Tag: crime

7 found dead in Oklahoma field during search for 2 missing teens

Seven bodies have been found on a property in Henryetta, Oklahoma, KOCO reported Monday.

The discovery was part of a search for two teenagers that had gone missing early Monday morning in eastern Oklahoma.

An alert went out Monday morning for 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer, saying that it was believed they were with 39-year-old Jesse McFadden. The teens are believed to be among the bodies found, though identities have not yet been confirmed.

The Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that deputies took the missing persons report that revealed Webster left during Saturday evening, April 29 to spend the weekend with a friend. She was set to be home by 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 30. She never returned home.

“Webster was reported to be staying with 39-year-old Jesse McFadden, who, along with two other family members, were believed to be heading to McAlester to work on a ranch,” the report said. But no one from the family went to the ranch and there hadn’t been any contact with them since Sunday.

Brewer was picked up along the way on Saturday evening.

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Bill Maher: Why Aren’t Major Black Celebrities Asking Why Black People Are Killing Each Other In Cities Like Chicago?

HBO host Bill Maher on Friday said Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson was “excusing horrific behavior” in a speech he delivered following several shootings in Chicagoland last week and questioned why black celebrities with large fanbases do not have opinions on these issues.

“Most of the shootings [in Chicago] are young black men killing other young black men. Is that not correct?” Maher asked.

“Yeah that’s correct,” guest Glenn Loury responded.

“Okay, much more than what the cops do. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? Why aren’t there a hundred giant black celebrities who would have the respect of those people saying what are you doing to yourselves? Why are you killing each other?” Maher asked.

“It dishonors our community. Come on, we’re better than this,” Loury said.

“Right,” Maher responded. “It’s never addressed.”

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Earth Day co-founder killed, composted girlfriend

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the “composted” body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and ’70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself “Unicorn” because his German-Jewish last name translates to “one horn”  —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen “Holly” Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn’t come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn’t until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn’s apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn’s bedroom closet. Inside the closet, police found Maddux’s beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

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Kitchen knives could be seized from homes of suspected criminals under new Home Office plans being considered

Kitchen knives could be seized from the homes of suspected criminals under a proposed Home Office plan.

Police will be consulted by ministers to allow them extra powers to ‘seize, retain and destroy bladed articles’ kept in private, even if the knives are ‘not on the Home Office’s banned list of weapons’.

According to The Telegraph, the move is one of numerous measures created to harden up sentences for selling, importing and possessing knives.

The Ben Kinsella Trust noted an 11 per cent increase in knife crime in England and Wales in the 12 months to September 2022, with police recording 50,434 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument during that period.

A total of 20 knives and similar weapons are banned in the UK, including belt buckle knives, push daggers, spiral knives, butterfly knives, swords and stealth knives.

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Parody Hitman Website Nabs Air National Guardsman After He Allegedly Applied For Murder-For-Hire Jobs

A Hermitage, Tennessee, man is facing federal charges after meeting with an undercover FBI agent to culminate a deal to murder an individual for payment, announced U.S. Attorney Henry C. Leventis.

Josiah Ernesto Garcia, 21, was charged yesterday in a criminal complaint with the use of interstate facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.

According to the complaint, Garcia needed money to support his family and in mid-February began searching online for contract mercenary jobs and came across the website www.rentahitman.com. Originally created in 2005 to advertise a cyber security startup company, the company failed and over the next decade it received many inquiries about murder-for-hire services. The website’s administrator then converted the website to a parody site that contains false testimonials from those who have purported to use hit man services, and an intake form where people can request services. The website also has an option for someone to apply to work as a hired killer.

Garcia submitted an employment inquiry indicating that he was interested in obtaining employment as a hit man. Garcia followed up on this initial request and submitted other identification documents and a resume, indicating he was an expert marksman and employed in the Air National Guard since July 2021. The resume also indicated that Garcia was nicknamed “Reaper” which was earned from military experience and marksmanship. Garcia continued to follow up with the website administrator indicating that he wanted to go to work as soon as possible.

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The Army Increasingly Allows Soldiers Charged With Violent Crimes to Leave the Military Rather Than Face Trial

Stationed at Army posts thousands of miles apart, two soldiers faced a flurry of criminal charges after they allegedly assaulted women within days of each other in early 2017.

One soldier was accused of physically assaulting his wife and firing a gun as she tried to flee their home near Fort Hood in Texas. Police later found a bullet hole in a window screen.

The other told investigators in Alaska that he’d had sex with a fellow soldier who he knew was drunk and incapable of providing consent. They later found DNA evidence of his semen on her shorts.

Military prosecutors deemed the cases strong enough to pursue them in court. But the Army instead kicked the soldiers out, allowing them to return to civilian life with scant public record of the accusations against them.

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Portland Police Held Back Details Of Brutal Murder Because Suspect Is Trans

Police in Portland deliberately delayed releasing details surrounding the brutal murder of a cab driver on Easter Sunday because the suspect is a trans individual with a history of threatening behavior, according to a report by journalist Andy Ngo.

The driver was found by police stabbed to death on Sunday evening in the Buckman Neighborhood, with Radio City Cab confirming the victim was a long-time employee with an impeccable record.

Ngo says he investigated the case after finding it suspicious that barely any details about an apprehended suspect were provided in the press release.

It was only on Monday afternoon that the Portland Police Bureau identified the suspect as 30-year-old Moses Lopez, who was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center, charged with Murder in the Second Degree and Unlawful Use of a Weapon.

Ngo details how Lopez was booked days before for threatening a different person with a weapon, but had been released without bail.

The journalist also notes how the individual’s was previously fired from working as a certified nursing assistant for allegedly engaging in abusive and threatening behavior towards co-workers.

Ngo says Portland police are still refusing to answer when asked if Lopez is trans.

The incident comes just a fortnight after the shooting in Nashville by a trans individual, with the person’s manifesto still being withheld from public release by authorities.

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Newly-Elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Said Black People Should Not Face ‘State-Sponsored Policing’

Chicago’s new Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson told a group organizing for a “police-free future” that black people should be removed from “state-sponsored policing” as a way to fight “white supremacy.”

During the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, Johnson came out in support of the “defund the police” movement and spoke on a panel titled “We Don’t Call Police: A Town Hall on a Police-Free Future” in which he praised organizers for pushing “an agenda that actually can transform people’s lives,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“And part of it is removing ourselves away from this, you know, state-sponsored policing,” he said, “but also the tools that have been placed against Black folks that have been used violently, whether it’s policing, or administering standardized tests, or … around how white supremacy finds its way in every facet of our lives, that we have to fight and resist that.”

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Trump Commuted His Sentence. Now the Justice Department Is Going To Prosecute Him Again.

When Philip Esformes walked out of prison in December 2020, he’d spent four and a half years behind bars, the majority of which were in solitary confinement. He reportedly weighed about 130 pounds. He was, in many ways, a broken man. But Esformes’ luck was changing: He had recently received clemency from former President Donald Trump, giving him the chance to rebuild his life after paying a debt to the country.

That fortune has quickly soured.

In a move that defies historical precedent, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is using a legal loophole to reprosecute Esformes’ case—raising grave questions about double jeopardy, the absolute power of the clemency process, and the weaponization of the criminal legal system against politically expedient targets. 

A former executive overseeing a network of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, Esformes was arrested in 2016. The prosecutors, who were found to have committed substantial misconduct throughout the case, alleged he paid doctors under the table to send patients his way and subsequently charged Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary treatments. The government held him without bond in the years leading up to his trial, placing him in solitary. He was ultimately found guilty of money laundering and related charges, as well as bribing regulators to give him notice of upcoming inspections so he could attempt to obscure shoddy conditions at those facilities. 

But Esformes was not convicted of the most serious charges leveled against him. The government failed to convince a jury, for example, that he committed conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. So his 20-year sentence—handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida—may appear grossly disproportionate to his convictions. 

Until you realize the judge explicitly punished Esformes for charges on which the jury hung.

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