Tag: crime

AOC’s attempt to explain away crime is really an attack on parents

No argument – however insulting or illogical – deters some Democrats from promoting more welfare benefits.

Take Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a vocal promoter of defunding and even abolishing the police. Long dismissive of rising crime rates and the culpability of policies she supports, she finally admitted that crime is surging. But instead of acknowledging the real causes of the crime wave, she blamed a novel culprit: “the child-tax credit just ran out, on December 31st, and now people are stealing baby formula.”

The increased child tax credit included in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan expanded the benefit to include over 30 million households. For the first time, the policy also paid benefits to nonworking adults. As a result, the IRS turned into America’s leading welfare-benefit provider and effectively revived unconditional monthly federal welfare payments for the first time in a generation.

The Democrats’ trillion-dollar Build Back Better plan would have continued these monthly payments, despite public opposition to making them permanent. But the legislation collapsed, leaving AOC to argue that the expiration of these temporary welfare checks is the real driver behind rising crime in America.

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Dead deputy probable suspect in 1983 murder of 11-year-old girl

St. Lucie County Chief Deputy Brian Hester announced Thursday that they have closed the 1983 cold case murder of 11-year-old Lora Ann Huizar.

Based on information obtained during the investigation, detectives have named former deputy James Howard Harrison as the only probable suspect in this case. The sheriff’s office is unable to pursue charges against Harrison because he died in 2008.

“We have established probable cause to determine that Harrison abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered the juvenile victim and later altered the crime scene by placing the victim in a drainage ditch in an attempt to destroy physical evidence,” said Chief Deputy Brian Hester.

On Nov. 6, 1983, a uniformed patrol deputy, later confirmed to be Harrison, observed Huizar walking toward her home from a local gas station around the time of her disappearance.

On Nov. 9, 1983, deputies recovered Huizar’s body nearby.

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Connecticut socialite mom admits to secretly filming minors in her mansion

A voyeuristic Connecticut socialite pleaded guilty to secretly recording three people, including a child, in a sexual situation in her multimillion-dollar Greenwich mansion.

Hadley Palmer, a mother of four, pleaded guilty to three counts of voyeurism and risk of injury to a minor — all committed in 2017 — on Jan. 19 in state Superior Court. As part of the plea bargain, the two most serious charges levied against her were dropped — employing a minor in an obscene performance, which is a Class A felony, and possession of child pornography.

The charges allege she filmed someone either naked or in their underwear with the “intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desire of such person (defendant) or any other person.”

Palmer, 53, could face between 90 days and 60 months in prison. She will also be required to register as a sex offender. 

However, in an unusual move, her criminal case has been sealed from the public. Judge John Blawie issued the order in Stamford on Thursday, limiting most of the details and criminal proceedings surrounding her crimes.

The judge said the case was sealed in order to protect several victims’ identities, despite objections from the Associated Press.

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‘Darkness Enveloped My Soul’: The Final Confessions of the Torso Killer

Jennifer Weiss says her life came full-circle in a massive, dreary building in Trenton, New Jersey. In May of 1978, her mother, Deedeh Goodarzi, put her up for adoption at an agency in the shadow of the New Jersey State Prison and its barbed-wire crowned fences. Decades later, she found herself at that same prison, confronting the man who had left her mother dismembered in a flaming hotel room in Times Square: Richard Cottingham, a.k.a. the Torso Killer, a man whose brutality towards his victims shocked even the most seasoned of cops.

“I wanted to find her. I didn’t want to ever have to try to find her skull,” Weiss says of her mother, whose identity she says she uncovered in 2003, when she was in her early twenties. “I was expecting to get the other half of the locket like Annie… and it was not the case.”

Weiss first met Cottingham through a sheet of glass for a window visit and was shocked to discover that she wasn’t scared of the man before her, who resembled Santa gone to seed. “I was trying to figure out pieces of my mother’s life and where her remains were,” she says. And he had the answers.

Cottingham, now 75, has spent the last four decades in relative obscurity, watching hours of police procedurals and detective shows behind bars as he slid into his seventies and his health hit a steady decline. Over the last decade or so, however, the killer — who has been convicted of eight murders  — has been slowly confessing to a series of cold cases. How these confessions came about is highly contested, though: Former Chief of Detectives for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Robert Anzilotti would say he’s responsible for wearing Cottingham down over the years, while Weiss and her friend, serial killer expert Dr. Peter Vronsky, claim it’s her unlikely, uncomfortable relationship with Cottingham that has helped grease the gears. Cottingham, who wrote to Rolling Stone from South Woods State Prison for his first published interview in more than 10 years, credits both, seeming to play his confidantes against each other even behind bars.

Credit aside, it’s not been an easy path when it comes to getting confessions out of Cottingham. Whether it’s his failing memory, the police’s interdepartmental politics, or Cottingham’s lust for manipulation, it’s become a proverbial race against time to get his alleged crimes put to paper — according to Cottingham himself, he has roughly 70 to 90 murders to go.

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Dem Political Consultant Pleads Guilty to Murder-for-Hire Scheme

A Democratic political consultant has pleaded guilty to hiring two men to murder a longtime associate.

Sean Caddle, who worked on campaigns in 2013 and 2017 for New Jersey state senator Ray Lesniak (D.), on Tuesday admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit murder. In 2014, the New Jersey native paid out-of-state conspirators thousands of dollars to travel to the Jersey City home of former associate Michael Galdieri, stab Galdieri, and set his apartment on fire. It is unclear what the motive was.

Lesniak said hearing the news of the murder-for-hire scheme was “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.”

“He led a double life,” Lesniak told the Associated Press. “While he was running campaigns for me—a lot of them very successful—he was arranging a murder.”

Caddle also worked on campaigns for former state assemblyman and failed Jersey City mayoral candidate Louis Manzo and successful Jersey City mayoral candidate Bret Schundler.

Manzo was indicted in 2009 as part of a federal corruption probe in New Jersey that led to dozens of arrests of elected officials. The assemblyman accepted $27,500 for his 2009 mayoral campaign in exchange for development approvals after he was elected, according to the FBI.

U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said Caddle’s murder for hire was “a callous and violent crime” and that Caddle was “as responsible as the two men who wielded the knife.”

“There is no more serious crime than the taking of another person’s life,” Sellinger said. “The defendant has admitted arranging and paying for a murder by two other people. His admission of guilt means he will now pay for his crime.”

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