fucked archive fucked archive fucked archive

Archive of some fucked relationships in the news

These items have been culled from 'Anna's News Clippings', part 1. Clippings archives are at this URL. The most recent are at the bottom.
Early 1999
Because idiots amuse me except when I'm them or in their wake, I found funny the AP report of the resolution of a Honolulu 911 call. On reaching the target apartment, where an elderly woman lived, police found Denny Usui at the door. When the police asked to see the woman, his grandmother, Usui said she wasn't at home. When the officers insisted on talking to her, Usui changed tack, they reported; 'Oh, I think she's dead', he offered. 'She's in the shower.'
He was correct about the whereabouts and moribundity of the woman, who was 'neatly covered' with a blanket. Idiot Usui reportedly said, 'I don't want to say anything else until I speak to my attorney because this is a felony and I never committed a murder before'.

? SomeOtherMonth 1999
Fries with that?
In Friday's Washington Post we hear of the other white meat. Turn your attention to the urban legend made fact. The month-old baby boy was found dead in a microwave oven yesterday in a Lanexa, Virginia, home. Joseph Lewis Martinez had burns consistent with those a microwave would produce, said Marcella F. Fierro, the state's chief medical examiner.
The New Kent County Sheriff's Department said a deputy responded at about 5:45am to a 'missing infant' call. They found the baby in the microwave in a one-story home where the baby lived with his young parents, said a neighbour. The anonymous neighbour added that the couple were friendly and that the father had said a week earlier that 'it was a good baby'.
Later there were reports that the baby's sister, who is epileptic, claimed to have had a seizure when putting the baby's bottle in the microwave. She did not specify whether or not she was seized by hatred of dribbly infants or merely seized by hunger.

17 October 1999
In Plymouth, Wisconsin, two bored cousins decided to see what it would feel like to be shot. The 17-year-olds were well on their way to finding out when an older relative intervened, offering to do it for them. Both were shot in the leg, and the older man was arrested. Although the teenagers didn't die, it could have been worse; they could have decided to procreate due to boredom.

In other family news, George Telidis is not alone in being an energetic soccer dad. Some think he went overboard by leaping from his seat to punch a member of the opposing team in the mouth.
However, he may be alone in deciding to sue the school board for depriving him of his liberty and violating his constitutional rights. What he means is that he is annoyed that he won't be allowed to attend his son's future games.

25 October 1999
Jim Brown, inducted into the US Football Hall of Fame, claims that his most recent legal sentence was issued by a racist judge.
Brown, who has several times before run afoul of laws on violence against women, was convicted of damaging his wife's car in a fit of anger. (Her refusal to testify cleared him of the charge of threatening to kill her.) The judge sentenced him to 400 hours of community service, which Brown said shows prejudice agaisnt blacks. He said he will not 'clean trash on the freeway'. This is 'cruel and unusual punishment'.

6 December 1999
It is easier for Canadians to find something to do. Barbara Lewis was recently found to have kept her former son-in-law as a sex slave for her family. The 47-year-old's family had fun with Robert Lee Warner for at least four years before his death.
Two members of the family have already been convicted, and another is likely to be extradicted after his return to Canada. Since the Canadian's body was badly enough decomposed that the coroner could not determine the cause of death, the three family members were charged only with harbouring an illegal alien in Rowena, South Dakota. The body was found buried behind the Lewis family's mobile home.
Steven Lewis's testimony against his mother indicated that the family dressed the man in pink lingerie and suspended him from the ceiling. They were in the habit of using carrots in unspecified sexual torture of the shackled man. They then made him eat dog food off their bodies. A police spokesman, in true spokesman fashion, said it was, like, the 'most totally heinous and bizarre' case he'd encountered.

20 December 1999
Robert Horton bailed his wife out of jail, but she threatened to skip a hearing, and he didn't want to see his money disappear. Shortly thereafter, wife Belinda appeared at the Phoenix, Arizona, courthouse, wrapped in duct tape.
Maricopa Sheriff's Department spokesman Sergeant Don Rosenberger said that on Monday Mr. Horton carried his wife through the door like a groom with a bride. Rosenberger said that Horton placed her on the court security officer's desk and said, 'Here she is'. He then asked for a wheelchair so he could take her to the courtroom. Deputies called the Phoenix Fire Department because they didn't want to hurt her by removing the tape themselves.
It was the wrong courthouse.
Also, the Hortons had not been notified that the hearing had been cancelled. Mrs. Horton would later have to face the charges, of obstructing a public thoroughfare, aggravated assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest.
Now the 52-year-old husband may come before a judge. The city police department will decide whether or not to file charges for the taping.

? February 2000
I now have an update on the Mississippi restaurant owner who cooked his wife. After killing her, Kevin Artz cut her body into small pieces and cooked the remains to serve in the restaurant as part of standard dishes. He hoped to dispose of the evidence this way. (Police are unsure what he would have done with the head, which Artz is said to have carried around in a box.) However, the game was over early; one of the first policeman to arrive on the scene said, 'I recognized burnt flesh on the counter'. Police later found a box outside the kitchen containing a skull and cooked meat.
The update is that Artz, facing a murder charge, claims that brain surgery rendered him insane. Weeks before the killing, he had an operation for a blood clot on his brain.
Furthermore, employees at the couple's restaurant will testify that Artz would not have done this if he were in his right mind. They will say that he loved his wife. Dishwasher Alex Lazaroff, 18, said, 'He loved Pat'.

21 February 2000
You thought arranged marriages were a thing of the past. Well, they got a sort of revival recently with an odd mix of a beauty pageant, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire and Blind Date. The US's Fox television network aired a programme on Tuesday where 50 potential brides, aged 19 to 45, were interviewed and given a compatibility quiz which was graded by a mystery millionaire's family and friends.
The field was narrowed to 10 women who paraded in casual clothes and bathing suits. The final five posed in wedding gowns. The man was revealed to San Diego real estate developer and motivational speaker Rick Rockwell--who also appeared in direct-to-video sequels to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. As for the bride, she was an emergency room nurse from Santa Monica, CA, who had served in the Gulf War.
After an advert break, the two exchanged wedding vows. Before the credits rolled, one third of all US women aged 18 to 34 had tuned in to the programme, whose creator promises that next time he will have single men parading before a rich woman. Would the feminists who complained that the programme exploited women complain about this Who Wants To Marry a Multimillionaire II>

23 February 2000
Imagine being chained to a bed for three days by your father to prevent you belly dancing at nightclubs. This is the situation faced by Istanbul's Mahmut Dagyolu.
The 19-year-old man's left arm and leg were chained to his bed until neighbours told police of his cries for help.
Solo male belly dancing is relatively new to Turkish nightclubs and has been greeted with opposition by conservative groups. However, male belly dancing itself is nothing new, having been spurred on by an Ottoman ban on female belly dancing. (By contrast, today's belly dancing blokes do not usually wear veils.)

11 March 2000
Do it yourself next time
A Montreal couple sought a discreet photographer who, for $900, took erotic pictures of them. A while later, he asked if he could use their images, if darkened and slightly altered, on his business cards. They asked to see the result first and never heard back from him. It was a couple months later when the wife found herself, and her husband, on a poster in a sex shop.
Their pictures were also posted on the photographer's website and placed in adverts in an erotic magazine. The couple are seeking an injuunction and Michel Letourneau's negatives. They claim they may suffer professionally because of the incident. The husband works as a sales rep for a multinational company and the wife is a child care worker.
The legal papers said, 'The photos taken of the couple contain nudity and are extremely personal, intimate and of a private nature'. They met Letourneau at an annual Love and Seduction Show.
When visiting another sex shop near Valentine's Day, the wife was prevented by staff from tearing down one of the relevant posters.

29 March 2000
Don't you wish you were Javanese? Police in Cilacap arrested a shaman for tricking women into having sex with him. He told his female patients his healing powers allowed him to grant their wishes. First, the woman was to bathe and lie naked in his house. Then, a police spokesman said, Shaman Suryono told them that 'while in the room if a man approached them looking like Suryono it was actually a genie who would make their wishes come true as long as they did what this supposed genie said'. The women paid the healer for the privelege. At least 35 women were taken in by the 36-year-old man.

18 April 2000
And in West Bend, Wisconsin, a man was sentenced to a seven-month jail term after he killed his wife's pets in retaliation for her abortion. Leonard Kritz terminated eight pets, including a chinchilla and birds and snakes, to teach her about the sanctity of life. At the sentencing hearing, wife Stacy said the two agreed the pets' killing should be 'part of a punishment'.
This was in April 1999. Mr. Kritz is to begin serving time on 12 June, after the birth of their new child.

22 April 2000
The 7-year-old Perley King stole his family's car to drive to the store because he wanted Cheerios. General Mills gave the boy a year's supply of the cereal due to his 'amazing devotion'. They 'also presented him with a new bike to help him understand that a seven-year-old should travel on two wheels, not four'. The cereal manufacturer's response goes on to say, 'Perley knows that what he did was wrong. Because we want to ensure that other kids don't follow his example, Cheerios will soon launch a national public service campaign promoting family and car safety', a campaign which they did not say would include freebies.

27 April 2000
Reuters reports that a British woman decided to have her child prematurely so her husband could hold the baby before he died of cancer. South Tyneside Hospital doctors agreed to Angela Moon's request for a two-weeks-premature birth. Husband Gavin indeed died three days after Imogen was born.
When he held her for the first and last time, he said to the baby, 'I'm your dad. Remember me'.

They didn't heed this advice. Wynema Faye Shumate was a South Carolina woman who thought she had found love in an Englishman (it gets worse). Trevor Tasker wooed the 30-something woman over the Internet and went to meet her earlier this month.
It was also earlier this month that the 65-year-old Shumate was jailed. Although there is no evidence that she killed wheelchair-bound roommate Jim O'Neil, she did hide the body in her freezer, where it was found over a year later.
The tabloids have other details, such as her cutting off the legs with an axe so he would fit inside, but I don't report trashy stuff.

14 May 2000
Having a good day, dear?
Pam DeVincent took boyfriend Michael Sgalla seriously when he handed her a .38 revolver and told her to shoot him if she really did hate him that much. (Yes, I know that this reads a little like a story from The Onion. Sgalla was taken from his Virginia trailer to hospital after being shot in the shin (hate or mild dislike?). She is being charged with endangerment with a firearm.

It may be old news, but it is now becoming much bigger business. And the names are wonderful...
Working mothers can now devote even more of their waking hours to their children. Kimberly Sedlacek, of Tacoma, Washington, said the daycare webcam doesn't distract her from her work for Boeing. Rather, 'if I didn't have it, that would be more distracting'.
Six companies are now selling daycare webcams, led by New York-based ParentWatch, whose systems are used in more than 150 daycare centres. Darius Vasefi, a vice president of KinderView, said, 'It's a way of portraying trust, saying "Hey, we've got nothing to hide"' to parents who are willing to pay $24.95 a month for this reassurance.
'You get to check in on your children and know they're safe', said Sedlacek, whose four-year-old daughter's dance performances are available online each Friday. A sales executive for the Georgia-based Kids'R'Kids daycare chain said privacy is not a problem because 'our centers always had an open-door policy. Parents could come in anytime, and this just expands on that'.

In case my sister felt left out, here is an Iowa item. Des Moines's David Parks wanted his mother, Michaeleen, to give him money for his rent. She said she couldn't give him money until she got paid at the end of the week, so he locked her in her closet for three days. Well, he did unlock the closet when he beat her with the belt. And I guess he opened the door when he fed her (only the best stale popcorn). He was considerate, letting her defecate in a garbage bag and not following through on his threat to cut off her toes.
After three days, Parks decided his mother needed medical attention. To keep a low profile, he took her to a beauty salon, from which one of his friends took her to a drugstore whence she was able to ring police.

30 May 2000
According to a Reuters report, a North Carolina mother was charged with child abuse following her 10-year-old daughter's 'rebirthing' session.
Trying to bond with the girl she adopted in 1996, Jeane Newmaker went to a psychotherapist, who prepared the simulated womb that daughter Candace was meant to crawl out of.
Denver psychologist Albert Magliolo said including the mother among the five people facing prison time may be a 'social statement' more than anything else, because 'you go to an expert who will take the responsibility for you'.
'Rebirthing' usually, as far as I know, does not involve placing pillows around the child and pressing on them to simulate contractions. It did in this case, however. 'Therapist' [a title which required no certification the last time I checked] Connell Watkins hoped this would cause the girl to make her way out of the blanket via a twist in the material, located above her head.
The girl didn't figure this out in time, and she died the next day in hospital.

What a way to go! A Misourri man pushed steak down his girlfriend's throat, eventually killing her. James Krebs was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after plea-bargaining.
Krebs dsecribed telling his girlfriend that her steak had too much fat on it. She said she would eat what she wanted. Krebs said it was at this point that he shoved a bunch of meat down her throat. She reportedly died of asphyxiation.

6 June 2000
Dubai press agencies report that the 'divorce by e-mail' case has been dropped. The parties opted for a boring, ordinary divorce instead.
Basically, a US journalist e-mailed his wife in October to tell her he divorced her, before filing in court. Under Muslim law, a man can divorce his wife by telling her 'I divorce you' thrice.
Although the chairman of Dubai's Personal Status Court said, 'There is no such thing as internet divorce', the judge said, 'what's important is identification and not the means used to ask for a divorce'. The judge said legal amendments would be necessary for addressing identification problems, making him more aware of security issues than Microsoft, for example.

This next item came from the Times, but it still sounds a little like an urban legend. A few seconds after they met, she started to hit him.
'Zhang' and 'Zhuer' fell in love through a chat room - an increasingly popular pastime in China - and then started to send e-mail to each other. They told each other that their loneliness would finally end when they met in person. Fortunately, they lived in the same province and this dream could come true easily.
Although there are a lot of people in China, the two who met on Haimiao Beach, near Laizhou, had met each other once before, more than two years earlier, when they became partners. Police intervened as they argued about such issues as why 'Zhuer' was 'in desperate need of a boyfriend'.

In slightly more macabre news, a Melbourne woman tried to do what any self-respecting mother would do if she suspected her children were possessed by Satan: kill her son and then try to resurrect him.
The mother of five, whose name was not released, attacked her other children before settling on drowning her three-year-old as part of a home-brew exorcism. Her attempt to resurrect him involved lovingly pouring boiling water over his body.
She claimed to be not guilty by reason of looniness. Justice Greg James agreed with her claim.

17 June 2000
And remember that unnatural sex is bad. Or so thought George Finley, a Floridian who was convicted after beating his wife's dog to death because he thought it was gay.
Sheriff's Captain Mike McQuaig said Finley 'felt that the dog was a queer-type dog and it made him angry'.
Witnesses said the 58-year-old was enraged that the neutered Yorkshire terrier/poodle kept trying to become sexual with the family's male Jack Russell terrier. Prosecutors described Finley hitting the dog with a vacuum cleaner wand and hurling the animal against a tree, whereupon it fell into a coma. Finley said he hit the dog by accident.
It's not just people from Florida who have problems. Nobuyoshi Aota is suspected of starving about 100 dogs to death. He is a dog breeder who decided the dogs could go several weeks without food or water.

28 June 2000
The romantic edition:

A couple travelling from Dallas were fined 5000 pounds for being pissed on their flight back to Manchester. The charges relating to their fondling of each other were dropped. But not before their employers, on whose business they were travelling, found out about the public removal of Amanda Holt's blouse and trousers. Both Holt and David Machin were fired.
After other passengers complained about the actions of Holt, 37, and Machin, 40, flight attendants asked them to stop cavorting, to no avail, according to witnesses for the prosecution. The prosecution quoted Machin as saying 'We became a little over-familiar, that's all'.
He later took a different tone, saying his 'drunken stupidity' almost let him throw away his relationship with his wife and three children. Holt said her actions were 'a matter of regret', as she left court with her husband.

That was UK-style romance. Here is the style of Stavanger, in Norway. Most people try to go for the most sensational, not the most banal, in proposing marriage... Frode Jonassen heard the loudspeakers in the grocery store blare 'I love you and want to marry you. You have 10 seconds to decide'.
His girlfriend, Tone Soerensen, had stepped into a back room. Frode didn't think that odd, since she works there. But he was a little less composed when the customers started to count down from ten. He did manage to say 'yes' at the last minute, reported Verdens Gang.

Or Cambodian style.
In a report from Phnom Penh, we find a man who was annoyed that he couldn't marry his lover, Nha Thavy. So the 35-year-old Hout Sitha toted an AK-47 and a bucket of gasoline in the general direction of her family. After he took them hostage and threatening to shoot them and burn their house down if they didn't give their blessing to the union, the family were not rescued through police intercession. Finally, members of Sitha's own family intervened. The families came to an understanding, and the two will be married.

And we can't forget the Americans.
Kendall Francois kept romance alive by taking prostitutes home with him. Now where is the best place to keep the decomposing bodies of eight women you have killed? This Poughkeepsie, New York, idiot hid his stranglees' corpses amid various other rubbish scattered about his home, where he lived with his parents and younger sister.
Francois killed the women over 22 months. He was finally arrested after a woman he had brought home escaped.

20 July 2000
A slightly more deserving death was that of Michael Rowe, 62. Those at the inquest heard that, in November, his wife, Brigid, sprayed hair mousse in his mouth before holding a blanket over his face for 10 minutes. She described herself as 'driven mad' by his snoring.
After killing him, she rang 999 and said 'I think I've killed my husband. He has driven me mad', allegedly. Prior to this, Michael, a chartered surveyor, snored annoyingly enough that she slept in the sitting room while he slept in the bedroom of their Paignton, Devon, home.
Pathologist Dr Gyan Fernando said Mr. Rowe was at three times the driving limit for blood alcohol at the time of his death. The first time the case was brought up, before she was deemed unfit to stand trial, Brigid admitted she did this at a time when he wouldn't struggle.
More recently she said she meant merely to 'give him a fright' and 'I thought he'd jump up but he didn't'. She said she stopped after he made 'funny noises'. Coroner Hamish Turner said it would be best if she not give evidence at the inquest.
The verdict was unlawful death.

Another death by baptism: she told police that voices told her to be good to her cats, 'baptizing them to get them ready for heaven'. She is from Florida, Dade City. She poured scalding water on six cats.
A neighbour said the 68-year-old woman threw some of her cats against the side of her house. Another said he found a dead cat on her car. But wait, you say, that's not baptism. 'I don't think she had a clue what she was doing', said Capt. David Duff, who said she has a history of mental problems and decided she didn't need her pills anymore.
Neighbours said the day before the cat slayings, she was wandering around town leaving empty casserole dishes in driveways and yelling.

29 August 2000
What do you do when you really love someone? In Phoenix, Arizona, we have the man who allegedly tried to kill his girlfriend with a woodchipper and ended up rather dead himself. The man, inside the machine, died there. City police said Lucia Lopez accepted Rafael Rodriguez's marriage proposal before her fiancé whisked her away to the landscaping business where he worked. She described him telling her to close her eyes and lie down on a woodchipper's conveyor belt, and she described moving from that position when he started the machine. Police Lt. Mark Zingg said she laid down again and 'he lays down next to her and she says the next thing she knows is he is through the machine, apparently grabbing her wrists to bring her into the machine too'. The machine automatically stopped but not before Rodriguez suffered fatal injuries to the head and arms.

12 October 2000
Texas issues marriage licenses to couples made up of exactly one genetic male and one genetic female. Desiring a lesbian union despite this, Jessica Wicks and Robin Manhart went to the Bexar County Clerk and obtained a marriage licence. Robin is a transsexual who is genetically male. To the tune of a protest march, they married at the Metropolitan Community Church.
The Associated Press quotes Warren Chisum, a state Representative who opposes same-sex marriage, as saying, 'You can't make laws to cover every little detail'.

Dorothy Parker said, 'Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live'. Robert G., 28, and Antonija, 24, may have agreed after their attempt to kill themselves when their parents opposed their union. AFP reports describe the Croatian couple as running a plastic tube from the exhaust pipe to the cab of their car, drinking an unspecified large amount of alcohol, and swallowing around 50 valium pills. They then put their heads together, where Robert shot himself in the temple.
The bullet went through the policeman's forehead and grazed his beloved's ear. He was placed in intensive car in a Zagreb hospital, while Antonija sustained minor injuries.

Innocence and guilt indeed are not cut and dried. Seven years after she was put in prison, an Ohio woman may be relieved of her life sentence now that her son has testified that the dog raped him when she was taking a bath and that she didn't sodomise the then-seven-year-old. Revisiting the incident since he reached the age of competency to testify (10 in Ohio), the boy said 'My mother is innocent' and named Bugsy the 70-pound pit bull as to blame.
When the 40-year-old woman brought her faeces-covered son to the Children's Hospital Medical Center of Akron, he was found to have a torn rectum with dog semen inside it. The woman said her son said he pulled down his pants as he desperately ran toward the bathroom, but prosecutors contended that she attacked him and used a turkey baster or similar device to cover her tracks with semen. A social worker testified that the boy told her his mother hurt him, testimony the defence now claim was what the adults had seemed to want to hear. The woman's life sentence for 'felonious sexual penetration' may be reconsidered if the boy's statement is deemed substantial, new evidence.

Another aggressive dog features in this Clippings edition. A six-week-old baby in California was killed by a dog when a relative went to warm a bottle of milk. Pomeranians are not usually thought of as terribly aggressive dogs, but sheriff's deputy Cruz Solis said the relative returned to find at least part of the girl's head in the dog's mouth Saturday night, according to the Associated Press. The baby, whose name has not been released pending notification of her parents, died of head trauma at a local hospital. The miniature dog was taken away by animal control officers, and the relative has not been charged.

Our next girl, a 15-year-old who was home-schooled and grew up with goats but without electricity, wanted to be an actress and singer. When the singing lessons provided by Wayne Allen Geis and his common-law wife escalated from singing and kissing to oral sex and intercourse, the girl balked, so Geis warned her that she had hurt her voice and would be better only with continued special coaching and sex.
After this, the teenager wrote a letter to entrepreneur J.Z. Knight, the 'channeler' of 'Ramtha', a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit. Knight invited the couple and the girl's family to attend a retreat at Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, where she interrogated the couple for over an hour in front of a crowd of 800. (The confession isn't considered privileged because it was public and the 'school' (I'm running out of inverted commas in this item) isn't considered a religious organisation.)
The defence may call Knight as a witness in an attempt to divert attention to the credibility of Ramtha's manifestations in the medium's trances and as a display of purple light seen by Knight.
About the only credible person is the prosecutor, who said, 'This is one of the most egregious allegations of long-term systematic grooming and manipulation of this girl's belief system I have ever seen'.

23 November 2000
According to the Agence France-Presse, scientists from the University of the West of England measured the emotional response of MPs while the politicians were shown various pictures, including those of a blond model and of Margaret Thatcher. They concluded, based on the pulse rates of most MPs, that Thatcher was a greater turn-on to these men than were such people as Denise Van Outen.

A Waterloo, Iowa, man was found naked in a community college farm's hay loft at 8am. In the corner was a bound ewe with her hindquarters elevated. Next to her was a blue nightgown.
Held by students until the polie arrived, Robert Allen Broderson was arrested for criminal trespass and animal abuse. (Iowa is one of 26 states which have no laws against sex with animals.)

6 December 2000
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sylvia Louise Gillard O'Brien has sued Coca-Cola for $7 million. That her now-three-year-old child doesn't like and trust her enough could be blamed on her being a loony or on the child being a child, but instead O'Brien asks the courts to believe that the baby failed to bond with her because she feared she would miscarry after a bottle of the Coca-Cola product Fruitopia broke, cut her lip, and made her bite pieces of broken glass.

10 December 2000
In court, a Newcastle woman recently admitted to biting off her best friend's husband's testicle after the two women returned to their husbands, who had been babysitting, after a night out. When Shelley Hutchinson was attacked by husband Neil, Denise Carr came to the woman's aid. After separating the spouses, Carr began to bite Mr. Hutchinson after he started to fight her. Prosecutor Stephen Duffield said, 'The defendant was not aware that she had bitten his testicle until after the incident'. The missing testicle was found under a picture frame in the sitting room. The Hutchinsons, who had then been married for three weeks, are now divorced.

14 December 2000
In the pages of the Chicago Tribune we find a second-generation attachment parent in Champaign, Illinois. The mother says she will continue nursing her son as long as he wishes. The six-year-old told child protection officials that he had told her to stop and that he was embarrassed to be breastfed.
The woman, who herself (with her eight siblings) had been raised in a 'child-led rearing' household, also claimed she stopped sleeping naked with the boy when he told her she should put some clothes on. He claims she still 'co-sleeps' naked with the clothed boy but only when she doesn't have any clean clothes.
The 32-year-old single mother, who works part-time at a liquor store and takes continuing education classes, said, 'they need to admit they made a mistake and drop it'. She maintains that her son will be back home before Christmas.

Finally, I can report that the Virginia woman who microwaved her month-old son has been sentenced to five years in prison. Elizabeth Renee Otte's claim that 'I can't remember doing this if I did this' was part of her 'epileptic blackout' defence. Otte had stopped taking her seizure medicine when she found herself pregnant. Her lawyer, Stephen Harris, added, 'The river was right across the street. There were ways that were more surreptitious than placing the baby in the microwave and going to bed'.
At the trial, experts testified that Joseph Lewis Martinez probably died when his blood reached 106 degrees, 10 minutes after Otte may or may not have pressed 'Start'.

20 December 2000
A divorce court judge in Chicago has ordered Karen Ziebell to pump breast milk so her soon-to-be-ex-husband can use it when he visits the month-old baby. Husband, and lawyer, Gerald said he sought the order because he knew that his wife wanted to breast-feed the baby and he didn't want to be denied the right to see the child for more than a few hours at a time. He said, 'They wanted to make a constitutional issue out of this where none exists. All we want is for me to have access to my son.'
Karen said she tried a breast pump with little success but doesn't want the baby to use formula for at least 11 more months. She also doesn't want her son to leave the house until the weather is warmer.
Usually divorces do not come so soon after a birth. Another issue in this case is the baby's name. The judge forbade Karen from naming the baby. Gerald had argued that she was considering names which were biased too heavily for her side of the family.

Maybe this isn't a fucked relationship story, but it will be once he gets into prison and meets Bubba
Joseph Nichols will spend the next four years in prison, where he will receive counselling. He will probably be told that it is socially unacceptable to steal water pistols from department stores. He may also be told that it is perverted to use them to squirt semen at girls. Over a year, Nichols perpetrated at least nine such incidents in Orange County, Florida. He sometimes took pictures. The end came in April, when he squirted and photographed a girl when she refused to open her mouth in a K-Mart parking lot. He too was being photographed.

Tracy Thacker, a marine recruiter, got his children out of school early, writing on the sign-out sheet that he was taking them 'to pay back mom'. After he had allegedly tried to break the neck of his wife, Holli, when she refused to have sex with him a few months earlier, the two were in the process of a divorce.
When police arrived at Thacker's house, at the behest of his step-daughter, who called from a neighbour's house, he threatened to kill himself and kept police at bay until a sheriff's deputy shot him. He had already set a fire and stabbed the 5- and 9-year-olds to death.

For more marital bliss, we turn to Kevin Fraze. Less than a month after his marriage, this 29-year-old allegedly choked his wife into unconsciousness and didn't let her receive medical attention. He threatened to kill the woman's five-year-old daughter and other relatives if she didn't do what he wanted.
After abandoning the girl, Fraze then took his wife on a honeymoon which included Colorado, Las Vegas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. Along the way, he beat, burned, raped, stabbed, and prostituted her, at one point restraining her while another man raped her. In Dade County, Florida, on 15 November, the woman, whose name has not been released, convinced someone to call police, whereupon Fraze was arrested.

From the Associated Press we hear of a man who used a 15-year-old girl's closet as a home base for three weeks before his blankets, Bible, dishes, and pictures of the girl were discovered by her mother. His truck was found near the family's Mount Vernon, Ohio home.
The 26-year-old Jeffrey Scott Martin abruptly left his Army unit to be with the girl he had met seven months ago on the Internet. When arresting Martin for such things as his picture of the girl naked, police found military dynamite and munitions in the truck.
Martin, who had free rein in the house when the girl's mother was at work, settled into his life there, going as far as to get a library card.

26 December 2000
Bernhardt Kali of Oranjemund, Namibia, was finally granted bail after being charged with attempting to murder his wife of seven years with an axe. The quarrel over a Phil Collins CD left Josephine Kali with an injured shoulder, broken finger, smashed thumb, and a bump on the head. The 45-year-old man is not allowed near his house, but Josephine said she still could never live there again. Such worries as 'What if he sneaks in at night?' have prompted her employer to house her until she moves into a company house.

In another story, a 14-year-old cocaine and paint thinner abuser pleaded guilty for sexually assaulting his 2-year-old niece. According to the Houston Chronicle, Roshalle Tatmon died of sepsis after an encounter with Prentise Waire Jr. gave her a ruptured rectum. Authorities believe medical help was only summoned the day after the attack. When a Children's Protection Services (CPS) worker made a routine visit to the home, the family at first refused to let her in, then was 'very hostile, especially the 14-year-old'. Tatmon was not present for the visit. Less than an hour later, someone in the home--which was shared by Prentise, Tatmon, Tatmon's mother, three adults, two 4-year-olds and a 1-year-old--rang emergency services to report that a child had died.
During his psychiatric evaluation, Waire said 'I can barely read and I can't be too much around distraction'. He said he didn't remember the incident with Tatmon, emphasising 'she was an angel to me ... I can't see myself hurting my niece because we were very close; we were family'. He said he went home and merely slept after drinking and using drugs in a park. He said, 'I said I did it because what I wanted was to take somebody else's spot' rather than letting 'whoever did it' be imprisoned.
In 1994, CPS had decided Tatmon's mother's three children should live with relatives, owing to the family's poverty. After that, the woman had Roshalle and another baby and, when her own mother died, took in Waire and four of her relatives--a four-year-old, two adults, and the girlfriend of one of the adults. More recent CPS involvement was to determine how many people lived there and if the children were adequately nourished and supervised.

1 January 2001
According to the Ottawa Sun, police are not charging a Finch couple for leaving their five-month-old child in a van overnight. The baby was left sleeping when the couple parked the van in their driveway. The child survived six hours of winter temperatures, which dropped to -22 degrees C, before his father found him the next morning.
Investigators were told that the couple had several children and simply forgot to take indoors the baby, who was strapped into a seat in the back of the van.

Following a trend in Bucharest, a Tokyo club offers special prostitute service for the equivalent of $1000. The customer visits a brothel which is decked out as a 'home' fantasy, including a beautiful 'wife' who cooks him a meal, has sex with him, watches the television programmes he wants to watch, and listens to him describe his day at work. Hmm.

In Ravenna, Ohio, Michelle Zonko Bica, 39, kidnapped Theresa Andrews after she pretended to be interested in the Jeep the Andrewses were selling. Bica took the nine-months-pregnant woman to her home, where she killed her and performed a simple Caesarian section. She then buried the woman's body in the dirt floor of her garage and placed gravel over the evidence there. Bica then claimed the baby to be hers.
For nine months Bica had fooled neighbours and, apparently, her own husband Thomas. They had thought she was pregnant so accepted newborn 'Michael Thomas Bica' with little difficulty. She explained to her husband that she went into labour shortly after he left in the early morning for work. She said she was discharged early from hospital due to a tuberculosis scare.
A month earlier the Bicas met the Andrews family in the local Wal-Mart's baby department, where they discussed their due dates and their homes' proximity. Shortly thereafter, Bica started telling people she was due near the due date mentioned by Andrews. She encouraged relatives to feel the baby kick and showed them ultrasound pictures.
When police came to the Bica home a few days later, hoping to find out about a 'phone call made to Andrews shortly before the woman's disappearance, they heard Thomas Bica screaming his wife's name. She had shot herself with the gun she had used on Andrews.

7 January 2001
NBC reported on Tom Greene, who has 30 children and five wives. Greene supports them from tax dollars and from selling magazine subscriptions. He claimed to have thought polygamy legal in Utah, but even the Mormons outlawed it some time ago. He married most of the women when they were under 15 years of age. Greene claimed his actions didn't have to do with sex.

When 39-year-old Indle King, Jr. strangled Anastasia, his 20-year-old Kyrgyz mail-order bride, the Everett, Washington, man was not too clever. It seems he thought that he could conceal the woman's identity by removing the woman's clothing and cutting off her long, blond ponytail. By the way, will I ever read a story which says 'he buried her body in a deep grave'?

Ariana Swinson died in her parents' Michigan apartment almost five months after child welfare officials determined that they no longer needed to supervise the care of the girl and her three siblings. Parents Linda Paling and Ed Swinson insist that a nearby bottle of Five Star whiskey had nothing to do with the death. Instead, they described hearing noises from the bedroom where the three oldest children were playing. He told police that he then stood the lightly crying girl up and she 'threw her hands up into the air and let out a terrible screm and started to collapse', hitting her head on the floor. He ran to a pay 'phone across the street and rang emergency services. (When deputies asked, Ed wasn't sure how to spell his daughter's name.) The eight-months-pregnant Linda said she was in the bathroom at the time and heard her boyfriend ask 'What's going on?' before asking for her help. She said she did her best as a trained nurse's aid.
One of the living children told a similar story, saying that he jerked backward too hard whilst playing 'choo-choo train', causing her to hit her head on the lightly carpeted concrete floor. Sergeant Richard DeShon said the boy's 'statements weren't very consistent and it did appear to be somewhat rehearsed'.
Nobody tried to explain Ariana's blackened, scaled feet; puncture wounds to the head; dehydration; and weight of 26 pounds. Emergency room physician Geoffrey Mills said, 'You could pretty much see the entire skeleton structure, which I rarely have ever seen in a child of that age'. Police found half the girl's blood under her mattress and a bloody t-shirt. Cause of death was listed as repetitive abuse with head and brain injury as well as drowning. Linda, when asked to describe the cause of each wound, blamed the older children for playing roughly, but she added that she may sometimes have picked Ariana up roughly. She later admitted that she had on occasion hit the girl; for instance, a few days earlier she bruised Ariana's face when trying to hit her mouth as punishment for swearing. Ed's comment, after further questioning, was, 'Well, take me in'.
Four months earlier, the parents had been told that although two rooms were not enough for so many people, they had made commendable progress on learning to become better parents.

11 January 2001
Amber Turner testified that her ex-boyfriend Rae Carruth told her that he would send an assassin if she didn't get an abortion. Turner's mother Barbara spoke in court of the 'power' exuded by Carruth, speaking of him in glowing terms. She also told Carruth 'I love you' from the witness stand.

14 January 2001
How can you tell when your relationship is over? In Kenora, Ontario, Canada, Julie Sherlock was found guilty of slicing her husband's scrotum open with a diamond ring after an evening at the pub. The victim said he went to sleep and later felt a sharp pain when he groggily woke up to use the toilet. He testified, 'I was groggy and didn't know what happened' but he did dispute the defence's claim that the three-to-four-inch gash was accidentally inflicted when his wife tried to help him after he fell on the floor: 'Why would she have picked me up by the testicles?' The man, who required eight stitches, said the incident made him realise that his relationship with the 57-year-old woman was not working.

18 January 2001
Tony Lamont Bragg Sr.'s son did not survive inattention. As the Tampa, Florida, father tried to continue playing the role-playing computer game Everquest, he squeezed the boy to quiet him. He returned to the game. Later he squeezed the child into a utility closet, where the child cried, off and on, for a day or so before dying.
Bragg's ex-wife Brandy L. Rozier had left the boy and his step-brother with Bragg when her home lost electricity. (The woman's other two children are in state custody.) When he was supposed to deliver the boy to a relative's home, Bragg found his son by his playpen in the closet. His heart had been punctured and he had bled to death. The child had also been malnourished.

Edwin Sandoval of Manchester, Connecticut, is also in trouble for his sexual antics. Five days after his girlfriend told him she was pregnant, the 35-year-old man put an ulcer medicine in her vagina in an attempt to cause vaginal contractions with misoprostol and induce an abortion. The woman, who consulted a doctor when she began bleeding, has now delivered a baby, and Sandoval faces up to 95 years in prison, where he won't have to care for a baby.

When London's Anna Climbie, 8, died of starvation and hypothermia, she had 128 bruises. Her French great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's boyfriend Carl Manning (a London bus driver), were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Manning admitted to responsibility for only about 'a third' of the girl's injuries, including a head wound from a bicycle chain. He did point out that Climbie 'could take the beatings and pain like anything', without crying at all.
The girl, deemed a nuisance by the couple, was sometimes left tied in the bath for 24 hours or so. The fun part is that Kouao insisted that the girl's problems were caused by witchcraft. She took Climbie to various churches, asking pastors to pray that the child be freed of demons.

15 February 2001
The Boston Herald reported on Justina Talbot and her boyfriend, who decided to prepare their two daughters for future husbands. Boyfriend Fernand Daviau claimed at his trial that both believed it was God's will for him to have sex with his children, which had been going on for four years since the girls were six and 10 years old.

In Minco, Oklahoma, a ouija board told a woman to stab her son-in-law to death. Carol Sue Elvaker, her daughter Tammy Roach, and Tammy's two daughters were using the board for entertainment as he slept. Elvaker, 53, complied with the board's request and stabbed Brian Roach in the chest. Elvaker had hoped to kill Roach's 10-year-old daughter but instead left the house with Tammy, who hid the knife first, and the two aforementioned grand-children. Elvaker was driving. After she crashed the car into a road sign and (apparently) broke her ankles, she tried pushing her 15-year-old grand-daughter into traffic, authorities said. Despite her injuries, Elvaker managed to run from the scene, jump over the highway median barrier, and make her way, naked, into a wooded area, where police later found her.
Relatives told police that Elvaker does not have a history of mental illness or odd behavior.

19 February 2001
Many men despair of having a valentine on Valentine's Day, but Robert Teller did something about this problem. The Albuquerque, New Mexico, man broke into ex-girlfriend Jeanette Francia's home and threatened her and her two children with an ice pick. He then took her to a mass civil wedding ceremony presided over by volunteer judges. A child's ring featuring a green frog was used in the ceremony.
Metro Court Judge Denise Barela Shepherd later said, 'I couldn't figure out why she looked so mad' but 'she kept reassuring me that she was fine and wanted to proceed'. Francia later told police she had feared she would be harmed if she told the judge she didn't really want to marry Teller. When the children called their grandmother from school to say Francia was in danger, the wedding was exposed for what it really was.

7 March 2001
I reported in the past on Kevin Artz, the Michigan man who allegedly killed his wife and cooked her body at the family's restaurant. Artz, approaching trial, has stated that, after 12 years of marriage, he looked at his wife and saw the devil staring back. The defence is calling witnesses who claim that Artz's brain surgery led to the murder.

A Parkman, Maine, man asked that his dog stand with him in court. Frank Buble, 71, is charged with attempting to kill his son Phillip with a crowbar. The father, who reportedly attacked his son because of the younger Buble's attraction to a dog, will, however, not have to see his son's 'significant other' during the sentencing. Phillip's request, denied by the court, said, in part, that he wanted 'Lady' to 'attend by my side if possible as she was present in the house during the attack, though not an eyewitness ... I've been informed your personal permission is needed given that my wife is not human, being a dog of about 36 pounds weight and very well behaved.'
Bestiality is not a crime in Maine, but the last year has seen 'sexual animal abuse cases' involving two dogs, two horses, and two cows.

According to news reports from Romania, Mircea Rau bought necklaces for his wife and his mistress, each bearing the relevant woman's initial, but accdientally gave his wife the parcel with the wrong necklace. After his wife threw an ashtray at him as he tried to flee his wife's wrath, Rau fell unconscious and was taken to hospital in Focsani, County Vrancea. In the meantime, his wife has reportedly asked for a divorce.

19 March 2001
The story of a 40-year-old Pennsylvania man's death continues to unfold. The at-least-sixth spouse of a transsexual known as "Tammy/Tommy", James John Felbaum was originally believed to have overdosed on his wife's pain pills. It is unclear whether Felbaum's penis was mutilated before or at the time of death. Police are cataloguing evidence which includes bloody rags in the yard of the couple's mobile home and IV drip equipment and various surgical tools in the trailer's operating room.
Following the death, Tammy was arrested for activities involving the killing of deer, hogs, birds, and cats. Neighbours described Tammy as killing her animals with a baseball bat and issuing death threats. Dogs, finches, seven cats, a mouse, turtles, and a parakeet were removed from the house after they were found to be dehydrated and living in faeces.
Neighbour Susan Badaracco said, 'The people on my road are scared to death of her'.

Police arrested a Beverly, Massachusetts, man who threatened to shoot his girlfriend with a homemade potato launcher. The woman alleges that Sean McGrath told her he would 'put a potato through' her head with the spud gun. He also got into fisticuffs with her teenaged daughter. The woman found the spud gun in the basement of McGrath's apartment building. He was arraigned in Salem District court for charges including making threats and possession of an infernal machine.

26 March 2001
A Jefferson, Kentucky, judge ruled that 23-year-old Tony Gene Wilson's sexual intercourse with his 16-year-old niece does not count as incest. Judge Stephen P. Ryan had 'a little bit of disbelief' that he had to make this decision, but he said the law only covers lineal blood relationships (ancestors, descendants, brothers, and sisters). Legislators may consider bringing the law in line with the current prohibition of marriage between people who are 'nearer of kin to each other ... than second cousins'. Such marriages are described in the law as 'incestuous and void'.
The niece told police that Wilson forced her to have sex with him, but he denied using force. Rape charges may be filed.

In Stuart, Florida, a St. Patrick's Day marriage got off to a good start when new bride Kathryn Marie Patrick, 36, hit her husband with the wedding cake and kicked him when he was on the floor. The husband, Brett, told police he and his wife began to argue after coming home from the wedding. In light of the bruises, scratches, and icing on Brett's body, Kathryn is being charged with battery.

And in other wedding news, Fox News reports that a Stupava, Slovakia, couple's Wild-West-themed wedding got a little bit out of hand. Three guests fired celebratory rounds from their pistols after the couple exchanged wedding vows, and one of the bullets lodged in the bride's ankle. Tereza Surname-unreleased's wedding day included a couple hours of surgery.

This isn't another story about a baby freezing to death after being left in a car overnight. Five-month-old Ethan Fletcher fried in his car seat as the temperature in his mother's car in Dallas, Texas, reached about 100 degrees. When the single mother's shift at a nearby restaurant ended five hours later, she returned to the car and started screaming. She told police that she was sure she remembered taking the boy to day care. The woman, unlike her name, was released. Deputy police chief Alfredo Saldana said, 'It's a tragic example of how quickly these things can happen'.

3 April 2001
In Zebulon, North Carolina, a man was killed in an argument with his nephew. The two were trying to establish who was 'the baddest'. The uncle, Randy Miles, 36, rang emergency services to tell them that Theodore Mitchell, 48, had stopped breathing. In his own words to the 911 crew, Miles 'tried to hit me, he missed, and I held him down so he wouldn't cause no more trouble, and I wouldn't let him go until he stopped breathing'. As the dispatcher questioned him, he said, 'Look, if he dies, I ain't going to jail 'cause it's you all's fault you ain't got here yet'.

8 April 2001
I reported before on Tammy Lynn Felbaum, who was charged in the death of her sixth husband. Further reports hae emerged, in which we hear that the botched castration which caused James Felbaum's death was, according to Tammy, performed by James on himself. However, police found a surgical consent form, signed by James, in the couple's trailer. Tammy said she had nothing to do with the operation and that the form was from an earlier operation.
Tammy was Tommy Wyda, who allegedly castrated himself in 1980 in order to advance himself in Case Western Reserve medical school's sex-change surgery queue. Highlights of Tammy's life include amateur medical practice (mostly on animals, it seems) and stripping (involving crushing empty soda cans between her breasts, something like this).

In Garner, North Carolina, the husband of a day-care centre owner was arrested on multiple charges of child abuse and sexual offences. Raheem Renard Robinson, who lived at the One Big Family Day Care Center, turned himself in, stating "It's all lies". Five children interviewed by a social worker said Robinson spanked them with a fishing pole and belts, made them eat coffee grounds, taped their eyes and mouths shut with electrical tape. One girl saw one of the eight alleged victims being left in a box in the yard for several hours. Another child was forced to eat a brownie which (s)he had thrown in the toilet.
A 13-year-old occasional visitor to the centre described how Robinson showed her and another girl a pornographic movie and then gave the girls a few green condoms and told them to go have sex, particularly with someone older. Then, months later, Robinson started showing the movie again, went into his bathroom, and emerged wearing only his boxers and a green condom. He pulled up her dress but stopped touching her when she screamed, she said.
Evelyn Graham, who operates a day-care business next door to the now-closed Big Family centre, said "Spanking with a belt maybe, but the other charges seem so far-fetched".

Caron Simmons of Orange County, Florida, was charged in the death of her husband, William. After the couple argued over the satellite television system, William allegedly hid the television control in order to frustrate his wife. Looking for it in a dresser, she found a gun, which, she told police, she pointd at her husband. Caron said she didn't mean to kill her husband, who died at Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Wethersfield, Connecticut, police arrested Richard Levitt for disseminating voyeuristic materials after Levitt's girlfriend reported him after she discovered that his web site contained a video of her having sex with him. Meanwhile, one of the girlfriend's friends rang her to report that she too was Levitt's girlfriend. The two women decided to confront the 42-year-old man, showing up on his doorstep at 2am on 25 March. Levitt and his wife answered the door. The Hartford Courant reports that in April Levitt was charged with lewd conduct and distribution of pornography.

27 April 2001
Worthy of Jerry Springer's programme...
On a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Alaska, Michigan twins Cynthia and Crystal Mikota began screaming at each other. When a flight attendant tried to calm the 22-year-olds, Cynthia gave her a bloody nose. Then outside the lavatory, where one or both of the twins had smoked, an argument ensued in which Cynthia told her sister "Let me off this airplane. I gotta smoke". After one of the pilots persuaded the women to return to their seats, he sat with them to prevent trouble. Cynthia hit him and spat on another crew member. When the flight crew put Cynthia in flexible handcuffs, Crystal hit a flight attendant then jumped on the back of another and put him in a chokehold.
The pilot determined it was safest to divert the flight to Anchorage, Alaska, where FBI agents met the flight and the still-screaming twins, who face up to 20 years each in prison.

7 May 2001
German pop singer Christian Anders has figured out a way to finance his liver transplant. The 56-year-old singer is letting millionaire Michael Liecher "use" his girlfriend for a year. The use of 20-year-old Jenna Kartes will secure Anders 500,000DM. Kartes said "I was shocked myself when I heard about this offer. Christian and Michael decided on it behind my back". But the concept doesn't bother her too much. She said "I will sleep with Michael because I love Christian. Perhaps he can then afford a new liver. Why should I feel like a prostitute about it?"

Texas accountant John David Battaglia was jailed after he shot his 6- and 9-year-old daughters when talking to his ex-wife on the telephone. The girls' mother, Mary Jean Pearle, rang Battaglia after he told her mother he needed to ask Pearle a question. Battaglia gave the 'phone to his eldest daughter on the 'phone to ask "Why are you trying to have Daddy arrested and have him put in jail". Before Pearle could answer, she says, the nine-year-old screamed "No, Daddy, no!" and gunshots rang out. Pearle believes the question referred to a Christmas 1999 attack on her for which Battaglia was fined and put on probation.
The couple have been divorced about a year. The girls, Liberty and Faith, lived with their mother and were visiting their father at the time of the murders.

A 13-year-old Cleveland, Ohio, boy was charged with murder after allegedly beating his eight-week-old daughter to death. Brandon Miller claimed he was innocent. The infant, named Diamond, died from massive head injuries and internal bleeding.
Miller claims that the noticed that the girl, who was in bed with her 14-year-old mother, had her head wedged between the bed and the wall. When he picked her up, she "started to spit up white stuff". When he noticed the baby was not breathing, he said, he woke the mother, who rang emergency services. He was tried in Juvenile Court because state law deems him too young to be tried as an adult.

16 May 2001
Michael Adamson of Sudbury, Ontario, was with a friend when Adamson's dog brought his wife's hand back to him. Adamson had earlier buried his 62-year-old wife Delphine in a shallow grave in the woods. It is unclear how long the body had been in the ground before it was discovered, but the 23-year-old Adamson was charged with first-degree murder fairly quickly thereafter.

21 May 2001
An Albuquerque, New Mexico, woman was annoyed when a coin-operated machine in a local laundry shop ruined a sweater. After complaining about the sweater, Francis [sic] Marie Lopez, 38, her son, her son's father Jerome Barela, and a nephew robbed the shop. Police sergeant Carlos Argueta said "It kind of makes you wonder what kind of parenting skills these people have".
Lopez and Barela returned to complain about the sweater again a few days after the robbery. The shop's owner said he had agreed to re-clean the garment but that Lopez kept complaining anyway.

The Houston Chronicle said Linda Anita Carty told her neighbours she would have a baby. They were right to believe she wasn't pregnant, but she had a baby anyway, for a short while. She had four accomplices kidnap Juana Rodriguez and her five-day-old baby, also taking some money.
The baby was found in a parked car, with the dead mother in the trunk of another car nearby. The relationship between Carty and her boyfriend Chris Anthony Robinson - also charged - and the armed kidnappers is not yet clear.

A Kissimmee, Florida, man beat his girlfriend's three-year-old son to death. Giovanni Vega said the boy fell on a concrete stairway at the hotel where his family lived. Vega said he tried to revive the boy by running a cold bath and hitting the child in the face. He said he didn't call emergency services because he feared police would discover his supplies. Vega is a heroin addict and drug dealer. He explained that the boy, Xavier Collado, and sister Xaimara were alone at the time of the accident because Vega was busy dealing drugs.

29 May 2001
Canada's Victor David is appealing his conviction for beating his cognitively disabled wife. The 61-year-old David said of his wife, who he kept imprisoned on a sailboat for 24 years, "she grew when she was with me". The woman, Linda, was allegedly left blind and further brain-damaged as a result of the beatings.
In January 1997, Washington state social worker James Mead began to search for Linda, who had not been seen for years. David tried to prevent Mead from reaching the sailboat, but police intervened and found Lindda curled up in the boat. She was covered with refuse and faeces. Several broken bones had healed without being set, and the woman's ears were swollen shut.
Now, years of legal wrangling later, David may also be charged with the felony of having a gun despite being a non-US citizen. He used the gun to keep relatives from seeing his wife.

4 June 2001
Miami prosecutors have dropped charges against 100-year-old Hermenergildo Rojas, who is accused of dousing his 38-year-old live-in girlfriend with gasoline because she had been paying attention to other men. The prosecution was unable to locate girlfriend Janet Ali and thus could not get her to testify. Rojas claimed he simply poured water on Ali and that she cut herself as she tried to escape through a window in the couple's trailer. Rojas said he plans to move out now.
Rojas spent three days in jail two years ago after an argument with a bus driver.

16 June 2001
Robert Gorghan raped and buggered a girl from when she was eight to when she was 21. He videotaped some of the abuse, which occurred at his home in Petersburgh, New York. He got married just minutes after his sentencing to 25 years in prison. Before returning to her house with the bridal bouquet, bride Cheryl said "He's been my husband for a very long time in God's eyes". Cheryl is the mother of the rape victim.

A Texas sex offender's probation includes the controversial condition that he not have sex until he is married. In 1999 Robert Torres, now 19, was sentenced to five years on probation after he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. Since then he impregnated a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old. After learning of this, at a probation revocation hearing Judge J. Manuel Badales imposed the "no sex until marriage" condition, extended Torres's probation for another five years, and sentenced the teenager to 30 days in jail. Torres said of the order: "I would like to get married, but how am I going to meet anyone?" Diana Philip of the Texas ACLU called the order irresponsible as well as cruel and unusual. Another search for a missing child... this time in Kissimmee, Florida. Donna Gillum rang emergency services to say she hadn't seen her daughter for an hour. She rang 911 three more times that evening while the squad car was on its way. After helicopters, police dogs, and over a dozen officers became involved in the search, Gillum thought of checking with her secondary babysitter. Investigator James Napier said "We go over there, and the child was there. The kid said mom took her over there around 6:30 [in the evening]." Gillum, who faces child neglect charges and may have to pay $2000 for the search, said she didn't remember taking her daughter to the babysitter. She admitted to drinking nine beers in three hours before ringing police.

22 July 2001
Arnell VanDuyne tied up his adoptive mother Norma Young. He then beat her to death with a baseball bat as six young children watched. The Clovis, New Mexico, 16-year-old then led police on a high-speed chase which ended in Texas. Authorities said the boy was apparently angry at Young for telling him to clean out a dresser drawer in his room and later told him he wasn't doing it correctly.

Wisconsin's David W. Oakley has nine children, by four women. He has at least $25,000 in unpaid child support. The state supreme court ruled this week that a judge was not wrong to bar Oakley from having more children unless he could support them. One of the mothers, carnival worker Lucretia Thompson-Smith said she still is supportive of Oakley; after all, her other children's fathers don't always pay child support. Oakley's current girlfriend, Rachel Ward, said "He's a completely different person now" and that Oakley, who was born in prison, is "more or less used to everybody leaving him. That's why I can understand how he's been leaving the women".
Ward, whose tubes are tied, said "He don't want [children]. He's just a very potent guy". His ex-wife Jill Cochrane said "He keeps his girls pregnant so they're his and no other guys are attracted to them".

A 15-year-old Hutchins, Texas, girl was locked in her bedroom at night, ostensibly to prevent her from making herself vomit after meals. The girl, who fled to a neighbour's property, was examined at hospital and was determined to have no signs of an eating disorder. Police chief G.E. Griffin said the girl's family belong to Believer's Fellowship, a group which encourage followers to have many children. The girl's mother said she has 12 children.
Last month in this city of 2,000, an eight-year-old girl was found to have been locked in a closet for months. The girl was severely malnourished.

18 August 2001
At about 1am, Detroit 20-year-old Shaniqua Betty handed her baby to a stranger at a bus stop, saying she needed to get her handbag from her boyfriend's home. When she returned from the 1.5-mile journey, the man was gone, along with the baby, three-month-old Isaiah Lewis. Police checked security tapes from a store near the bus stop and, after discoering that its timing was off by an hour, arrested a 48-year-old man, who led them to an abandoned building five blocks from the bus stop. The boy's body was found in a pile of dirty diapers and other debris. Last year a psychological evaluation indicated that Betty was "not capable of caring for or rearing a baby".

24 August 2001
There are better ways to end a relationship... The Houston Chronicle reports that Marvin Latryl Smith died when a train hit him. Smith, 25, stopped the car on a set of railroad tracks because he knew his girlfriend, with whom he was in the midst of an argument, would be scared. Jackson left the car, and Smith followed. He rushed back to the car when he heard a train whistle and was trying to move the car when he was squished.

One wonders about the health of this family. Clearwater, Minnesota, County Undersheriff Lyle Colligan called it "an absolutely unbelievable, tragic coincidence" when Arne and Carol Kleppe's 3-year-old adopted son drowned in Six Lake on Sunday. The couple's son and daughter drowned in the same lake in 1998. The Kleppes said the boy vanished when he was off playing with the family dog. Colligan said "we've done a very thorough investigation, and we aren't seeing anything other than a horrible repeat of an awful tragedy" and that the investigation is closed unless new information is brought forward.

Rounding off the obligatory "dead children" section is Maria Ricardo, who looked on as two of her sister's children were tortured, killed, and buried by their father, Marco Barrera, in the Angeles National Forest. Sheriff's deputies happened to see the family near a freshly dug grave in the forest. They dug up five-year-old Ernesto Barragon's starved, beaten body and later found two-year-old Lupita Esquivel's body nearby.
Ricardo, 31, was sentenced to 12 years, eight months in prison on Friday. Her sister has just completed her sentence for child endangerment. Barrera now has only 14 children, eight by his wife and six by her sister, Ricardo.

...The second part of the archive is here.
And the most recent part of the archive is here.




If you want, you can go back to our home.


© 1999-2022 Anna Shefl