In the courtroom, there are really two “prongs” on which to secure a conviction, or argue against one. The first is forensic evidence [direct DNA evidence, fingerprints etc]. The second is circumstantial evidence [indirect evidence, witness testimonies, alibis or lack of]. Sometimes one prong is emphasized over the other. Other times they’re used to complement a particular argument.
Examples of cases where circumstantial evidence was more important include the murder of Laci Peterson and triple axe murderer Henri van Breda. In the Peterson case there was virtually no trace of Laci other than a single hair in a needle-nose pliers in Peterson’s boat, and cadaver odors.
In the Van Breda case there was an Armageddon-like crime scene overflowing with blood. In the latter case there was so much blood and DNA it was slippery to sort out and somewhat confusing. The main thrust of the defense case in the Van Breda trial focused on nitpicking DNA samples that were inconclusive.The Judge in the Van Breda case said if all the DNA evidence was excluded [from the prosecution side and the defense side] the circumstantial evidence remaining was still compelling, and overwhelming.
Examples of cases where DNA evidence was more important [and arguably too important] include the Amanda Knox case, OJ Simpson and Madeleine McCann. If DNA can be used to convict, any uncertainty around its scientific veracity means it can also become the fulcrum around which a defense can secure an acquittal.
Examples of cases where DNA evidence was used to argue a case but shouldn’t have include the JonBenet Ramsey case and arguably the Madeleine McCann case. In both these cases circumstantial evidence ought to have been sufficient.
Where a crime scene is severely contaminated or compromised, reasonable doubt exists surrounding forensic samples that are typically not quite good enough to qualify as sufficient. The law requires forensic samples to be 100% accurate, and the protocols in collecting them to be professional and beyond reproach.
The third dimension to the true crime pitchfork is psychology, or in the parlance of the genre, “motive”. Unfortunately, modern criminal law no longer puts much value in motive, just intention [or Dolus]. As a result, more than a few trials conclude with the court unable to explain why the crime even took place [Chris Watts, Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox, Oscar Pistorius, Henri van Breda etc.].
The courts say knowing why doesn’t matter, just that knowing when, what, where and how is sufficient. It may be sufficient for the law, but it’s not adequate for human beings.
More echoes of the Watts case. Remember Watts’ “first confession” where he implicated Shan’ann in killing the little girls. We have the same thing here, where Berreth is murdered to “protect” their daughter. Surely there are other ways of protecting children besides murdering their mothers?
Patrick Frazee reported Kelsey Berreth to child services because she was harming their toddler daughter, new documents could show. The alleged killer, 32, is said to have confided in his mistress Krystal Jean Lee Kenney, telling her that his fiancee abused one-year-old Kaylee.
Kenney testified that murder suspect Frazee had told her Kelsey, 29, hurt their daughter, leaving her with a burn on her hand and a bump on her head. Kenney disposed of crucial evidence in the murder case, including a gun, keys and the missing mother’s phone and claims she cleaned up the crime scene at his request.
Kenney then got rid of Berreth’s keys at Makad Gorge State Park, right over the border from Colorado in Idaho, court documents reveal. The nurse also told police that she burned Berreth’s cell phone and threw it in the trash at work, along with the burner phone she used to speak with Frazee. Frazee is said to have told his lover that they needed to ‘get rid of’ Berreth so she couldn’t hurt or even kill Kaylee.
So often the murder of children by their biological parents or other relatives is associated with prolonged periods of abuse or even torture. This is what makes the Watts case idiosyncratic.
A desperate search for missing 8-year-old California boy went from hopeful to tragic on Thursday after officials announced that the child had been murdered, allegedly by his own father. “It is with a heavy heart that the Corona Police Department must let our community know the missing child investigation regarding Noah McIntosh has been escalated to a homicide case,” the police department stated.
Bryce McIntosh, father of missing Noah, has been charged with his murder. Meanwhile, the search for the child’s body continues. “We would like to assure our community members our department has put all our efforts into locating Noah McIntosh while gathering the facts regarding his disappearance,” police stated. “Our search for Noah continues.”
On March 12, Noah’s mother, Jillian Godfrey contacted the police claiming that she had not been able to contact her son for almost two weeks.The next day a search warrant was served at Bryce McIntosh’s apartment.
The painting, Still Life with Fruit and Chestnuts, was donated to the museum by a couple in 1960 and suspected to be by the Dutch master.
But several experts pooh-poohed the claim. However, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam determined that Van Gogh painted the rather dowdy fruit bowl – perhaps on a blue day – in 1886.
The news has been somewhat muted, as the confirmation occurred last year, but wasn’t reported for months. In a further discovery, the experts found there was a portrait of a woman hidden underneath the still life. The often sad artist – whose works are now priceless – often reused his canvases because he was too poor to buy new ones.
…if we had been that little more welcoming in 1876, perhaps the history of art would have taken a different turn. Instead of those astonishing stars over the Rhône at Arles, they might have been shining down on the North Sea at Scarborough.
During the course of several trips in the south of France I visited Arles, where Vincent lived in 1888, and St. Rémy where he was confined in the famous asylum, for the express purpose of identifying the scenes he painted. In fifty years these scenes have changed amazingly littleand today, but for the major fact that the trees have grown taller, they offer virtually the same appearance they did to the painter at the time. A first glance finds them disappointing both in their structure and their unprepossessing color. The views that van Gogh chose often amazed me by their banality, by their total lack of any emotional quality—that quality he makes so urgent in all of his works. But painting the bridge of Trinquetaille, that Mairie of Auvers, the wheatfield under the rain, or the passageway in the asylum, the artist knew how to accentuate the sensations of intensity, of gayety, of desolation or of melancholywhich he discovered in them. By purely pictorial means he has stressed line and color…
Faced with the themes and the canvases of van Gogh, so strangely alike yet so absorbingly different, one realizes that “reality” cannot exist independently, and that the artist paints after all not what is but what he sees. Vincent himself best defined the problem when he asked his brother: “When the thing represented is…absolutely in agreement and one with the manner of representing it, isn’t it just that that gives a work of art its quality?”
Speaking of the history of world art taking a different turn, if even one of the contentions in this true crime interpretation of the life and death of Van Gogh are true, all of art history going back over a century is turned on its head…
March 30th, 2019
1. Interview with OLAYINKA HAMZA, the attorney who met Shan’ann at restaurant
5 and half hours into this Madeleine documentary and a man’s said “we can never question a dog – because they don’t speak our language” £7.99 for this thank you Netflix
watching this Madeleine McCann documentary & 1. Why did they leave the door open?? 2. Why didn’t their friend actually GO into the room to check on the children & 3. Why didn’t their other female friend report she seen a suspicious man carrying a child??? Hmmm…
3. “I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt – and evidence of collusion.” – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), during a House Intelligence Committee open hearing, responded to Trump and Congressional Republican’s calls for his resignation, Thursday, March 28,
“They’re innocent,” Douglas said of both Knox and Echols, whom he also referred to as “heroes.” Both have been convicted of murder and both were sitting on stage beside the former profiler. Douglas’ sentiment prompted Knox to choke up and thank him for believing her.
But Echols said he was able to make it through all these hardships because he started practicing magick, which made conditions bearable and kept him sane.
Comedian Dave Hill, who interviewed Echols Thursday, joked a bit about magick, knowing many aren’t super-familiar with the topic.
“Magic is for nerds,” Hill said. “But magick with a ‘k’ sounds like there are goats involved.”
But … what is it?
Magick, as Echols puts it, “is the western path to enlightenment.” It’s similar to things like the Law of Attraction or The Secret, in that it all has to do with manifesting in some way, according to Echols.
“[We’re] wandering aimlessly, that’s what we do through life. We don’t remember where we come from, where we’re going, or why we’re supposed to be going there. Magick causes you to remember some of these things and gives you a sense of purpose,” he explained.
Practicing magick for Echols consists of a variety of… ceremonies and rituals, all for the purpose of spiritual growth. This kept him balanced and helped him manage the physical and emotional stress and pain of imprisonment. Echols was able to learn so much about magick through all his time reading in prison. He got his hands on whatever he could find to read during those endless days, and started from there. Echols is still committed to magick to this day. After all, it wasn’t easy adjusting to life after prison.
“I didn’t realize I had lost things like facial recognition ability, voice recognition ability, destroyed my eyesight. It takes a very heavy toll on you mentally, physically, emotionally,” he explained. He even claimed that he had barely any memories of his first two years out of prison, as he was just so traumatized.
Get the TCRS take on Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three:
When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night.
Indeed, for van Gogh reading was as compulsive as painting: “I have a more or less irresistible passion for books and the constant need to improve my mind, to study if you like, just as I have a need to eat bread.” He copied down poems by Longfellow, Goethe and Keats; he enjoyed the works of George Eliot as well as Hans Christian Andersen, Thomas a Kempis, Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoevsky, Maupassant, Balzac and Voltaire.
The museum staff decided to send “Vase With Poppies” to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for further inspection. Experts there analyzed the work’s paint, material and style and concluded that it is indeed a van Gogh, one that falls in line with the paintings he made not long after moving from Antwerp to Paris in 1886.
Louis van Tilborgh, senior Researcher and the Van Gogh Museum, notes that the recent investigation into the origins of “Vase With Flowers” suggests that light can be shed on other “floaters”—works that can have been attributed to van Gogh, but whose authenticity remains uncertain. “[O]ne can say that slowly but surely,” Tilborgh adds, “real progress is being made in Van Gogh studies.”
Dr Perlin said it was “possible” Madeleine’s DNA was present in the McCann hire car, potentially opening up a line of the police inquiry that was seemingly shut down by the 2007 “inconclusive” DNA results.
“What was interesting about the report from the FSS 10 years ago is they’re trying to interpret [the McCann DNA] data,” Dr Perlin said.”What this [FSS] report says is there is a possibility that Madeleine McCann’s DNA is present in this mixture,” said Dr Perlin – who Nine.com.au sent a copy of the FSS DNA report which was handed to Portuguese police in September 2007.
“[If] a lab can produce informative data, even if it is complex and mixed, but they can’t interpret it then you can have tremendous injustice; of guilty people not being convicted, of innocent people staying in prison. What is needed is an objective and accurate interpretation that can scientifically resolve the DNA,” he said. Dr John Lowe, the senior scientist at the FSS responsible for solving the McCann DNA samples, stated in his final report that his team could not resolve the evidence because it was too challenging.
In the Maddie podcast, Dr Perlin explained exactly how modern DNA software can reboot the McCann cold case. Madeleine would be 16 years old in May this year. Portuguese police sent dozens of DNA samples to the FSS in 2007.
Forensics teams lifted floor tiles and took DNA swabs from behind a blue two-seat sofa in the lounge area of the McCann holiday apartment. Sections of the boot compartment in the Renault Scenic hire car were also cut out and expressed to the FSS.
Not everyone is supportive of her, though. There are still plenty of people who think that Knox is guilty, and she admitted she spends a lot of time feeling like she needs to explain herself. As a result, her morning routine isn’t just coffee and breakfast. It includes deleting vicious social media comments.
“I kinda have this daily morning routine where I go on my social media profiles and delete all the nasty comments and block all the people that make mean comments to me,” she said. Knox said that while she acknowledges that these kind of comments are now part of her existence, “It’s not nice. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt me but at the same time I know these people hate someone that’s not me.”
By deleting the comments, Knox explained she’s choosing to limit the amount of negativity that she allows to infiltrate her life. While tabloid journalism tore Knox apart…she’s even joined the media world herself. Within weeks of being exonerated, she began writing for a local newspaper in Washington…
…and it was a different story in 2014: Knox's desire to go back to Italy is a reversal from what she has told reporters in the past. She told "Good Morning America" in 2014 that she would never set foot on Italian soil of her own volition.
But no surveillance cameras captured the incidentand one of the men was actually Smollett’s personal trainer, the actor’s attorneys said.
If prosecutors saw holes in their case, they had to do the “best they could do in the interest of justice. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they looked at the evidence and didn’t feel they could prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Sara Azari, a criminal defense attorney.
The secrecy surrounding the details of the sudden dismissalof Smollett’s charges has left some people calling for greater transparency from the prosecutors office and has led to speculation. A judge agreed to seal Smollett’s court file at the request of his attorneys and without the opposition from prosecutors…legal analysts said the decision to keep the records from public disclosure will stop the community from learning what really happened.
Jussie Smollett has hired high-powered criminal defense lawyer Mark Geragos to represent him against the 16 felony charges he is facing in Chicago following his alleged orchestration of a staged homophobic and racist attack.
1. In the video below AD makes a claim about a red vehicle. He neglects to mention or show the angle of the porch camera, and that it isn’t oriented directly toward the neighbor’s wall, but is turned slightly towards the road. Thus the camera seeing the vehicle pull away makes sense. It is interesting that Watts moves his own vehicle forward, perhaps once he realizes the neighbors are stirring.
In 2007, the now-closed British lab, the FSS, was forced to undertake a massive review of up to 2000 cases of violent crime, including rape and murder. There were concerns that the DNA tests relating to these criminal cases had failed to detect minute traces of DNA that could potentially have identified guilty parties.
The search for Shannon was compared to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Matthews served four years in jail for kidnapping her daughter Shannon, nine, in 2008 to generate cash from the publicity.
The mother, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, made several emotional pleas for her child to return during the huge police search despite being aware of where she was.
There are reports that Matthews wants to sell the rights to her autobiography so she can pay for cosmetic surgery in the hope it would help her to go unrecognised. It is believed all seven of Matthews’ children are living under new names and no longer have a relationship with their mother. Last year, Matthews told the Daily Mirror: “I’m not Britain’s worst mum. I didn’t kill anybody.”
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann are still being chased for hefty legal fees nearly a decade after the start of their court battle against the ex-police chief who has attacked them again in a new documentary.
Kate and Gerry McCann are about to be told by a court in Lisbon, Portugal, that they still owe thousands of pounds from their libel fight against Gonçalo Amaral. Amaral, 59, is waiting on a soon-to-come judgement from the European Court of Human Rights over the lengthy legal battle with the McCanns, sparked by his 2008 book The Truth of The Lie, before deciding whether to launch a compensation claim.
The eight-part series called ‘The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann’ was commissioned in 2017 as the true crime genre exploded with TV shows such as Making A Murderer.
The McCanns, who refused to take part in the project and declined to watch a preview, will be infuriated that their tormentor Goncalo Amaral – ‘a thorn in our sides’ – is set to be starring in it. Protection officer Jim Gamble said advances in tech mean she could be found..
The couple, who are still challenging a libel win by the ex Portuguese detective in the highest court in the landthe European Court of Human Rights will be ‘horrified to learn’ that the worldwide streaming service has interviewed the retired officer.
MailOnline first exclusively revealed that Kate and Gerry wanted ‘nothing to do with’ the drama which has cost up to a reported £20 million.
McCanns “didn’t participate or approve of” Netflix documentary.
I used to think for a long time that parents were heavily involved but when Kate was offered a plea for ONLY 2 years in jail for a confession, but never took it, I knew it can’t be it. #MadeleineMccannNetflix
Wasn’t familiar with the story till I saw #MadeleineMccannNetflix. Don’t know the truth, but I know this: 1. You don’t leave a 3-year-old and two 2-year-old alone while having dinner. 2. It’s not a cultural thing whether or not you do point 1. 3. You don’t let the door unlocked.
Sydney Aiello, who survived the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, has died from suicide, people close to the family told CNN. Her mother, Cara, told CNN affiliate WFOR that Aiello suffered from survivor’s guilt after one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history and had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Aiello had been on campus the day of the mass attack but was not in the building where the shootings took place, her mother said, according to WFOR. Aiello, a cheerleader in high school, graduated just months after a troubled teen gunned down 14 students and three teachers there. The family of Parkland school shooting victim Meadow Pollack described Aiello as “someone dear to Meadow.”
The news of the double tragedy comes just as students are out of school this week for spring break. Investigators told the Miami Herald that the male student died in “an apparent suicide” on Saturday night. He was a sophomore and attended Stoneman Douglas last year at the time of the Feb. 14 shooting that claimed 17 lives on campus.
The understanding of these statues changed over time as cultural mores shifted. In the early Christian period in Egypt, between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, the indigenous gods inhabiting the sculptures were feared as pagan demons; to dismantle paganism, its ritual tools — especially statues making offerings — were attacked. After the Muslim invasion in the 7th century, scholars surmise, Egyptians had lost any fear of these ancient ritual objects. During this time, stone statues were regularly trimmed into rectangles and used as building blocks in construction projects.
“Ancient temples were somewhat seen as quarries,” Bleiberg said, noting that “when you walk around medieval Cairo, you can see a much more ancient Egyptian object built into a wall.”
8. From the Archives: John Ramsey interview with Anderson Cooper [2012]
The officers said they would come back in the morning, after 9am. Kate continues: “With that they were gone, leaving us to our own devices. It was incomprehensible. Looking back, it’s inexplicable, of course, that we should ever have been left in what was now a crime scene. We shouldn’t even have been allowed to take things out of the children’s bedroom.”
At the crux of the divide, district attorneys disagree on whether the possibility of the death penalty is necessary to facilitate plea deals on potential capital cases and avoid lengthy, costly murder trials. Without the death penalty, more defendants will be able to plead to second-degree murder, district attorneys who oppose repeal warned, though they clarified that they wouldn’t seek death in a case that didn’t merit it simply to obtain a plea.
“Without this tool that we have at our disposal right now, reserved for the worst of the worst, those pleas simply don’t happen,” said Republican Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke, citing the recent case of a Frederick man who pleaded guilty to murdering his family to avoid the death penalty. “Chris Watts doesn’t have an incentive at that point.”
The vast majority of all criminal cases are resolved by plea deals, including murder cases, said District Attorney Dave Young, a Democrat who represents Adams and Broomfield counties and opposes the repeal. He is pursuing the death penalty against a man charged with killing Adams County sheriff’s Deputy Heath Gumm. “We would not be able to do that without leverage,” he said. “The whole legal system is based on leverage — not just criminal cases.”
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann disputed that analysis and said convictions shouldn’t rely on the prospect of the death penalty, but instead on the strength of the evidence in the case.McCann has said publicly that she will not seek the death penalty in any case because she morally opposes it, and she has said the decision has not affected her ability to convict.
Chris Watts on sex with mistress Nichol Kessinger and wife, Shan’ann Watts
The incomplete DNA information found its way into the press and, before long, unsubstantiated allegations started to circulate.
Tabloids splashed accusations against the McCanns across their front pages and the media frenzy became relentless. One particular newspaper, featured in the documentary, ran a front-page headline with the words: “We have found her blood in the boot of your hire car… Did you kill her by accident?”
There was no evidence to show that Madeleine was the source of the DNA.
There are so many different genres on Netflix is can be difficult to sort through them all. But one thing Netflix does better than just about anyone else? True crime documentaries.
People are obsessed with seeing true crime stories on television. Maybe it’s because the stories are real. Maybe it’s our morbid fascination with violent crimes. No matter the reason, true crime has been popular long before Netflix was even invented. But now they’ve proven how expert they are at taking those stories and bringing them to life.
Journalist Felícia found it odd that in the weeks after Madeleine vanished, the investigating police seemed to be focusing only on the suspected kidnapping and not the family involved. “We know that in most cases, the culprit is someone who is close to the child,” Felícia explains in the documentary. She goes on to tell the story of a visit she made to the restaurant where the McCann group ate on the night of the incident. She sat at the same table as them and found that despite Gerry McCann’s claim that the table had a “line of sight to the apartment” – which they say was a factor in deciding where to eat that evening – there was limited visibility. This was the first contradiction she found in the parents’ statement to police.
“From the position I was in, it was completely impossible to see the apartment or the room where they had left the children to sleep,” Felícia adds. “As an investigative journalist, I have to ask, why? Why would you lie about such a simple thing?”
Her colleague Margarida says that they had a feeling something was off with the timeline and that the McCanns’ version of events doesn’t match that of the employees who served them in the hotel. Further doubt was driven by inconsistencies in Gerry’s statements about which door he entered the apartment through and whether or not it was locked. There’s also her understanding that the McCann group gathered to work out their timeline and then revise it 24 hours later.
Gonçalo Amaral, former Chief Investigating Coordinator with the Portuguese police, says that statements by Jane Tanner, who claimed to have seen a man carrying a child in pajamas away from the resort, seemed to evolve as time went on.
Our prurient attraction to crime, gore and the misery of others is not new: equivalent publications to Crime Monthly (though tamer) can be traced back at least to Victorian times—an era when Jack the Ripper was turned into a species of folk legend. But today’s fixation, and the sheer barrage of content it brings with it, can make us forget standards and neglect others. We lose in the variety and styles of storytelling we watch. And perhaps, just perhaps, we lose something of ourselves when we slow down to gawp at the car crash as we pass.
Peer-reviewed medical journals are peppered with studies that posthumously diagnose the illnesses of artists, using data that ranges from medical records to, in rare cases, the artist’s physical remains. Most commonly, though, such medical connoisseurs turn to the deceased’s body of work for clues.
This might seem like an amusing sport, but Marmor warned that many doctors use flawed measurements and take their conclusions too far. “Artists have license to paint as they wish, so style is mutable and not necessarily an indication of disease,” he said. “Speculation is always fun, but not when it is presented as ‘evidence’ in scientific journals.”
When Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin passed away on the Marquesas Islands in 1903, he left behind four teeth in a glass jar and abundant speculation about whether or not he died from syphilis. An opportunity to address some of the unanswered questions surrounding his legacy arose in 2000, when those teeth were extracted from a sealed well near Gauguin’s former hut. Caroline Boyle-Turner, a Gauguin specialist, wanted to first confirm that the cavity-ridden molars did indeed belong to the Frenchman, and then see what could be learned from the remains.
A chance encounter on a cruise liner treading through the South Pacific put Boyle-Turner in contact with William Mueller, a founding member of the Dental Anthropological Association. The two became investigative partners, and their findings were published in Anthropology in 2018. The DNA extracted from the teeth was compared with DNA taken from the interred remains of the artist’s father (recently identified in Chile), as well as a sample from Gauguin’s living grandson. The results were a match. The molars were also tested for traces of cadmium, mercury and arsenic, which were all common treatments for syphilis during Gauguin’s time. None were found, which doesn’t necessarily conclude that Gauguin wasn’t syphilitic, only that he didn’t receive those treatments (or at least not in a high enough dosage to leave a residue).
“Van Gogh was 20 when he arrived, an impressionable age for anyone, so his period in London had a deep influence on him,” he said. “What was important about London was that he worked in an art gallery, and this helped introduce him to painting. Had he never worked in a gallery, I believe it unlikely that he would ever have become an artist.”
Bailey wrote in the Art Newspaper that Van Gogh is thought to have fallen in love with Loyer’s 19-year-old daughter, Eugénie,during his visit.
Alongside the insurance documents, builders also recovered a tattered 1867 edition of “A Penny Pocket Book of Prayers and Hymns.” The offices of the book’s publisher, Frederick Warne, were in Covent Garden, close to the gallery where Van Gogh worked. Bailey wrote that the book was probably owned by Ursula, but may have been read by Van Gogh, who became a devout Christian while in London.
But what if an artist seeks — nay, demands — obscurity? That’s the premise of Dan Gilroy’s contemporary art world satire-cum-horror, in which the dying wish of a hermit painter is ignored and his works fed into the hungry mouth of the market instead of being destroyed.
Stretching five days, “Death Becomes Us” pieces together the rare opportunities to sit before the wrongly accused (Amanda Knox, Damien Echols, etc.) and the cold-case experts who’ve turned such cases into a Hollywood obsession.
A highly anticipated eight-part docuseries on the disappearance of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann is gripping if you don’t know the storyand a disappointment if you do. Somebody knows exactly what happened to Madeleine McCann, the 3-year-old Briton who disappeared without a trace from her bed in a holiday resort on a family vacation with friends in Praia Da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007. But it clearly isn’t the makers of the new Netflix series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Unfortunately the writer of this piece cops out on his own premise. There are many bogus documentaries out their claiming to represent the premise of true crime, among them Making A Murderer [both seasons], the Paradise Lost trilogy, and virtually all coverage of the McCanns and the Ramseys, especially coverage in which they voluntarily participate.
3. Police detective testifies in Packham murder trial
The culture around The Tortured Genius represents that the more mentally ill the artist, the more brilliant his work. The first person that comes to mind is apparently none other than Vincent Van Gogh. His severed ear is part of popular culture parlance. When the gifted artist wasn’t having psychotic episodes or cutting a part of his ear off, he painted exquisite paintings as he transferred his inner anguish on his canvas. Others like Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka, etc. had similar fates. Their professional lives flourished as they battled mental illness. But the question remains. Is the idea of the Tortured Genius a myth or a reality?
Made of earthen-color fabric on steel frames up to 32 feet high and 800 feet long, the walls shield industrial machinery from a high school and wetlands greenbelt in Greeley, prairie homes in Windsor, and kids riding bikes and skateboards in Mead.
It is the latest innovation for companies equipped with horizontal drilling technology that are trying to solve a puzzle: how to extract more fossil fuels from under where people are living and minimize impact.
The walls help companies meet Colorado’s noise limits (55-80 decibels during the day and 50-75 at night, and measured 350 feet from the source). Walls also are being considered for wildlife habitat where proposed drilling threatens mating of sage grouse. Previously, oil and gas companies tried to ease impact of industrial operations near people by stacking hay bales and shipping containers around engines. Beyond cutting noiseby 20 to 30 decibels, the fabric walls partially block the glare of floodlights and dust cloudsduring companies’ multimonth period of drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
It was a simple retelling – in what felt almost like real time, so leadenly was it done – of the story of the three-year-old’s disappearance from the holiday resort of Praia da Luz one terrible night in May 2007. It was a blatant cash-in on the vogue for the true-crime series that have become a staple of Netflix’s output since the success of Making a Murderer a few years ago, but without any of the justifications previous works in the genre have provided. It was not the disinterment of a forgotten case, it was not the re-examination of a suspected miscarriage of justice. It offered no new facts, no new insight. It didn’t even have a point of view.
Instead, it was purely a rehashing of everything anyone who was alive at the time, or who has been of an age to understand the periodic appeals on anniversaries, birthdays and other painful dates by the McCanns for more information in the 12 years that have elapsed since, already knew…
3. Michael Jackson’s maid reveals sordid Neverland secrets
It's quite funny that the #McCann have "pretended" to object to the #Netflix film. Look at the copyright tag in the photo. Guess who would have provided permission to use it?> 'never-before-heard testimonies from those at the heart of the story', including the McCanns' friends pic.twitter.com/AvQyQFGPFf
As expected -> Undermining, mocking the Portuguese side of the police investigation. Portuguese cops later identified #McCann as arguidos>>>Maddie cops released sketch of 'egg with side parting' days after disappearance https://t.co/ZIyrRvJe1I#McCannpic.twitter.com/mn10o8Glgy
Aoife Smith described the man she saw carrying the little girl towards the beach on the night of 3rd of May, as wearing beige trousers with buttons, like the ones Gerry McCann is wearing in this photo.#McCannpic.twitter.com/cbJYm9XLMn
1. I’m no hero. 2. I never ‘blasted’ anybody. 3. As I said to the decent Australian journalist from whose podcast this was culled and distorted by someone without his integrity, a reconstruction would have been a great idea if only those involved would have taken part. https://t.co/XaxNB58jKj
I believe the claim the McCanns refused to participate is the opening gambit to get viewers to believe the Netflix documentary is on the up and up. Viewers will come in believing it is going to be objective and get a solid propoganda film exonerating the McCanns. #mccann
Portuguese asked the group to return to the scene to run through their movements on the night of May 3, 2007. But negotiations with the witnesses allegedly stalled because of disagreements over how it would be managed by investigators.
The reconstruction had been planned for May 2008, six months after Kate and Gerry had been declared arguidos, or official suspects. Their friends raised concerns over the arguido status in emails to police.
They were also said to fear a media frenzy if they flew back to the resort, and questioned the purpose of the re-enactment. One member of the group proposed the police use actors instead, but Portuguese detectives refused.
Police were said to be frustrated the reconstruction did not happen. They shelved the investigation in August 2008 and the McCanns’ arguido status was lifted.
“Why do you think he’s telling the truth now?” asked host Phil McGraw.
Rzucek said he believed Watts spoke honestly about the killings because “I think it’s eating him up. I think he was more than glad to talk to somebody for five hours, sitting in a box 24/7,” said Rzucek, who was the children’s godfather. “We loved him like a son and Frankie loved him like a brother,” Sandy Rzucek said. “I just don’t understand.”
Patrick Frazee is pictured checking out baby supplies and formula at a WalMart on Thanksgiving Day in documents from his murder case that were obtained by DailyMail.com. A still from the store’s surveillance system shows Frazee pushing a carriage with a baby seat which is believed to hold his daughter Kaylee just after 1pm.
It was minutes after this that Frazee was seen with a crate in his truck heading back to Berreth’s house, despite telling investigators he went straight home after his fiancee handed over their daughter earlier that afternoon. A neighbor’s surveillance video shows that Frazee was inside the residence for two hours before leaving, during which time authorities now believe he murdered Berreth by bludgeoning her with a bat.
On his way out of the home, Frazee called both his mistress Krystal Jean Kenney and his mother Sheila Frazee, though they were not the only two women the accused killer spoke to over the next few days. Court documents show that Frazee was also in contact with a third woman from Idaho. The relationship between Frazee and that woman is unclear, and she is not a suspect and never been identified as a person of interest in the case.
She was however just a few miles away from where Berreth’s phone pinged in Idaho on November 25, and contacted Frazee at the exact time the missing mother’s cellular was registered by a nearby tower. The woman, 39, has also been employed in the medical field, so there is a chance she may have been a friend of Frazee’s mistress, Kenney.
1. TCRS blows by 2 million page impressions five months after launching in mid-October 2018. Thank you to all the regular visitors, commenters and readers in the TCRS community.
Father Of Murder Victim Shan’ann Watts Reveals What He’d Say To Son-In-Law, Chris, If Given The Chance – Dr. Phil
“Knowing what you now know, what would you say to him?” asks Dr. Phil of the grieving family.
“The same question I’ve had – Why?” responds Frank Sr. adding, “There’s nothing that I can imagine why you would do that to your family. You want another life? Go. Open the door and leave.”
“He could have just gotten a divorce,” says Sandy. Calling her daughter and granddaughters’ deaths “inhumane” she says, “I think the hardest thing for me right now is the way they died.”
“I think the hardest part is knowing our granddaughter watched her sister die and then begged for her life,” says Shan’ann’s mother, Sandy Rzucek, reacting to what the family has been told about her son-in-law’s description of the last words spoken to him by Bella.
“I felt my daughter’s spirit, the moment she died,” says Shan’ann’s mother, Sandy Rzucek, who lives in North Carolina. She describes waking up everyone in her house the morning her daughter and grandchildren were killed to tell family members that she felt something was wrong with Shan’ann.
“We didn’t even know she was missing yet,” says Shan’ann’s brother, Frankie, confirming his mother’s account.
After authorities found her daughter’s body, a few days after her and the girls’ disappearance, Sandy says she felt Shan’ann’s presence in her home. “I felt her, and I heard her say, ‘I love you, Mommy, and I’m sorry.’”
Sandy claims she received another visitation from Shan’ann and her children after Celeste and Bella’s bodies were recovered.
HORRIFIC: Christopher Watts drove the girls along with their dead mother's body on a 45-minute drive to a secluded oil field where he smothered the youngest with her favorite blanket and killed his 4-year-old after she watched her sister die. https://t.co/ul6FgNe8mo
parts of new #ChrisWatts information i think he is still making up. "He said that he killed his wife because they were going to get divorced and she said he'd never see the kids again." I believe premeditated and he cares what people are thinking of him #excuse
“He had no empathy for life,” Curie said about Frazee, in an exclusive interview with NBC’s “Dateline.” Curie said she and Frazee started dating in 2010.
“I was attracted to his sharp wit and he had a very explorative mind. He contemplated everything. And he was excellent at reading people,” Curie told “Dateline” correspondent Andrea Canning. But, four months into their relationship, Curie said Frazee started playing mind games on her.
“He began not calling me for days, and then calling me in the middle of the night telling me he had visions of me in a wedding dress. And we’d talk and argue for hours. And we’d end up winding right back into each other.”
The emotional abuse, as she described it, went on for a year. She said Frazee would put her on a pedestal, then tear her down. But, she said, she continued to be drawn to him. As their relationship continued, Curie said she observed Frazee, a rancher and popular farrier, hit his dogs.
“Dateline” interviewed a man who knew another side of Frazee. Clint Cline said Frazee worked with his donkeys, and describes him as a “nice guy, very conscientious about his work, very concerned about the health and well-being of our animals, very great with his daughter.”
Curie and Frazee’s on-again, off-again relationship ended in 2014, when Curie said she came across the definition of a psychopath online. “He fit the bill to a T. And that’s when I left him.”
In an interview with Dr. Phil that will air on Monday, Sandra and Frank Rzucek were joined by their son to share their grief over the deaths of their daughter, her two children Bella and Cece, and her unborn son.
Chris’ recent chilling “confession” gives us even more insight into his perverted mind. He shared the tale of heartlessly killing Shanann after making love to her, then telling her he didn’t love her and wanted to leave her before finally strangling her to death. He claims she didn’t even struggle and said It was like Shanann was praying, thinking of scripture and forgave him for doing it.
He also described being overtaken by an outside power that got him to compulsively kill his family; he retells the moment as if he was powerless over his impulses to overcome this heinous crime.
Chris Watts may not have been able to find his relevance in the real world, but seems to have found it in prison. In prison, Chris feels like an important man; the man he always thought he should be. He gets fan mail and love letters. His newly revealed confessions, after “finding God” are making him even more of a global star, albeit a notorious one. He is making his mark on history, so he thinks. His egotistical plan and sick need for distinction and recognition are finally being met. Criminality led to his celebrity.
Madeleine McCann’s parents have slammed a new Netflix movie about their daughter’s kidnap fearing it could hinder the painstaking police search for her.
According to The Sun, Kate and Gerry McCann have revealed they had been asked to take part in the documentary but “want nothing to do with it”.
Oscar-winning Netflix boasts the documentary has “riveting” new interviews with key investigators as the 12th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance approaches.
The streaming giant is set to release more details and the launch date of the movie The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the coming weeks.
Throughout their investigation and prosecution of this case, Rourke said they tried to figure out what happened, but he told the Coloradoan that “reality turns out to be much worse than anything any of us surmised from the evidence we had… about the worst you could imagine.”
After Watts was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison, Rourke said he doubted Watts would ever give an honest account of the killings. But on Thursday, Rourke said he believes Watts’ recent confession to investigators is a “truthful, credible account” of the killings.
Mostly.
“I’m assuming what he is telling is truthful,” Rourke said, adding that the skilled investigators who interviewed Watts also believe he was honest in his most recent confession. “I don’t think that everything that came out of his mouth during those interviews was the truth because I honestly don’t believe that this monster has the ability to have remorse at all.”
Rourke said some pieces of evidence match Watts’ most recent confession, including footage from a neighbor’s security camera that shows another shadow aside from Watts’ by his truck when he was loading Shanann’s body into the back seat.
In the video released by the Weld County District Attorney’s Office, Watts is seen standing by his work truck when another shadow appears to be moving toward him, and Watts leans down to pick something up, likely one of the girls.
That video “would be consistent with his statements that the girls were alive when they left the house and walked out to the truck,” Rourke said.
NOTE: I will be doing an analysis of the film At Eternity’s Gate, and explain how my research challenges the popular myth of the great artist.
Jo, the widow of Vincent’s brother Theo, made it her mission to introduce the world to Vincent’s art. She sold some of his works, loaned some out for exhibitions and published the letters that Vincent and Theo wrote to each other. #internationalwomensdaypic.twitter.com/jwJHcNZ88c
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation released this morning records pertaining to Chris Watts’ Feb. 18 confession to law enforcement about how and why he killed his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two daughters, Bella and Celeste.
The records released at 8 a.m. include two audio files documenting Watts’ five-hour long interview with CBI, FBI and Frederick police, two images of Watts, a 37-page CBI report, and a letter from Colorado Department of Public Safety Executive Director Stan Hilkey.
The Tribune has accessed the records and reporters are reviewing them.
Michael Jackson’s estate is engaged in a campaign of adverts, lawsuits and interviews in an attempt to salvage his image after the screening of Channel 4’s documentary Leaving Neverland, which details years of alleged grooming and child abuse.
Jackson’s estate – which has made $2.1bn (£1.6bn) since his death in 2009 and is run by John McClain, a co-executor with Jackson’s former lawyer John Branca – originally tried to block the release of the documentary by contacting Channel 4 and issuing a $100m lawsuit against HBO, which broadcast Dan Reed’s film last weekend in the US.
The estate said the documentary, which premiered at Sundance in January, is “the kind of tabloid character assassination Michael Jackson endured in life, and now in death”, and added that “the film takes uncorroborated allegations that supposedly happened 20 years ago and treats them as fact”.
Eamonn Forde, a music industry expert, said the estate was engaged in an unprecedented containment and damage-limitation exercise to attempt to preserve the most lucrative posthumous fortune in the history of music.
“This is a new era for artist estate management, because this is about containment rather than maximising the profile of a deceased artist,” said Forde. “To an extent, estate management is about building a narrative around an artist; they are the directors of the narrative.”
On Dec. 15, authorities filed a search warrant executed on Frazee’s home, which listed 67 seized items. Police took possession of Frazee’s financial records, five pairs of his wrangler blue jeans, a Verizon tablet, his boots, a tan baseball cap and 50 9 mm bullets and two casings. They also wanted items that could provide DNA samples of the suspect and victim.
They also found “four teeth in a small envelope” and a fifth tooth held separately. One of Berreth’s teeth became a gruesome point of discussion during a recent hearing involving Frazee’s alleged accomplice, Krystal Jean Kenney Lee, an Idaho nurse.
Lee told investigators that Frazee had her clean up “a mess” at Berreth’s townhome after he killed her, the affidavit says. Frazee specifically asked her to look for a tooth that may have fallen down an air vent. Lee found a tooth inside the apartment that included the full root.
Frederick, Colo. – Four-year-old Bella Watts pleaded for her life, just moments after she watched her father kill her younger sister “CeCe,” according to lawyer Steven Lambert. Lambert, of the Grant & Hoffman Law Firm, represents murder victim Shanann Watts‘ parents Frank and Sandy Rzucek, CBS Denver reports. The law firm shared new details about the murder with Dr. Phil in an exclusive interview.
According to lawyer Thomas Grant, Chris Watts confessed new details to investigators after finding faith in prison. Watts spoke for hours with police on Feb. 18 from a prison in Wisconsin.
“He is claiming that he is remorseful, and he has found God,” Grant told Dr. Phil.
Lawyers confirmed Sandy Rzucek was not given access to the audio recording in advance, but was briefed on the discussion by law enforcement. Rzucek wished to share the information with the public, prior to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation releasing the redacted audio recording on Thursday.The Rzuceks hoped sharing the story would help clear their daughter’s name, after some believed Chris Watts’ original story that she killed the children.
Chris Watts had just strangled his wife Shan’ann and was wrapping her in a sheet to dispose of her body when their daughter Bella walked into the room. “What are you doing with mommy?” the 4-year-old asked her father. As Watts began to wrap her body up in a sheet, Bella walked in and asked about her mother, Lambert said.
“She’s four, what we’ve been told she’s quite smart — was quite smart — and knew something likely was up. And what he said was that, ‘Mommy is sick, we need to take her to the hospital to make her better,'” Lambert said.
A spokeswoman from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation [Susan Medina] tells PEOPLE the office plans to release more information on the case Thursday, adding that the office was taken by surprise by the Dr. Phil interview.
Chris Watts murdered his elder daughter after she witnessed him killing her mother according to an interview that will air Tuesday on The Dr Phil Show. Steven Lambert, the lawyer who is representing the family of Shanann Watts in their wrongful death lawsuit, claims that his clients were informed of just how Watts carried out the brutal murders.
It started with Shanann threatening to keep their children from him after she learned of his affair, and ended with the mom and both daughters dead. Bella reportedly spent her final moments begging her father to spare her life.
‘The night in question Shanann came home. She and Chris had got into a fight. They made up. They were getting along really well,’ Lambert tells Dr Phil in a clip obtained by DailyMail.com. ‘Later on, they got into a fight again. In that fight he essentially confessed to having an affair, that he wanted a divorce. That it was pretty much over between them, and she had said something to the effect of, “well you’re not going to see the kids again.”‘
Lambert then adds: ‘As a consequence of that conversation he strangled her to death.’ The clip ends with Lambert revealing: ‘Bella walked in and asked what are you doing to mommy.’ The interview was conducted at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where Watts was transferred back in December. It is unclear however if he is still there, or if he may have leveraged his interview with authorities to be moved to another facility.
Authorities do not believe that Watts ever gave a factual account of what happened the night of the murders. The release last week of doorbell footage that showed Shanann arriving home on the night she was murdered also suggests that the Weld County District Attorney may have come across new video evidence.
[This last sentence is patently incorrect. Law enforcement had the doorbell footage by as early as November 2018, although curiously the exact date when the footage was viewed is not provided].
I’m at the Teller County courthouse where at 8:30 #PatrickFrazee will be back in court for a motions hearing. I’ll be live tweeting from the courtroom. @KKTV11News
3. Michael Jackson – Child Molester or just plain Whacko?
The controversial Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland premiered on @HBO. It chronicled the relationships the singer had with Wade Robson and James Safechuck. Both men claim that Jackson sexually abused them as children. https://t.co/UwIhdFvRdN
Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California is back on the market for $31m, a steep cut from the $100m asking price four years ago. The dramatic price cut for the iconic property is partly due to years of droughtin the region that affected the real estate market, Kyle Forsyth, one of the listing agents, told US media.Jackson reportedly paid $19.5m for the property in the 1980s but a real estate investment firm bought it in 2008 for $22.5m after the singer defaulted on a loan.
His ranch was raided in 2003 as part of a child molestation case against him and police at the time seized a large collection of pornography and images of nude children.
Once Trump is impeached, we as a community need to impeach the idiots who defended him daily for over two years. After lying on a daily basis on national and international television, and in spite of his lies and deceits receiving national attention and consistent analysis in the media, Trump’s supporters nevertheless continued to actively defend him. This defense is indefensible.
I would like to see the Trump supporters who are active in true crime put up their hands and admit to enabling a serial liar and deceiver, while simultaneously campaigning against injustice. I’d like to see those supporters do the one thing Trump can’t, and won’t. Admit your mistake and apologize.
Say:
“I made a mistake.”
Will they?
Will you?
I won’t hold my breath.
For the rest, this is the TCRS take of Trump [published in July 2017].
According to these numbers, human beings are about 10 times more poisonous than poisonous snakes. https://t.co/jfFMHAsPeN
February 28th, 2019
1. Weld County to release “2nd Chris Watts Confession” on March 7th – Greeley Tribune On Feb. 18, an interview took place between Watts and investigators with CBI, FBI, and the Frederick Police Department. Thursday’s release does not say where the interview took place, nor does it provide specific details about the interview. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation possesses documentation, including a written report and audio file from its interview with Watts. The information will be released to the public March 7. Although he pleaded guilty, Watts never disclosed how or why he carried out the murders. Sources close to the investigation say Watts has finally confessed those details. Chris Watts tells investigators more details about the murders of his wife, two daughters – Denver Channel Chris Watts provides new details on murders: Officials – ABC Chris Watts’ father, Ronnie Watts, said his son did not tell him the details about the conversation, but Ronnie Watts told ABC News Thursday, “In my heart I know he didn’t kill those girls.” Ronnie Watts said his son calls him every night and “knows the Bible inside and out.” “It’s over and done with,” Ronnie Watts said of the case. “I am confused why they [the investigators] went out there in the first place.”
2. What happened when Otto Warmbier was detained in North Korea?
Investigators have also found that a neighbor’s surveillance camera captured someone leaving Paul Caneiro’s home at about 2 a.m. on Nov. 20 and returning about two hours later, according to the affidavit. In that time, neighbors of Keith and Jennifer reported hearing gunshots.
Paul Caneiro had disconnected his own surveillance cameras at about 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, according to the affidavit. He told police that he may have disconnected the cameras because he thought they were causing the WiFi to run slowly, but investigators discovered that the cameras were hardwired, and did not run on WiFi.
3. Geologists have finally found exactly where some Stonehenge rocks came from, debunking old research – CNN “It remains one of the most remarkable instances of long-distance movement of megaliths in the ancient world, yet was curiously under-studied,” Pollard said. “I’m sure we’ll be back.”
4. Meet the Woman Living in Boulder’s Notorious JonBenét Ramsey House – Westword “This is all speculative, but based on the feelings we got from being there, we never felt the Ramseys were involved” in JonBenét’s death. “My husband is a marriage-and-family therapist, so we understand a little about dysfunctional families. And if that stuff had been going on behind the scenes, I don’t think we would have felt that way in the home.”
At 27 minutes, the Judge touches on #Rohde's defining identity trait – he's a salesman. That's what he tried to sell [aka bullshit] to the court – he pitched the spiel of a suicide. Sentenced to 20 years in prison, including for obstruction of justice. https://t.co/8qADLyRW36
February 26th, 2019
1. When a body is burned, cadaver dogs can no longer be used. So how does one find charred remains in a landfill? The same way dinosaur hunters and archaeologists look for fossils and buried treasures – by meticulous, systematic searching. How investigators will search a landfill for Kelsey Berreth’s remains – CNN It may sound like an impossible task: searching a quarter-acre of a landfill for charred, decomposed human remains three months after a person was last seen alive. But searchers are hopeful that they will find the remains of Kelsey Berreth and any other evidence that could shed light on her death. Berreth vanished on November 22 from where she lived near Woodland Park, Colorado. Patrick Frazee, her fiancé and the father of their daughter, is accused of murdering her and tampering with her body. A woman cooperating with law enforcement shared information that helped lead investigators to the Midway Landfill in Fountain, Colorado. Searchers will begin sifting through landfill detritus there on Tuesday and continue for at least 35 days until they make it through the area. Beginning Tuesday, Woodland Park detectives and other law enforcement officials will search through an area of 686,805 cubic yards, the department said in a statement. Ten searchers are expected to work eight hours a day for 35 days to make it through the primary target area, which measures 135′ by 32′ and nine inches deep. The entire search area is 250′ by 125′ and 25 feet deep. The estimated time frame could change based on their progress, Woodland Park Police Commander Chris Adams said. An excavator will remove the trash to another location and lay it out in lines so that searchers can sift through the material, Adams said. “It’s a slow, methodical search. We don’t want to miss anything. I think we owe it to Kelsey and her family to — to be as thorough as we can,” Adams said. The process resembles the procedure that forensic anthropologists use to search areas. Authorities begin landfill search for Kelsey Berreth’s remains – kktv.com
2. The video below talks about Chris Watts’ parents offering their son clemency in court. I believe it’s one of the reasons Watts committed the crimes and believed he’d get away with it, because he knew his parents would love him [and forgive, but most important, believe him] no matter what. On the night of August 16th, at around 20:00, Ronnie was telling his son he loved him, rubbing his back and embracing him, while the police were still searching for the the three bodies Watts had gotten rid of. If this doesn’t make a father angry, or doubtful, or hesitant in his love for his son, what would?
In the Oscar Pistorius trial the parents of murdered Reeva Steenkamp also forgave Oscar almost immediately. This is different because it’s the parents of the victim forgiving the killer. They said they didn’t wish to hold a grudge and were doing it out of their devotion to God. The problem with these public declarations is the public and the court is watching as well. If the family of the murder victim is so forgiving, who is the court to disagree [or so the thinking goes]. Oscar initially got off with a very light sentence.
In the Van Breda axe murder trial, many of his family members came forward to say they don’t believe he did this, and if they did they forgive him etc. There is something very distasteful about this. Would the murder victims be so forgiving? Should the court be so forgiving?
One aspect I don’t agree 100% with in the clip below is the selective way of blaming Cindy Watts for what she did or didn’t do [Shan’ann’s behavior towards her is regarded as completely irrelevant].
When Shan’ann went on Facebook and slandered her mother-in-law, a lot of what she was pissed off at wasn’t the nut stuff, it was Cindy saying “she needs to be tough, and to learn a lesson from that [not being given nuts]”. This was what infuriated Shan’ann the most – being undermined and overruled. And yet a lot of that is what was happening behind closed doors between Shan’ann and her husband.
For any marriage to work, it requires two people making an effort and acting right, not just one. True crime isn’t about one aggrieved party, it’s about the dynamics in the marriage that led to the divorce [the crime]. To argue that a breakdown came only from one side isn’t an accurate picture of how the world, or society works.
3. Yesterday one of my books got “Review Bombed” by a toxic fan from this site. This is part of the advent of social media – organized dissent. As a result, I won’t be posting any further content on CrimeRocket today, and I’m currently re-evaluating continuing with the Watts coverage beyond the end of this month [February]. Star Wars 9 Is Already Getting Review Bombed On Rotten Tomatoes – ScreenRant Star Wars 9 doesn’t come out for ten more months, but commenters are already review bombing the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. With Star Wars 9 still months away from hitting theaters, toxic fans are already at it again on the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page, attempting to torpedo the film’s “want to see” rating by posting negative comments. Of course, none of the commenters in question have seen the movie, and Rotten Tomatoes has not as yet calculated an actual audience score. Many of the comments actually focus on lingering negativity over The Last Jedi, which was itself subjected to an organized campaign of Rotten Tomatoes trolling in an effort to hurt its score. Despite the campaign, The Last Jedi still went on to gross $1.3 billion at the global box office. Captain Marvel ‘review bombed’: Rotten Tomatoes just took MAJOR action against trolls – The Express A group of so-called ‘Marvel fans’, all white male, had taken to the site’s audience reviews section to blast the movie; taking offence to Brie Larson’s observation that almost all journalists she was encountering at film junkets were white males. When she said she wanted to help women and writers of color to get into those junkets, the trolls came out in force – claiming she was “anti white men” and that she “clearly doesn’t want me to see the movie”. It was, of course, all completely over-the-top – and Captain Marvel isn’t the first movie to suffer a “review-bombing” on Rotten Tomatoes. Last year’s Black Panther and 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi – also perceived to be relatively progressive movies – suffered similarly. Captain Marvel’s audience anticipation score had plummeted down to a little over 20% at one point, but Rotten Tomatoes have now taken action.
February 25th, 2019
1. Chris Watts playing with Bella and Ceecee.
Amaral calls David Payne the biggest enigma of #McCann story, then ventures into Gaspar, pedophile theory etc. which I believe is hogwash. pic.twitter.com/ovUuhEh5Iu
February 21st, 2019
1. Video shows Shan’ann Watts shortly before death – CNN Within hours — possibly even minutes — Shan’ann was slain, authorities have said. Watts was sentenced to life in prison in November. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke says his office continues to receive daily phone calls, emails and letters containing everything from conspiracy theories to suggestions on follow-up investigations. “This has certainly permeated the conscience of a big section of the public and we continue to get correspondence on a daily basis,” Rourke says. Chris Watts: New footage shows pregnant wife shortly before husband killed her – The Mirror The new footage was obtained by HLN through an open records request to the Weld County District Attorney’s Office. The video had not been previously released by prosecutors.
2. Justice Department preparing for Mueller report as early as next week – CNN
On Nov. 22 around 4:30 p.m., Frazee called Kenney and told her, “You need to get here now. You’ve got a mess to clean up,” Slater said. “We lived such separate lives for so long,” Frazee told police during the recorded call. He never called police to report her missing for the 10 days between Thanksgiving and when he talked with police, Adams said after the recording ended. Tests confirmed that Berreth’s blood was found on the toilet, bathtub, trash can, parts of the floor and wall, vanity area, bathroom door hinges and electrical outlet. Slater said this evidence lead them to conclude she may have been killed in the bathroom. A bath mat was missing from the room. In addition, a cadaver dog at the home alerted authorities to the back of Berreth’s car at her apartment complex. An arraignment was set for April 8 at 8:30 a.m., with the judge giving Frazee’s defense attorneys time to go through what they said were more than 3,300 pages of discovery evidence in the case. The judge also ruled that the arrest affidavit for Frazee would be unsealed following Tuesday’s hearing — likely on Wednesday morning.
When Kenney entered Berreth’s townhome in late November, blood was splattered on the walls, floor and children’s toys, said Agent Greg Slater. Kenney spent three to four hours cleaning, bleaching the walls and floors, removing the curtains and couch pillows and hunting for a tooth in the air duct vent that Berreth’s fiance and alleged killer told her to find, Slater said. Frazee allegedly took matters into his own hands, blindfolding Berreth with a sweater and bludgeoning her with a baseball bat. During the two months before the murder, suspected killer Patrick Frazee allegedly had urged Kenney three times to kill Berreth — once by drugging her macchiato as a way to “get rid of her” and two other times with an aluminum bat and a metal rod, Slater said. Cellphone records from the day of Berreth’s disappearance showed that Frazee called his mother, Sheila, about 4:24 p.m, Slater said. His phone connected to the tower that services Berreth’s house. At 4:37 p.m., Frazee called an Idaho number belonging to Kenney — also in the vicinity of Berreth’s home — and received a return call from that number a few minutes later. Cmdr. Chris Adams told the court that the day after Berreth went missing, her phone and Frazee’s phone were “hitting off” the tower that services Frazee’s Florissant home.Kenney said she believed the couple’s daughter was in danger under Kelsey Berreth’s care and that she “couldn’t live with herself if something happened” to the child.
4. Proposed testosterone limit ’flawed’ and ‘hurtful’, say Caster Semenya’s lawyers – Guardian Caster Semenya’s lawyers have hit back at the IAAF on day two of their hearing at the court of arbitration for sport, claiming the world governing body’s proposed testosterone limit for women is “flawed” and “hurtful”. The two-time Olympic 800 metres champion is challenging the IAAF’s revised eligibility rules for female athletes at the Lausanne-based tribunal in a landmark case for intersex and transgender women in all sports.
February 19th, 2019
1. Trauma/Cadaver dog alerts in basement
NEW: explosive info as DA Dan May states that Patrick Frazee's mom, Sheila, saw the "burning of the black tote' implying #KelseyBerreth 's body was burned after she was murdered and that the body was in tote. Judge will decide whether or not Sheila Frazee will testify after lunch
investigators did luminol tests 12/6 on #KelseyBerreth 's apartment and found kelsey's blood DNA profile all over the bathroom including on the toilet, trash can, floor, wall and door hinges. Pros – is it fair to say Kelsey met with foul play? Slater – yes. #patrickfrazee
CBI: Krystal told investigators she bought the coffee at Starbucks. Went to Berreth's home with it. Said she posed as a neighbor with a fake name and even gave Berreth the coffee. Krystal said she did *not poison it #9news
Frazee suggested Kenney taint a caramel macchiato from Starbucks with ambien or other narcotics to kill Kelsey Berreth. Kenney said she carried some of those drugs as a nurse. @KOAA#KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee#KrystalKenney
We are still in the courtroom. DA is pleading for Sheila Frazee’s testimony because he believes it will help the case. Sheila’s Attorney is fighting the plea. @KKTV11News
Kenney went so far as to buy a caramel macchiato at the Starbucks inside the Woodland Park Walmart Sept. 23 and pose as a neighbor thanking Berreth for corralling her dogs that had gotten loose. Berreth told Kenney, who used a bogus name, that she had not helped with the dogs but accepted the unlaced drink anyway. Slater said Frazee was angry when he learned the coffee hadn’t been tainted. Kenney also told Slater that Frazee claimed Berreth was a “terrible mother” who was physically abusive toward their daughter and used drugs and alcohol. Frazee also allegedly told his mother to lie about Berreth in a campaign to paint her as a bad mother,said 4th Judicial District Attorney Dan May. May also said Shiela witnessed the burning of evidence in the killing. The testimony framed Kenney as a key figure in the investigation.She had previously accepted a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Frazee. Cellphone records from the day of Berreth’s disappearance detailed by Slater showed that Frazee called his mother, Shiela, about 4:24 p.m. His phone connected to the tower that service’s Berreth’s house. At 4:37 p.m., Frazee called an Idaho number belonging to Kenney — also in the vicinity of Berreth’s home — and received a return call from that number a few minutes later. Cmdr. Chris Adams, the prosecution’s first witness, told the court that the day after Berreth went missing, her and Frazee’s phones were “hitting off” the tower that services Frazee’s Florissant home. Kenney was seen on surveillance video Nov. 24 at a Conoco in Florissant. Also captured in the video at the same time was Frazee filling up a 5-gallon jug of gasoline. On Nov. 25, Kenney, 32, and Berreth’s phones simultaneously pinged in Grand Junction. That same day, Berreth’s supervisor got a text from her saying she wouldn’t be at work and was going to visit her grandmother, Slater said. Kelsey’s mother, Cheryl, told Colorado Bureau of Investigations Agent Gregg Slater that Kelsey never mentioned the trip. Cheryl also told Slater, the prosecution’s second witness Tuesday, that she got a text from Berreth’s phone Nov. 24saying she’d call the next day. That call never came, said Slater.Sean Frazee, Patrick’s brother and a Colorado Springs police officer, dropped by Patrick’s house at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 22, Adams said. Patrick was not home at the time, but when Sean arrived “a little later,” Patrick was there with his and Berreth’s 1-year-old daughter. Nothing was out of the ordinary, said Adams.Adams added that Patrick and Sean are estranged. Berreth’s body has not been located. During Tuesday’s cross examination, Adams said on Dec. 4 a cadaver dog hit on a location on the ground next to a car parked in front of Berreth’s house.It is the only location on which a dog has indicated. Family members reported finding blood when they went to Berreth’s house Dec. 6, Adams said.Adams also described a Dec. 2 recorded call between Frazee and an officer to the court. Frazee said to the officer that Berreth told him she wanted to end their relationship. She wanted “space,” he told police. “We’d figure out custody arrangements from there.” In 2017, Frazee took Berreth’s gun, said Slater. The couple was arguing about financeswhen Berreth said, “Maybe I would be better off dead” and pointed the gun at her head. Frazee’s mother was called by prosecutors to the stand Tuesday prior to Adams and Slater’s testimony. A judge ruled in favor of her attorney’s representation that she would invoke the 5th Amendment at the start of the hearing. He will rule again after a lunch break. Before Tuesday, the only possible motive for the presumed killing was found in an amended complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in the wrongful-death lawsuit brought by Berreth’s family against Frazee. In it, they claim Frazee, who had the keys to Berreth’s townhome, demanded full custody of their daughter and killed her when she refused. The case, which has attracted a national spotlight, has also led to a custody battle over the couple’s daughter pitting Berreth’s parents against Frazee’s mother. A judge has granted temporary custody to Berreth’s parents.
Agent Slater says Lee told him she had a THIRD chance to “get rid of Kelsey” this time with a bat. Krystal came back a week after Oct 15th. Waited for Kelsey outside her home with a bat. @KKTV11News
Kenney brought gloves, a hair net, two trash bags, bleach, a white body suit (to keep things off her person) and booties (shoe covers). She brought those supplies from home, Slater says, because she had them from painting her home. @KOAA#KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee
Krystal told Slater some of Kaylee’s toys were covered with blood and #PatrickFrazee told her to look for a tooth near an air duct. Krystal began to clean up. @KKTV11News
Going room by room. In the living room, Frazee told Kenney to grab a sweater, look for a tooth in a vent & clean up Kaylee’s toys covered in blood. @KOAA#KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee#KrystalKenney
Court testimony from CBI agent: Krystal Lee says she went into #KelseyBerreth ‘s condo and “it was horrific.” There was blood everywhere. She said Frazee had instructed her to clean it up.
Courtroom testimony from CBI agent: Krystal Lee says Frazee told her that he blindfolded #kelseyberreth with a sweater for a guessing game, then hit her with a bat. @KDVR
Slater: Krystal says the black tote was used to carry #kelseyberreth's body. #PatrickFrazee had it in the back of his truck. He had Thanksgiving dinner with his family after killing her.
Slater: Frazee put #kelseyberreth's body on a stack of hay in a barn. #PatrickFrazee told Krystal that Kaylee was in another room sitting on a chair during the murder.
Slater: Krystal did not see #KelseyBerreth in the tote but could see a lump. #PatrickFrazee said in the tote was Kelsey's body and the bat used to beat her.
Kenney says Frazee had Thanksgiving dinner with his family and then took black tote with Kelsey's body in it out to Nash Ranch in Fremont County and put it on top of a stack of hay. #PatrickFrazee#KelseyBerreth#KrystalKenney
With #KelseyBerreth’s body in Toyota Tacoma, they drive to #PatrickFrazee’s property. There, he used gasoline and oil to burn tote containing #KelseyBerreth’s body and baseball bat that killed her. @csgazette
BREAKING: Slater: #PatrickFrazee put Kelsey’s body back in his truck went back to his property. Put the tote in and put her in a trough. He got wood and set Kelsey’s remains on fire. @KKTV11News
She threw the keys (presumably to Berreth’s townhome) into a gorge in Gooding, Idaho. Kenney told investigators about her route back to Twin Falls. It matches the phone records. She then burned Kelsey’s phone & a burner phone in her yard. @KOAA#KelseyBerreth#KrystalKenney
Slater says along with the body, #PatrickFrazee and Krystal Lee burned the bat used to kill #KelseyBerreth and the trash bags from the crime scene @KKTV11News
Krystal was instructed to text Frazee from #KelseyBerreth's phone saying, "Do you even love me anymore." She was also instructed to text Doss Aviation. #PatrickFrazee
The murder, according to Kenney (through Frazee), happened in a back office/second bedroom, Slater said. When Kenney went back to Frazee’s home, Slater says Frazee gave Kenney the cell phone. Kenney took Berreth’s purse & took it. @KOAA#KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee
#PatrickFrazee wanted to make it look like #KelseyBerreth went off and that's why he asked Krystal to take the gun. Slater says he wanted it to look like she had gone off and killed herself.
The gun is coming up in conversation now. The gun was recovered from Mark Pierson. The gun was proven to belong to #KelseyBerreth. Pierson told investigators the gun came from Krystal. #PatrickFrazee
THREE TIMES: Idaho nurse Krystal Lee Kenney took steps to carry out murder of #KelseyBerreth before changing her mind and refusing to go through with it; now claims #PatrickFrazee killed Berreth himself https://t.co/2H1pADbvJ4
According to Krystal #PatrickFrazee picked up #KelseyBerreth's burnt remains and told Krystal he'd either dump them in the river or the dump. Which could be why we've heard of investigators in contact with Waste Management facilities.
#KelseyBerreth is dead because #KrystalKenney couldn’t be bothered with going to the police after 3 separate solicitation attempts by #PatrickFrazee. Three different occasions she traveled to CO to help. She’s just as much of a piece of shit as he is.
4. A mother’s love: Rohde’s mom pleads for him – TimesLive Be lenient for the children’s sake, Rohde’s mom begs judge – iol Brenda – a shareholder in Lew Geffen Sotheby’s – and two of Jason’s friends gave witness to his character before his sentencing. Rohde, a former Lew Geffen Sotheby’s International chief executive, was found guilty of murdering his wife, Susan Rohde, and obstructing the ends of justice by staging her suicide. Susan’s body was found in a locked bathroom off a room she shared with Rohde at the Spier Wine Estate Hotel, in Stellenbosch, on July 24, 2016. State advocate Louis van Niekerk put it to Brenda that testifying about her son’s character put her “in a terrible position as a mother”. He also suggested that there was an element of bias, to which Brenda replied: “I have just stated the facts. I am here to tell the truth and support my son.”
#Rohde Brenda: My husband and I came to a mutual agreement to separate and then divorce. He settled in JHB and I went to my parents, who helped me with Jason as a toddler. Unfortunately my husband completely disappeared. @TeamNews24
He further told the court that Rohde was very intelligent and a very successful businessman and he (Livingstone) had never observed any signs of violence in Rohde in the years he had known him as a friend. State advocate Louis van Niekerk told the court that the picture that the defense witness was projecting was completely different compared to what the court had found in Rohde’s character. “The court made some very harsh findings on his actions and also pertaining to his character related to the facts before the court. You haven’t read the judgment but I’m not going to take you back there. But it completely differs from the picture that you project here for us today compared to what the court said,” said Van Niekerk.
IAAF president Sebastian Coe, arriving at the court, said: “Today is a very, very important day. “The regulations that we are introducing are there to protect the sanctity of fair and open competition.” The chief advocate for Athletics South Africa, Norman Arendse, said Semenya would give evidence. “The whole week is going to be important. Obviously the evidence will be evaluated and assessed at the end of the process this week. So today this is the start,” he told reporters. The issue is highly emotive.When British newspaper The Times reported last week that the IAAF would argue that Semenya should be classified as a biological male – a claim later denied by the IAAF – she hit back, saying she was “unquestionably a woman”. In response to the report, the IAAF – stressing it was referring in general terms, not to Semenya in particular – denied it intended to classify any DSD athlete as male. But in a statement, it added: “If a DSD athlete has testes and male levels of testosterone, they get the same increases in bone and muscle size and strength and increases in haemoglobin that a male gets when they go through puberty, which is what gives men such a performance advantage over women. “Therefore, to preserve fair competition in the female category, it is necessary to require DSD athletes to reduce their testosterone down to female levels before they compete at international level.” Semenya is not the only athlete potentially affected – the silver and bronze medallists in the Rio Olympics 800m, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Kenya’s Margaret Wambui, have also faced questions about their testosterone levels. But it is Semenya, who also won Olympic gold in 2012 and has three world titles to her name, who has led opposition to the proposed rules. Matthieu Reeb, CAS Secretary General, said the case was highly unusual. “It is unusual and unprecedented because we never had a such a case at CAS,” he said. “What is going to happen I am not able to say, but it is going to be important for sure.” South Africa’s sports minister Tokozile Xasa argues that the rules are “discriminatory”.
February 17th, 2019
1. Armchair Detective is at it again.
This time a post-it is being conflated as metadata “proving” Watts was “secretly” filing for divorce on August 24th in Weld County family court. Does Armchair Detective identify where he found the scrap of paper in the Discovery Documents [it’s on page 169].
This conspiracy theory is specific and thus easy to disprove.
August 24th was the date of their court appearance because they were being sued by the Wyndham Hill Homeowner’s Association. The original civil claim was filed on July 12th against the couple to be heard in the Weld County District Court.
There’s also this from the Coloradoan:
The local court’s own procedures describe a protocol of 30 calendar days allowed to pay fines, and after 45 days of non-payment a delinquency notice is issued.
So an appearance roughly six weeks after the docket was opened fits with the protocols for delinquent payments on fines.
The delinquency aspect with Wyndham Hill makes sense given they were also behind on their previous three mortgage payments. They’d also received a letter from Chase Bank alerting them to their delinquent home loan. The monthly mortgage payment was $2700. At the time of the murders Watts had $2000 in his Chase check account, and $1500 in his USAA checking account. All credit cards were maxed out.
In other words, there is far more documented, timeline and procedural evidence proving the civil claim than a divorce. That’s not to say the couple hadn’t spoken about divorce, just that there is no evidence either of them had instituted any kind of formal process against one another. That this was in the offing over that final weekend, naturally, there can be no doubt.
So the overall premise of the Secret Divorce Conspiracy is catchy – that Watts secretly filed for divorce. But it misses the point. If Shan’ann didn’t know about it until the day of her death then he hadn’t actually filed for divorce. And the murders occurred not because he did file for divorce, but because he didn’t, told Kessinger he had but somehow felt he couldn’t.
Even in his interrogation/confession with the FBI, Watts said he told Shan’ann he wanted to separate, not that he wanted a divorce.
Moreover the backwards slanting print-style handwriting on the post-it [similar to the writing on the other two yellow post-its] appears to be from Frederick PD Officer Patricia Cochran’s notes, not a note or diary entry made by Watts himself.
The format of the Discovery Documents with regard to the Supplemental Reports, is that the cover sheet provides a date, time, location and typed narrative, signed off by the officer assigned to a particular task, along with attachments of all of their written notes and other digital data [bodycam footage, audio recordings] where applicable.
2. Possible motive for missing Colorado mom’s murder surfaces for the 1st time in wrongful death lawsuit – ABC
February 16th, 2019
1. Chris Watts and Steven Avery Interviews Compared
“(#ChrisWatts is likely) making 10 cents an hour stamping license plates," an attorney for Shanann Watts' parents said. "He's spending 23 hours a day in a cell, sitting there. He has the next 30 years to think of what he’s done.”https://t.co/9X0fkmY99H
February 13th, 2019
1. Christopher Watts not fighting wrongful death lawsuit filed by Shanann Watts’s family after murder convictions – Daily Camera Watts has not hired an attorney in the case and has not filed a single document in the suit since it was filed, court records show. The Rzuceks filed a motion for default judgment on Monday, court records show. A default judgment can be awarded if the defendant doesn’t respond to a suit, triggering an automatic win for the plaintiffs. “He has failed to answer the case against him,” according to Steven Lambert, an attorney with Greeley’s Grant & Hoffman Law Firm, who is representing Shanann’s parents. Lambert said he expects the judge to make a decision on the motion in the next week or two. If the judge finds that Watts is in default, the court will next have a hearing in which a jury decides how much money the Rzuceks should be awarded in damages.Watts likely will appear by telephone for that hearing, Lambert said.
2. Nurse Who Hid Evidence for Accused Killer in Colo. Mom’s Murder Was ‘Very, Very Scared’ He’d Kill Her, Too – People A frightened Kenney had confided to her friend Michelle Stein that she had a role in the coverup, Stein told CBS News. “I will just tell you Krystal was very, very scared,” said Stein. “Krystal’s a very level-headed, kind, fun-loving, happy-go-lucky person. She’s a tough cowgirl. But she was absolutely scared and extremely upset.”
Is that a good reason to help someone cover up a murder?
3. Parents still grieving one year after Parkland school shooting – wptv
12 months, since Parkland Feb. 8, 2019 1,149 young lives lost – Miami Herald The 12-month period starting Feb. 14, 2018, saw nearly 1,200 lives snuffed out. That’s a Parkland every five days, enough victims to fill three ultra-wide Boeing 777s. The true number is certainly higher because no government agency keeps a real-time tally and funding for research is restricted by law…
4. Willem Dafoe Talks Offering a “Whole Different Take” on Vincent van Gogh in ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ – Hollywood Reporter Have you gotten any surprising audience reactions to the movie? Just how it deeply affects people. People think they know about van Gogh, but this gives a whole different take on him.Julian somehow was able to get around this kind of cartoon of van Gogh as the tortured loser artist who didn’t sell a painting. He was able to tap into the joyous aspect of making the paintings, without going against the information we have. He was really able to tap into the joy this man must have felt in his prolific — troubled but prolific — years of almost a painting a day toward the end of his life.
Last night I watched #ateternitysgate featuring Willem Dafoe. After researching and writing about the world's most famous artist I was interested to see the modern take on his life & death. I'll be writing a review and critique on the film – watch this space. #VincentvanGogh
February 12th, 2019
1. I don’t agree with the tone and many of the sentiments in this video, but some of the ideas are worth considering. The video also contains yet another instance of ordinary people labeling other ordinary people implicated or associated with a crime as a “psychopath”. Psychopath and narcissist seem to be the go-to terms these days for anyone you don’t understand or agree with. Probably when today’s teenagers argue, picking up a cue from their parents, that’s what they call each other. It’s juvenile and doesn’t belong in true crime.
https://youtu.be/cemEdTERM9s
2. Making A Murderer: Key Pieces Of Evidence The Show Leaves Out – ScreenRant
It’s instructive that this analysis doesn’t come from the mostly braindead mainstream media, but from a news site dedicated to reviewing movies and tv. It shows just how lazy and uncritical much of the MSM is these days.
A few highlights: Dassey’s Confession Brendan Dassey’s supposed “forced” confession is shown in short clips on Making A Murderer, so viewers never really got to hear all the chilling details that came out of his mouth. The reality is, Brendan’s confession lasted for hours, and new portions of the transcripts have surfaced that are very specific and equally disturbing. Details of these transcripts include how many shots were fired into Halbach’s head, and how the entire murder was premeditated because she “looked good and was pretty nice.” Child Molestation While the Netflix documentary makes Steven Avery out to be a pretty harmless guy, it seems like he might be anything but, especially around children. One particular phone conversation between Brendan Dassey and his mother was cut from the documentary completely. So, what were they trying to keep hidden? According to transcripts of the conversation, Dassey told his mother, “I even told them about Steven touching me,” then mentioned his brothers had been touched by Steven Avery as well. Red Flags While he was in prison, Steven Avery planned the torture and killing of a young woman, and fellow prisoners who served time with Avery before Halbach’s death also claimed that Avery talked about and drew diagrams of a torture chamber he planned to build upon his release. The Appleton Post Crescent also included statements from two women who claimed they were raped by Avery, with an affidavit saying that Avery admitted his guilt to his fiancé.
Purchase TCRS’ take on the Avery case at this link.
4. World’s biggest drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is found guilty on all counts – CNN After the jury left the room, Guzman waved and smiled at his wife, Emma Coronel, a former beauty queen and courtroom regular who smiled back and touched her hand to her heart. “Good, thank you,” she said when asked how she felt after the verdict. Over two and a half months, the jury heard testimony about unspeakable torture and ghastly murders, epic corruption at nearly every level of Mexico’s government, narco-mistresses and naked subterranean escapes, gold-plated AK-47s and monogrammed, diamond-encrusted pistols. El Chapo jury deliberations will stretch into a second week. Here’s why jurors may be taking their time.The prosecution’s case featured 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses. Fourteen of those witnesses — mostly admitted drug traffickers and cartel associates — cooperated with prosecutors in hopes of reducing their own prison sentences. There were also surveillance photos, intercepted phone calls and text messages involving Guzmán, as well as exhibits of blingy firepower and bricks of cocaine that dropped with the force of potato sacks. In contrast, defense attorneys called just one witness and focused on undermining the credibility of cooperating witnesses.
February 11th, 2019
1. Some recent commentary highlighting Watts’ cowardice. Did his weakness as a man play into the heart of why these unspeakable crimes took place?
More conspiracies doing the rounds now in the Chris Watts case. Now it’s that Nichol Kessinger was pregnant with Watts’ child. The idea for this conspiracy seems to have spun up around the Thayers’ recently announcing their second pregnancy on Facebook.
https://youtu.be/K152Ew8IZek
2. Mom allegedly kills son, 2, by bashing him with rock in the veld – News24 The murder shocked residents on social media, with some commenting that conditions were dire in the town…
This illustrates how and why context is important. Happy, harmonious, authentic and cohesive individuals [and communities] are less likely to engage in crime than compromised, fractured, duplicitous and incoherent individuals [and communities]. Wider ranging environmental forces, especially if they are deteriorating, such as financial hardship or illness, can exacerbate the fault lines already present in the human psyche. A pregnancy is a hybrid of internal and external factors that can overwhelm individuals and families if other burdens are already chronic and in play.
February 10th, 2019
1. The horrors of buying a house you can’t afford.
2. In true crime, words – semantics – matter. In criminal trials, words add up ultimately to a sentence which either deprives the defendant of his freedom, or grants it.
In ordinary society, in families and friendships, words also matter. Concentrate today on choosing yours wisely.
“If thoughts corrupt language, language can also corrupt thought.” – George Orwell
February 6th, 2019
1. Did Patrick Frazee “learn” from the Chris Watts case? In other words, is there Criminal Intertextuality at work here?
2. Idaho nurse charged with tampering with physical evidence in Kelsey Berreth murder case
3. Marcia Clark says O.J. Simpson trial made her a ‘depressed person’ as she looks ahead in new show ‘The Fix’ – FoxNews
4. Settlement reached in Rebecca Zahau civil case – CBS A civil case regarding the death of 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau, whose bound and nude body was found hanging from a balcony at a historic Coronado mansion more than seven years ago, was dismissed with prejudice on Wednesday. A jury previously found Adam Shacknai, the brother of Zahau’s boyfriend, liable in her death and awarded her family $5 million, despite a law enforcement ruling that her death was a suicide. The dismissal vacates the jury’s verdict due to a settlement reached between her family and Adam Shacknai’s insurance company, for an undisclosed sum. Following the proceedings, Adam Shacknai spoke outside the courtroom professing his innocence and saying he never touched Rebecca. He also made it clear he did not take part in any settlement talks. He spoke for about 20 minutes to reporters and also talked about the Zahau family’s attorney Keith Greer, the Zahau family, the judge and the jury during his civil trial.
Adam Shacknai’s response when asked “did u kill Rebecca Zahau?” Civil trial is now over. His insurance company and the Zahau family reached a settlement @CBS8 pic.twitter.com/1FwJn1Z8HH
5. Review: ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ has its flaws, but Willem Dafoe is flawless – The National When conversation does occur, it is almost always vital, such as the brief exchanges that manage to show the deep bond between van Gogh and his brother Theo (Rupert Friend), or a heart-wrenching [fictional] dialogue during his incarceration in an asylum where he debates art, God, and eternity with a resident priest (Mads Mikkelsen).
Based on the paperwork filed, police believe Kenney destroyed evidence on Nov. 24. That’s two days after Berreth was last seen publicly. #KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee@KOAA
NEW TODAY: More court documents were made public today in state’s case against Krystal Kenney. Here’s the description of the one count of tampering she faces. The dates include Nov. 24 & 25. #KelseyBerreth#PatrickFrazee@KOAApic.twitter.com/ansXg7fbt1
February 3rd, 2019
This is Shan’ann’s final Facebook video, posted on August 8th.
https://youtu.be/uAKEPGA27LY
If Chris Watts was asked why he did what he did, and he gave an honest answer, it might go something like this…
“He kept grabbing my arm and begging, ‘Don’t kill him. You guys shouldn’t kill him. Please don’t kill him,’” Sandler said, adding that Kardashian was pleading with tears in his eyes.
The turning point in the standoff came when Simpson made it clear that the gun in his hands was not directed at law enforcement— “I would never point anything at you guys,” he could be heard saying — and he finally put the weapon down. The situation grew calmer — and just before 9 p.m., Simpson emerged from the Bronco and was finally arrested.
Like the Chris Watts case, when I found out Oscar Pistorius had shot someone to death – four times – through a closed [locked] door, I thought it was an open and shut case. I paid attention to the headlines, but I wouldn’t say I dropped everything to focus on the case. At that stage I was a professional freelance photojournalist [full-time]. Most of my work involved writing for magazines and occasionally doing shoots for corporates like Mercedes Benz and the Square Kilometer Array.
The day after the murder I wrote this post on Facebook.
Early on there was pushback. “Don’t speculate if you weren’t there.” “It’s not our place to judge.” “Leave it to the lawyers.” “Only God and Oscar know what really happened.”
On the first day Oscar appeared there was pandemonium in court. It was a media circus, and although they didn’t know it then, Oscar himself was the ringmaster.
09:37 – As soon as Oscar Pistorius starts to enter court, photographers start shooting. Magistrate protests. – @karynmaughan. @AlexCrawfordSky tweets that Pistorius is wearing a dark blue suit.
09:48 – Nel: Pistorius shot an unarmed innocent woman…she was unarmed and inside a toilet. Pistorius sobs, his head in his hands– @karynmaughan
09:53 – Nel: “The deceased arrived between 5 and 6pm [with an] overnight bag and cosmetic bag. The deceased was shot three times while [in] the toilet.”
09:55 – Pistorius breaks down in tears in court, Sky News reports.
10:25 – Roux suggests that Pistorius broke toilet door to get to Reeva, to help not harm her.
10:26 – Pistorius breaks down uncontrollably now as his defence suggests he did not know it was Reeva behind [the] bathroom door, tweets @AlexCrawfordSky.
10:27 – Roux: We say it can never, ever be a schedule six. It’s not even a murder.
10:33 – Pistorius blows into his hankie. He’s been crying throughout the hearing.He looks exhausted, says @karynmaughan.
12:15 – Nair: I have received written and oral argument. Nel is relying on objective facts…
12:16 – Pistorius wipes his eyes with a tissue, seems to be trying hard not to sob audibly.His brother leans forward as if to touch him but too far – @Simmoa
12:22 – Pistorius looks up straight to the magistrate as he reads his judgment on the seriousness of the offence, says @AldrinSampear.
12:26 – Nair: At this point in time, I cannot rule out premeditation. For the purposes of bail – we go Schedule 6.
12:27 – Pistorius reacts with more tears then leaves court for another break, tweets @BBCAndrewH.
12:31 – David Smith tweets: “Pistorius family grouped in small circle, weeping, arms around each other. Cameras clicking and filming from every angle.”
12:32 – Pistorius family and friends hold an impromptu prayer meeting after Nair ruling, says Karyn Maughan.
13:48 Pistorius: I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder let alone premeditated murder as I did not intend to kill my girlfriend.
13:50 – Pistorius is leaning forward and sobbing.His brother Carl has his hand on his shoulder, tweets Barry Bateman.
13:51 – Oscar Pistorius: I deny that I committed murder in the strongest point. Even though I don’t have to, I want to deal with these allegations.
13:54 – “Reeva had bought me a present for Valentine’s Day. We were deeply in love.” Oscar sobs.
13:55 – Karyn Maughan tweets “Nair interrupts court: my compassion as a human being doesn’t allow me to continue this.”
13:56 – Magistrate urges Pistorius to compose himself and listen. Says he will give him a few minutes.
13:56 “Nair is going to give him 2 minutes to speak to his family, to regain his composure“, tweets Barry Bateman. 13:57 – Barry Bateman tweets: “Nair tells Oscar he needs to concentrate. We adjourn for a few minutes. Nair asks no photos be taken.”
14:49 – Nel: I will call investigating officer Hilton Botha to reply to Oscar Pistorius statement.
14:55 – [Pistorius] stands, staring straight ahead, eyes narrowed as magistrate gathers his papers. Nair waits for him to leave so cameras can’t [photograph] him.
15:11 – Media behaving like a mob outside court, swarming to get comment. Crushed – @MandyWiener
I remember well tweets coming through exclaiming, as if the Earth was shaking, that “Oscar is crying”, which would result in the entire show shutting down and the court decamping while Oscar – like a deity – recovered himself. The same shitshow would later repeat itself during the criminal trial, a trial Oscar said he didn’t understand why there was even a need for because it was all an accident.
Following the first day of the bail hearing, the prosecutor’s star witness, Detective Hilton Botha, was shortly booted out of the trial. His crime was he’d shot at the tires of a taxi, and since there were several people inside, he faced multiple charges of attempted murder.
It sounded bad, a lot worse than it really was [just like Oscar’s sobbing and retching in court], but the defense won their gambit and Botha’s testimony had been thrown out.
How did I start writing about this particular trial? It didn’t start by focusing on the crime or the criminal, but the victim, and I guess it started for me on Facebook. Since I was a photographer, and since Reeva Steenkamp was a model [sometimes featuring in magazines like FHM and Heat], we were friends on Facebook.
It started by looking on her wall to see her final post [ironically, it was a post to thank another photographer for his work].
Later I would return, and read more about what she said was going on in her life. Reeva’s penultimate post was about gender violence and standing up and speaking out against crime.
As time went by, I waited for Reeva’s story to be told. Each day the headlines featured wall to wall coverage of Oscar, and it was always about Oscar. But I wanted to know about Reeva. Who was she? What was her story? What happened to her?
As I became more curious, I began to go further and further into Reeva’s timeline on Facebook. This curiosity had no agenda. I didn’t intend to write or cover anything, I was simply interested in who the person that had been shot dead had once been. The best answers to my questions, I soon found, were coming from her.
As my knowledge and insight expanded, the media managed to maintain a protracted silence about Reeva.
I guess that’s when my journalistic instincts, and my thirst for justice, kicked in.
My coverage of the Oscar trial started off as a magazine article, and started off not focusing on the man everyone was reporting on breathlessly, but rather the woman he shot. It was about Reeva. And ironically, that magazine article never saw the light of day.
There’s a narrative around that article. It ended up being 12 000 words which I thought could be cut up and printed in 4 parts. I had early interest in South Africa’s largest tabloid magazine, and they assured me they wanted to use the piece, and then they started to drag their feet and make excuses. They said the hype had passed, and suggested holding the article over until Reeva’s birthday in August. When her birthday came they passed on the article. They did, however, cover many of the aspects mentioned in the article bit by bit [including a cancer scare, a portentous picture Reeva painted as a child, and a prior incident she’d experienced with her mother when criminals broke into her home. The tabloid told me they covered this independently after I sent them the research.
While the article on Reeva was in magazine limbo for months, I went on with other work but I started to pay more attention to Oscar. I wasn’t really interested in him so much as a person, I simply wasn’t starstruck by him at all, and as a sportsman myself, I didn’t think his claim to fame [a double amputee competing against able-bodied athletes] was particularly authentic.
So when I wrote about Oscar for the first time in early March 2013 [two weeks after the murder], it was for a financial magazine, and it had to do with Oscar’s spectacular failure to deliver as a brand ambassador. Early on I recognized him not as a hero but as a performer. An actor. A showman. And a failed one at that.
I believe I was also one of the first to recognize Oscar’s emotional behavior in court [and later on television] as a sly attempt and a ploy to influence the outcome. In court, his tone of voice was often high-pitched when he testified, in keeping with his ridiculous claim that the victim [Reeva] had never screamed, and that what five different neighbors heard wasn’t her screaming in terror, but him screaming in terror [because he’d mistaken her for a burglar].
If it was a ploy, it worked. Oscar’s play for sympathy initially got him off the murder charge. The female judge, who had something of a disability herself, found Oscar guilty of culpable homicide [manslaughter] and sentenced him to five years in jail [effectively 10 months].
It was at this moment, when the first trial was complete, that I realized my sense of mission in true crime. In true crime there is seldom an open-and-shut case, and this is especially rare in high-profile true crime. The Chris Watts case is a very rare exception of a case that was wrapped up in super quick time, and a nice bow tied around it.
In true crime, I’ve learnt, things are seldom what they seem – not only the criminals themselves, but the crime scene, the appearance of things including and especially in the media, and the way things are spun in court [by both counsels].
In the end my magazine article on Reeva Steenkamp was recycled from 12 000 words down to just 2000, and published in Marie Claire magazine.
As crazy as this sounds, about a year after writing the original 12 000 word piece, I sent an email to another bestselling author [I won’t say his name]. That email was dated April 14th, 2014, and I still have it. I sent this author, who I’d heard was writing a book on the Oscar trial, all my research and was ready to tip my hat and head off in the sunset back to the world of freelance photojournalism.
In June, I mentioned somewhere on social media that this author [I mentioned his name] was using my work and I was quickly contacted by him by email, rebuked and admonished. I sheepishly apologized, letting him know the offending message was viewed – ultimately – only 38 times.
And then I had a change of heart.
I met with a fellow writer – of crime fiction as it turned out – and told him as a sidenote about the fate of my article on Reeva Steenkamp. He suggested I publish it on Amazon. It wasn’t a route I wanted to go. “So you’re just going to shelve it, put it in a drawer and leave it.” That was what I intended to do. Meanwhile the criminal trial finally got going and the silence on Reeva – from her friends, from the fashion and magazine industry, from journalists and photographers, and even from her on family – continued.
And then I thought, fuck it, I don’t want to be part of that silence. When I published Reeva in her own Words on Amazon on June 6, 2014, I fully expected it to disappear into a digital drawer. But then it didn’t. Instead it sold each day, and for 200 straight days afterwards.
The success of the book along with the message that was going out prompted me to publish other research I’d accumulated but, for various reasons, had been turned down by a slew of newspapers. It didn’t take a lot of work to simply package these articles [written, polished and edited] into a single document. That was published the very next day, and Recidivist Acts too was an immediate success.
The journalist in me recognized that the readership was getting something from me that they weren’t getting anywhere else. I’d simply never considered writing for Amazon the way I wrote for magazine editors.
And so, after the first two “books” were published [neither of which were intended as books, but rather started life as failed print media pitches and submissions], I decided to write what I really had to say about the case. I studied law in my university days, and I’d been keeping an eye on the legal proceedings between ongoing journalism jobs. I published Resurrection before the verdict of the trial came out. Many found this pre-empting vulgar and offensive. It was “too early” they complained, for a book to be out. Meanwhile, others quietly bought it and read it.
I was so effected by Reeva’s story [and still am] that I elected to put her face on every cover, and use the letters R and S [for Reeva Steenkamp] in every title I used.
Resurrection was my first attempt to decipher motive in true crime. Motive was completely missing in the media narrative at that point, and ironically, from the trial narrative as well. The prosecution simply never fielded one, and the judge – rightly – remarked on this. Technically a motive isn’t necessary, it doesn’t have to be proved in a criminal case, just intent. But this was probably the biggest failure of the otherwise savvy prosecutor. If it was a premeditated murder, at least offer an idea why you think it happened.
Since no one was having that conversation, I was.
When I wrote Revelations, I wanted to discuss another issue that had been left out of the court narrative. The timeline of events. The method of the murder. Incredibly, neither counsel had provided the court with a timeline [at that point], and the prosecution was nitpicking on evidence rather than providing a scenario for how the murder actually played out. While the attempt to return several times to key parts of testimony to catch the accused off-balance made sense, they also had the undesired effect of confusing the timeline [and, as it turned out, the judge].
In October I contacted the bestselling author I mentioned earlier and gave him instructions that he no longer had permission to use any of my research. He said this would be possible but problematic, and asked if I also wanted my name removed from his list of acknowledgements. I said I did.
[The author later published a book which amounted to apologia, a bogus sympathy narrative on Oscar written with the approval, and input – it seemed – of Oscar’s family. The author’s way of addressing what Oscar was thinking – his motive – was a cop out, something unknown and unknowable. Ironically that book today has fewer reviews than the research – published as a book – that I’d given to him. Currently my books on the case are also ranked far higher on Amazon than his book].
The South African media, with rare exceptions, mostly ignored my coverage. In one instance, I was invited on a radio show not to have a serious discussion on my research, but as a comedic ploy, where a top detective was invited to poke holes into my amateur research for the amusement of the morning show radio audience. The comedy aspect didn’t quite play out as planned, for the host.
Ironically, we [the celebrity detective and I] ended up agreeing on a vital aspect of the case – that Reeva was shot either while she was on her phone or about to make a call. I brought up this aspect and when the host asked Piet Byleveld to comment, he said it made sense. What I didn’t say is that it’s also possible Reeva had Oscar’s phone in the cubicle that Valentine’s Day morning when she was shot, and that’s the reason he started bashing down the door with the bat, and then reverted to shooting through the door.
Johnson needed 1 hour. Barry Roux now hitting his 1 hour mark. About to make final submission. Praises Judge Masipa. #OscarPistorius
Then I started sitting in on the trial in person, rather than watching it on television. I sat in as an accredited journalist, and reported on the sentencing trial, the appeal and the verdict of the SCA. That’s yours truly [see below] in the red and blue beanie, participating in the media scrum.
I also traveled to meet Reeva’s parents in person, and communicated a few times with her cousin [who also testified at trial].
At one stage, after the Supreme Court of Appeal sent the case back to the judge for a review of sentence, I had a brief meeting with the prosecutor, and we were going to have a witness I’d found and interviewed, testify in aggravation. The prosecutor contacted the witness, warned her of being targeted in the press, and she subsequently decided not to testify.
As the trial dragged on, media interest waned. Finally, when the original fuck up was finally overturned and the Oscar was found guilty of murder [and sentenced to the minimum of 15 years], the media coverage was gone.
I was there on the final court day and no one else was. Not the family of the killer, not the family of the victim. Not even the lawyers. Instead of the large legal teams, a skeletal crew representing them attended. The biggest, most high-profile case in the country’s history ended not with a bang, not with a celebration for the triumph of justice, but a whimper.
I learned valuable lessons during the Oscar trial. I learned how justice isn’t a given even in “open and shut” cases. I learned how dumb and biased the media can be. I saw the powerful impact of PR to set up a bogus narrative while drowning out the victim, and rendering her completely invisible. I realized just how clueless vast swathes of the public can be. Even with bumper to bumper coverage, most people watching the case remained ignorant or misinformed, which makes them easy to manipulate. And they were. Many, like the judge, fell for the performance and lost sight of the obvious, let alone the letter of the law.
I learned how important motive, a timeline, and relationship dynamics are, even – and especially – when no one is talking about these, including the lawyers arguing the case.
Most important, through Reeva, I learned to see beyond the cardboard cutouts, and to see these people as people. People as flesh and blood, admirable at times, beautiful sometimes, but also fallible. People not so different, after all, from you and I.
Through Reeva I saw the way to truly understand true crime is through the interiority of the people involved, and 14 books later, I’ve taken on the mantle of true crime full time. Today I write books for a living. Instead of magazine articles, I write mostly about high-profile cases, but sometimes I depart into other areas, like mountain climbing, art, travel, my late mother, or even fiction.
Since I started writing books five years ago, in mid-2014, I’ve had some success. DOUBT, covering the Madeleine McCann case, went up to #2 on Britain’s competitive true crime bestseller charts in 2017, during the ten year anniversary period of her disappearance.
I’ve also had some of my books reviewed [negatively of course] by the “exonerated” defendants themselves. The international media have paid more attention to my work [you know what they say about a prophet in his own hometown] especially of the JonBenet Ramsey case. Given the massive coverage this colossus of a case garnered in America and worldwide, it was a real test whether I could add anything to that narrative. I think I did.
Las Vegas concert shooter Stephen Paddock may have been seeking a “certain degree of infamy” when he carried out the worst mass shooting in recent US history, but no single or clear motive has been found for the 2017 attack, the FBI said Tuesday.
The conclusion was reached in a report released by the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, which looked into the October 1, 2017 massacre.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said a panel of experts had conducted an analysis of Paddock’s life and behavior leading up to the attack. Paddock acted alone and was not motivated by any ideological or political beliefs, the FBI said.
“There was no single or clear motivating factor behind Paddock’s attack,” the report said. “Throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder,” the FBI said. It said no suicide note or any other communications related to the planning of the attack were found. “However, an important aspect of the attack was Paddock’s desire to die by suicide,” the FBI said.
3 pages? Worst mass shooting in history of USA. FBI releases 3 page report saying nothing. Zero. They have no clue. Sgt Schultz: "I KNOW NOTHING, I SAW NOTHING, I HEARD NOTHING." Biggest pathetic embarrassment in US law enforcement history. https://t.co/Ta2aCDd4lm
NPR colleague @LeilaFadel reports FBI concluded its report on Stephen Paddock & the Vegas shooting & determined he acted alone to plan a mass shooting over the course of a year, but there is still no discernible motive. All investigations now complete. We will never know why.
“Sunflowers” journeyed to 79 exhibitions between the end of World War II and 1973 when the Van Gogh Museum was established. After that, the painting was lent out just six times, traveling as far as Chicago and Tokyo. Its last journey, a trip to London, took place in 2014.
Some of the paints used by van Gogh that have naturally faded or darkened in the last century have also impacted the brightness and coloration of the painting. Over time, the colors will change even more. While there’s little that can be done to reverse the trend, when the painting goes back on display in late February, the museum will reduce the lights shining on the painting down to 50 lux, one-third the amount previously illuminating it…
6. In other news, Chris Watts Conspiracies are now the order of the day…
https://youtu.be/yWNPyLlkkQk
https://youtu.be/_suhdZ79_Tc
January 29th, 2019
1. Drilling Through Discovery is now a #9 Amazon Bestseller.
Hi Nick, I purchased Drilling through descovery last night.. couldn't put it down…I only had 3 hours sleep…I blame you…😁
Madeleine’s twin brother and sister Sean and Amelie, who are both aspiring amateur athletes, will have one special wish as they turn 14 on Friday – for their sister to come home.
A family friend said: “The twins have spent so much of their lives without their big sister but they never forget her and they pray for her. They just want her to be found safe and well after such a long time.”
2. In the mood for some Chris Watts conspiracy theory?
January 24th, 2019
1. When Agent Tammy Lee asks Watts what should happen to the person responsible [if his wife and children were murdered]. Watts’ voice breaks as he answers, “The worst possible thing…”
Elsewhere in the confession he sobs and wails for an extended time. He also fails the polygraph miserably. A psychopath would not show this kind of obvious emotion, and would be far more likely to pass a polygraph. Psychopaths are also skilled at deceiving people in general. They know how to act.
Watts has some social awkwardness issues, and he is something of an oddball, but he’s not even close to a psychopath. Many take comfort that he did what he did because he felt nothing. It’s the opposite. He did what he did because he was overwhelmed with emotions – including for his mistress, and the tangle of their financial mess, among many additional dynamics.
Notice the very long, very demonstrable answer Watts offers when Agent Lee asks him the simplest question: “How did you wake her up?” Also, note the many gestures he makes.
Get the True Crime Rocket Science take on the Amanda Knox case, arguably the most globally talked-out criminal trial in true crime history, at this link.
Ashley Cogburn told CBS News’ Nikki Battiste her friend had a lot going for her: a dream job, a baby and a fiancé. But she said Berreth also often appeared to be upset, and she believes, it had to do with Frazee.
“The moment that I found out that she had been missing, the first words that came out of my mouth were, ‘He did something to her,'” Cogburn said.
Cogburn said she saw red flags in their relationship, including that he was always “mad about something. She couldn’t win … the things that he would say to her were somewhat demeaning … I remember one time in particular she came to me and she was just crying. And Kelsey is this – she’s a tough girl … and I can’t remember specifics, but I just remember gathering, ‘This person is borderline emotionally abusive to you right now.'”
“During the Chris Watts case, it was made public that Chris’ alleged mistress also followed the group, sending screen shots of posts to local, state and federal authorities on the case.”
1. Sent in my one of the members of the Facebook group.
This video is one of many which show just how innocent these little girls were. I also noticed Ceecee’s nappy and underwear. The evidence says she was dressed in a nappy, underwear and nightgown – watching this video shows it must be part of her toilet training, putting on her pull ups nappy but also getting to wear big girl underwear. You also get to observe Ceecee’s care free nature, her bad cough and their strategy to keep her from running out of her room.
Greed, debt and a gambling problem drove a Southern California man to kill his business partner’s family with a sledgehammer and bury their bodies in the desert, prosecutors said Monday.
But the defense said authorities are charging the wrong man and the real culprit is another business partner.
Opening arguments were held in the trial of Charles “Chase” Merritt.
Merritt, 61, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
Sean Daugherty, supervising deputy district attorney for San Bernardino County, told jurors that Merritt wrote checks for more than $21,000 on his partner’s online bookkeeping account after the family was last seen alive in February 2010, the Sun newspaper of San Bernardino reported.
“Greed, and greed’s child, fraud” were the motive, Daugherty argued.
When skeletal remains of the McStays were discovered last month near Victorville, detectives started taking a closer look at people associated with the Fallbrook family of four.
One of those individuals is Charles Ray Merritt, also known as Chase Merritt, a metal worker and former business partner of Joseph McStay.
Merritt, 56, is a hard man to find. CBS News 8 affiliates checked four different addresses and came up empty. We also left telephone messages and emails with Merritt and his associates, but received no response.
Merritt worked for Joseph McStay’s fountain design and manufacturing company in February 2010, when Joseph, his wife Summer, and their two young sons mysteriously went missing from their Fallbrook home.
Days after the McStay bodies were discovered on November 11 by an off-road motorcycle rider in the desert near Victorville, Merritt was interviewed by the online tabloid, Daily Mail, which quoted Merritt as saying:
“I was the last person Joseph saw. He came to Rancho Cucamonga on February 4 to talk to me about a huge business deal we had going on in Saudi Arabia.
We met for an hour-and-a-half for lunch. He was so excited. We had the Saudi Arabian project and a few other things going on. The business had never been so good and we were looking forward to the future. He did nothing to suggest there was anything wrong or untoward.
We both left and went home and I spoke to him on the phone about two or three times on his drive back to Fallbrook, all standard business stuff. The last time I spoke to him was around 6 o’clock.”
Opening statements are set for Monday, Jan. 7, in the death penalty trial of Charles “Chase” Merritt, accused in the 2010 slaying of the McStay family, and one more pretrial hearing Friday, Jan. 4, may decide whether to unseal a search warrant declaration used to collect DNA from Merritt’s brother.
A motion filed by defense attorneys said the DNA swab was taken from Bennett Merritt on Dec. 20, after jurors for the trial had been selected.
Defense attorneys want to know why, and suggest in court documents that prosecutors are turning their attention to Bennett Merritt as “somehow complicit in the McStay murders,” and were pushed by independent defense DNA investigations in the case.
“We want to see what the detective wrote to a judge,” defense attorney Rajan Maline said in a brief phone interview. He said any named source in the warrant declaration can be redacted, “but what did they say in the affidavit? We’re dying to see it.”
Join me on Daily Mail TV today as we investigate the cases of killer dad Chris Watts and accused killer dad Patrick Frazee. What's at the heart of both of these cases? Check your local listings! #ChrisWatts#kelseyberreth
Durst — whose past was detailed in an HBO documentary series — is set to go on trial Sept. 3 at the Airport Branch Courthouse in Los Angeles in connection with the killing of Susan Berman, 55, who was found dead in her home in Benedict Canyon on Christmas Eve 2000.
During a hearing Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham agreed with the prosecution’s contention that jurors should hear evidence about Morris Black’s killing in Galveston, Texas.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told the judge that the 75-year- old defendant “beat a murder in Galveston.”
“… He got away with it. … He’s not going to get away a second time,” the prosecutor said, referring to Berman’s shooting death.
What absolute nonsense. Jayme Closs was found after 3 months. Madeleine McCann has been missing more than 11 years. No comparison. >>> parents take hope from rescue of US teenage girl https://t.co/Zik1c6HYWa#McCann
Durst has been long estranged from his real estate-rich family, which is known for ownership of a series of New York City skyscrapers — including an investment in the World Trade Center. He split with the family when his younger brother was placed in charge of the family business, leading to a drawn-out legal battle.
According to various media reports, Durst ultimately reached a settlement under which the family paid him $60 million to $65 million.
“We went and looked at houses together in Fort Collins,” Bolte claimed, noting that he was about to move from his residence and Watts expressed an interest in moving in with him.
“I was planning on getting a two-bedroom apartment,” he said. “But Chris was like, ‘No, I’m going to be divorced. We need to look at three-bedroom houses and the girls can have a room.”
So Watts was going to go apartment hunting with Bolte, then with Kessinger?
The couple said they spoke to KMVT after their employee received threats and harassment on social media. They said Frazee was arrested four days after they called the FBI.
KMVT says that in the next interview segment, airing Friday, the Rockstahls discuss what was said in their conversation with the feds. In an interview slated for Sunday, the couple will share what they were told about Lee’s alleged trip to Colorado that prompted police to swarm Twin Falls, Idaho.
On Facebook, KMVT reporter Kelsey Souto said the Rockstahls believe that Lee was in fear for her life when Frazee allegedly solicited her to kill his fiancée.
After his release, Echols spent years avoiding talking about the spiritual practice that he now admits helped saved his life.
“I was really, really gun-shy. Whenever I’d talk about it, I’d always look over my shoulder to check and see if anyone could hear me,” recalls Echols, who now travels the country teaching “magick” workshops and is busy working on a follow-up book on the subject. “But I eventually realized I had to get over that hurdle—because if you give up the things you love out of fear then you’re not really alive.”
Scotland Yard’s investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from an apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007, aged three, has so far cost £11.75million.
January 9th, 2019
1. Kelsey Berreth’s human remains still missing.
We've received a number of media calls about the human remains located in Aguilar (near Trinidad). While the coroner has not made official identification, CBI agents do not believe the remains are Kelsey Berreth. https://t.co/Bg2M2hhfq7
After watching the video clip above, do you think Investigation Discovery answer or address the question why [which is the title of the clip]? If so, what answer do they provide?
An online register of actions in the case shows that Judge David A. Groner signed an order of dismissal on Wednesday, and that a settlement conference set for March 20 has been canceled, with the notation “case disposed.”
A clerk in Groner’s office on Friday said the order declares that the claims against those producing the documentary “are dismissed with prejudice and without costs or attorney fees. This is a final order and the case is closed.”
After handling many defamation cases for them over the past 20 years, hopefully this is my last defamation case for this fine family. https://t.co/1DMBuSNxyS
In a ruling dated Dec. 10, Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill granted the Boulder department’s motion seeking to quash that subpoena and granted a protective order.
Mulvahill’s ruling noted that the murder case “remains open and has not been completed,” and also states that Boulder is not a party to the ongoing litigation between Burke Ramsey and producers of the controversial documentary.
But the judge also cited the fact that, with dozens of books and movies and television shows having picked at the bones of the beleaguered investigation for more than two decades, there aren’t a lot of secrets left.
Mulvahill’s ruling stated “…there is a tremendous amount of information available in the public domain such that Defendants can obtain the subpoenaed information from other sources or through discovery.”
In a separate filing, court records show that Burke Ramsey’s lawyers in November moved to withdraw their subpoena to the Boulder Police Department and dismiss their action.In a one-line ruling, Mulvahill granted that motion on Nov. 13.
The subpoena to Hunter had targeted a broad range of material, including every document relating to JonBenet’s death that he might have retained since leaving office.
Court records show that subpoenas in recent months also had been served on numerous other players in the Ramsey drama, including onetime Ramsey private investigator Ellis Armistead, former Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy, Boulder’s High Peaks Elementary School — which both Ramsey children attended at the time of JonBenet’s death — as well as Dr. Francesco Beuf, JonBenet’s pediatrician.
Divorced mother-of-two Krystal Lee is being investigated over her role in the mystery of the disappearance of Kelsey Berreth. Lee, 32, is believed to have been having an affair with Patrick Frazee who has been charged with Berreth’s murder even though her body has not been found.
Lee, who lives in Twin Falls, Idaho, has not been formally identified by police as the woman they are investigating, but sources confirm she is the woman involved.
Now DailyMail.com can reveal that that person is Lee, who works as a pre-op nurse at the St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls. She has now been placed on a leave of absence, the hospital confirms.
A friend of Patrick Frazee whose granddaughter was a frequent playmate of the accused killer’s daughter Kaylee shared shocking new details about his relationship with missing mom Kelsey Berreth.
Tamra Freeman told CNN that Frazee and Berreth had split back on New Year’s Day in 2018, just three months after the couple welcomed daughter Kaylee.
That contradicts comments made by Berreth’s aunt suggesting that her niece had broken up with Frazee on November 22, the day she was last seen in public.
3. Police bodycam footage in Chronological order the day Chris Watts’ family were reported missing
Will Chris Watts survive prison?
4. Animated video shows how Robert Durst could have murdered Morris Black in new court filing
3. Jayne Zmijewski, the dog handler in the Chris Watts case, appears in this trailer:
January 3rd, 2019
1. Rocket Science has been somewhat on the fence about Watts’ possible bisexuality. I’ve been unwilling to say he was definitely bisexual, but also unable to rule it out either. From the beginning there’s been smoke, but is there really fire? Like agent Coder, it was difficult to take Bolte seriously in the beginning, but over time, Bolte’s story seems to have some credibility.
Notice how CNN carefully refers to Bolte as Watts’ “alleged” gay lover even now. So they’re not 100% convinced either, yet interested enough to put Bolte on their platform a second time.
The Twin Falls nurse is suspected of ditching Kelsey Berreth’s cellphone in Idaho, sources told ABC News, which is declining to identify the woman until law enforcement releases her name.
The charges indicate authorities believe Mr Frazee tried to persuade another person or multiple people to kill Ms Berreth on at least three occasions between September 1 2018 and November 1, 2018.
Police allege she was slain on or around November 22 — the last day she was seen alive in public — almost three months after Mr Frazee’s first alleged attempt to arrange her murder.
Stephen Longo, an attorney with McDivitt Law Firm, helped explain the charges.
“It suggests to me that he probably asked the same person three times to either help or commit the crime individually,” Longo said. “It’s always possible, based on the three counts, that he asked three separate people.”
“It’s documented somehow, right? Whether it’s email, text message, recorded phone call, something where we have specifics where we can trace the date,” Longo said.
A person could also have supplied that information, he said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors still are not releasing evidence, including the probable cause affidavit to Frazee, citing the ongoing investigation. They did, however, ask the judge to allow consumptive evidence testing. News 5 asked Mark Pfoff, a former detective in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office who worked on more than 50 homicide investigations, what that testing means.
“You’re usually looking at some form of body fluids, whether it’s blood or saliva or something like that,” Pfoff said. Pfoff said the amount of evidence is so small, it’s likely not visible to the eye — meaning testing that evidence once would prevent any follow-up testing moving forward.
Judge Linda Billings-Vela will decide on the motion for consumptive testing, as well as another motion on whether to allow Frazee himself to see the probable cause affidavit, in a Friday motions hearing.
Frazee is due back in court Thursday for a custody hearing. Both Berreth and Frazee’s mothers are vying for custody of the couple’s 1-year-old daughter.
January 2nd
Which shirt was hung on the hanger? An orange shirt, or a white shirt?
Looking at a video from the Watts home search w/ K9 cadaver dogs. both female officers clearly heard a child like laughter from S.W closet. Both verbally acknowledge hearing a kids laughter on video but not written on reports!!😫😫😫 #chriswatts#shanannwatts#wattsmurders 👻
It was Berreth however who had been hesitant to move in with her fiance because he still lived with his mother. She instead decided to get her own home after moving to Colorado from Washington to be with Frazee. In May, Berreth paid $184,900 for a two-bedroom home in Woodland Hills, where she lived with her daughter.
A family member claimed soon after Berreth went missing that she had split with Frazee on the day she was last seen, but that has never been confirmed by investigators. There were a number of details that had puzzled the public in the wake of Berreth’s disappearance, including the fact that she had just baked fresh cinnamon buns before she went missing.
Frazee also failed to report her missing, despite [having] their daughter Kaylee that entire time.
…the murder solicitation charge means that someone else was involved in the crime – but so far Frazee has been the only one who has been charged.
District Attorney Dan May said that to be charged with solicitation, the suspect would have to have done more than just ask someone to commit a murder on their behalf,the Post reported…
The narrative for the solicitation charges indicate Frazee had been trying since Sept. 1 to persuade another person to participate in the killing, and the first-degree murder charge involved an accusation of robbery in connection with the killing.
Thus far, the arrest affidavit, which lays out the facts of the case that are the basis from the charges, has been sealed. Even Frazee and his public defenders have been prevented from seeing it.
As to consumptive testing planned by DA, it's hard to say what evidence is. Only that it's so small testing will destroy it. @csgazette#KelseyBerreth#Frazee
Quick explainer on #Frazee's five felonies. Two are first-degree murder under different theories of crime. One theory alleges Frazee killed #KelseyBerreth with intent and deliberation. Other alleges she died during commission of separate felony. @csgazette
The 59-year-old former Saudi insider turned criticwas strangled before he was cut up into pieces by a team of 15 Saudis sent to Istanbul for the killing, according to Turkish officials, with media reports suggesting the parts were dissolved in acid.
A-Haber said the bags and suitcases were put into a minibus which travelled the short distance from the consulate to a garage at the residence. The men are then seen taking them inside.
Question: Were his body parts in the garbage bags, in the suitcases or both?
The cousin, JoDee Garretson, says Berreth met 31-year-old cattle rancher Patrick Frazee online in early 2016, and moved from Warden, Washington, a few months later to be closer to him. They were ultimately engaged and while they lived in separate homes about 15 miles apart, they shared custody of a 1-year-old daughter, Kaylee.
According to police, Berreth’s employer got a text from her phone on Nov. 25, saying she wouldn’t be at work that week. Frazee also said she texted him that day, but the contents of that text have not been released.
The book also says that the head of the hit squad, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, told Khashoggi when he entered the consulate that he would not be harmed if he cooperated with them.
He asked Khashoggi to send a message [from his cell phone] to his son Salah’s phone in Riyadh, informing him that he was safe in Istanbul and not to worry if he could not be contacted for a while.Khashoggi refused to do so, and in the recording, cited in the book, can be heard saying: “Will you kill me? Will you suffocate me?”
According to the book, Khashoggi maintained his composure when he realised that he would not get out of the consulate alive, after he heard Mutreb ordering five members of the hit squad to attack the writer by suffocating him with a nylon bag. The recordings indicate that Khashoggi’s last sentence was: “Do not cover my mouth. I have asthma, you will suffocate me.”
Khashoggi resisted his killers for five minutes, according to the book.
Afterwards, Khashoggi’s body was cut up by Tubaigy using a forensic saw. The book purports that the members of the hit squad, who remained present at the scene, were disturbed and nauseated by the dismemberment.
1. CrimeRocket was started on October 10th, 82 days ago, or 2 months and 20 days. Today it passed 1 million page impressions. Thank you to all justice seekers for supporting this site. See you all on the other side.
Could the manner in which he collected a nude selfie really threaten the national security of the United States,” Concord’s lawyers ask in the filing.
Concord’s filing Thursday comes amid a drawn-out fight where the Russian company seeks to access what the Justice Department says is “sensitive” evidence in the case, which could reveal national security and American investigative secrets to powerful foreigners.
Is a nude selfie “sensitive evidence”?
December 29th, 2018
1. Trial Analyst Andell Brown Discusses the Many Opportunities for Chris Watts to be Truthful
“He’s very conscientious about his work,” Cline tells PEOPLE of Frazee, a farrier who, at least twice a year, arrived to trim and care for the hooves of the donkeys that roam free in the historic former gold mining camp near the base of Pike’s Peak. “He had the health and the well-being of the donkeys’ interest at heart,” Cline says.
Given the circumstances — Kelsey Berreth, Frazee’s 29-year-old fiancée and mother to their 1-year-old daughter, who by then had been missing for 28 days — “I think that’s the last thing I would have been doing at that time, calling my customers and giving a new cell,” Cline says.
Of filming and living in France, particularly in Auvers-sur-Oise, the commune outside of Paris where van Gogh died after suffering a gunshot to the chest, Dafoe says the experience was “incredible. You’re approximating his perspective; you can see some of the landscapes from his paintings and then you can visit them so they’re alive…. You feel his spirit.”
Learning to paint, which in several scenes from the film he had to do in real time, similarly rooted Dafoe in van Gogh’s body. “It was very important to give me the physical experience to be able to relate to some of the things he was talking about. I can relate as someone who’s interested in art, some I can relate to as a human being. But once I started painting, it was more complete.”
Note the custody hearing was scheduled last week, so clearly the hearing itself does not play into the motive for the murder, although that doesn’t mean custody wasn’t a contentious issue.
People claiming they know Kelsey Berreth & she was once committed to a mental institution in Idaho. Was Kelsey on medications? What did she buy @ Safeway?#PatrickFrazeepic.twitter.com/3xB61Ei0BI
Knox, 31, says she and new fiancé Christopher Robinson are “utterly heartbroken” over the accident.
“He was the smartest, funniest, sweetest, cuddliest, most talkative and wonderful cat. We feel so lucky to have had him our lives.”
Words and sentiments Knox failed to come close to expressing after her friend, Meredith Kercher, was murdered in her home, in the room next to hers, in Perugia, Italy.
Former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow, who has helped coordinate conflict zone trips for multiple protectees…says the spotting of Air Force One and Twitter chatter is not a security breach, but is concerning and a lesson to be learned.
“In the age of social media, this highlights a new vulnerability that the Secret Service and military have to be super mindful of in the future,” Wackrow says. “You’re charting new territory with the inclusion of social media from a threat perspective and from an awareness perspective, and future planning is going to address that.”
June 14: Chris Watts enters coworker Nichol Kessinger’s contact information into his phone. Kessinger would later become his mistress.
The way the media has written this suggests Watts had one phone, and by entering her details into his phone in June, Kessinger became his mistress after this date. This is how myths and misconceptions are created by the MSM.
June 27: Shanann Watts takes Bella, right, and Celeste, left, to North Carolina for a five-week vacation, while her husband stays at home and works.
July 4: Kessinger told police she went to Chris Watts’ house for the first time on the Fourth of July to “set up his diet and weight loss/exercise goals.” “He invited her to his home, he cooked lunch, they ate and she left,” according to police documents.
July 7: The first phone call is logged between Chris Watts and Kessinger.
That too is a misleading misinterpretation.
July 14: Chris Watts and Kessinger go on a date to [the Shelby American Collection in Boulder]. That afternoon, Shanann Watts makes four unanswered calls to her husband.
This is how the media “investigates” a 22 year old crime on its anniversary:
The child pageant queen’s cute pink tricycle, complete with streamers on the handlebars, was dumped beside the house. Soon enough, Novick had taken ownership of the dead girl’s trike, along with a packet of popcorn and an oversized candy cane which had decorated the front lawn, but became a grim symbol of the tragedy as cameras filmed every minute of the investigation from outside the Ramsey home.
Novick, previously a member of local Charles Manson-themed band Scramblehead, was no stranger to controversy. He wanted to explore the meaning behind the trike.
He took it to psychics to see whether they could read anything from it. He left it on the footpath to see how passers-by would react (many began riding it).
He realised everyone had some kind of link to JonBenet. “One woman who rode it, her dad was one of the movers,” he told news.com.au. “Another one told me she lived two doors down, and grew up with the media attention.
“There will always be theories. I’m as interested in how we treat it, the media.”
Sheila Frazee, the mother of the suspect, was briefly detained by authorities but not placed under arrest. The divorced mother-of-four, who is a registered nurse, lives with her youngest son at the ranch, which she outright owns according to public records. She also owns two additional properties in the area.
Her son meanwhile attends to the ranch and also breeds dogs.
That same source said that Frazee’s arrest came after authorities obtained new information about Berreth that has lead them to believe she is no longer alive. Frazee was arrested after cell records and data provided new details regarding Berreth’s disappearance, according to officials.
The solicitation charge was also addressed at a news conference on Friday, with officials saying that Frazee asked someone to commit some sort of crime but refusing to elaborate beyond that at this time. On Friday, Frazee appeared at Teller County court via video conference where the judge read him his charges – first-degree murder as well as solicitation of murder. The audience at court was unable to see the screen.
None of his relatives were present during the hearing. He will be held without bond pending his next court appearance on December 31. As for where the body may be, police told residents of Woodland Park that they should expect an increase in police activity around the area in the coming days. Agents are also at Berreth’s home looking for evidence.
Monday’s court documents include a request from Frazee’s public defenders asking that investigators turn over emails and text messagesthey’ve recovered.
Woodland Park Police Chief Miles De Young said the two had exchanged custody of their 1-year-old daughter on Thanksgiving. Frazee does not have a prior criminal history in Colorado, according to CBI records. He is slated to appear in court again on Dec. 31.
De Young said it is an “absolute possibility” there could be more arrests in Berreth’s disappearance.
…eyewitnesses exclusively told KRDO they saw Frazee at a waste management facility, dropping off a load on Monday.
Employees at the company in Teller County also tell us they saw Frazee at the facility dropping off trash from a long trailer with two other men. Witnesses say Frazee remained in a white pickup truck as the two other men, who drove in two separate cars, unloaded the trailer.
The trash was later collected by police and it’s been reported a few of the items were taken away by police for further investigation. Photos capture Woodland Park police cars on the property. They were not able to give us any further information regarding the investigation or could not tell us what exactly was found.
Jameson, who is now in her 60s, described herself in her pre-cybersleuth days as a housewife who homeschooled her kid and baked bread all day. I imagine in 1997 when Jameson first heard of what happened to JonBenét, she put herself in the Ramseys’ shoes. She saw herself and her husband in John and Patsy and she saw her own child or children in JonBenét and Burke.
The article appears to indicate that Jameson has inherited detective Lou Smit’s case files.
1. For the past week or so, the mainstream media has been saturated with talk about Watts receiving love letters in jail. That’s all the media can talk about, and all that is being talked about. It’s ultra lame tabloid-style coverage of the Watts case. Here’s another:
“You should call your dad and tell him you did not appreciate your mom putting your daughter at risk today, nor do you like that she teased our girls,” Shan’ann reportedly wrote in texts to Chris. “You should also say you don’t appreciate her saying they have to learn they can’t always get what they want! They are 2 and 4!”
…we’ve decided as a society that certain behaviors are not OK. As a result, we’ve decided that there are certain standards by which people are obligated to act. We expect people to act according to “that degree of care that an ordinarily prudent person can be reasonably expected to exercise under similar circumstance.” If someone acts “unreasonably” in those situations, then they can be sued for the harm caused to a third person as a result. For instance:
If you are injured by a driver who failed to exercise reasonable care when driving on the freeway, you can sue them because all drivers have a duty to act reasonably to prevent harm to other drivers. Doctors are supposed to perform their duties as any other reasonable doctor would in a similar situation, or else face liability for medical malpractice. Store owners must put up a sign when a floor is wet, because society considers that to be the reasonable way to act to prevent someone from slipping and falling. Homeowners must warn guests in their home of any sort of danger that may be posed by an ongoing remodeling job of the kitchen. If someone punches you, you can sue them for injuries for intentionally hurting you! …but in most states you can’t sue an affair-partner for interfering with the most important relationship of your life?
In the Chris Watts case, the “missing persons” were found a few days after they “disappeared”. In the Madeleine McCann case, the “missing person” search has been going on for eleven years, and this story involves another pledge to never stop searching.
£12 million has already been spent on the search for Madeleine, making it the most expensive individual missing person’s case in history.
Maybe he’s trying to transform himself from Sexy Hunk to Joe Ordinary, in an effort to be overlooked by libidinous prison-mates.
According to his December 14 commissary list, the jailbird, 36, will soon trade in his buff physique for a dad-bod: He ordered a six-pack of fudge brownies, three boxes of holiday cookies, powdered donuts, and three iced buns.
He also bought deodorant, shampoo, body lotion and even pens and envelopes to mail letters out — amid reports he’s receiving a massive amount of love letters from female fans.
He spoke about how Watts’ wife Shan’ann texted him over and over trying to save their marriage, how she bought relationship books for him, one of which was found in the trash. Instead, he shopped for jewelry and vacation spots for his new girlfriend.
Prosecutor Michael Rourke said Watts killed his family not out of rage, but in a calculated manner.
“Why did this have to happen? [Watts]’ motive was simple, your honor,” Rourke said. “He had a desire for a fresh start.”
Colborn contends the series was edited to make viewers think he and others planted evidence to frame Avery.
“His reputation and that of Manitowoc County, itself, has been severely and unjustly defamed,” Colborn’s lawyer, Michael Griesbach, said in a press release (per Variety). “He is filing this lawsuit to set the record straight and to restore his good name.”
Representatives for Netflix had no comment when reached by Fox News.
Colborn contends that the filmmakers distorted the events and left out key facts in order to make the argument that he framed Avery and Dassey for the murder.
Both Dassey and Avery remain behind bars as the debate over their guilt or innocence continues to be debated.
1. Dr. Phil reckons Chris Watts broke the bones of his daughterswhen he forced their bodies through the thief hatches and into the tanks. But the autopsy doesn’t show any broken bones…
Rebecca's last hours of life were awful. We aren't stopping until her killer is behind bars, no matter how much incompetence and corruption we encounter along the way. https://t.co/gT6xbbcwRf
A spokesperson for the Weld County District Attorney’s office said that prosecutors there were just as surprised by Chris Watts’s seemingly sudden decision to plead guilty to murdering his pregnant wife and two children as the curious public that has been gripped by the tragic family killing.
CrimeOnline contacted the Weld County District Attorney’s office for confirmation of a report related to the Watts murder case and to follow up on a fulfilled Colorado Open Records Request. Part of CrimeOnline’s original request asked for any documentation related to any recorded discussions preceding Watts’s decision to plead guilty to murdering his pregnant wife Shanann and two daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste.
But a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office said that Watts’ defense lawyer approached the District Attorney “out of the blue” to announce that Watts had decided to plead guilty on the condition that the death penalty be taken off the table. The spokesperson indicated that Watts’ decision was very unexpected, and said that prosecutors don’t know why Watts appeared to have a sudden change of heart.
The #ChrisWatts case holds up a giant mirror over the idea of love, family and finance. Who do you see reflected in it? https://t.co/DV1hYzJY72
‘I don’t even know if they were like filing for divorce. I don’t know if they were putting the house up. I don’t even know. I don’t even know anymore what is real and what is not.’
Vincent van Gogh’s swirling dreamscape vision of the night sky, the iconic The Starry Night is estimated to be worth more than US$100 million.
Ma Chunyan, a 32-year-old artist in Dafen, can produce in one day a 1,000 yuan (US$145) reproduction of the masterpiece from an image on her mobile phone.
Ma is one of 8,000 painters creating copies of Western art in Dafen for a market which has never returned since the global financial crisis in 2008 when foreign demand for art reproductions fell.
The declining overseas orders have spurred the local government to embark on a plan to transform Dafen into a producer of original works instead.
Nichol Kessinger ‘plans to start fresh with a new name,’ a source claims.
“She has received several threats, public shaming and could be considered one of the ‘most hated women’in America,” a source close to the investigation told Radar. “She plans to start fresh with a new name, new town and ultimately a new identity.”
Now, she is living in another state for her own safety, the source explained…
Before this week, there was no point in 2018 when average prices in Colorado were lower than they were at the same time period in 2017, 2016 or 2015. The drop was abrupt. As recently as a month ago, motorists were paying an average of $2.77 per gallon in the Centennial State.
“We had the largest week-to-week drop of any state,” AAA Colorado spokesman Skyler McKinley said. “So there is some stabilization going on.”
The reasons behind Colorado’s pricey year are complicated. Gas prices are affected by “thousands if not hundreds of thousands of micro economies,” McKinley said, especially since the state gets gas from West Coast sources, refineries in states to the north and from the Gulf Coast.
Local gas taxes aren’t to blame.As of July, Colorado applied 22 cents of taxes and fees to each gallon of gas sold in the state, the 11th lowest rate in the nation, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation.
The intense and turbulent friendship between the Post-Impressionist masters Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh lasted only 63 days and ended in one of the most bizarre acts in the history of art—van Gogh brutally slicing off his own ear.
That’s the official version of why the world’s most famous artist cut off his own ear, and almost bled to death afterwards. I believe Gauguin – who was a keen fencer – cut off Vincent’s ear, and Vincent took it on the chin. He had to because Gauguin was the more successful artist, and had a business arrangement with his brother Theo. And coincidentally, so did Vincent, so he couldn’t fuck that up by blaming Gauguin, so he reverted to type, he blamed himself.
So add credence to this theory, Gauguin bugged out of Arles so quickly after Vincent’s “mishap”, he left behind his fencing equipment. He wrote to Vincent later asking him if he’d courier his swords back to him. This was Vincent’s response:
Read the full New Yorker article about Van Gogh’s Ear, here.
My book The Murder of Vincent van Gogh rubbishes the popular mainstream contentions that 1) Vincent cut off his ear, 2) went mad and 3) committed suicide. It also provides an in-depth revisionist history of the great artist. The Murder of Vincent van Gogh describes how and why Gauguin injured Vincent [it was an attempted murder in fact], what drove him to the asylum at St Remy [it wasn’t madness, but he was a very troubled man, you would be too in a similar situation] and finally, that Vincent wasn’t shot by accident but deliberately murdered.
The identity of the murderer and the motive, as well as the location of the crime, is sketched in true crime terms for the first time ever.
Here’s the full unedited video that shows the full play. Not convenient context. The offender is suspended pending a hearing on Jan 8. There were no charges filed. I fully agree that this type of play has no place at ANY level. But at least do your research before you post Pav. pic.twitter.com/IghfVNjv2Q
At Friday’s news conference, Gore told reporters he knows some observers are skeptical of his department’s conclusions. But he defended his homicide team, calling them “as good as any in the state or the county.”
“They’ve got 100 years of experience,” he said. “We have no reason not to follow the facts, follow the evidence, and follow the interviews where they lead us.”
Greer, the Zahau family attorney, told reporters that the sheriff’s department had barred him from the news conference. Speaking outside the department’s conference room, he claimed it is “impossible” that fair, thorough review of the evidence could again conclude that Zahau killed herself.
“That tells me there’s something corrupt in the (Sheriff’s) process,” Greer said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know that (that corruption) is, but it’s not a logical conclusion. There’s something here that is motivating (the Sheriff’s department) to do the wrong thing.”
Before the news conference, Greer told NBC 7 that it’s possible that Sheriff Gore and other department executives were influenced by Jonah Shacknai’s wealth.
Gore responded with a measured but forceful denial. “I never took any money from Jonah Shacknai in my election or re-election campaigns. That’s just not the way we operate,” he said. “And to be quite honest, I take personal offense at that, at impugning the reputation of this department, one of the best in the country.”
Like all human gifts, courage comes to us at varying levels and at varying moments,” Time magazine’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, wrote in an essay about the selection.
“This year we are recognizing four journalists and one news organization who have paid a terrible price to seize the challenge of this moment…
I thought the District Attorney wanted to know why? Now he's lost all curiosity. Bizarre>‘This is not a witch hunt’: Chris Watts prosecutor cannot explain data from girlfriend’s phone https://t.co/SOZKTKIJjq#ChrisWatts
Despite his desperate pleas, the last discernible words the transcript records for Khashoggi are:
“I can’t breathe.”
The transcript notes more noises, and several more voices.
One of those voices is identified on the transcript by Turkish authorities as belonging to Dr. Salah Muhammad al-Tubaiqi, the head of forensic medicine at Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry, the source says.
Aside from Khashoggi and Mutreb, he is the only other voice identified by name on the transcript. As the transcript continues, it is clear Khashoggi is not yet dead.
The transcript notes the noises that can be heard on the tape, almost in the manner that subtitles describe moments in movies where there is no dialogue.
“Scream.”
“Scream.”
“Gasping.”
Then, the transcript notes other descriptions.
“Saw.”
“Cutting.”
Tubaiqi is noted giving some advice to other people in the room, apparently to help them deal with the appalling task.
“Put your earphones in, or listen to music like me.”
During the scene, the transcript notes at least three phone calls placed by Mutreb.
The transcript does not specify the moment Khashoggi dies.
All of it was used to build a sweeping case against Chris Watts, the 33-year-old man who ultimately pled guilty to killing his wife and kids in a deal brokered by his attorneys to spare him the possibility of facing the death penalty.
But even as much information as it provides, it does not answer the biggest question of all: Why did Watts decide to strangle Shanann Watts, his wife of six years, and smother the couple’s little girls, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3?
When Watts family neighbor and Shanann Watts’ friend Nickole Atkinson was looking through the Watts home with Frederick police Aug. 13, she said she tried not to touch anything.
It had been hours since Atkinson had sent several unanswered texts to Shanann, since Atkinson had called Shanann’s husband, Christopher Watts, since Atkinson had gone to the doctor to beg them to tell her whether Shanann made it to her scheduled appointment.
Jesus, it’s December and they can’t even get the facts straight that Atkinson was Shan’ann’s friend not her neighbor. Clueless media!
So when she walked into the Watts home with Christopher and police at the very beginning of a missing persons-come murder case, Atkinson said she had an eerie feeling. That’s why she tried not to touch anything.
“Because at that point, bad thoughts were going through my head,” Atkinson told investigators in a newly released audio recording.
“They’re silly little things, but why would he strip the bed before he went to work if Shanann was still sleeping in the bed (as Watts told friends, family and investigators),” Atkinson said.
It turns out, Atkinson’s eerie feeling was correct. The family wasn’t on a play date; they had been murdered by Watts. Shanann was never around to make the kids beds Aug. 13. And the master bed? Investigators would later find a fitted sheet matching that bedding near the tank battery north of Roggen where Watts had dumped his families’ bodies.
There was more. Atkinson watched a neighbor’s camera footage from early that morning. It was 5:18 a.m., and Watts had backed his truck up into the garage and loaded something into the bed.
“That’s when my mind went bad — really bad,” Atkinson said. “What would he be loading up at 5:18 in the morning? And Shanann yells at him (when he uses the garage) because the garage wakes up the (girls) and the girls’ bedroom is right above the garage.”
In one exchange, Shanann tells her friend Watts wasn’t wearing his wedding ring, and he had changed his phone’s background photo to sand dunes. Unknown to both Shanann and Atkinson was this: Watts had spent time at the sand dunes with his mistress while Shanann was in North Carolina with the girls.
Shanann told Atkinson she would tell Watts to find a place when they got back from North Carolina, and she told him she was going to put the house on the market and takes the kids out of school to save money.
In a series of texts about a week before she would be murdered, Shanann laid out her thoughts on Watts’ posture toward the relationship.
“He’s obviously not in it. He’s not fighting. He’s not in love. He’s checked out.”
Susan Rohde’s estate has paid R2.9m to her husband, Jason, to fund a defence that failed when he was convicted of murdering her.
This was revealed on Wednesday by the administrator of Susan Rohde’s estate, David Anderson, who was giving evidence during Rohde’s sentencing proceedings in the High Court in Cape Town. Rohde is the estate’s beneficiary.
Anderson told Rohde’s advocate, Graham van der Spuy, that there was only R80,000 in cash still available for distribution, and that he would be unable to finalise the estate until Rohde’s criminal proceedings were concluded.
He said Susan’s mother, Diane Holmes, had offered to loan the estate R500,000 so that it could continue to fund the education and maintenance of the couple’s three daughters.
Prosecutor Louis van Niekerk handed Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe confirmation from Stellenbosch University that the Rohdes’ twins, Alexandra and Josie, who have just written their matric exams, had been accepted to study there in 2019.
Anderson said annual expenses for the twins and the Rohdes’ eldest daughter, Katie, were expected to amount to about R250,000 a year.
He told the court that a Liberty Life insurance policy on Susan’s life, which named Rohde as the beneficiary, was expected to pay out R2.6m. When this amount reached the estate the financial pressure it was facing would ease.
Anderson was the first prosecution witness to testify in aggravation of sentence for Rohde, who was convicted on November 8 of murdering Susan at Spier, in Stellenbosch, in July 2016.
Proceedings were delayed when power cuts hit the high court at 10am. The court sitting resumed after 12.30pm. Rohde arrived in court in handcuffs after spending the last four weeks in Pollsmoor prison.
Anderson was followed into the witness box by Dr Naeemah Abrahams of the Medical Research Council. Abrahams is a global expert on femicide, which she described as the killing of women by their intimate partners.
So this is right after his wife and kids we reported missing. He was at the neighbors with police looking at their video. Of all things to show up on TV it’s a video of an unborn baby and right after what appears to be a skull in oil. How crazy. #ChrisWattspic.twitter.com/jPc8R2TPAZ
Sandra said the estrangement seemed to have been going on for a “few weeks, maybe a month.” Chris acted “just cold as ice,” she said, not replying, not responding.
“I just said, ‘Give him space,’ you know,” Sandra recalled. “But little did we know.”
“I’m not going to blame the kids for a disconnection or anything, but yeah, we focus on the kids like, all the time,” he told an investigator. “And like, as our relationship got longer and longer, I could feel that disconnect.”
Chris then went on to say that he and Shanann didn’t have deep conversations anymore.
1. In the video below, Shan’ann Watts’ pants are in the laundry. Watts picks them up and shows them to the K9 officer. Thank you to Sylvester for providing this link.
CNN begins using the proper spelling for Shan’ann Watts. People magazine have been using it for some time now.
#Rohde Alex indicated that even thinking about her mother brings up negative feelings because her death is associated with ongoing trial. They still require closure and surety in this matter to be able to deal with their mother's death. @TeamNews24
#Rohde Perry says twins believe they need their father. They were able to voice their opinions on impact of Susan's death. Alex had strong opinion but Josie found it difficult. Neither have been able to deal with death and this causes ongoing emotional distress. (@JennaEtheridge)
Wow, the twins didn't hand in a victim impact statement. I guess it's a foregone conclusion then that #Rohde's daughters will testify in mitigation of sentence [in other words, as defense witnesses].
Van Niekerk brings up the twins' distrust of the legal system. Important point, but so ironic. Is the system working if it's lenient, or if it's strict when it comes to punishing this sort of crime? #rohde
#Rohde Perry: As a probation officer, it was unusual for me to have to gain access to victims by working through the defence parties of an accused. "At the end of the road, things worked out". @TeamNews24
#Rohde Salie-Hlophe says she wants photos that reflect Susan's normal life and who she was as a person. She gives the State time to do this. Defence says it was distressing to look at" this lovely woman as a dead person" and wants better photos. @TeamNews24
Four sources confirm to Denver7’s Jace Larson that Chris Watts was transferred from the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, where a new prison inmate goes after conviction, to an undisclosed facility out of state. The Colorado Department of Corrections inmate locator shows Watt’s location as the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, but this is no longer the case.
Earlier this month, the State Bar’s probable cause committee ordered the Bar attorneys to prepare a formal complaint against Martinez. He is alleged to have given false testimony to the Bar and alleged to have revealed the identity of a juror in the second Jodi Arias murder trial, which Martinez prosecuted in 2015.
Dishonesty is a cardinal sin in the legal profession, and if an attorney or a law enforcement officer is found to be untruthful, it casts doubt on all of his or her cases. And jury identities are protected by law. The media is barred from photographing or identifying jurors without their permission.
Martinez gained national attention and devout fandom from those trials, the first of which was live-streamed in 2013. Arias was convicted of the 2008 murder of her sometime boyfriend, Travis Alexander. But two different juries failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether to sentence her to death.
America may get its most intimate look yet inside Robert Mueller’s secretive Russia investigation in the next four days, with a series of disclosures that have the potential to be greatly damaging for President Donald Trump.
Court filings focusing on Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on Tuesday and his ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Friday could offer tantalizing new details of Mueller’s deep dive into the 2016 campaign.
If the special counsel lives up to his reputation, his filings will feature surprising revelations and rich texture to color the picture he has already painted in indictments and witness testimony of a culture of endemic dishonesty in Trump’s orbit about multiple, so far unexplainable, ties with Russians.
He may also begin to add context and answers to some of the intriguing clues he has dropped in a probe that has so far seen three people sentenced, one convicted at trial and seven guilty pleas and has charged 36 people and entities with a total of 192 criminal counts.
With each twist of the investigation, a fascinating trove is building of hints and implied connections, odd coincidences and apparent shady links between key players that is crying out for explanation.
But a civil suit filed by Shanann’s parents, Sandra and Frank Rzucek, and brother, Frank Jr., on behalf of her estate seeks to ensure that his name recognition doesn’t turn into cash. The document is accessible below, and its language echoes that of a complaint that the family of another murder victim aimed at arguably the most notorious alleged American killer of the past century.
“It has a lot of similarities to the suit Ron Goldman’s family brought against O.J. Simpson,” notes Tom Grant, a partner in Greeley’s Grant & Hoffman Law Firm, which represents the Rzuceks. “That’s its intent — to make sure Chris Watts is never able to profit from his evil acts.”
I can’t imagine Watts is the type to write books, or have books written about himself. He’s not an actor or a showman to the extent OJ was and is, but that’s not to say he’s not been putting on some kind of act for God knows how long.
Tomorrow morning at 8:30am ET we are taping a special #CrimeStories diving into the discovery documents, videos, audio and more in the case of killer dad #ChrisWatts. Have a question, theory or tip. Leave us a message at 909-49-CRIME now or call us in the morning! See you there
Reporters have been tweeting out jokes about what the two men must have saying. “You would be happy too if you just got away with murder,” wrote Aaron Blake of The Washington Post, as he offered his caption.
As concerned messages and calls about his missing wife lit up his phone and the bodies of his daughters sank in Weld County oil tanks less than 100 feet from his truck, Christopher Watts planned his new life as a bachelor.
He called his daughters’ preschool to unenroll them. He exchanged text messages with a real estate agent about selling the family’s large Frederick home, the house that made them seem like any other suburban family. Minutes after speaking with his mother-in-law, who was wondering about Shanann Watts’ well-being, he searched online for coupons to Aspen resorts, phone records released by investigators show.
He looked up the lyrics to a Metallica song, the chorus of which includes: “Pounding out aggression/Turns into obsession/Cannot kill the battery/Cannot kill the family.”
Hours had passed without anyone hearing from Shanann.
“What the heck is going on with you guys that she would totally shut out everything?” a friend texted. “It’s not like her.”
Watts tried to allay everyone’s fears. He asked them not to call police.
Cellphone data obtained in the investigation into Colorado murderer Chris Watts show he was looking up ways to marry his mistress and the lyrics to love songs in the days before he killed his pregnant wife and their two kids in August.
The data was included in a batch of nearly 2,000 documents obtained by the Daily Mail in a Freedom of Information Act request this week.
The cellphone data showed Watts striking up a romantic relationship with a woman he met at work, Nichol Kessinger. He entered her phone number into his phone on June 14, and they started dating while his wife, Shanann Watts, and daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, were away for most of the summer visiting family in North Carolina.
Chris Watts’ phone data showed that he had his first phone call with Kessinger on July 7, and a week later they visited a Mustang museum together. Four days later, Kessinger started sending him seminude photos of herself, according to the data obtained by the Mail.
That same day, a worried Shanann Watts sent a slew of texts to her husband saying she had realized “what’s missing in our relationship!” and accusing him of not reciprocating her feelings and effort. The following morning, Chris Watts made several Google searches between 8:41 a.m. and 12:07 p.m., including, “When to say I love you,” “When to say I love you for the first time in a new relationship,” “What do you feel when someone tells you they love you,” and, “How does it feel when someone says I love you.”
During an interview with The Denver Post earlier this month, Kessinger said that she started dating Watts at the end of June and that he told her he was in the final stages of his divorce. She said she didn’t know that he was expecting his third child with his wife.
On July 28, investigators wrote in documents that Watts and Kessinger traveled together to spend a night at the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Two days later, Watts started looking up “love letters” and lyrics to love songs.
The next day, Watts flew to North Carolina for the final week of his family’s vacation.
On August 4, while Watts was away, Kessinger spent two hours looking for wedding dresses on Google.
On August 8, a day after the family returned from North Carolina, Watts searched Google for topics related to “marrying your mistress.” Meanwhile, Shanann Watts had started confiding in her friends that her husband had become distant and they were having issues.
In the five final days of her life, Shanann Watts Googled couples counselors in her area and bought relationship self-help books online, according to the documents.
Meanwhile, on August 9, four days before he killed his wife and kids, Chris Watts looked up the price of an Audi Q7. That day, his wife left for a quick business trip to Arizona. The following day, he spent the morning arranging a babysitter to look after his girls so he could attend a Colorado Rockies game the next day. In reality, he went out on a date with Kessinger.
Weeks before he killed his wife and two daughters amidst an affair he was having with a co-worker, Chris Watts typed into Google, “When to say I love you for the first time in a new relationship.”
On that same day of July 25, less than three weeks before the Aug. 13 murders, Watts Googled, “What do you feel when someone tells you they love you” and “How does it feel when someone says I love you.”
Four individuals brought the legal challenge to this decision, with the support of the campaign group Hacked Off. The four were phone-hacking victim and former Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames, the Bristol schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies, who was wrongly accused of murder, and Gerry and Kate McCann – the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann.
At a hearing earlier this month, the four argued that in November 2012 the former prime minister David Cameron made a “clear and unambiguous commitment” that the second part of the inquiry would go ahead. Their lawyers said that commitment, made at a meeting with Jefferies, Mrs McCann and Hames, meant they had a “legitimate expectation” it would proceed.
But Lord Justice Davis said Cameron made “no such promise” in the meeting and that it was unacceptable that the case was based on a covert recording of the discussion, despite participants having agreed that what was said in the meeting would remain confidential.
The judge said he had a great deal of sympathy for the claimants but that sympathy could not override the law and the legal case failed “at almost every level”.
1. Full video: Chris Watts tells father and investigators about deaths of his wife and daughters
At 1:07:17 Watts is asked if one of his co-workers should go out and retrieve the bodies of his children from where he dumped them in two large fracking tanks. He answers, despairingly, “No, no, no, oh God, no…I can’t have that.” [Sobs].
A total of 66 video files were released on Thursday, including the video of Watts loading his truck. See below.
NEWLY RELEASED VIDEO:
Video shows murderer Chris Watts calmly walking to his truck, backing it in his garage, and re-entering the home…after Shanann, Bella, and Celeste were killed.
When preparing to play van Gogh, what research did you do?
I read biographies, of course. I had seen Lust for Life and the [Robert] Altman film [Vincent & Theo] years ago. But when you make something, you really want to forget those things. You can’t copy them. It’s the idea that to express what a work of art is you have to make another thing. There are parallels to what you learn in painting: It’s not about likeness.
Did anything you learned about him surprise you?
How steeped he was in a spiritual quest, which is usually short-handed as a kind of madness. He tried to be a man of God early in his life, so that was surprising to what extent he was always having a dialogue with his God through nature. For someone that was so socially awkward and had so much trouble communicating with people on a social level and famously had trouble with women, had trouble with physicality, intimacy, he was a very compassionate person. He felt distance from people, but he loved the soul of the worker. He talks much about how you have to live like a peasant to paint peasants.
What do you hope van Gogh would think of the movie?
Huge 3 terabyte tranche of photos, video on Watts case to be released in days.
Had your fill of the #ChrisWatts case? Exhausted after sifting through almost 2000 pages of discovery? 3 terabytes of data containing photos, video and more will be released by law enforcement in the coming days. #tcrshttps://t.co/7IyEDBDjLWpic.twitter.com/BzqJdzpaI2
WATCH: This is the moment paramedics put Casey Anthony's father in a medical helicopter Saturday after FHP said he flipped his SUV in Volusia County. FULL STORY: https://t.co/Ju67L7CqXopic.twitter.com/1KUcydGpNl
The report then printed the entirety of the words to the Master of Puppets track, which begins, “Lashing out the action / Returning the reaction / Weak are ripped and torn away / Hypnotizing power / Crushing all that cower / Battery is here to stay / Smashing through the boundaries / Lunacy has found me / Cannot stop the battery / Pounding out aggression / Turns into obsession.”
Watts, 33, strangled Shanann Watts, 34, and smothered their daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste before sunrise in their home in Frederick, Colo. He then disposed of the bodies at the oil and gas company where he worked.
The Nevada Department of Corrections granted OJ an out of state travel permit for November 17 to 24, which means he’ll have to return to Nevada by Sunday, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
“While in Florida, Mr. Simpson is required to adhere to his parole conditions and remain in contact with his parole officer in Nevada,” Florida Department of Corrections spokesman Patrick Manderfield told the newspaper.
Among the conditions of Simpson’s parole are that he not drink alcohol “to excess,” he said. However, that didn’t to stop Simpson from drinking what appeared to be a tropical cocktail garnished with a lime and strawberry while strolling on the beach Friday.
Dressed casually in athletic gear and a sun visor, OJ dined with his children and others in the group on a busy outdoor terrace overlooking a marina.
The Colorado man who butchered his pregnant wife and two toddler daughters told police he was “not a good man” as he confessed to coldly dumping their bodies in a “freakin’ oil tank,” according to documents released this week.
Notes from interviews released Wednesday by the Weld County District Attorney’s Office show how investigators got Christopher Watts, who was sentenced to life in prison last week for the heinous killings, to confess after he failed a polygraph test.
For two days, Watts, 33, maintained that he had no clue what happened to his wife Shanann, 34, and their two daughters, after they went missing on Aug. 13.
He told investigators he missed reading to Celeste, 3, and Bella, 4, and that it was difficult to be at home without them, the documents, posted by The Denver Post show.
When the interviewer, at one point, asked Watts to describe all the ways a person could make someone disappear, the Watts gave a short answer — and then giggled.
In a polygraph test, Watts didn’t tell the truth each time he answered “no” to whether he physically caused his wife to disappear, if he was lying about the last time he saw her, and whether he knew where Shanann was.
Later, Watts admitted he was having an affair with a woman named Nichol Kessinger, the documents show. Investigators told him to be honest and “get everything off his chest.” That’s when Watts asked to speak to his father, Ronnie Watts, who was in the police department lobby.
Christopher Watts failed a polygraph test before investigators were able to pressure him into confessing that he killed his pregnant wife and hid her body, as well as those of his two young daughters.
07:40: "If you take the kids somewhere, please let me know where they are at!" Chris Watts' Staged Message to Shan'ann hours after her murder https://t.co/RymiC1MDxv#ChrisWatts
Oh yes. Nichol's Google searches for "preparing for anal sex" on that Saturday night when Chris got a babysitter. Her bragging to her friend Charlottea about his cunnilingus skills…The nude selfies of her he uploaded. I now know more about them than I do about my own sex life.
He was always the quiet kid who followed the rules. So much information right here. #ChrisWatts developed carpel tunnel syndrome, and seems to be the reason he gave up being a mechanic. Used to attend church regularly. His father started drinking when his son left home. pic.twitter.com/5Vtg0X0WYF
According to Frederick Police when Chris arrived at the house and he allowed officers to search inside. He came up to officers and handed them Shannan's wedding ring, which he said he found on the nightstand. #Chriswatts@DenverChannel
Very interesting, while police were searching the house: "Shanann's mother called during this time and was adamant that Christopher had done something and that I needed to check the GPS on his truck." #ChrisWatts
More observations from Shannan's friend Nikole and neighbor on the day she was reported missing: " Nickole and Nathaniel said they both felt Christopher was extremely nervous. Nathaniel said he had heard Christopher numerous times in the past yelling loudly at Shanann."
Shannan's five week trip to North Carolina this summer appears to be when their marriage started to change. This is also around the same time #ChrisWatts started dating his new gf. "Christina said when they were separated for 5 weeks Chris came back to Shanann a different man."
When asked why the sheets weren't on their bed this was Chris's response to police: "Chris advised she usually jumps into bed after being in the airport and will wash the sheets the next day to get the airport off them." #ChrisWatts@DenverChannel
When they found Shannan's phone, Chris did not know the password. Her friend Nikole Atkinson who first called police did. Chris gave police consent to search her phone. They found no calls that morning. #ChrisWatts@DenverChannel
MORE: "He said when they were together again the last week it just wasn't the same. Chris felt like they weren't in love anymore. Chris said he could never be himself or be who he was before he met her."
Exactly why #ChrisWatts deleted his Facebook shortly before the murders we still don't know, but here's what Shannan told a friend about it: "Chris told Shanann he needed a break from Facebook."
That was the self help book investigators found in the trash: "I collected a hardback book within its original Amazon shipping box that was titled "Hold me Tight" appearing to be brand new. I was informed that it had been located in the recycle bin."
Remember the mark on #ChrisWatts neck in the media interviews he did with @DenverChannel everyone speculated was a defensive wound: "There was a red mark on the left side of his neck that he identified as being a mosquito bite."
Venus Williams has reached a settlement with the estate of a man who died in a traffic collision in Florida with a car driven by the tennis star. The family of 78-year-old Jerome Barson filed a wrongful death suit against Williams following the June 2017 crash in Palm Beach, Florida. No charges were filed by police against Williams or the driver of the other car over the accident.
The settlement reached last week does not reveal any of the terms of the agreement other than a stipulation that both parties will pay their own attorneys’ fees. Barson’s wife was driving and he was in the passenger seat when the collision occurred with the car driven by Williams.
Barson suffered severe injuries and died two weeks later.
Effectively Williams – a multimillionaire – has been fighting this suit for over a year. Against the family of a 78-year-old man she wrongly killed because she crashed into him.
2. Not much happened today at the Rohde sentencing, besides admin and a postponement. Methinks it wasn’t a good time to disrupt the matric exams of his daughters, which is fair enough, but then why not simply say so.
Jason Rohde’s defense team says they ‘severely underestimated’ the preparations for the pre sentencing hearing. It seems we will be postponing the matter to December 5. Rohde could be facing a prescribed minimum sentence of 15 years in jail for murder. #JasonRohde#Rohdepic.twitter.com/D7jQgX8E13
After the attack he got back on his bike – with the knife still stuck in his skull – and rode to a doctor in nearby Strand.
A receptionist at the doctor, who wants to remain anonymous, confirmed the incident to YOU. She said the cyclist has since been admitted to a hospital in Cape Town where emergency surgery was to be performed.
It’s the second attack on a cyclist in less than a week on the same 3km stretch of road between Gordon’s Bay and Strand.
But neither prosecutors nor the surviving relatives of Shanann, Bella and Celeste Watts who spoke at Monday’s hearing expected to ever understand how “a seemingly normal person [could] annihilate his entire family” and then methodically cover his tracks, as Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke put it.
“You buried my daughter Shanann in a shallow grave, and then you put Bella and Celeste in huge containers with crude oil, you heartless monster,” Frank Rzucek told the court as his son-in-law sat behind him clenching and unclenching his jaw, having already pleaded guilty to the murders.
On Monday, Rourke described how surveillance cameras showed Watts going back and forth between the house and his pickup in the darkness that morning — loading up the corpses before he drove to a company oil field “to secrete away his family in a place he hoped they’d never be found.”
He dug a hole for Shanann and stuffed each of his daughters into a separate tank full of crude oil. Bella had to be shoved through the eight-inch hatch, Rourke said, leaving a tuft of blond hair on the side that investigators in hazmat suits would later discover.
And when he had done all that, Rourke said, Watts contacted a real estate agent to put the house on the market.
“Mr. Watts has asked us to share this morning that he is devastated by all of this,” his public defender told the court on Monday morning in Weld County, Colorado, two weeks after he pleaded guilty to his charges.
“Although he understands that words are hollow at this point, he is sincerely sorry for all of this,” his attorney said.
Asked by the judge if he wanted to make a statement himself, Chris, 33, declined.
Chris’ motive “was simple,” Rourke said. “He had a desire for a fresh start, to begin a new relationship with a new love.” (Police have said Chris was cheating on Shan’ann with a co-worker when he murdered her.)
Rourke also described the “stark contrast,” in the lead up to the homicides, between Shan’ann’s efforts to save her marriage and Chris’ disinterest.
“None of this answers the question of why, however,” he said. “If [Chris] was this unhappy and wanted a new start, get a divorce. You don’t annihilate your family and throw them away like garbage.”
“We love you dad, we know you are innocent and we want to testify for you.”
This was the message Jason Rohde’s twin daughters sent their father via a family member after receiving the news that he had been found guilty of murdering their mother at Spier Hotel in 2016.
Rohde’s 18-year-old daughters Josie and Alexandra, who are writing matric exams at Diocesan School for Girls in Grahamstown, heard about their father’s fate as they walked into their Afrikaans exam.
In September 2014, Samuel Little was convicted in Los Angeles of the cold-case murders of three women between 1987 and 1989. DNA evidence linked Little — also known as Samuel McDowell — to the slayings. He was given three life sentences, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
But last summer, Little’s DNA also connected him to the unsolved 1994 murder of an Odessa, Tex., woman named Denise Christie Brothers — another young woman strangled and dumped. In July, Little was indicted on a charge of the crime, and transferred to Texas. According to a release from the Ector County District Attorney’s Office, a Texas Ranger named James Holland struck up a rapport with Little, and the elderly man began talking.
“People for years have been trying to get a confession out of him and James Holland is the one who finally got him to give that information,” Bobby Bland, the Ector County district attorney, told the Associated Press.
His words delivered a shock. Little claimed he was responsible for more than 90 murders nationwide between 1970 and 2013. If the those numbers prove true, the serial killer’s run would be historic.
“If all of these are confirmed, I mean, he’ll be the most prolific serial killer, with confirmed killings, in American history,” Bland said
Did athlete He Yinli commit a crime by tossing aside the Chinese flag in public? Or was the the weather to blame for it slipping out of her hand?
Who is not patriotic? The Chinese marathon runner who dropped a national flag in the sprint phase and lost the gold medal, the volunteers who handed over the flags and interrupted the runner, or the organizer who failed to respect the sports spirit? https://t.co/VowOVHA7A6pic.twitter.com/dNVZoGkjkW
“I’m not down with the idea of the poor unknown artist is the true artist,” he sighs. “But I do think that with success comes certain things that can corrupt you. That’s the oldest story in the book and I think you just have to be careful.”
“Actors are famously inarticulate about what we do because it’s mysterious work. Any time you really try to describe it, buzzers and lights go off in my head because of the lie-lie-lie-bullshit-bullshit- bullshit,” says Dafoe.
Before learning he would never walk out of prison Monday, Chris Watts sat at the defense table, head down and leg bobbing, as his mother told him she loved him and his slain wife’s family called him a monster.
Calling it perhaps “the most inhumane and vicious crime that I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen,” Judge Marcelo Kopcow handed down five life sentences — three consecutive and two concurrent — with no possibility of parole, in the deaths of Watts’ daughters and pregnant wife.
Want to watch the #ChrisWatts sentencing? We're streaming it live starting at 10 a.m. on: ➡ https://t.co/k7B4SVwSWy ➡ Facebook ➡ Twitter ➡ TV streaming devices
1. Watts family murders: Chris Watts scheduled to be sentenced Monday – Denver Channel
The headline of the article below oozes bias doesn’t it? Technically it’s true, of course, but is really true that she’s going to attend court just to say that?
Rourke said that investigators never believed that Watts was being entirely truthful.
“The spotlight that he tried to shine on Shanann — falsely, incorrectly and frankly a flat-out lie — has been corrected,” Rourke said. “The spotlight shines directly where it belongs: On him.”
God, it’s beautiful. The world I mean. Sunlight. Sunflowers. The faces of old women. Gnarled hands. Night skies. Cypresses in the wind. The world as Vincent van Gogh saw it.
A new film by Julian Schnabel, “At Eternity’s Gate,” with Willem Dafoe playing the man we refer to, by common consent, as “poor Vincent,” captures this beauty. It’s an understated, yet insinuating and ultimately stunning work, one of the most credible and convincing artist biopics ever made.
Well actually, it’s not. And if you think the story of Vincent van Gogh doesn’t qualify as true crime, well, how about this:
In December 1788 when he lost his ear, Vincent van Gogh was found almost dead in his room, lying in a blood-soaked bed. Initially people thought he was dead because he’d almost bled to death. Hours later his housemate, fellow artist Paul Gauguin was on a train from Arles to Paris [fleeing the scene?] When he wrote to Vincent he asked him to send his fencing equipment, which he’d left behind in his haste to leave the scene. Vincent said he wasn’t ready to face those “weapons”.
The circumstances around Vincent’s death are even more appropriate to true crime – a gun that was never found, a trajectory [through the abdomen] that made no sense, and a suicidal man who wanted a doctor. If you want the real “biopic”, read The Murder of Vincent van Gogh.
The parents of Chris Watts will get the opportunity to provide victim impact statements at their son’s sentencing hearing Monday but their attorney will not be allowed to address the court, the judge in the case ruled on Thursday.
Chris Watts is scheduled to be sentenced Monday in Weld County District Court.
By not pursuing the death penalty, Rourke saved the family of Shanann Watts years spent wrapped up in the criminal justice system, as well as millions of dollars for taxpayers, according to Michael Radelet, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado and author of “The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado.”
“Even if Mr. Watts would have been executed, it still would not have repaired the damage he did to those three people and their families,” Radelet said.
In Colorado, one person has been executed in the last 50 years in the state, according to Radelet. For homicides committed in the 2000s, he said there have been two dozen death penalty prosecutions, but only two have resulted in death sentences. A third case is still pending, and the rest resulted in life sentences or less.
“So it’s not a very good hit record,” Radelet said. Once someone is sentenced, he said they should expect to be on death row for at least 20 years before they are executed.
Of the two death row inmates in Colorado, one was sentenced in 2008 and the other was sentenced in 2010. Those convictions are still being examined by trial courts, Radelet said, and may still face appeal.
While it’s possible Rourke could have won the death penalty in this case, it’s becoming increasingly difficult across the state and nation to even fill a jury for death penalty cases. Prospective jurors are asked if they support the death penalty, and Radelet said about 50 percent of people in the country are against it when given the option of life without parole.
“That’s part of why death penalty trials are so timely and so costly,” Radelet said.
Stan Garnett, former Boulder County District Attorney and an attorney at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in Denver, also said there are benefits to avoiding a trial in cases like this. If the prosecution can secure a sentencing agreement of life imprisonment without parole, it saves taxpayer money and is easier on the victims’ families.
“I think it’s a just result to an incredibly tragic case, where three people lost their lives and it’s awful,” Garnett said.
At 19:16 on November 15th, and updated later at 21:36, the Denver Post published an exclusive interview with Nichol Kessinger. In the interview she claimed she co-operated with the cops virtually from the get-go. It’s likely Kessinger’s assistance [which Watts would have felt as a stinging betrayal] is what led to his swift arrest and initial “confession”.
Throughout the two-month-long affair, Kessinger claims she believed Watts was going through the final stages of a divorce, and had no idea she was pregnant.
Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke has been clear that Chris Watts thus far has only provided a “partial motive”.
There are some odd things about the circumstances surrounding the plea deal Chris Watts struck with prosecutors, according to Law&Crime Network host and former Morris County, N.J. head prosecutor Bob Bianchi. Circumstances that he would never have allowed to happen under his watch.
“What I do find to be unusual in this case … is that I would have required a proffer session with the defendant, where he would have sat down in order to be spared the death penalty,” Bianchi said. “He would have spilled the beans on everything, from A to Z, we would have known what the motive is, which we don’t know right now, and he would have clearly allocuted in court, got up and said this is why I did it.”
No one loves Damien Echols more than Damien Echols. But he seems to have a few high-profile celebrity fans blowing his horn. Sturgill Simpson is one of a long list of celebrity schmucks singing the praises of the murder-made-me-famous-and-now-I-write-about-it true crime celebrity.
The discussion, held last week at Unity of Nashville, a church on the outskirts of Music City, was part of the Nashville Public Library’s Salon@615 series. (Echols will sit for two more conversations in the coming days: one with the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines in L.A. on November 15th; another with Eddie Vedder in Seattle on November 19th.)
“I would say roughly 99 percent of the people on this planet, if they had to endure your life experience, most of us 1) would not have survived, and 2) would not have [come out of it] with your outlook on the world and life in general, [which] has been pretty inspiring and humbling, just for me as an individual,” Simpson told Echols, who explained how he used mediation and magick to flush from his soul the anger, pain and bitterness over being a victim of gross injustice. As defined in Echols’ book, magick is “an amalgam of Gnostic Christianity, esoteric Judaism, Taoist energy practices, and often forms of divination such as the Tarot or the I Ching. … Spelled with a k to differentiate it from parlor tricks and illusions you see on the stage.”
“You are invoking elemental, astrological and planetary energies into yourself, into your energy system, over and over and over, sometimes for hours a day,” the author said of the magickal practices he credits with saving his life, while distinguishing them from the dark arts and occultist negative connotations of the word’s traditional spelling that Arkansas prosecutors used to persecute him in a kangaroo court nearly 25 years ago.
“People will come up to me and they’ll talk to me, and I’m smiling and it seems like we’re having this interaction and I’m engaged,” said Echols. “And people are like, ‘Oh yeah, he was really in tune to what I was saying.’ When that person walks away from me, I couldn’t tell you one single thing they said to me, because I go on autopilot, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my shit together.”
A new 100-page inmate file for convicted killer Jodi Arias, reveals that she has thrown a fit over a haircut and complained about receiving death threats while behind bars.
In 2015, while conducting a mail scan, a corrections official found a letter addressed to Arias that…said that a person “and a female accomplice have stated that they are going to put funds on the books of some inmate there so that the inmate can do harm to you.” according to 12 News.
In another incident, Arias told an officer that an inmate threatened her, reportedly telling her, “I’m going to [expletive] kill you [expletive] the same way you killed [redacted name].”
Arias has reportedly complained about several threats and has asked the prison to transfer her for safety. Still, the convicted killer seems to be finding ways to communicate with the outside world.
During one phone call, Arias reportedly told a friend to tweet for her so that she could effectively complain about an alleged lack of hot water at the prison for several days.
Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have received a further £150,000 in government funding.
Madeleine was three when she was last seen while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007. The Metropolitan Police launched its inquiry in 2011 after a Portuguese investigation failed to make headway.
A total of £11.75m has been spent on Operation Grange to date.The new funding is for the six-month period until 31 March next year. Detectives have been applying to the Home Office every six months for a grant to continue their work.
This whole interview makes for excellent reading, but the part that resonated the most was Nancy Grace saying her views in true crime – including of the Avery case – have nothing to with ratings or popularity.
You’ve gone out on a limb on a lot of cases. Are you taking more heat on this one than other ones?
(Laughs.) Gee, that’s kind of hard to compare. What’s hotter: a white flame or a blue flame? I don’t know. They both burn, let me put it like that. Yes, it’s hurtful. Of course it’s hurtful. I’m not a robot. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t have any skin in the game. My deal with HLN doesn’t have anything to do with ratings. I don’t think that’s right for what I do. I’m not going to get a big bump in pay or raise or a promotion if I get 5,000 more viewers. My paycheck remains the same if I get a ton of viewers or very few viewers on a night. The reason I am speaking out is that I have been on the Halbach case since the get-go, when it was just a missing person. And I remember talking to Steven Avery about where she was. And I can remember the moment. I knew right then that he was lying. And if he was lying, then he killed her.
2. TCRS publishes TWO FACE TWO POLLYANNAS, the 3rd book in the groundbreaking series on the Watts Family Murders.
This article by KDVR provides some cogent analysis for how and why a plea can be rescinded.
Defense attorney Harvey Steinberg said there is a way to withdraw a plea before sentencing, but does not believe it will happen in this case.
“Remember the mother is not in a position to withdraw the plea,” Steinberg said. “The mother can scream and yell and do everything she wants. Maybe it’s appropriate, maybe it’s not, but ultimately it’s his decision after sitting and talking to his lawyers.
“There is a rule, rule 32 allows the withdraw of plea prior to sentencing if there is a fair and just reason.I don’t know what the fair and just reason is here. So do I think there is a likelihood that any judge would allow him to withdraw the plea? The answer is no.”
More than 3 months after her murder, the mainstream media still don’t know how to spell Shan’ann’s name:
C'mon guys, let's make an effort to get the spelling of Shan'ann's name right. It's been three months since her murder. #ChrisWattspic.twitter.com/hagvtCk71N
Chris Watts filed an objection through his attorneys against expanded media coverage.
But Judge Kopcow has denied the request, meaning expanded media coverage has been provisionally granted for Monday’s sentencing hearing:
November 13th, 2018
1. Six days after the dodgy plea deal last week, Chris Watts’ parents have broken their silence, and are taking the media into their confidence. At least three separate stations have reported on their side of the story in the past 12 hours.
“There’s a whole lot of unanswered questions about the case. Everything happened too quick there, from a case status to a plea.“ – Ronnie Watts
“It has been so overwhelming. And I feel like I have to do something to help my son. I just need to do something. If he’s not going to fight, I’m going to fight for him.” – Cindy Watts
Chris Watts’ folks are right. Everything has been rushed and Chris Watts has been thrown under the bus, legally speaking. No matter how guilty, everyone has the right to trial.
Damien Echols will speak about and sign his new book, “High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row.” He will be in conversation with Tami Simon for this special event; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder; $5
In my view the High Magick that saved his life was the same magic that cost the lives of Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers.
During emotional pre-sentencing proceedings last week, Cornelius’ father Willem appealed to Judge Allie to impose a sentence on the accused “which will at the very least prevent other parents from going through what we have gone through”.
His family had been ripped apart by what happened in the early hours of that winter morning. His wife, Anna Cornelius, drowned in March. Her body was found along the shores of Scarborough, less than a year after Hannah’s murder. Over a year after her death, Hannah’s younger brother, who is autistic, still asks his father when his sister is coming home from holiday.
“Me and my son are not a family – we are the survivors who live in the ruins of what once was.”
“What seems to have happened here is that a new version or a modified anti-stall capacity was added which pushes the nose down automatically. If it’s true, it is beyond comprehension that Boeing did not tell the airline and pilots about this,” said CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.
He added that if the WSJ report is confirmed, the matter will be one for aviation regulators to take up, rather than individual airlines.
“The issue is how much information to give the pilots about the systems on board so they can respond in an emergency,” Quest said, adding that pilots are often overloaded with readouts and signals from multiple devices and monitors that can risk distracting them at the worst possible moment.
Whenever there is a mass shooting in America, the same chorus erupts: why? What’s the motive? The motive is unknown. When it comes to mass murder, or attempted mass murder, the motive is NEVER unknown. Mass murder is an attempt to settle a score with the world, with society, for a perceived injustice. We miss this because we transfer our sense of “all is right with the world” onto the perpetrator, and hence their motive is a mystery to us.
The real source of these negative feelings however, and thus potentially the source of the solution to mass killings, is humiliation. See below:
A 50-year-old woman sabotaged Australian supermarket strawberries with sewing needles in an alleged act of workplace revenge, prosecutors told a Brisbane court Monday.
My Ut Trinh has been charged with seven counts of contamination of goods and faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted. Trinh’s arrest Sunday followed at least 100 reported cases of sewing needles or pins found in strawberries across the country earlier this year, sparking nationwide panic. Metal was also found in a banana, an apple and a mango, which the government believed to be isolated “copycat” cases or hoaxes.
Trinh is reportedly a former supervisor at the Berrylicious and Berry Obsession farm in Wamuran, north of Brisbane. Police will allege she felt mistreated by colleagues and had spoken to coworkers about taking revenge, according to CNN affiliate Nine News.
Four years before Adam Lanza massacred more than two dozen people in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, police officials were warned of his homicidal plans, according to documents released by the F.B.I. this week.
In one entry dated Dec. 26, 2012, 12 days after the shooting, a man said he had been privy to a conversation in which Mr. Lanza said he had an assault weapon and was planning to kill children at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his mother.
What this shows is that, far from being a huge mystery, mass shootings are predictable and preventable. Social media is often used nowadays to express feelings of threat. Weapons and combat gear are posted online. Aggressive messages and/role-plays acted out on YouTube or Facebook. The question is whether society takes any notice of these early warnings, and when we don’t, why not?
The British Government’s decision not to go ahead with the second part of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and regulation is being challenged at the High Court by a group that includes Kate and Gerry McCann.
The second inquiry was due to look into unlawful conduct within media organisations as well as relations between police and the press. The McCanns complained of press intrusion into their lives after their daughter Madeleine went missing on holiday in Portugal in 2007.
Two inquiries were expected when back in 2011, and in response to a wave of public anger over alleged phone-hacking by the now-defunct News Of The World, former British Prime Minister David Cameron said that it would be divided into two parts. In related news, it has emerged that Kate and Gerry McCann have opened legal proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to have a book by a former Portuguese PJ detective shelved.
According to the couple, the book and subsequent DVD has earned Gonçalo Amaral close to €400,000. Demand for the book has seen it translated into several languages with 180,000 put into print.
This comes after the Portuguese Supreme Court last year rejected yet another appeal by Kate and Gerry McCann to overturn an earlier ruling in favour of former PJ police inspector Gonçalo Amaral.
A lower court had ruled in 2015 that Amaral pay the parents of Madeleine McCann 500,000 euros for damage caused by his book. But since then, three successive court rulings have found in favour of the former Portuguese detective.
Durst is due back in a Los Angeles courtroom Jan. 14 for a pretrial hearing.
During final arguments at the conclusion of a preliminary hearing that spanned several weeks, defense attorney David Chesnoff said last month the prosecution’s theory that Durst killed Berman while he was lying in wait was illogical, telling the judge the allegation was “very weak.” He also noted there were no fingerprints, DNA, blood, eyewitnesses or hair samples linking his client to the crime.
But Deputy District Attorney John Lewin argued that Durst was “responsible” for his wife’s death in 1982. He called Durst an “egomaniac” who has done what he wants his entire life.
I used to believe guns were the problem, and guns are the solution to America’s mass shooting epidemic. Then I researched and wrote SLAUGHTER. I didn’t expect to have my own views shifted as much as they were, but what I discovered was gun control are part of the solution, but they’re not the source of the problem. Guns enable the underlying pathology.
The Rohde case means quite a lot to me. For one I sat in on some of the trial, and covered almost all of the defense case. For another, I saw the autopsy and crime scene photos, and remain troubled by them to this day.
I also had a brief one-on-one encounter with the accused [now convicted], and his family, and had unusual access to the prosecutor.
My book on Rohde is still in progress. Depending on how the Watts case goes, Indefensible may be available later this year or early 2019.
Let's see a gauge of interest. Who would like a book on the #Rohde case? I'm halfway through it but paused pending this judgment because he seems to be a very litigious oke. Could bring it out by Christmas for those interested. pic.twitter.com/92YyGfu7Nb
Frankly I’m surprised Judge Salie-Hlophe is pronouncing judgment after two long, straight days of closing arguments. She’s either made up her mind even before the arguments began and were submitted, or the one argument was simply a lot more compelling than the other [and perhaps it’s both].
TCRS verdict: Guilty. Also guilty of defeating the ends of justice.
However the female Judge clearly gave the prosecutor a much harder time during his closing argument. During the Van Breda trial Judge Desai was very argumentative with the defense throughout, and also in the closing arguments. And we know how that went.
Throughout the Rohde trial Salie-Hlophe appears to have been more benign [if that’s the word] to the handsome prosecutor, and the sword-crossing with Van der Spuy was epic at times. That said, the challenging and interrogation of the state’s case on Tuesday led me to post this:
Judge Salie-Hlophe: "Maybe taking your make-up off isn't such a priority." #Rohde I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this. pic.twitter.com/HMvhTuRFfV
3. TWO FACE just made the top 10 of Amazon’s Bestselling Hoaxes & Deceptions Category for the first time. On the same day the 25th review is posted for an overall reviewer rating of 3.5 out of 5.
The Colorado public defender’s office, which was appointed to represent Mr. Watts, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Mr. Rourke, the district attorney, said investigators did not know if they would ever get a full and accurate statement from Mr. Watts. But he said: “The spotlight that he tried to shine on Shanann, falsely, incorrectly and frankly a flat-out lie, has been corrected.
“The spotlight shines directly where it belongs — on him.”
No @WeldCountyDA respected the wishes of the victims family and consulted them first. Michael Rourke doesn’t oppose the death penalty but likely saw the plea deal as a pragmatic way to give the family some measure of justice without putting them thru a trial. https://t.co/OCAqbCCj8p
The fact that so many family members are here from both sides of the family [flying in all the way from North Carolina] suggests this is a big deal. It's not just a nothing preliminary hearing. It's not just scheduling. It's significant #chriswatts#pleadeal
If I understood correctly, the DA flew to North Carolina to meet with the Rzucek family. Says he feels sick, saddened by this result. Pleasure knowing the family, but "there is no cause for celebration." That's for damn sure. #ChrisWatts
DA says autopsy reports still sealed. Will talk to family about it. DA says he will not ask autopsy reports to remain sealed after sentencing hearing. #ChrisWatts
Two high-profile hearings are being held today. One, kicking off the Watts criminal trial [unless there’s a plea deal which will do the opposite and end the prospect of a criminal trial], and the other the closing arguments in the very long Jason Rohde case.
Summary of morning session: Jason Rohde Trial: Live Coverage & Analysis #tcrshttps://t.co/ehbgn4OZ0a … #Rohde I'll be updating this page over the course of the day and the next few days until the closing arguments have been completed. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
In July 2016 Rohde – a millionaire CEO of a large realty group – was accused of murdering his wife during a business conference at the Spier hotel. He claimed his wife committed suicide after he told her he wanted a divorce.
TCRS will be actively covering the court proceedings of both throughout the day. Keep tabs on these hashtags:
1. Are status conferences usually not televised? There won’t be any expanded media coverage [that’s television and livestreaming] from inside Weld County Court during today’s Chris Watts hearing. There will be coverage, including Livetweeting and analysis at TCRS.
Do you believe Shannan Watts killed (Strangled) her children to death
One of his alleged lovers, a social-media blogger, bragged to at least two others that she helped Martinez dig up negative information about the sole juror who refused to vote for a death sentence. That juror’s name was revealed minutes after a mistrial was declared.
Arizona law prohibits the public release of juror names.
Martinez also is alleged to have flirtatiously communicated with a juror who had been removed from the trial in an attempt to glean information about sitting jurors.
The woman told investigators during a sworn deposition that she had texted photos of her naked breasts to Martinez after he told her he was “a breast man.”
Did a heartbroken Susan Rohde end her own life in the bathroom of a fancy winelands hotel in July 2016 or did her husband Jason violently cut her life short and try to lead police off the trail?
Closing arguments for and against these scenarios will be presented in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday when the State and Rohde’s defence team face off after an almost three-month break.
Likely to be at the centre of their presentations is the physical clues that give an indication of what happened in Susan’s last moments.
The court faces a challenging task in making sense of the testimonies from four pathologists who weighed in on possible causes of death, and deciding which is beyond reasonable doubt. The State maintains that Rohde manually strangled his wife to death and/or inflicted “other violence” that was unknown, following months of heated arguments over his affair with colleague Jolene Alterskye.
The two had been at Spier Hotel for a weekend conference that Alterskye was also attending. One possibility that prosecutor Louis van Niekerk put forward during the trial was that Rohde had smothered his wife with a cushion as it was “the only way to shut her up”.
Van Niekerk said Rohde then tried to stage a suicide by dragging her body to the bathroom and using an electric cord to hang her from a hook on the back of the door.
Last October, State pathologist Dr Akmal Coetzee-Khan testified that he had recommended police investigate a possible homicide after noting blood stains in the room, scratches on Susan’s face and blunt force trauma injuries which suggested a physical altercation.
Coetzee-Khan found injuries to suggest that she had been punched in the face, her neck squeezed with a hand, a hand or object placed over her nose and mouth, her chest or ribs kicked, punched or kneed, and the back of her head pushed against a surface.
There were signs of a physical altercation before strangulation which lasted more than a few minutes, and could have lasted up to an hour, he said at the time.
State pathologist Dr Deidre Abrahams observed the autopsy that Coetzee-Khan conducted and testified that she supported his findings of strangulation and asphyxiation.
Rohde has pleaded not guilty to these charges and emphasised during his testimony that the only thing he was guilty of was being an adulterer. “The option for me was divorce, my lady, not murder. With all my faults, I am not a murderer. I made a lot of mistakes, but I am not a murderer.”
Defence pathologist ‘95% sure’
The defence maintains that Susan took her own life or had a failed parasuicide attempt.
Defence pathologist Dr Reggie Perumal, who conducted a second autopsy on Susan, testified that suicide by hanging was the most probable cause, but he could not exclude other possibilities, such as manual strangulation.
He also said it was possible that marks of faecal matter next to her body and outside the hotel bathroom door could possibly be as a result of her being dragged after she had died and soiled herself.
A second forensic pathologist testifying for the defence said he was 95% sure that Susan had committed suicide.
1. Chris Watts will make another appearance in Weld County District Court Tuesday for a status conference.This will be the last court hearing for Christopher Lee Watts before he is scheduled for an arraignment, where he may enter a guilty or not guilty plea. – Times-Call
Amaral cruelly claims Madeleine, abducted aged three from an Algarve holiday apartment in 2007, died in an accident and the McCanns then covered it up.
Is Amaral right though about Madelein’s death being an accident? If it was entirely accidental, absolutely no need to cover it up.
Kate and Gerry, who have fought a lengthy legal battle to stop Amaral cashing in, are currently challenging him at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. A source close to them said: “If Goncalo Amaral continues to make these outrageous claims then he will find he has a tough fight on his hands.
“Kate and Gerry are not going to let him get away with what he said about them.”
The McCanns’ pursuit of Amaral is impressive. If only they pursued their daughter with the same personal passion and focus.
Tickets to the class were $200 a pop. Sarah, a school administrator from DC, drove seven hours to attend. “I look to Damien because, like thousands of others, I was inspired by his resilience,” she said. “He taught me that anyone can be freed from their own personal prison cell. I had put myself in an imaginary cage; the bars were made of my anxieties and fears.” Sarah wakes up at 3.30 every morning to practice magick; thanks to Damien’s teachings, she says, “I am mostly free of anxiety and sadness.”
There’s a difference between putting yourself in a prison cell of your own mind and making, and being a prime suspect in a triple murder case. There’s also something to be said for the vacuous life that follows, where the “innocent” accused then goes on to milk his victimhood ever after in books and talks about how much he suffered, as if he has no life beyond the infamy and celebrity related to a murder he says he didn’t commit.
At a recent talk and book signing in Manhattan, Echols led an audience of more than 100 in a guided meditation he says reliably helps clear his mind.
Note: Amanda Knox is also milking the murder-made-me-famous celebrity gravy train by doing speeches for money to talk about how and why she didn’t kill her British housemate.
Unsurprisingly, since Echols and Knox have so much in common, they’re bosom buddies.
Frustration, tears and a feeling of hope is what part two of “Making a Murderer” brings. Fans will have to wait several years more to see what will happen with all this new information, or to see if there is any chance of justice for Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.
The Weld District Attorney’s Office announced late Friday that Frederick triple murder suspect Christopher Watts will appear Tuesday in Weld District Court for a status conference.The hearing is scheduled for 30 minutes beginning at 2 p.m. in Division 17. The district attorney’s office didn’t release any other information.
Watts wasn’t scheduled to return to court until 10:30 a.m. Nov. 19 for a status conference in Division 16. That court appearance remained on the docket as of Friday afternoon.
Is it just bad luck that this hearing has been moved to the same day the US media will be preoccupied with the Midterm elections? In true crime there is no such thing as coincidence.
2. Gerry McCann Radio 4 Interview About Madeleine McCann
Gerry #mccann speech in this radio address is CRINGEWORTHY… describing Madeleine in pain “skin to skin” with him? Shouldn’t his memories be happy times instead of a child in pain #ThisIsSoSick#McCannspic.twitter.com/m5tiEuKcEd
The source of school shootings isn't guns. It's humiliation. The sadism in mass shootings doesn't come from inside a gun or bullet, but human psychology. Guns don't help, but take away guns and you still have the source of the problem to deal with. Columbine also involved bombs.
Read the Rocket Science assessment of Mass Shootings which profiles for the first time in true crime history Stephen Paddock, Adam Lanza, Nikolas Cruz, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, James E. Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho:
He opened his heart to BBC Radio 4 listeners yesterday, describing the pain he and wife Kate felt when the little girl vanished from a holiday apartment in Portugal’s Algarve just short of her fourth birthday 11 years ago.
Opened his heart? A cardiologist implicated in the disappearance and death in his daughter opening his heart?
Cardiologist Gerry, 50, said: “We are incredibly resilient for the most part, and people and time make the pain ease. The grief and the loss and some of the pain we have is the not knowing but I certainly don’t wish her dead.
“That is not a trade-off at any point.”
Grief and loss? Smiles all round during this interview:
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
TCRS MERCH available now – just in time for Christmas!
Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
Read the entire 9-Part TWO FACE series, the most definitive book series covering the Chris Watts Case
Visit the TCRS Archive of 100 Books dealing with all the world’s most high-profile true crime cases.
Join the TCRS Community on Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Multiple daily posts, interesting discussions, amazing audiobooks narrated by the author, ongoing series and powerful, informative weekly podcasts.
Subscribe to the Growing TCRS YouTube Channel
Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
3. 
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