Tag: crime

Former pastor charged with killing 8-year-old girl who was walking to Bible camp nearly 50 years ago

An 83-year-old former pastor has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of a neighboring pastor’s daughter in 1975, Pennsylvania officials announced Monday.

The suspect, David Zandstra, was arrested on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where investigators say he confessed to killing 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington nearly five decades ago when he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania.

His confession came after investigators presented him with new evidence gathered early this year, which came from an interview with a confidential informant and a diary entry the informant wrote in 1975 when she was a 10-year-old girl, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

Zandstra has been charged with criminal homicide, murder, kidnapping of a minor and the possession of an instrument of crime, the release said.

“Justice has been a long time coming, but we are proud and grateful to finally be able to give the community an answer,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a statement.

This case has “haunted” members of law enforcement and the small area of Marple Township since Gretchen went missing, Stollsteimer said. The girl was last seen walking to summer Bible camp on August 15th, 1975, the release said.

The camp was held at both the Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church – where Zandstra was a pastor – and the Reformed Presbyterian Church – where Gretchen’s father was a pastor, the release said. Gretchen’s father became concerned when she failed to appear at his church, the release says, and it was Zandstra who then called police to report Gretchen’s disappearance.

Investigators noted there were inaccuracies in Zandstra’s early statements and they had questions about how the pastor knew so much about what Gretchen was wearing that day, even though she never arrived at camp, according to a newly released criminal complaint.

At the time, Zandstra denied knowing anything about the disappearance, the complaint said.

Two months later, Gretchen’s skeletal remains were found in nearby Ridley Creek State Park. Her cause of death was homicide, and the medical examiner said Gretchen suffered “two or more blunt impacts to the skull,” according to court documents.

Nearly five decades went by as the case laid dormant. Ultimately, an interview with a woman who was friends with the suspect’s daughter in the 1970s – and her diary entries from that time – led to a pivotal break in the case.

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Relative of original Jack the Ripper investigator claims to know never-caught serial killer’s ID

A relative of a former investigator of the Jack the Ripper case claims she knows the real murderer is.

Sarah Bax Horton, who is a relative to an officer who conducted the original investigation, claims a man named Hyam Hyams is the real mysterious serial killer who went on a spree in London in 1888.

Horton, a former police volunteer, said her detective work has led her Hyams, who lived in the area at the same time as the murderer, and that he was a cigar worker, therefore, would give him the knowledge of how to use a knife, the Telegraph reported.

In addition, Hyams had a dark past littered with alcoholism, epilepsy, and paranoia. He was also arrested after he attacked his wife and his mother with “a chopper,” the Telegraph said.

But what really convinced Horton that Hyams was the real serial killer was his medical records, which gave “distinctive physical characteristics.”

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Cops search Las Vegas home as part of investigation into rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder

Las Vegas police searched a home Monday as part of an investigation into rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder.

Detectives served a search warrant at a home in Henderson near Interstate 11 and Wagon Wheel Drive.

Shakur was shot and killed just one block from the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996. He was 25 years old.

The case remains unsolved.

Police have declined to comment any further. 

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Everything we know about family of ‘quiet’ Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann

The suspect busted for the Gilgo Beach murders is a twice-married architect quietly raising two children — including a son with special needs — in the ramshackle Long Island home he grew up in.

Rex Heuermann’s stunned neighbors in Massapequa Park were nearly united Friday in calling him a quiet businessman and “regular family man.”

Among them was actor Billy Baldwin, 60, who tweeted his shock at waking to “learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate” from Berner High School’s class of 1981.

“Married, two kids, architect. ‘Average guy… quiet, family man.’ Mind-boggling,” the local-born actor wrote.

“Massapequa is in shock.”

The 59-year-old architect was raised with his brother, Craig, in the unkempt 1956 home on 1st Avenue that is directly across the bay from where 11 bodies have been found strewn since 2010.

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40 human skulls, other bones used as decorations found in Kentucky man’s home, authorities say

Human remains — including dozens of skulls — were found inside a man’s house in Kentucky, according to authorities.

In an affidavit, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation noted approximately 40 skulls, as well as femurs, hip bones, and a Harvard Medical School bag, were discovered during a raid at 39-year-old James Nott’s home in Bullitt County Tuesday morning.

The skulls were decorated around the furniture. One skull had a head scarf around it. One skull was located on the mattress where Nott slept. A Harvard Medical School bag was found inside the Residence,” Special Agent Sara J. Cunning noted in the affidavit.

Cunning wrote that authorities also found a slew of weapons, such as an AK-47 rifle, a .38 special, Charter Arms, a revolver, ammunition, grenades, and plates for body armor.

The FBI, along with the Mt. Washington Police Department, executed a warrant in connection with a search for guns and trafficked human remains, which led to Nott’s arrest.

During the search, “an FBI agent asked Nott asked if anyone else was inside the residence,” the document noted. “Nott responded, ‘only my dead friends.'”

Nott, who is a convicted felon, as he was arrested on gun charges in 2011, was also linked to a nationwide trafficking ring in which several suspects were accused of purchasing and selling stolen human remains, some of which were tied back to the Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Arkansas.

The FBI began looking into Nott after he had chatted with Jeremy Pauley, a man from Pennsylvania — who was also being investigated for his role in the trafficking ring.

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Zodiac witness speaks out for first time to claim the murders were the work of multiple killers – because the man she saw did not match criminal sketches made after notorious cab driver shooting

The Zodiac killings of the late 1960s and 1970s may have been the work of more than one murderer, a witness has suggested. 

The terrifying new theory was revealed by a woman who believes she saw the man responsible for one of the gruesome murders in the new Peacock docuseries, ‘Myth of the Zodiac Killer,’ which premiered on Tuesday. 

‘The Zodiac’, as the killer became known, was believed to be responsible for five deaths and two more attempted murders in the San Francisco bay area, but his correspondence claims he killed 37 people.  

The supposed murderer wrote confessional letters to local news outlets and four cryptic ciphers, but his identity has never been revealed. 

Now a witness at Lake Berryessa in Napa County – where Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22, and Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, were stabbed in broad daylight on September 27, 1969 – has spoken publicly for the first time. 

Shepard survived but Hartnell died, and before leaving the park the killer left the dates of two previous murders on the side of Hartnell’s car. 

Linda Jensen, who was sunbathing at Lake Berryessa that day, claims the man she believes she saw is inconsistent with police sketches from other supposed Zodiac murders. 

‘There are other drawings that came out, of the Zodiac, that looked nothing like what I saw that day,’ Jensen told the documentary. 

Jensen was at the lake sunbathing with friends when a strange man had stalked the group and hid behind a tree for around 45 minutes. 

The group pretended he wasn’t there, for their own safety, she explained. 

Jensen believes the man she saw had notably different hair, eyes and facial features to another sketch produced after the murder of a 29-year-old cab driver named Paul Lee Stine who was shot by a passenger on October 11, just a few weeks later. 

‘He had very smooth, parted hair and combed [it] really straight…[he looked] just very intense, like focused,’ Jensen, said of the man she saw.  

‘The vibes coming off of him were bad, were dark. All of us felt that’ she said. 

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Manson family killer Leslie Van Houten, 73, is released from prison after serving 53 years of a life sentence

Leslie Van Houten walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving 53 years of a life sentence for her participation in two of the infamous Manson murders.

Van Houten, the youngest member of the cult, ‘was released to parole supervision‘ and driven to transitional housing, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The convicted killer, 73, is expected to spend about a year in transitional housing, learning basic skills such as how to go to the grocery store and get a debit card, according to her attorney Nancy Tetreault. 

Van Houten was serving a life sentence for helping Charles Manson´s followers carry out the 1969 killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary.

Her release comes just four days after Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would not fight a state appeals court ruling that Van Houten should be granted parole. He said it was unlikely the state Supreme Court would consider an appeal.

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HOW MISSOURI’S ‘FELONY MURDER’ LAW TRAPS PEOPLE FOR DEFENDING THEMSELVES

Technically speaking, Antonio Meanus wasn’t supposed to own the gun he had stashed in his pants on Oct. 7, 2021. But he didn’t believe he had much of a choice.

Earlier that day in Springfield, Missouri, Meanus, a tall, 30-year-old man with a goatee and shoulder-length dreadlocks, had gotten a call from a man named Raquan White, the son of his former boss. White said he was in a financial bind. He was going to come up short on his next rent payment and wanted to sell an iPhone to a 17-year-old named I’Shon Dunham. But White had dealt with Dunham in the past and said that he “didn’t feel trustworthy.” So Meanus says White asked him to come along to make sure Dunham didn’t rob him.

Meanus, who had grown up in some of the roughest areas of St. Louis, told White that the whole thing was a bad idea and offered to just give him some money. But White insisted on going. Not one to abandon a friend, Meanus got in the car.

It had been an unusually warm fall day for the city’s 170,000 residents. About halfway through the ride to the meetup point, Meanus again tried to convince White to go home instead.

“I said, ‘This don’t sound right,’” Meanus told The Appeal in a phone interview from the state’s Crossroads Correctional Center. “Let’s just turn around and go back.” White assured him it would be fine and kept driving.

They eventually reached a two-story apartment building on 422 East Norton Road. Newly planted trees dotted the lawn around the parking lot. Dunham and a stranger emerged from the red brick apartment building. The stranger’s hand was tucked under his shirt. Dunham, a slender teenager with big eyes, a wide smile, and a peach-fuzz beard, hopped into the front seat and asked for the iPhone. But White first demanded to know what the uninvited guest was doing there.

“He cool,” Dunham said.

Dunham then lunged forward, tried to grab the iPhone, and began grappling with White in the front seat. After a brief struggle, Dunham wordlessly pulled out a gun and pointed it at White’s head.

Meanus panicked. He believed that both he and White would be killed. So he pulled out his gun and shot Dunham, killing him.

Distressed, Meanus called the police to report what had happened. He knew he couldn’t have done anything else in the circumstances. He didn’t know, however, that a single state law had already taken away his right to save himself.

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Dem bill in California would mandate judges to consider race when doling out prison sentences

A Democrat-backed bill making its way through the California Legislature would require judges in the state to consider a convicted criminal’s race when determining how long to sentence them to prison.

Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, the Democratic chair of the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, quietly introduced Bill 852 in February. The Assembly went on to pass the little-known legislation in May, and the measure is currently being considered in the state Senate. 

The bill would add a section to the Penal Code of California requiring courts, whenever they have the authority to determine a prison sentence, to “rectify” alleged racial bias in the criminal justice system by taking into account how historically persecuted minorities are affected differently than others.

“It is the intent of the Legislature to rectify the racial bias that has historically permeated our criminal justice system as documented by the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” the proposed new section to the Penal Code reads. “Whenever the court has discretion to determine the appropriate sentence according to relevant statutes and the sentencing rules of the Judicial Council, the court presiding over a criminal matter shall consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations.”

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