Tag: murder

FBI to exhume body of woman featured on Netflix series ‘The Keepers’

The FBI will exhume the body of a woman whose mysterious death was detailed in Netflix’s true-crime series “The Keepers,” as law enforcement officials explore a potential link with the cold case murder of a Baltimore nun. 

“The Keepers” investigated the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and Baltimore high school teacher, and allegations of sexual abuse by an influential Baltimore priest named Father Joseph Maskell in the 1960s. 

In November 1969, before Cesnik seemingly vanished, Joyce Malecki was strangled, stabbed and found submerged in a body of water at Fort Meade.

Malecki’s body will be exhumed from Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore with her family’s permission as the FBI explores an unspecified lead possibly connecting the two cases, Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, confirmed to news outlets. 

“The FBI gave us no indication other than to say the purpose of the exhumation is to collect evidence,” Wolfgang told WBAL-TV. “Our best speculation is that they may be looking for DNA evidence to match it up with a potential suspect they may already have.”

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‘Cannibal’ Mexican husband ‘killed his wife, ate her brains in tacos and used her skull as an ashtray’

A ‘devil worshipper’ dubbed the ‘Cannibal of Puebla’ who allegedly killed his wife, ate her brain in tacos, and used her skull as an ashtray has been arrested in Mexico.

The suspect, identified only as Alvaro, was seized at the couple’s home in Puebla on July 2 and taken into custody.

The police accuse the 32-year-old of murdering his wife – a mother of five – on June 29 while under the influence of a prohibited substance.

During questioning, he allegedly told officers that Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Holy Death) and the devil had ordered him to commit the crime.

Following the killing, Alvaro allegedly dismembered victim Maria Montserrat Animas Montiel’s body and placed her remains in plastic bags.

He allegedly threw some of them into a ravine behind the home and kept the rest inside the property.

According to sources close to the case, he confessed to eating part of his wife’s brain in tacos and using part of her shattered skull as an ashtray.

Two days after the killing, he allegedly called one of his stepdaughters to confess his crime.

The victim’s mother, Maria Alicia Montiel Serran, told local media: ‘He told one of her daughters to come and collect her mum because “I already killed her and put her in bags”.’

Grieving Maria Alicia added that Alvaro chopped up the 38-year-old victim’s body ‘with a machete, a chisel, and a hammer’. She went on: ‘I called him crying, asking why he did that to her if she wasn’t a bad person.’

According to Maria Alicia, the suspect confessed: ‘I killed her, I cut her into pieces, and I threw her into the ravine in bags.’

She added that he claimed: ‘She didn’t suffer.’

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Real estate heir accused of murdering his mother for inheritance money during a fishing trip dies in pretrial detention

Nathan Carman, the real estate heir who was facing an upcoming murder-on-the-high-seas trial in his mother’s death, has died in his jail cell.

Carman, 29, is believed to have died “on or about June 15, 2023,” according to a notice of dismissal filed Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont. He was being held in pretrial detention at the Cheshire County Department of Corrections in Keene, New Hampshire, at the time. The filing did not say how Carman died.

Carman was set for trial in October in the murder of his mother, Linda Carman, who died while on a fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016. Nathan Carman had pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and fraud.

The Vermont real estate heir had also been suspected of killing his grandfather, John Chakalos, for millions in inheritance money in 2013, although he never faced charges. Prosecutors said the killings were part of a scheme to obtain money and property from Chakalos’ estate and related family trusts.

Cheshire County officials said in a news release that Carman was found unresponsive overnight in his cell on a routine round completed by correctional staff. Carman was the sole occupant of the cell, the news release said. Keene police officers, overseeing the initial investigation, processed the scene, but the manner of death was deemed undetermined.

An autopsy is expected to determine how Carman died.

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Prominent Trans Activist Sentenced To LIFE In Prison For Murder Of California Family

A prominent trans activist has been sentenced for the 2016 triple homicide of a California lesbian couple and their son. Dana Rivers, born David Chester Warfield, has been handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“It is a horrible thing to sentence someone to die in prison, and I don’t take that lightly,” Judge Scott Patton said during the court hearing held today. “But this is the most depraved crime I ever handled in the criminal justice system in 33 years. Frankly, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

The sentencing comes months after Rivers, 68, had been found guilty of the murders in November of last year. Rivers was denied a motion for a new trial, though his attorney had attempted to argue prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Patton dismissed the issues raised, labeling them “trivial” and “frankly quite ridiculous,” while noting that the evidence for Rivers’ guilt was “overwhelming.”

Rivers’ crimes date back to November 11 of 2016, when police were called in response to the sound of gunshots being fired outside the home of Wright and Reed in Oakland, California. When authorities arrived, they found Rivers covered in blood and gasoline and fleeing from the house, which had been set ablaze.

When discovered by police, Rivers had been heading towards his black Harley Davidson motorcycle, which was parked outside of the home with the keys left in the ignition. When police searched the Harley, which Rivers affectionately referred to as “Barbie,” they found blood on the bike and a bloody knife in its saddlebag.

A further search of Rivers’ person revealed that he was in possession of a bloody screwdriver, a knife, brass knuckles, bullets, pepper spray and Benny Diambu-Wright’s iPod, according to court documents.

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6 Women Under Age 40 Found Dead Within 100 Miles of Each Other Around Portland Raising Speculation of Serial Killer on the Loose

Authorities are investigating the deaths of six women, all under age 40, that have been found within 100 of each other in forested or rural areas around Portland according to KGW8 News.

The tragic discoveries have led to speculation that a serial killer is on the loose.

The New York Post reports:

Five different law enforcement agencies are investigating the women’s deaths — and at least three of the agencies have said they are working with the others to determine if the cases could be connected and have a single perpetrator, according to officials and the local publication.

In the most recent case, 22-year-old Ashley Real was found dead in a heavily wooded area near Eagle Creek on May 7 after she was last seen at a transit center in late March.

Another woman, Joanna Speaks also vanished in late March and her body was found in a rural area of Clark County on April 8. She died of blunt force trauma to the head and neck, according to the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office which declared her death a homicide.

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‘Trunk Lady’ murder victim identified over 50 years after she was found strangled to death with bolo tie

After over half a century, investigators in St. Petersburg, Florida, say they have learned the identity of the city’s oldest and most notorious cold case victim. Sylvia June Atherton, a 41-year-old mother of five from Arizona, was the woman whose body was discovered in a wooden trunk 53 years ago on Halloween, authorities announced.

According to a press release from the St. Petersburg Police Department, two officers found a black steamer trunk in the woods behind a restaurant on Oct. 31, 1969, in the 4200 block of 34th Street South.

Inside, officers found a woman wrapped in a large plastic bag. She had visible head injuries, was strangled with a man’s Western-style bolo tie, and was partially clothed in a pajama top. The unnamed victim was buried as “Jane Doe” in Memorial Park Cemetery.

The case quickly gained notoriety, with the victim being dubbed the “Trunk Lady,” and was featured in various television shows, articles, and cold case conferences.

Forty years after discovering the “Trunk Lady,” a doctor with the University of Southern Florida’s Department of Anthropology assisted authorities in exhuming her remains. Efforts to identify the victim using teeth and bone samples over the years proved challenging due to their degraded state. However, earlier this year marked a breakthrough when a St. Petersburg police cold case detective discovered original samples of the victim’s hair and skin, which had been taken during the victim’s initial autopsy.

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Where The Most Death Penalties Are Carried Out

At least 883 people are known to have been put to death last year, according to Amnesty International’s annual review of the death penalty. However, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, the true number is likely far higher, as several countries do not publish accurate figures – including North Korea, Vietnam and Belarus.

In China, where numbers remain a state secret, thousands of people are believed to be executed and sentenced to death each year.

As Statista’s chart shows, Iran comes second only after China with at least 576 people known to have been executed in 2022, up 55 percent from the year.

The crimes behind these executions are mostly related to drugs and murder, while 18 were for moharebeh (enmity against God), which can be connected to the protests surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini.

Amnesty International notes that Saudi Arabia also saw a significant increase in death sentences since 2020, rising from 27 to a record high of 196 deaths, 83 of whom were executed for terrorism-related crimes. In total, 55 countries still have the death penalty, 20 of which recorded executions in 2022.

In the U.S., 18 executions were recorded in 2022 across six jurisdictions. These were Alabama (2), Arizona (3), Mississippi (1), Missouri (2), Oklahoma (5), and Texas (5). Meanwhile, there were 21 new death sentences recorded across 12 states. These included: Alabama (3), Arizona (1), California (2), Florida (5), Georgia (1), Louisiana (1), Mississippi (1), Missouri (1), North Carolina (2), Oklahoma (1), Pennsylvania (1) and Texas (2).

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NYPD reportedly stood by, failed to help Chinatown woman as homeless man stabbed her to death in her own home

In a recently filed lawsuit by the family of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee, the Chinatown woman who was killed early in the morning on February 13, 2022 by a homeless man who followed her into her apartment, the victim’s family alleged that two NYPD officers heard her screams “for at least five minutes” and did nothing.

The New York Post reports that two unidentified cops dispatched out of the 5th Precinct responded to Lee’s 911 phone call, which she made while being attacked, and the cops responded within four minutes, “heard Ms. Lee screaming for help” but “failed to gain entry to Ms. Lee’s apartment until Ms. Lee had been stabbed more than 40 times by her attacker and succumbed to her injuries,” according to the lawsuit. 

According to the lawsuit, made against the city and the NYPD, the cops allegedly spoke to the killer “through the closed door of Ms. Lee’s apartment” and “Despite having reason to believe Ms. Lee’s life was in imminent danger, (the officers) failed to gain entry to Ms. Lee’s apartment or otherwise provide her with any potentially life-saving police or medical assistance at that time.”

The lawsuit, filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court, is seeking unspecified damages.

The victim’s aunt, Boksun Lee, said in the court filing that the cops did not enter her niece’s apartment until after she died.

Christina Yuna Lee, a digital producer originally from New Jersey, entered her Chrystie Street apartment around 4:20 am that morning and was allegedly followed by 25-year-old Assamad Nash, a homeless man out on bail for previous alleged violent crimes and who had been convicted of petty larceny and robbery. Nash has been charged with murder for Lee’s killing.

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Alleged ‘Serial Killer’ Caught In California Is Illegal Alien Who Came Into U.S. Under Obama

A man arrested in California late last week — who allegedly carried out a string of murders — is an illegal alien who came into the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor during the Obama administration.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer request against 21-year-old Carlos Dominguez, who illegally came into the U.S. in April 2009 from El Salvador, according to ABC 10. The report identified Dominguez as “an alleged serial killer.”

Dominguez, who attended UC Davis, is accused of stabbing two people to death and attempting to stab another person to death in the area. The three stabbings, all separate incidents, happened between April 27 and May 1. He was arrested by the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office and is now in the Yolo County jail.

The school said in a press release that Dominguez was a third-year student until April 25, “when he was separated for academic reasons.”

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Autopsy Reveals New Details in Death of Detroit Neurosurgeon Who Was Found Dead in His Home

On April 23, Police found the body of Dr. Devon Hoover, 53, wrapped in a sheet in the attic of his home. Dr. Hoover, a notable neurosurgeon, lived alone in a large home in the historic Boston-Edison District of Detroit. 

A welfare check was requested when he did not respond to calls or meet with family members in Indiana as expected on April 22. Police report Dr. Hoover was shot inside his home and that they recovered his abandoned vehicle several miles away.

Police have not revealed a motive or information on possible suspects. 

On Wednesday, April 10, Police reported that Dr. Hoover had been shot twice in the head, then dragged naked into the attic. The Detroit Free Press reported that Dr. Hoover was “shot behind his right ear and then again in the back of the head.”

Dr. Hoover was on staff at Ascension Michigan Hospital—A spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “Devon Hoover, MD, was a dedicated and well-respected member of the Ascension Michigan family and will be greatly missed by our community.”

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