Who Killed Theresa?

"Serial Killer": So 2006

2009-07-04T16:41:00.000-04:00

Teen Girl Becomes 5th Victim of Suspected South Carolina Serial Killer
Saturday, July 04, 2009

A sketch of the serial killer police in rural South Carolina believe murdered four people; the suspect still is on the loose.
Authorities say a teen girl shot in father's store is the fifth victim of suspected South Carolina serial killer.

Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler says Abby Tyler, 15, died as a result to gunshot injuries. Her death comes two days after a shooting at her family's small furniture and appliance store in Gaffney, S.C. on Thursday.

The teen's father, Stephen Tyler, 45, was also shot and killed Thursday at Tyler Home Center.

Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton said Stephen Tyler's shooting death and those of three others since last Saturday — a peach farmer, an elderly woman and her daughter — are connected.

"We're concerned," Blanton told reporters Friday. "We're dealing with a man that's killed four people."

The suspect is described as 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing 200 pounds, with blue eyes. Blanton classified him as a serial killer.

Police released a sketch Friday of the serial killer on the loose who they believe murdered the people in six days in rural South Carolina.

Investigators don't know exactly who he is or whether he is familiar with the area.

Earlier reports that the killer was driving a dark blue van haven't panned out, according to Blanton.

He said it isn't clear whether the victims and the suspect knew each other.

"There's no evidence there is a hit list," Blanton said. "There's no evidence he knows the victims. There's no evidence the victims are connected (to each other)."

The murders all happened within 10 miles of each other in Cherokee, a county of 54,000 people about 50 miles south on Interstate 85 from Charlotte, N.C.

"This person is gonna be somebody that not a lot of people pay attention to or give a second look to," Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright, whose department has joined the investigation, told FOX News on Friday. "Obviously, he's either really good or really lucky."

Thursday's killing happened one day and about 7 miles from where family members found the bodies of 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot in Linder's home.

Blanton would not say if Tyler and his daughter were also bound.

The killing spree began last Saturday about 10 miles from Tyler's shop. Peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, was found shot in his living room. Investigators said he appeared to have been robbed, but they haven't determined if anything was taken in the latest killings.

The sheriff said evidence makes it obvious that Cash's killing is linked to the deaths of the women, but he refused to give details.

He said the killer appears to have first spoken with Cash's wife about buying hay in a ruse to commit the crime. She left and then came home a few hours later to find her husband's body.

"We think she may have been his intended victim," the sheriff said. He theorized Thursday that the killer could be targeting women.

Cherokee County saw just six homicides in all of 2008, which was double the number reported in 2007.

At least 30 investigators from across the region are working on the case, and Blanton canceled all vacation and regular days off for his officers. He wants anyone living in the area to be vigilant and call in any tips, large or small. He also asked any door-to-door salesmen to stop working until the case is solved.

"We know we are dealing with a dangerous person," Blanton said. "And we know through the investigation that he is unpredictable."

Residents are on edge, according to the sheriff.

"There is fear in our community," Blanton said.

NC Racial Justice Act Passes

2009-07-02T00:29:00.000-04:00

Let's see, institutionalizing bias as a means of preventing bias. That doesn't seem right to me. "The burden is on the defendant to prove that race was an underlying factor": Wonder how much that will cost taxpayers.

Independent Weekly

By a 7-6 vote, the House Judiciary I Committee approved a "clean" version of the Racial Justice Act (SB 461), which would prevent the execution of defendants who can prove race was an underlying factor in the decision to seek, or impose, the death penalty at the time of their trial. Meanwhile, a rough cost estimate has been published, with prosecutors and defense attorneys disagreeing over whether the bill would cost, or save, the state money.

The bill the House J1 Committee approved today does not include controversial clauses that would ensure the resumption of the death penalty in North Carolina, which were added on the Senate floor but later removed in the House Ways and Means Committee. It also contained several technical amendments to the version Ways and Means had passed. The bill now heads to the House Appropriations Committee, before coming up for a vote on the House floor. If House members succeed in keeping the bill free of the execution amendments, a compromise will likely need to be struck in conference committee.

After a discussion by committee members, Committee Chair Deborah Ross asked if anyone in the audience wished to speak against the bill. Nobody raised his hand.

Rep. John Blust (R-Guilford) offered an explanation: "People might not like the idea of coming forward and being against something that's titled 'the Racial Justice Act.'" He added:

"If we really want to talk about racial justice we need to think about the people out there right now, in the various communities in this state, some of whom live in very rough communities and face a survival question day-to-day, at the hands of people who often prey on them. And it's those African-American citizens, out in the community, that I have more concern about their racial justice, to be able to live their lives. That's going to be impacted with the DA's having to look over their shoulders in prosecuting capital cases from now on."
The Rev. William Barber II, president of the NAACP state chapter, walked to the podium to debunk the concern: "African-Americans want to see this passed."

In an interview after the vote, he cited better schools, jobs and economic development—not the death penalty—as "the deterrents that we need in regards to the issues [Blust] was talking about."

"The African-American community is somewhat conservative, when it comes to crime," he said. "We believe, if you do the crime, you ought to do the time. What we fight for is there not being one system of sentencing for black folk, and then another system for others."

He added: "No prosecutor that's really interested in justice is worried about anyone reviewing what they have done."

Simultaneously, a fiscal note (PDF, 96 KB) has been added to the Racial Justice Act's ncleg.net page, including broad estimates on the cost of implementing the bill. N.C. Indigent Defense Services estimated "there will likely be a net savings associated with implementing the bill," due to the removal of trial and post-conviction appeal costs when defendants successfully make a Racial Justice Act claim, meaning they would instead be sentenced to life without parole, or, if their trial has not yet begun, tried for life without parole.

The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) estimated that the extra court fees for Racial Justice claims in the first year to be between $2.4 million and $6.2 million, consisting mostly of defendants already on death row, who have one year to file a claim. However, the agency also noted that "to the extent a pretrial hearing resulted in a ruling that causes a case to proceed non-capitally, where it might otherwise have proceeded capitally, the subsequent costs for that case would be considerably less." AOC did not provide estimates of these long-term savings.

The N.C. Department of Justice estimated the additional costs of current death-row inmates making Racial Justice Act appeals to be $4 million, and did not factor in any potential savings from cases that would instead proceed non-capitally. (According to an Indy analysis of figures provided by the IDS, the state would have saved an estimated $36 million in defense costs alone, between the years 2001 and 2008, if it had sought life without parole, instead of the death penalty, in 733 capital cases.)

Both the AOC and Department of Justice arrived at their cost estimates by relying on a single capital murder trial in Durham, in which expert fees to investigate a claim of racial bias cost at least $25,000. (The defendant's motion wasn't heard; the charges have been reduced to noncapital murder, due to other circumstances.)

"Under the RJA, each case will have different data that defense and prosecution experts will have to consider and evaluate," the Department of Justice figures. "Thus, it is assumed that similar expense will be required for each of the 163 inmates currently on death row."

However, District Attorney Tracey Cline, the opposing attorney in the murder trial, told the Indy those costs should not factor into the Legislature's decision to approve or disapprove the Racial Justice Act. "Statistics in Durham County were applied in the wrong way. But in other, rural areas, it may be exactly what's needed," Cline said. "I don't want people to think that because of what happens in Durham, we should not support the Racial Justice Act, because I think that would be a travesty."

One way to keep such costs down is to launch a "coordinated statewide statistical study," which is what the IDS suggests in the fiscal note. Such a study, for which IDS suggests not-for-profit foundation funding, could produce "a baseline of data that may be disaggregated for purposes of analyzing racial discrimination claims by county, district and division."

In other words, each case would not have to re-invent the wheel, as the Department of Justice suggests.

Other than the one-year window for the 163 inmates presently on death row in North Carolina, the Racial Justice Act would allow defendants facing the death penalty to raise the claim either in pretrial hearings or after their conviction. (The one-year deadline would then expire, and the bill would then no longer apply to death-row inmates.)

Committee Counsel Hal Pell acknowledged there is "some overlap" with constitutional protections, but added that the bill "provides some specific guidance, and allows statistical evidence to be used, and provides a procedure for this claim."

The burden is on the defendant to prove that race was an underlying factor; meanwhile, the bill would also allow the prosecution to rebut a Racial Justice Act claim with statistical evidence, or by pointing to programs that seek to eliminate the consideration of race in sentencing decisions.

Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate

2009-06-28T16:39:00.004-04:00

There is nothing remotely amusing about a child killer. So when Gleason Williams was found dead in his cell at Dorchester prison I can understand the family of murdered 5-year-old Shannon Dawn Morrissette feeling a sense of relief, even elation. The relationship between victim and predator is very complex, and no one should pass judgement on either side.

What I don't understand is the level of vitriol demonstrated by the public. The blood-lust expressed on comments sections of any number of stories about Williams' death is disturbing and unwarranted (but not surprising).

"Good Riddance", "Rot in Hell", "I hope MJ is doing to you what you did to that little girl..."

I won't defend Williams. But the justice system passed sentence. He was serving time. He died. Leave it at that and go about your ways. You really have no business here.

If the day should come when I meet my sister's murderer I will not celebrate any misfortune that may come to the offender. And I won't dance on their grave. The world's screwed up enough without an extra douse of bombast and rhetoric. God willing, have them be caught and let justice do what it will do. Victim-Predator-The Justice System. Society? Just be thankful you're not involved.

Mom says she’ll 'celebrate' death of daughter’s killer

Inmate was serving life sentence in Dorchester for murdering 5-year-old
By BILL KAUFMANN The Canadian Press
Sun. Jun 28 - 4:46 AM

CALGARY — The apparent suicide of an inmate at a New Brunswick prison earlier this week is cause for a bittersweet celebration, according to the mother of the young girl he killed.

The Correctional Service of Canada said Gleason Bennett Williams died Thursday in Dorchester Penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder.

Williams, a native of Prince Edward Island, strangled and slit the throat of Shannon Dawn Morrissette, 5, in his basement suite in southeast Calgary in 1992.

The girl was hearing-impaired and couldn’t speak.

The circumstances of the inmate’s death are still being investigated.

"I know it sounds bad but I’ll celebrate with my family," said the girl’s mother, Janet Morrissette, in an interview from her home in Regina.

"It’s lifted, it really, really has ... the horror’s over."

Two weeks ago, Morrissette faced Williams at the penitentiary during a hearing that ultimately denied the 54-year-old killer escorted day passes.

Morrissette said she’s grateful she had the chance to speak to the man who dumped her daughter’s lifeless body into a dumpster before he met his own end.

"I’m so glad the suicide didn’t happen before I got to read a victim impact statement. He heard what Shannon might have been and could have been," she said.

Even though Williams’s request for escorted day passes had been denied, Morrissette’s family dreaded future hearings and ultimate freedom for the man deemed this month by parole board officials a risk to reoffend.

Williams would have been eligible to apply for full parole in 2012.

When she saw the call display on her phone Friday morning, indicating corrections officials were calling, Morrissette said she braced herself for more agony.

"I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s appealing,’ " said Morrissette. "Now I won’t have to worry about him causing the same pain to another family like ours."

The family’s annual pilgrimage to Shannon’s grave just outside Calgary in August will take on a different tone, added the mom.

"It’s going to be different, not so heavy," Morrissette said.

Shannon was playing behind her home on Aug. 15, 1992. Williams strangled the girl and slashed her throat with a knife. Her body was found in a duffle bag the next morning in a nearby trash bin.

Hare Raising

2009-06-28T11:36:00.004-04:00

Now comes the utterly predictable development that a Quebec television show is doing a "Ghost Hunters" show on the former Champlain College student residence at Compton, Quebec (known as Kings Hall), and that according to their "readings" the lead ghost (apparently there are over 40 of them) is a spirit called "Theresa".

King's Hall haunted? No surprise to me. Here's what I wrote about the place back in 2003:

"King’s Hall - the one-time girls’ school, one time student residence for Champlain College - is today a “resort” hotel. In advertisements (check out the website) it refers to itself as a “Four Seasons Resort”. Careful. Not a “Four Seasons Hotel”, as in the world leader in luxury hotels and resorts. Four seasons; as in, this hotel is open in all four seasons of the year. The place reeked of desperation. A gothic anomaly in the middle of dairy country. It looked like the setting for one too many cheap horror movies. Trying to say these were luxury accommodations was like trying to pass off Dollywood as a major theme park. After the lease was up in 1979, the owners tried to unload the school on the Canadian government for 1.1 million, but even the Canadian government wasn’t that stupid. I pulled into the parking lot. There was one car in the drive. One car, and over one hundred rooms. This place wouldn’t last the summer.

I entered the lobby. Not surprising, there was a suit of armor propped up in the corner. If the red tennis shoe monster from Bugs Bunny suddenly ran out of the dining room I wouldn’t have batted an eye. What was this place? In any other situation, I suppose I would have called it beautiful – Mahogany paneling, a tea service, a harpsichord. Under the circumstances it just seemed weird. A bed and breakfast maybe. Something country quaint to go along with the cows and the gristmills - but this place: Windsor castle? Meet Children of the Corn."

Hey, no one loves a good scare more than me, but my belief in such things is limited. To the point, no matter what they came up with would never be admissible in a court of law. That ultimately is the point: to solve the crime of Theresa Allore's murder.

So hunt away good people. Bring attention to the case. Find tantalizing patterns of meaning in utter randomness. You will have no complaints from me.

The King is Dead. Long Live The King

2009-06-26T06:57:00.001-04:00

My ticket stub from the August 4th, 1984 Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 Victory Tour concert at The Montreal Forum. Thank you Peter for dragging me there.

The Suspense Is Killing Me

2009-06-25T08:18:00.001-04:00

Court to rule on Robert Pickton appeal today

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Appeal Court will hand down a decision today over the conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Some family members are hoping the former pig farmer actually wins his appeal.

If the court upholds the six second-degree murder convictions, the Crown has already indicated it won't go ahead with the remaining 20 murder charges again Pickton.

But many family members of those 20 women want a trial, including Lori-Ann Ellis, whose sister-in-law Cara is on that list.

Ellis says it's unfortunate that she has to hope the convictions will be overturned so they can have their day in court.

The Crown has launched a cross appeal over the trial judge's decision to split the original 26 murder charges into two trials.

Police moved into Pickton's Lower Mainland farm in 2002, setting off a massive murder investigation that uncovered body parts, blood samples, bone fragments and victims' belongings.

Love to prove that, wouldn't ya? Get your name into the National Geographic.

2009-06-23T07:32:00.001-04:00

Great White Sharks Are Like Serial Killers

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP

Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight.

The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that's been hard to observe beneath the surface.

A new study compares great white sharks to serial killers, saying the creatures hunt down specific victims, staying focused and learning from previous attacks. "There's some strategy going on," said Neil Hammerschlag, a co-author of the study and a shark researcher at the University of Miami.

"There's some strategy going on," said study co-author Neil Hammerschlag, a shark researcher at the University of Miami who observed 340 great white shark attacks on seals off an island in South Africa. "It's more than sharks lurking at the water waiting to go after them."

The sharks feeding at Seal Island could have just hovered right where the seals congregated if they were random killers-of-opportunity, Hammerschlag said. But they weren't.

They were focused. They stalked from a usual base of operations, 100 yards from their victims. It was close enough to see their prey, but not close enough to be seen and scare off their victims. They attacked when the lights were low. They liked their victims young and alone. They tried to attack when no other sharks were around to compete. They learned from previous kills.
And they attacked from below, unseen.

There's a big difference between great white sharks and serial killers and it comes down to that old gumshoe standard: motive. The great whites attack to eat and survive, not for thrills. And great whites are majestic creatures that should be saved, Hammerschlag said.

"They both have the same objective, which is to find a target or prey or victim," said study co-author D. Kim Rossmo, a professor of criminal justice at Texas State University-San Marcos. "They have to lurk. They want to be efficient in their search."
The human criminal has to worry about being caught by police and thus is even more careful, said Rossmo, who was a police officer for more than 21 years in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The entire shark-serial killer connection is something right out of a crime novel.

R. Aidan Martin, a Canadian shark researcher who has since died, was reading a whodunit that detailed the relatively new field of geographic profiling, which tries to find criminals by looking for patterns in where they strike. He connected with Rossmo, a pioneer in that criminal field, and they applied the work of tracking down criminals to sleuthing shark strategy.

Martin and Hammerschlag watched sharks from sunrise to sunset, applied the "fancy math" of geographic profiling and came out with plots that showed there was some real stalking going on, Hammerschlag said. Older sharks did better and were more stealthy than younger, smaller sharks, demonstrating that learning was occurring, he said.

The study focused on just one location, but the same principles are likely to be applied to other shark hunting grounds. They can't really apply to shark attacks on people because those are so infrequent, Hammerschlag said. But if you could figure out the base of operations for the great whites, it would give you a good idea of places to avoid if you were worried about shark attacks, he said.

Other animals, such as lions, also reveal strategies in their hunting, Hammerschlag said. Land animals have been observed more easily from the air or elsewhere on the ground.

University of Florida shark attack researcher George Burgess, who had no role in the study, said the researchers simply used a new tool to show what scientists pretty much knew all ready: "Sharks are like many other predators that have developed patterns to their attacking that are obviously beneficial as a species."

Mr. Rasmussen was told by police, “you have been watching too much TV,”

2009-06-14T08:24:00.002-04:00

Police Find Suspect in Cold Case: One of Their Own

Detective Stephanie Lazarus of the Los Angeles Police Department was arrested last week in the 1986 beating and shooting death of the wife of a former boyfriend.

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: June 12, 2009
LOS ANGELES — To her neighbors, she was the kindly friend who delivered chocolate-covered cherries at Christmastime and passed hours in the garage building doors and cabinets. To her colleagues, she was a basketball-crazed jokester who threw herself into work but delighted in pranks like kidnapping a stuffed bear for a candy “ransom.”

But to the police and prosecutors, Stephanie Lazarus, the 49-year-old mother of a toddler whom friends and co-workers could not praise enough, is a killer. Worse, she is one of their own. She is a Los Angeles police detective, and she has been charged with killing the wife of a former lover more than 20 years ago.

Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, who supervises hundreds of detectives and has seen his share of sensational crimes in a 32-year career here, is still shaking his head at the whirlwind turn of the case.

Only a few police officers in Chief Beck’s career have been charged with deliberately killing someone off duty, and he never imagined investigating one of his own seasoned detectives for such a crime.

“I don’t know that everyone is capable of homicide, but certainly you never know who is capable of homicide,” Chief Beck said in an interview. “People can hold dark secrets and hold them very well for a long period of time. She definitely did.”

Detective Lazarus was arrested June 5 at police headquarters and charged with the 1986 beating and shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen, 29, whom Ms. Lazarus had stalked and threatened, Ms. Rasmussen’s father has said. Detective Lazarus, a 25-year veteran, was a patrol officer then with two years on the force.

Now on leave without pay, Detective Lazarus is to be arraigned July 6 and is being held in the county jail without bail. An assistant for her lawyer, Mark R. Pachowicz, said Mr. Pachowicz would not comment.

Prosecutors will have the option of pursuing the death penalty because the police assert that Detective Lazarus committed robbery — Ms. Rasmussen’s car disappeared, along with her marriage certificate, during the attack, family members said.

Ms. Rasmussen and her attacker engaged in a “dramatic” fight, Chief Beck said, before she was shot three times and left for dead. Her husband of three months, John Ruetten, found the body when he returned to their condo in the San Fernando Valley.

The department is now reviewing the original investigation to determine whether Detective Lazarus was overlooked as a suspect.

Ms. Rasmussen’s father, Nels Rasmussen, would not comment, but his lawyer, John C. Taylor, said that at the time Mr. Rasmussen had pressed detectives to look into a former girlfriend of Mr. Ruetten who was a police officer, though he did not know her name.

Mr. Taylor said Mr. Rasmussen was told at one point, “you have been watching too much TV,” and ultimately investigators concluded that the killing had probably resulted from a botched burglary.

The case had remained unsolved until investigators in the department’s cold-case unit, newly bolstered as a result of the city’s plummeting homicide rate, reviewed it as part of a systematic check of old files using technology that was not available at the time of the crimes.

They discovered evidence — a saliva swab from a bite wound on Ms. Rasmussen — that, after recent DNA testing, revealed the attacker was a woman and not a man, as originally thought.
After re-interviewing Ms. Rasmussen’s friends and family, investigators began looking at Ms. Lazarus as a prime suspect and surreptitiously retrieved a discarded item from her, tested it and determined that her DNA matched the swab.

Detective Lazarus worked on a small squad investigating art theft and fraud. The homicide unit is right across the hall.

Chief Beck said the department had gone to great lengths to keep its investigation secret, including housing the detectives on the case in another building and limiting its knowledge to “very, very few people.”

The arrest stunned colleagues and friends.

“It is heartbreaking,” said Detective Deborah Gonzales, president of the Los Angeles Women Police Officers and Associates, an organization in which Detective Lazarus had been an officer.
“You had the impression this job was her life,” Detective Gonzales said, adding that at work Detective Lazarus often displayed a sense of humor, for example, swiping a stuffed animal for ransom.

“She left a note saying leave 10 M&Ms on her desk and she would give it back,” Detective Gonzales said.

Detective Lazarus lives in suburban Simi Valley on a street populated with several current and retired police officers. Her husband, Scott Young, is a Los Angeles police officer as well, and they have lived on the street for about 10 years.

An elderly woman who answered the door at their home said: “I have nothing to say, and I may never have anything to say. The press has made a circus out of this.”

Neighbors said Detective Lazarus was friendly but not particularly outgoing. She and her husband mostly kept to themselves, the neighbors said, working on the house or walking with the daughter they have adopted, but displayed kindness through small gestures, like distributing Christmas treats and offering flowers to the sick.

They did, however, share their eagerness for a child.

“They wanted a baby so bad,” said Sandra Preece, who lives across the street. “They asked the neighbors if we knew of anyone who wanted to give up a child for adoption.”

For a time, Detective Lazarus ran a private investigation firm on the side called Unique Investigations, according to The Ventura County Star. An article in the paper from 2000 describes her offering free photographing and fingerprinting of children as part of a protection kit for parents.

Mostly, those who knew her said, Detective Lazarus seemed committed to work. In an article on the art-theft unit in The LA Weekly in April, the detective, who graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, said she became an art lover at 18 after a trip to Italy. She was described as a protégée of the senior officer in the unit.
Her career collapsed on the morning of June 5. Shortly after arriving at police headquarters, she was summoned to a holding jail in the basement with word that a suspect needed to be interviewed. She was relieved of her gun as part of the jail’s procedure for visiting officers, and an arrest team swooped in.

“There was” a suspect, Chief Beck said. “But it was her.”

Canada tightens sex offender registry

2009-06-01T13:11:00.001-04:00

Hey, this only friggin' took forever:

Ottawa to tighten up national sex offender registry, DNA database
Last Updated: Monday, June 1, 2009

Sweeping changes to the national sex offender registry and the national DNA database are intended to make them more effective tools for police in tracking and preventing sex crimes, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said Monday.

"The government is delivering another aspect of our commitment to get tough on crime and protect the safety and security of our communities," Van Loan told reporters at a press conference in Ottawa.

"Police and victims groups have requested these changes for some time and our government is delivering on them."

Those advocacy and law enforcement groups had argued the registry, in place since 2004, hasn't been responsible for solving a single sex crime.

Among the proposed changes:

All sex offenders will automatically be added to the registry upon conviction. Currently such offenders are included only after a formal request is made by the Crown and a judge orders it — which happens 58 per cent of the time.

Convicted sex offenders will also automatically be required to provide a DNA sample to be entered into the national database.

Police will have access to the sex offender registry to prevent sex crimes. "If police see an individual behaving suspiciously near a school ground, for example, they will be able to request information from the database," said Van Loan. "They will be able to obtain additional information to assist them in their prevention work." Currently police can use the sex registry to investigate a crime only after it has happened.

Those who are convicted and jailed for sex crimes in another country and are returned to Canada to serve the remainder of their sentence will now be registered with the registry.
Canadians convicted abroad of sex crimes and returning to Canada at the end of sentence must report their conviction to police within seven days of arriving back in the country or face criminal prosecution. "No longer will Canada be a safe haven from which travelling sex offenders can operate safely," said Van Loan.

Sex offenders must report the name of their employer, the type of employment as well as any volunteer organizations they are associated with. They will also be required to provide notice in advance of absences from their residence of seven days or more.

Police will be allowed to notify other Canadian and foreign law enforcement jurisdictions when registered sex offenders are travelling to another area.

Federal and provincial correctional services will be allowed to notify registry officials if a registered sex offender is either released into the community or re-admitted to custody.

Tori Stafford

2009-05-25T07:41:00.002-04:00

The further I get from these things, the more a hate playing amateur sleuth. It disturbs me. And some things I've seen have changed me.

Still, from this it appears they removed the entire back seat of the car and dumped it along with the body in a farmer's field. Just horrifying:

Police continue grim searches for Tori Stafford, 8, and 1970 Kirkland Lake victim Kathy Wilson, 12
May 25, 2009 04:30 AM
NICOLAAS VAN RIJN
STAFF REPORTER

Two little girls, both missing, both dead.

And today, as Ontario Provincial Police continue to search a vast swath of southwestern Ontario for the body of 8-year-old Tori Stafford, who has not seen since she was abducted outside her Woodstock school on April 8, OPP officers in Kirkland Lake are ramping up the search for 12-year-old Kathy Wilson, last seen riding in a cousin's truck on the outskirts of town in October 1970.

Investigators have no doubt what they'll find when they finally reach the end of their quests, whether it takes them 39 years, as in the Wilson case, or however long it will take to search for Tori.

Two little bodies.

Kathy Wilson's killer has already confessed; two suspects in Tori's disappearance are in custody and police hold out no hope she'll be found alive.

"I think it's the nature (of people to hope for) one possible little miracle," OPP Const. Laurie-Anne Maitland said yesterday, referring to the search for Tori.

"But in this tragic case," she added, "it's not (possible)."

Police investigating Tori's death have charged Woodstock resident Michael Rafferty, 28, with first-degree murder and abduction and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, also of Woodstock, is charged with abduction and being an accessory.

McClintic accompanied investigators in an OPP helicopter on several occasions last week as they flew over fields and streams near Guelph, but so far there's been no sign of Tori's body.

Yesterday, OPP appealed to area residents to check their properties for the grey, cloth-coloured back seat that is missing from Rafferty's 2003 Honda four-door car, blue with black spray paint over portions of the vehicle. Police have the car, but are looking for the back seat in an effort to recover evidence.

If the seat is located, police investigators stress "that it not be touched," and are requesting that it be reported immediately. They're also asking anyone who finds it to try, without making physical contact with the seat, "to protect it from the elements until investigators can attend the scene."

Late last week police asked anyone living within a 50-minute drive of Guelph to check their property for anything suspicious.

Investigators have so far remained mum about any tips they may so far have received.

The area being searched for Kathy Wilson's body is far smaller than the 2,660 square kilometres of southwestern Ontario farmland – all of it less than an hour's drive from Guelph – that may hold Tori's current resting place.

Barry Vincent Manion, convicted earlier this year in the Kirkland Lake girl's death so long ago, told investigators where to find her body. That search resumes in earnest today, kicked off with a police news conference that will include a look at the area being searched.

Helping in the search near Kirkland Lake – OPP expect it to take about two weeks – will be a number of forensic anthropology students from the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.

Kathy Wilson was on her way home from a trip to the grocery store and post office when she disappeared. Her sisters remembered seeing her in a cousin's truck that day 39 years ago, and have long recalled the terrified look on her face.

Earlier this year, police arrested Manion, the cousin, then living in London.

He was 61 when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March and was sentenced to life in prison; he was found hanged in his cell a few days later.

But before he died, Manion led police to the area where he said he had strangled the girl and admitted he'd been abusing her for the year preceding the killing.

He told detectives he had picked the girl up in his truck, then drove to a quiet area where he fondled her and asked her to perform a sex act. When she refused and ran away, he chased her into a wooded area and choked the life from her. Then he buried her and her groceries.

Police said they had to wait for spring thaw to begin the hunt for Wilson's remains. Over the weekend, OPP investigators began searching a wooded area in Morrisette Township, just north of Kirkland Lake.

Investigators in the Kirkland Lake search plan a news conference today.

Stranger homicide? Never. Crime of Passion? Most Definite.

2009-05-24T17:40:00.001-04:00

NYPD forensic investigator stabbed to death in bed
By COLLEEN LONG

NEW YORK (AP) — Michelle Lee's career was solving crimes. Working as a forensic investigator for the New York Police Department, she was training to do the type of "CSI" work made famous on television.

But the 24-year-old became a victim of a crime herself, stabbed to death in her bed, her naked body found in a pool of blood. Using the same investigative techniques Lee was learning, authorities on Friday arrested her ex-lover Gary McGurk in the case, charging him with second-degree murder.

McGurk pleaded not guilty and was being held without bail. His attorney, Joseph Corozzo said his client was innocent.

"This is a gruesome crime, but my client is not responsible for it," he said. "We look forward to seeing the purported evidence in this case."

Lee had recently moved out of her parent's home and was living in Sunnyside, Queens, a quaint neighborhood of working-class families. She started working for the NYPD last September and was training in forensic investigations at a police lab analyzing evidence like hair samples, drugs, gunshot residues and bodily fluids. She was going to specialize in narcotics.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly described her as a "very talented young woman."

The weekend of her death, her roommate was out of town. She returned Sunday, April 26, and thinking Lee must've been sleeping, she didn't bother to say hello. When she wasn't up the next morning, the roommate peeked into Lee's room and discovered the grisly scene. Lee was naked and had been tied to her bed, a knife jutted out of her neck. Her chest had been burned with an iron. Investigators would later say she was hit with a blunt instrument before she was stabbed.
There was no sign of forced entry. She was last seen leaving the gym in her neighborhood around 5 p.m. the Saturday before her roommate discovered her body.

Police offered a $12,000 reward for any information leading to her death. Meanwhile, investigators probed the case, talking to her friends and acquaintances. Lab workers — though none of Lee's co-workers — analyzed forensic evidence from the scene.

Weeks went by, and one person's story didn't quite add up, according to police and prosecutors. McGurk, a 23-year-old Irish-born student at John Jay Criminal College, was apparently the last person to have contact with her, and his statements kept changing, investigators said.

The two had met at the John Jay athletic center in 2004, where she also attended, and he asked her out. But dating didn't work, and so they were "friends with benefits," according to his statement to police. He claimed they had rough sex — tied each other up, choked each other, that sort of thing, according to court documents.

"Sweet girl. Friends first, herself last," McGurk said in a statement to police. "She told me that she made bad decisions. I told her that I was a bad decision, joking."

After he started dating another girl, their relationship cooled but they still spoke regularly. They chatted online the Saturday before she was found dead. And he was apparently upset investigators didn't contact him immediately, according to court documents.

She also owed him at least $2,000, he said. McGurk had lied to Lee, telling her he was sick with cancer and needed the money immediately. She didn't have it, he said.

His statements to police on how much he owed her and how much she had paid kept changing, along with when and where he last saw her, according to court documents. Forensic evidence also tied him to the scene, but police wouldn't get into details.

McGurk was charged Friday by District Attorney Richard Brown with second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
He maintains his innocence.

"If I were to have done this to Michelle I would not only embarrass myself but I would also embarrass my family," McGurk said, according to court documents. "I did not go into her apartment. She had company. You don't like it but you accept it."

He is due in court June 4. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

In his court statements, McGurk said he is scheduled to graduate May 28, but he wasn't sure he could handle the life of a forensic psychologist.

"I find crime scene photos and cadavers disturbing," he said.

Hey Canada? Wake up!

2009-05-24T08:32:00.002-04:00

The exact battle that was waged in Quebec after the disappearance of Cedrika Provencher, and such a shame another child had to die.

You'd think Canada would put two-and-two together and make this a national policy?:

Online petition seeks changes to Amber Alert in light of Tori case

Victoria Stafford is shown in this 2006 family handout photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO)

Thousands of people have signed an online petition aimed at forcing changes to Ontario's Amber Alert system in light of the Tori Stafford case.

The person who created the petition has dubbed the changes "Tori's Law."

The petition asks that the law be changed to require an Amber Alert be issued without question if the guardian of the child finds it "out of character for the child to be missing for any length of time."

An Amber Alert is currently issued when police confirm a child under 18 years old has been abducted and could be in serious harm. There must also be enough descriptive information about the child, abductor or the suspect vehicle in order to be issued.

Local media then interrupt scheduled programs in order to broadcast the information.

An Amber Alert was never issued when Tori Stafford went missing April 8, 2009.

The online petition goes on to claim that if an alert had been issued, Tori "could still be alive today."

He'll Be Dead In Five Years

2009-05-24T08:19:00.001-04:00

Tori murder accused 'intelligent' and 'weird'

Online date says Rafferty 'friendly' as another pal says there was something 'a little off about him'

May 22, 2009 04:30 AM

KENYON WALLACE
STAFF REPORTER

WOODSTOCK, Ont.–It wasn't the first time Melanie Munger had been put ill at ease by Michael Rafferty. But the Facebook message she received in October 2007 from the self-proclaimed "hopeless romantic" set off alarm bells.

"He said he worked in a meat packing plant in Guelph and worked under a knife all day," Munger, 30, said yesterday. "I thought there was something strange about that message. There was just something a little off about him."

Nearly a year and a half would pass before his name would resurface in Munger's mind. Rafferty, 28, was charged Tuesday with the murder and abduction of 8-year-old Tori Stafford. Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, was also charged with abduction and being an accessory to murder.

The picture former friends and acquaintances of Rafferty paint is of a man of contradictions. While most describe him as intelligent and even funny, "weird" and "odd" are also common adjectives. But the thought Rafferty could be capable of kidnapping and killing a little girl never existed. Until now.

Munger, a St. Thomas resident, says she first met Rafferty in Toronto in 2001 when he was living at a friend's house on Queen St. W.

She said Rafferty, then unemployed, was nonetheless well dressed in the latest fashions. "It's kind of hard for someone without money but you could tell he wanted to look good to impress the ladies."

But there were hints of strangeness, enough that Munger felt no urge to keep up regular communication. "He would end his Facebook messages with comments like `I miss you' and `You are one of the best ones.' He was just a weird guy."

Tina, a Woodstock resident who asked that her last name not be used, met Rafferty on the dating site plentyoffish.com a year and a half ago. She says Rafferty quickly wanted to escalate their friendship to a romantic level. When she balked, he became distant – except when he needed money or drugs.

"I mentioned ... one day that my Dad has some medical problems and uses OxyContin," recalled Tina, 26. Then "he started phoning me up asking for Oxy. At one point he said he needed it for his mom and then for himself. For a while that's all he would call me about."

Tina says the two hung out "all the time," going for coffee or for drives.

"He was friendly, nice, and seemed intelligent. He talked a lot about fashion, girls and claimed he was a dance instructor," she said.

Rafferty claimed on his MySpace page to have graduated from Alexander Mackenzie High School, but the Richmond Hill school says it didn't happen. Rafferty only attended from Sept. '95 to March '96, acquiring just one credit, a York Region school board spokesman said.

Rafferty also claimed he studied to be a chef at George Brown, but on a cursory search the college found no record, a spokesperson said.

Jim Bender, owner of Lady Godiva's Adult Emporium, which is also Woodstock's pipes and bongs supplier, says Rafferty used to come in often to buy water pipes. "He looked worse for wear the last time I saw him" early this year, he said.

I Have A New Job

2009-05-19T07:32:00.002-04:00

Well, not so new, but I've been keeping it on the down-low. I'm the Assistant Budget Director for the City of Durham.

As I expressed to Kim Rossmo some weeks ago, this of course means I've laid aside plans to pursue a PhD, but I figure choosing a career path was worth it, and it has allowed me to be in the "smoke filled room" when matters of public policy are addressed. I mean, isn't that what all this is ultimately about? A seat at the table?

For instance, a key piece of the Durham budget has been the consideration of funding for the warrant control operation; the program that was borne from the Eve Carson affair and its aftermath where it was discovered that a backlog of stale warrants may have indirectly contributed to her murder. It has been quite satisfying to sit at the table where the decision to continue that program (to clean up the warrant backlog) was made. Though this being my first budget season I was largely silent in that discussion, rest assured I took good notes.

Anyway, here's an article summarizing the City Manager's presentation of the preliminary budget at last night's Council session:

Bonfield's budget request cuts 3.1%

By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg@heraldsun.com
May 19, 2009

DURHAM -- City Manager Tom Bonfield's fiscal 2009-10 budget request cuts overall spending by 3.1 percent, with most of the cuts targeting the parts of city government funded by property taxes.

As directed by the City Council, the request holds the line on Durham's property tax rate, keeping it at 54 cents per $100 of assessed value.

Bonfield's proposal would slash overall spending to $344.4 million, about $11.1 million below what the council authorized last year in the closing months of former City Manager Patrick Baker's tenure.

All but about $1.8 million of that comes from the city's tax-fortified "general fund," which pays for most of its day-to-day operations aside from those of the Water Management Department and the Durham Area Transit Authority.

Much of the savings comes from a proposed staffing cut that would do away with 113 of the 2,425 city jobs the 2008-09 budget authorized. A majority of the targeted jobs are vacant, but 35 workers will have to find new positions on the city payroll or face being laid off.

The job cuts by themselves will save nearly $6.6 million and roll back nearly two years' worth of growth in city staffing. The reduction in general-fund spending is the city's first since 1996.

The proposed cuts come because revenues are lagging because of the recession at a time when the city has to raise spending for long-promised initiatives like the Holton Career and Resource Center and the Walltown Recreation Center. Those two projects by themselves are adding $816,258 to the budget.

Bonfield also acknowledged that the city was unable this year to draw money from its savings to help balance its spending plan.

The City Council last year told Baker and his staff to allow savings levels to drop below a key benchmark, 12 percent of annual appropriations, so it could cap the 2008-09 tax rate at 54 cents per $100 of assessed value.

The 12 percent mark is supposed to assure banks and credit watchdogs agencies that Durham can repay its debts and merits a AAA bond rating. Waiving it was the single most controversial decision the council made in the 2008-09 budget debate and led to a split, 4-3 vote on passage of that spending plan.

The resulting $4.5 million dip into savings "basically used up any surplus that was available" to help in the upcoming fiscal year, Bonfield said.

Spending cuts and somewhat better-than-expected revenue collections have the city's fiscal 2008-09 general fund running $1.4 million in the black. Bonfield is not, however, proposing that the city spend that money on continuing expenses like salaries.

Instead, he said officials should use it only on one-time moves like pushing savings back up to the 12-percent level, dealing with a $2 million deficit in DATA's operating fund, and catching up with deferred maintenance.

Applying it to day-to-day expenses is a bad idea because the city faces continued "economic uncertainties," Bonfield said.

He added that it's not clear the state and local economy has hit bottom.

Even if it has, "I don't think any of us know how long we're going to stay where we are," he said. "And staying even is not a great option. Things need to get better, or we will probably have more unpleasant discussions going forward."

The budget cuts won't require the elimination of programs, but the city will have to scale some back. It won't accept new applications for streetlight and traffic-calming installations, and will cut operating hours at some recreation centers.

Bonfield's spending request also assumes that the Solid Waste Management Department goes with the planned cancellation of a privatized weekly curbside-recycling contract and moves to handle those pickups with its own laborers every other week.

That change is also tied to plans to end city-provided pickups of business and apartment-complex Dumpsters. The changes at Solid Waste Management all told will save $434,000 a year, officials said.

They remain on track even though the current recycling contractor, Tidewater Fibre Corp. is trying to head off the cancellation of its deal. It's made a counteroffer, but its terms don't seem likely to save as much money as Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long's plan, Bonfield said.

Spring Lake hires former Chapel Hill Chief Gregg Jarvies to clean up the mess

2009-05-18T17:58:00.002-04:00

A no brainer: From the Town that doesn't need more law enforcement oversight to Spring Lake: Desperate for accountability. Jarvies is a terrific choice here.

Former Chapel Hill chief to head Spring Lake police
Posted: Today at 2:12 p.m.
Updated: 51 minutes ago
Spring Lake, N.C. — Town officials on Monday picked former Chapel Hill police chief Gregg Jarvies to stabilize the beleaguered Spring Lake Police Department while they search for a full-time chief.

Jarvies, who retired from the Chapel Hill Police Department in April 2007, was on the job in Spring Lake Monday afternoon, almost two weeks after Chief A.C. Brown resigned amid a state investigation of the department. His contract with the town runs through Sept. 1, but officials said it could be extended.

"We wanted to get a high-caliber individual in place as quickly as we could to help stabilize the department and begin the rebuilding," Town Manager Larry Faison said.

Cumberland County deputies assumed control of law enforcement in Spring Lake on May 6, following the arrests of two officers on a variety of charges. Sheriff Earl "Moose" Butler ordered Spring Lake officers to stay away from all investigations.

"We certainly have challenges ahead," said Jarvies, who plans to commute from his Hillsborough home three or four days a week.

Indictments allege that Sgt. Darryl Eugene Coulter Sr. participated in an April 2008 home invasion in which three men were held at gunpoint and that he asked subordinate officers to falsify a report about a September raid on a motel room in which $2,900 was seized. Sgt. Alphonzo Devonne Whittington Jr. allegedly stole that money from the police department's evidence room and tried to cover it up, according to an indictment.

Brown resigned the following day, and reports that he and another officer were shredding files in the department prompted a judge to order the State Bureau of Investigation to take control of all Spring Lake Police Department files.

Cumberland County District Attorney Ed Grannis has dismissed all pending misdemeanor cases in Spring Lake, saying that he suspects senior officers of lying and directing other officers to fabricate facts in police reports.

Spring Lake officials had named Sgt. Mack Utley III as acting police chief before turning to Jarvies.

Although Spring Lake's police officers have been taken off the streets, they remain on the job. Many of them have been using up their compensatory time off in the past two weeks, Jarvies said.

"It's been unfortunate that the department has been told to stand down, but in a way, it gives, I think, everyone a chance to sit back and say what the training needs are," he said.

Jarvies spent 32 years with the Chapel Hill Police Department, including seven as chief. He also has been a consultant for the Illinois State Police and a guest lecturer at North Carolina State University.

"I know they're going through a tough time, and I thought I could take some baby steps getting the department back – bring some structure and hopefully some respect and pride back in the department," he said, noting that he also will help Spring Lake officials search for a permanent police chief.

Possible Connection - Quebec / U.S. Murders?

2009-05-10T06:56:00.004-04:00

Dear Kathy:

Thanks for contacting me. I am not convinced that the assaults, rapes and murders committed by Avedis Ralph Seaward in the Concord, New Hampshire area circa 1978 - 1982 are in any way connected to the three murders of my sister, Theresa Allore, and Manon Dube and Louise Camirand during the same time period in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada.

As is the case with the Quebec deaths, Seaward's activity is heavily clustered in the Concord area. You would need to find some rational explanation for him crossing the border into Canada at that time to capture my interest. Yes, he was a long-haul trucker, and, yes the the main route out of Concord is Interstate 93 which directly connects to Highway 55. And Hwy 55 was, and is, the main artery for trucking from the United States into Quebec (And passes very close to the Quebec crime scenes). However, you would have to know a little about the Quebec dump-sites; they are not easily accessible by transport. I would consider it high-risk behavior, if not entirely impossible for a truck could access those roads.

Briana's abandoned car

On the overriding subject of a possible cross-border offender; I have spend a considerable amount of thought and effort in investigating this possibility. As I am sure you are aware there are a number of unsolveds from Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire from that era where the possible crimes took place in proximity to the Canadian border. For a time myself and the families of Maura Murray and Briana Maitland were working for approx. 6 months with Dateline NBC on a possible story.

Brianna Maitland

We had also contacted police and professional investigators about the likelihood of such a suspect. The bottom line was there was no evidence to suggest such a suspect ever existed. The prospect is certainly titillating to the imagination, but such behavior defies logical explanation (there would need to be some concrete proof to justify such a suspect operating in the two different regions). However, I always remain open to someone coming forward with that proof.

Maura Murray

Thank you for contacting me. I am always interested in cold cases, and I hope you are able to find some answers.

Sincerely,

John Allore

--------------------------------

I ran across your site and I am wondering if the cases on your page could belong to Avedis Ralph Seaward of Concord New Hampshire. I noticed there are quite a few in that area. Seaward raped several girls in New Hamphire. Please let me know if you think he could be resposible for any of these crimes:

In 1981 I was a victim of Avedis Ralph Seaward. I was working in a King Kwik store when he came in and robbed, kidnapped and raped me. In the car was a deceased girl. She had dirty blond hair, green eyes. At the time he raped me he was a suspect in 278 rapes and murders. He was a long haul truck driver. He wrote a confession to the F.B.I. in the confession he said his crimes are from New Hampshire to Florida and from Massachusetts to California. The states he mentions specifically are New Jersey, Florida, Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, Texas, Tennesee, Michigan, Missouri, and California. Seawards crimes include murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and arson among others. His crimanal records go back to 1961. He states these crimes occured between 1968 to 1979. Also in 1981 he committed several crimes of rape and one murder that I know of. He was in the Georgia state prison from 2-8-1979 to 2-1-1981.

Seaward says he killed an elderly lady in Concord New Hampshire

Seaward says he raped a girl in Concord walking up North State St. near the Blossom Hill Cemetary may have been August 1981.

Seaward says he raped a victim he believed lived in Pennacook near Concord. He raped her at the end of Perkin Court in her own car. may have been Feb 1978?

Seaward says he murdered a Frank Gurton In Boston Massachusetts. He caught up with him 1968 at the Hillbilly Ranch Bar, Park square area. Shot Gurton in the head with a 357 magnum and buried him some where around where the John Hancock building stands.

Seaward states he murdered a Frank Buxton in the area of Park Square area, Boston. He caught up with him at a Avis Car Rental and took him to an open field near what he believes is the Cambridge River, near the Boston Museum of Science and a large bridge. Seaward shot him with a 38 calibur in the head and chest. Seaward then dismembered him and buried him in different holes.

Seaward said he murdered a Freddie Conner in 1971. He shot him in the head 5 times and buried him in an open field behind the Turtle Inn on First St. Atlantic Beach Florida.

Seawrd stated in he worked for a contractor Jack Anderson in 1971 installing counter tops. At a apt. complex when Anderson didn't pay him he burnt the complex down.

There was a complaint filed in march 1981of a rape

Seaward raped two girls in Concord May 1981. Plead insanity spent six weeks in a mental institution. One girl was 15 one was 16.

Seaward raped a girl in Agust of 1981 in Concord.

In September of 1981 he stole a car, checks and other items in Concord.

Seaward murdered a girl Oct 6, 1981

Seaward robbed, kidnapped me and raped me Oct 7,1981

Seaward robbed, kidnapped and raped a victim in Sandusky ohio Oct 13,1981. At this time he was caught.

At the present time Seaward is in the Ohio Prisons system. He is charged with 2 counts of agg. robbery. I do not know what happened to the charges of murder. The 2 counts of rape and kidnapping were plead down to agg. robbery, in which he recieved 7 to 25 on my case and 7 to 25 on the Sandusky victim. I have been fighting since mid eighties to keep him in prison or at least label him a sexual preditor. He is up for parole in 2011. He will not be labeled a sexual preditor.

I am hoping that someone has ran across some of these crime. I don't know how truthful he was on the names. I am hoping to find cases that may fit these crimes. Since I am not from these areas I need to find someone that knows of these locations.

I am also interested in unsolved cases that fit this time period. I know he committed alot of rapes in or around cemetaries, some were at gravel pits and wooded areas. He also robbed convenient stores and some victims were at bars.Hopefully someone knows something about these cases.

If you have any cases in your town that fit Seawards confessions please let me know. I am not sure if he gave the right names but I bet he gave the right details of the crimes. All his victims and thier families deserve justice. Will you help please. I also have more paper work on him.

Thank you,
Kathy XXXXXXXX

The Dangling Carrot - Run Rabbit Run

2009-05-04T12:55:00.002-04:00

A new twist on abolishing the death penalty - not on moral grounds, but as a cost saving measure. And in Colorado, a novel approach: any savings will be used to offset the expense of cold-case murder investigations:

Colorado may end death penalty to focus on cold cases

By P. SOLOMON BANDA – 23 hours ago
DENVER (AP) — Colorado is one of 10 states that have considered abolishing the death penalty this year to save money, but Colorado's proposal has a twist: It would use the savings to investigate about 1,400 unsolved slayings.

The measure has sparked fierce debate between prosecutors and some victims' families. Prosecutors want to keep capital punishment as an option for heinous crimes, and they say the bill has raised unrealistic hopes about solving cold cases.

Supporters of the bill say it's more important to find and prosecute killers still on the loose than to execute the ones already convicted.

"The death penalty is not relevant without a murderer brought to trial," said Laurie Wiedeman, the older sister of 17-year-old Gay Lynn Dixon, whose 1982 slaying remains unsolved. "I would like to see the person who killed my sister put to death. But to have that person free to run around and committing other crimes?"

Abolishing Colorado's death penalty would save an estimated $1 million a year that now is spent on prosecutors' time, public defenders' fees and appeals, according to a legislative analysis.

Supporters of the death penalty repeal measure want that money diverted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations cold case unit, which has just one staffer. The extra money could add eight people to the unit, the legislative analysis said.

Proponents, led by Evergreen-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, also say Colorado's death penalty is so rarely used that it's not a deterrent.

Colorado has executed only one person in the past 42 years, Gary Lee Davis, put to death in 1997 for his conviction in a 1986 slaying. Two men are currently on the state's death row.
The Colorado House narrowly passed the measure in late April, and the Senate is expected to vote before the session ends Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Ritter hasn't publicly said whether he would sign the bill if it passes. Before becoming governor, Ritter was Denver's district attorney and unsuccessfully sought capital punishment seven times. Before becoming district attorney in 1993, Ritter had expressed personal doubts about capital punishment.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and all but one of the state's district attorneys oppose the bill. Even if the savings were applied to a cold case unit, which Suthers and other said isn't guaranteed by the bill, many cases may remain unsolved.

"I think it's a sad situation," Suthers said. "You have hundreds of ... parents of murdered children, sitting there being led to believe that if they abolish the death penalty in Colorado their child's death will be solved.

"A million dollars doesn't buy you a lot of cold case investigation," he said.

He and other prosecutors say additional DNA testing, including a proposal pending in the Legislature to take samples at the time of a felony arrest, could do more than expanding the state's cold case unit to solve old cases.

New Mexico this year became the second state to abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate capital punishment in 1976. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.

Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Texas considered abolishing the death penalty, but bills in those states have stalled, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

"It (budgetary concerns) was a prominent issue and an impetus for these bills getting hearings this year," Dieter said.

Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons documented 1,434 unsolved slayings in Colorado since 1970, and a CBI database for law enforcement closely matches those numbers
"We have 1,400 murderers walking around. We don't feel threatened by it, but we should," said Frank Birgfeld, whose 34-year-old daughter Paige Birgfeld disappeared from Grand Junction in July 2007 and is presumed dead.

But cold cases become harder to solve as time passes. In February, 65-year-old Tina Louise Lester was arrested in Ohio on a 1968 warrant in a Denver shooting death, but District Attorney Mitch Morrissey decided against filing charges because of the lack of witnesses who could counter Lester's self-defense claim.

"Two men in that bar, who are pivotal witnesses, would have been in their late 80s," Morrissey said.

That doesn't sway Howard Morton, executive director of Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, whose 19-year-old son Guy Oliver was the victim of a still-unsolved 1975 slaying in Arizona.

"We know they won't all be solved," Morton said. "We think that some of them will be, and more importantly it sends a signal that for those who have gotten away with murder, we're coming after you."

New Photo of Theresa

2009-05-02T18:51:00.002-04:00

So this was taken around August 1978, at our house in New Brunswick, just before Theresa and Andre (pictured) returned to school. It gives you a good dynamic of their ages just before she died - remember that Andre was also at Champlain College, Lennoxville when she disappeared in November 1978: this is the kid who had to deal with all that shit.

Theresa is wearing a David Bowie shirt which I still have. The NY Islanders jersey? The last I remember it was in a yellow duffle bag stored under a house at Kensington and Bathurst in Toronto around 1987 along with a lot of my possessions... after that I lost track of it.

A Friend found Roch Gaudreault's original business card

2009-04-26T08:04:00.003-04:00

Julissa Brisman

2009-04-19T08:26:00.002-04:00

Love this comment posted at the New York Daily News concerning the murder of Julissa Brisman:

Hailegh Apr 19, 2009 6:44:35 AM
"Now that the picture of the killer has come out to the public, why hasn't he been found? Ms. Brisman was very attractive and all these women deserve swift justice."

Yes, it's because she was attractive that justice should be served.

Police use profilers in search for Ontario girl

2009-04-12T13:21:00.000-04:00

I know who I suspect:

Monday, April 13, 2009 9:50 AM ET
CBC News
Investigators have brought in behavioural experts to help in the search for an eight-year-old southwestern Ontario girl who has not been seen since last week.

Victoria (Tori) Stafford was last seen leaving her school on Wednesday afternoon. (Photo provided by Woodstock police)Specialists from the Ontario Provincial Police are now working the case to create a profile of someone who might be involved in Victoria Stafford's disappearance in Woodstock.

Surveillance video showed the Grade 3 student, known to her friends as Tori, walking with an unidentified woman as she left school Wednesday afternoon in the city of 35,000 east of London.
Investigators, who have called the woman a "person of interest," are poring through dozens of tips from the public about her identity.

The woman in the video is described by police as between 19 and 25 years old, between 120 and 125 pounds, with straight long black hair in a ponytail. She was wearing a white coat and black jeans.

Police said they have no reason at this time to suspect foul play, but the search for Victoria has continued around the clock with more than 200 volunteers from the community helping police.

Family has 'no answers'
The search continued Monday after about 1,000 people joined the girl's relatives for a candlelight vigil in Woodstock on Sunday night.

Stafford's parents, Tara McDonald and Rodney Stafford, separated last December. The father, who described the relationship as "an ongoing struggle," said he doesn't believe any of Victoria's relatives are behind her disappearance.

"I have no answers," the missing girl's mother said at the vigil. "Nobody can even begin to imagine what our family is going through."

Surrounded by his family at the vigil, Rodney Stafford thanked the hundreds of people who have helped search for his daughter.

"To me it is a dream, and I wish someone would slap me and wake me up, and preferably it be Tori," her father said.

Anyone with information can call police at (519) 537-2323 or contact Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS.

April 13th, 1979

2009-04-11T08:35:00.004-04:00

Well it was 30 years ago Monday that Theresa's body was found so I thought I'd do a little commentary of the following photo essay:

The missing person notice signed by Lennoxville Police Chief Leo Hamel

Lennoxville as it looked 30 years ago

Le Pire

Crime scene photo 1

Crime scene photo 2

Roch Gaudreault & Jacques Quirion search through a garbage bag of women's clothing found near the crime scene (later determined not to be Theresa's)

The French Press got it right

Theresa's wallet found 10 miles from the crime scene...

photos obviously staged...

meaning police crime photographers got their DNA all over the wallet.

The Haunting Murder of Theresa Allore

2009-04-11T08:31:00.002-04:00

Simon Fraser Book Takes did a mini-review of Kim's book:

Kim Rossmo (MA’87, PhD’96) takes a serious but fascinating look at some of the reasons why police work doesn’t always succeed. The reasons fall into three broad categories: cognitive biases, including perception, intuition, and tunnel vision; organizational traps, including groupthink, rumour, and ego; and errors in probability, including chance and randomness in forensics and profiling.

The cases used as illustrations of Rossmo’s thesis range from well-known miscarriages of justice (David Milgaard, Donald Marshall, and Guy Paul Morin) to investigations that didn’t begin early enough (the murders of women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside), to unsolved cases (most particularly the haunting murder of Theresa Allore in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in 1978).

The book concludes with specific recommendations to help police departments avoid some of the investigative pitfalls Rossmo has identified, thus minimizing the chance of wrongful conviction and improving detective work.

Rossmo holds the University Endowed Chair in Criminology and is the director of the Centre for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation in the Department of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. He is also an adjunct professor at SFU. Contributors to the book include Neil Boyd, SFU criminology professor, and Doug A. LePard (BA’01), deputy chief constable commanding the investigative division of the Vancouver Police Department.

Oh God, Remember these bozos?

2009-04-10T18:01:00.002-04:00

Bridge protesters found guilty of mischief

Span closed for 21/2 hours; Defendants claim courts are biased against fathers in custody disputes

BY IRWIN BLOCK, THE GAZETTE
APRIL 10, 2009

Two divorced fathers whose publicity stunt four years ago shut down the Jacques Cartier Bridge for 21/2 hours were found guilty yesterday of mischief and other charges.

Quebec Court Judge Gilles Cadieux rejected the argument of necessity Benoît Leroux and Gilles Dumas invoked to justify breaking the law with their stunt on the bridge.

Dressed in a Robin outfit and carrying a placard calling for parental equality, Leroux scaled the bridge's ironworks on May 23, 2005, with Dumas coordinating from the ground.

Because of the danger, the Sûreté du Québec closed the span to traffic in both directions.

Cadieux ruled the two men, activists in Fathers 4 Justice - an international organization that fights for fathers' rights in child-custody cases - did not require illegal methods to make known their claims to the public or media.

Both men contend family law courts are stacked against fathers in custody disputes.

Leroux said outside the court he's been barred from visiting his 8-year-old daughter in the U.S. for the past six years because his estranged wife won a civil protection order after he failed to make child support payments.

Leroux and Dumas were convicted of mischief and conspiracy. Dumas was also convicted of interfering with police in the exercise of their duties.

Leroux asked the court for an unconditional discharge so he does not get a criminal record that could prevent him from visiting the U.S. to see his daughter or affect his standing with the Order of Engineers.

Cadieux asked him to consult a lawyer or do his own research to determine the consequences of having a criminal record.

Dumas objected to introducing his previous convictions into the court record. He he is to make legal arguments on that issue and his sentence on May 5.