Tag: murder

Oklahoma county GOP chair arrested in alleged murder-kidnap plot

Tiffany Adams, an Oklahoma resident who last year was elected as the chairwoman of Cimarron County Republican Party, was arrested this week and charged with three other people of participating in kidnapping and murder.

Local news station KOCO reports that Adams was charged with participating in the kidnapping and murder of 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley, who both disappeared a little over two weeks ago.

According to local news station KSN, Butler was involved in a custody dispute with the 54-year-old Adams, who was the paternal grandmother of Butler’s children.

Butler and Kelley had been traveling to Adams’ house to pick up Butler’s children for a court-ordered visitation on March 30 before they mysteriously vanished.

The two women’s bodies were discovered on April 14th and Adams was arrested shortly afterward, along with fellow suspects Tad Cullum, Cole Twombly, and Cora Twombly.

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CNN Reporter Slips Up, Suggests People Were “Happy” OJ “Could Get Away With” It Because He Was Black

A CNN reporter made a revealing Freudian slip when she suggested people were “happy to see ” OJ Simpson “get away with” it because he was black.

Simpson died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 76, it was announced yesterday.

The former NFL star was cleared of murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 in the so-called “trial of the century,” although many believe the verdict was wrong.

Simpson was later found liable of murder in a civil trial and ordered to pay a $33.5million judgment to the victim’s families.

Commenting on Simpson’s death, CNN’s Stephanie Elam placed it in the context of the race riots of the 1990’s, arguing that people were “happy to see” OJ being cleared as a form of restorative racial justice.

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French woman found dead in Italian church was searching for ghosts in possible Tik Tok stunt, police say

A 22-year-old French woman whose blood-drained body was found in an abandoned church in northern Italy’s Aosta Valley over the weekend had been looking for a haunted house believed to contain ghosts, according to police.

She told family members about her plans before leaving the village near Lyon where she lived, a police spokeswoman in the town of La Salle told CNN.

Police believe the victim could have been attempting to carry out a TikTok stunt, adding that her death could be related to a ghost hunting competition being played in France on the social media platform. The other working theories are that it was a “consented murder” or sacrifice, or an attempt to carry out a social media prank in the deconsecrated church. Police are still searching for a young man who was seen with her. There are also two other missing persons cases in the area which police say could be related.

According to the spokeswoman, the victim and a male friend had been seen in the area dressed “like vampires.” A witness interviewed by police say the young woman was pale and “emaciated” and the man had dark hair and olive skin. The witness told police investigators that she looked like a “walking corpse.”

The dead woman, whose name has not been released, had been stabbed with what investigators say was a camping knife and had bled to death, according to medical examiner Roberto Testi. She also had two gunshots to her neck and one to her abdomen that police say may have been inflicted after she died. Some of the blood had been scraped off the floor and removed from the crime scene, police told CNN. There were no signs of struggle, police say.

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‘Neo-Nazi Satanist cannibals’ who lured woman to her death as a human sacrifice then ‘roasted and ate another victim’s flesh and ribs’ are jailed in Russia

Four ‘neo-Nazi Satanists’ accused of luring a woman to her death as a human sacrifice and then ‘roasting’ and eating another her have been jailed in Russia.

Andrey Tregubenko, 36, was found to have invited Victoria Zaitseva, 27, on a trip to Karelia, near the Finnish border, in June 2016, where the victim was ambushed by Tregubenko and his girlfriend, Olga Bolsakova, 36, in a forest.

Zaitseva, who is understood to have been in love with Tregubenko, died after she was stabbed multiple times with a knife. She was then thrown into a pre-dug hole, covered with brushwood and set alight.

In August, the couple met Alexander Perevozchikov-Khmury and Tatyana Deryugina, also sentenced Tuesday, who agreed to commit another ‘sacrifice’ with them.

Platon Stepanov, known as Wilhelm Torquemada, 27, was named locally as the man drawn into a forest in the Leningrad region after being groomed by Bolshakova, with whom he shared an interest in black magic and Satanism.

Stepanov was then beaten severely and stabbed to death, as reported by state-owned agency RIA. The killers would later confess to slicing off his flesh and ribs – and roasting and eating the human meat. The body was, again, hidden in a hole and ‘burned at the stake’.

In the third such killing, also in August 2016, Tregubenko stabbed to death aquaintance while drunk during an argument. The group then retired to a nearby apartment where they performed a ritualistic ceremony with the victim’s blood before disposing of the knife in a pond.

After three years of intensive investigation, the Moscow Regional Court sentenced the gang to varying terms in prison for their involvement in the killings.

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Woman sets out to solve 100-year-old cold case MURDER of her great-great-grandmother – after her family spent years being plagued by the mysterious death and the wild WITCHY conspiracy theories surrounding it

A woman has set out to investigate the 100-year-old cold case murder that has plagued her family for decades.

Jo Piazza, from Philadelphia, had grown up being told that her great-great-grandmother Lorenza Marsala was killed in Sicily before she could join the rest of the family on their move to America.

The mom-of-three, who is an author and podcast creator, was forced to unravel a whole host of wild theories about the death – including speculation that the village had turned on her because she was a witch or that she owned land the mafia wanted to get their hands on.

Jo said that members of her family had tried to warn her off delving into the case at the risk of ‘opening old wounds’ – but she was undeterred. 

The intriguing tale began after Jo’s father passed away back in 2015.

She was pregnant at the time, newly married, had recently relocated and lost her job, telling Today: ‘I didn’t have time to grieve… All of it is a blur.’

The doting daughter was forced to clear out some of his belongings so her mom could have a fresh start – with one item being his computer.

But Jo came to regret throwing it out after coming across some emails from her dad when she was cleaning out her inbox a few years later.

She said that she had responded to most of them at the time but there were a handful that had gone unopened.

‘One caught my eye. It was his grandfather’s birth certificate. He had remarked on the fact that the mother’s name, Lorenza, was so beautiful. “She was the one who was murdered,” he reminded me in all caps,’ she shared.

Jo revealed that her father had become ‘obsessed’ with discovering the truth about her death – even making several trips back to the island.

However, he eventually had to limit his research to that which she could do online after suffering a rare form of muscular dystrophy.

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Recommended reading…

Get it HERE.

“Just days before Kurt Cobain’s body was discovered on April 8, 1994, Courtney Love hired private investigator Tom Grant to locate him. In The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain Tom Grant takes readers behind the scenes of the investigation. Here, you can read a day by day account of Grant’s investigation and learn about the evidence for murder regarding Kurt Cobain’s death. There are many new details contained in The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain, including new transcripts of recorded telephone conversations with Courtney Love and others, as well as an updated list of “persons of interest” in the crime. In this book, you will get a clear picture of 1) Why Kurt Cobain was killed and 2) Who is responsible for his death. The book also contains a compelling account of Tom Grant’s struggles to blow the whistle on the botched investigation into Cobain’s death. Did Kurt Cobain really commit suicide? Or was he murdered? You won’t be able to honestly answer that question until you read The Mysterious Death of Kurt Cobain.”

South LA Man Is 13th To Be Exonerated For Murder In LA County Since 2020

It took only a single eyewitness testimony to convince a jury to wrongfully convict Stephen Patterson to a 50-year life sentence for shooting and killing 16-year-old Yair Oliva in 2005. That witness was 200 yards away, inside her home in South Los Angeles and peering through closed blinds.

Other witnesses contradicted that testimony or could not identify Patterson, who was only 19 at the time. Investigators also ignored that the gun used in Oliva’s killing showed up at another crime scene six weeks later.

But on Wednesday, Patterson was declared innocent after spending nearly half his life behind bars. His exoneration marks the 13th under Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s tenure. According to his office, those 13 people collectively add up to nearly 300 years of wrongful incarceration.

Gascón is running for reelection and touting his work on criminal justice reform that his competitors have criticized as being soft on crime.

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Three Pennsylvania men who have spent decades in prison for rape and murder of elderly woman in her home have their convictions overturned

Three Pennsylvania men who were imprisoned for decades in the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old woman – despite their DNA never matching that found at the scene – have had their convictions overturned by a judge.

The Delaware County judge threw out the convictions for Derrick Chappell – who was 15 when he was arrested – and first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty. The District Attorney is now reviewing the case to see if a new trial is necessary.  

Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty were each convicted in separate trials for the murder of Henrietta Nickens, a 70 year old woman who was brutally killed at her home in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 10, 1997.

Nickens was savagely beaten and had had her underwear removed. Investigators found her home ransacked and blood on the walls and bedding. 

A mysterious green jacket, in the pocket of which was cocaine, was found on top of Nickens’ television set.

Investigators discovered semen in the woman’s rectum. They tested the semen and found that it didn’t belong to any of the three arrested individuals.

The prosecutors, who have been characterized as pugnacious, sought to separate the recovered semen from the crime. They affirmed that the semen might have originated from consensual intercourse and was unrelated to the murder. 

Nickens had been chronically ill and had no known sexual partners. 

The prosecution’s case against Chappel, Johnson, and Grastly hinged on the testimony of key witness Richard McElwee, who was 15 years old at the time of the crime.

McElwee testified that he functioned as a lookout while the three older boys pilfered Nickens of $30.

In exchange for his testimony, McElwee pled guilty to third-degree murder, as well as other charges. He was sentenced to serve six to 12 years in prison in 1999.

In 2000 and 2001, Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty were each convicted of second-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison.

Over the course of their more than two decades-long prison stint, the three men have continued to protest their innocence.

Each of them filed pro se petitions in federal court over the years saying they were wrongly convicted, but their petitions were denied.

The fate of Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty drew the attention of many organizations dedicated to freeing wrongly convicted men and women.

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California woman’s 2001 conviction for murdering her husband is OVERTURNED after two decades in prison as evidence used against her is discredited

More than two decades ago, a California woman was convicted and sent to prison for 25 years to life for murdering her husband.

Jane Dorotik has always maintained that she did not kill her husband of 30 years, Bob Dorotik, and over the years she has filed many motions requesting new testing be done on the evidence used in her case.

Dorotik, now in her mid-70s, was finally able to get her message through to the courts that the evidence evaluated against her in 2001 needed further assessment.

During the summer of 2020, when jails were overcrowded and COVID-19 was a concern, Dorotik was temporarily and conditionally released from prison.

Her legal team hoped that release would become permanent pending a court overturning her jury’s verdict.

During a remote hearing, that is exactly what happened when, much to Dorotik’s surprise. The state requested that her murder conviction be overturned. The judge agreed to the ask.

But the good news was followed shortly by the San Diego County DA’s attempt to retry her. A judge allowed the retrial to proceed, but said some of the central pieces of evidence used against her 20 years ago would not be admissible.

Then, in May 2022, as jury selection was about to begin again, the deputy district attorney walked in and said the state no longer felt the evidence they had was ‘sufficient to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt and convince 12 members of the jury. So we are requesting that the court … dismiss the charges at this time.’

Dorotik was once again, unconditionally, a free woman. 

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Illinois parole board members resign after releasing man who stabbed 11-year-old to death in less than 24 hours

A board member and chair of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board resigned after freeing a man who went on to fatally stab his ex-girlfriend’s 11-year-old son less than 24 hours after he was released.

According to CBS 2, board chair Donald Shelton and board member LeAnn Miller resigned Monday following the March 13 murder of Jayden Perkins, who was stabbed in the chest allegedly by the recently released prisoner.

Crosetti Brand (37) allegedly ambushed Perkins and his pregnant mother, Laterria Smith, who was his ex-girlfriend, at their home after he was granted parole from the Stateville Correctional Center.

Smith (33) was stabbed in the neck during the attack but survived.

Brand had been serving 16 years for home invasion and aggravated assault.

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