Tag: crime

DNA Used to Uncover 70s Serial Killer Who Raped and Strangled College Student in Ohio

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph T. Deters announced the indictment of Ralph Howell for the rape and murder of Cheryl Thompson in 1978.

Howell was killed in an automobile accident in 1985.

Howell was posthumously indicted for one count of Aggravated Murder, and one count of Rape.

On March 24, 1978, Cheryl Thompson went missing after leaving her home to meet her boyfriend at a bar in Oakley.

On April 8, 1978, Thompson’s body was discovered along the bank of the Little Miami River by an Ohio Department of Natural Resources officer. Thompson’s cause of death was asphyxia caused by strangulation. It was also determined Thompson had been raped.

Physical evidence was collected from Thompson’s body and stored at the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office. However, due to the forensic limitations of the time, the investigation quickly went cold. Loveland police officers and agents at the Bureau of Criminal Investigations never stopped investigating.

This year, the DNA sample taken from Thompson’s body was sent to a third-party genealogy company in hopes of developing a suspect. The results narrowed this DNA sample to a specific family tree. Ralph Howell was included in these results.

Further investigation showed Howell was arrested in 1983 for abduction. In that incident, Howell picked a woman up on the side of the road and offered to drive her home. Once in the vehicle, Howell placed a rope around the victim’s neck and began to strangle her. He told her he wanted to have sex with her. The victim was able to fight Howell off and escape from the vehicle.

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Michigan Judge In Hot Water After Allegedly Making False Assault Claim

A Michigan judge is in hot water after her alleged misconduct in a bike shop.

The Judicial Tenure Commission filed a public complaint against Wayne County Judge Demetria Brue after an incident that began when she rented bikes at Mackinac Island Bike Shop in August 2019, The Detroit Free Press reported.

When Brue and her colleague returned the bicycles, she told employees there was an issue with the bike and they should not have to pay full price, the complaint states. Brue also spoke to the owner of the shop, but they were unable to come to an agreement. Brue told the owner, Ira Green, multiple times that she was a judge, the complaint states.

Brue did not respond to a request for comment.

At some point during the 20-minute discussion, Brue allegedly reached over the cash register, took the receipt out of Green’s hands, and ripped it.

After ripping the receipt, she then allegedly falsely claimed that the store owner assaulted her and appeared to play every card she had.

“You assaulted me,” she said. “Did you just assault me? You took my receipt and tore it up. I want the police. Now we need the police. I am going to call them. You snatched my receipt and threw it away and grabbed my hand and you hurt me. You touched my hand with force and violence. I am a female. I am a judge. I am here for a conference and you … I am an African American female. That was racist, and it was disrespectful and it was violent.”

When police arrived she claimed to them that she was assaulted until the officers reviewed the security footage.

She admitted that she was not assaulted and the officers assisted in reaching an agreement where the judge did not have to pay for the bike rental.

She has been accused of breaking 10 rules, including making a false statement to a police officer.

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Colorado club shooting suspect is nonbinary, attorneys say

The public defenders for the suspect in the mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub said in a Tuesday night court filing obtained by a New York Times reporter that their client is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.

The big picture: The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, is facing multiple murder and hate crime charges over the shooting at Club Q last weekend that killed five people, per Max D’Onofrio, a city spokesperson.

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First Trans Representative in New Hampshire Arrested After Stalking Woman, Violating Restraining Order

The first openly transgender person elected to public office in New Hampshire has been jailed on charges related to stalking a victim who had a protective order against him. Stacie Laughton’s arrest comes just days after he was re-elected to the New Hampshire House as a Democrat.

Laughton, born Barry Charles Laughton Jr., was arrested on November 12 after his most recent violation of a stalking order that had been placed against him by an unidentified woman in his community in July. Laughton, 38, had contacted the victim over social media.

According to the Hudson Police Department, this is not the first time Laughton has violated his restraining order. In August, Laughton had similarly attempted to make contact with the victim, and was arrested in September for the violation. He was released from custody shortly after.

There was virtually no media coverage of his September arrest, which likely meant voters were unaware of it ahead of the November 8 elections, during which Laughton ran for re-election as a Libertarian Democrat candidate in Nashua’s 4th Ward.

Laughton placed second out of four candidates, securing him a seat in the House of Representatives. New Hampshire has the largest state House in the country with 400 representatives, and all three top finishers in the race took seats.

In addition to his recent stalking order violations, Laughton is on bail for a 2021 arrest in which he was charged with misusing the Nashua 911 emergency system.

Between May and July 2021, he sent seven texts to Nashua 911, prompting police officers to respond to his address. On each occasion, they determined there was no emergency. At the time, Laughton denied sending the texts and claimed that he was being “spoofed” by an unknown perpetrator.

He also complained that media coverage of the arrest was making him look bad.

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Oregon Gov. Kate Brown Pardons Everyone Convicted Of Simple Marijuana Possession

Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a pardon Monday for those in her state who have been charged with simple possession of marijuana.

“No one deserves to be forever saddled with the impacts of a conviction for simple possession of marijuana — a crime that is no longer on the books in Oregon,” Brown announced in a press release. “Oregonians should never face housing insecurity, employment barriers, and educational obstacles as a result of doing something that is now completely legal, and has been for years. My pardon will remove these hardships.” The move will eliminate over 47,000 convictions from criminal records impacting about 45,000 people.

Calling the criminal justice system in Oregon “flawed, inequitable, and outdated,” Brown further added that “Black and Latina/o/x people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

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Did the FBI Tamper With the Frame Rate of the Jan 6 Pipe Bomb Footage?

More than a year has passed since the FBI last released footage of the pipe bomber who allegedly planted explosive devices near the DNC and RNC party headquarters the night before January 6, 2021.

The FBI has reportedly collected 39,000 video files relating to the suspect’s identity, according to Steven D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington D.C. Field Office. Yet since September 8, 2021, not a single new video file has been released.

At Revolver, we have been focused on the two clips of video footage from DNC building security cameras that the FBI released on March 2021 and September 2021, respectively.

In August 2022, we definitively proved the DNC camera footage from the FBI’s September 2021 release should have captured the “money shot” of the pipe bomber taking the bomb out of the bag and planting it near a park bench in front of the DNC building. But for some reason, the FBI censored the tape so that the public could not see the alleged criminal walk back into the camera frame to commit the actual criminal act.

Over the past two months, we took a closer look at the DNC surveillance footage the FBI provided to the public. What we found was even more bizarre, and more damning than our initial discovery that the FBI is withholding critical footage of the pipe bomber actually planting the bomb.

The original “missing moneyshot” – reflecting the FBI’s deliberate censorship of the commission of the crime, effectively – is a red flag of such stunning proportions that it alone merits Congressional investigation under a GOP-led House commission on FBI malfeasance.

The new findings we are about to discuss, however, are so implausible, specific, and suspicious that we are compelled to demand that a future GOP-led commission subpoena and demand the exact chain of custody for the DNC surveillance tapes that the FBI released to the public

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Everything We Know About the Club Q Shooting Suspect in Colorado Springs

A gunman shot and killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on Saturday night.

The shooting suspect, named by police as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, also injured more than two dozen people at Club Q before a patron pinned him on the ground until police arrived. Two barmen who worked at the club were killed in addition to 3 still unnamed others. Of the 25 people injured, seven were in critical condition as of Sunday night.

The suspect, who is reportedly the grandson of California state lawmaker Randy Voepel, was arrested by El Paso County police last year and charged with felony menacing and first-degree kidnapping after he allegedly threatened to harm his mother with a homemade bomb and other weapons. The case was never prosecuted.

The shooting in Colorado took place hours before the LGBTQ club was due to host an all-ages drag brunch event to celebrate Transgender Day of Remembrance. Similar events have been the target of increasingly vitriolic attacks by far-right groups and Republican lawmakers in recent months who baselessly claim they are being used to groom children.

“Club Q is a safe haven for our LGBTQ citizens,” Colorado Springs Police Department  Chief Adrian Vasquez said in a statement. “Every citizen has the right to feel safe and secure in our city, to go about our beautiful city without fear of being harmed or treated poorly. I’m so terribly saddened and heartbroken.”

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NBC: Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack

The official narrative on the Paul Pelosi attack purported by Democrats and the mainstream media makes zero sense.  You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to recognize there were multiple contradictory accounts from the Department of Justice vs. local police and even some reports from journalists.

In fact, NBC suspended one of its own correspondents, Miguel Almaguer, after he reported that on the night of the supposed attack at the Pelosi home in San Francisco that Paul Pelosi actually opened the door when police knocked, seemingly in normal health, and then walked away from the officers to talk to the alleged assailant David Depape, when Depape attacked him.  This report led many to suggest that Pelosi and Depape somehow knew each other. 

A media firestorm ensued along with denials from the DOJ, which detailed a completely different version of events in which the police officers opened the door themselves and found Pelosi struggling with Depape who had injured him with a hammer.  NBC dropped Almaguer after many called his report “bizarre.” 

As it turns out, Miguel Almaguer was right.  NBC now reports that police body cam footage has been made available to some media outlets and the footage clearly shows Paul Pelosi opening the door for police in seemingly perfect health.  This contradicts the DOJ report on the attack and suggests a potential cover-up. 

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Alleged satanic cult killer Ethan Myers arrested after chilling ‘human sacrifice’

Three people believed to be satanic cult members have been arrested for the gruesome alleged murder of a woman as part of a “human sacrifice”.

Sarah Hopson was found brutally slain at her mobile home in Texas, USA, last Sunday during a welfare check, according to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.

The 36-year-old had allegedly been bashed in the head with a rock, while her fingers, toes and ears had been cut off and placed in a plastic bag.

She had large wounds to the right side of her head and forehead, while her lifeless body was reportedly wrapped up in a carpet.

Police arrested Ethan Kyle Myers, 26, on Thursday, after two people – who were also arrested in connection to the murder – asked police to check on the woman.

The pair, Allen Price and Teresa Louviere, reportedly told officers that “Ethan Myers had done something to Sarah Hopson”.

They allegedly told officers that he was staying in their home and had been “acting strange” before fleeing their house covered in blood.

Mr. Price reportedly also told police that Ethan had been involved in “cult activity”.

This claim was also backed up by Ethan’s mother, who allegedly revealed to officers that her son was “hearing voices” and was “satanic” and that he was hiding out in the woods to avoid being arrested.

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