If it bleeds, it leads…
Tag: murder
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.
‘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.
Explain that…
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.”
Ex-Northwestern professor sentenced to 53 years for sex-fetish murder
A former Northwestern University professor has been sentenced to more than five decades behind bars for the “cold-blooded” and “calculated” sex-fetish stabbing death of his boyfriend.
Renowned microbiologist Wyndham Lathem, 47, was sentenced Tuesday to 53 years for killing 26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Lathem was convicted in October of first-degree murder and faced a prison sentence of 20 to 60 years.
Cook County Judge Charles Burns said he believed a sentence on the “extreme” end was merited, according to the paper.
“To butcher an individual, Trenton Cornell, the way that he died, in order to fulfill a bizarre, antisocial, perverted fantasy, based on whatever sense of reality, is totally beyond my understanding,” said Burns, who called the murder a “calculated execution.”
Biden’s DOJ Say Arsonist Who Killed A Man Should Get Reduced Sentence Because He Was Rioting For BLM
A BLM rioter who set fire to a pawn shop and killed a man is facing a shorter sentence than normal because, according to US Attorney W. Anders Folk, he was “caught up in the fury” of the Black Lives Matter riots.
On June 5, 2020, in Minnesota, BLM riots were breaking out and becoming violent. Hundreds of people took to the streets and began looting local businesses, vandalizing private property, and recklessly setting fire to buildings. Montez Terriel Lee Jr. was one of these violent actors.
That night, Lee broke into a pawn shop, poured fire accelerant around, and set it on fire. These actions were caught on video.
According to court records, one of the videos captures Lee standing in front of the burning shop, saying, “F*** this place. We’re gonna burn this b**** to the ground.”
Over two months after Lee burned down the shop, a 30-year-old man, Oscar Lee Stewart, was found dead among the debris.
By joining in the violence of the BLM riots and being misled into thinking that was the right way to act, Lee took the life of an innocent man that night.
The typical sentence that would be applied to Lee’s case is over 200 months of incarceration. However, in a memo from the US Attorney’s office for the District of Minnesota, a lesser sentence was recommended because of the “motives” behind Lee’s actions.
The memo describes Lee’s motives as almost admirable. Forgetting the violence he enacted and the innocent life he took, at least his intentions were “good”.
Mr. Lee’s motive for setting the fire is a foremost issue. Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he “could have demonstrated in a different way,” but that he was “caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police.”
The defense that Lee was “caught up in the fury of the mob” is a poor way to set an example for the rest of the country. There needs to be some maintained sense of right and wrong. If you are upset and seeking social change, you shouldn’t be allowed to do so by burning cities and being violent. Generating fear and endangering others is not a reasonable way to get a point across.
Animal Sacrifice Sees Drunk Priest Allegedly Behead Man Instead of Goat
A drunk priest in India allegedly killed a man during an animal sacrifice for Sankranthi celebrations on Sunday (January 16.)
Local news outlets reported that the incident happened by mistake. The victim, a 35-year-old man named Suresh, was holding the goat meant for sacrifice in Valasapalli village, in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
The accused, named Chalapathi, was supposed to carry out the animal sacrifice and cut off the goat’s head.
However, the priest ended up using the knife to cut the throat of Suresh instead. Several local reports said the victim was beheaded.
The United News of India (UNI) news agency reported that Suresh left behind his wife and two children.
According to UNI, the sacrifice happened as part of the animal festival Kanuma, also known as Pasuvula Panduga, which happens on the third day of the Sankranthi in Andhra Pradesh.
It was organized at the local Yellamma temple, dedicated to the patron goddess of Andhra Pradesh.
Miami cops arrest ‘serial killer’ estate agent, 25, accused of murdering two homeless men and injuring a third in drive-by shootings: Police believe there may be other victims
Miami police suspect a 25-year-old, Cuban-born real estate agent of being a ‘serial killer’ after he was arrested in the killings of two homeless men and for critically wounding a third in a series of drive-by shootings from his Dodge Charger.
Willy Suarez Maceo allegedly shot a homeless man in the head near downtown Miami at 400 SW 2nd Avenue around 8 pm on Tuesday then pulled up alongside Jerome Antonio Price, 56, two hours later and shot him dead as he slept on the sidewalk at Miami Avenue and 21st Street in Wynwood. The first victim survived.
He’s also suspected in the unsolved murder of another homeless man, 59-year-old Manuel Perez, at 27 SE 1st Street on October 16.
A man pictured in surveillance footage at the scene closely resembles Maceo, and the vehicle seen driving away matches a black Dodge Charger caught in surveillance footage of the Tuesday shootings, police said.
Maceo was arrested Thursday after he refused to drive away from an area with visible ‘no trespassing’ signs at 445 Northwest 4th Street, according to police reports.
A rapid ballistics test of the firearm in his vehicle, which he had a permit to carry and conceal, linked him to Tuesday’s shootings, police said.
Miami Police Interim Chief Manuel A. Morales called Maceo a ‘ruthless killer’ who ‘brutally targeted’ the homeless in a press conference and suspects that ‘there may be other victims that suffered at the hands of this ruthless individual.’
Every circus needs a shooting gallery…
Hellbound and Down 
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