this has been in my local Boston news past few days. arrests in a 1969 murder of a kid. i hope to add more old cold cases solved in this thread.
An 'incredible turn of events' led to the arrest of three men accused of killing a 15-year-old Massachusetts boy more than 41 years ago, authorities said.
The body of John Joseph McCabe of Tewksbury was found in a vacant lot in Lowell on September 27, 1969, police said. He had been bound with rope, his eyes and mouth taped shut.
Allegedly because he flirted with the girlfriend of an older teenager, John was kidnapped after leaving a dance by the youth and two of his friends.
The teens allegedly assaulted him and left him to die as he struggled to free himself, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said.
Authorities arrested Walter Shelley, 60, of Tewksbury; Edward Allan Brown, 59, of Londonderry, New Hampshire; and Michael Ferreira, 57, of Salem, New Hampshire yesterday.
Shelley, who lives just a couple of miles from McCabe’s parents, is charged with murder and Brown is charged with manslaughter. Ferreira faces a murder charge in juvenile court because he was a juvenile at the time of the slaying; he also faces a perjury charge in adult court for allegedly lying to investigators.
Authorities aren't saying exactly what led them to the suspects, but Mr Leone called it an 'incredible turn of events'. Thomas O'Reilly, a prosecutor in Lowell District Court, added that information has been provided by an unnamed confidential witness.
Mr O'Reilly said the killing was sparked by jealousy over a girl.
Pressed by authorities who never let the case drop, one of the men, according to the police report, finally admitted his role in the crime to authorities and named the two other men.
While they did not identify Brown as the witness who broke the case, his wife confirmed yesterday that he had cooperated with authorities.
Carolyn Brown said: 'He’s an honorable man,’ adding that he served for 35 years in the Air Force as a cargo specialist, most recently in Iraq.
Coping with the revelations about the case, she said, has been difficult. “We live in quite a small town,’’ she said.
Mr O'Reilly alleges that on that night in 1969, the three friends - who were teenagers at the time - were drinking and driving around town in Shelley's 1965 Chevy Impala, when they came up with a plan to find John and 'teach him a lesson' for flirting with Shelley's girlfriend.
At that time, John was walking home from a dance at the Knights of Columbus in Tewksbury.
The three older friends allegedly found John and forced him into their car, where they beat him, according to O'Reilly.
The boys then allegedly drove to the vacant lot on Maple Street. At this point, John was crying and begging to be let go, according to what police say Brown told them.
The younger boy was allegedly dragged from the car, then bound and left in the lot.
The three suspects are said to have returned an hour or two later, and found John dead. The cause of his death was later recorded as asphyxia from strangulation.
When the teens saw that John was dead, they 'panicked' and fled, according to police. Later, they allegedly made a pact to never talk about it with anyone.
However, police say the truth has come out.
Shelley pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $500,000 cash bail.
There was no answer at a phone number listed under Shelley's name. His lawyer did not immediately return a message left at his office seeking comment.
Brown was released on personal recognizance after pleading not guilty. Ferreira first faces a fugitive from justice warrant in New Hampshire before appearing in a Massachusetts court.
LOWELL: A PEACEFUL TOWN
WITH AN INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE
Lowell, about 25 miles north west of Boston, was one of New England's centres of the textile industry.
It was also one of the American Industrial Revolution's first planned communities.
Originally named East Chelmsford, it was renamed after Francis Cabott Lowell, inventor of the power loom that made it possible to transform raw cotton into finished fabric within a single factory.
In 1826 Lowell boasted 2,500 residents but the population quickly expanded as the railway industry moved into the town.
As the textile industry drifted south, Lowell began to attract other manufacturing industries.
In 1969, the year of John McCabe's death, the population stood at just other 90,000, with Irish-Americans being the predominant group.
The town enjoyed a fairly peaceful, low-crime reputation and was on the verge of attracting high-tech industries that became the hallmark of its rebirth in the 1970s.
In the early 1990s the town suffered a series of economic setbacks and bankruptcies. The decade was also marked by a wave of immigration from south east Asia and Latin America.
It was not immediately clear who their lawyers were. Mr Leone said: 'The investigators on this case, as well as the victim's family, never gave up hope that those responsible for the murder of John McCabe would be held accountable for his death, and today marks the remarkable beginning of that accountability and day of reckoning for all involved in John's death'.
John's family, particularly his father, William, never gave up on finding his killers, Lowell police Superintendent Ken Lavallee said.
Mr Lavallee added: 'Their determination to see this matter resolved motivated all of us in law enforcement to keep this matter on the front burner'.
Roberta McCabe-Donovan, John's sister who was six at the time of the killing, said the family did not know the death was over a girl.
She said: 'There was no reason known for 42 years and then today we found out it was because of a girl. I don't believe John even knew the three of them.'
Speaking of her joy at the arrests, Roberta, who saw the perpetrators for the first time Friday at the courthouse, said: 'Suddenly they said we had to meet at the police department to discuss and my parents and I were almost in shock.
After hugging detectives at the news conference, she said: 'From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.'
John McCabe’s mother Evelyn also said she felt relieved by the arrests and spoke of the heartbreak over looking at people in town and wondering if they were responsible.
'I was having a hard time just dealing with life,' she said. 'I went to church looking at everybody . . . wondering if they did it. Everywhere I went I would stare at people.'
She said John enjoyed working on car engines. 'He was a wonderful boy, and I’m sure he would have been a wonderful man and father,’ she said.
Maggie Coffey grew up with McCabe and was supposed to have been his date for the evening on the night of the dance.
Ever since, she has been touch with authorities frequently in an effort to help with the investigation.
Mrs Coffey, 56, said: 'We were in art class together, and he had startling blue eyes and red, red hair, and he came right up to me and showed me his poster and said, "I made this for you.' Then he asked me to the school dance.
'I, of course, said yes. But my mom made me stay home and babysit. I cried and cried and moaned about the whole thing.
'John never came back from the dance that night. The case never went away in my mind. I kept it going. I would email old school friends, and anything I heard I just shot it immediately to the police.
'Today, the investigative machine is getting all the attention, but what I firmly believe is that John's friends and the impression John made on us and the fact that we could never forget him -- it was that kind of resilience that kept the heat up all those years. ... It renewed efforts and, finally, I think it got done.
'All we wanted was for the truth to come out and to know what happened before John's parents died.
Police are renewing their search for seven-year-old Ramona Price who vanished without a trace five decades ago by bringing in specially-trained cadaver dogs.
It is hoped the dogs will finally be able to find the remains of the little girl when they search through the dirt and brush of a bridge over the 101 Freeway in Santa Barbara which was being built when she disappeared in 1961 and is soon to be torn down.
Santa Barbara police now believe that Ramona fell victim to one of the area's most prolific serial killers the day she told her father she was going to run ahead to their new home. She never arrived.
They believe she may have fallen victim to Mack Ray Edwards, who worked on the structure as a heavy machine operator in September, 1961, when Ramona went missing.
Edwards confessed to six murders and is believed to have killed at least 20 children before turning himself in to police in 1970. He hung himself in his San Quentin cell the next year.
According to Cam Sanchez, Santa Barbara Police Chief, he even joked about his murders in prison and said most of his victims would never be found because they were buried underneath roads.
Edwards, who died at the age of 53, wasn’t suspected at the time. Instead, police questioned two brothers who had convictions for sex crimes, but there was not enough evidence to prosecute them, and the case went cold.
Then four years ago author Weston DeWalt, who is writing a book on Edwards, started going through old police files.
Last year he discovered Edwards had worked for a highway contracting company in Santa Barbara, and spoke to the friend he had shared a room with, just a quarter of a mile away from the bridge.
He told police he believed Edwards may have killed Ramona, too, but they have waited until now, as the overpass is demolished, to reveal their suspicions.
Police have warned the lead is only a possibility, but cold case investigator Jaycee Hunter told the Los Angeles Times: ‘The big thing is for us not to miss this opportunity. We would be stupid not to do it.’
In 1971, Edwards was convicted of killing three children:
Stella Nolan, eight, from Compton. She disappeared on June 20, 1953
Gary Rochet, 16, from Granada Hills, who was shot on November 26, 1968
Donald Todd, 13, from Pacoima, who disappeared on May 16, 1969
He also confessed to another three murders, but couldn’t be charged because their bodies were never found.
Across the state, officers are still trying to unravel the full extent of Edwards’s killing spree. He hinted to police he had murdered many more than six, but hung himself in jail before they could verify his claims.
LAPD detective Vivian Flores said: ‘We can't give up finding these kids, we just can't. These children represent your kids and my kids. Would you ever want detectives to stop looking if your child was missing?’
Police say if the three dogs detect the presence of a body, excavation work could begin next week.
They hope to have more success than in 2008, when they excavated an exit ramp in search of Roger Dale Madison, a 16-year-old boy who Edwards confessed to stabbing.
He went missing in 1968, when the killer was working on the freeway, and officials thought he could be buried underneath it. After five days, the search was called off.
Edwards became known for the terrible brutality of his crimes. His first murder was in 1953, when he abducted and sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl called Stella Nolan.
He strangled her and threw her off a bridge, but when he came back the next day and found she was still somehow alive and had managed to crawl 100 yards, he stabbed the little girl and buried her in an embankment.
Edwards’s spree finally stopped in 1970, when he and a 15-year-old accomplice bungled the kidnap of three sisters.
Yet he also displayed an odd streak of kindness which bemused investigators. When he turned himself into police after the botched abduction, he warned the sergeant his gun was loaded.
He also said he was disappointed the families of his victims would have to hear the details of the horrific murders in court even though he pleaded guilty.
During his trial he said he wanted to be executed, and tried twice to commit suicide in custody.
He was convicted of three murders in 1971 and was sentenced to the death penalty he craved, but he hung himself before his execution.
in December 1957, 7-year-old Maria Ridulph was playing with a friend outside her Sycamore home when a young man approached, introducing himself as “Johnny,” and asking: “Do you have any dollies? Would you like a piggy-back ride?”
“Pretty Maria,” as the newspapers would call her, said yes to one piggy-back ride, and then to another. Maria’s friend went home.
For the next five months, almost the entire community of some 7,000 Sycamore residents and dozens of FBI agents frantically searched for Maria. And then in April 1958, Maria’s decomposed remains turned up beneath an oak tree near Galena.
On Friday, more than 53 years after Maria’s disappearance, the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s office announced the arrest and murder charges against 71-year-old Jack Daniel McCullough of Seattle in connection with the case.
Maria’s brother, Charles Ridulph, 65, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the arrest, after so many years, stunned him because he had assumed whoever killed her was long dead.
“Otherwise something would have come up before this time” said Ridulph, who was 11 when his sister vanished. “We’re in shock, to tell you the truth,”
Adding to his surprise, the alleged killer was a man from the Ridulph’s neighborhood.
“The shock that it [was] someone that we know from the neighborhood is just an added shock,” said Ridulph, who still lives in Sycamore.
McCullough, also known as John Tessier, was in the custody of the King County Sheriff’s Office in Seattle Friday, awaiting extradition to Illinois, according to DeKalb County authorities.
McCullough was married, had worked in the Lacey, Wash., police department in the 1970s, and was currently living at a retirement community in Seattle, according to The Seattle Times.
McCullough’s arrest stunned people at The Four Freedoms House of Seattle, where he also worked as a night watchman. One resident told The Times that McCullough was a “nice guy,” who held a disaster-preparedness seminar for residents after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
“In all my life, I never would have guessed,” said McCullough neighbor Rena Rooney, 88. “It’s such a shame. He was so good to us.”
DeKalb County investigators said McCullough had been a suspect at the time of Maria’s disappearance, but that “the case ran cold after McCullough joined the military and changed his name.”
But the case was re-opened last year, according to documents filed in King County District Court and obtained by The Seattle Times on Friday.
During the initial investigation, McCullough claimed he’d been on a train from Rockford to Chicago on the day Maria was abducted, court documents state.
But McCullough’s alibi fell apart when one of his ex-girlfriends in 2010 came across an unused and unstamped train ticket for the Rockford-to-Chicago trip, according to the documents. The unused ticket, dated for the day Maria went missing, poked holes in McCullough’s story and refocused attention on him, according to the court papers.
“This crime has haunted Sycamore for half a century,” DeKalb County State’s Attorney Clay Campbell said in written statement. “We hope that the family of Maria Ridulph and this community can find some solace and closure with this arrest.”
Mary Katherine Chapman was the little girl playing with Maria Ridulph the day she was kidnapped. Chapman chose to speak through her husband Friday, saying she’s delighted someone has finally been charged with her childhood friend’s murder.
“She’s very happy an arrest had been made, due to the length of time that has passed,” said Michael Chapman, standing on the front steps of the couple’s St. Charles home.
Back in 1957, the disappearance of Maria, a second-grader who was hoping for a toy typewriter for Christmas, drew national attention. The FBI led the investigation, and both J. Edgar Hoover and President Eisenhower wanted daily updates on the search.
Charles Ridulph vividly recalls the turmoil his family endured as the search for Maria got under way.
“The family was in complete disarray,” Ridulph said Friday. “Shortly after [Maria] was gone, the FBI moved into the home and had wiretaps in the home, and they were there 24 hours a day.”
At one point, Maria’s mother, Frances Ridulph, took to the radio and newsreels: “If the person who kidnapped her is listening, it couldn’t have been done in malice. It was a little mistake. God forgives mistakes. We would, too. Don’t cry, Maria, above all, don’t cry. Don’t make a fuss. We’ll be with you soon.”
But on April 26, 1958, Maria’s skeletal remains were found near Galena by a couple looking for mushrooms. The dark hair matched Maria’s; so did the checkered shirt and little brown socks.
Charles Ridulph said today that he’s dealing with a range of emotions, including anger.
Ridulph’s parents have since died, and he said it would have been very difficult for them to deal with the pain anew.
“They talk about closure, which there is never such a thing,” Ridulph said. “It was pretty well closed for us, and now it’s all open again. My daughter said to me when I told her [about the arrest], she said it’s too bad my parents aren’t alive. I said, ‘Thank God they weren’t alive for this day.’”
It's been nearly 25 years since the murder trial of Elizabeth Diane Downs captivated the nation -- marking Oregon as the home of one of history's most notorious child killers.
Experts have for decades labeled Downs a narcissistic psychopath. She was convicted of killing her 7-year-old daughter and trying to kill her two other young children outside Springfield in a shooting that inspired a true-crime book by Ann Rule and a made-for-TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett.
Today, Downs is 53. Her most recent prison mug shot shows a woman older than her actual years, white hair and sunken features, nearly unrecognizable from the bombshell blonde who once flounced unashamed past television news cameras in handcuffs and shackles.
Yet a thick packet of documents collected for her first parole hearing Tuesday shows that Downs' looks are about all that's changed in the past quarter-century.
Records show that Downs has remained as troubled behind bars as she was outside them. She has never participated in any rehabilitation programs, she has never admitted to her crimes. She believes her surviving son is out of a wheelchair though he is a paraplegic and his sister remains partly paralyzed.
Instead, she has spent much of her time plotting how to get out of prison, including one plan to commandeer a helicopter. She escaped from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in Salem for 10 days in 1987 and was later transferred out of state. She tried to escape from a New Jersey prison in 1989 and 1991, and from a California prison in 1994.
In Downs' view those escape attempts are evidence of her "healthy attitude about society" and that she is ready for parole.
Downs was found guilty on all charges on June 17, 1984, and was sentenced to life in prison plus 55 years. The judge made it clear that he did not wish Downs ever to regain her freedom.
Yet, according to the state law she was sentenced under, Downs is entitled to parole hearings every two years starting this year. Downs will answer questions via closed-circuit television from the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, Calif.
A recent psychological evaluation of Downs reiterated her narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis: "By year 20 one hopes that the life prisoner has come to a place of deeper self-reflection and introspection regarding their life and incarceration. By this time there should be some struggle in contemplation with existential life issues. Regardless of guilt or innocence, one normally would be asking the how and why questions of life. The thing that is most troubling regarding Ms. Downs is that she appears to have done very little of this."
Downs has penned at least two lengthy handwritten letters to parole officials defending herself.
"Had I stacked my prison file with 'atta-girl chronos,'" (a term the staff use for inmates who do good deeds for parole board recognition alone), she wrote on Nov. 19, "would you have thought my motivation was manipulative?"
Horrifyingly fascinating
On May 19, 1983, when Downs shot all three of her children, such crimes were virtually unheard of. Though cases of mothers killing their children have long since filled the headlines, Downs' was among the first. It both horrified and fascinated the nation.
At the time, Downs claimed she was carjacked on a rural road near Springfield by a "bushy-haired stranger" who shot her and her three small children. Investigators, however, got suspicious when they noticed her calm manner given the traumatic event.
Their suspicions grew when Downs went to see her then 8-year-old daughter, Christie Downs, for the first time in her hospital bed; the child's eyes glazed over with fear and her heart rate, being monitored on a machine, began to race.
Much of the case against Downs rested on testimony by the girl, who described how her mother shot all three children while parked at the side of the road, then shot herself in the arm to make it look as if the crime were committed by someone else.
Escape plans
After her successful escape from the Oregon Women's Correctional Center in 1987, Downs was transferred to a prison in New Jersey.
Records show that in May 1989, Downs' 26-year-old boyfriend, Robert Seaver, submitted voluntarily to a polygraph examination, the results of which revealed that Downs was planning -- again -- to escape.
Seaver outlined numerous escape plans he and Downs discussed, including a plot in which he would pass himself off as a land speculator and hire a helicopter. Once in the air he would force the pilot at gunpoint to land in the South Hall yard while Downs was on recreation.
Downs, then 33, denied the escape plot, prison records show, but she "admitted that she and Mr. Seaver had talked about her trying to become pregnant during visits through a primitive artificial insemination method."
After that, Downs was transferred to the Washington Department of Corrections, which requested the following year that Oregon take her back "due to her attitude" and because "her behavior constituted a security risk."
In 1993, she was transferred to California's Chowchilla women's facility. Less than a year after her arrival, a corrections officer discovered 8 inches of the concrete holding the window frame in Downs' prison cell chipped out in "what appeared to be an attempt to dislodge the window and frame from the building," according to prison records.
In a 12-page, handwritten plea to the Oregon Board of Parole last week, Downs asserted that her escape attempts should be viewed as a good thing.
"Of all the felonies on the law books, 'escape from prison' is the only one that indicates a healthy attitude about society," Downs wrote to the parole board in a letter obtained by The Oregonian. "If you truly want to know what sort of prisoner won't come back to prison, your first clue is the prisoner who thinks more about being on the outside of this place than being 'well programmed' or 'adjusted' HERE."
"I am NOT ashamed of my escape," she wrote. "At least I don't want to be here and will do everything I need to do so I don't come back."
"How and why"
As part of its consideration, the parole board will look to see whether Downs has accepted any personal responsibility for her actions.
In her Nov. 17 letter, she bristled at the psychological evaluator's suggestion that she hasn't become introspective about herself or her crime.
"With all due respect," she wrote, "while it may appear I no longer struggle with the cosmic 'why' or 'how,' the truth is that I have been asking how and why since 10:35 p.m., May 19, 1983. The spiritual struggle (the evaluator) wrote of was engaged decades ago. The cosmic sweat has long dried."
Despite her long history of troubles behind bars, Downs said she still deserves parole.
"I don't run drugs or brew hooch," she stated. "I don't smuggle tobacco or get officers walked off. In 25 years behind these steel bars, I have NOT cracked one of these 'ladies' in the head. If you had lived inside this place, you might understand what an accomplishment that is."
Downs also defended herself against the report's assertion that she keeps her "emotions under tight control, presenting only socially acceptable feeling."
"Everyday billions of people wake up to stress and chaos," Downs wrote in response. "Cranky bosses, mad commuters, gas prices that make no sense, dog do on the new carpet. And they 'keep their emotions under tight control, presenting only socially acceptable feelings.' That's what separates civilized humans from gangs and barbarians."
Children won't testify
The two surviving children, Daniel and Christie, eventually went to live with Lane County Assistant District Attorney Fred Hugi, one of the prosecutors of the case, and were adopted by Hugi and his wife. Daniel, the younger child, is a paraplegic as a result of the shooting. Christie has permanent partial paralysis on one side of her body.
According to parole officials, Downs' surviving children are not scheduled to testify at Tuesday's hearing. Lane County District Attorney F. Douglass Harcleroad spoke vehemently against Downs' parole.
"Downs shot each of her three children execution-style while they sat in her car," he wrote. "Cheryl was shot twice in the back and died immediately. Christie was shot in the chest and then again through the hand as she was grabbing her chest. Danny was shot in the back as he lay sleeping. Downs then waited for all the children to die as she slowly drove her car back to town."
Harcleroad railed against Downs' assertion in one of her letters to the parole board that her son was once again walking.
"Contrary to Downs' bold assertions in her dangerous-offender report, Danny remains paralyzed from the chest down. He will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life."
Harcleroad asked the board to turn her down flat, citing Downs' "utter lack of any re-evaluation or remorse for her horrific crimes."
"Downs has certainly not been rehabilitated and most likely never will," he wrote. "She constitutes a danger to others of the highest extreme which cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be controlled by supervision and treatment. The application for parole should be denied."
An indie film produced by an ex-con seeking to solve the cold case of the 1977 murders of three Oklahoma Girl Scouts has divided the town of Tulsa, with locals scrambling for parts in the film and law enforcement officials wary.
Not only is the film “Candles" seeking to dramatize the horrific crime, but the filmmaker claims he knows who committed the murder and will reveal who it is in the film.
The triple homicide at Camp Scott remains one of the most ghastly cases in Oklahoma history. In 1977 three young Girl Scouts -- Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Michelle Guse, 9, and Doris Denise Milner, 10 -- all occupants of tent No. 8, were raped, bludgeoned and strangled on their first night at Camp Scott summer camp on June 12.
Their bodies were left in the woods bound in rope within their sleeping bags and discovered by a camp counselor the next morning. In 1979 police arrested Gene Leroy Hart, a local prison escapee with a history of violence. He stood trial for the crime and was acquitted, later dying in prison on unrelated charges. In 2007, authorities conducted new DNA testing, but the results proved inconclusive due to deteriorated crime scene evidence.
It’s a crime that's left an indelible mark on the community, and the camp has never been re-opened.
Filmmaker John Russell claims that he encountered the real murderer while he was in prison himself for check fraud in 1978. He told FoxNews.com that the killer confessed to the Girl Scout murders in addition to several other crimes. Russell also claims he felt his life was threatened because of his knowledge of the murders for the next three decades and that he was ignored by the authorities when he tried to release the information to them 30 years ago.
The man in charge of the area where the murders took place, Mayes County Sheriff Frank Cantey, said he can’t speak to what Russell may have said to police three decades ago, but he tells FoxNews.com he hasn’t been contacted by Russell and that he knows of no harassment the filmmaker has received from the police force with regards to his claims over the Camp Scott murders. The original police officers who investigated the crimes for Mayes County are no longer with the force, Cantey said.
“I have been sheriff for 11 years and I don’t know that I have ever talked to this guy,” Cantey said. He added that his office does follow up on any credible leads regarding the three decades-old murders that tend to surface from time to time.
The director of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has been in contact with Russell and is looking into whether his claim to know the murderer is credible.
“We are looking into it. We want to know if this guy had the means, motive and opportunity to do it. We always, in a situation like this, take every lead seriously,” said OSBI public information officer Jessica Brown.
Brown said she knows nothing about Russell previously coming forward with claims.
“I have no reason to believe that is true,” Brown told FoxNews.com.
Russell says he has reached out to all three of the victim’s families. Two of them, Guse’s and Milner’s, did not return his calls. The third, Shari Farmer, expressed a wariness over the film.
“Mrs. Farmer was very leery,” Russell said. “We spoke a month ago and I met with her right after the auditions last Sunday and her sentiment is that she would prefer a film not be made about it simply because she doesn’t like the idea of it. But she said if it was to help solve the murder and give her the truth of who did it she would be thankful."
The filmmaker says he will not be recreating the actual murders in the film out of respect for the families.
The Oklahoma Film and Music Office is among those concerned about the film and turned down a request from Russell to collaborate and share resources.
“We weren’t telling him he couldn’t do the movie. We did tell him we couldn’t support it,” Jill Simpson, the Director of the Oklahoma Film and Music Office told FoxNews.com. Simpson said her office’s concern was that Russell said he does not have the blessing of the family and that he is unafraid of potential lawsuits.
“We couldn’t support it. We just saw too many red flags.”
But many Oklahoma residents are embracing the film. The production company held a casting call in Tulsa last weekend looking for its stars and extras and saw hundreds of eager locals. Interest in the casting was also high on the movie’s Facebook page, but the Oklahoma film office also expressed concerns over the production company’s practices at the casting.
“They charged $20 for photos at the casting. At any legitimate project you should not be charged,” Simpson told Fox News.com.
Russell rebutted these claims and said that his company brought in an outside photographer to take headshots for those who arrived without them. He said his production company received no profits from the photographs.
The Girl Scouts national office says they have had no contact with Russell and that they do not support his work on the film. In a statement to Fox411 Girl Scouts spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins expressed her sympathy for the families in their ongoing tragedy.
“To this day, the tragic murder of three Girl Scouts 30-plus years ago in Oklahoma continues to cause a lot of pain and suffering for the families and friends of the victims,” Tompkins said. “If any individual has evidence as to who is responsible for this heinous crime, they should turn that evidence over to investigators immediately so the case can be solved. We continue to extend our hearts and prayers to the families of these children.”
(07-06-2011, 10:34 AM)crash Wrote: Jaysus, LC....has anyone ever had the balls enough to suggest to you that maybe you enjoy your job a little too much?
MIAMI -- A vial of Ted Bundy's blood has been found in Florida and investigators will use the newly discovered evidence to try to solve cases that went cold decades ago.
Before he was executed in 1989, Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders and was suspected of many more. A complete DNA profile couldn't be developed for the serial killer until the blood was found. The full profile will be uploaded to the FBI's national database Friday, giving authorities key evidence to possibly link Bundy to long-unsolved crimes.
The vial was discovered after Florida authorities received a call from a detective working a cold case in Tacoma, Wash. The blood had been taken in 1978 when Bundy was arrested in the death of a 12-year-old girl in Columbia County, Fla., The News Tribune in Tacoma reported.
Despite an order to destroy much of the biological evidence in the Florida case, the vial was still on file, said David Coffman, chief of forensic services at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Tallahassee crime lab.
"We were really surprised," he said.
Coffman cautioned that it will be a challenge to find full DNA samples from so long ago, making a match unlikely. But if there is a match, authorities will know right away.
The Tacoma detective was investigating the 1961 disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, a 6-year-old who vanished from her home in the middle of the night. Bundy is among several possible suspects.
The Tacoma detective said they had letters Bundy had sent that might contain his DNA on the stamps or envelop and could be used to develop a forensic profile, and possibly discover if he was linked to the Burr case.
Coffman said the agency said it had some items to examine, too. There was a display case with evidence from Bundy's trial in their lab. Among the items: dental molds of Bundy's teeth and the wax impressions that had been used to make them.
"After hanging up with her, I went back to our display and looked at it," Coffman recalled. "I said, `There's got to be something. DNA's gotten so sensitive now.'"
He decided to try the molds for traces of saliva, but there were a number of fingerprints on them, so it wasn't a great sample. At about the same time, the Florida agency discovered the Columbia County clerk's office had an original blood sample taken from Bundy. It resulted in a complete forensic profile, with all 13 core markers used in tests against the DNA database.
A bulletin will be sent to law enforcement agencies across the country when the DNA is uploaded. Tacoma police are among those waiting. Detectives there are sending evidence to the state crime lab to see if there is still DNA on it 50 years later.
Bundy sexually assaulted and killed several young women in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah and Florida between 1974 and 1978. He was sentenced to death in 1979 for the murder of two Florida college students and later for the rape and murder of the 12-year-old girl in Columbia County.
(07-06-2011, 10:34 AM)crash Wrote: Jaysus, LC....has anyone ever had the balls enough to suggest to you that maybe you enjoy your job a little too much?
I am SO glad you enjoy your job too much, LC! I appreciate all the work you do to keep us all updated. I think that Mock's Cell Block is the best place to visit if you want the latest on solved and unsolved crimes. You are always on top of everything with accurate info. I love you too Duchess!
i remember this awful and senseless case very well.
(CNN) -- A 25-year-old Oklahoma man was charged Friday with the murder of two girls who were found about three and a half years ago, shot to death in a ditch alongside a remote country road.
"We don't believe that he knew (the slain girls) directly," Oklahoma State Bureau Of Investigation Director Stan Florence said Friday of Kevin Sweat. "We just believe that he happened to be in the area that day."
Best friends Taylor Paschal-Placker, 13, of Weleetka, and Skyla Jade Whittaker, 11, of nearby Henryetta, were discovered on June 8, 2008, by Taylor's grandfather. They had been shot 13 times in the head and chest -- eight times for Skyla and five for Taylor -- the state medical examiner reported after an autopsy.
Their killings rattled Weleetka, a town of just over 1,000 residents, with police calling the shootings the community's first murders in more than 20 years.
It also set off an extensive investigation involving multiple local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and including about 650 interviews, 900 leads and 19,000 forensic tests on 800 pieces of evidence, according to Florence.
Sweat was among those interviewed relatively early about the girls' murder, because he owned a Glock .40 Model 22 handgun like one of those thought to be used in the shootings. But he was not considered a suspect until this summer, after he was arrested and charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Ashley Taylor, said Florence.
The suspect was already behind bars in Seminole County (Oklahoma) Jail in his girlfriend's death when the new charges were filed, according to the state investigative bureau director.
District Attorney Max Cook, whose jurisdiction includes Creek and Okfuskee counties, told reporters on Friday that he has filed court documents requesting that Sweat be eligible for the death penalty if found guilty of murder in any of these killings.
"We feel that we are in an appropriate position to go forward in this case," Cook said Friday, referring to the case of the two girls.
Wow. I'm so glad. Kevin Sweat is a familiar name, in regards to this case. I was just checking out his deviantart website a few weeks ago. It had to do with the gun that was used.
Remains of Ohio girl missing since 1999 found in crawl space LIMA, Ohio (AP) – The skeletal remains of a 14-year-old Ohio runaway who went missing in 1999 have been found after the home where she was last seen was demolished, according to police.
New search for first missing child pictured on milk carton
Dozens of federal agents gathered outside a commercial building in lower Manhattan Thursday as part of a search for the body of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who disappeared in 1979 on his way to a bus stop in New York City.
Patz's disappearance, considered a high-profile cold case, prompted authorities to splash his image across the sides of milk cartons. It is thought to be the first time that step was taken for a missing child.
search above, post 18, yielded nothing ^
this is just breaking this morning:
NBC4NY
The NYPD is questioning a New Jersey man in connection with the Etan Patz case, the 6-year-old boy who vanished more than 30 years ago as he walked to the school bus from his SoHo home, law enforcement sources tell NBC 4 New York.
Police picked the man up sometime Wednesday evening and brought him to New York City for questioning.
The man is known to investigators and not anyone new in the case law enforcement sources say. He worked and lived in Patz's neighborhood when the boy disappeared.
Its not clear why the police decided to question the man. His name did come up previously to investigators when the boy first disappeared.
He has made statements to police about the case but so far has not provided details that would lead them to Patz's body.
"An individual now in custody has made statements to NYPD detectives implicating himself in the disappearance and death of Etan Patz 33 years ago. We expect to provide further details later today," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.
Several sources have indicated some skepticism exists about the man's story, but police are going to be thorough in their investigation of any possible leads.
An intensive search for Patz was renewed several weeks ago when police dug up the basement of a handyman's workshop near where Patz disappeared. A new layer of concrete had been laid over the foundation of the basement shortly after Patz disappeared.
I heard this on the radio this morning, and have not had a chance to read the whole thing yet. Is the guy from NJ the Handyman from the prior search..or a totally new guy?
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