Archive for February, 2011

A Plea Deal for Duncan?

Attorneys for condemned child killer Joseph Edward Duncan III submitted a plea deal to prosecutors Tuesday that would lift his death sentence for killing a Beaumont boy in 1997.

Duncan, 47, already sentenced to death for the slaying of an Idaho boy and three other members of his family, is facing capital punishment if convicted of kidnapping and murdering 10-year-old Anthony Martinez.

The defense offer, however, indicated Duncan was willing to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole, Deputy District Attorney Otis Sterling told City News Service.

One of Duncan’s two court- appointed attorneys, Scott O’Meara, confirmed that an offer was presented, but declined to elaborate.

Duncan, who is also facing nine life sentences for murders and other felonies, is scheduled to be in court at the Larson Justice Center on March 7.

That’s when the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office is expected to announce a decision about the plea deal.

Sterling said he planned to meet with District Attorney Paul Zellerbach to discuss the deal.

“We need to decide if we’re willing to allow him to (plead),” Sterling said. “I will present that to the DA, who will make that decision. It is Zellerbach’s call.”

Should the prosecution continue seeking the death penalty, Duncan would be tried between April 5 and April 15 unless he asks for a delay.

Duncan, when representing himself last year, did not deny the allegations against him, but was not allowed to plead guilty, because state law requires a defendant in such cases to have a lawyer first.

“While he was self-represented that wasn’t a possibility,” Sterling said. “He recently has gotten lawyers, and it’s at a point where they extended an offer to us. So we’ll talk about it and see what we want to do.”

The serial killer has a troubled history with lawyers, having previously fired court-appointed lawyers.

A judge found him competent to stand trial and represent himself in 2009.

Duncan was tied to the Coachella Valley slaying when Anthony’s name surfaced during questioning in Idaho in another unrelated crime.

Partial fingerprints found at the scene where Anthony’s body was discovered matched Duncan, authorities have said.

Duncan allegedly left a fingerprint on the duct tape used to bind Anthony, who was abducted by a stranger as he played with friends in an alley behind his family’s apartment on April 4, 1997.

The child’s nude body was found by a Bureau of Land Management ranger on April 19, 1997, on Berdoo Canyon Road in Indio — some 90 miles east of where he was snatched — south of Joshua Tree National Monument.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office charged Duncan with Anthony’s murder in 2007.

Duncan was sentenced to death in August 2008 by a federal judge in Boise, Idaho, for murdering 9-year-old Dylan Groene.

Duncan kidnapped the boy and his 8-year-old sister in May 2005, then tortured and sexually abused both of them over the course of several weeks before shooting Dylan in the head while his sister watched.

Duncan also killed the children’s brother and mother, and the mother’s fiance.

He was arrested after a waitress at a Denny’s restaurant recognized him and the kidnapped younger sister.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide began investigating whether the drifter and high school dropout, whose first sex offense was committed when he was 12, could be tied to other cases.

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20110223/NEWS0802/102230302/Lawyers-condemned-child-killer-Joseph-Edward-Duncan-III-submit-plea-deal-court?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

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Discovery article

The Cellar.

AMW information

2011
02/28
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Update on Hatch’s Death

A prisoner has  been charged over the murder of a notorious child sex killer. Damien Fowkes, 35, was arrested after Colin Hatch was allegedly taken hostage and strangled by a fellow inmate at the maximum security Full Sutton prison near York on Tuesday night. Police said that Hatch, who was serving life for the appalling sex murder of seven year old Sean Williams, was strangled to death.

Me: He got what he gave.

The young boy was snatched after going for a bike ride on a summer’s evening in 1993.
Last night the dead boy’s mother said her ex-husband, John Williams, was ‘ecstatic’ over the killing and told her: ‘Justice had finally been done.’  Lynn Williams, 53, said she felt ‘numb’ over the death.

Fowkes is alleged to have taken Hatch hostage for up to an hour before killing him with a ligature in a barricaded cell.

I hope he scared the hell out of him in that hour. He deserved to feel the same way he made his victims feel.

He will appear before magistrates in Beverley, East Yorkshire, by video-link tomorrow, Humberside Police said. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke ordered an urgent inquiry into the death on the vulnerable prisoners’ wing at Full Sutton prison near York on Tuesday night.

Fowkes, a convicted robber, was transferred there last year from Frankland jail in Durham, another of Britain’s most secure prisons. The prison inquiry will focus on how Fowkes ended up on the same wing as a reviled paedophile. One senior source said: ‘It beggars belief that someone who has a burning hatred of paedophiles could be housed in the same wing as someone like Hatch.’

I do not know many people that do not have that burning hatred.

Hatch, 38, was serving life for the murder of Sean in North London in 1993, while on parole for a previous child sex attack.

He had a string of convictions for assaulting young boys when he was locked up in January 1994.

Jailing Hatch, Judge Nina Lowry said he was ‘highly dangerous’ and told him it was not possible to envisage a time when he could be released safely. Sentencing him at the Old Bailey, the judge said: ‘In my judgment, you should never be released back into the community while there remains the slightest danger you will reoffend.’

Unemployed Hatch, then 21, smirked when he heard the verdict.  Two years previously, he was jailed for three years for assaulting a boy of eight in almost identical circumstances.  His lawyer warned he could kill when he was released. Within 11 weeks of being paroled in April 1993, Hatch fulfilled that chilling prediction.

We no longer have to worry about Hatch getting out again! He is not able to hurt anymore little boys. Good riddance to bad garbage.

Sean was abducted, sexually assaulted and choked to death after Hatch lured him to his tower block home in Norfolk Close, Finchley, North London. A postman discovered the youngster’s body taped up in bin liners and dumped in a lift.

Since the Huntley incident,  several social networking tribute pages have been set up ‘in  honour’ of Fowkes, praising him for the attack. Fowkes is due to stand trial for attempted murder at Newcastle Crown Court in July.

Source

I am sorry that Fowkes was the one that did it since he is now facing murder charges. I am happy that there will never another little boy murdered by Hatch.

2011
02/27
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Gary M Hilton receives the death penalty

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – After an hour of deliberations, a jury unanimously recommended Monday that Gary Michael Hilton, the drifter found guilty in the 2007 slaying of a nurse whose beheaded body was found in a national forest, should get the death penalty.

Circuit Judge James C. Hankinson said he will give “great weight” to the jury’s recommendation.

Hilton was found guilty last week of killing 46-year-old Cheryl Dunlap, a Sunday School teacher and Florida State University nurse, who was found dismembered in a national forest in the Florida Pandhandle, where the 64-year-old drifter used to camp.

“We are extremely pleased with the death verdict and even more so that it was unanimous. Obviously the jury saw what needed to be done to bring justice and that’s what Mr. Hilton got today and Ms. Dunlap and her family got,” prosecutor Georgia Cappleman told CBS affiliate WCTV as she left the courtroom.

State Attorney Willie Meggs said he was surprised by the unanimous verdict, but said if there were ever a case for it, this was it.

CBS News

I hope that this is not another killer that gets to stay on death row for years and years.

2011
02/26
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RCMP Needs Help With A 16 year old mystery

Jane Doe

The RCMP want the public’s help in solving the 16-year-old mystery of a woman whose partial remains were found on serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm.

RCMP will be posting an FBI sketch of what the woman may have looked like on their website in the hope that a member of the public may recognize her.

Half of the woman’s skull, with the vertebra attached, was found in 1995 by a man filling a water bottle at a creek in Mission, B.C.

In August 2002, bones recovered at Pickton’s farm in Port Coquitlam were genetically linked to Jane Doe, but charges against Pickton for her murder were dropped.

RCMP Corporal Annie Linteau said she could not discuss the Pickton case and could not point to any new information about Jane Doe that was not part of the Pickton trial.

“This is not a story about Pickton. This is about Jane Doe,” she said Sunday in an interview.

The police have released information about Jane Doe in an effort to identify her, she said.

Source and a lot of information on Pickton

Article on the release of the photo

Another article on the Jane Doe

2011
02/26
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Child Killer Found Murdered In Prison

Police are investigating the suspected murder of child killer Colin Hatch at one of Britain’s most secure prisons.

Hatch, 38, of north London, died at the maximum-security Full Sutton jail near York on Tuesday, police said. Post-mortem tests will be carried out later.

Hatch was jailed for life in 1994 after being convicted of killing a seven-year-old boy while on parole for a previous child sex attack.

A 35-year-old prisoner has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

He is in custody at the East Yorkshire prison and will be moved to a police station at a later date, Humberside Police said.

A force spokesman briefly described events at the jail on Tuesday night.

He said: “We received a call from the prison service at 1924 GMT reporting that there was an incident ongoing at the prison.

“At 2007 GMT we received a further call stating that a 38-year-old man who had been involved in the incident had died.”

Jailing Hatch, who had a string of convictions for assaulting young boys, Judge Nina Lowry said he was “highly dangerous” and told him it was not possible to envisage a time when he could be released safely.

Just over two years before he was jailed for life in 1994, he had been jailed for three years for assaulting a boy of eight in almost identical circumstances.

His lawyer warned he could kill when he was released.

Within 11 weeks of being paroled in April 1993, Hatch struck again.

Sean Williams was abducted, sexually assaulted and then choked to death after Hatch lured him to his tower block home in Norfolk Close, Finchley, north London.

A postman discovered the youngster’s body taped up in bin liners and dumped in a lift.

Det Supt Duncan Macrae, who led the murder inquiry, described Hatch at the time as a frighteningly cunning criminal.

He had pulled the wool over the eyes of the authorities and would kill again if he was ever released, Mr Macrae said.

Hatch had a string of previous convictions from the age of 15 for attacks on six young boys.

At his trial for indecently assaulting the eight year-old boy and choking him until he lost consciousness, psychiatrist Dr Anthony Wilkins recommended that Hatch was a “menace to the public” and should be sent to Broadmoor top security hospital.

But Broadmoor had not considered Hatch dangerous enough at the time, Dr Wilkins said. Instead he was jailed for three years, as the judge was given no alternative.

His murder conviction prompted a review of parole and probation for those convicted of sex crimes, with Sean’s mother and father, Lynn and John Williams, saying others had to take some of the blame for their son’s death.

Mrs Williams said: “Never again must a child be murdered by a pervert.

“Never again must a family have to suffer this experience and never again must Colin Hatch be released back into our community.”

Source

Goodbye Colin Hatch. If there is an afterlife I hope that you get all that you gave.

Sorry this is just copy and paste. I am too tired for a rant tonight and this would have been a major one.

2011
02/24
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Serial Killer Kills While In Prison. More Information Available.

Serial Killer Kills Cell Mate

I had written before about serial killer Michael Wayne McGray who killed another inmate, Jeremy Phillips. Michael has quite the history.

McGray has six murder convictions, and is serving six concurrent life sentences. One of his last victims, and the youngest, was little Nina Sparks; in 1998, McGray killed both the 11-year-old girl and her mother inside their Moncton, N.B. home.

He was not shy about his killings or about the fact that he could and would kill again.

McGray was also notorious for comments he made to reporters two years later. “Just because I’m locked up in segregation doesn’t mean I can’t kill somebody,” he told the National Post, from a maximum-security penitentiary in Renous, N.B. “I have a chance to kill every day.” Taking human lives, McGray said, was “almost a hunger. It’s something I need. I have to have that physical release. When I kill, it’s a big high for me.”

McGray reportedly did not want a roommate and was vocal about this. It was well known that Jeremy Phillips was afraid of McGray and had asked moved. His request was denied and he is now dead. All of this is raising many questions.

Four months later, RCMP are still investigating his “suspicious” death, which they say, “has indicators of a homicide.”

It could have been prevented, McClain and other inmates claim, had prison authorities heeded flashing warning signs and reacted.

Details of certain events leading to the in-custody death were revealed in this newspaper in December. No one provided answers for why McGray, a 45-year-old serial killer, was moved from a maximum-security institution to the less-restrictive Mountain.

Three Mountain inmates who knew both McGray and Phillips have now come forward with additional information; their corroborating accounts from separate interviews raise more disturbing questions.

Besides pleading with prison officials for a cell reallocation, Phillips discussed his situation with the other inmates. McGray had made it clear that he didn’t want a cellmate, either. He had asked for single-bunk accommodation; none of the three inmates interviewed can understand why his requests were also denied. Cell reallocations are commonplace inside Mountain, where tensions frequently run high. There is no shortage of empty cells inside that prison, they all agree.

“I don’t think these guys are taking me seriously,” McClain recalls McGray telling him, in late November. “What do I have to do?”

On Nov. 21, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the prison went into emergency lockdown, over what was apparently an unrelated incident. All prisoners were secured inside their respective cells. Their cell doors were locked. At regular intervals thereafter, each cell was checked and every inmate was counted by guards walking down each range.

McGray and Phillips were locked in their shared cell, prison staff confirmed to the RCMP. At approximately 10 o’clock the next morning, with lockdown still in effect, Phillips was found dead.

McGray was removed from their shared cell. He is now in another, undisclosed prison location. He has not been charged with the death of Phillips.

I do not know why he has been charged yet, but I am sure it is a matter of ‘red tape’. They have also not released the cause of death.

I keep saying that capital punishment is not just retaliation. It is a matter of public safety.

According to the story another inmate had a diary entry that says that a prison official told Phillips to “suck it up” when he begged to be moved. That official needs to lose his job.

The article is very informative and I hope to hear more about this case soon.

Source

2011
02/23
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News and Updates

Gary Ridgway did plea guilty as expected to the murder of  20-year-old Rebecca Marrero in 1982.

The convicted killer started to apologize in court on Friday for Marrero’s murder, but was cut off when an unidentified man sitting with the victim’s family began shouting obscenities at him.

The victim’s sister, Mary Marrero, her 79-year-old mother standing shakily at her side, told King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts that her family has been devastated by the murder and wished that Ridgway faced the death penalty.

“The day she came up missing I wanted to kill myself,” Mary Marrero said, her voice breaking. “I still feel that today … There is so much anger. What does it take to get the death penalty in the state of Washington? I do not agree with this plea deal.”

“If I had one thing to ask today, it would be to kill him,” she said.

Source

Herbert Mullin was (surprise) denied parole again.

A former Felton man convicted of murdering 10 people, including a 4-year-old child, an elderly man and a priest, was denied parole Thursday during a hearing at Mule Creek State Prison, the District Attorney’s Office reported Friday.

Serial killer Herbert Mullin, 63, murdered 13 people in roughly a four month period in 1972 and 1973.

He was convicted in 1973 of 10 killings in Santa Cruz County. He was also convicted of killing a priest in Los Gatos in the confessional booth and admitted to two additional slayings for which he was never charged.

The killing spree was one of three in Santa Cruz County in the 1970s, earning the county the dark sobriquet of being the murder capitol of the world.

Source

Milwaukee accused serial killer Walter Ellis pleaded no contest to the charges against him.

A Milwaukee man accused of killing seven women over 21 years pleaded no contest to all charges against him Friday.

Fifty-year-old Walter Ellis pleaded no contest to five counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree murder.

The women were killed between 1986 and 2007.

Ellis, who was convicted by Judge Dennis Cimpl, is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Source

Craig Price will not be allowed to take a trip from Florida to Rhode Island to argue his appeal. His violent behavior in prison and the cost were both listed as reasons. I hope they never let him out. This is one scary guy.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Craig Price, the state’s youngest serial killer, who terrified Rhode Islanders in the 1980s, will not return from prison in Florida to argue his appeal before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that it would decide Price’s appeal based on written arguments unless Price requests within 30 days that a court appoint a lawyer to argue orally on his behalf. The court directed that Price or his standby lawyer could file such a request on his behalf.

In ruling, the court said it was mindful of the cost of transporting Price from prison in Florida and his recent admission to assaulting a correctional office there.

Price was 15 in 1989 when he confessed to brutally stabbing and bludgeoning Joan Heaton and her daughters, Melissa and Jennifer, after slipping in through their window at night. Price also admitted to the unsolved murder of another Buttonwoods neighbor, Rebecca Spencer, two years earlier.

Price refused to take a psychiatric exam until 1994. Then, after he took the test, the court concluded that Price had not been truthful with the psychiatrist and, therefore, had “not cooperated with the examination, even though he had participated.”

The attorney general initiated a criminal-contempt charge against Price for refusing to participate in the psychiatric program. A jury convicted him after a trial in 1997, and Judge Albert E. DeRobbio Sr. sentenced Price to 25 years in prison, 10 years to serve and 15 suspended.

The state Supreme Court in 2003 affirmed Price’s criminal-contempt conviction. But the court left open the opportunity for him to petition to reduce his 25-year sentence.

Price is seeking relief from the contempt sentence, arguing it was excessive and unconstitutional. The attorney general’s office counters that the sentence is proportionate with the years-long contempt Price showed for the court order regarding treatment.

Source and a link to the Court Documents here.

Also, America’s Most Wanted has updated 2 serial killer cases on their site.

Daytona Beach Serial Killer

Interstate 65 Serial Killer

You can see the full Serial Killer Episode by clicking on the link on my video page.

2011
02/22
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Reading right now

So far very interesting.

Crime Library Article

Read along

2011
02/21
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Hilton and Rodriguez updates

Gary M Hilton

Gary Hilton has been found guilty in Florida. The jury is deciding his fate.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A jury convicted a drifter of murder Tuesday in the decapitation slaying of a woman in the Florida Panhandle, a case that resembles a Georgia killing for which the man is already serving a life sentence.

Gary Michael Hilton, 64, sat stone-faced as Circuit Judge James Hankinson read the verdict after the 12-member jury had deliberated for three hours and 40 minutes.

Hilton could get a death sentence for murdering 46-year-old nurse and Sunday school teacher Cheryl Dunlap of Crawfordville. He also was convicted of kidnapping and stealing the victim’s ATM card but acquitted of taking her car.

Jurors will return Thursday to hear testimony about whether to recommend death or life in prison, the only other penalty allowed for the murder conviction. Hankinson will not be bound by their decision, but he must give it great weight.

Hilton received a life term in Georgia after pleading guilty to murder in the January 2008 slaying of 24-year-old hiker Meredith Emerson

The bodies of both victims were found in forests, and each had been beheaded.

Hilton, who declined to testify, also is a suspect in at least three other killings in Florida and North Carolina.

Full story

Another Link about HIlton

Antonio Rodriguez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antonio Rodriguez aka the Kensington Strangler, might be facing the death penalty. The prosecutor plans to seek it in his case.

Prosecutors to seek death penalty against alleged serial killer

February 09, 2011|By the CNN Wire Staff

Philadelphia prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against suspected serial strangler Antonio Rodriguez, according to District Attorney spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson.

Rodriguez appeared at a preliminary hearing Wednesday where two police detectives read confessions Rodriguez gave regarding three women he allegedly killed and sexually assaulted between November and December of last year, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Bretschneider.

Nicknamed the Kensington strangler, the 21-year-old Rodriguez was arrested after DNA testing linked him to the attacks in the city’s Kensington district, according to Detective Justin Frank.

Full story

I wish both sets of prosecutors luck!

2011
02/17
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Frank Spisak to be executed

Frank Spisak Jr at his trial

A self-proclaimed Nazi who shot 5 people, killing 3 of them in an attempt to start a race war in Cleveland is set to be executed Thursday February 17, 2011.

Frank Spisak aka Frances Anne, was found guilty in 1983 of murdering Rev. Horace Rickerson, Timothy Sheehan and Brian Warford. He also shot John Hardaway several times and shot at but misses Coletta Darrtt.

Spisak told investigators that he went on hunting parties to kill black people. He also blamed blacks for his inability to get a job.

During his initial trial Spisak carried Hitler’s Mein Kampf into the courtroom. He also made a Nazi Salute to the jury.

Frank has claimed that his ‘identity confusion’ is a mental illness and tried get off on an insanity plea. Happily no one has bought that excuse from the man who described how good he felt killing Warford.

So, tomorrow at 10 am Cleveland time the man who has sat on death row for 27 years in Ohio will end his stay and be the last man in Ohio to be put to permanent sleep using sodium thiopental.

Goodbye Frank.

Source

Source

Source

Frank’s whining in his own words.

2011
02/16
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Center For Disease Control

If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency. emergency.cdc.gov
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