Victims

Kelly Yeomans

2012-02-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

Kelly Yeomans (1984 – 28 September 1997) was an English schoolgirl from the Allenton suburb of Derby. Her 1997 suicide, at the age of 13, became widespread news when the cause was blamed on bullying to which she had been subjected by other local children.

In evidence to court, Yeomans was described as a pleasant and friendly girl. However, she was reported to be the victim of repeated harassment and taunting, particularly about her weight. Her parents said that the incessant bullying had left Yeomans feeling miserable. Her mother asserted that she had gone to her daughter's school, Merrill College, Shelton Lock, thirty times to complain about the issue, but received no assistance. School officials, however, claimed they had received only one complaint.

Matters came to a head in September, 1997, when a group of youths reportedly gathered at Yeomans's home on several consecutive nights, on each occasion throwing food at the house and shouting taunts aimed at Yeomans. Her mother later said that the incident prompted Yeomans to tell her family, "It is nothing to do with you Daddy, nothing to do with you Mummy, and nothing to do with you Sarah her sister. I have had enough and I'm going to take an overdose."

The parents said they were worried and sought help for their daughter's obvious depression, but did not believe she would carry out her threat to take her own life. However, Yeomans was soon found dead in her bedroom after taking an overdose of painkillers.

After they admitted having done so, five youths between the ages of thirteen and seventeen were convicted of intentionally harassing Yeomans in the months leading up to her death. They were sentenced to attendance centre orders. For a time, Yeomans's death put the issue of child bullies and their victims into the public spotlight.

In his 2003 recording "More Jack than God", the former Cream bass guitarist Jack Bruce wrote a tribute to her - "Kelly's Blues".

Kelly Yeomans

2012-01-12T15:42:00.001-08:00

Kelly Yeomans (1984 – 28 September 1997) was an English schoolgirl from the Allenton suburb of Derby. Her 1997 suicide, at the age of 13, became widespread news when the cause was blamed on bullying to which she had been subjected by other local children.

In evidence to court, Yeomans was described as a pleasant and friendly girl. However, she was reported to be the victim of repeated harassment and taunting, particularly about her weight. Her parents said that the incessant bullying had left Yeomans feeling miserable. Her mother asserted that she had gone to her daughter's school, Merrill College, Shelton Lock, thirty times to complain about the issue, but received no assistance. School officials, however, claimed they had received only one complaint.

Matters came to a head in September, 1997, when a group of youths reportedly gathered at Yeomans's home on several consecutive nights, on each occasion throwing food at the house and shouting taunts aimed at Yeomans. Her mother later said that the incident prompted Yeomans to tell her family, "It is nothing to do with you Daddy, nothing to do with you Mummy, and nothing to do with you Sarah [her sister]. I have had enough and I'm going to take an overdose."

The parents said they were worried and sought help for their daughter's obvious depression, but did not believe she would carry out her threat to take her own life. However, Yeomans was soon found dead in her bedroom after taking an overdose of painkillers.

After they admitted having done so, five youths between the ages of thirteen and seventeen were convicted of intentionally harassing Yeomans in the months leading up to her death. They were sentenced to attendance centre orders. For a time, Yeomans's death put the issue of child bullies and their victims into the public spotlight.

In his 2003 recording "More Jack than God", the former Cream bass guitarist Jack Bruce wrote a tribute to her - "Kelly's Blues".

Junko Furuta

2011-11-08T04:25:00.001-08:00

oncrete-encased high school girl murder case (女子高生コンクリート詰め殺人事件, Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken?) was a 1988–89 murder in which a Japanese girl, Junko Furuta (古田順子 Furuta Junko), 16 at that time, was murdered.

On November 25, 1988, four boys, including a 17-year-old whose personal name was Jō and would be later given the surname Kamisaku, abducted and held Furuta, a third-year high school (12th grade) student from Misato, Saitama Prefecture, for 44 days. They kept her captive in the house owned by the parents of Kamisaku, in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo.

To forestall a manhunt, one of them forced Furuta into calling her own parents and telling them that she had run away from home, but was with "a friend" and was not in danger. He also browbeat her into posing as the girlfriend of one of the boys when his (Kamisaku's) parents were around, but when he was sure they would not call the police, he dropped the pretext. Furuta tried to escape several times, begging the parents to help her, but they did nothing, apparently out of fear that a second boy would hurt them. This second boy was at the time a low-level Yakuza leader and had bragged that he could use his connections to kill anyone who interfered.

According to their statements at their trial, the four of them raped her (over 400 times), beat her with metal rods and golf clubs, introduced foreign objects including a hot light bulb into her vagina, made her eat cockroaches and drink her own urine, inserted fireworks into her anus and set them off, forced Furuta to masturbate, cut her nipple with pliers, dropped dumbbells onto her stomach, and burned her with cigarettes and lighters. One of the burnings was punishment for attempting to call the police. It was also stated that some time after the first acts of torture, she became unable to drink water, which would cause her to vomit whenever she attempted to do so. At one point her injuries were so severe that according to one of the boys it took more than an hour for her to crawl downstairs to use the bathroom. They also related that "possibly a hundred different people" knew that Furuta had been imprisoned there, but it is not clear if this means they visited the house at different times while she was imprisoned there, or themselves either raped or abused her. When the boys refused to let her leave, she begged them on several occasions to "kill (her) and get it over with."

On January 4, 1989, using a loss at mahjong solitaire as a pretext, the four beat her with an iron barbell, poured lighter fluid on her legs, arms, face and stomach, and set her on fire. She died later that day of shock. The four boys claimed that they were not aware of how badly injured she was, and that they believed she had been malingering.

On January 5, the killers hid her corpse in a 55-gallon drum filled with concrete; the perpetrators disposed the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō, Tokyo.

The boys were arrested and tried as adults; but, because of Japanese handling of crimes committed by juveniles, their identities were concealed by the court. However, the magazine Shūkan Bunshun reported their real names, claiming that "human rights aren't needed for brutes".

For his participation in the crime, Kamisaku served eight years in a juvenile prison before he was released, in August 1999. In July 2004, he was arrested for assaulting an acquaintance, whom he believed to be luring a girlfriend away from him, and allegedly bragged about his earlier infamy. Kamisaku was sentenced to seven years in prison for the beating.

Junko's parents were dismayed by the sentences received by their daughter's killers, and enjoined a civil suit against the parents of the boy in whose home the crimes were committed. When some of the convictions were overturned on the basis of problematic physical evidence (the semen and pubic hair recovered from the body did not match those of the boys who were arrested), the lawyer handling the civil suit decided there was no case to be made and refused to represent them further.

In July 1990 a lower court sentenced the leader to seventeen years in prison. The court sentenced one accomplice to a four- to six-year term, one accomplice to a three- to four-year term, and another accomplice to an indefinite five- to ten-year term. The leader and the first two of the three appealed their rulings. The higher court gave more severe sentences to the three appealing parties. The presiding judge, Ryūji Yanase, said that the court did so because of the nature of the crime, the effect on the victim's family, and the effects of the crime on society. The leader received a twenty-year sentence, the second highest possible sentence after life imprisonment. Of the two appealing accomplices, the one that originally got four to six years, received a five- to nine-year term. The other accomplice had his sentence upgraded to a five- to seven-year term.

The case drew nationwide attention towards the sentencing and rehabilitation of youthful offenders, especially in the context of youths charged as adults, and became a media sensation.

At least three Japanese-language books have been written about the incident.

A Japanese manga, 17 Sai, written by Fujii Seiji and illustrated by Kamata Youji, was released in 2004, chronicling the events of the crime.

An exploitation film, Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken 女子高生コンクリート詰め殺人事件, Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case), was made about the incident by Katsuya Matsumura in 1995. Yujin Kitagawa (later a member of the music duo Yuzu) played the role of principal culprit.

Another film, Concrete (コンクリート, aka Schoolgirl in Cement, 2004), was based on one of the books written about the incident.

In 2006, the Japanese rock/metal band the Gazette released a song on their album Nil titled "Taion" ("Body Temperature") that is a tribute to the girl.

Guro manga artist Waita Uziga's "True Modern Stories of the Bizarre" includes the story "Schoolgirl in Concrete", based on the murder case of Junko Furuta.

Raymond Robinson

2011-10-01T03:27:00.001-07:00

Raymond "Ray" Robinson (October 29, 1910 – June 11, 1985) was a severely disfigured man whose years of nighttime walks made him into a figure of urban legend in western Pennsylvania. Robinson was so badly injured in a childhood electrical accident that he could not go out in public without fear of creating a panic, so he went for long walks after dark. Local residents (who would drive his road in hopes of meeting him) called him The Green Man or Charlie No-Face, and they passed on tales about him to their children and grandchildren. Teenagers raised on these tales are sometimes surprised to discover that the mythic boogeyman was a real person, well liked by his neighbors and his family.

Robinson was eight years old when he was injured by an electrical line on the Morado Bridge, outside of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania while attempting to view a bird's nest. The bridge carried a trolley, and had electrical lines of both 1,200 volts and 22,000 volts which had killed another boy less than a year earlier. Robinson was not expected to survive; he lived, but he was badly scarred and lost his eyes and nose, one ear, and one arm.

Robinson lived in Koppel, PA and spent his days at home with relatives, making doormats, wallets, and belts to sell. Because of his appearance, he rarely ventured out during the day. However, at night, he went for long walks on a quiet stretch of State Route 351, feeling his way along with a walking stick and his feet. Groups of locals regularly gathered to search for him walking along the roadway. Robinson usually hid from his curious neighbors, but would sometimes exchange a short conversation or a photograph for beer or cigarettes. Some were friendly, others cruel, but none of his encounters deterred Robinson from his nightly walks. He was struck by cars more than once. Robinson stopped his long walks during the last years of his life, and retired to the Beaver County Geriatric Center, where he died in 1985.

Robinson became a local myth in the Pittsburgh area, and his real story was obscured by urban legend. In the stories, he was the Green Man, an employee of a power company who was, in some versions of the story, hit by a downed power line and in other versions, struck by lightning, after which he died or hid in an abandoned house. To the disfigurement Robinson suffered in reality, legend added an open hole in one cheek and glowing green skin.

Through several generations, Robinson's story has been passed on so many times that his name and his real history have been overshadowed by the ghost story which grew out of them.

Percy Foster

2011-09-15T16:21:00.001-07:00

U.K. tabloid Sunday Sport recently introduced the world to Percy Foster, a 35-year-old dwarf porn star whose career was just beginning to catch fire. It was all because an observant production assistant on the set of Hi-Ho Hi-Ho, It's Up Your Arse We Go had noticed how much Foster looked like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. But just as Foster was set to join the rarefied ranks of celebrity lookalike dwarf porn stars, tragedy struck: The body of the 3' 6" performer has been discovered in a badger's den, partially eaten.

According to Sunday Sport's follow-up account, Foster was found "deep in an underground chamber by Ministry of Agriculture experts ahead of a planned badger-gassing programme near Tregaron, west Wales." They write that "expert CSI teams had to use fingertip technology to remove his body from the six-foot-deep burrow." (I have no idea what fingertip technology is, but I imagine it's akin to one of those claw cranes you find in arcades and drugstores.)

Officials have not yet ruled out suicide, and adult film producer Dexter Yamunkeh's comments — in which he intimates that Foster may have cracked under the pressures of being the world's leading Gordon Ramsay-lookalike-sex-dwarf — certainly don't invalidate the possibility:

"Percy was a little guy with big problems. He was doing well but he was under pressure, 24/7, like everyone in this goddamned business."

It's more than a little curious that the internet, aka God's porn dumping grounds, contains not a single reference to either Percy or Dexter prior to these two news items. But that's just the cynic in me talking. So tonight, we pour out a little (and I do mean little) gin in memory of poor Percy. We may never get to see his work in Midget MasterChef: Assbasters 7, but his memory will live on all the same

2 little people mexican wrestlers murdered by hookers

2011-08-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

It's sad news for fans of the Mexican Lucha Mini stars, twin brothers Alberto and Alejandro Jimenez, known as La Parkita and El Espectrito Jr.

The two were found dead in their hotel room in Mexico City. The brothers, 35, were checking into a hotel on Sunday night after a show when they were reportedly approached by two prostitutes.

After hotel staff noticed the women leave the room hours later, but didn't spot the wrestlers, they went to go check on them. The two luchadores were found lifeless, lying in the beds.

Reports are being released that the hookers belong to Las Goteras (meaning The Drops) which is a gang of whores that robes their clients after making them pass out by drugging their drinks.

Unfortunately, the Jimenez brothers overdosed on the drugs which normally don't kill men, but officials believe because the brothers were of such small size, the dose was fatal to them.

Alcohol containers were also found in the room but the ladies are still missing.

Cops are looking for the two females and luckily have found finger prints in the room which they believe they can match to the hookers.

Katie Piper

2011-05-03T03:49:00.001-07:00

I was savagely disfigured by my deranged boyfriend: Acid attack victim bravely shows her face.
With painful honesty, Katie Piper, the former TV presenter tells why she has finally waived her right to anonymity – and reveals the awful events that changed her life for ever

However much she would like to forget them, the details of how she lost her dreams, her identity and very nearly her life will stay with Katie Piper for ever.

They are burned into both her memory and her face. Katie, 26, has remained fearful and anonymous in the 18 months since the man she met on the internet attempted to destroy her, so few will recognise her name.

But the facts of the case – the rape, the vengeful boyfriend Daniel Lynch, the cup of industrial-strength sulphuric acid – are all too familiar, a cause of anger and revulsion when they were revealed in court earlier this year.

It was an added cruelty that Katie’s world had revolved around her beauty. She modelled for catalogues and magazines, presented television programmes and had dreamed of a full-time career in the media.

But on March 31, 2008, the old Katie Piper disappeared for ever. The acid, hurled into her face on a busy London street, disfigured her beyond recognition. Some slipped down her throat with further terrible consequences.
‘I could hear someone screaming and screaming and kept wishing they’d be quiet. Then I realised it was me,’ she recalls.

‘I was standing in the street with people walking past me and I could feel my face evaporating. I thought I was on fire as the acid ate at my skin.

‘In one of Danny’s calls he’d told me he’d got a present for me that would change my life for ever. I knew instantly that he was behind it.’

Afterwards, able to communicate only in writing, she gave her parents a note that said: ‘Kill me.’ Yet today, Katie is no longer in despair.

Still learning to live with her rebuilt features and exhausted by more than 30 operations, she has agreed to waive her anonymity and speak in public. Her fightback will be featured in a Channel 4 documentary this month.

She hopes her bravery will help her regain some confidence. It is also a chance to insist – as she has discovered in the hardest way – that appearance cannot be the measure of human worth.

‘I’m never going to be the old Katie. She’s like a best friend I once had,’ she admits.

‘She’s gone and there’s a different one in her place. I’m not going to be a victim. I’m the woman who got through this. I’m full of life and looking forward to the future.’

At the beginning of last year, Katie was living in London for the first time and enjoying it. She was popular, particularly with men who were drawn to her blonde good looks and petite figure.

Like many young adults, she lived part of her hectic life through the pages of Facebook and it was not unusual for her to receive 80 emails in one day, many from admiring strangers.

Mostly, these were ignored. But when 33-year-old Daniel Lynch, a martial arts enthusiast, emailed Katie to say he’d been following her career, she admits she was instantly attracted.

‘He was wearing a martial arts suit in his picture and I’d been doing some promotional work for martial arts in the UK,’ she explains.

‘We seemed to have a lot in common and, to be honest, looking at his picture, I fancied him.’

A few days later Lynch turned up at a promotional event in Reading where Katie was working.

‘He seemed quite shy and nervous when we first met,’ she says. ‘We just had a nice, normal chat. He was 6ft 4in, quite macho-looking and handsome. I liked what I saw.’

Katie sent him her phone number and when they went on their first date, he met her with flowers and a teddy bear.

‘We liked each other and we had fun,’ she says. ‘He told me on our second date that he loved me. His arm was always around me and even when we were in the car and stopped at traffic lights, he would turn and kiss me.
‘He was attentive and showered me with affection. He rang me and emailed me constantly. At one point he’d sent so many messages he blocked my Facebook account. If I’m honest, I was flattered – at least at first.’

She soon got a very different view of her new boyfriend, though. Angered by a trivial slight when he was buying trainers, Lynch had exploded at a shop assistant, leaving Katie to pick up the pieces. This was at the end of March last year.

‘We were two weeks into our relationship and I’d started feeling stifled by his constant calls and emails. I didn’t say anything but I planned to break up with him,’ she says.

If she had known his true background, she would never have been with him in the first place. Lynch, who lived in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, with his mother and brother, had convictions for violence and had served a jail sentence for throwing boiling water into the face of another man. But Katie knew none of this.

‘Later on the day of the incident in the shop, when he suggested we make a night of it and stay in a hotel in Bayswater, I agreed,’ she says.

‘It was a Thursday and I had an appointment in town the next day. We went for a meal, shared a bottle of wine and he seemed to be in a good mood again.’

What happened next was terrifying by anyone’s standards. To a young girl from a comfortable home in a South of England market town, it was unimaginable. Lynch raped her in the hotel room before holding her captive for eight hellish hours.

He smashed her head, beat her, threatened to slash her face with a razor and said he would hang her with a belt. Later he claimed to have been high on steroids.

Even now, the details of the rape are hard for Katie to recount. ‘One minute he’d tell me he loved me and the next he was shouting and swearing. His face was so contorted and I knew that I was dealing with a very sick person,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think he was going to let me leave that room alive.

‘The blood from my head wound was everywhere – on the bed, on the carpets, on the bathroom tiles. I told him the maids would be along soon and we had to clear up, otherwise they’d call the police.’

They drove back to Katie’s flat in Golders Green where, to her relief, he agreed to let her out of the car. It was 5pm on Friday.

If her brief affair with Lynch was a dreadful mistake, Katie’s next decision, too, might seem open to question. She decided not to go to the police, gripped by the fear that he would kill her if she put one foot wrong. Nor did she tell the truth to the doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where her head wound was glued.

‘I hated myself and what had happened to me,’ she says. ‘But I was terrified that he would hurt me or someone I loved. I kept thinking that as long as I played along and didn’t make him angry, he’d get fed up.’

Instead, the bombardment of phone calls continued. Lynch was full of apologies, she says, and the following Monday morning begged her to read an email he had written.

So, with her own internet line down, she agreed to leave her flat and walk to an internet cafe.

Katie admits: ‘I was nervous about leaving the flat but thought that I could end this thing if I read the email. The whole time Danny was on the phone to me, making conversation, asking me what I was wearing. I was exhausted so I told him.’

This was how her assailant, directed by Lynch, picked her out.

‘I saw a man in a hooded top walking towards me,’ she says. ‘He was carrying a cup. I assumed he was a beggar so I reached into my bag for some change. He came up close, like he was going to speak, and threw liquid from the cup at my face.

‘The pain was indescribable, but for a split second I remember thinking, “How rude to throw coffee when I was trying to help him.” I could feel my skin and clothes burning off me.’

Seath Jackson

2011-04-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

A 15-year-old boy was shot to death and stuffed into a sleeping bag before being burned in a bonfire and dumped into water, Marion County deputies said Wednesday. Investigators said he was lured into a house by his ex-girlfriend then beaten by a gang of older teens.

Six people are in jail, including the teen's 15-year-old ex-girlfriend, Amber Wright. They're accused of killing Seath Jackson in a Summerfield home on S.E. 53rd Avenue in Marion County on Sunday, and then trying to cover up the crime by burning his body.

WFTV spoke with Jackson's closest friends on Wednesday. They said he spent Sunday at their house and Wright texted him non-stop, telling him she wanted to get back together. Detectives said the texts were part of a plan to lure Jackson to the home shared by her friends.
Jackson's friend, Jeremy Williams, said he cannot move past the shock.

"She was calling and texting and telling him she wanted to get back with him," Williams said.

Once inside the home, Jackson was hit in the head with some kind of wooden object and was shot multiple times, according to detectives. When Jackson made an attempt to leave the house, he was tackled, held and shot again, deputies said.

"He was beaten in the head with a wooden object; it may have been an ax handle. He was shot once, he was able to break free, he was tackled and he was shot once again," said Judge Cochran of the Marion County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies arrested Wright, 18-year-old Charlie Kay Ely, 18-year-old Michael S. Bargo, 20-year-old Justin Soto, and 16-year-old Kyle Hooper, who is Wright's brother, and charged them with first-degree murder.

"He was dragged into the bathroom where he was beaten some more and shot once again," Cochran said.

Wright's stepfather, 37-year-old James Havens, was also arrested and charged with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. According to investigators, Bargo was the mastermind behind the murder plot.

According to a sheriff's office report, Jackson's body was placed in a bathtub and his knee caps were broken. His body was hog tied and then placed into a sleeping bag and then burned in bonfire.

Jackson's remains were then shoveled into several 5-gallon paint containers and dumped it in the water at a local lime quarry, allegedly with Haven's help, detectives said.

The details are too much for Jackson's friends to take, and they were there when his parents found out what happened.

"It was really hard. A bunch of his friends were there and the look on his parent's face was just horrible," said friend Carrie Williams. "I'm astounded that people can do that to a child."

Deputies said Havens overheard the teens talking about the murder, but said he didn't take it seriously. After he learned what happened, deputies said he helped them cover up the murder.

Havens was released on a $10,000 bond on Wednesday morning, according to the sheriff's office.

The motive behind the violence is something everyone is struggling to understand. Their only clue: Jackson's Facebook page and a series of messages between him and Wright filled with profanity.

Jackson accused her of cheating. She wrote: "You continuously write shit about me."
"I said I was done with you, and you should be done with me," Jackson said.

"It takes a real man to accept the fact that he got broke up with," Wright posted.

The online argument may have fueled the vicious killing.

Chairman

2011-04-07T03:44:00.000-07:00

Obese man cut from chair he was stuck in for 2 years dies; skin fused with maggot-infested fabric

BELLAIRE, Ohio (KTLA) -- A morbidly obese man has died after being confined to a living room chair for over two years.

Authorities found the 43-year old man unconscious after receiving a 911 call from his roommates.

After several attempts to remove him, officers discovered his skin was fused to the chair with urine and feces.

The man, who was not identified, sat in his own waste and was covered with maggots, according to local TV station WTRF.

Officers were forced to cut the man out of the chair.

A hole was also cut in the wall of the home to get him outside to a waiting ambulance.

Shockingly, two other able-bodied people lived there---another man, who had a separate bedroom, and the girlfriend of the man who was stuck in the chair. Officials say the girlfriend served food to him, since he never got up.

Bellaire Code Enforcer Jim Chase says now the tennants have been given orders to clean it or leave it.

One officer said it was the worst thing he ever responded to. And most said the worst part of all was the smell. Ironically the landlord says the man in the chair rented from her before and used to be a vital active person.

She says she checked on them periodically but lately he always sat with a blanket over him. She says she had no idea it had come to this

The man was taken to Wheeling Hospital in nearby West Virginia, where he later died.

Brooke Greenberg

2011-02-11T07:14:00.001-08:00

Brooke Greenberg (born January 8, 1993), is an American from Reisterstown, Maryland, who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. She is about 30 inches (76 cm) tall, weighs about 16 pounds (7.3 kg), and has an estimated mental age of nine months to one year. Brooke's doctors have termed her condition Syndrome X.

Brooke was born on January 8, 1993 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, one month prior to her due date, weighing just four pounds (1.8 kg). She was born with anterior hip dislocation, a condition which caused her legs to be swiveled upwards, awkwardly, toward her shoulders; this was corrected surgically. Otherwise, Brooke appeared to be a normal infant.

In her first six years, Brooke Greenberg went through a series of unexplained medical emergencies from which she recovered. She had seven perforated stomach ulcers. She also suffered a seizure. This was followed by what was later diagnosed as a stroke; weeks later, no damage was detected. At age five, Brooke had a mass in her brain that caused her to sleep for 14 days. The doctors diagnosed the mass as a brain tumor. However, Brooke later awoke, and physicians found no tumor present. Brooke's pediatrician, Dr. Lawrence Pakula, states that the source of her sudden illness remains a mystery.

To keep food from getting into her lungs, Brooke is fed through a permanent stomach tube. Feeding her through the tube takes ten hours a day.

Over the past several years, the Greenbergs visited many specialists, looking for an explanation for their daughter's strange condition, yet there has been no diagnosis of any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality. In 2001, when Dateline documented Brooke, she was still the size of a six-month-old infant, weighing just 13 lb (5.9 kg) at 27 inches (69 cm) tall. The family still had no explanation. Brooke Greenberg's mother Melanie said: "They the specialists just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinologist. We tried the growth hormone...". The growth hormone treatment had no effect. Howard, Brooke's father, said: "I mean she did not put on an ounce or she did not grow an inch ... That’s when I knew there was a problem." After the growth hormone administration failed, the doctors, unable to diagnose a known condition, named her condition Syndrome X.

The Greenbergs made many visits to nearby Johns Hopkins Children's Center, and even took Brooke to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, searching for information about their daughter’s condition. When geneticists sequenced Greenberg's DNA, they found that the genes associated with the premature aging diseases were normal, unlike the mutated versions in patients with Werner syndrome and progeria.

In 2006, Richard Walker, PhD in endocrine physiology of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, said that Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic disorder or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why. Her telomeres seem to be shortening at the normal rate.

In 2009, Walker said: "There've been very minimal changes in Brooke's brain ... Various parts of her body, rather than all being at the same stage, seem to be disconnected." Walker noted that Greenberg's brain, for example, is not much more mature than that of a newborn infant. He estimates her mental age at around nine months to a year old. Brooke can make gestures and recognize sounds, but cannot speak. Her bones are like those of a ten-year-old, and she still has her baby teeth, which have an estimated developmental age of about eight years. Said Walker, "We think that Brooke's condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of aging." "Different parts of her body are developing at different rates, as if they were not a unit but parts of separate organisms," Walker explains.

Dr. Walker believes that the condition resulted from a failure of central control genes. He has identified two more people with similar developmental issues: Gabrielle K. of Montana (born 2004) and Nicky Freeman of Australia (born 1970), a forty-year-old man who looks like a boy. Others, such as British biologist Aubrey de Grey, believe that aging and development are not related.

911 dispatcher forgot to send help

2010-12-09T01:02:00.000-08:00

Help never came for four people stuck on a logging road in northern Saskatchewan because a civilian RCMP dispatcher got distracted and forgot to send a tow truck.

And when the tow truck didn't arrive, one of the women tried to walk 60 kilometres for help before dying on the side of a highway.

Details of the circumstances that lead to Kerri Canepotatoe's death came to light Thursday when the RCMP made public the results of an investigation into how three 911 calls from the stranded motorists were handled.

Chief Supt. Randy Beck said the review found that the dispatcher, who has been on the job for 33 years, made a mistake.

"The very next moment that this call was dropped, where the cellphone coverage was lost, the next call came in which was a robbery. His attention was diverted to dealing with the caller on that robbery and subsequently erred in not dispatching," said Chief Beck.

"It was a simple human error."

The calls were made on April 8, when Ms. Canepotatoe, Melissa Rabbitskin and two children left Prince Albert heading for Loon Lake, near the Alberta boundary. They got lost and made a wrong turn. Their car got bogged down in mud and water on a logging road near Big River.

The stranded travellers tried calling 911 three times. Only one of those calls made it through to an RCMP call centre in Prince Albert.

"I have two kids with me and I'm trying to get back home and I am stuck in water. It's kind of deep water and I'm trying to get back home. All I need is a tow truck to come and pick me out. Please can you get us help," Ms. Rabbitskin said to the RCMP civilian dispatcher.

"Hello?" she said.

"Yeah, just hang on here. Don't be pushing it girl. So you don't know where you are? You're on the Chitek Road and that's all you know," replied the dispatcher.

"I was going through Chitek Road, yes." Her next words were indescipherable.

"See, you're breaking up. I'm not getting that," said the dispatcher.

Rabbitskin could not say where she was stuck. The call lasted about seven or eight minutes.

The next morning, Ms. Canepotatoe, 18, left the car to walk for help. She died of exposure, but it wasn't until the discovery of her body by the side of a secondary highway on April 12, and it being positively identified on April 15, that finally spurred the search that found Ms. Rabbitskin and the two children, who were left shivering for a week in their stranded car.

Chief Beck said Mounties may not have been able to find them based on the limited information from the call.

Still, the dispatcher should have sent the call to a tow truck operator or to a police officer to respond.

"It should not be up to our operators to decide who needs a call (or) who doesn't," said Chief Beck. "It's take the information and pass it on and dispatch it to service providers in the field."

"If that had been done, there may be a different circumstance."

Chief Beck said the RCMP changed procedures at the beginning of September so that supervisors must review calls if no one is dispatched. He said the force and the operator involved feel "terrible."

"As I said to the families yesterday, we did not live up to their expectations or the standards we set for ourselves and for that we apologize."

Kent Schaible (2) died after his fundamentalist Christian parents chose to pray over him rather than take him to a doctor

2010-12-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A couple who prayed for their sick toddler rather than take him to a doctor before his pneumonia death went on trial on manslaughter charges Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Lawyers for Herbert Schaible, 42, and his wife Catherine, 41, told jurors the couple are being prosecuted because they are Christian fundamentalists who believe in faith healing. The lawyers said prosecutors cannot prove the parents knew their 2-year-old son was near death when he got sick in January 2009.

Kent Schaible died 10 days later of bacterial pneumonia. According to prosecutors, a doctor's visit could have saved him.

"A 2-year-old doesn't have the wherewithal to say, 'Mommy, Daddy, I'm sick. I need to go to a doctor,'" Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said in opening statements. "A simple visit to the doctor, a prescription and that little boy could have been with us today."

About a dozen U.S. children die in such cases each year, often from diabetes, pneumonia and other treatable illnesses, according to Shawn Francis Peters, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who wrote "When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law."

The parents often claim they failed to recognize the severity of the illness, he said.

The Schaibles have six other children and no prior contact with police or social workers.

The couple, who quit school after ninth grade, worked as teachers at their church, First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

"This case is not about religion. They didn't know that the child was seriously ill," said defense lawyer Bobby Hoof, who represents the father.

"Even the medical examiner testified that it's a rapidly moving organism," he said after court Tuesday. "It could become manifest in one day and fatal the next."

Kent's symptoms had included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite, and he was warm to the touch, the parents told police in statements after his death.

They thought he was improving as the days wore on, but when his condition worsened, they called their pastor and then a funeral home, authorities said.

Police asked why they didn't call a doctor. Both said they believed in God for healing, Pescatore has said.

The city judge who upheld involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and conspiracy charges in October 2009 called the parents loving but misguided. They remain free on $150,000 bail.

High-profile coroner Cyril Wecht is scheduled the testify for the defense Thursday. Hoof declined to say whether his client would testify, and Catherine Schaible's public defender did not immediately return a call.

Jurors could get the case by Friday.

Death from laughter

2010-08-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

Records of cases of death from laughter date back to Ancient Greece.

Death may result from several pathologies that deviate from benign laughter.

Infarction of the pons and medulla oblongata in the brain may cause pathological laughter.

Laughter can cause atonia and collapse ("gelastic syncope"), which in turn can cause trauma. See also laughter-induced syncope, cataplexy, and Bezold-Jarisch reflex.

Gelastic seizures can be due to focal lesions to the hypothalamus. Depending upon the size of the lesion, the emotional lability may be a sign of an acute condition, and not itself the cause of the fatality. Gelastic syncope has also been associated with the cerebellum.

In the third century B.C., the Greek stoic philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after giving his donkey wine, then seeing it attempt to feed on figs.
Martin I of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughter in 1410.
Pietro Aretino, who died in 1556, "is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much."
The Burmese king Nanda Bayin is said in 1599 to have "laughed to death when informed by a visiting Italian merchant that Venice was a free state without a king." This may be apocryphal, however, as Htin Aung states that the king abdicated a year before he was assassinated in 1600.
In 1660, the Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English Thomas Urquhart, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

On 24 March 1975, Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, died laughing while watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, featuring a kilt-clad Scotsman battling a vicious black pudding with his bagpipes. After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter, Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and died from heart failure. His widow later sent The Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments of life so pleasant.
In 1989, a Danish audiologist, Ole Bentzen, died laughing while watching A Fish Called Wanda. His heart was estimated to have beaten at between 250 and 500 beats per minute, before he succumbed to cardiac arrest.
In 2003, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, is reported to have died while laughing in his sleep at the age of 52. His wife was unable to wake him, and he stopped breathing after two minutes of continuous laughter. He is believed to have died of either heart failure or asphyxiation

Kim Sa-rang

2010-08-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

Kim Sa-rang, a 3-month-old Korean child, died from malnutrition after both her parents spent hours each day in an internet cafe raising a virtual child on an online game, Prius Online

Kodi Hawthorne

2010-08-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

A Port Orchard woman committed suicide after losing her daughter in a vicious custody battle over her 9 month old daughter.
Kodi Hawthorne, of Port Orchard, had been her daughter Ryah's sole caregiver for the child's entire life. Upon being served with a paternity suit by her daughter's father, Tyler, she arrived in court originally requesting that the father be allowed visitation with his daughter as long as he took his required medication for bipolar disorder, as he had a violent and abusive history.

In the months that followed, a series of character attacks began against Kodi to prove her an unfit parent. She was portrayed as a drug user and abusive parent, despite passing drug follicle screenings and providing pediatrician letters that confirmed Ryah had been a happy, healthy, breastfed infant in her mother's care.

During the court process, Tyler's Myspace pages would cryptically declare, "She is MINE." Hawthorne's residence was stalked and bricks smashed through her window while her daughter was in her care. When attempting to get a restraining order against the father, she was denied.

After passing the necessary hurdles in court to maintain her custody, she was served with paperwork accusing her of raping a 14 year old boy she had lived with and for whom she had provided after school care. Before her rape case was proven or closed, Hawthorne's daughter was then removed from her custody, placed with the father and Hawthorne was given 18 hours of supervised visitation a week.

Despite attempting to assert her visitation rights before her custody trial scheduled for November of 2010, she was consistently denied said visitation by the father, who now had custody. Hawthorne reported her lawyer of Port Orchard had also received threats not to let a supervisor be approved for Ms. Hawthorne to see her daughter.

A study done by the Virginia based American Judges Foundation found that in 70% of challenged custody cases, abusive parents are successful in proving the victimized parent unfit.

Having been given only 2 hours of visitation in 3 weeks, Hawthorne entered a deep depression and consistently received threatening and harassing text messages from "anonymous" emails and phone numbers who she had asserted were from Tyler.

She had been threatened to be arrested to for child rape charges and "thrown into jail" in order to never see her daughter again. The threats, depression and loss of her daughter became too much for Hawthorne, who ended her life in a Kent hotel room on April 8, 2010.

Further investigation with detectives revealed no such rape charges were ever going to be filed, as evidence was not enough to charge Ms. Hawthorne in her rape case. The case mirrors the bullying case of teenager Phoebe Prince, although Kent detectives state that in Washington "a crime has not been committed."

Coincidentally, on Mother's Day 2010, almost exactly one month after Kodi Hawthorne's death, a march of hundreds of victimized parents held a silent vigil at the White House to protest the broken American family court system that removes children from protective parents.

http://www.kodihawthornestory.info/letter-to-all-left-behind.html

Jennifer Daugherty

2010-08-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Lee Daugherty (Thursday, November 8, 1979 – Thursday, February 11, 2010) was a 30-year-old woman who was tortured and murdered in Greensburg, Pennsylvania in February 2010.

During torture and abuse sessions, which lasted for a total of more than two days, Daugherty's attackers tied her up, forced her to consume feces and urine and detergent; beat her with a towel rack, a vacuum cleaner hose, and a crutch; shaved her head; painted her face with nail polish; forced her to write a fake suicide note; and then stabbed her to death. Six suspects were charged with criminal homicide, kidnapping and other counts related to her death. According to her relatives, Daugherty had the mental abilities of a 12- to 14-year-old, she trusted everyone, and she had thought that the suspects were her "friends."

Allegheny County Coroner Cyril H. Wecht, who has conducted and reviewed thousands of autopsies of homicide victims, stated, "... This is one of the most horrific cases I have seen... You have one young, defenseless woman, six people who are keeping her captive and doing all of these things, knowing she is mentally challenged. Put it all together, it is bizarre, it is extreme barbarism."

Genie

2009-11-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

Genie is the pseudonym for a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in American history. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities on November 4, 1970.

Genie's discovery was compared extensively with that of Victor of Aveyron, about whom a film was made, The Wild Child. Psychologists, linguists and other scientists exhibited great interest in the case due to its perceived ability to reveal insights into the development of language and linguistic critical periods. Initially cared for in the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Genie later became the subject of acrimonious debate over where and with whom she should eventually live, moving between the houses of the researchers who studied her, to foster homes, to her mother's house, and finally to a sheltered home for adults with disabilities in California. Funding and research interest in her abilities eventually ceased. In 1994 a book was written about her case by Russ Rymer.

Genie's parents lived in Arcadia, California. Genie's mother was partially blind due to cataracts and a detached retina, and her father (who was 20 years his wife's senior) was mentally unbalanced. Genie was the fourth (and second surviving) child, and had an elder brother who also lived in the home.

When Genie was between 14 and 20 months of age and was just beginning to learn speech, a doctor told her family that she seemed to be developmentally delayed and possibly mildly retarded. Her father took the opinion more seriously than it was expressed by the doctor, apparently deciding that she was profoundly retarded, and subjected her to severe confinement and ritual ill-treatment in an attempt to "protect" her.

Genie spent the next 12 years of her life locked in her bedroom. During the day, she was tied to a child's potty chair in diapers; at night, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. Indications are that Genie's father beat her if she vocalized, and he barked and growled at her like a dog in order to keep her quiet. He also rarely allowed his wife and son to leave the house or even to speak, and he expressly forbade them to speak to Genie. By the age of 13, Genie was almost entirely mute, commanding a vocabulary of about 20 words and a few short phrases (nearly all negative), such as "stop it" and "no more."

Genie was discovered at the age of 13 when her mother left her husband and took Genie with her. On November 4, 1970, the two entered a welfare office in Temple City, California, to seek benefits for the blind. A social worker met them and guessed that Genie was 6 or 7 years old and possibly autistic. When it was revealed that she was actually 13, the social worker immediately called her supervisor, who then notified the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Temple Station deputies responded, the parents were charged with child abuse, and Genie was taken to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Genie's mother, weak and almost blind, claimed she was herself a victim of abuse by Genie's father. The father committed suicide by shooting himself on the day both parents were to be arraigned on child abuse charges. Charges against the mother went forward in municipal court, but the judge refused to forward the charges to superior court.

Genie had a strange "bunny walk", in which she held her hands up in front, like paws. Although she was almost entirely silent, she constantly sniffed, spat, and clawed. Many of the items she coveted were objects with which she could play. In spite of her condition, hospital staff hoped they could nurture her to normality. When interest in the case widened, Genie became the focus of an investigation to provide evidence supporting the theory that humans have a critical age threshold for language acquisition. Within a few months of therapy, she had advanced to one-word answers and had learned to dress herself. Her doctors predicted complete success. They even screened François Truffaut's movie The Wild Child for ideas. Genie was initially moved out of the hospital to the home of Jean Butler, and later was moved to live with psychologist David Rigler, his wife and children, where she remained for four years.

Though initially nearly silent, Genie later learned to vocalize and express herself through sign language. Provided with few toys or objects to stimulate her, the majority of her time was spent in a dark room staring at a yellow plastic raincoat. After her rescue, attempts were made to help her speak and socialize. Her demeanor changed considerably, and she became social with adults she was familiar with. Colorful plastic objects became her favorite objects to collect and play with, and she demonstrated a deep fascination with classical music played on the piano (one of the neighboring children practiced piano regularly, and this was speculated to be the source of her fascination as it was one of very few sensations available to her). Genie developed remarkable nonverbal communication skills; repeatedly she and her caretakers were approached by strangers who would, without being asked, spontaneously give Genie gifts or possessions in which she exhibited an interest.

Jean Butler was Genie's teacher at Children's Hospital. Butler became Genie's foster parent by accident or by, as members of the Genie team suspected, a scheme that Butler concocted to allow Genie to stay with her. Butler claimed that she herself had had a rash that was likely measles, and thus when Genie had visited her home, Genie may have contracted it. Genie was moved to Butler's home with the initial intent of a temporary quarantine, but the stay became prolonged when Butler petitioned to make it permanent. Butler became very protective of Genie and resisted visits by other members of the Genie team including Susan Curtiss and James Kent.

Butler's personal journal recorded concern that Genie was taxed too greatly by the Genie team and experiments; however, Butler didn't hide the fact that she hoped Genie would help make her famous. According to Curtiss, Butler frequently stated that she was "going to be the next Anne Sullivan." Her true intentions may never be known because she died in 1988, but many members of the Genie team claimed genuine affection for Genie and an overwhelming desire to "rescue" her.

Butler did, however, continue the essential practice of observing and documenting Genie's behavior while in her home. One such behavior Butler documented was Genie's practice of hoarding, a behavior typical of children who have been moved from abusive homes. When Butler applied to be Genie's legal foster parent, she was rejected.

Genie returned to the hospital and was handed over to a new foster parent, therapist David Rigler. His wife, Marilyn, became Genie's new teacher. Marilyn found the need to teach Genie unconventional lessons, for example, in anger management. Genie would go into a fit of rage and act out against herself, so Marilyn taught Genie to "rage" through jumping, slamming doors, stomping her feet and generally "having a fit." Marilyn noted that Genie had a stronger command of vocabulary than most children acquiring language. During this period Genie was even able to discuss her years of abuse:

Marilyn Rigler: Where did you stay when you lived at home? Where did you live? Where did you sleep?
Genie: Potty chair.
Marilyn Rigler: You slept in the potty chair?
Genie: Mmm-hmm. Potty chair.
She stayed with the Rigler family for the next four years. During that period she began to learn some language, and the Riglers arranged for her to learn sign language. She also learned to smile. If she could not express herself in language, she would try to communicate by drawing pictures.

Despite Genie's relative success, the National Institute of Mental Health, which had funded the project, grew concerned about the lack of scientific research data generated, as well as the unprofessional manner in which records were being kept. In 1974, the Institute cut off funding for the research. The following year the Riglers decided to discontinue their foster parenting. Genie had not yet learned full grammatical English and only went so far as phrases like "Applesauce buy store."

In 1975, Genie was returned to the custody of her mother, who wished to care for her daughter. After a few months, the mother found that taking care of Genie was too difficult, and Genie was transferred to a succession of six more foster homes. In some of the homes she was physically abused and harassed, and her development regressed severely. She returned to her coping mechanism of silence and gained a new fear of opening her mouth. This new fear developed after she was severely punished for vomiting in one of her foster homes; she didn't want to open her mouth, even to speak, for fear of vomiting and facing punishment again.

The original research team heard nothing more about Genie until her mother sued them for excessive and outrageous testing and claimed the researchers gave testing priority over Genie's welfare, pushing her beyond the limits of her endurance. The suit was settled in 1984.

Genie now lives in a sheltered accommodation in an undisclosed location in Southern California; it is at least her sixth adult foster home. Her mother died in 2003.

An independent film entitled Mockingbird Don't Sing is based on Genie's life.

Madeleine McCann

2009-09-28T13:49:00.001-07:00

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007 while on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. The British girl went missing from an apartment, in the central area of the resort of Praia da Luz, a few days before her fourth birthday, and has still not been found. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have said that they left the children unsupervised in a ground floor bedroom while they ate at a restaurant about 130 yards (120 metres) away.

The initial investigation by the Polícia Judiciária (PJ) (the Portuguese criminal investigation police) was based on the assumption that she had been abducted. After further investigation, the PJ stated that there was a strong hypothesis that she might have died in her room. During the investigation there were a number of unconfirmed claimed sightings of Madeleine in Portugal and elsewhere and additional scientific evidence was obtained. The investigation involved the co-operation of the British and Portuguese police and demonstrated the differing methodologies employed by each, with regard to such aspects as the amount of information released to the public and the legal status of those involved in the case.

Robert Murat, a local resident, was given arguido (suspect) status on 15 May 2007. Kate and Gerry McCann were also named as arguidos on 7 September, but were allowed to fly back to the United Kingdom on 9 September. All three were cleared, with their arguido status lifted, on 21 July 2008. The Portuguese Attorney General closed the case, without a result, also on 21 July.

The disappearance and its aftermath were notable for the breadth and longevity of the media coverage. This was initially due to the active involvement of the parents in publicising the case and to several awareness-raising campaigns by international celebrities and, latterly, to the interest that arose from the parents being named as suspects. The event generated international media attention with controversy surrounding the Portuguese-led police investigation and the actions of Madeleine's parents. There has also been criticism of the extent and nature of the publicity and of the reporting of the disappearance in both the Portuguese and British media.

The Candy Man

2009-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

A temp worker at a Camden chocolate processing plant died this morning after he fell into an eight-foot vat that was mixing and melting chocolate to be used in Hershey's candy.

Vincent Smith II, 29, of Camden, was standing atop a platform and tossing blocks of solid, raw chocolate into the tank, Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, said.

The tank was heated at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and paddles inside stirred the chocolate as it was thrown in.

When Smith fell around 10:30 a.m., one of his three coworkers on the platform immediately rushed to turn the machine off and the two others tried to pull him out.

But Smith had been struck by one of the paddles, suffering fatal injuries. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and Camden firefighters pulled his chocolate-covered body out of the tank.

Smith worked at a plant owned by Lyons & Sons, Inc., which is contracted by Moorestown, NJ-based Cocoa Services, Inc. to process chocolate. Laughlin said the plant, which was once a Campbell's Soup Co. location, had been processing chocolate for six or seven years.

Laughlin said early investigation results indicate the death was accidental. The mixing process was a daily task performed by the workers, he said, and yesterday's batch would have been used in making Hershey products.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it was investigating the incident. Lyons & Sons does not have any prior OSHA violations.

In July 2002, a 19-year-old worker died in a similar fashion when he fell into a vat for mixing and melting chocolate at a plant in Hatfield Township, Montgomery County.

An autopsy determined the man died of asphyxiation.

James Mason

2009-07-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

of Chardon, Ohio, died of heart failure after his wife exercised him to death in a public swimming pool. Christine Newton-John was seen on video tape pulling Mason around the pool and preventing him from getting out of the water 43 times. Newton-John later pleaded guilty to reckless homicide.

Abigail and Brittany Hensel

2009-05-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

Abigail "Abby" Loraine Hensel and Brittany "Britty" Lee Hensel (born March 7, 1990, Carver County, Minnesota, United States), are highly symmetric dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins, and further, tribrachius, bipedus. They have two spines and separate half-sacrums, which converge distally within a slightly broad pelvis. They each control and sense their corresponding arm and leg; a third, rudimentary central arm was amputated in infancy.

Abigail and Brittany Hensel's parents are Patty, a registered nurse, and Mike Hensel, a carpenter and landscaper. The twins have a younger brother named Dakota, or Koty for short, and a younger sister named Morgan. Brittany's head is about 15 degrees laterally outward, while Abby's head tilts laterally outward about 5 degrees, causing Brittany to appear to be of slightly less stature. They were raised in New Germany, Minnesota and attended Lutheran High School affiliated with the Missouri Synod in Mayer, Minnesota. At age 12, they underwent surgery at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare to correct scoliosis and to expand their chest cavity to prevent future difficulties with breathing.

Each of the twins manages one side of their conjoined body and they are quite ambidextrous and coordinated in both their arms and legs when both hands or both legs are required. By coordinating their efforts, they are able to walk, run and ride a bicycle normally — all tasks that they learned at a normal speed. They each write with their corresponding hand. Together, they can type on a computer keyboard at a normal speed. Their sense of touch is partitioned to their own body half, which shades off at the midsagittal plane such that there is a small amount of overlap at their midline.

In April 2006, they appeared in Joined for Life, a documentary produced by Advanced Medical, distributed on the Discovery Health Channel. They also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 8 and April 29, 1996. In April 1996, the twins were featured on the cover of Life under the caption "One Body, Two Souls", and their daily lifestyle was depicted in the corresponding article titled The Hensels' Summer. Life followed up with another story in September 1998. In 2003, an updated story of them at age 11 (filmed in 2001) was published in Time and again in Life. They appeared in a follow-up documentary on The Learning Channel on December 17, 2006 filmed around the time of their 16th birthday, in which they discuss dealing with puberty and getting their driver's licenses. In the summer of 2006 they had a vacation in Texas at the home of a family whose dicephalus twin girls had died at a few hours old.

They both successfully passed their driver's license exam, both the written and driving tests. They had to take the tests twice, once for each twin. Abby controls the pedals, radio, heat, defogger etc., Brittany controls the turn signal and lights and together they control the steering wheel. They also want to visit the UK, so they can both have a chance to use their opposite controls.

They both graduated from high school in 2008. They began college at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.

In conversation, they are clearly distinct persons, with distinct likes and dislikes. Despite sharing a body, the twins' preferences in food, clothing color, etc. differ. Some of their clothes are altered by their seamstress so that they have two separate necklines in order to emphasize their individuality. They will usually have separate meals, but sometimes will share a single meal for the sake of convenience (e.g., each takes a bite of the same hamburger). Abigail is better at mathematics and Brittany is better at writing. For tasks such as responding to e-mail, they type and respond as one, anticipating each other’s feelings with little verbal communication between them. In such cases as the latter, their choice of grammatical person is to use the first person singular out of habit when they agree, but when their responses do differ, they use their names in the third person singular.

There is some concern about their ability to have continued good health because only four known sets of conjoined twins who share an undivided torso and two legs have ever survived into adulthood, and most have congenital heart defects or other organ anomalies. None have shown up in the Hensels' case. They have so far had no desire to make themselves available for any medical studies. They intend to make a rather limited number of media appearances in the future, primarily just to appease the world's curiosity and to reduce the number of people who might otherwise be taken aback by their unusual body configuration. They intensely dislike being stared at or photographed by strangers while going about their private lives. They expect to date, get married, and have children. They hope that by providing some information about themselves they will be able to lead otherwise fairly typical social lives as together they continue to make new friends.

Organ distribution
Most of Abigail's and Brittany's shared organs are located at or below the level of the navel and their merging coccyx.

2 heads
2 completely separate spinal cords
2 spines with ribs bridging the two columns
2 arms (originally 3, but rudimentary central arm was surgically removed, leaving central shoulder blade in place)
1 broad ribcage, with surgery to correct scoliosis and expand the pleural cavities
2 breasts
2 highly fused sternums, traces of bridging ribs
4 lungs (medial lungs moderately fused, not involving Brittany's upper right lobe); three pleural cavities
1 diaphragm with well-coordinated involuntary breathing, slight central defect
2 hearts in a shared circulatory system (nutrition, respiration, medicine taken by either affects both)
2 stomachs
2 gallbladders
1 liver, enlarged and elongated right lobe
Y-shaped small intestine which experiences a slightly spastic double peristalsis at the juncture
1 large intestine with one colon
2 left kidneys, 1 right kidney
1 bladder
1 set of reproductive organs
2 separate half-sacrums, which converge distally
1 slightly broad pelvis
2 legs

L'Inconnue de la Seine

2009-04-28T09:14:00.001-07:00

L'Inconnue de la Seine (French for "the unknown woman of the Seine") was an unidentified young woman whose death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artists' homes after 1900. Her visage was the inspiration for numerous literary works. According to an often-repeated story, the body of the young woman was pulled out of the Seine River at the Quai de Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. The body showed no signs of violence, and suicide was suspected.

A pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a moulder make a plaster cast death mask of her face. According to other accounts, the mask was taken from the daughter of a mask manufacturer in Germany. The identity of the girl was never discovered. The moulder who took the cast of the face was believed to be based at the Lorenzi family model-making firm. Claire Forestier, a member of the Lorenzi family, believes that the model was not dead when the cast was taken. She works in the family modelling workshop, and says that a dead body from a river would not have such clear features. She estimated the age of the model at no more than 16, given the firmness of the skin.

In the following years, numerous copies were produced. The copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. Albert Camus and others compared her enigmatic smile to that of the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.

The popularity of the figure is also of interest to the history of artistic media, relating to its widespread reproduction. The original cast had been photographed, and new casts were created back from the film negatives. These new casts displayed details that are usually lost in bodies taken from the water, but the apparent preservation of these details in the visage of the cast seemed to only reinforce its authenticity.

Critic A. Alvarez wrote in his book on suicide, The Savage God: "I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her." According to Hans Hesse of the University of Sussex, Alvarez reports, "the Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s. He thinks that German actresses like Elisabeth Bergner modeled themselves on her. She was finally displaced as a paradigm by Greta Garbo."
The earliest mention can be found in Richard Le Gallienne's 1900 novella The Worshipper of the Image, in which an English poet falls in love with the mask, eventually leading to the death of his daughter and the suicide of his wife.

The protagonist of Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), reflects:

"The caster I visit every day has two masks hanging next to his door. The face of the young one who drowned, which someone copied in the morgue because it was beautiful, because it was still smiling, because its smile was so deceptive – as though it knew."
„Der Mouleur, an dem ich jeden Tag vorüberkomme, hat zwei Masken neben seiner Tür ausgehängt. Das Gesicht der jungen Ertränkten, das man in der Morgue abnahm, weil es schön war, weil es lächelte, weil es so täuschend lächelte, als es wüßte.“
In 1926 Ernst Benkard published Das letzte Antlitz, a book about 126 death masks, writing about our subject that she is "like a delicate butterfly to us, who, carefree and exhilarated, fluttered right into the lamp of life, scorching her fine wings." („uns jedoch ein zarter Schmetterling, der, sorglos beschwingt, an der Leuchte des Lebens seine feinen Flügel vor der Zeit verflattert und versengt hat.“)

Reinhold Conrad Muschler's 1934 widely translated best-selling novel Die Unbekannte tells the maudlin story of the fate of the provincial orphan Madeleine Lavin, who has fallen in love with the British diplomat Lord Thomas Vernon Bentick and, after a romance, commits suicide in the Seine when Bentick returns to his fiancée. This novel was turned into a film of the same name in 1936.

Vladimir Nabokov's 1934 poem L'Inconnue de la Seine, written in German shortly after Muschler's book was published, speculates on the identity of the presumed lover who made her commit suicide.

Other examples appear in:

Hertha Pauli's 1931 story L'Inconnue de la Seine, which first appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt
Ödön von Horváth's play based on his friend Hertha Pauli's story, written in 1934 and titled Die Unbekannte aus der Seine
Claire Goll's 1936 short story Die Unbekannte aus der Seine, in which the protagonist peers into a death mask and dies from a heart attack caused by delusion and guilt as he believes he recognizes the face as his daughter's.
Maurice Blanchot, who actually owned one of the masks, described her as „une adolescente aux yeux clos, mais vivante par un sourire si délié, si fortuné, [...] qu'on eût pu croire qu'elle s'était noyée dans un instant d'extrême bonheur“ ("a young girl with closed eyes, enlivened by a smile so relaxed and at ease... that one could have believed that she drowned in an instant of extreme happiness")

In 1931, Jules Supervielle once described the perspective of one dealing with the wearies of life as the "First-person narrative of the sense and the nonsense of suicide".

In Louis Aragon's 1944 novel Aurélien, L'Inconnue played a significant role as one of the main characters attempts to rejuvenate the mask from various photographs. At the beginning of the 1960s Man Ray contributed photographs to a new edition of the work.

The face of the unknown woman was used for the head of the first aid mannequin Rescue Annie. It was created by Peter Safar and Asmund Laerdal in 1958 and was used starting in 1960 in numerous CPR courses. Therefore, the face has been called by some "the most kissed face" of all time.

Roanoke Colony

2009-04-03T22:14:00.000-07:00

The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County in present-day North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, several groups attempted to establish a colony, but either abandoned the settlement or disappeared. The final group of colonists disappeared after three years elapsed without supplies from England during the time when England was at war with Spain, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony". The most likely explanation is that they were assimilated into one of the local indigenous tribes.

Sir Walter Raleigh had received a charter for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia from Queen Elizabeth I of England. The charter specified that Raleigh had ten years in which to establish a settlement in North America or lose his right to colonization.

Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World, and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain. The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County in present-day North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Raleigh himself never visited the New World.

Between 1585 and 1588, several groups attempted to establish a colony, but either abandoned the settlement or disappeared. The final group of colonists disappeared after three years elapsed without supplies from England during the time when England was at war with Spain, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony". One possible explanation is that they were assimilated into one of the local indigenous tribes.

In 1584, Raleigh dispatched an expedition to explore the eastern coast of North America for an appropriate location. It was led by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who chose the Outer Banks of modern North Carolina as an ideal location from which to raid the Spanish, who had settlements to the south, and proceeded to make contact with local Native Americans, the Croatan tribe of the Carolina Algonquians.

The following spring, a colonizing expedition composed solely of men, many of them veteran soldiers who had fought to establish English rule in Ireland, was sent to establish the colony. The leader, Sir Richard Grenville, was assigned to explore the area further, establish the colony, and return to England with news of the venture's success. The establishment of the colony was initially postponed, perhaps because most of the food stores were ruined when the lead ship struck a shoal upon arrival at the Outer Banks. After the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements there, the natives in the village of Aquascogoc were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In retaliation, the last village visited was sacked and burned, and its weroance (tribal chief) executed by burning.

Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane and approximately 75 men to establish the English colony at the north end of Roanoke Island, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies.

As April passed, there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. The colony was still in existence in June when Sir Francis Drake paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean and offered to take the colonists back to England, an offer they accepted. The relief fleet arrived shortly after Drake's departure with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind a small detachment both to maintain an English presence and to protect Raleigh's claim to Virginia.

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched another group of colonists. These 117 colonists were led by John White, an artist and friend of Raleigh's who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. The new colonists were tasked with picking up the fifteen men left at Roanoke and settling farther north, in the Chesapeake Bay area; however, no trace of them was found, other than the bones of a single man. The one local tribe still friendly towards the English, the Croatans on present-day Hatteras Island, reported that the men had been attacked, but that nine had survived and sailed up the coast in their boat.

The settlers landed on Roanoke Island on July 22, 1587. On August 18, White's daughter Eleanor gave birth to the first English child born in the Americas, Virginia Dare. Before her birth, White reestablished relations with the neighboring Croatans and tried to reestablish relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had attacked a year previously. The aggrieved tribes refused to meet the new colonists. Shortly thereafter, a colonist named George Howe was killed by natives while searching for crabs alone in Albemarle Sound. Knowing what had happened during Ralph Lane's tenure in the area and fearing for their lives, the colonists convinced Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's situation and ask for help. There were approximately 115 colonists — the 114 remaining men and women who had made the trans-Atlantic passage and the newborn baby, Virginia Dare — when White returned to England.

Crossing the Atlantic as late in the year as White did was a considerable risk, as evidenced by the claim of pilot Simon Fernandez that their vessel barely made it back to England. Plans for a relief fleet were initially delayed by the captains' refusal to sail back during the winter. Then, the coming of the Spanish Armada led to every able ship in England being commandeered to fight, which left White with no seaworthy vessels with which to return to Roanoke. He did manage, however, to hire two smaller vessels deemed unnecessary for the defense and set out for Roanoke in the spring of 1588. This time, White's attempt to return to Roanoke was foiled by human nature and circumstance; the two vessels were small, and their captains greedy. They attempted to capture several vessels on the outward-bound voyage to improve the profitability of their venture, but were captured themselves and their cargo taken. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.

Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was not able to mount another resupply attempt for three more years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition that agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back from the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590 on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of some ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle of any kind. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. In addition, there were two skeletons buried. All the houses and fortifications were dismantled. Before the colony disappeared, White established that if anything happened to them, they would carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance could have been forced. White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island, but he was unable to conduct a search; a massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, they left.

The end of the 1587 colony is unrecorded (leading to its being known as the "Lost Colony"), and there are multiple hypotheses on the fate of the colonists. The principal hypothesis is that they dispersed and were absorbed by either the local Croatan or Hatteras Native Americans, or still another Algonquian people; it has yet to be established if they did assimilate with one or other of the native populations.

In F. Roy Johnson's, "The Lost Colony in Fact and Legend", co-author Thomas C. Parramore wrote;

...The evidence that some of the Lost Colonists were still living as late as about 1610 in Tuscarora country is impressive. A map of the interior region of what is now North Carolina, drawn in 1608 by the Jamestown settler Francis Nelson, is the most eloquent testimony to this effect. This document, the so-called "Zuniga Map", reports "4 men clothed that came from roonock" still alive at the town of Pakeriukinick, evidently an Iroquois site on the Neuse." It also goes on to say, "...By 1609 there were reports in London of Englishmen from Roanoke living under a chief called "Gepanocan" and apparently at Pakerikinick, It was said that Gepanocan held four men, two boys, "and a young Maid" (who may be Virginia Dare) from Roanoke as copperworkers..."

On February 10, 1885, state legislator Hamilton McMillan helped to pass the "Croatan bill," which officially designated the Native American population around Robeson County as Croatan. Two days later on February 12, 1885, the Fayetteville Observer published an article regarding the Robeson Native Americans' origins. This article states

"...…They say that their traditions say that the people we call the Croatan Indians (though they do not recognize that name as that of a tribe, but only a village, and that they were Tuscaroras), were always friendly to the whites; and finding them destitute and despairing of ever receiving aid from England, persuaded them to leave the island, and go to the mainland.…They gradually drifted away from their original seats, and at length settled in Robeson, about the center of the county..."

A similar legend claims that the Native Americans of Person County, North Carolina, are descended from the English colonists of Roanoke Island. Indeed, when these Native Americans were last encountered by subsequent settlers, they noted that these Native Americans already spoke English and were aware of the Christian religion. The historical babies of this group also correspond with those of those who lived on Roanoke Island, and many exhibit European physical features along with Native American features. Others discount these coincidences and classify the settlers of Person County as an offshoot of the Saponi tribe.

Others hypothesize that the colony moved wholesale, and was later destroyed. When Captain John Smith and the Jamestown colonists settled in Virginia in 1607, one of their assigned tasks was to locate the Roanoke colonists. Native people told Captain Smith of people within fifty miles of Jamestown who dressed and lived as the English.

The weroance Chief Wahunsunacock (better-known as Chief Powhatan) also told Captain Smith of the Virginia Peninsula-based Powhatan Confederacy, and that he had wiped out the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesepian, a tribe living in the eastern portion of the present-day South Hampton Roads sub-region which had refused to join his Powhatan Confederacy. Archaeological evidence found at Great Neck Point in present-day Virginia Beach at a Chesepian village site suggests that the Chesepian tribe was related to the Carolina Algonquins, rather than the Powhatans.

Chief Powhatan reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim. No bodies were found, although there were reports of a Native American burial mound in the Pine Beach area of Sewell's Point in present day Norfolk, Virginia, where the principal Chesepian village of Skioak may have been located.

This hypothesis is somewhat contradicted because, according to William Strachey's The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britanica (1612), the Chesepians were eliminated because Powhatan's priests had warned him that "from the Chesapeake Bay a nation should arise, which should dissolve and give end to his empire." Strachey, who arrived in the Virginia Colony in May 1610 with the Third Supply, was well aware of the mystery of the Roanoke colonists, but made no mention of them in conjunction with his writings about the fate of the Chesepian at the hands of the Native Americans.

Still others speculate that the colonists simply gave up waiting, tried to return to England on their own, and perished in the attempt. When Governor White left in 1587, he left the colonists with a pinnace and several small ships for exploration of the coast or removal of the colony to the mainland.

Another claim suggests that, with the region in drought, the colony must have suffered a massive food shortage.

There are those who hypothesize that the Spanish destroyed the colony. Earlier in the century, the Spanish had destroyed evidence of the French colony of Fort Charles in southern South Carolina and then massacred the inhabitants of Fort Caroline, the French colony in present-day Jacksonville, Florida. This, however, is unlikely since the Spanish were still looking for the location of England's failed colony as late as 1600, ten years after White discovered that the colony was missing.

In 1998, East Carolina University organized "The Croatoan Project", an archaeological investigation into the events at Roanoke. The excavation team sent to the island uncovered a 10 carat (42%) gold 16th century English signet ring, a flintlock musket, and two 16th century copper farthings at the site of the ancient Croatoan capital, 50 miles (80 km) from the old Roanoke colony. Genealogists were able to trace the lion crest on the signet ring to the Kendall coat of arms, and concluded that the ring most likely belonged to one "Master" Kendall who is recorded as having lived in the Ralph Lane colony on Roanoke Island from 1585 to 1586. If this is the case, the ring represents the first material connection between the Roanoke colonists and the Native Americans on Hatteras Island.

The Lost Colony DNA Project is a new effort underway by the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research to use DNA testing to prove or disprove that some Lost Colony survivors assimilated with the local Native American tribes either through adoption or enslavement. A large percentage of the surnames do exist among these tribes. Additionally, deeds and wills have been discovered to bear this theory out. The project will attempt to locate and test as many potential descendants as possible. Testing is also planned for some ancient remains.

Also in 1998, a team led by climatologist David W. Stahle, of the University of Arkansas, Department of Geography, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton, of the Center for Archaeological Research at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, used tree ring cores from 800-year-old bald cypresses taken from the Roanoke Island area of North Carolina and the Jamestown area of Virginia to reconstruct precipitation and temperature chronologies.

The researchers concluded that the settlers of the Lost Colony landed at Roanoke Island in the summer of the worst growing-season drought in 800 years. "This drought persisted for 3 years, from 1587 to 1589, and is the driest 3-year episode in the entire 800-year reconstruction," the team reported in the journal Science. A map shows that "the Lost Colony drought affected the entire southeastern United States but was particularly severe in the Tidewater region near Roanoke Island." The authors suggested that the Croatan who were shot and killed by the colonists may have been scavenging the abandoned village for food as a result of the drought.

The "Lost Colony" and its fate, particularly baby Virginia Dare, have had a significant effect on American popular culture. Numerous books and articles (ranging from scholarly to improbably romantic) have been written on the subject, and a number of places have been named Roanoke, Raleigh, Dare, etc.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Green in 1937 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, The Lost Colony is an epic outdoor drama combining music, dance, and acting to tell a fictional recounting of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony. It has played at Waterside Theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island during the summer months near-continuously since that time with the only interruption being World War II. Alumni of the cast who have gone on to fame include Andy Griffith (who played Sir Walter Raleigh), William Ivey Long, Chris Elliott, Terrence Mann, and Daily Show correspondent Dan Bakkedahl.

List of colonists

The following is a list of the first planters of Roanoke Colony, an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony.

Adult male colonists
John White, governor
Roger Bailie, assistant
Ananias Dare, assistant
Christopher Cooper, assistant
Thomas Stevens, assistant
John Sampson, assistant
Dyonis Harvie, assistant
Roger Prat, assistant
George Howe, assistant
Nicholas Johnson
Thomas Warner
Anthony Cage
John Jones
John Tydway
Ambrose Viccars
Edmond English
Thomas Topan
Henry Berrye
Richard Berrye
John Spendlove
John Hemmington
Thomas Butler
Edward Powell
John Burden
James Hynde
Thomas Ellis
William Browne
Michael Myllet
Thomas Smith
Richard Kemme
Thomas Harris
Richard Taverner
John Earnest
Henry Johnson
John Starte
Richard Dange
William Lucas
Arnold Archard
John Wright
William Dutton
Morris Allen
William Waters
Richard Arthur
John Chapman
William Clement
Robert Little

Adult male colonists (cot'd)
Hugh Tayler
Richard Wildye
Lewes Wotton
Michael Bishop
Henry Browne
Henry Rufoote
Richard Tomkins
Henry Dorrell
Charles Florrie
Henry Mylton
Henry Payne
Thomas Harris
William Nicholes
Thomas Phevens
John Borden
Thomas Scot
William Willes
John Brooke
Cutbert White
John Bright
Clement Tayler
William Sole
John Cotsmur
Humfrey Newton
Thomas Colman
Thomas Gramme
Marke Bennet
John Gibbes
John Stilman
Robert Wilkinson
Peter Little
John Wyles
Brian Wyles
George Martyn
Hugh Pattenson
Martyn Sutton
John Farre
John Bridger
Griffen Jones
Richard Shaberdge
James Lasie
John Cheven
Thomas Hewet
William Berde
Edouard Jourda

Adult female colonists
Eleanor Dare (Elyoner Dare)
Margery Harvie
Agnes Wood
Wenefrid Powell
Joyce Archard
Jane Jones
Elizabeth Glane
Jane Pierce
Audry Tappan
Alis Chapman
Emme Merrimoth
--- Colman
Margaret Lawrence
Joan Warren
Jane Mannering
Rose Payne
Elizabeth Viccars

Children
John Sampson
Robert Ellis
Ambrose Viccars
Thomas Archard
Thomas Humfrey
Thomas Smart
George Howe
John Prat
William Wythers
Virginia Dare
-- Harvie

Sophie Lancaster

2009-02-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

Sophie was just 20 years old when she was tragically murdered.
Sophie and her boyfriend were walking through a park when they were followed by a large group of teens and then were attacked from behind because they were wearing Gothic clothing. The group first attacked Sophie's boyfriend and left him unconcious then started attacking Sophie. Both were in a coma but tragically Sophie's family agreed to switch off life support and she passed away.
Sophie was planning to go to college to do an English degree. She had been with her boyfriend for 3 years they both had a long-standing attachment to the goth subculture.

The ceremony was held at The Riverside Centre, Whitworth then after the ceremony, guests were invited to write messages to Sophie in black marker pen on her white coffin as music by the Beatles, Jeff Buckley and Marilyn Manson was played. Mourners then walked in procession led by a lone piper, to Whitworth Cemetary for a burial.

Sophie's family have set up a charity campaign called SOPHIE (Stamp Out Prejudice, Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere).

two teenagers aged 15 and 16 have been found guilty and have been sentenced for life.**

Kiyoko Matsumoto

2009-02-11T02:36:00.000-08:00

On February 12, 1933, a 21 year-old girl's school student, Kiyoko Matsumoto . committed suicide by jumping into the crater of Mount Mihara, a volcano on the island of Izu Oshima, Japan. This act started a trend in Japan and over the course of the year, 944 people (804 men, 140 women) leapt into the crater.

American musician Beck references Matsumoto's death in the lyrics to the song "Volcano" from his 2008 album Modern Guilt: 'And I heard of that Japanese girl who jumped into The Volcano. Was she trying to make it back, back into the womb of the world?'

Marivel Alvarez

2009-02-10T16:25:00.001-08:00

They celebrated Christmas Eve with food, gifts, and candy from a pinata they broke earlier in the day. A disco ball spun in one of the rooms and Marivel danced with her siblings, to whom she was very close. Everyone was having a good time. Just before midnight the children wanted more candy. In the holiday spirit, Marivel's mother took three of the children with her to go to the 24 hour mini mart for more candy and left Marivel behind because she was playing. From what family members have pieced together, Marivel ran out to join her siblings and must have slipped on some ice along the driveway as her mother was backing out of the driveway. She didn't know Marivel was behind the vehicle.

Marivel is the 6 year old daughter of David Alvarez and Cordelia Mae Sommers Quistorf, and died on Christmas Day as the result of this tragic accident.

She was currently a first grade student at Washington Elementary School and truly loved attending classes and shared a wonderful relationship with her teacher, Miss Gruber. She especially enjoyed reading, drawing pictures, and participating in after school activities with her friends and special relatives, Leo, Chalino, and Caridad. She liked horses and all things associated with them.

In addition to her parents, Marivel is survived by her twin sister, Marisol, two brothers, David, Jr. and Armando, her sister, Mercedes, all at home, maternal grandmother, Joan (Alvaro) Coto Dominguez of Sheboygan, maternal great-grandmother, Charlotte Quistorf of Manitowoc, paternal grandparents, Virginia and David Alvarez, St., of Houston, Texas, numerous aunts, uncles, and other relatives and friends. She was preceded in death by her great-grandfather, Charles Quistorf.

Funeral services were held Friday, December 30, 2005, at Ballhorn Chapels. The Rev. Gregory S. Whelton officiated. A memorial fund has been established in her name.

The family would like to extend their gratitude to the Sheboygan Police Department and the staff of St. Nicholas Hospital for all their efforts.

Marivel will live on in the hearts of all who knew her.

Rest in sweet peace, little angel.

A special thank you to our special angel, Sparkysgrl, for sponsoring Marivel's memorial page. God bless you!

attempts suicide to save dad

2009-02-07T02:25:00.000-08:00

A 13-year-old girl in China is in a critical condition after trying to commit suicide so that her liver could be given to her cancer-stricken father, Chinese media reports.

Chen Jin tried to kill herself last month after discovering a medical report in her mother's purse saying her father was dying of liver cancer and had only three months to live, the Shanghai Daily reported.

"Mum, I'm sorry I couldn't stay with you any longer," the newspaper quoted her suicide note as saying.

"Please give my liver to dad and save him after my death."

Chen, who took sleeping pills, was burned by an electric blanket after she lost consciousness, the newspaper said, adding she may need extensive surgery if she survives.

Her 43-year-old mother, Cui Lan, a laid off factory worker, said she returned home from hospital on January 24 to find the doors jammed from the inside, reports said.

Cui broke in, finding her daughter collapsed beside the note and empty bottles of pills.

"She loves her dad more than herself," a tearful Cui said, according to the China Daily newspaper.
Chen, who was taken to the same hospital as her father, was in a deep coma for three days, the Shanghai Daily reported. She remains in intensive care and has been drifting in and out of consciousness.

The father learned of her suicide attempt only on Wednesday after the story appeared in the media, the China Daily said.

The family, whose monthly income was about 1000 yuan ($A227), was already struggling to cover the 100,000 yuan cost of the father's treatment, the reports said.

Hospital workers and friends donated money to help the family and a leading Chinese web portal, Sohu.com, appealed for help and published the mother's bank details.

Around 1.5 million patients in China need organ transplants each year, but only 10,000 can find organs, according to government statistics from 2007.

Kirsten Brydum

2009-02-06T06:46:00.001-08:00

Kirsten Brydum pedaled away from the Howlin' Wolf club into the darkness of another American city that she didn't know very well. It was 1:30 a.m.
She rode a black cruiser bicycle with a basket on the back, borrowed from friends of friends. In nearly every city she had visited on her two-month road trip, it seemed someone was always willing to lend her an old bike.
The Rebirth Brass Band had been on the bill that night. Brydum, 25, had danced for a while outside the club in her flip-flops.
She thought that the bouncer eventually would let her in for free, and that suited her in more ways than one.
She believed, passionately, that people would one day reject a basic mechanism of free-market societies: the exchange of goods and services for money.
She arrived in New Orleans in late September with a rail pass, a little red notebook and a head full of ideas about the oppressive forces of capitalism and government, and how they might be replaced with something better. The road trip was partly a rite of passage in the grand tradition of Jack Kerouac - an adventure to mark her recent graduation from college in San Francisco. But she also hoped to report on the small, scattered outposts where fellow radicals had established alternatives to mainstream culture.
It all would end in New Orleans, four miles from the Howlin' Wolf, in a forlorn and out-of-the-way block in the Ninth Ward.
More than three years after Hurricane Katrina, its homes remained battered and abandoned, its lots choked with debris and roof-high weeds.
To many Americans, this kind of New Orleans neighborhood has come to symbolize a near-criminal lack of government presence.
Brydum might have seen the block as the kind of place where an autonomous, post-capitalist movement might flourish.
She had some cash saved from waiting tables; her mom helped with some of the travel expenses. Brydum and an old boyfriend drew up the list of places she would visit: alternative health centers, collectivist punk communes, anarchist bookstores and so-called "guerrilla gardens" planted by activists on land they do not own. Her plan was to document what she found on a Web site, allowing radicals to share ideas and strengthen tiny institutions that she believed would "prefigure a world without capitalism."
On July 30, she flew to New York City, where she met her boyfriend, John Viola. In an e-mail to friends and family, she rhapsodized about their four days of "romance and resistance." Viola, a San Francisco Bay Area attorney, met Brydum when he agreed to take on her 2004 criminal case. She and a few dozen others had been arrested at a San Francisco biotechnology and anti-globalization protest. By the time he got involved, the activists had been jailed for a couple of days, and the stress was beginning to show.

After he won her release, they would see each other at the same parties, the same protests. She grew up middle class in Van Nuys, a Los Angeles bedroom community in the San Fernando Valley. She was sweet-tempered, well-liked, a good student. But from an early age, she questioned accepted wisdom. At her Catholic elementary school, she challenged Catholic dogma - her ideas, she later joked, got her branded "a third-grade heretic." At Birmingham High School, she gravitated toward the punk-rock kids, the black-clad, the ravers and the seekers.
At the now-defunct New College of California, where she earned her bachelor's degree, she immersed herself in contrarian thinkers, particularly the anarchists: Emma Goldman, imprisoned by U.S. authorities for opposing the draft in 1917; David Graeber, the anthropologist who studied the egalitarian communities of northwest Madagascar; and Hakim Bey, a scholar who extolled history's "pirate utopias," which operated beyond the grasp of governments.
Central to her thinking: "She didn't believe that we lived in a world of scarcity," Viola said. "That scarcity was a myth that was used to keep people divided. And so if resources and goods are taken care of and shared equitably, then there's enough for everybody."
In San Francisco, she put the idea into practice. She helped found a series of fine-dining events. Patrons were not required to pay. In Dolores Park, she co-founded a "Really Really Free Market," where people gathered to give things away.
"Because there is enough for everyone," the slogan read. "Because sharing is more fulfilling than owning."
E-mails traced path
She was a utopian, Viola said, but not naive. He had seen her street smarts. Still, as she prepared to leave New York and set out on her own, he was concerned.
"She was very aware of the risks," he recalled. "She said, 'If anything should happen to me on the trip, if I should ever be killed on the trip, I accept that.' "
The e-mails home traced her path. From New York, she rode the train to Philadelphia. There, she wrote, she met up with "a small activist scene living in the cracks of a neglected and impoverished neighborhood. ... We borrowed bikes and rode all over town, visited the urban farm, danced at a benefit for Critical Resistance" - a group that advocates the eradication of prisons - "cruised a free store/vegan potluck barbeque/folk show in the basement."
In Providence, R.I., she stayed in a friend's apartment without electricity, noting, on her trips around town, the "gorgeous empty mills that seem to be opening up for more creative endeavors as the condo wave recedes."
In Boston, she networked at a regional anarchists' meeting. In Buffalo, N.Y., she met up with a friend who calls herself Hannah Potassium. The pair rode bikes everywhere.
"She showed me the greener side of the Rust belt city: rivers, lakes and gardens," Brydum wrote. "We found a well-organized housing co-op with beautiful interiors and were invited to come back for dinner. At midnight, I hopped on a greyhound to Detroit not knowing where to go or what to do when I arrive ... "
She was shocked by Detroit's vast landscape of blight. The broken city seemed to support her ideas about the folly of capitalism. But she also was troubled that people had to live there.
"Sure, there's some romanticizing of a place like this: a postindustrial workless wonderland free for the taking, ripe with opportunities to create a pirate utopia," she wrote. "But in reality, the scene was sad. Some people do still live in Detroit, and the few that I met from the activist scene were bitter and burned out. It's hard to create the world you wish to see when there are no resources, few comrades to inspire, and no spare energy."
By early September, she was in St. Paul, Minn., for the Republican National Convention, among the thousands of activists who protested President Bush, the Iraq war and the neglect of the needy, chanting: "Stop the war on the poor!"
More cities followed: St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Madison, Wis.; Chicago. She found a ride from the Midwest to North Carolina on Craigslist. But the driver changed plans abruptly and left her in downtown Indianapolis. She eventually hooked up with another stranger who drove her to Asheville, N.C., in a Volkswagen burning vegetable oil.
Then it was on to New Orleans, on Amtrak's Crescent line.
"Westward bound"
"I don't really know what to expect," she wrote. "... The sun is setting on the bayou-licked lands and I am truly fortunate. I have rounded this beautiful Southeast corner on the Crescent line today and from now on I am westward bound. "
She rolled into town with a reservation of sorts at a punk-rock group house in the Ninth Ward. They were friends of friends, white kids in a black neighborhood. Some dived into Dumpsters for food. Some were artists and musicians, and some hopped trains. Some had volunteered to rebuild the city.
Brydum had talked to her friends about making sense of New Orleans, and looking for radicals working for solutions amid the post-Katrina ruins. Since the storm, the city - long a magnet for escapists and hipsters - also had been attracting a new kind of itinerant idealist. Some came to work for nonprofits or public schools. Others aligned themselves with activist groups like Common Ground, a nonprofit that set up shop in the Lower Ninth Ward, gutting houses, starting community gardens and helping organize residents left homeless.
Many of the newcomers arrived with scant knowledge of the charming but insular city, which, by some measures, is plagued with the nation's highest crime rate.
"We give them overly cautious warnings," said Caitlin Reilly, Common Ground's volunteer coordinator. "We say, 'You're probably going to be fine but you should be aware there's very high crime, and a high murder rate.' "
After the brass band show at the Howlin' Wolf, she disappeared. Her laptop, duffel bag and phone remained at the punk-rock house, and the phone kept ringing.
"We were kind of worried, because she didn't seem like a party kid," said Julia Milan, a 22-year-old resident of the house. "The second day, we started to get scared."
Her body had been found by a church group gutting houses in the Ninth Ward; it was lying unidentified in the morgue. Brydum had been shot four times in the face. New Orleans Police Detectives began their search for a killer, but have had no luck so far.
John Viola, the boyfriend, flew to New Orleans to meet with homicide detectives. He held meetings with anti-violence activists and a few young radicals. With his encouragement, they established a system that provides escorts to anyone who feels uncomfortable biking alone at night.
"About forgiveness"
Brydum's mother, Mamie Page, always respected Kirsten's ideas and ideals, even when she didn't share them. In an e-mail, she said her younger daughter told her that Kirsten "would have been more about forgiveness than punishment for this crime, and focusing more on the issue of violence against women and rehabilitating the criminal."
"I can't get my brain around that one," said Page, a paralegal living in Portland, Ore. "For obvious reasons."
Other family members noted, with a disgusted irony, that the killer might have been covering up a robbery. Brydum's bag and bicycle were not found at the scene.
"It's kind of pathetic," said Brydum's aunt, Catherine Page-Evans, of Woodland Hills, Calif. "Of course, she would have given it to them."

Deric Bryant

2009-02-03T17:17:00.001-08:00

A Bloomington teen was charged Monday with robbing and killing a man who asked to use his phone at a gas station two weeks ago.
Edgar Garcia, 18, was charged with murder and second-degree robbery in the Jan. 9 fatal stabbing of Deric D. Bryant in a field at Cedar Avenue and 11th Street in Bloomington.
A criminal complaint filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court includes a special allegation that Garcia used a knife in the attack.
Until late last week, sheriff's detectives had few leads. But through phone records, they were able to trace Bryant's last call to a cell phone belonging to the suspect, said sheriff's homicide Sgt. Frank Bell.
Bryant, 21, of Rialto, encountered Garcia at a Valero gas station in Bloomington and asked if he could make a call on Garcia's cell phone.
"It was a chance meeting," Bell said.
The two began talking and ended up in a nearby field, where the victim was stabbed and robbed of his wallet, Bell said.
Investigators believe Bryant was killed late Jan. 9 or early Jan. 10. His body was found the afternoon of Jan. 11.
Bryant's family declined to comment Monday. Bryant worked at a cold storage center in Riverside and had no criminal ties.
"He was just an average guy," Bell said.
Garcia was interviewed late Friday, then arrested and booked into Central Detention Center in San Bernardino. He is scheduled for arraignment in Fontana this morning.

Virginia Rappe

2009-02-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

Subject of Hollywood scandal. Born in New York in 1895 to a part-time chorus girl Mabel Rapp and an unknown father. It's not clear as to when she added the "e" to her last name but it was under that name she became a successful commerical model in Chicago department stores. At the time of her death, Virginia was best known as the face on the sheet music cover of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," a popular song of that time. Virginia won an award as "Best Dressed Girl in Pictures" but unfortunately she was better known within the Hollywood community as something else. At this point in time she came to know Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle who had worked at Keystone with her fiance Henry Lehrman. She, along with Maude Delmont and Al Semnacher went to a party thrown by Arbuckle on Labor Day 1921. By Friday of that week, Virginia had died in the hospital and Arbuckle was charged with her murder. The first two trials ended in hung juries, Roscoe was finally acquited in March 1922 in the third trial. He was aqcuited with an unprecedented apology from the jury. No one ever really knew what happened that day in 1921. All that is for sure is that Virginia died in a hospital on the Friday after of the injuries she suffered at that party.

Jessica Marie Lunsford

2009-02-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

Nine-year-old Jessica was kidnapped and killed by a registered sex offender who was living near her home. A massive manhunt had been underway, spearheaded by her father Mark, her grandparents, local authorities, volunteers, and the media. Her body was found after her killer confessed to the crime and told police of her whereabouts. Jessica is the namesake of the Jessica Lunsford Act, a Florida law that strengthened penalties against sex offenders, signed into legislation by Florida Governor Jeb Bush on May 2, 2005.

Vanessa Iverson

2009-02-01T21:49:00.000-08:00

A domestic dispute erupted into a mass killing in southern Wisconsin, leaving six people, including two infant boys, shot to death, and a 2-year-old girl with a gunshot to her chest.
A prosecutor said late Sunday no one was in custody but that police weren't looking for a suspect and no one else was in danger. Officials often use such language when the shooter is among the dead.
"What we have is a complicated death scene and we're investigating all the possibilities," said Kevin St. John, a spokesman with the state Justice Department, which is leading the investigation.
Walworth County District Attorney Phillip Koss said the shooting was part of a domestic dispute, but he wouldn't elaborate until autopsies were completed and the crime scene was fully evaluated.
Officers, responding to a report of shots fired, stormed an A-frame duplex Saturday night with weapons drawn, kicking in the door, neighbor Richard Heideman said. He saw two paramedics go in behind them and come back out minutes later.
"That's when I knew everybody was dead," Heideman said.
As the bodies were wheeled out, one onlooker dropped to his knees on a neighbor's lawn and threw his hands to the sky in prayer.
The 2-year-old girl was found in a nearby van, seriously wounded. A male family member who escaped the shooting was helping investigators.
Authorities have not released the victims' names, but Kay Macara said her 19-year-old daughter, Vanessa Iverson, was among the dead.
With tears in her eyes, Macara said her daughter went to the apartment the previous night to visit friends.
"My child," she said. "I want answers."
Also in the house during the shooting were the twin infants, their parents, and the mother's sister and her husband, said Sarah Iverson, Iverson's sister-in-law.
The 2-year-old sister of the twins, Jasmine, was in serious condition at University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.
The father of the children, 22-year-old Ambrocio Analco, was one of the dead, said Marco Pastrana, Analco's cousin. He said the twin boys were 2 to 3 months old.
Pastrana said Analco no longer lived with the children's mother. Analco left Pastrana's house Saturday night to drop the kids off with her at the duplex, Pastrana said.
"It came to my mind that this was not true," Pastrana said. "But when I came here I went to talk to the cops and they tell me that he was dead, his kids were dead and one was in the hospital."
Neighbor Leandra Mena, 65, said she heard what she thought were firecrackers coming from the house around 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
"I thought it was firecrackers because it's so close to the Fourth of July," she said.
Police cordoned off two blocks around the duplex for most of the day. On Sunday morning neighbors, some still bleary-eyed, clustered on the sidewalks, watching investigators move bodies out of the house.
Tina McKinnon, 37, lives about a block away and said there was never any commotion at the house. "The children were very pleasant," she said.
Delavan, home to about 8,000 people, lies in the farm fields and woods between Janesville and Milwaukee. The P.T. Barnum Circus, "The Greatest Show on Earth," was founded in Delavan in 1871, and statues of circus animals decorate the town square.

Scott Amedure

2009-01-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

He was killed after appearing on the "Jenny Jones" television talk show, where he admitted he had a crush on another man, Jonathan Schmitz, who turned out to be homophobic. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, his father, Frank Amedure was a local tractor-trailer driver, and his mother, Patricia Graves Amedure, was a housewife. In 1968, the family moved to Waterford, Michigan, and two years later, Frank and Patricia were divorced. After his parents divorced, he lived principally with his father, as did his three brothers and one sister. At age 17, he quit high school to join the Army, where he finished his GED high school equivalency, and was trained in satellite communications. While assigned to Germany, he learned to ski, and broke his leg while skiing in Switzerland. After three years, he received an Honorable Discharge, with the rank of Specialist. After working several years in technical communications and telephone type jobs, he became a bartender, because he enjoyed working at night. Generous to a fault, he took in several homosexual friends with AIDS, caring for them when others had shunned them. On March 6, 1995, he was taped for an episode of the Jenny Jones Talk Show, in which he admitted to being a secret admirer of Jonathan Schmitz, who lived near him in Orion, Michigan. Until the taping, Schmitz had no idea who his secret admirer was, male or female, and he went out of curiosity, later claiming that the producers implied that his admirer was a woman. Schmitz would also later claim that Amedure's homosexual overtures frightened him, and that the taping of the show, to be aired two weeks later, humiliated and angered him. When Scott Amedure left a suggestive note in Schmitz's front door, Schmitz purchased a shotgun, went to Amedure’s mobile home, and killed him, just three days after the taping. As a result of the killing, the show was never aired. Schmitz was convicted of second degree murder, and sentenced to 25 to 50 years, which means he will serve at least 20 years before he is eligible for parole. In 1999, the Amedure family sued the Jenny Jones Show for the ambush tactics that led to Scott's death, and in May 1999, the jury awarded the Amedures $25 million dollars, finding that the ‘Jenny Jones Show’ was both responsible and negligent, contending that the show intentionally created an explosive situation without due concern for the possible consequences.

Tent Girl

2009-01-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

aka Barbara Ann Hackmann Her body was found wrapped in a tent-like material, hence the name. She has been the subject of many news stories, including a story on "48 Hours" in 1998. Her body remained unidentified for years until DNA testing confirmed her identity.

Mr. Wilbur Riddle, who had been scavenging for glass insulators alongside Highway US-25, discovered the decomposing body wrapped in a heavy green canvas tarpaulin, such as might be used to wrap up a tent. A police investigation failed to identify the deceased woman, much less name any suspects in her apparent murder. She was buried in the Georgetown Cemetery with a donated headstone that bore her likeness as it appeared in a police sketch of how she might have looked in life, and the following inscription:
TENT GIRLFOUND MAY 17 1968ON U.S. HIGHWAY 25, N.DIED ABOUT APRIL 26 - MAY 3 1968AGE ABOUT 16 - 19 YEARSHEIGHT 5 FEET 1 INCH WEIGHT 110 TO 115 LBS.REDDISH BROWN HAIRUNIDENTIFIED
The gravesite existed as such for many years and was a popular legend tripping destination among area adolescents.

Decades later in 1998, the Tent Girl was positively identified as Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor as a result of the ongoing efforts of Mr. Todd Matthews. Matthews, the son-in-law of Wilbur Riddle, had maintained a longstanding interest in the case. He had collated information on the Tent Girl and combed through many missing persons reports on the internet. When he encountered a report from the family of a young woman who went missing in Lexington, Kentucky in late 1967, he forwarded information on the Tent Girl to the Hackman family. The family felt that this was likely their missing relative, and this led to the exhumation of the body and DNA testing, which confirmed her identity. The family opted to have Barbara's remains re-interred in Georgetown, with an additional stone base placed under the original grave marker, bearing her real name.
The prime suspect in the murder is Barbara's husband, George Earl Taylor, who died of cancer in October 1987.

Christa McAuliffe

2009-01-23T11:04:00.001-08:00

She was a teacher, and was slated to be the first civilian in space, assigned to fly about the ill-fated space shuttle “USS Challenger”. The image of her jaunty stride and exuberant wave as she entered Challenger spacecraft shortly before the ill-fated mission ended in tragedy has become an icon of the 20th century. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan, in an attempt to rekindle the excitement of the early days of America's space adventures, directed that the first ordinary Unites States citizen in space would be "one of America's finest, a teacher." The energetic Social Studies teacher from Concord High School, Concord, New Hampshire, noted on her eleven-page application, "I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate." In July 1985, Christa was selected over 11,500 other applicants to become the first Teacher In Space. As a payload specialist on the Challenger mission, she trained side by side with the other six Challenger astronauts. She prepared materials for the two lessons scheduled during the flight and planned to keep a journal, reminiscent of the journals kept by pioneer women crossing the 1800s frontier. Instead, millions of school children and adults watched horrified as the Challenger exploded only 73 seconds after lift-off. Christa's influence continues to touch the lives of school children and adults alike. The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, opened in 1990 in Concord, New Hampshire, carries on her vision of educating students of all ages about astronomy and space science: "I touch the future, I teach."

Etan Patz

2009-01-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

On the morning of May 25, 1979, six-year old Etan Patz left his Manhattan SoHo apartment to walk to a bus stop en route to school. It was the first time that he had ever gone to the bus stop on his own. The child never got on the bus and was never seen or heard from again. The kidnapping of Etan Patz sparked one of the most intense missing persons manhunts in the history of the New York City Police Department. Authorities began a worldwide search which led to then President Ronald Reagan's declaration of May 25 (the day of Etan's disappearance) as National Missing Children's Day. The search for Etan Patz was the most extensive manhunt since the abduction of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, and Etan became the symbol for lost children all across America. Unfortunately, he was never found. Etan Patz was declared legally dead in June, 2001, by a Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge who ruled that Etan Patz died on May 25, 1979, the day he was kidnapped.. The prime suspect in the case is a man named Jose Antonio Ramos, who is a known child molester. Ramos is currently serving time in a Pennsylvania prison on an unrelated child molestation charge. Police are unable to formally charge Ramos in the Patz case for lack of evidence. Julie and Stan Patz, Etan's parents, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Ramos, because less evidence is needed for litigation in a civil case. Even though Etan Patz has been declared legally dead, the case still remains open with the cold case squad of the New York City Police Department. Although Etan is gone, his spirit will live forever in the minds and hearts of the American people.

Sideshow note: he was the first missing child to appear on a milk carton

he was legally dead in 2001

In the 1983 movie Without a Trace, starring Kate Nelligan and Judd Hirsch, a six year old boy disappears while walking to school in Manhattan. The Stanley Jaffe film was loosely based on the Patz case. While in production, this movie was titled Still Missing, based on the Beth Gutcheon novel of the same name. It was retitled when someone realized that audiences might mistake this film for a sequel to the unrelated movie Missing.
In the 1996 movie Ransom, a nine-year-old boy disappears from New York City's Central Park. Brawley Nolte, the child actor, bears an (older) resemblance to the widely circulated image of Etan. Unlike Etan's case, the object of the kidnapping was merely money.

Each year, on the anniversary of Etan's birthday and his disappearance, Stan Patz sends Ramos a copy of his son's MISSING poster. On the back he types the same message: "What did you do to my little boy?". The day of Etan Patz's disappearance, May 25, is now designated National Missing Children's Day.

Emily Sander

2009-01-22T14:56:00.000-08:00

18, Butler Community College student, died in November 2007, in El Dorado, Kansas. She was a victim of a homicide.
She was born?Feb. 26, 1989 in Olathe, Kansas, the daughter of Russ Sander and Clara Travnichek. She was a student at Butler and attended El?Dorado High School for one year.
She loved dancing, music, shopping, and animals.
Survivors include her parents, Russ and Tammy Sander of Lakehills, TX; Clara Biediger of El Dorado, KS; brothers, Jarod Sander of Lakehills, TX, Jacob Sander of El Dorado, KS, and Christian Olson of Lakehills, TX; a sister, Stephanie Olson, of Lakehills, TX; grandparents, Clem and?Shirley Sander of El Dorado, KS, Emerson and Myrtle Travnichek of Rosalia, KS, and Darlene Raddatz of Redwood Falls, MN; a nephew, Samuel Sander of San Antonio, TX; and many uncles, aunts and cousins.
Services will be held at Carlson Funeral Home in El Dorado, Kansas. Interment will follow the services in Walnut Valley Memorial Park in?El Dorado.

Leonard Peltier

2009-01-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement, who, in 1977, was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two FBI Agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There is considerable debate over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial. Some supporters and organizations, including Amnesty International, consider him to be a political prisoner. Amnesty International said, for example, that "Although he has not been adopted as a prisoner of conscience, there is concern about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction and it is believed that political factors may have influenced the way the case was prosecuted." Numerous lawsuits have been filed on his behalf but none have succeeded. Peltier is currently incarcerated at the United States penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Leonard Peltier was born on September 12, 1944 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the son of Leo Peltier and Alvina Robideau. He spent his early years living with his grandparents on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. Peltier became involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM), and eventually in the conflicts that occurred on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the early 1970s.

On June 26, 1975, Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams were searching for a young Pine Ridge man named Jimmy Eagle, wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault and robbery of two local ranch hands. Eagle had been involved in a physical altercation with a friend, during which he had stolen a pair of cowboy boots. Williams and Coler, driving two separate unmarked cars, in piggy-back fashion, observed and followed a red pick-up truck which matched the description of the one belonging to Eagle. At the time, Peltier was a fugitive, with a warrant issued in Milwaukee charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer, of which he was later acquitted.
Williams radioed that he and Coler had come under high-powered rifle fire from the occupants of the vehicle and were unable to return fire to any effect with their .38 pistols and shotguns. FBI Special Agent Gary Adams was the first to respond to Williams' call for assistance, and he also came under intense gun fire from Jumping Bull Ranch.
The FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the local police spent much of the afternoon pinned down on Highway 18, waiting for other law enforcement officers to launch a flanking attack. At 2:30 p.m., a BIA rifleman shot one of the shooters, Joe Stuntz, and killed him.
At 4:30 p.m., authorities recovered the bodies of Williams and Coler at their vehicle, and at 6 p.m. laid down a cloud of tear gas and stormed the Jumping Bull houses, finding Stuntz's corpse clad in Coler's green FBI field jacket.
The others, authorities later reported, had slipped away from the compound after Stuntz's death, to cross White Clay Creek and hid in a culvert beneath a dirt road. With police focused on the storming of Jumping Bull, the group made a break for the southern hills. In the following days, they split into smaller groups and scattered across the country, setting off a nationwide manhunt that lasted eight months.
The FBI reported Williams had received a defensive wound from a bullet which passed through his right hand into his head, killing him instantly. Coler, incapacitated from earlier bullet wounds, had been shot twice in the head execution style. In total 125 bullet holes were found in the agents' vehicles, many from a .223 (5.56 mm) rifle. The FBI investigation concluded the agents were executed at close range by the same .223 caliber rifle.

On September 5, 1975, Agent Williams' handgun, and shells from both Agents' handguns, were found in a vehicle near a residence where Dino Butler was arrested.
On September 9, 1975, Peltier purchased a Plymouth station wagon in Denver, Colorado. The FBI sent out descriptions of it and a recreational vehicle (RV) in which Peltier and associates were believed to be traveling. An Oregon State Trooper stopped the vehicles based on the descriptions and ordered the driver of the RV to exit, but after a brief exchange of gunfire, Peltier escaped on foot. Authorities later identified the driver as Peltier. Agent Coler's handgun was found in a bag under the front seat of the RV, where authorities reported also finding Peltier's thumb print. On December 22, 1975 he became the 335th person named by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
On September 10, 1975, a station wagon blew up on the Kansas Turnpike near Wichita, and a burned-up AR-15 was recovered, along with Agent Coler's .38 Special revolver. The car was loaded with weapons and explosives which were apparently accidentally ignited when placed too close to a hole in the exhaust pipe. Present in the car among others were Robert Robideau, Norman Charles, and Michael Anderson, said to be associates of Peltier.
Peltier fled to Hinton, Alberta, Canada, where he hid out at a friend's cabin. He was eventually apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on February 6, 1976. Peltier was not armed at the time of his arrest.
Peltier fought extradition to the United States, a decision that backfired when Bob Robideau and Darelle "Dino" Butler, AIM members also present on the Jumping Bull compound at the time of the shootings, were found not guilty on the grounds of self-defense by a federal jury in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As Peltier fled to Canada and then fought extradition, he arrived too late to be tried with Robideau and Butler and was tried separately.
At his trial in United States District Court for the District of North Dakota in Fargo, North Dakota, a jury convicted Peltier of the murders of Coler and Williams and the judge sentenced him in April 1977 to two consecutive life sentences. After a series of appeals, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed Peltier's conviction in July 1993.

There has been debate over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial. Several allegations have been made by Peltier’s supporters which they claim point to his innocence, and all of these have been disputed by the FBI:
An FBI agent who testified that the agents followed a pickup truck onto the scene (a vehicle that could not be tied to Peltier) is alleged to have later changed his account to describe a red and white van, a vehicle type which Peltier did drive. Further, as the FBI did not record radio communications in 1975, there was an unresolved discrepancy between Agents as to whether Williams said he was pursuing a "red and white van" or "pickup truck." Three witnesses testified they saw Peltier approach the slain officers' vehicle. They later alleged that the FBI had threatened and forced them to testify. The FBI answered that the witnesses' testimony was not necessary for conviction. An FBI ballistics expert testified that a shell casing found near the dead agents' bodies matched the gun tied to Peltier. Critics argued that an FBI teletype stating the firing pin of the recovered weapon did not match the shell casings proved that Peltier’s weapon was not the murder weapon. It was counter-argued in testimony by the FBI that although the marks from the firing pin did not match those on the casing, the firing pin had probably been replaced after the murders, and that the marks made by the rifle’s extractor were an exact match to the recovered weapon.

Peltier's conviction sparked great controversy and has drawn criticism from a number of sources. Numerous appeals have been filed on his behalf; none of the rulings have been made in his favor. Peltier is considered by some to be a political prisoner and has received support from individuals and groups including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchú, Amnesty International, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Belgian Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Peltier's supporters have given two different rationales for overturning the conviction. One argument asserts that Peltier did not commit the murders, and that he either had no knowledge of the murders (as he told CNN in 1999), or that he has knowledge implicating others which he will never reveal, or (as told in Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse) that he approached and searched the agents but did not execute them. The other rationale holds that the killings (no matter who committed them) occurred during a war-like atmosphere on the reservation in which FBI agents were terrorizing residents in the wake of the Pine Ridge standoff in 1972.
Near the end of President Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000, rumors began circulating that he was considering granting Peltier clemency. This led to a campaign against the possibility, culminating in a protest outside the White House by about five hundred FBI agents and their families, and a letter opposing clemency from then FBI director Louis Freeh. Clinton did not grant Peltier clemency.
In 2002, Peltier filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the FBI, Louis Freeh, and a long list of FBI agents who had participated in the campaign against his clemency petition, alleging that they "engaged in a systematic and officially sanctioned campaign of misinformation and disinformation." On March 22, 2004, the suit was dismissed.
In 2003 News from Indian Country publisher Paul DeMain wrote that an "unnamed delegation" with knowledge of the incident told him, "Peltier was responsible for the close range execution of the agents..." DeMain described the delegation as "grandfathers and grandmothers, AIM activists, Pipe Carriers and others who have carried a heavy unhealthy burden within them that has taken its toll."
In an editorial written in early 2003, DeMain stated that the motive for the execution-style murder of AIM activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash "allegedly was her knowledge that Leonard Peltier had shot the two agents, as he was convicted." DeMain did not accuse Peltier of participation in the murder. (In 2002 two other AIM members were indicted for the murder.) In response, Peltier launched a libel lawsuit on May 1, 2003, against DeMain. On May 25, 2004, Peltier withdrew the suit after he and DeMain reached a settlement, which involved DeMain issuing a statement where he wrote, “…I do not believe that Leonard Peltier received a fair trial in connection with the murders of which he was convicted. Certainly he is entitled to one. Nor do I believe, according to the evidence and testimony I now have, that Mr. Peltier had any involvement in the death of Anna Mae Aquash.’’DeMain did not, however, retract his central allegations: That Peltier was in fact guilty of the murders, and that Aquash's murderer or murderers' motive was the fear that she might inform on Peltier.
In February 2004, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud was tried for the murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, and found guilty. On June 26, 2007, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered the extradition of John Graham to the United States, to stand trial for his alleged role in the murder of Annie Mae Aquash.
In Looking Cloud's trial, the prosecution argued that AIM's suspicion of Aquash stemmed from her having heard Peltier admit to the murders. The prosecution called as a witness Darlene “Kamook” Nichols, former wife of AIM leader Dennis Banks. She testified that in late 1975 Peltier confessed to shooting the FBI agents to a group of AIM activists who were at that time on the run from law enforcement. The fugitives included Nichols, her sister Bernie, her husband Dennis Banks, and Aquash, among several others. Nichols alleged that Peltier said, “The mother fucker was begging for his life, but I shot him anyway.” Bernie Nichols-Lafferty also gave the same account of Peltier’s statement.Other witnesses have testified that once Aquash came under suspicion of being an informant, Peltier interrogated her on the matter while holding a gun to her head. Peltier and David Hill later had Aquash participate in bomb-making so that her fingerprints would be on the bombs. The trio then planted these bombs at two power plants on the Pine Ridge reservation.
On February 10, 2004, Peltier issued a statement: “Kamook's testimony was like being stabbed in the heart while simultaneously being told your sister just died.” Peltier denounced Kamook Nichol's courtroom accusations as false, saying “I loved Kamook as my own family. I can't believe the $43,000 the FBI gave her was a determining factor for her to perjure herself on the witness stand. There must have been some extreme threat the FBI or their cronies put upon her.”
After the Looking Cloud trial, Darlene Nichols married Robert Ecoffey, Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Law Enforcement Services, who was instrumental in the investigation that led to Looking Cloud's conviction. During the trial Nichols acknowledged receiving $42,000 from the FBI in connection with her cooperation on the case, money she explained was compensation for her expenses in traveling to collect evidence by wearing a wire while visiting her ex-husband, Dennis Banks. Some of the money was for moving expenses so that she could move because of her fear of Banks.
Bruce Ellison – who has been Leonard Peltier's lawyer since the 1970s -- invoked his fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify at the grand jury hearings leading up to the Looking Cloud trial in 2003, or in the trial itself. During the trial, the federal prosecutor named Ellison as a co-conspirator in the Aquash case. Witnesses state that Ellison participated in interrogating Annie Mae Aquash on Dec. 11, 1975, shortly before her murder.
In a February 27, 2006, decision, U.S. District Judge William Skretny ruled that the FBI did not have to hand over five of 812 documents relating to Peltier and held at their Buffalo field office. He ruled that those particular documents were exempted on the grounds of “national security and FBI agent/informant protection.” In his opinion Judge Skretny wrote, “Plaintiff has not established the existence of bad faith or provided any evidence contradicting (the FBI's) claim that the release of these documents would endanger national security or would impair this country's relationship with a foreign government.” In response, Michael Kuzma, a Buffalo lawyer and a member of Peltier's defense team said, “We're appealing. It's incredible that it took him 254 days to render a decision.” Kuzma further stated, “The pages we were most intrigued about revolved around a teletype from Buffalo ... a three-page document that seems to indicate that a confidential source was being advised by the FBI not to engage in conduct that would compromise attorney-client privilege.” Legal action has been taken by Peltier’s supporters in an attempt to secure more than 100,000 pages of documents from FBI field offices located throughout the U.S. claiming that these files should have been turned over at the time of his trial or following a Freedom of Information Act request filed soon after.
In 2007, Peltier became a figure in a political controversy when billionaire David Geffen, a Peltier supporter, detached his financial support for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and funded Barack Obama's campaign instead. This caused an immense furor in the Clinton camp, and Geffen admitted he switched his support because he became disillusioned by Bill Clinton's refusal to pardon Peltier in circumstances where he pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire felon and criminal.
Whatever the controversy, Peltier's conviction still stands. Upon hearing the case on February 11, 1986, Federal Appeals Judge Gerald W. Heaney, concluded, "When all is said and done...a few simple but very important facts remain. The casing introduced into evidence had in fact been extracted from the Wichita AR-15." Following this, Peltier admitted that he fired at the agents, but now denies that he fired the fatal shots that killed the agents.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Sideshow note:

he needs to be free

Boston Molasses Disaster

2009-01-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. A large molasses tank burst and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event has entered local folklore, and residents claim that on hot summer days the area still smells of molasses.

The disaster occurred at the Purity Distilling Company facility on January 15, 1919, an unusually warm day. At the time, molasses was the standard sweetener in the United States. Molasses can also be fermented to produce rum and ethyl alcohol, the active ingredient in other alcoholic beverages and a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time. The stored molasses was awaiting transfer to the Purity plant situated between Willow Street and what is now named Evereteze Way in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Near Keany Square, at 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 ft (15 m) tall, 90 ft (27 m) in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed there was a loud rumbling sound like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.
The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 to 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h) and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft² (200 kPa). The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet. As described by author Stephen Puleo,

Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.
The Boston Globe reported that people "were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet." Others had debris hurled at them from the rush of sweet-smelling air. A truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor. Approximately 150 were injured; 21 people and several horses were killed — some were crushed and drowned by the molasses. The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast.
Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn't answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his sisters staring at him.

First to the scene were 116 cadets under the direction of Lieutenant Commander H. J. Copeland from the USS Nantucket, training ship of the Massachusetts Nautical School, that was docked nearby at the playground pier. They ran several blocks toward the accident. They worked to keep the curious from getting in the way of the rescuers while others entered into the knee-deep sticky mess to pull out the survivors. Soon the Boston police, Red Cross, Army and other Navy personnel arrived. Some nurses from the Red Cross dove into the molasses while others tended to the wounded, keeping them warm as well as keeping the exhausted workers fed. Many of these people worked through the night. The injured were so numerous that doctors and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers found it difficult to make their way through the syrup to help the victims. It took four days before they stopped searching for victims; many dead were so glazed over in molasses, they were hard to recognize. Two who were found on the fourth day could not be identified.

It took over 87,000 man hours to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. The harbor was still brown with molasses until summer. Local residents brought a class-action lawsuit, one of the first held in Massachusetts, against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA), which had bought Purity Distilling in 1917. In spite of the company's attempts to claim that the tank had been blown up by anarchists (because some of the alcohol produced was to be used in making munitions), a court-appointed auditor found USIA responsible after three years of hearings. USIA ultimately paid out $600,000 in out-of-court settlements (at least $6.6 million in 2005 dollars).
United States Industrial Alcohol did not rebuild the tank. The property became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) and is currently the site of a city-owned baseball field.

The cause of the accident is not known with certainty, but the company was found liable and paid damages.
Several factors that occurred on that day and the previous days may have contributed to the disaster. The tank was poorly constructed and insufficiently tested. Due to fermentation occurring within the tank, carbon dioxide production may have raised the internal pressure. The rise in the local temperatures that occurred over the previous day also would have assisted in the building of this pressure. Records show that the air temperature rose from 2°F to 41°F (from -17°C to 5°C) over that period. The failure occurred from a manhole cover near the base of the tank, and it is possible that a fatigue crack grew substantially. The hoop stress is greatest near the base of a filled, cylindrical tank. The tank had only been filled to capacity eight times since it was built a few years previously, putting the walls under an intermittent cyclical load.
An inquiry after the disaster revealed that Arthur Jell, who oversaw the construction, neglected basic safety tests, such as filling the tank with water to check for leaks. When filled with molasses, the tank leaked so badly that it was painted brown to hide the leaks. Local residents collected leaked molasses for their homes.
Based on the date of the accident, some have claimed that the tank may have been overfilled so that the owners could produce as much ethanol for liquor as possible before Prohibition came into effect. But the 18th Amendment, enacting Prohibition, did not become law until more than a year later, and the Volstead Act did not ban the production of industrial alcohol, so these claims are groundless.

The sites of the molasses tank and the North End Paving Company have been turned into a recreational complex, officially named Langone Park, featuring a Little League ballfield, a playground, and bocce courts. Immediately to the east is the larger Puopolo Park, with additional recreational facilities.
A small plaque at the entrance to Puopolo Park, placed by the Bostonian Society, commemorates the disaster.
The plaque, entitled "Boston Molasses Flood", reads:
On January 15, 1919, a molasses tank at 529 Commercial Street exploded under pressure, killing 21 people. A 40-foot wave of molasses buckled the elevated railroad tracks, crushed buildings and inundated the neighborhood. Structural defects in the tank combined with unseasonably warm temperatures contributed to the disaster.

Sideshow note:

Joshua's Song, children's book (fiction) centered upon the incident.

Brett Downey

2009-01-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

From an email -
My nephew Brett Downey was killed on August 19, 2004 while practicing at Glen Helen Raceway in Southern California. He was taken from us at the young age of 11. The loss of such an awesome young boy was felt by many both near and far. While competing in races all over the US, Brett had made so many friends. The tragic loss has been devastating to our family, but faith in God and the support of the MX community has helped us through it. I felt such an instant connection with Michael Berg the moment I read about his son Garrett just days after Brett died. He listened to me and was nice enough to take the time to contact Brett's parents and help comfort them. For that I will be forever grateful.
Brett is missed so much! This Thursday, October 13th would have been my nephews 13th birthday. It's only of many milestones in a childs life that we won't have the chance to share with him.
Brett's parents have continued to support the sport their son loved so much by creating the Brett Downey Safety Foundation. It's their mission to make tracks all over the US safer for all riders.

Sid Cardinale and Ashley Myers

2009-01-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

Wynnie Myers had been chatting with her daughter, Ashley, on a cellphone not long before the 18-year-old died in a fiery chain-reaction crash on Interstate 66 early Sunday that killed two others, including her daughter's good friend, also 18. "They were laughing and chattering," Myers, 44, said yesterday of the teenagers, who were in one car. "They were just full of happiness." The Winchester teenagers had spent the evening in the District, eating their first sushi before going to bookstores and a dance club. They were on their way home when their 1996 Volvo station wagon had a flat tire on Key Bridge, and they called Myers to come pick them up. As it turned out, a bystander helped them change the flat, so they arranged instead to meet Myers at a McDonald's in Centreville. "I told them to keep the four-ways on, don't drive over 45 and stay on the right," Myers said she told them. "I talked to them all the way up to 3:22." At 3:52 a.m., Virginia State Police said, a 2007 Kenworth tanker truck hauling gasoline struck a 2000 Jeep from behind, and the Jeep, in turn, struck the Volvo near the Fairfax County Parkway. The Jeep's gas tank erupted in flames, and all three vehicles were consumed in the fire. The driver of the Jeep and the teenagers died instantly, police said. Yesterday, police said they were able to positively identify the victims through dental records. Also killed in the Volvo was Sid Cardinale. The driver of the Jeep was identified as Kevin Weeks, 35, of Haymarket. The driver of the tanker, Mac Jerry Kriesch, 43, of Woodbridge, suffered only minor injuries. Police said that they are continuing to investigate the crash but that Kriesch is the only known witness. He has told police that the Volvo and Jeep were parked in the center-right lane of the four-lane highway and that the Jeep didn't have its lights on when he hit it, Sgt. Terry Licklider said. "It's not just cut and dried as to exactly what happened," Licklider said. "Were they stopped in the road? Was it a previous accident? Was someone disabled? We just don't know right now." Ashley Myers and Cardinale were seniors at different high schools, and were described by relatives and school officials as possessing magnetic personalities that meant large circle of friends for each. "He would talk to anybody. He was friends with all different types and groups of people," Cardinale's mother, Brenda Cardinale, 36, said yesterday. "He just liked to be happy. And wanted everyone around him to be happy." Cardinale, a senior at James Wood High School, was planning to travel after graduating from high school and then work as a masseur, she said. Tomorrow he will be buried. "He will be terribly missed by a lot of people," Brenda Cardinale said. "He was one that shouldn't have been taken so early." Officials at his high school announced the teenager's death yesterday over the loudspeaker after police confirmed the identities of the accident victims. In his government class with teacher Mickey Monahan, students spoke about him, with the phrase "nice guy" spilling out so many times it led to a discussion of what that meant, Frederick County schools spokesman Steve Edwards said. The students concluded, he said, that it wasn't one big act that made Sid special but a combination of little ones. Similar scenes played out at Ashley Myers's school, John Handley High. Principal Doug Joyner described her as compassionate and enthusiastic, whether she was participating in cheerleading, softball or choir. "Just her positive presence, the enthusiasm and the energy that she conveyed by simply how she dealt with people every day is something that made an impact in the lives of people here in this community," he said. "She was the sort of student that everyone knew." Wynnie Myers said she was remembering the little things: the way her daughter would dance around the house, the way they never said "love ya, bye" but rather "love ya later," the hours the two passed at the wooden table in their kitchen. It is where they talked, ate and had burping contests that Ashley never won. "The tears at that kitchen table, the laughter, the games," Myers said. "Oh my God, the kitchen table, if it could talk." Myers said she just recently saw Ashley's Web page on MySpace. "She has on there that I was her best friend and she doesn't know what she would do if anything ever happened to me," she said. "Now it's the other way around."

Hartford circus fire

2008-12-12T05:59:00.000-08:00

The Hartford Circus Fire, which occurred on July 6, 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut, was one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the United States. The fire occurred during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was attended by approximately 6,800 people.

The fire began as a small flame about twenty minutes into the show, on the southwest sidewall of the tent, while the Great Wallendas were on. Circus Bandleader Merle Evans is said to be the person who first spotted the flames, and immediately directed the band to play Stars and Stripes Forever, the tune that traditionally signaled distress to all circus personnel. Ringmaster Fred Bradna urged the audience not to panic and to leave in an orderly fashion, but the power failed and he could not be heard. Bradna and the ushers unsuccessfully tried to maintain some order as the panicked crowd tried to flee the big top.
Sources and investigators differ on how many people were killed and injured. Various people and organizations say it was 167, 168, or 169 persons (the 168 figure is usually based on official tallies that included a collection of body parts that were listed as a "victim") with official treated injury estimates running over 700 people. The number of actual injuries is believed to be higher than those figures, since many people were seen that day heading home in shock without seeking treatment in the city. The only animals in the big top at the time were the big cats trained by May Kovar and Joseph Walsh that had just finished performing when the fire started. The big cats were herded through the chutes leading from the performing cages to several cage wagons, and were unharmed except for a few minor burns.
The cause of the fire remains unproven. Investigators at the time believed it was caused by a carelessly flicked cigarette but others suspected an arsonist. Several years later while being investigated on other arson charges, Robert Dale Segee (1929-1997) who was an adolescent roustabout at the time, confessed to starting the blaze. He was never tried for the crime and later recanted his confession.
Because the big top tent had been coated with 1,800 lb (816 kg) of paraffin dissolved in 6,000 US gallons (23 m³) of gasoline (some sources say kerosene), a common waterproofing method of the time, the flames spread rapidly. Many people were badly burned by the melting paraffin, which rained down like napalm from the roof. The fiery tent collapsed in about eight minutes according to eyewitness survivors, trapping hundreds of spectators beneath it.
The circus had been experiencing shortages of personnel and equipment due to World War II. Delays and malfunctions in the ordinarily smooth order of the circus had become commonplace. Two years earlier, on August 4, 1942, a fire had broken out in the menagerie, killing a number of animals. Circus personnel were concerned about the 1944 Hartford show for other reasons. Two shows had been scheduled for July 5, but the first had to be cancelled because the circus trains arrived late and could not set up in time. In circus superstition, missing a show is considered extremely bad luck, and although the July 5 evening show ran as planned, many circus employees may have been on their guards, half-expecting an emergency or catastrophe.
It is commonly believed that the number of fatalities is higher than the estimates given, due to poorly kept residency records in rural towns, and the fact that some smaller remains were never identified or claimed. It is also believed that the intense heat from the fire combined with the accelerants in the paraffin and gasoline could have burned people completely, as in cremation, leaving no substantial physical evidence behind. Additionally, free tickets had been handed out that day to many people in and around the city, some of whom appeared to eyewitnesses and circus employees to be drifters, who would never have been reported missing by anyone if they were killed in the disaster. The number of people in the audience that day has never been established with certainty, but the closest estimate is about 7,500 to 8,700.
While many people were burned to death by the fire, many others died as a result of the ensuing chaos. Though most spectators were able to escape the fire, many people were caught up in the hysteria and panicked. Witnesses said some people simply ran around in circles trying to find their loved ones, rather than trying to escape the burning tent. Some escaped but ran back inside to find family members. Others stayed in their seats until it was too late, assuming that the fire would be put out promptly, and the show would continue.
Because at least two of the exits were blocked, by the chutes used to bring the large felines in and out of the tent, people trying to escape could not bypass them. Some died from injuries sustained after leaping from the tops of the bleachers in hopes they could escape under the sides of the tent, though that method of escape ended up saving more people than it killed. Others died after being trampled by other spectators, with some asphyxiating underneath the piles of people who had fallen down over each other.
Most of the dead were found in piles, some three bodies deep, at the most congested exits. A small number of people were found alive at the bottoms of these piles, protected by the bodies that were on top of them when the burning big top ultimately fell down on those still trapped beneath it. The emotional toll on performers and spectators should not be underestimated, and because of a picture that appeared in several newspapers of sad tramp clown Emmett Kelly holding a water bucket, the event became known as "the day the clowns cried."

On July 7, charges of involuntary manslaughter were filed against five officials and employees of Ringling Bros. Within days of these charges being filed, the circus reached an agreement with Hartford officials to accept full financial responsibility and pay whatever amount the city requested in damages. This resulted in the circus paying out almost US$5,000,000 to the 600 victims and families who had filed claims against them by 1954. All circus profits from the time of the fire until then had been set aside to pay off these claims.
Although the circus accepted full responsibility for the financial damages, they did not accept responsibility for the disaster itself. The five men charged were brought to trial in late 1944; four were convicted. Although they were given prison terms, the four men found guilty were allowed to continue with the circus to their next stop, in Sarasota, Florida, to help the company set itself up again after the disaster. Shortly after their convictions, they were pardoned entirely.

In 1950, a Circleville, Ohio man named Robert D. Segee claimed he was responsible for setting the Hartford Circus Fire. He said he had a nightmare in which an Indian riding on a "flaming horse" told him to set fires. He further claimed that after this nightmare his mind went blank, and that he did not come out of this state until the circus fire had already been set. It was said Segee fit the description of a serial arsonist right out of a psychiatrist's textbook. Segee also knew intimate details of the incident, which some believed only the real arsonist could have known. For instance, it was never made public that the circus had two smaller fires of undetermined origin prior to the tragedy. Segee admitted setting both of them as well. These statements, Segee added, were in response to a later dream he'd had of a woman standing in flames urging him to confess.
In November 1950, Segee was convicted in Ohio of unrelated arson charges and sentenced to more than 40 years of prison time. However, Hartford investigators raised doubts over this man's confession, as he had a history of mental illness, and it could not be proven he was anywhere within the state of Connecticut when the fire occurred. Connecticut officials were also not allowed to question Segee, even though his alleged crime had occurred in their state. Additionally, Segee, who died in 1997, denied setting the fire as late as 1994 during an interview. Because of this, many investigators, historians, and victims believe the true arsonist—if it had indeed been arson—was never found.

The best-known victim of the circus fire was a young girl wearing a brown dress. She is known only as "Little Miss 1565", named after the number assigned to her body at the city's makeshift morgue. Oddly well preserved even after her death in the fire, her face has become arguably the most well-known image of the fire. The Offspring mentioned her in their 1989 song Jennifer Lost the War. John & Mary wrote a song called "July 82" (included on their 1990 CD "Victory Gardens") that was about her and the whole tragedy.
Her true identity has been a topic of debate and frustration in the Hartford area since the fire occurred. Despite massive publicity and repeated displays of the famous photograph in nationwide magazines, she was never claimed and eventually was buried without a name in Hartford's Northwood cemetery, where a victims' memorial also stands.
In 1991, arson investigator Rick Davey (along with co-writer Don Massey) published "A Matter of Degree: The Hartford Circus Fire and Mystery of Little Miss 1565", in which he claims the girl's name was Eleanor Emily Cook and that she was from Massachusetts. Davey also contends that there was a conspiracy within the judicial system to convict the Ringling defendants, and that Segee was the arsonist. Prior to writing the book, Davey spent six years researching the case and conducting his own experiments as to how the fire may have really started. He has professed the original investigation was both flawed and primitive, though he did not work on the original case.
Various assertions put forth in "A Matter of Degree" have been fiercely disputed by investigators who worked on the case, as well as by other writers, most notably Stewart O'Nan, who published "The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy" in 2001. O'Nan points to the fact that Little Miss 1565 had blonde hair, while Eleanor Cook was a brunette. The shape of Little Miss 1565's face and that of Eleanor Cook are dissimilar, and the height and age of the two girls do not match up.
Perhaps most significant, when shown a photograph of Little Miss 1565, Eleanor's mother Mildred Corintha Parsons Cook immediately stated that this was not her daughter. She firmly maintained that stance until her death in 1997, age 91. Badly injured in the fire, Mrs. Cook had been unable to claim her two dead children, and was too emotionally traumatized to pursue it later. She'd been told that Eleanor was not in any of the locations where bodies were kept for identification. She believed that Eleanor was one of two children who had been burnt beyond recognition and remain unidentified. O'Nan thinks she may be body number 1503. He further points to the differences in the dental records of Eleanor Cook and the records made of Little Miss 1565 after her death.
As O'Nan and others have pointed out, the most likely scenario is that a family claiming a body early on mistakenly identified Eleanor Cook for their own child and she is buried under that child's name. Even when "Little Miss 1565's" picture ran in the papers, they failed to recognize her as their own due to their desire to put the traumatic event behind them. While DNA analysis could end this debate definitively, the logistics of exhuming all the likely candidates for this mix-up rule this out.
With the questions over whether Eleanor Cook is the true identity of Little Miss 1565 still unanswered in the eyes of many, the body was exhumed after the release of "A Matter of Degree" and buried in Southampton, Massachusetts, next to the body of Edward Cook, the brother of Eleanor Cook and a victim of the circus fire himself (another brother, Donald, survived and worked with Davey to establish Miss 1565's identity). In 1992, her death certificate was officially changed from the previous identification of "1565." Since then, the Cook family has raised questions whether the body is indeed that of Eleanor Cook, and some investigators have come to believe that Eleanor's body may have been another of the unclaimed bodies from the fire and not Little Miss 1565. As of 2005, the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Lab is reviewing the case.

One of the survivors of the fire, Maureen Krekian, discussed her ordeal in 2007. She was 11 at the time, and lived on the same road where the circus was held. On the day of the event, she was supposed to go to the circus with a woman next door and her daughter. When she went to their house, she found that they had already left without her. She decided to go to the circus on her own, where she seated herself in the bleachers.
"I remember somebody yelling and seeing a big ball of fire near the top of the tent. And this ball of fire just got bigger and bigger and bigger. By that time, everybody was panicking. The exit was blocked with the cages that the animals were brought in and out with. And there was a man taking kids and flinging them up and over that cage to get them out. I was sitting up in the bleachers and jumped down — I was three-quarters of the way up. You jump down and it was all straw underneath. There was a young man, a kid, and he had a pocketknife. And he slit the tent, took my arm and pulled me out."
As she was being pulled out, Krekian grabbed another little girl's arm and pulled her out as well.
Actor and theater director Charles Nelson Reilly, who was thirteen years old at the time, survived the fire and dramatized it in the film of his stage show, "The Life of Reilly". In a 1997 interview, Reilly said that he rarely attended the theater, despite being a director, since the sound of a large audience in a theater reminded him of the large crowd at the circus before the disaster.
A serviceman on leave, trying to escape, was overcome by the smoke and collapsed to the ground. He tugged at the leg of a man running past and told him he'd get $200 if he got him out before going unconscious, and later woke up in the hospital. When the hospital staff brought him his clothing, he checked his wallet. He'd had $500 in it. Upon checking he found $300.This very story was also cited in the book "Fire in the Grove" by John Esposito as having occurred at the Coconut Grove fire two years earlier. Esposito states in his book that he doubts this actually happened. This is probably a case of urban myth.

While the circus was banned from Hartford and other parts of Connecticut for years after the Hartford fire, it began to make a comeback in the 1970s. Laws passed in Connecticut shortly after the fire made it illegal for big tops to be used (though at the time of the fire big tops were being phased out anyway), so the Ringling Bros. circus has traditionally been held in the Hartford Civic Center when it visits the city.
Many of those present at the fire have not returned to circuses since then. Others have returned. In May 2004, Dorothy Carvey and her son, Tighe, were given free passes for their family by Ringling Bros. to attend a show at the Hartford Civic Center. For Dorothy Carvey, this was her first time attending a circus since the fire occurred. The story of their visit, as well as what happened to them in 1944, was written about in The Hartford Courant.
In 2002, the Hartford Circus Fire Memorial Foundation was established to erect a permanent memorial to the people killed in the fire. Ground was broken for the monument on July 6, 2004, at the site where the fire occurred. This memorial is located behind the Wish School at 350 Barbour Street,

Notable survivors

Eunice Groark, first female lieutenant governor of Connecticut Charles

Nelson Reilly, actor and entertainer

Chief Black Hawk

2008-11-20T23:49:00.001-08:00

died in 1832 and was buried on James Jordan's farm near Iowaville. On July 3, 1839, James Turner, a local dentist, stole the corpse, fled to Quincy, Illinois, cooked off the flesh in a hog-scalding kettle, and prepared to exhibit the skeleton. The Iowa governor insisted on its return, then gave the skeleton to a physician friend, who kept it in his Burlington office. A fire destroyed both office and bones in 1855.

Jimmy Hoffa

2008-11-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

exact date of death unknown) was an American labor leader and convicted criminal (pardoned). As the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Hoffa wielded considerable influence. After he was convicted of attempted bribery of a grand juror, he served nearly a decade in prison. He is also well-known in popular culture for the mysterious circumstances surrounding his unexplained disappearance and presumed death. His son James P. Hoffa is the current president of the Teamsters.

I love u guys Messeng

2008-11-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

Police released the text message and a photo of Keyes on Thursday, as they continued to investigate the Wednesday incident in classroom 206 at Platte Canyon High School.

Keyes was one of two girls whose screams spurred SWAT teams to storm a Colorado classroom where a gunman was holding them hostage, officials said Thursday.

Duane Morrison, 53, had already sexually assaulted and "traumatized" the students when the raid was ordered to end the Wednesday standoff, Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said.

Morrison used Keyes as a human shield when the officers burst in. Morrison shot her in the back of her head when she tried to escape, Joe Morales, executive director of Colorado's Department of Public Safety, told reporters.

The gunman then shot himself. When his body was removed from the classroom, authorities found a semi-automatic pistol and a revolver on him, the sheriff said.

Morrison had told the police he had a bomb in his backpack, Wegener said, but after it was over, he said, "It looks like there was nothing in the backpack."

Keyes was taken by helicopter to a Denver hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Morrison, who had an arrest record in neighboring Jefferson County and was wanted on a fugitive-from-justice warrant, took six girls hostage inside a classroom of Platte Canyon High School, in Bailey Colorado.

He released four students one-by-one in a three-hour standoff but negotiations then broke down.

Wegener said the gunman threatened that something would happen at 4 p.m.

"It was then decided that a tactical solution needed to be done in an effort to save the two hostages that were in the room," Wegener said.

The screams from the hostages "moved up the tempo of the operation a bit," Morales said.

Wegener said: "We had to go try and save them."

He added that any motive for the attack was "still a mystery."

In an interview with KOKI in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the gunman's father, Bob Morrison, described his son as "just different" and "a loner."
Mom: My son lied

A purported witness to the standoff said the gunman wanted to take only girls hostage, but his mother said later that her son was lying.

Cassidy Grigg, 16, told NBC's "Today" that the gunman fired a warning shot as he entered the classroom, then lined up the students in front of a chalkboard.

However, Grigg's mother said he was in a nearby computer lab when he heard the commotion. Grigg went to check it out but was turned away by his teacher, his mother said.

Larina Grigg elaborated to the Rocky Mountain News, saying her son "wants to say he's sorry. I know and he knows he made a huge mistake. He lost one of his dear friends."

She added that Cassidy wanted to be a hero and "got caught up in the chaos" of television crews scrambling to interview him.

Grigg told "Today" that Keyes "was one of my first friends."

"She was always sweet, she always welcomed people," he said. "She was just friendly, she was a good person in general."
'Scared to death'

Authorities have searched Morrison's car, in which he appeared to be living, the sheriff said.

Wegener said the suspect did not have much of a criminal history and only minor things were on his record.

Bailey is not far from Columbine, where two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in 1999.

"I know we talk about the Columbine connection," Wegener said. "This is something that has changed my school, changed my community.

"My small county is gone," he added.

"I've gone from upset to angry that this man has done this to our community, has done this to our children," Wegener said.

On Wednesday, Wegener said he was "scared to death" as he was deciding whether to order police to storm the classroom.

"Nobody wants anything to happen like this at their school," said Wegener. He said his own son was in the building. Asked whether he was second-guessing his decision, Wegener said, "I have to go and eventually I have to face a family about the fact their daughter is dead. So what would you do?"

Ota Benga

2008-11-07T18:20:00.001-08:00

Born in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this pygmy from the Batwa tribe, along with other African pygmies, was brought to the United States to be exhibited in a World Village that "showcased" native tribesmen from all over the world at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. At the expos conclusion the young African and his fellow tribesmen were returned to Africa, but Benga, asked to return to the US with the man who first brought him to America, Samuel Verner. Financial difficulties soon forced Verner to leave the tribesman in the care of the American Museum of Natural History in New York as he went to South Carolina to seek family support for his financial struggles. In 1906, the caretakers decided to place the African native in the Bronx Zoo as part of an exhibit on evolution. The man was caged in the primate house with an orangutan as his only roommate. The exhibition became popular drawing over 40,000 visitors daily. However, human rights activists protested the spectacle and Ota Benga was soon removed from display. Now a national curiosity, he was sent to Virginia where many hoped he would find a new start. However, trapped between the cultures of his native Africa and his new home in the United States, Benga shot himself. He was in his early thirties. This tragedy was one of the first to bring to the world's attention the importance of human rights. His legacy is preserved in a book about his life, "Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo" (1992), the movie, "Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America" (2002) and in the establishment of the "Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity". He was reportedly buried in an unmarked grave in Lynchburg's Old City Cemetery before being moved to the city's White Rock Cemetery. Therefore the location of his grave is uncertain.

John and Lorena Bobbitt

2008-11-07T15:40:00.000-08:00

were an American couple, married on June 18, 1989, made famous for a 1993 incident in which Lorena cut off John's penis with a kitchen knife.

On the night of June 23, 1993, John Bobbitt arrived at the couple's Manassas, Virginia apartment intoxicated after a night of partying and, according to testimony by Lorena in a 1994 court hearing, raped his wife. (Note: He was tried and acquitted for this alleged spousal rape in 1994; he was prosecuted by the same district attorney who prosecuted Lorena for allegedly attacking John.) Afterwards, Lorena got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. According to an article in the National Women's Studies Association Journal, in the kitchen she noticed a carving knife on the counter and "memories of past domestic abuses raced through her head." Grabbing the knife, Lorena entered the bedroom where John was asleep; and she proceeded to cut off more than half of his penis.

After assaulting her husband, Lorena left the apartment, with the severed penis. After driving a short while, she rolled down the car window and threw the penis into a field. Realizing the severity of the incident, she stopped and called 911. After an exhaustive search, the penis was located, packed in ice, and brought to the hospital where John was located.

The penis was re-attached by Doctors James T. Sehn and David E. Berman during a nine and a half hour surgery.

Lorena was taken into custody.

During the trial, the couple revealed details of their volatile relationship and the events leading up to the assault. Lorena stated that John sexually, physically, and emotionally abused her during their marriage. She also stated that John flaunted his infidelities, and forced her to have an abortion. Several witnesses provided testimony supporting Lorena's claims. Lorena's defense attorneys maintained that John's constant abuse caused Lorena to eventually "snap" as she was suffering from clinical depression and a possible bout of post traumatic stress disorder due to the abuse.

John denied the allegations of abuse. However, when he was cross-examined, his statements often conflicted with known facts, severely weakening the prosecution's case.

After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found Lorena "not guilty" due to temporary insanity causing an irresistible impulse to sexually wound her husband. As a result, she could not be held liable for her actions. Under state law, the judge ordered Lorena to undergo a 45-day evaluation period at a mental hospital, after which she would be released.

In 1995, after seven years of marriage, Lorena and John divorced.

After the incident, John Wayne Bobbitt attempted to cash in on his notoriety in a number of ways. He formed a band, "The Severed Parts", to pay his mounting medical and legal bills—though the band was unsuccessful and failed to generate enough money. In 1994, John appeared in the adult film John Wayne Bobbitt: Uncut, in another attempt to make money. In 1996, he appeared in another adult film, Frankenpenis (also known as John Wayne Bobbitt's Frankenpenis). In 1998 he appeared on the World Wrestling Federation's Monday Night Raw program alongside the porn star character Val Venis who had recently almost had his penis cut off. Not long after, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada where he worked as a bartender, limo driver, mover, and tow truck operator. He also had a stint serving as a minister of a Las Vegas church.

After the divorce, John continued to have run-ins with the law. He was reportedly arrested seven times for offenses ranging from assault to grand larceny. In 1994, he was convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery against his former fiancée, Kristina Elliott, and sentenced to 15 days in jail. In September 1999, he was sentenced to five years probation for his role in the theft of more than $140,000 in clothing from a store in Fallon, Nevada, and ordered to pay $5,000 restitution and serve 100 hours of community service.

After two trials for domestic abuse against Joanna Ferrell, his third wife, in 2004—one ending in conviction for Bobbitt and the other in acquittal—he was arrested for a third offense in September 2005. Days after the third incident, he filed for a divorce. On February 8, 2006, a municipal judge found Bobbitt not guilty, due to insufficient evidence.

After the trial, Lorena was treated as a feminist "hero", though she attempted to keep a low profile and resumed the use of her maiden name. In December 1997, Lorena made news when she was charged with assault for punching her mother, Elvia Gallo, as they watched television. She was eventually found innocent of assaulting her mother. Her mother currently lives with her. As of 2007 she is employed in the Ashburn, Virginia area as a hair stylist.

Lorena appeared on CBS where she spoke exclusively with The Early Show about her life after the scandal, 15 years later she has a fiancé, Dave Bellinger, and a two and a half year old daughter named Olivia. She has founded the organization Lorena's Red Wagon which helps to prevent domestic violence through family oriented activities.

After the trial, Lorena was treated as a feminist "hero", though she attempted to keep a low profile and resumed the use of her maiden name. In December 1997, Lorena made news when she was charged with assault for punching her mother, Elvia Gallo, as they watched television. She was eventually found innocent of assaulting her mother. Her mother currently lives with her. As of 2007 she is employed in the Ashburn, Virginia area as a hair stylist.

Lorena appeared on CBS where she spoke exclusively with The Early Show about her life after the scandal, 15 years later she has a fiancé, Dave Bellinger, and a two and a half year old daughter named Olivia. She has founded the organization Lorena's Red Wagon which helps to prevent domestic violence through family oriented activities.

The Bobbitt case was one of the first scandals that brought legitimacy to the subject of marital rape and forced abortion. The case also brought attention to the issue of domestic violence. Within days of the incident, domestic violence and feminists groups rallied around Lorena, citing the continuous abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband that caused her to defend herself, albeit in an unusual and violent manner. Media attention surrounding the case resulted in national debate and also sparked a flurry of jokes, limericks, T-shirt slogans, advertising gimmicks, and an urban legend that she was killed in a car accident because (note the double-entendre) "some prick cut her off". Shortly after the incident, episodes of "Bobbittmania", or copycat crimes, were reported. The name Lorena Bobbitt eventually became synonymous with penis removal. The term “Bobbittised punishment” gained social acceptance. This incident was one of three news stories used in the song "Headline News" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, a parody of the Crash Test Dummies hit "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", and was used as one half of the Julie Brown comedy film Attack of the 5'2" Women with the also topical Tonya Harding story. D12's Bizarre also rapped "I don't give a fuck about my dick/that's why I'm dating Lorena Bobbitt" on the song "Rap Game" which appeared on the 8 Mile Soundtrack. Rapper Foxy Brown also made a comment in 112's song "U Already Know" where she rapped "Plus I cut like I train Lorena Bobbit." Rapper Konkrete rapped "She'll be castrated, Lorena Bobitt maybe" on the song "Tomb of the Boom" of the the Outkast album Speakerboxxx. Freekey Zekey rapped "Your girl leanin' on my Corvette, she take penis like Rena Bobbit." Also, death-rapper Necro raps at the end of a freestyle before he leaves, "I'm out like the last nut Bobbitt will ever use to rape his wife" Kansas City rapper Tech N9ne references Bobbit in his song "Psycho Bitch II", singing "Lorena Bobbit told her to slice yo dick" in the opener. Several other hip hop artists have tried unsuccessfuly to use the story in their rhymes. The subject was also mentioned in the film Fight Club where Tyler Durden says "It could be worse. A woman could cut off your penis while you're sleeping, and toss it out the window of a moving car".

Megan Meier

2008-11-07T03:28:00.001-08:00

was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri who committed suicide in October 2006. Her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. The account, purportedly belonging to a 16-year-old male named "Josh Evans," was created and monitored by the mother of a friend of Meier, whom a police report identified as Lori Janine Drew.
A federal grand jury indicted Lori Drew on May 15, 2008, on three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy. A penalty of up to five years in prison corresponds to each of the four counts that the indictment carries.The case has caused several jurisdictions to consider legislation prohibiting harassment over the Internet.

Jeremy Quinn a good guy

2008-11-06T15:39:00.001-08:00

Jeremy R. Quinn was doing what he often did, helping someone in need. And it cost him his life. "He was usually pretty nice to people," his father, Roger Quinn said. "He was allowing this guy to sleep on his couch." At about 3 a.m. Thursday, Quinn, 25, 224 W. 12th St., allegedly was stabbed in the chest by a man he was allowing to stay at his apartment. Quinn later died at Samaritan Hospital. The suspect drove off with Quinn's older model pickup truck. Quinn had been victimized before by people he tried to help, according to his father. "In the past, he's helped people and they've stolen money from him," he said. A neighbor called 911 at about 3 a.m. and reported hearing a commotion coming from Quinn's apartment. "We heard one man talking and the other screaming and something bumping," the caller said. Another neighbor called 911 and reported Quinn came into his apartment and needed an emergency squad. Quinn told the neighbor he had been stabbed in the chest. He named the suspect when police arrived, giving the name Bill Schumaker. However, City Police Detectives determined the suspect likely was using an alias. West Twelfth Street was closed to traffic between Cottage Street and the City Street Department facility while the crime scene was processed by City Police detectives and an agent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. It remained closed until 12:45 p.m. Before daybreak, the City Fire Department provided lighting for the crime scene. Detectives, who had been up since the early morning hours, spent all day questioning those who knew Quinn and the suspect. They requested the public's help in finding the suspect and Quinn's truck. The suspect was using the name William S. Schumaker or Shoemaker. He is also was known locally as "Wild Bill" or "Tattoo Bill." He is a white male, approximately 45 to 55 years old, slender, with short dark hair and a growth of salt-and-pepper facial stubble. The suspect is missing a lower tooth and has a noticeable underbite and a number of black tattoos on both arms. He is known to frequent downtown bars and has been in town since about August. His prior history in the area, if any, is not known at this time. He also is known to drink heavily and use drugs, police said. The suspect is believed to be driving Quinn's dark blue 1986 Chevrolet pickup truck. The two-wheel drive truck might have oversize rear tires and a dent in the driver's side door. The license plate number is DEN 7255. Anyone with information about the suspect or the vehicle is asked to call the City Police Department, 419-289-3639. ----------------------- Scott B. Brentlinger entered a not guilty plea Wednesday in an initial appearance hearing at the County Jail. Brentlinger, 48, is charged with murder in the Jan. 17 stabbing of Jeremy R. Quinn. Brentlinger's court-appointed attorney, Andy Hyde, requested a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is sufficient cause to charge his client. Common Pleas Judge Deborah E. Woodward scheduled the hearing for 3 p.m. Friday. Woodward said she would determine later whether to conduct it at the County Jail. Wednesday's initial appearance hearing and Friday's bond setting hearing were conducted at the County Jail for security reasons. Brentlinger allegedly stabbed Quinn in the chest inside Quinn's apartment at 224 W. 12th St. at about 3 a.m. Jan 17 and left the area in a pickup truck belonging to the victim. On Jan. 22, after an extensive investigation and manhunt, Ashland Police detectives arrested Brentlinger at a soup kitchen on Cleveland's near west side. The pickup truck was recovered at Fairview Hospital on the far west side of Cleveland, where Brentlinger reportedly told police he had gone for treatment of cuts on his hands. Brentlinger remains in County Jail on $1 million bond.

Steven Stayner

2008-11-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

was an American child who became famous after he was kidnapped as a seven-year-old and held captive by his abductor, to be reunited with his family seven years later.

On the afternoon of December 4, 1972, Steven Stayner was approached by "Reverend" Kenneth Parnell while walking home from school. Parnell asked Steven if his mother might make a donation to his church. Although Steven had been told not to speak to strangers, he thought the man was nice, and believing Parnell to be the pastor of a church, he believed it was safe. Steven accepted an offer of a ride home. Steven questioned Parnell when they drove past Steven's home, but Parnell ignored the boy. Parnell took Steven to his cabin which, unknown to Steven, was located several hundred feet from Steven's grandfather's residence. Steven found several toys in the cabin, and told Parnell he was going to give them to his sisters and brothers when he went home. Parnell's accomplice in the abduction was Edward Ervin Murphy, known as "Uncle Murph" to Steven. Parnell molested Steven that first night.

Parnell began calling the boy Dennis Gregory Parnell, telling people that he was his son. "Dennis" and Parnell moved frequently around California, with Parnell enrolling him into a series of schools. He allowed Steven to begin smoking at a young age. One of the few positive aspects of Steven's life with Parnell was his dog, a Manchester Terrier whom Steven named Queenie. This dog had been given to Parnell by his mother, who was not aware of "Dennis's" existence during the period Steven was living with Parnell.
Parnell repeatedly molested the boy, starting with oral sex and moving onto sodomy. Parnell also babysat for the parents of one of Steven's friends, Kenny. Kenny's mother, Barbara, who was always fighting with her alcoholic husband Bob, eventually moved in with Parnell and "Dennis". One evening, "Dennis" was invited into bed with Parnell and Barbara, and the nine-year-old boy was forced to have sex with her. Eventually, Parnell and Barbara separated, and Parnell began sexually abusing Steven again. As Steven grew older, Parnell allowed him to start drinking alcohol.

As Steven entered puberty, Parnell began to look for a younger child to kidnap. On February 14, 1980, Parnell and Sean Poorman one of Steven's high school buddies kidnapped five-year-old Timmy White in Ukiah, California. Motivated in part by the young boy's distress, Steven decided to escape with him, intending to return the boy to his parents and then escape himself (Steven believed that Parnell had legal custody of him). On March 1, 1980, while Parnell was away at his night security job, Steven left with Timmy and hitchhiked into Ukiah. Unable to locate Timmy's home address, he decided to have Timmy walk into the police department to ask for help, before escaping himself. Before he could successfully escape, the police spotted the two boys and took them into custody. Steven immediately identified Timmy White and then revealed his own true identity and story.
By daybreak on March 2, 1980, Parnell had been arrested on suspicion of abducting both boys. After the police checked into Parnell's background they found a previous sodomy conviction from 1951. Both children were reunited with their families that day. In 1981, Parnell was tried and convicted of kidnapping Timmy and Steven in two separate trials. He was sentenced to seven years but was paroled after serving five years. Parnell was not charged with the numerous sexual assaults on Steven Stayner and other boys, as most occurred outside the jurisdiction of the Merced county prosecutor or were by then outside the statute of limitations. The Mendocino County prosecutors, acting almost entirely alone, decided not to prosecute the sexual assaults that occurred in their jurisdiction. This is likely due to the prosecutors believing they were "protecting" Steven because "rape and molestation victims" were seen as "damaged goods" as well as the Stayner parents not wanting him to talk about Parnell's crimes. Murphy and Poorman who had helped abduct Timmy White were convicted of lesser charges. Both claimed they knew nothing of the sexual assaults on Steven. Barbara was never arrested. Steven remembered the kindness "Uncle" Murphy had shown him in his first week of captivity while they were both under the influence of Parnell's manipulation, and believed Murphy to be as much Parnell's victim as Steven and Timmy were.
Parnell's prison sentence for the abduction of Steven and Timmy was considerably less than the seven years he had kept Steven prisoner. Steven's kidnapping and its aftermath prompted California lawmakers to change state laws "to allow consecutive prison terms in similar abduction cases."

Steven married Jody Edmondson on June 13, 1985, and they went on to have two children, a son and daughter.
On September 16, 1989, just before 5:00pm PDT while riding home after his shift at Pizza Hut, his motorcycle was involved in a collision with a car that pulled out into traffic. Steven received head injuries that were to prove fatal; he died at the Merced Community Medical Center at 5:35pm. He was driving without a license (suspended for a third time due to excessive traffic violations and without his helmet, which had been stolen a few days before. Over 500 people attended his funeral, including then-14-year-old Timmy White, who helped carry Steven's coffin into the church. Steven had converted to Mormonism just prior to his death.

In early 1989 a television miniseries based on his experience, I Know My First Name is Steven (also known as The Missing Years), was produced. Steven, taking a leave of absence from his job, acted as an advisor for the production company (Lorimar-Telepictures) and had a non-speaking part, playing one of the two policemen who escort 14-year-old Steven (played by Corky Nemec) through the crowds to his waiting family, on his return to his Merced home. Although pleased with the dramatization Steven did complain that it depicted him as a somewhat "obnoxious, rude" person, especially toward his parents, something he refuted while publicizing the miniseries in the Spring of 1989. The two-part miniseries was first broadcast in the USA by NBC May 21-22 1989. Screening rights were sold to a number of international television companies including the BBC, who screened the miniseries in mid-July of the following year; later still, it was released as a feature length movie.
The production was based on a manuscript by Mike Echols, who had researched the story and interviewed Stayner and Parnell, among others. After the premiere of I Know My First Name is Steven, which won four Emmy Award nominations, including one for Corky Nemec. Mike Echols published his book I Know My First Name is Steven in 1991. In the epilogue to his book, Echols describes how he infiltrated NAMBLA.
In 1999, much to the disgust of the Stayner family, Mike Echols wrote an additional chapter, about Cary Stayner, at the request of his publisher who then re-published the book.
The title for the film and book are taken from the first paragraph of Steven's written Police statement, given during the early hours of 2 March 1980 in Ukiah. It reads (note the incorrect spelling of his family name

"My name is Steven Stainer. I am fourteen years of age. I don't know my true birthdate,but I use April 18, 1965. I know my first name is Steven, I'm pretty sure my last is Stainer,and if I have a middle name, I don't know it."

Sideshow note:

Stevens older brother is serial killer Cary Stayner.

Ten years after Steven's death, the city of Merced asked its residents for proposals for names of city parks which would honor Merced's notable citizens. Steven's parents proposed that one be named "Stayner Park". This idea was eventually turned down and the honor was given to another Merced resident. on account of Steven's brother Cary Stayner.

In 2004, Kenneth Parnell, then age seventy-two, was convicted of trying the previous year to persuade a woman to procure for him a young boy for five hundred dollars. Although Stayner was dead, a written statement he had made before his death was used as evidence in Parnell's 2004 trial. Timmy White was also subpoenaed to testify in the trial. Kenneth Parnell died of natural causes on January 21, 2008, in a California medical facility, while serving a 25-years-to-life sentence.

more on Steven Memorial

David Reimer

2008-11-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

Born as Bruce Reimer, one of twin boys to Janet and Ron Reimer, Bruce's penis was destroyed in a circumcision accident when he was 8 months old. His parents consulted Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, who advised Bruce's parents to also have his testes removed and raise him as a girl. He was renamed Brenda and treated as female by his family from then on. Dr. Money theorizied that gender identity is largely the result of social learning, and believed that if Brenda never knew the truth of her birth, she would successfully transition to a female. However, Brenda's childhood and adolescence was difficult. She and her twin brother Brian were extensively studied by Dr. Money; both twins later alleged they were sexually abused by Money during some of the treatments. By the age of 14, Brenda was suicidially depressed and begged her parents to discontinue her treatment with Dr. Money. The Reimers ceased her treatment and finally told the twins the truth of Brenda's birth. Brenda then decided to live as a male, and changed her name to David. In the next few years David underwent further surgeries to reverse his sex reassignment, and later married a woman and became a stepfather to her children. Dr. Money, however, continued to describe David's original sex reassignment (from male to female) as a success, which lead David to speak out in 1997 to make his side of the story known, and to try to dissuade other physicians from treating other infants as he had been treated. Brian, David's twin, began having mental problems after learning the truth about his sibling, and eventually committed suicide in 2002. In 2004, David, depressed over his failing marriage and continued psychological problems, also took his own life. The story of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer was the subject of the book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl" and the BBC documentary "Dr. Money and the Boy With No Penis." Dr. Money died in 2006.

Christopher McCandless

2008-11-06T14:25:00.001-08:00

He was an American wanderer who died near Denali National Park after hiking alone into the Alaskan wilderness with little food or equipment. Author Jon Krakauer wrote a book about his life, Into the Wild, published in 1996, which was adapted into a 2007 film directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild, with Emile Hirsch as McCandless.

Amanda Carter

2008-11-02T12:38:00.001-08:00

LONG BEACH – Amanda Carter just knew how to make her friends laugh.
The fun-loving, energetic junior at Los Alamitos High always said the right thing, or made a silly face to bring a smile to anyone around her.
That's how friends remembered the 16-year-old Carter on Tuesday, a day after she was killed in an accident.
About 150 friends and classmates gathered at El Dorado Regional Park to mourn her death.
"She was really an amazing person," said Duran Reid, 16, Carter's boyfriend of six months. "She was a very beautiful person inside and outside. And once you got to know her, she was even more beautiful."
Carter died after her Jeep Cherokee skidded off the Garden Grove (22) Freeway off-ramp at Studebaker Road in Long Beach, then plunged into the flooded Los Cerritos Channel on Monday afternoon.
Witnesses told police that Carter's vehicle appeared to be traveling fast while making a sharp right turn from the off-ramp onto Studebaker.
Firefighters and several bystanders pulled Carter out of the vehicle, which was on its roof with the tires above 10 feet of fast-moving water. Carter was rushed to Long Beach Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Investigators have not determined whether Carter, a resident of Belmont Shore, was speeding or if the rainy conditions also contributed to the accident, said officer Juan Gomez, a Long Beach police spokesman.
Carter, who received her license in October, had just dropped off friends Katie Pollarmo and Allie Bumsted at their homes after the group had lunch. Carter was headed home to meet her mother so the two could go to the movies, friends said.
Carter, an only child, is survived by her mother, Diana. Her father died two years ago.
Friends at the memorial took turns talking about Carter and what she meant to each of them.
"Amanda was such a fun-loving person," said Pollarmo, who had known Carter since kindergarten. "She would always go out of her way to be there for anyone and would never want anything in return."
They also said Carter aspired to work in the fashion industry after she finished school.
Carter wore the latest designer clothes and always tried to incorporate her favorite color hot pink into her outfits, they said.
"Amanda was always the best dressed at school," Bumsted said. "Nobody could compete with her."
Los Alamitos High students and staff members are planning to organize another memorial at school once all students return from winter break on Monday.
Bumsted said she will wear hot pink at the school memorial in honor of her friend.

Shosei Koda

2008-11-02T01:20:00.001-07:00

was a Japanese citizen who was kidnapped and later beheaded in Iraq on November 3, 2004 while touring the country.
His parents were members of the United Church of Christ.
The captors demanded that the Japanese government withdraw its forces from Iraq; the Japanese government refused.
He stated that he entered Iraq on October 19, 2004 because that "he wanted to know what is happening there," according to Kyodo News.
In his execution video, his three captors stand while Koda sits on the American flag. Koda has his hands tied behind his back and is blindfolded while a captor, behind him, reads a speech which lasts for two minutes and ten seconds. After that, the captors place him on the ground and hold him down as they begin to behead him.
Throughout the beheading, the captors chant, "Allahu Akbar," which is a common Arabic religious expression meaning "God is Great".
The video ends with shots of Koda's blood-covered, severed head on top of his body and a few seconds of shots with the banner of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. His headless body was placed on top of a blood-soaked American flag.

Brian Glick

2008-11-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

Brian Glick was a homicide victim murdered at the age of 21 on October 25, 1993 by Dennis Tate and Michael Olson in Bloomington, Minnesota. Glick’s murder was a shock to the Twin Cities community and his death and the subsequent trials of his murders received widespread attention in the Twin Cities press.

Brian Glick was born on April 25, 1972 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Minneapolis. His parents were divorced in 1978. His family moved to Bloomington and in 1990 Glick graduated from Bloomington Kennedy High School. In 1992 he began working at a Subway store on Old Shakopee Road East, a block away from where he lived with his mother, stepfather and teenage sister, Tammy. At the time of his death Glick had been working to save enough money to marry his fiancée Katie Long. Glick was interested in aviation, but his plans to become an aircraft mechanic were thwarted when it was discovered that he was color-blind. Instead, Glick returned to school and completed the necessary course work to become a paramedic.

In the year before his death, it was discovered that Glick had a large benign brain tumor, and in May 1992 he underwent surgery to have it removed. At the time of his death Glick was still recovering, but his prognosis was positive. Ironically, the operation that saved his life would contribute to his death. Shortly after surgery Glick returned to work at Subway. On the last day his boss saw him he commented "You're really bouncing around here tonight. You really look good." Glick responded that that he was feeling the best he had since the surgery and he was going to make it.

On the night of Monday October 25, 1993, Glick was working alone at the Subway shop. He spoke with his fiancée by telephone around 11 p.m., and fifteen minutes later, at around 11:15 p.m., went out back to empty the trash. Glick was unaware that Dennis Tate, 16, and Michael Olson, 19, were waiting for him behind the store. Olson was a former employee at the store, but had been fired, and knew both Glick and the layout of the store. As Glick headed back into the shop after emptying the trash, Tate and Olson jumped him and brutally choked and beat him until he was unrecognizable. The two then entered the store, vandalized surveillance cameras, and stole a cashbox containing $152. Glick's fiancée went to the store about 11:30 p.m. to pick him up. When she found the store empty she called police, who arrived shortly before midnight. Glick was found behind the store and immediately taken by ambulance to Hennepin County Medical Center. Glick died at 4:50 a.m. Tuesday, October 26, 1993, with his mother at his bedside. Doctors noted that a piece of skull that was healing from the recent brain tumor operation had been pushed up and back into his brain, contributing to Glick’s death.
Michael Olson was arrested on October 27 after police found a bloody shirt at his home. Dennis Tate was apprehended the following day. The two confessed to killing Glick and told the police that they had intended to double the money stolen with the purchase and sale of drugs - a plan that went awry when they were ripped off by a drug dealer.
Olsen and Tate pled guilty in a Hennepin County District Court. Olsen was convicted of murder by a jury and sentenced in March 1994 to 27 years and two months in prison for second-degree murder. Glick’s father, Stephen; mother; and fiancée testified at the trials of his murderers. At Olson’s sentencing Glick’s father said:
“ "His [Olson's] prison is now measured by walls. Mine is measured in sadness, loneliness and anger. For the rest of my life, my relationship with my son has been dictated by him. I hate him for making this prison for me. I hate him for taking it upon himself to decide how I will relate to my son." ”

Nicole Speirs

2008-11-02T01:03:00.000-07:00

made headlines in the area of Tooele, Utah as a domestic violence murder victim. She was killed March 25, 2006 at age 22, by her then-boyfriend and father of her twins, Walter Smith. On the night of Nicole's death, Smith reported that he found her dead in her home, drowned in her bathtub, after returning from a trip to Idaho. The autopsy confirmed that drowning was the cause of death. Tooele is located approximately 18 miles west of Salt Lake City.
Smith, her 24-year-old boyfriend and a member of the United States Marines who had returned from Iraq, was not immediately known to have killed her until December 12, 2006, when he confessed to the killing. According to police, Smith walked into a Veteran's Administration hospital building and confessed eight months after the fact. Smith was since discharged from the Marines.
On August 14, 2007, Smith pleaded guilty to a second-degree manslaughter charge as part of a plea bargain. He was originally charged with first-degree felony murder.

Nikki Catsouras

2008-10-31T02:45:00.001-07:00

was a young American woman who died at the age of 18 as a result of a car crash after losing control of her father's Porsche Carrera at high speed, and colliding with a toll booth in Orange County, California. The death was notable for a controversy surrounding the leakage of photographs of Catsouras' badly dismembered and decapitated body on to the Internet, which caused her family to take legal action due to distress about the incident.

Marilyn Sheppard

2008-10-29T23:31:00.001-07:00

Marilyn Sheppard, wife of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, wealthy Cleveland physician, who were both principals in a crime that baffled Cleveland police and became a national media circus for over sixty years. Marilyn, was found brutally bludgeoned to death, succumbing from between 20 and 30 blows on the head in the couple's lake shore home in Bay Village. (a suburb of Cleveland) The couple's seven year-old son, Sam Reese, was asleep in the room next to his mother's during the murders. The doctor himself was badly beaten but revealed to police a story of grappling with "one or two men" before being knocked out while sustaining serious injury to his head and neck. Evidence pointed to his guilt. He was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Marilyn was born and raised in the Cleveland area and attended Cleveland Heights High School where she met Sam and they dated. After graduation, he was off to Los Angeles to attend the Osteopathic School of Physicians and she to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, Florida. Upon Sam's return to Cleveland, he became affiliated with the family operated Osteopathic Hospital in Bay Village and they were married. With the purchase of their first home located on a high cliff over looking the Lake Erie shore in Bay Village, a semi-elite suburb of Cleveland, Marilyn settled into the life of being married to a physician. She became a mother, homemaker and taught Bible classes at their Methodist Church. The couple, both sports enthusiasts, spent their leisure time playing golf, water skiing, and having friends over for parties. Sam and Marilyn's marriage seemed free of problems, but in truth, it was suffering due to Sam's infidelities. Divorce was never discussed and they worked to revitalize their marriage. Then tragedy struck. On the night of July 4th, Marilyn, who was four months pregnant, and Sam entertained neighbors until midnight. After the guest left, Sam fell asleep on the couch and Marilyn went to bed. Awakened by what he thought was his wife calling his name, he hastened to the bedroom and saw a bushy haired man fighting with his wife. He was immediately struck on the head, rendering him unconscious. Marilyn was gone at age 30. Her funeral was held at the Methodist Church in Bay Village. Dr. Sam was taken to his wife's funeral in a wheel chair wearing an orthopedic collar. He wept bitterly during the eulogy. The strange decades lasting aftermath had begun....Three plausible theories have immerged over to years in an attempt to identify the killer. Sam Sheppard's version of the killing for which he was convicted, did not stand up during a second trial and he was acquitted. He was a broke alcoholic at the time of his death but still maintained that a bushy-haired burglar had killed his wife. Richard Eberling a window washer who was in the house a day before the crime is considered the culprit. Later he was convicted of killing an elderly widow, however, maintaining until his death in prison, he had no complicity in the death of Marilyn. Sam Sheppard in his initial statement to police claimed a confrontation with two individuals. Bay Village Mayor Spencer Houk and his wife, next door neighbors, fit this scenario and had a motive. This was presented to the grand jury but no indictments were handed down. The couple has since died.

Adam (unsolved Thames murder case)

2008-10-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

"Adam" is the name given to a young African boy whose torso was discovered in the River Thames, London on September 21, 2001. He is believed to have been between the ages of four and seven. The murder is believed to be linked to a ritual killing. Despite the use of the best forensic science in the world and ground-breaking investigative techniques, the London Metropolitan Police Service have not caught the killer.
The torso was first discovered on the afternoon of Friday September 21, 2001 as it floated past the Tower of London towards Tower Bridge in Central London. A passer-by crossing the bridge had noticed an orange object in the water, and realising it was a body as it passed under the bridge, alerted the police. The Metropolitan Police sent its marine search unit to the scene, who recovered the torso further upstream. The body was found to be the torso of a young black child, the orange being a pair of shorts around the stumps of the legs.
The discovery of the torso shocked police, and prompted massive media coverage in the United Kingdom and around the world. The police named the body Adam in the absence of any positive identification.

Adam's bones were also analysed to see if it could determine his geographical origins. As everything a person eats bears the trace of the soil of where it was grown or reared, soil samples were compared to places around the world. Scientists determined from this that Adam originated in the Yoruba Plateau in Nigeria, Africa.
Metropolitan police travelled to Nigeria and launched a campaign to track Adam's parents. Despite visiting primary schools and looking at reported missing children in the region, there was no success.

In July 2002, a Nigerian woman arrived in the UK from Germany, claiming to have fled from a Yoruba cult that practised ritual murders. She claimed that they attempted to kill her son, and that she knew Adam was murdered in London by his parents. However, police searching her flat found orange shorts with the same clothing label as those found on Adam.

Surveillance of the woman's associates brought the police to another Nigerian, a man named Kingsley Ojo. Searching of Ojo's house found a series of ritual items, however none of the DNA on the items matched Adam's DNA. Ojo was charged with child trafficking offences, and is expected to be questioned by police about the Adam case.

Progress on the case has been considerable given the lack of evidence and the existence of only Adam's torso. However, the lack of dental records or face imagery has been a major block to solving the crime. Still, Metropolitan police believe the publicity surrounding the case has acted as a deterrent for further ritual crimes in the UK.
The police also note that Adam would never have been found if his body had washed out into the North Sea, which would have occurred only two turns of the tide after his discovery.

Bobby Kent

2008-10-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

He allegedly dominated his peers in their middle class Fort Lauderdale community through psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. On a summers day, he was lured to the edge of the Everglades with the promise of sex and drugs, then was killed in a bizarre and brutal act of vengence carried out by seven of his high school aquaintences-including his lifelong best friend The story is told in the book "Bully" and the 2001 motion picture of the same name.

Cynthia Ann Parker

2008-10-28T02:06:00.001-07:00

The details of her early life are clouded in confusion. Sources place her birth year between 1825 and 1827. One source narrows it to between June 2, 1824 and May 31, 1825 according to the 1870 census. Her place of birth has been listed as Coles, Clark, and Crawford Counties in Illinois. She was born to Silas M and Lucy (Doty) Parker. Even her time of death has been listed from 1864 to 1871. She did die in Anderson County, Texas and is listed in the 1870 census. So she probably died sometime after that. Between birth and death she suffered the extreme agony of being kidnapped twice in her lifetime. Around the age of 9 or 10, her family moved to Texas and settled at the headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County. The family developed a little community around the church of her uncle who headed the local branch of the Primitive Baptist Church. The community was enclosed with substantial walls and a company of Texas Rangers were formed for protection from the Indians. The settlement became known as Fort Parker. On May 19, 1836 she suffered her first kidnapping when a band of Comanche braves raided the settlement. Several people were killed and 5 others were kidnapped with her. Within six years, all the victims were returned to their family except Cynthia Ann. She was to remain with the tribe for almost 25 years. During this time she was to forget the ways of the white people and become a complete Comanche. At first she was beaten and abused, but she soon integrated into the tribe. She was given to a Comanche couple who raised her as their own. She was given the Comanche name of Naduah, which was also spelled as Nadua and Nauta. She became devoted to her adopted family and memories of the white ways quickly vanished. When requests for her ransom were received, she asked the tribal council to refuse them. A young chief by the name of Peta Nocona won her heart and they were married. He was quite famous for successful raids on white settlements in the territory. It was the custom of prominent Comanche warriors to take several wives. Peta only took Cynthia Ann, a mark of extraordinary devotion and honor to her. Cynthia Ann presented Peta with two sons and a daughter, Quanah, Pecos, and Topsannah, or Prairie Flower as she was also to be known. Her son Quanah was to become one of the fiercest Comanche warriors in tribal history. He is often noted as the last Comanche chief, although he was never named chief by the Comanche people. He was made chief by the white man when he did an about face and became a great proponent for peace. In December of 1960, Peta's camp was attacked by a group of Texas Rangers in what is known as the Battle of Pease River. Realizing that the battle was lost, Peta fled with the two sons. Peta was wounded and whether or not he survived is unknown as history does not mention him again. Cynthia and Topsannah were taken to Camp Cooper for her second "kidnapping". She was identified by her uncle and taken to his farm in Birdville, Texas. She made repeated attempts to escape and return to her people and each one failed. She was heartbroken being away from her family and not knowing whether Peta was dead or alive. In 1863, she received word that Pecos had died of small pox and a few months later Topsannah died of influenza. In 1870, at the age of only 43, she could take no more, she stopped eating and her health failed. Some say she died of influenza and some think she starved herself to death. She was buried in Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County near Frankston, Texas. Quanah searched for his mother for many years and upon learning of her death had her body and that of his sister moved to the Post Oak Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. When Quanah died in 1911, he was laid next to his devoted mother. In 1957, all three bodies were moved to the Post Cemetery at Fort Sill and buried on what is known as Chief's Knoll. The city of Crowell, Texas holds a two day event every year known as the Cynthia Ann Parker Festival. The town of Groesbeck, Texas holds an annual Christmas Festival at the original site of old Fort Parker which has been rebuilt on the old site to exact specifications. Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas has named one of its colleges the Cynthia Ann Parker College of Liberal Arts. Her story is told in the book, "Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker".

Ishi

2008-10-27T03:47:00.001-07:00

Ishi was the last of the Yahi people, a sub-tribe of the Yana which once populated a pocket of central California about 100 miles north of present-day Sacramento. Living in the heart of the California gold rush, the Yahi clashed with white civilization, contracted diseases brought by white pioneers, and lost numerous brutal battles with the US Army and armed settlers. As his people neared extinction Ishi's band scattered, and he spent years living nomadically in the foothills of Mt. Lassen in the California Cascades with his mother, sister, and two other tribesmen. After the last of his companions died in 1908, he lived alone in the woods for three more years before emerging, near starvation, and walking into a slaughterhouse in Oroville, California on 29 August 1911.
By this time America's white majority considered the "wild west" days to be long over, and this primitive man who spoke no English was considered an oddity and a problem. For lack of any better place for him, he was jailed by the local sheriff. A linguistics professor became intrigued by reports of this "wild man of Oroville", and came to meet him. After making some headway in translating his Yahi language, he was brought to the University of California at San Francisco. There he came under the care of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, who telegraphed his colleague Edward Sapir on 6 September 1911: "Have totally wild Indian at the museum. Do you want to come and work him up?"
Among his people it was considered bad manners to mention one's own name, but he was called "Ishi" because that was the word for "man" in his language. Whether he was treated as a man is still a matter of some dispute. He became a living exhibit at the university's Museum of Anthropology on Parnassus Heights in San Francisco, where throngs of people watched him make bow-and-arrow sets, arrowheads, and traditional Yahi dwellings. He also worked as a janitor at the museum, ostensibly to pay for his lodging. From Kroeber's writings, it is clear that the professor and his family eventually came to see Ishi as human, perhaps even as a friend. Kroeber arranged a 1914 visit to Ishi's ancestral homeland, where Ishi fished and hunted while academics took photos and notes. Ishi taught bow-and-arrow skills to local physician Sexton Pope, who in turn helped popularize archery among non-natives in America. Lacking genetic defenses against white peoples' diseases, his health at the university was fragile, and Ishi died of tuberculosis at UCSF in 1915.
One of his last requests was that his body not be autopsied, as scientific probing of his corpse would be sacrilege to his people's beliefs. Kroeber, however, was out of town when Ishi died, and before it could be stopped Ishi's corpse was autopsied, then cremated, after his brain was extracted and shipped to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. For decades and as recently as 1997 the Smithsonian denied having Ishi's brain, but after requests from native groups that wanted to give his remains a traditional burial, a Smithsonian spokesman acknowledged in 1998 that Ishi's brain was indeed in storage there. In 2000 his brain was turned over to two Native American tribes deemed to have a historical relationship to the extinct Yahi, and buried with his ashes in Deer Creek Canyon, near his presumed birthplace.

Brooke Bennett

2008-10-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

A body found Wednesday is believed to be that of a missing 12-year-old whose uncle allegedly planned to force her into a sex ring, Vermont State Police said.
Col. James Baker said Brooke Bennett's body was found in Randolph, where the uncle lives, about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday.
She was last seen alive with the uncle, Michael Jacques, 42, at a convenience store a week ago.
"The painful discovery of Brooke's body today is tragic and heartbreaking," the state police director said at a news conference.
He called the death "clearly suspicious" but declined to give details before a news conference scheduled for Thursday morning.
Sex ring initiation alleged
But in an affidavit unsealed earlier in U.S. District Court, an unidentified teenager said she was present on June 25 when Jacques tricked Brooke into thinking she was going to a party and took her too his Randolph home to be initiated into a sex ring.
Jacques was in jail awaiting trial on sex charges unrelated to the disappearance of Brooke Wednesday. Vermont state police say he will be charged with kidnapping in connection to Brooke's disappearance.
According to the affidavit, the unnamed teen, also a relative of Jacques, told federal agents that she herself had been having sex with Jacques since she was 9, in a sex ring called Breckinridge.
The 14-year-old girl told authorities she helped Jacques, the missing girl's uncle, take the 12-year-old to Jacques' Randolph home on June 25 to be initiated into the ring. Brooke was missing ever since. The girl said she understood that as part of the initiation, Brooke "would have sex with adult males," according to the affidavit.
The girl said she and Brooke watched television for a while before Jacques told her to leave and took the Brooke upstairs. The witness said she left the house with her boyfriend and did not see the girl again.
MySpace page used in cover-up
Brooke's former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, appeared in federal court Wednesday on an obstruction of justice charge in the case. He was denied bail and was held pending another hearing on Monday.
Police say Gagnon, 40, lives in Texas but often visited Vermont. According to the affidavit, he told police he accessed Brooke's MySpace page from a laptop computer at his home in San Antonio after getting login information from Jacques.
Police said they have evidence that postings to the account were altered to make it appear that Brooke had discussed a secret rendezvous with someone identified as "Skittlemeup" shortly before she disappeared.
Gagnon also told police he had downloaded child pornography onto the laptop, according to the affidavit.
Authorities said Gagnon was on a regular visit to Vermont from Texas when he was arrested Monday.
In Randolph before the announcement, Brooke's friends and family put up signs saying they missed her and were praying for her safe return. She lived in Braintree, a small town close to Randolph.
"To the community, thank you so much for all your support and help, and I hope I can keep continuing to get that," said Brooke's mother, Cassandra Gagnon. She wore a photo pin of her daughter on her T-shirt.
She said she was "very surprised" by her ex-husband's alleged involvement.
'Program for sex' allegation
On Monday, Jacques was arraigned on an aggravated sexual assault charge involving a different girl, who is quoted in court papers as saying Jacques told her he would be her trainer in a "program for sex." It was not immediately clear if that girl was the same one saying she helped Jacques.
The girl said she had met three men in the program, including Jacques, and that she was told two other girls also were in the program. "The first who does it lives and the second gets her throat cut," she told police, according to an affidavit filed in court Monday.
Jacques dropped Brooke off at a convenience store on June 25, and surveillance video shows they left in separate directions. She had told family members she was going to meet a friend and visit a hospitalized relative of the friend, but police believe that was a lie.
In the sex assault case, Jacques pleaded not guilty and was being held in lieu of $250,000 bail. His attorney called the evidence in the case "very sparse."
Jacques has 1993 convictions for kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Prosecutors argued against bail, saying he posed a threat to the accuser and had violated probation.
James Bennett, Brooke's father, said Gagnon had been married to Brooke's mother, Cassandra Gagnon. He said they separated about four years ago and may have divorced.

David Vetter

2008-10-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

was a boy from Shenandoah, Texas, United States who suffered from a rare genetic disease now known as severe combined immune deficiency syndrome (SCIDS). Forced to live in a sterile environment, he became popular with the media as the boy in the plastic bubble. He spent most of his life at Texas Children's Hospital, but in 1981, David was discharged to his parents' full-time care. He died of cancer shortly after a hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Chief Yellow Bear

2008-10-25T01:04:00.001-07:00

He was a chief of the Southern Arapaho tribe. His Indian name was Wuk-Nee-Haw-Nay. He was the highest ranking warrior in the lodge and signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867. This treaty granted the Southern Arapaho a reservation between the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers in the Indian Territory (presently Oklahoma). In 1880 he was a member of the delegation that went to Washington DC to discuss reservation boundaries. Yellow Bear and his nephew, Chief Quanah Parker, went to Ft. Worth, Texas to discuss overdue money from leased tribal reservation lands. The two of them checked into the most modern hotel in the city, the Hotel Pickwick. Yellow Bear decided to retire early, but Quanah went with a friend for a social visit. Two hours later, Quanah returned to the hotel room, and retired for the evening. In turning off the gaslight, it is speculated either he blew the light out, not realizing the consequences, or he did not turn the valve completely off. Whatever the reason, he awoke sometime later, roused Yellow Bear, and both struggled across the floor, Quanah falling near a window, but both lost consciousness. Almost 13 hours later, the scene was discovered, and Yellow Bear was dead, and Quanah survived.

Ron Goldman

2008-10-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

He and a casual friend, Nicole Brown Simpson, were found murdered at her Brentwood condominium, just outside her front door. Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, was returning eyeglasses that she had accidentally left there at dinner that night. He is considered an accidental victim of the murder, either arriving just as she was being murdered, or shortly before. As police reconstructed the crime, he attempted to defend Nicole from her attacker, but was also cut down. His friend, Nicole Simpson, was a tall, beautiful blonde, who was divorced from her celebrity husband, professional football star and then rising movie and television actor, Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. The police accused O.J. Simpson of having committed the murders. In a highly televised and controversial "Trial of the Century", running from December 1994 to October 1995, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders after it was found that a police investigator, Detective Mark Fuhrman, had lied on the witness stand. In a later civil court case concluded in February 1997, brought by Ronald Goldman's father, O.J. Simpson was found guilty for wrongful death and ordered to pay $8.5 million dollars to the Goldman family.

Jose Martinez

2008-10-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

Sgt. Breck McDaniel has attended hundreds of autopsies in his eight years as a Houston homicide detective, but he'll never shake the image of an emaciated little boy with sunken eyes and protruding ribs exposed under the morgue's harsh lights.
"Most of them blur together, but that one stands out," McDaniel said.
A maintenance man had found the boy's body in a trash bin at a southeast Houston apartment complex the morning of March 13, 2003. Wrapped in a blanket and stuffed into a red and white woven bag, the child wore nothing but a sagging diaper. He weighed less than 30 pounds.
Five years later, investigators identified the abandoned boy as 5-year-old José Bernardo Martinez. Relatives recognized his image on a Spanish-language news program and called police. His mother was arrested and charged on Thursday with felony murder.
"There's a huge sense of relief," McDaniel said Friday. "It's one of the handful of cases I still think about regularly."
The boy with no name had haunted investigators from the start.
Determined to put a name to their tiny victim, McDaniel, 35, and his partner, homicide investigator Rick Moreno, 48, knocked on doors, put up fliers, searched missing child databases and visited hospitals, hoping to match a surgical scar on the boy's abdomen to medical records.
"All in vain," Moreno said.
"Yeah, we felt horrible," McDaniel recalled. "We don't get many cases with a victim this helpless, this innocent."
Child advocates dubbed the boy "Beloved Doe." McDaniel and Moreno went on to work a steady stream of other murders, but they never forgot the child who starved to death before being tossed out with the trash.
"I wouldn't give up," Moreno said Friday. "We'd constantly read through the file to make sure we'd followed every clue we could."
But Houston homicide detectives juggle at least four open murder cases on any given day, and Moreno didn't always have the time to devote to Beloved Doe that he would've liked.
"There were probably a couple of years we didn't work on it at all because there were no leads," he said.
The FBI offered to help, announcing a $20,000 reward for information on the case in February. A break came Tuesday night, when the Spanish-language channel Univision aired a segment on Beloved Doe that featured a photograph of the dead child's face, along with a composite drawing.
Painful memories On Thursday, authorities charged Ma Dana Martinez, 30, in the starvation death of her son. The steelyard worker is accused of failing to provide adequate nutrition and hydration to the child, who was blind.
Moreno said closing the case has been a highlight of his 28-year career with HPD.
Investigating child deaths is the most difficult part of a homicide detective's job, said Jim Binford, who retired last year after more than three decades with the Houston Police Department's homicide division.
"I will forever miss being a police officer, but I don't miss baby autopsies," said Binford, 60. "It's the very nature of a police officer to be protective, so when the victim is a child, it really goes to the weakest link in his chain."
Binford still remembers standing in the morgue, looking down at the body of a little boy who'd been beaten to death with a telephone cord because he'd wet his bed.
"I kept losing count somewhere in the area of 300 wounds on him where a boyfriend of his mama had beaten him and stomped on him," Binford said. "Those are cases that stay with you. And those are cases that I don't care who you are, you don't want to hear that story."
'I remember I lost it' Retired HPD homicide Capt. Bobby Adams said the only time he ever cried on the job was at the sight of a strangled baby's body on a windowsill. It was 1962 and he was a rookie homicide detective.
"I remember I lost it," he said. "And that was a long time and a lot of people ago."
Adams, 72, learned to rein in his emotions at murder scenes over the course of 21 years in the homicide division, but he never forgot the dead baby in the window.
"I think you'll find most seasoned homicide detectives are pretty soft, really," Adams said. "You'd think they would get so hard but they're not. They have to put up a certain front and have a professional demeanor, but they're pretty soft-hearted."

Roy L.Dennis aka Rocky

2008-10-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

He was born with the rare disease, craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, which causes calcium to accumulate on the skull and makes the head grow to twice its normal size. The movie "Mask" was about him.

Ryan White

2008-10-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

poster child for HIV/AIDS

AIDS Victim, he gained national attention for the disease and its victims, helping to education the public on its causes, it's treatment and the risks associated with the disease. During the period from 1986 to 1989, he became the national poster boy about the problems of the disease and helped remove the public stigmatisms associated with it. Born in Kokomo, Indiana, Ryan was the son of Hubert Wayne and Elaine Hale White. When only six days old, he was diagnosed with hemophilia, a hereditary blood disorder in which blood has trouble clotting, and even minor injuries can lead to severe bleeding, with the risk of bleeding to death. For treatment, he received transfusions of a blood product made from blended plasma of non-hemophiliacs, a common treatment for the disorder. In December 1984, at the age of 13, he became extremely ill with pneumonia, and was soon diagnosed as having Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). At the time, very little was known about AIDS, and most people feared any contact with any of its victims, fearing contamination. At that time, AIDS was 100 percent fatal in all cases, and almost nothing was known about how it was transmitted to its victims; many people believed that they could catch AIDS just from being in the same room with a sick person. White had received a transfusion that contained contaminated blood; the doctors had not tested the blended plasma for the disease markers, as so little was known about AIDS and how it was transmitted, and no reliable test then existed. During this period, nearly 90 percent of those hemophiliacs treated with blood clotting factors became infected with AIDS and subsequently died soon afterwards. Initially expected to live only six months, Ryan asked to be allowed to go to school, but fear and pressure from students and their parents caused school officials to refuse him admittance. Over half of the parents and their teachers had signed a petition requesting the local school board to ban Ryan from attending school, fearing that the AIDS virus could possibly put them all at risk. In June 1985, Ryan and his parents submitted a formal request to return to school in the fall, which school superintendent James O. Smith rejected. This prompted a lawsuit, during which the Indiana Department of Education voted to admit Ryan to school, but the local school board, which had obtained a restraining order that barred Ryan from attending school until the court decided the lawsuit, blocked the case. In the meantime, medical research was learning more about the AIDS virus almost daily and while transmission was nearly non-existent between a victim and a healthy person, many people remained skeptical of the research findings, and believed that he should be banned from public contact (going to public school) as an unacceptable and unnecessary risk. In July 1986, the Indiana Circuit Court ruled that Ryan was no threat to other children and was allowed to go to school. While spending the 1987-1988 school year at Western Middle School, Ryan received numerous death threats and harassment, including requirements to eat lunch alone, use a separate bathroom, and verbal abuse from fellow students. The next year, the family moved to Cicero, Indiana, where Ryan was welcomed into Hamilton Heights High School, by teachers and students who had been educated about AIDS and were not afraid of it or its victims. In 1989, the made for television movie, "The Ryan White Story" aired on ABC television, educating more than 15 million viewers on the real risks associated with the disease, helping to reduce the hysteria that had caused Ryan and his family so much trouble. As the AIDS disease progressed, Ryan became increasingly ill, and he died of AIDS complications just two months before he was to graduate from Hamilton Heights High School. Many celebrities attended his funeral, including Mrs. Barbara Bush (wife of President George H. W. Bush), and President Ronald Reagan wrote a tribute to Ryan. White's highly visible public lawsuit and determination to go to high school allowed the media to focus on the disease and to change public perception about it. The resulting publicity also resulted in more serious efforts on the part of the federal government to combat the disease. In August 1990, Congress passed "The Ryan White Act" to provide federal funds to research and help those afflicted with AIDS.

Boy in the Box

2008-10-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

The "Boy in the Box" is the name given to an unidentified murder victim, approximately 4 to 6 years old, whose naked, battered body was found in a cardboard box in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 25, 1957. He is also commonly called "America's Unknown Child".

La Païva

2008-10-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

Esther Lachmann, later Pauline Thérèse Lachmann, later Mme Villoing, later Mme la Marquise de Païva, later Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck, (b. Moscow, 7 May 1819 - d. Neudeck, 21 January 1884) was the most successful of 19th century French courtesans.
She was born of Jewish parents of Polish ancestry in the Moscow ghetto, where Martin Lachmann, a weaver, and his wife Anna Amalie Klein had taken refuge. On 11 August 1836, aged seventeen, she married Antoine Villoing, a tailor. Together they had one son, and then Esther fled the marriage, and took up residence in the slums of Paris, near the Eglise Saint-Paul, assuming the name Thérèse, and set about trying to find a rich suitor. She found one in Henri Herz, a pianist, and became his mistress, gaining entry into artistic, though not aristocratic, society. It is generally believed that they married in London, but it is not clear that this actually occurred - in any case, such a marriage would have been bigamous. By him she had a daughter. Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow, Théophile Gautier, and Emile de Girardin attended her salon. Thérèse's spending nearly ruined Herz's finances, and he traveled to America in 1848 to pursue business opportunities. While he was away, her spending continued, and Herz's family turned Thérèse out of the house in frustration. She took up residence at the hôtel Valin. One of her friends, Esther Guimond, took her to a milliner, Carnille, who advised her to go to London, with an arsenal of couture, to seek her fortune. At Covent Garden, Thérèse captured the attentions of Lord Stanley.
She returned to Paris, and from there to the spa at Baden, where she met a Portuguese marquis, Albino Francesco de Païva-Araujo. Her first husband had died of consumption, so she was free to marry the marquis on 5 June 1851, acquiring a fortune, a title, and her nickname, La Païva. The day following, Horace de Viel-Castel wrote, she told her husband, "You wanted to sleep with me, and you've done so, by making me your wife. You have given me your name, I acquitted myself last night. I have behaved like an honest woman, I wanted a position, and I've got it, but all you have is a prostitute for a wife. You can't take me anywhere, and you can't introduce me to anyone. We must therefore separate. You go back to Portugal. I shall stay here with your name, and remain a whore." And, indeed, the marquis returned to Portugal, leaving her behind. The marriage was not annulled until 16 August 1871, and the marquis shot himself in 1872.
Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote that one of La Païva's conquests was a banker of whom she demanded twenty banknotes of one thousand francs each - which, she stipulated, he must burn one by one during their lovemaking. The banker decided to substitute counterfeit banknotes. Even so, the sight of their incineration was so unnerving that he could not accomplish his part of the tryst.
Her final conquest was Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, a Prussian count, who gave her the Château de Pontchartrain in Seine-et-Oise and the famous yellow Donnersmarck diamonds. She married him on 28 October 1871. With his money, she erected the most elegant hôtel in Paris, in the Champs-Elysees, designed by Pierre Mauguin. Viel-Castel says she regularly wore some two million francs' worth of diamonds, pearls and other gems. The hôtel Païva became a symbol of the Second Empire, an exemplar of the taste of the time.
It was widely believed, though never proved that she and her husband were asked to leave France in 1877 on suspicion of espionage. In any case, they went to live in Henckel's castle at Neudeck in Upper Silesia; he had a second estate at Hochdorf in Lower Silesia.
She died at their castle in Neudeck on 21 January 1884, aged 64. Her naked body was preserved in a glass tank of alcohol, kept by her husband in an isolated room of the castle. Henckel visited her corpse regularly for a strange sort of contemplation that may be termed thanatophilia. It is said that when Henckel's second wife, Katharina, unexpectedly discovered the body of her predecessor, preserved in all its glory in alcohol, she suffered a mental breakdown.

Judith Barsi

2008-10-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Actress. Made her TV debut at age 5 in a Roman Meal commercial. One of her strong casting points was that she seemed younger than she was. At six years old, she played the three year-old 'Kimberly MacDonald' in "Fatal Vision" (1984). Television appearances include bits in "St. Elsewhere" (1982), "Cagney and Lacey" (1982), "Remington Steele" (1982) and "Growing Pains" (1985) as well as Anna in "Punky Brewster" (1984). Films include "Do You Remember Love?" with Joanne Woodward (1985), "Eye of the Tiger" with Gary Busey (1986), "Jaws: The Revenge" (1987), and lead voice work in "The Land Before Time" (1988) and "All Dogs Go to Heaven" (1989). In all she made ten films, eight notable TV appearances, and over 70 commercials. Judith and her mother died tragically at the hands of her alcoholic, abusive father. She and her mother were laid to rest on August 9, 1988; they share a grave. Judith's plot remained unmarked for over 16 years. Her fans purchased her a marker through a Memorial Fund, which was placed on August 23, 2004.

Christopher Barrios Jr

2008-10-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

Justice For Christopher

As Christopher Barrios's family struggled to make final preparations to lay the body of the 6-year-old to rest, authorities released chilling details about how he died. The just-released 13-count indictment against Christopher's accused killers, George Edenfield, his parents David and Peggy Edenfield; and family friend Donald Dale, who is charged only with helping conceal the kidnapping and murder, paints the most gruesome picture yet of the brutal death of little Christopher Barrios. According to the indictment, the Edenfields lured Christopher into their mobile home on March 8 as the boy was walking from a neighborhood swing set to his grandmother's house for supper. Inside their trailer, the Edenfields held the little boy captive while George and David, both convicted sex offenders, took turns sodomizing him. As she watched her husband and son rape the kindergartener, Peggy Edenfield, 57, masturbated, the indictment charges. Sometime during the attack, both George, 32, and his father, David, 58, performed oral sex on the boy. The two men then choked Christopher to death. Afterward, according to a statement Peggy Edenfield gave to the police, George and David used clothing to wipe semen off of themselves. Then, either Peggy or George used soap and water to try to clean off any fingerprints left on Christopher's neck from the strangulation. They then wrapped the boy's body in plastic trash bags. The Edenfields then called family friend Donald Dale, 34, who helped them dump Christopher's body near the Glynn County airport. Two game wardens, part of a small army of hundreds of law enforcement officers, National Guard troops, and volunteers who spent a week searching for Christopher, found the boy's body a week later less then three miles from his home. The two game wardens, both on ATVs, spotted tire tracks leading off of a road near the airport. They dismounted their ATVs and followed the tracks on foot. About 15 feet from the road, the two lawmen came across a black plastic trash bag buzzing with flies. After a week of anxious searching, they had finally found Christopher. A Family of Monsters In 1994, David Edenfield was convicted of incest for having sex with his daughter. He was sentenced to 10 years of probation. Three years later, his son George molested two boys, ages 9 and 7, who lived near the Edenfields' Union Street home in downtown Brunswick. Like his father, George, received no prison time for his crime. Instead, a judge gave him 10 years probation. George Edenfield was well known around Union Street. One neighbor told Crime Library that George often flew into terrible rages. While raging, he threatened sexual and other physical attacks. He frequently trespassed on others' property and threatened one neighbor with hedge trimmers, promising to cut off the neighbor's toes. According to the neighbor, when Peggy Edenfield heard about the threat, she joked about it, saying George shouldn't follow through with it because she didn't like "toe sandwiches." On August 30, 2006, Glynn County sheriff's deputies told George he had to move. As a registered sex offender, state law prohibited him from living within 1,000 feet of places where children congregate, such as schools, daycare centers, and playgrounds. The Edenfields' house on Union Street was less than 250 feet from the Orange Park playground. The deputies gave George Edenfield 10 days to clear out. A couple of weeks later, the deputies found out George hadn't moved, so they got a warrant for his arrest. On Oct. 9, sheriff's deputies arrested Edenfield. He spent nine days in jail before posting a $3,000 bond. Shortly after his arrest, George and his family moved into the Canal Road Mobile Home Park where Christopher Barrios lived. In mid-November, a Glynn County grand jury indicted George Edenfield for being a registered sex offender living too close to prohibited areas. In the trailer park, George continued his strange ways. "I know the boy was weird," neighbor Leland Ferguson told the Florida Times Union. "He'd come up to the school bus and stop and googly-eye the children." Another neighbor said George tried several times to lure two teenage boys into playing ball with him or taking a walk in the woods with him as the boys got off their school bus. On March 5, three days before he allegedly kidnapped, raped, and murdered Christopher Barrios, George Edenfield pleaded guilty to the November indictment and received another 10 years of probation. Glynn County District Attorney Stephen Kelley announced Wednesday that he is seeking the death penalty against all three Edenfields. "This is one of the most horrific crimes that I've seen in 21 years of prosecutions," he told The Associated Press. Christopher's grandmother, Sue Rodriquez, has nothing but contempt for the Edenfields. "They're monsters from hell," she said.

Daniel Benoit

2008-10-21T14:07:00.001-07:00

Son of Chris Benoit and Nancy Benoit

Son of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and wrestling valet Nancy Benoit (who went by the ring names of Woman, Fallen Angel, and Robin Green, among others). He was found dead along with his parents in their home in the Atlanta, Georgia area.

Elizabeth Short

2008-10-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Black Dahlia

victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Nicknamed the Black Dahlia, Short was found severely mutilated, with her body severed, on January 15, 1947 in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. The murder, which remains unsolved, has been the source of widespread speculation as well as several books and film adaptations. The body of Elizabeth Short was found on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, severely mutilated, cut in half, and drained of blood. Her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears, and she was posed with her hands over her head and her elbows bent at right angles.

Dr George Hodel

Azaria Chamberlain

2008-10-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

dingoes eat my baby

Her death shocked many people and brought attention to the rampant dingo population, leading to several appeals to start culling the dingo growth. She was taken from her family's tent by a wild dingo at nine weeks old during a camping trip to Ayers Rock, Australia. Her mother was convicted for her murder despite flawed evidence and police proceedings which ended up being proven by the courts. Her father was convicted of being an accessory and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonnment but the sentence was suspended so he could care for their surviving children. In 1986 the matinee jacket she was wearing the night she was taken was found in a dingo lair and secured her mother's innocence and the conviction was overturned in 1988. She was survived by two older brothers and a little sister. She never had a funeral and her body was never found. Her story is told in the Oscar nominated and multiple award winning movie 'A Cry in the Dark'.

Sideshow note:

if you rearrange the letters in her mothers name LINDY CHAMBERLAIN you get CHILDREN BY ANIMAL

Fanny Adams

2008-10-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

She was a victim of one of the most infamous child murder cases in Great Britain. She and her friend Minnie Warner, both aged eight, along with Fanny's sister Lizzie, aged seven, were out for a walk on August 24, 1867 when, at half past one in the afternoon, they were approached by Frederick Baker, a solicitor's clerk who had, evidently, been drinking. He gave Minnie one and a half pennies to buy some sweets, and offered Fanny half a penny if she would leave with him. She took the money but declined the offer, whereupon Baker picked her up and carried her to a nearby field. Minnie and Lizzie continued playing until about five o'clock, when they returned home. Fanny's mother, Harriet Adams, went in search of her daughter and saw Baker, who said that he had given her some money to buy sweets, and Mrs. Adams accepted this. By seven o'clock, however, there was still no sign of the girl, so a search party was organized, and Fanny's head was found on a pole, minus her eyes and ears. Her leg had been cut off and her internal organs removed. Baker, who had returned to his office, was arrested, but protested his innocence, although his clothes were splattered with blood, as were two knives found in his possession. Worst of all, he had written in his diary, "Killed a young girl - it was fine and hot." At his trial, which took place on the 5th of December at Winchester Crown Court, his defense was that these words meant only that he knew that a girl had been murdered. However, the jury took only fifteen minutes to find him guilty, and he was hanged at eight o'clock on the morning of Christmas Eve, in front of a crowd of five thousand at Winchester Prison. Before his execution, he wrote to Fanny's parents to say that he had not interfered with the girl sexually and had not meant to injure her, but had been enraged by her crying. Two years after Fanny's death, the Royal Navy introduced tins of chopped mutton to feed the sailors. The bad taste joke at the time was that this must be "sweet Fanny Adams". The phrase "Sweet F.A." then became applied to anything worthless, and is still used to mean "sweet nothing", largely because of its ambiguous initials. Fanny Adams was interred in a grave beneath a headstone which was paid for by public subscription in 1874.