LifeDaily

When we send our children off to school, we take a number of things on faith. We trust that they’ll be educated, that the advice they’ll be getting will be sound and helpful. We trust that they’ll be fed well, that they’ll be happy, and perhaps most importantly of all, that they’ll be safe.

These days though, we’re treated to more and more news stories about the instances where our faith in the educational system is misplaced. It’s not always the school’s fault, however, sometimes, it’s the very last person anyone would think who does the most damage…

Telling Mom

James Mentzer Story — www.experiencegr.com

It was dinner time at the Smith household. The family was sitting down for a good meal, laughing, smiling, talking about their days, when Mr. Smith leaned over to ask his child how their day at school went. The story they told their parents, and the strange interactions they’d had with one of their school teachers, was the same one being echoed at two other houses in the area.

3rd Grade

The story begins with three elementary school students: an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, and an eleven-year-old. Besides the fact that the three of them went to the same school, they didn’t have much in common. Indeed, the three children hardly even had similar teachers in common. Well…except for one…

Strange Interaction

The parents of these students reported the situation to the police, but as they relayed their individual accounts, the strange circumstances surrounding the aforementioned teacher’s bizarre behavior became more and more apparent. The strangest part was that this wasn’t their teacher, but one who still worked there.

Called Her In

The first of the students told her parents that she had been approached by the teacher in the hallway while she was heading to recess. She knew him from around the school, so when he asked her to come to his classroom and help with a special project of his, she was glad to help…

Communities

The teacher, Mr. Mentzer, told the girl that he was going to give her a packet to read passages from. He explained that the packet was about “communities” and that while she read, he was going to record the discussion on his computer. There was just one unusual element of it, he wanted her to read them aloud whilst holding a giraffe puppet.

Angry

Mr. Metzler had not only told her to act out the words in the communities pack by way of the giraffe puppet she was using, he’d also get angry at her if she didn’t read as the giraffe. As if the yelling and odd puppet weren’t enough to make her uncomfortable, Mr. Metzler amped things up a bit after that…

Rubbing Her

Just when she thought things were getting uncomfortable, Mr. Mentzer began rubbing her leg, from her knee towards her groin area. Even young as she was, she knew this was wrong and asked him to stop, but he ignored her pleas. He persisted in this behavior over the next half hour as well.

Special Project

Then he began to rub her arm and had her look at objects around the room as he did so if only to distract her. All this under the guise of what he was calling his “Special Project”, a project mind you that was not part of any recognized curriculum and which would get even more unusual as he began to target subsequent students…

Longtime Teacher

Those who knew Mr. Mentzer would never have imagined that he would be capable of such reprehensible and bizarre behavior. He had gotten a job at the Pennsylvania elementary school in Lower Dauphin in 2003 and was working there full-time since then. He was a quiet, albeit charming man, but certainly not a child molester…right?

Read the iPad

The second student reported that he didn’t just record them reading on the laptop or iPad, while they read, but had it on after they had provided the teacher with his subsequent puppet shows. This student had to read “Communities” with a pig puppet on their hand and when they were done, was introduced to Mentzer’s other toy…

Crowns and Pendant

While the victims repeated the phrases in the communities packet, Mr. Mentzer would take out his pendant and his crown. He would put the crown on the student’s head and swing the pendant in front of her eyes. Mentzer would tell her to follow its movement as he spoke and as she read.

Brainwashing

Once the student was in a more receptive state, Mentzer would have them recite an oath of sorts. The entranced students would be expected to call Mentzer “Master” and indicate that they would obey him. All of this, according to the subsequent investigation, was part of Mr. Mentzer’s so-called “Master plan….”

Obedience Training

A third victim also corroborated that they were told to repeat the phrases “I will obey you, Master” and “I will obey your commands, Master” while the two were alone in his classroom. It was a strange scene and one that would have gone completely unpunished if it weren’t for the fact that he had recorded all his “sessions.”

Recorded

Metzer too recited lines of dialogue while he acted with the same giraffe puppet on his hand, all the while, recording every interaction on his laptop. It seemed the perfect scheme though. All he had to do was pull the students he desired from classrooms with substitute teachers, and indoctrinate them into his own personal world…

Not Svengali

What James William Mentzer didn’t count on, was the fact that his supposed subject would remember every detail about their unusual, uncomfortable interactions with him. Obviously, he was not the cunning child hypnotist he thought he was. No sooner had the children relayed the stories to their parents, then the school was called.

Investigation Begins

To their credit, the school did what had to be done and didn’t try and deal with Metzer on their own at first. They called the police right away, and in February 2018 a full investigation into the teacher’s interactions with his students during the course of his “special project” was initiated. What they found was slightly more disturbing…

Suspicions

The police suspected that Mentzer had contact between not only the three students who reported his misconduct but possibly two others as well. This would bring his crimes to a whole other level. Especially if those children didn’t report it because they were worried about the consequences.

Charges

Since his arrest, James William Mentzer has been charged with institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, indecent assault, and five counts of corruption of minors. He is presently awaiting trial but has been relieved of his duties at the school since the arrest. As for the school’s take on the predator in their midst…

Administrative Leave

The school district released a statement following the former teacher’s arrest saying: “Lower Dauphin School District placed East Hanover Elementary School teacher James Mentzer on administrative leave when allegations of misconduct were brought to the school’s attention. At the same time, the district immediately contacted appropriate legal authorities…”

Measures Appropriate

Mentzer remains on leave until the legal situation is resolved but if he is found guilty, the school has taken measures to revoke his credentials as a professional educator. This is good news for all of Mentzer’s potential future victims. We just have to wait and see if Mentzer’s bizarre brand of sexual assault will be justly punished.

Parents Become Involved When They Hear About Teacher Pulling Students For “Special Project” is an article from: LifeDaily

While being both incredible and life-changing to hear the news that you’re expecting a baby, pregnancies can be difficult. From the physical changes to your body that you couldn’t begin to prepare for, to the possible morning sickness during your first trimester, becoming pregnant has its downsides.

Despite how complicated, it’s usually worth it, even for those parents who give birth to preemies and endure a daily battle until their baby fully develops. But for one couple living in Australia, they experienced a pregnancy that not many others can say they have been through…

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Kate and Peter Hill Story — ttadelaide / Facebook

Shortly after Kate and Peter got married in 2006, a doctor told Kate she had a serious problem. She was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a syndrome which can make conception difficult. Basically, it meant that Kate wasn’t ovulating and her body had a hormonal disorder.

Conceiving Would Be Hard

Like others with the same condition, Kate’s ovaries could develop numerous collections of fluid and fail to regularly release eggs. Unfortunately, polycystic ovary syndrome is so common that it affects one in 10 women of childbearing age. Kate just happened to be one of the unlucky ones and she shared the devastating news with her husband…

Given Hormones

As disheartening as this news was for Peter to hear, Kate’s doctor put her on hormone treatment so that she’d increase their chances of conceiving. Kate and Peter remember very distinctly that during that time, they only had sex once, but apparently it was enough.

Conceiving Twins And A Medical Miracle

Kate became pregnant and the couple was elated. From there on, they received positive news when they discovered that Kate had conceived twins! Unfortunately, one of the babies didn’t develop, but 10 days later, a medical miracle happened…

A Double Pregnancy

The couple learned that they were expecting again. But, how was this possible? Kate was already pregnant. Kate literally got pregnant while she was already pregnant, and yes, even after she, unfortunately, lost one of her twins.

Conceived On Two Different Dates

Since she pregnant on two different days, the fetuses developed at different rates. A pregnancy like this is called superfetation, and it’s extremely rare. Even rarer because the couple only had sex once…

Her Body Released Another Egg

“I had fallen pregnant and my body had spontaneously released another egg, giving the embryos different gestational ages,” Kate Hill said. “What makes this case even rarer is that my husband and I only had intercourse one time [in the possible time period of conceiving the girls].”

Decided To Search Google

Basically, Peter’s sperm stayed alive for 10 days to fertilize the second egg released. The parents-to-be were so shocked by this news, that they searched Google to get some answers for what seemed to be a medical mystery…

Barely Any Medical Literature On The Phenomenon

However, Peter couldn’t find any medical literature about the phenomenon. Apparently, there are only 10 medically documented cases of superfetation in the world, that’s how rare this type of pregnancy is. Kate was now carrying two babies, conceived 10 days apart.

Superfetation Is Extremely Rare In Humans

Dr. Jason James, medical director at Miami’s FemCare Ob-Gyn, says that superfetation occurs in some animals like rabbits and rodents, but that it is “exceedingly rare” in humans. Most doctors believe that alleged reports of superfetation are due to unequal growth and development of twin fetuses of the same gestational age. Still, despite its rarity…

Superfetation Is Poorly Understood

Superfetation is theoretically possible, at least until the uterus closes after the egg and sperm unite. This is usually by day 10 of a pregnancy, according to Dr. Michael Cackovic, who works at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Despite the little information that is known, superfetation is still poorly understood and somewhat mystical in the medical community.

First Reason

Superfetation is so unlikely for a few reasons. First, after getting pregnant, your body is supposed to stop further ovulation. This means that there shouldn’t be a second egg, unless both were released simultaneously, as with fraternal twins. Plus…

Second Reason

Since the couple only had sex once, this suggests that his sperm apparently lived for 10 days inside of her before fertilizing another egg. This is also baffling because sperm can usually only live inside a woman’s body for up to five days. “That’s some super-sperm,” Dr. Sherry Ross, an obgyn said.

Third Reason

Then, because a mucus plug forms during pregnancy to prevent sperm from entering the cervix, the uterine lining usually undergoes changes that make it unfavorable for a new embryo to be implanted. “But nothing is so black and white that it’s not possible,” Ross explained…

“Life Finds A Way”

Cackovic even compared Kate’s pregnancy to a theme in Jurassic Park. “One episode of intercourse with two pregnancies 10 days apart is highly suspect. That being said, as they say in Jurassic Park, ‘life finds a way.’” But throughout the pregnancy, Kate had some concerns.

Different Weights

She was constantly worried about her babies growth and how much smaller baby No. 2 would be. Although the babies were given two different due dates, December 20 and December 30, both were delivered on November 29. As Kate anticipated, Olivia, baby No. 1 weighed 5.46 lbs and Charlotte weighed slightly less at 4.23 lbs. They also had totally different blood types…

Different Personalities

There were other noticeable differences in behavior between the girls. Olivia generally hit milestones before Charlotte, although Charlotte was never far behind her sister. Both girls are nonidentical twins, so it’s understandable how they are so different.

Their Favorite Is Minnie Mouse

While Charlotte is cautious when it comes to exploring, Olivia is more inquisitive and loud. But, there’s one thing both girls can agree on: They’re obsessed with Disney! Kate explained that they’re having a Minnie Mouse-themed party for the girls and they couldn’t be more excited.

Other Parents Shouldn’t Worry

Hill’s extremely rare birth is being studied by medical professionals. As far as what other parents could expect, Ross says that there are a lot of things that can happen that don’t make biological or logical sense. However, “you shouldn’t worry that you’re going to suddenly end up carrying two babies during a pregnancy due to superfetation.”

Medical Mystery

James also agrees, saying, “This is very rare, though we do think it has happened from time to time.” However, “when it does happen, no one is really sure how or why.” It’s a mystery.

Couple Told They Couldn’t Conceive, Then They Became Pregnant Twice, At Once is an article from: LifeDaily

With the platform of social media, you can convince others to believe whatever you want about your life. One post can show you looking happy, meanwhile inside, you’re suffering and no one even knows it.

One newlywed from Montana became very good at convincing others she was in a happy relationship. However, few people knew was that she was covering up her real feelings for her husband. The ones to whom she revealed her innermost feelings, kept it a secret until they couldn’t bear to anymore…

Wedding Remorse

Jordan Graham Story — www.hollywoodlife.com

Just one week after marrying the man of her dreams, Graham began having doubts. Before her wedding, she couldn’t wait to start the next chapter of her life, but after it, her mood shifted from excitement to remorse about being married.

A Religious Woman

Graham was very different than her husband. She worked at a daycare center, and in her off time, she spent more time with young children than with adults. Many described her as “naive, immature, socially inept, shy and quiet.” Graham also was deeply religious and didn’t believe in premarital sex…

Complete Opposites

Her husband Johnson, on the other hand, never attended church and spent all his free time with his friends, drinking beer, playing softball and driving cars. He often drove recklessly, and over the years he racked up many speeding tickets for driving 120 mph in a 70 mph zone.

Changing His Ways

However, as his relationship with Graham started getting more serious, Johnson stopped messing around and started going to a Baptist church. Then, when they got married in a park in their hometown of Kalispell, Montana, many fellow church members were among their 90 guests…

Glacier National Park

Kalispell is a city in northwest Montana, known for its natural beauty and home to Glacier National Park. The park is full of fresh blue lakes, breathtaking mountains, and picturesque glaciers, which is exactly why Graham and Johnson planned to go there on a hike one week after their wedding.

Questionable Text Message

Before the hike, Graham texted her friend saying she wanted to talk to her husband about the second thoughts she was having since marrying Johnson. She sent her friend a message saying, “But dead serious if you don’t hear from me at all again tonight, something happened.”

Having “The Talk”

The friend assumed that Graham would take the opportunity to discuss her marriage at the park where they could have some alone time. But, when she didn’t hear from Graham afterward, she became worried.

Leaving Out Important Details

Then Johnson failed to show up for work the following day and was reported missing. Graham was questioned by authorities, as it was protocol. She told investigators that her husband told her he was going for a drive with a friend and then added that she saw him get into a car that had pulled up to their home. What she failed to mention was that they took a hike that morning at Glacier National Park…

Being Questioned By Police

Two days after police questioned her, Graham told a park ranger that she found her husband’s body near the park’s Loop Trail. It was a popular trail for hikers and one that Johnson particularly loved. What followed, was Graham telling various stories about his death to many people.

Fabricating Stories

She was lying to friends, family, and federal investigators by trying to pin her husband’s disappearance on other people. One variation of her story was that Johnson had fallen while hiking with friends. This was quite the fabrication…

Leaving Out Details Of What Actually Happened

Then, five days later, she reportedly admitted to investigators that she had an argument with her husband that resulted in her pushing him to his death. Following her confession, it was hard for investigators to believe Graham since she lied about what happened so many times before.

Lacking Credibility

After previously making false statements to authorities, she had ruined her credibility. To prove she was telling the truth, Graham had to recount exactly what happened the night of July 7 when her husband of only eight days, fell to his death…

Trial, December 2013

This time, Graham’s explanation of what happened would be in front of a jury and they would determine if she was guilty of murdering her husband. It was time for the men and women of the jury to decide if Jordan Linn Graham, 22, had murder in her heart eight days after she walked down the aisle.

The Evidence

The jurors were shown text messages between Graham and a friend, in which Graham expressed doubt about her days’ old marriage, the stories she made up after Johnson’s death, and her eventual confession. “And then we were arguing some more and he went to grab my arm and my jacket and I said, ‘No,’” Graham told an FBI agent. She continued…

Portraying Herself As A Victim

“I am not going to let this happen to me, I am going to defend myself. So I kinda said, ‘Let go’ and I pushed, and he went over…It was just kind of quick thinking, like ‘Get off me!’” Graham’s public defender also portrayed her as a victim saying that she was indeed having doubts about the relationship, but that Johnson’s fall from the cliff was an accident.

Testimony From One Of Johnson’s Friends

But a testimony from one of Johnson’s close friends painted a different picture. On his last day alive, Johnson told friends that Graham had a “surprise” planned for him later that day. Cameron Fredrickson, who had known Johnson since 2006, gave his testimony…

A Bad Feeling

He said his bad feelings about Graham stemmed from the two years the couple was dating before they were married. “Their interaction with each other, it didn’t seem like a happy, loving relationship that you would normally see…It was just very awkward I guess…She was just very distant and reserved,” Fredrickson recalled.

His Suspicion Grew

Always uneasy about the relationship, Fredrickson said that Graham didn’t even look at Johnson when she delivered her vows at the wedding. Then, when he learned that his friend’s body was found lifeless at the bottom of a cliff, he knew immediately Graham had something to do with it. During the trial, security cameras were also revealed which captured the couple driving into the park and parking in the area called “The Loop.”

The Security Footage

They hiked to what prosecutors called a “dangerously steep area below the road.” While the rest was not caught on camera, after Johnson had fallen the equivalent of 15 stories, Graham got back in her car and drove home. She didn’t call for help and she didn’t stop to seek assistance.

Sentencing

Despite Graham’s best efforts to defend herself, her trial concluded. Jordan Graham pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Missoula federal court and she admitted to pushing her husband Cody Johnson off a cliff. She said it was a “split-second decision in the heat of the moment,” and she was sentenced to a little over 30 years in federal prison.

Bride Painted The Picture Of A Happy Marriage, But Her Nuptials Had A Bitter End is an article from: LifeDaily

Love is the most powerful force there is. So powerful, in fact, that it can make people do crazy things they would never normally do.

In the fall of 2005, a 22-year-old Petty Officer in the Navy fell madly in love with a young woman he met during a chance encounter over the phone. Unfortunately, the officer’s passion drove him to commit an unthinkable crime after an innocent Marine got caught up in his ‘girlfriend’s’ tragic web of lies…

Unusual Behavior

On January 2, 2006, a Marine Corporal failed to show up for roll call, which was highly unusual for the decorated Marine who had fought in 2 tours in Iraq. His friends and co-workers immediately felt that something was wrong as he would never just leave the base in Virginia Beach without getting permission.

A Marine’s Marine

“He was your ideal Marine. He wanted to look good, you know, Marines pride themselves on looking good in uniform — he was a Marine’s Marine,” said his friend, PJ McGrath. According to other friends, however, the Marine was also devoted to his wife and their unborn child…

A Family Man

“He talked about his wife, how excited he was to be a father… He was really looking forward to it. You could just tell, when he talked about her and his soon-to-be-born child, he just lit up,” said Gunnery Sgt. William Richard. Instead of being sent overseas away from his growing family, the Marine decided to enroll in intelligence school at the Navy-Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center.

A Red Flag

For the soon-to-be dad, it was a way to help people while also ensuring he would always be able to take care of his family. So when he just didn’t show up for class and was nowhere to be found on the base, everyone knew something must have happened…

An Investigation Begins

That day, NCIS agents were called about Marine Corporal Justin Huff, who seemed to have vanished and an investigation was opened. “We had all hands on deck. We probably had roughly 20 to 30 agents that were pulled in,” NCIS Agent Maureen Evans said.

The Surveillance Video

Investigators searched Justin’s room and found the only thing missing was his wallet. It appeared like Justin had just stepped out of the room for a minute and planned to return. “We pulled surveillance video of the night before he went missing and we were able to see him… leaving in the middle of the night, his dorm room and leaving the building to go out of view,” Special Agent Bill Elflein said…

The First Lead

Agents reached out to Becca, Justin’s wife, and she told them she hadn’t spoken to him the day he disappeared but that he seemed perfectly normal when they spoke the night before. Nothing made sense to the NCIS agents until they got their first lead when Private First Class William Richard told them about a strange conversation he had with Justin a few days earlier.

The Rape Investigation

“He told me that an individual came… had a conversation with him about a rape and that he was possibly involved in the Thanksgiving time frame… he told me the guy said he was an NCIS agent doing an investigation,” Special Agent Elflein said about what Richard reported. “Justin Huff also told Richard that he did not believe it was an NCIS agent because he asked this person for credentials and the agent failed to produce credentials…”

A Fake Agent

Even though Justin didn’t believe the man was an NCIS agent, his friends and fellow Marines said that he would have wanted to clear his name and help out any way he could after hearing a girl had been attacked. Investigators determined Justin wasn’t under any kind of NCIS investigation, proving that the man who had visited him really was an impersonator. “So we were wondering who this guy was that was posing as an NCIS agent and talking to Justin,” Special Agent Elflein said.

The Next Clue

Then, the agents got another clue from Private Richard, who explained that he ran into a man outside the entrance of the housing complex looking for Justin 2 days before he vanished. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, but shared the man’s description with the agents in case he was involved…

A Breakthrough

Agent Elflein spread the description of the man around the base, and within a few days, some of Justin’s Marine friends saw a man that fit the description. They accused the man of having something to do with Justin’s disappearance, which he denied. “But they had the wherewithal to grab his identification and for the very first time we had the name Cooper Jackson,” Agent Elflein said.

Complete Strangers

Jackson, an intelligence specialist in the Navy, was from a small country town in southwest Virginia and joined the Navy to see the world. According to NCIS agents, however, Justin and Jackson were complete strangers. “As the investigation continued, there was a very strange connection between Justin Huff and Cooper Jackson that we could never have never predicted,” Agent Elflein said…

The Missing Link

According to NCIS agents, they soon learned that the missing link between the 2 men was a petite blonde woman named Samantha. “She portrayed herself as blonde hair, blue eyed, five feet, gorgeous young lady. What Samantha was doing is what we now call “catfishing” and it basically involves creating a persona that you’re not,” NCIS Agent Maureen Evans explained.

A Random Caller

It all started when Samantha, whose real name was Ashley Elrod, called Jackson randomly in November of 2005. According to investigators, Elrod had been calling random numbers at the barracks for the past 3 years. After ‘accidentally’ calling the wrong number, she would identify herself with a fake name and try to establish a relationship…

A Web Of Lies

“She had had other relationships with guys in the Navy, and so there was a certain prefix that she could call the barracks. And so it was that random. She just happened to pick out, that evening, the room that Cooper was in,” said Don Marcari, Cooper Jackson’s lawyer. According to Marcari, Jackson thought the stranger sounded cute and started talking to her. “She told Cooper that she was five foot, 100 pounds, blonde. She was an art history major from a rich family in Texas that owned three houses in the Outer Banks.” In reality, Elrod was a heavyset 22-year-old high school dropout from North Carolina. She found photos of a pretty, blonde young woman and sent them to Jackson.

Too Good To Be True

“Cooper was a little bit socially awkward, I think, particularly with girls. Never had, from what I found out, a very lasting, long-term relationship. And now he had this beautiful, rich girl that was interested in him, that would talk with him for hours a day. And I think he just became in love and infatuated with her,” Marcari said about Jackson. However, soon Jackson wanted to meet up with Samantha, who he considered his girlfriend…

A Plan Backfires

They would make plans to meet up but something would always come up and Samantha would cancel. Jackson started getting suspicious and demanded to know what was going on. Elrod started to fear what would happen if Jackson found out the truth and told him that she slept with a Marine at a party to push him away and make him move on. Unfortunately, her plan backfired.

A Chance Encounter

Jackson refused to believe his girlfriend, who had told him how much she loved him, would cheat on him and became convinced that she must have been raped. When he continued to press Elrod for details, she broke down and just agreed with him so that he would stop interrogating her. But the interrogating only continued, and he coerced her to confess that a tall, white, and muscular Marine with dark hair had raped her. After that, Jackson searched the base for someone and became convinced that Justin Huff was his girlfriend’s assailant after Justin gave him a ‘look’ during a chance encounter…

The Murder

Jackson called Elrod back and pressed her to admit that the Marine’s last name was Huff. When she again broke down and agreed with him to appease him, Jackson posed as an NCIS agent, kidnapped Justin, and drove him to a remote wooded area in North Carolina to avenge his girlfriend. Justin swore on his life, his wife, and his unborn child that he had nothing to do with the rape, but Jackson was in too deep with all the crimes he committed to get Justin so he slit his throat and lit his body on fire anyway. Eventually, Jackson admitted everything to NCIS agents after they connected the dots and apprehended him. He even led them to where he buried Justin’s body and the murder weapon.

The Truth Is Finally Revealed

Jackson was charged with killing Justin and faced the charge during a 3-day hearing at Norfolk Naval Station. During which, he saw Elrod for the first time while she testified that she catfished people because she had low self-esteem, and was stunned to see the woman he had spent hours talking to wasn’t a petite blonde but a 300-400 pound young woman. During the hearing, Jackson apologized to Justin’s family for the pain he caused them. Ultimately, he took a plea deal to avoid the death sentence and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole. “It’s really, really sad that this family suffered this loss so brutally,” Agent Maureen Evans said. “They have to live every day without him, and I think the world is not in a better place because I think he had a lot to do and I think he woulda done a lot and impacted this world.”

Marine Caught In Tragic Catfishing Web Of Lies Pays Ultimate Price is an article from: LifeDaily

Defending the guilty is just part of the job for defense lawyers, and many would say just about anything to save their client from punishment no matter whether they deserve it or not.

So when a defense lawyer in England argued that his client should not be punished for her violent crime because of something that millions of women go through every month, the public thought there was no way it would hold up in court and that a judge would instantly see through the absurd defense…

Nothing But Trouble

In early November 1981, officers at a local police station in East London knew something bad had either just happened or was about to happen when a 29-year-old barmaid from the area walked into their police station.

A Bad Track Record

Officers immediately recognized the woman since she had almost 30 prior convictions and the unstable 29-year-old was known to cause trouble all around East London. According to her record, the young woman had been in prison on and off for 10 years…

History Of Violence

Over those 10 years, the woman was convicted for a variety of offenses like arson, assault, and breaking stranger’s windows with rocks. According to the police, the 29-year-old had tried to take her own life 20 times.

A Deadly Attack

Worst of all, however, was the charge that the woman had stabbed another barmaid to death during a brawl about a year earlier. For that offense, she was imprisoned for 10 months while she awaited trial. Eventually, however, she was released and placed on probation when her father intervened…

Uncovering The Truth

After Sandie was arrested for the murder of her fellow barmaid, her father, who worked as a night security guard, became determined to get to the bottom of his daughter’s erratic behavior since she seemed to be randomly taken over by violent impulses.

An Alarming Pattern

Smith’s father found her diary and studied it carefully. After reading it thoroughly, he noticed a strange and alarming pattern. Based on Smith’s diary entries, her dad realized that the violent and erratic outbursts always occurred at monthly intervals…

A Monthly Occurance

Not only did the outbursts happen once a month, but they always occurred just before she got her period. Smith’s father remembered reading an article in the newspaper about premenstrual tension, or PMT, and wondered if his daughter was suffering from the same thing.

The Diagnosis

PMT, also called PMS, is a mood disorder that occurs during the menstrual cycle that typically causes mood swings, tender breasts, food cravings, fatigue, irritability and depression in women just before the onset of their period. For some women, however, the symptoms of PMT are more severe…

Calling In An Expert

Doctor Katharina Dalton, a London-based gynecological endocrinologist, had been studying the effects of PMT since 1984 and agreed to examine Smith after hearing about what her father discovered in Smith’s diary entries.

The Examination

Dr. Dalton went to the prison where Smith was being kept until her trial and confirmed what her father had suspected. ”She had been in prison for seven months when I first saw her, and accurate records had been kept,” Dr. Dalton said about the initial examination…

A 29-Day Cycle

”Most of the month she was described as pleasant and law-abiding. But once every 29 days, she would attempt arson in her cell, or try to drown or strangle herself, or smash windows. She had been in prison on and off for 10 years prior to that, and those notes showed 26 episodes of violence occurring every 29 days,” Dalton said.

A Medical Condition

Smith pleaded innocent of murder since it carries a mandatory life sentence in England, but plead guilty to manslaughter since the sentencing is up to the judge’s discretion. After Dr. Dalton explained that Smith’s violence was caused by a medical condition out of her control, the judge came to a decision…

A Groundbreaking Sentence

Sandie Smith would be placed on probation and would have to undergo treatment for PMT, which her lawyer told the court turned her into a ‘raging animal’ once a month. Once released from jail, Sandie was treated for 3 months with daily injections of the hormone progesterone, which became imbalanced just before her period and caused her to have violent outbursts.

Treatment Begins

For the first time in years, Sandie was able to get through a month without having a violent episode. The public, however, wasn’t convinced that she could now be trusted just because she was being treated for a hormone imbalance…

1 Year Later…

About a year later, however, Sandie walked into the police station on a November afternoon carrying a 4-inch knife and started threatening to kill a sergeant who she claimed insulted her. At first, police believed they had proof that Sandie was just a violent criminal since she was still undergoing treatment.

Lowering The Dosage

Dr. Dalton told officials that Sandie’s alibi for her violent outburst still held up since she had reduced Sandie’s progesterone dosage to figure out how much she still needed. On November 10, Sandie was again placed on probation for carrying a knife and threatening the life of an officer…

Another Murderer Goes Free

The very next day, 36-year-old Christine English, who plead guilty to manslaughter after running down her boyfriend with her car and killing him, was also released from custody and had her license suspended for just a year after it was proved she also suffered from PMT.

Public Outrage

As a result of the lenient punishments, a public debate ensued. Critics argued the rulings would only set women back further. “It is a very disturbing situation. Any woman can plead PMT and literally get away with murder. I don’t think anything is going to set back women’s causes more than this thing,” said Dr. Gerlad Swyer, a prosecution witness and gynecological expert. “To let women think they become criminal once a month as a result of their physiology is to really debase the status of women. This is to say women are criminal by nature…”

The Defense

Dr. Dalton, however, argued that the ruling applied to only a very small, testable percentage of women suffering from PMT. “I’m not worried about women’s groups. I’m making better women of the few who are letting down our side,” said Dalton, who was only worried that the condition would be abused by defense attorneys. “Lawyers are sending more and more cases to me. It’s a great worry because I get plenty of rubbish. The courts will accept PMT if it’s the genuine article, but doctors have to be more careful about the diagnosis.”

Moving Forward

Despite what the public said, Sandie was just glad to finally know what was wrong with her and get her life on track. “They all said there was nothing physically wrong with me,” Sandie said. “Now I see Dr. Dalton once a month, and a visiting nurse comes every day to give me an injection of progesterone. I may be on it for years… I wouldn’t like to go through it all again,” she added. “People thought I was mad, and so did I. Before I was treated for PMT, one minute I was playing records and the next I would be out for 48 hours doing crazy things. I would like to make it up to my parents.”

Violent Women Set Free After Lawyer Argues PMS Made Her Do It is an article from: LifeDaily

When a child has to go through being homeless, it’s very difficult. Then, having to endure it on and off for nearly 20 years, that’s even worse. Life for homeless school children means isolation and struggle, which is exactly what the man in the following story experienced.

He lived in and out of homeless shelters and other people’s homes for most of his life with his family. While all the odds in the world were against him to make something of himself, he proved to the everyone that he was not giving up. Despite hiding his story for nearly his whole life, now he wants it to be heard…

Growing Up Homeless

He had to be quick in every aspect of his life. Being homeless meant he had to take late night showers at school when no one was around and do his best not to let any of the teammates or coaches know.

Sneaking Into School

Dawkins attended one of the wealthiest high schools in Fort Mill, South Carolina, but he spent the majority of his time there being homeless. He would arrive at his school late at night and slide a rock under a crack in the door of the locker room so he could slip into the building…

Searching For Stability

Since he was young, Dawkins’ family moved all over in search of stability. He moved back and forth from Shelby to Charlotte then to Columbus, Ohio and then Fort Mill and Atlanta. The high point in his life was when his mom and step-dad bought a house in Charlotte in 2009.

A Solid Foundation That Was Short-Lived

He had his own room for the first time in his life, as previously having lived in the projects. “When we got that house, I thought we were like the Jeffersons, moving up.” Dawkins explained. But, in 2011, that solid foundation crumbled. His mom, Brandy, lost her job and then the house and the family searched for places to live. That’s how they ended up in Fort Mill…

Moved To Fort Mill, South Carolina

Dawkins was nearing the end of 10th grade, and his mom and two siblings moved to a home in Fort Mill, where a coworker of his mother’s offered them to stay. But it was rough. The electricity would turn on and off and his mom had to buy the family jugs of water so they could bathe and brush their teeth.

Living At His Great Grandmother’s And Homeless Shelters

That arrangement was short-lived and then things really fell apart. The family spent time with a great grandmother that lived in Charlotte and also in local homeless shelters. Dawkins was enrolled at Fort Mill High School and he tried to keep his family’s turmoil a secret. This was no easy feat…

His Great Grandmother’s Passing

Then, when his grandmother passed away, it was another huge blow because it put an even greater dent in his safety net. He was forced to take secret showers at the school and curled up in the locker room and slept there for the night.

Keeping It A Secret

None of Dawkins’ coaches or teachers knew about his homelessness, although a few of his close friends found out. One of them, Tee Muhammad, is someone Dawkins described as a brother. The pair immediately bonded at school and there was one time Dawkins asked Muhammad’s mom, Bryant if he could spend the night…

Establishing An Official Residence

When Muhammad explained to his mom that Dawkins had nowhere else to go, she allowed him to stay. She even worked with Fort Mill High administrators to establish her home as his official residence so he could stay at school. Her son even started getting better grades at school, thanks to Dawkins’ pushing.

The Passing Of His Best Friend

But in 2015, Muhammad passed away after walking into a busy intersection without looking. After that, Dawkins wasn’t himself. Soon after, football coaches Ed Susi and Bill Geiler got an inkling that something was wrong with Dawkins…

Speechless

After a summer workout, Susi asked the team’s captains, including Dawkins, if they had anything to say before concluding the workout. When Dawkins stepped forward to speak, his throat tightened and no words came out. He was confused and laughed, but then hamstrings and other muscles in his body became stiff.

Hungry And Lacking Energy

He had barely eaten the two previous days and he was dehydrated because the water at his home was shut off. In response, Dawkins had to be hooked up to intravenous fluids for the next few hours, and then, over the next few months, Susi and other coaches gave him money or took him to the grocery store…

His Body Finally Gave In

But if Dawkins’ body didn’t show signs of wear and finally cave in, the coaches may never have known what was going on. Geiler described feeling embarrassed that he didn’t know about the situation. Being that Dawkins would just go about his business and practice hard, it was hard to difficult to tell what was going on in his life.

Nothing Was Ever As Serious As What He Was Going Through

“If he gave up a touchdown or would make a pick, he never got the highest of the highs or the lowest of the lows, because he was living the lowest of the lows. Giving up a touchdown, that was nothing,” Geiler explained. For Dawkins, football offered him an avenue to escape his unstable life…

Things Finally Started Looking Up

His world finally started to turn around when he got his first scholarship offer in the mail from Chowan College. He decided to attend Bethany College but transferred to N.C. Central to find himself. Then, he became settled at Bluefield, a small school in the quiet, Appalachian hills.

A New Life At College

Despite graduating high school with a 1.6 GPA, Dawkins made the Dean’s list every year of college. This was due to the fact that his own life was stabilized. He no longer worried about where he’ll sleep at night or where he’ll eat. He’s had a meal plan that allows him to eat three times a day in the school’s cafeteria, and it’s a convenience he appreciates more than any of his teammates…

“It Feels Good”

Dawkins said, “It just feels good to not be in a situation where I’m like, ‘what am I gonna eat today? How am I gonna eat today? How we gonna do this, or do that?’ All I’ve got to do is go to the cafeteria, or call one of my teammates or coaches.” But still, it’s taking time for him to come out of his 20-year-long traumatic fog.

He Hid His Past For So Long

He didn’t speak about his life for so long until people close to him have urged him to do so. “I told myself I was going to put my pride aside and let my story be heard…Your environment or upbringing doesn’t define who you are, it’s your fuel,” Dawkins said. He probably has so much fuel because of what he’s been through with his family…

Family Turmoil

Dawkins brother was murdered, and three other brothers were in and out of prison. He never knew his biological father and has attended six different high schools, with his mother growing up the same way as him. But despite all of this turmoil, Dawkins will become the first in his family to graduate from college.

Life Today

He dreams about playing in the NFL but is mainly excited to graduate college. Although he still has to get over the emotional trauma he has endured, Dawkins says that he constantly reminds himself, “It’s really sink or swim.” It’s what one of his coaches told him and it has stuck with him. Today Dawkins lives a more stable life in a three-bedroom apartment in Virginia. He plays football for Bluefield College and is two semesters away from graduating.

Athlete Kept His Homelessness A Secret For Years And Now He Has The Courage To Share His Story is an article from: LifeDaily

Husband, wife, two or three kids, a dog and a nice house with a green lawn. That’s the recipe for a happy suburban family, so archetypical that it’s the setup for just about every sitcom family in TV history.

Of course, real life isn’t TV. Real life isn’t always full of laughs and is often filled with problems that aren’t easily summed up in a half hour. And not everything going on is laid out clearly for the benefit of an audience. Sometimes, there are bad things going on beneath the surface…

Nice LIfe

Eric Ringenberg Story — www.illinoisstate.edu

Pamela and Eric were living a nice, pleasant life that would be the envy of plenty of people. The two of them had both graduated from Illinois State and took jobs with the State Farm insurance company. Somewhere along the line, they met each other.

Good Jobs

With Pamela working as a compliance analyst and Eric working in IT, they didn’t see too much of each other at work but when they did, they enjoyed each other’s company. They eventually went out on a date, then another, and before you know it, they were engaged to be married…

Gossip Mill

Of course, everyone at State Farm knew about their relationship. For those who liked to gossip about such things, it was a topic that would come up from time to time. The optimistic were pleased as punch that the two of them found love while the cynical said it wouldn’t last.

Beautiful Union

But the cynics were wrong and Pamela and Eric had a lovely wedding. Sometime after that day, they decided to have a child because, after all, that’s what married couples do. After a few months of trying and 9 months of pregnancy, little Colin was born…

One More Time

The couple was naturally ecstatic to have their baby boy. After about a year, they decided to have a second child. After all, that’s what couples generally do. Pamela’s pregnancy proceeded without any complications and, after 9 months, little Russell was born.

Suburban Ideal

By all accounts, Pamela and Eric were living a nice, normal life. They had good, steady jobs, a nice house in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood, and two beautiful kids. It was as if they were living the template for a good life. But contrary to all indications, someone wasn’t happy within their home…

Unexpected Awakening

One day in September, just over a week after Russell was born Pamela Ringenberg found herself waking up in the middle of the night. It’s not unusual for the mother of an infant to be jarred out of her sleep but this time, rather than the sound of her child’s cries, it was the shrill beeping of their smoke alarm that woke her.

Smoke!

When she took a breath in and smelled the smoke in the air, her heart rate spiked immediately. Pamela turned toward Eric and he was missing from his spot in the bed. She reached for her cell phone but it wasn’t in its usual spot or anywhere in sight…

Missing

Pamela rushed to her children’s rooms but also found them missing. She was now as confused as she was worried. Where was her family? With the heat rising and smoke stinging her eyes and filling her lungs, she had no choice but to run out of the house, rather than take more time to search for them.

Help!

She ran outside into the cool, predawn air, the silence of the night only broken by her coughs and the growing sounds of the fire. Pamela ran to a neighbor’s door and pounded, crying for help until she woke someone and they called 911…

Massive Anxiety

As first responders rushed to her Bloomington, Illinois home, Pamela was beyond worried. There was still no sign of her husband or children. Eric’s car was still in the driveway and, using a neighbor’s phone, she got no response when she called his cell phone.

Sirens

In minutes Pamela began to hear sirens in the distance. Firefighters began to battle the blaze, which was still at a manageable level, while EMT’s began treating her for smoke inhalation. When the firefighters went into the home’s basement, they found a tragic sight…

Terrible Scene

There, they found Pamela’s two children and her husband, and the family dog all dead. Her whole world had been destroyed in a single moment and, naturally, Pamela believed this was the worst thing that could have happened. But when she found out that it wasn’t fire or smoke inhalation that had killed her family, she was even more devastated.

Murder-Suicide

The firefighters found Eric hanging by his neck from a rope in an apparent suicide. Even worse, her 2-year-old son Colin and her 1-week-old infant Russell had been killed before the fire started, apparently from strangulation with some sort of string or ligature…

Investigation

When the police began to look into their deaths, the first place they looked was to the internal security cameras that the Ringenberg’s had in their home. What they saw in the minutes before the fire proved that Eric had intended to kill his entire family and himself.

Heinous End

As his wife slept, Eric had gathered all of the cell phones in the house together and hidden them in a kitchen cabinet. He then strangled his two sons, brought their bodies to the basement before starting the fire that was presumably to kill Pamela and hide what he’d done. After the fire started, he looped a noose around his neck and ended his life…

Unbearable Mundanity

Pamela could think of no reason why Eric had done something so horrific. He’d given no outward indications that he was unhappy with his marriage or his life or that he was suffering from any kind of mental illness. But apparently, the simple suburban life had been crushing him inside.

No Judgment

In the time before Eric’s actions became public knowledge, Pamela released a statement on Facebook saying “Friends and family. I do not have my phone so I could not reach you all directly nor will I be monitoring Facebook for quite some time….There will be some news coming out soon and I ask you just refrain from judgment and understand this is a very difficult time. Please just pray for all my family. Thank you.”…

Unimaginable Loss

Later, Ringenberg family released a statement through a lawyer saying “The magnitude of their loss is unimaginable.” They didn’t want to discuss matters with the general public or media but went on to say “The families are very appreciative of the first responders, the State Farm Community and OSF [St. Joseph] Hospital staff for the assistance they have been provided during and since their tragedy.”

Seek Help

In an obituary, Eric was described as a “loving husband and a devoted father.” It went on to say “Colin was a bright, loving child who loved Thomas the Train and Paw Patrol. His favorite thing was visiting the fire trucks and fire stations,” and called Russell a “happy, loving baby.” If you or a loved one are considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 800 273 8255 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org. There is a better way out.

Tragedy At State Farm Employees’ Home Shatters Wife’s Suburban Illusions is an article from: LifeDaily

Besides the remaining Rockefellers, Bill Gates, and the current presidential family, just about every American dreams of winning the lottery. Now, the educated among us will believe that such dreams should remain in the realm of fantasy. “Lotteries are just taxes for stupid people,” or so they say.

Every so often though, even the most cynical among us are proven wrong. We’re treated to images of happy people whose unlikely windfall truly changes their lives. Of course, we rarely hear about what happens afterward…

Needing Fuel

Scotty was thirteen years old and already working a part-time job to help his impoverished family make ends meet. It was a cold February day and Galax, Virginia was in the middle of a cold snap. On his way home from work, Scotty had picked up a bunch of old newspapers to use as kindling in the family’s wood stove. It wasn’t enough, but it would do.

Rifling Through

Up until that day, Scotty’s family lived off the land. The wood stove in Scotty’s house was used for everything, from cooking the veggies they grew in their backyard garden, to the animals they hunted in the Appalachian hills. As Scotty rifled through the newspapers, he noticed a sudden flash of shiny black plastic tucked into the folded papers. It was a good thing he noticed it…

Imbedded Record

Scotty didn’t own many records, he didn’t own any at all in fact, but his parents did have an AM/FM turntable that could play them. He didn’t know what was on the record, but even if it was one song he’d never heard, he was happy to finally have a record of his own: something he’d never have been able to afford otherwise.

Strange Music

He put the vinyl onto the turntable and dropped the needle. A strange song began to play. It was a song he remembered hearing before, though he couldn’t quite recall where that had been. When the odd tune had ended, a voice crackled into life and instructed the listener to call a number to claim his prize…

What was It?

The record, as it turned out, wasn’t a record at all but something called a flexi-disc. These thin pieces of vinyl or vinyl-coated paper were created so that records could be distributed more widely and affordably than they would have otherwise. The purpose of them was almost purely promotional.

Flexi-disc

Because of the cheap cost of production, flexi-discs could come in all shapes and sizes. Most people had turntables in their homes in those days, so these flexi-discs could often be found attached to the spines of magazines, mailed out as postcards, or even on the back of cereal boxes. Everyone had them, but it was the fast food industry that made the most use of them…

Fast Food Flexi

It was the 1980s, and the fast food industry loved them some flexi-discs. They even started putting them in Kid’s meals. Burger King had flexi-discs featuring Alf and before long, brand favorite McDonald’s finally got into the game. They were going to go above and beyond their competitors though.

How Many?

McDonald’s had upped the ante on Flexi-disc production, printing 80 million flexis of its “Menu Song” in one go. For scale, this is the equivalent of an 80-times-platinum record, which dwarfs the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. MJ only sold 66 million copies of his record. Scotty’s disc was one of that 80 million…

Couldn’t Afford

When Scotty was a child, his poor family never really ate out at McDonald’s, a place that today is synonymous with fast food but was, in his mind, his favorite restaurant. It was a luxury to eat out anywhere, especially when keeping enough food in the Landreth house was a challenge in and of itself.

How Much?

This particular McDonald’s promotion was, at least for Scotty, a real Charlie and the Chocolate Factory situation. You see, one of the 80 million Menu Song records offered a $1 million prize for one lucky recipient. As it turned out, that recipient was one of the people in the US at the time who most needed it: Scotty Landreth…

Never Imagined

“I figured we might have won a car or free meals: either way it would have been good to me,” explained Scotty. “I never, ever could have thought that it’d be a million dollars.” Once that record came into their life, the Landreth’s lives changed for the better. Not just for them, but for the whole town of Galax, Virginia.

More than a Miracle

There was one caveat, of course, Scotty was still a minor, which meant that he couldn’t officially collect his winnings. Thankfully, his mother, Charlene Price, was able to do so on his behalf. Finding the winner of the McDonald’s contest was a big deal, as it turned out, and the next year saw the family undergoing several big changes…

Appearances

Charlene was flown out to Chicago to promote the campaign and show the world that there were indeed winners in the McDonald’s contest. Oprah’s stylist even did her hair for the performance. Scotty’s family had been elevated to minor celebrity status and it gave them a newfound sense of purpose.

The Price is Right

The family returned to Galax with a new idea in mind. Charlene Price worked in a local grocery store prior to the win and wanted to take it over, to build a business for her family. She purchased the store and renamed it The Price Is Right. She hired family members and even set up a credit system for locals in need. It was what the community needed…

Bittersweet Gift

Charlene married the love of her life and the store did well…for a time. Despite her best efforts and best intentions, things didn’t pan out for the family in the long run. 30 years since that windfall, the bittersweet memories of their one-time win have haunted what’s left of the Landreth family.

Many Tales

A decade after she won the money, Charlene Price died penniless in a hospice bed in her sister’s trailer. The Price and Landreth families, as well as many other residents of Galax, tell very different stories of their downfall. Many of them believe that Price, who had been poor her whole life, was ill-equipped to deal with her newfound wealth…

Couldn’t Handle It

This could be so, after all, the same happens to many lottery winners. Many believe the problem was that her first mistake was her taking all the money in a lump sum up-front. Still, others say that greedy family members stole money from Charlene, or that she spent too much on lavish trips to Dollywood, Guatemala, or Hawaii.

Fallen Apart

Charlene’s marriage fell apart, she was forced to close the Price is Right, and some say her new boyfriend cleaned out their bank accounts and left town soon after. When the money left, so too did Scotty’s chances at getting ahead in life. He ended up getting a full-time job to support his family by working at, you guessed it, the local McDonald’s…

Sibling Rivalry

Today, Scotty makes his living at that McDonald’s and by working odd-jobs like tree-trimming and gardening. His sister Tammy meanwhile, lives at the Galax motel. The two rarely ever talk because of some long-forgotten argument over the flexi-disc. And the “golden disc” that brought them their brief fortune, it turns out they lost it along the way.

Sad Story

Fortune turned Scotty’s life from upside down to rightside up and back again. His mother’s early death may have been, in some part, due to the fact that she could not reconcile the loss of their newfound fortune. It wasn’t a golden ticket after all, but a piece of plastic heartbreak that ruined all the lives attached to it.

Impoverished Teen’s Fortuitous Discovery Spells Joy And Eventual Heartache For His Small Town Family is an article from: LifeDaily

This is a story the likes of which can usually be found in Hollywood movies or literary thrillers. It’s a story of one family’s struggle to come to terms with the mistakes that cost them everything, and the villain behind it all.

It’s been more than a decade since the family in this story has gone through their ordeal. They live a simple life now, but in days long past, they were once at the peak of high society. That all came crashing down, however, when one Machiavellian fraudster first entered their lives…

Simple Life

Thierry Tilly Story — www.thetimes.co.uk

Our story today begins in a semi-detached house in Oxford, where an elegant, unmistakably aristocratic woman lives with her husband and three grown children. It’s a tight living space, a simple place for so formerly grand a family, but it’s the lot of them have left of their past grandeur.

Tucked Together

Christine, who is 58, her 65-year-old husband Charles-Henri, and their three children, Guillaume, 35, Amaury, 32, and Diane, 27, used to live in a chateau near Bordeaux, France. They were part of an ancient family, one whose wealth had kept them going for centuries. We’re talking very old money here. But even old money spends…

Retirement Plans

Years ago, Christine had a plan for her golden years that would have seen her sitting in a vast, ancestral manor, surrounded by sunflowers in southern France. Unfortunately, that is not the case today, and it all comes back to 1999 when a man named Thierry entered their lives and made them question everything.

Secretary

It was her husband Charles-Henri’s older sister Ghislaine, who first brought Thierry into their lives. She worked as the director of a Paris secretarial college, and Thierry was her deputy. He seemed a good sort, from good stock, who had rubbed elbows with some of the most respectable people in their upper-class world…

Bold Claims

What they didn’t know at the time, however, was that the man’s claims, many of which seemed outlandish to say the least, were nothing more than the well-researched elements of a long-term scheme. He claimed he was a descendant of the Habsburgs and the son of an Olympic ice-skater.

Telling Tales

Despite their misgivings about the verity of such claims, the family believed him. They believed much of what he said mainly because they had no reason to doubt him, yet anyway. So when he told them that he knew about a sinister plot against the family, they listened carefully…

Sinister Plots

Thierry Tilly’s stories of a sinister masonic plot against the Védrines family were enough to have them step back and take notice. Over the course of the next few years, Tilly ingratiated himself into their confidence. He even had them convinced that it was only he who could save them from what awaited them.

Bugged

Tilly’s claim was that he was a secret agent and that he’d known their lives were in danger for some time. He said they were all bugged and had been followed and surveilled for some time by an evil network that included not only strangers but even member of their own family. He told them he had the tools to keep them safe…

One After Another

As incredible, as downright unbelievable as all of this seemed, the family was falling for it. It was almost as if their reason had left them, that they were under some sort of spell. Even the family matriarch Guillemette an 88-year-old and the older brother, Philippe, a retired Shell Oil executive, were so undone by paranoia, that they believed this man.

Closed-off

Believing that the whole family and the fortune were endangered, the family barricaded itself behind the closed shutters of Château Martel, their ancestral home. They cut off all contact with the outside world, except for Thierry Tilly of course. To be fair, their fortune was in danger, but the fox had already been in the henhouse for some time…

Banishment

Charles-Henri, Christine’s husband and heir apparent, was an obstetrician. He was a learned man who had spent his career in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and yet it all failed him when it came to logically following Tilly’s ruse to its source. Any family member who spoke against Tilly or his motives was banished from the family. He had completely taken over from within.

Rasputin Anew

The banished family member described Tilly’s control of them as if the conman had “opened their heads and taken out their brains.” He was like Rasputin, slowly using mental techniques and his trust within the family to cement the verity of his claims in their collective head. At one point, he even convinced the family that they’d have to leave France…for their own safety…

Leave France

Tilly uprooted the family and helped facilitate their move to Great Britain, He told them that if they stayed in France, their lives would be at risk. After that, his methods became even more ruthless. Tilly beat, threatened, and humiliated Christine to obtain what he believed to be a “key” to a non-existent family fortune he claimed she possessed.

Betrayal

As if that weren’t enough, Tilly had turned Christine’s own children against her. He made them believe she had been working with those who meant the family harm. In March of 2009, Christine fled back to France. She told the police what had happened, that the man her family had trusted was nothing more than a criminal, and mercifully, they believed her…

Broken Spell

Police arrested Thierry Tilly in Switzerland soon after, but his spell over the Védrines family was not yet broken. Such was his power over the family that it was a further six months before a lawyer who specialized in cult victims could persuade Charles-Henri and the children to return to Christine’s side in France. By then, the damage had been done.

So Many Fleeced

It’s hard to believe that 11 members of a wealthy, noble Protestant family could have been so thoroughly brainwashed over the course of a decade by one man, but there are reasons why Tilly’s brand of control worked so well. The main one was that the family was so insular, they didn’t need much outside counsel, so discussions within the family were all Tilly-driven…

Ill-Equipped

“I heard someone on the radio talking about us and saying we were cultured, educated, intelligent and this should have armed us against Tilly,” explained Christine “But it didn’t. We were simply not armed to deal with someone who lied on such an extraordinary scale…” she added that perhaps they were naive, almost like hypnotized puppets.

Fighting Back

Charles-Henri, who had originally inherited Château Martel, was devastated when he learned that he’d been tricked into signing away the property at Tilly’s suggestion. He thought he’d been signing for a loan, he didn’t find out until much later that he’d signed away his ancestral home and that the money for it was already gone…

Rebuilding

Today the family is trying to rebuild their life in some way. Charles-Henri has returned to work as a doctor, his children are finishing degrees and opening their own businesses, and Christine has written a book about the ordeal. Charles-Henri is determined to get his family home back, even if it takes him the rest of his life.

Current Whereabouts

As for Thierry Tilly, he is currently serving 10 years in jail for the kidnap, brutal treatment, extortion, and abuse of the Védrines family. Sadly, all of the Védrines’ property, the things they’d sold off at his suggestion, has disappeared. Their jewels, paintings, money, several properties, and most devastatingly, their family photos and heirlooms remain to be recovered.

Wealthy Family Of Aristocrats Lose It All Thanks To Sinister Scammer is an article from: LifeDaily

If there’s one thing that the families of those struggling with addiction will tell you, it’s that no matter what you do or don’t do to support that family member, kicking the habit ultimately comes down to the substance abuser and the choices that they make.

In the best cases, those choices are good and they get better. In the worst cases, those choices are horrible and result in the kind of suffering that spreads out far beyond the individual’s life…

Enviable Marriage

Ken and Janet had the kind of relationship that many people dream of having. The 56-year-old man and 61-year-old woman had been married for 28 wonderful years. Since 1997, they’d been living in the same house in Griswold, Connecticut raising their family through good times and bad.

My 3 Sons

The greatest highlights of their nearly 3 decades together would have to be the births of their sons Matthew, Gregory, and Eric. They had brought unimaginable joy along with them when they each came into the world. But as can often be the case with family, it was those same sons that brought some of the worst moments in Ken and Janet’s lives…

Crushing Loss

Perhaps the most heartbreaking tragedy was when Gregory unexpectedly died. He was so young when it happened that his age could still be measured in weeks and the loss was devastating to the family.

Addiction

While Matthew and Eric would grow up without any significant health problems, Matthew would suffer from an affliction all too common amongst young people. During his teenage years, he began abusing drugs, beginning a struggle with addiction that would last his entire life….

Backslider

Though he’d kicked his drug habit several times, it was always all too easy to relapse. When Matthew was 21 years old, after recently losing his job, he slipped back into his old ways and began taking heroin.

Supportive Parents

Ken and Janet tried to support their son as best they could and allowed him to stay with them in their home until he got back on his feet. Without a steady source of income, his parents believed he would be safe from his addiction simply by not being able to afford drugs. Unfortunately, Matthew had come up with a dangerous way to feed his habit without having any cash…

Barter

Matthew Lindquist had arranged a deal with a dealer named Sergio Correa where he would trade his father’s gun collection for heroin. Kenneth was a responsible gun owner and kept his weapons in a locked safe so Matthew couldn’t just swipe them and make the trade.

Hatching A Plan

Instead, he and Sergio had worked out a plan where, after his parents went to sleep early in the evening, Matthew would take the dealer to the safe and he would make off with it, then tie the drug-addicted young adult up and make the whole thing look like it had been a robbery…

Bringing Backup

From Sergio’s perspective, it was a great deal. With just a quick and easy 20 minutes or so of work, he would get a collection of firearms worth far more than the value of the drugs he’d have to give up. In order to drive the car and as backup just in case things didn’t go smoothly, he decided to bring along his sister Ruth.

Backing Out

Sergio and Ruth met up with Matthew a few blocks away from his parents’ home and went over the final details of the staged robbery and the exchange. But in the short time between when they met and when they drove to his parents’ block, Matthew had a change of heart. The full gravity of what he was about to do finally hit him and he wanted to call the whole thing off…

Deadly Chase

Of course, that didn’t sit well with Sergio. He began to yell at Matthew, trying to force him to go through with the plan as they’d agreed. But when Ruth parked the car just down the street from the house, Matthew got out and bolted into a wooded area off the road. Sergio chased after him, brandishing a machete.

Freaking Out

When Sergio caught up with Matthew some 50 feet away from the road, he struck him in the back of the head, knocking him down. That’s when Matthew began to yell and “freak out,” Ruth said. Enraged, her brother started stabbing him, then put the knife in Ruth’s hand and she stabbed him too…

Escalating Crime

What had started out as a burglary had turned into a killing. Still, Sergio was determined not to leave without the guns he’d been promised. He and Ruth went into Ken and Janet Lindquist’s open basement door and found the safe. Frustration spiked in him when the locked safe turned out to be bolted to the floor.

Going Further

Still refusing to give up on the guns, Sergio decided to go upstairs and get the keys to the safe from Matthew’s parents. Now armed with a baseball bat, Sergio attacked Ken, beating him senseless as he refused to give up the keys…

Take What You Want And Go

When Janet asked the home invaders why they were doing this, Ruth told her it was because Matthew had set them up. Under the threat of further violence, Janet gave Sergio the keys to the safe under the condition that they would just take what they wanted and leave her and her husband alive.

No Witnesses

Sergio retrieved the firearms and held Janet at gunpoint while Ruth ransacked the house, collecting anything of value she could find. But when she got back to the room where Sergio was with the woman, he found him holding a rope wrapped tightly around her neck and pulling while Janet was face down on the floor, with Sergio’s foot in her back…

Light It Up

On the way out of the house, Sergio lit the place on fire using some flammable liquid he found in the basement. They loaded up the stolen goods into Matthew’s stolen car and made off. Firefighters responded to the blaze and found the bodies of Ken and Janet and Matthew’s car was found set ablaze in a nearby parking lot sometime later.

Where’s The Son?

Initially, Matthew was considered a person of interest by police who thought he may have had something to do with the incident. It wasn’t until months later that his body was found in the woods by his parents home that they knew he was a victim as well…

Telltale Texts

It was through Matthew’s phone records that investigators began to piece together the truth of what happened that night. They were able to quickly track down Ruth Correa but didn’t even need to look for Sergio as he was already in jail on unrelated drug charges.

Immediate Confession

Once in police custody, Ruth immediately confessed to everything she and her brother had done. It was baffling that the young mother of two would take part in such a brutal and heinous act, considering that she’d had no prior criminal record. Regardless, with her confession and a large amount of physical evidence, it’s almost certain that she and Sergio will spend many years behind bars for the lives they took.

Drug Abuser’s ‘Robbery’ Gone Wrong Ends In Catastrophic Loss For His Family is an article from: LifeDaily

The honeymoon has to be the happiest time for any newly-married couple. Some choose to enjoy a week or two in an upmarket, five-star hotel for plenty of rest and relaxation after the stresses of the wedding; while others wanting to prolong the beloved honeymoon opt for luxury cruises so they can enjoy that time to the fullest.

When Scott decided to take his new bride on a cruise to Mexico, Karen was more excited than he was for the trip. She had dreamt of going on a luxury cruise liner for years, and now her dream was about to become a reality…

First Impressions

Scott Roston Story — www.murderpedia.org

When Scott met Karen he had a sneaky feeling deep down that she would be his wife someday. He wasn’t totally sure why he had that hunch but there was just something about her that made Scott think she was great wife material. It wasn’t long after the couple met that things went from casual attraction to something far more serious.

Common Interests

The way in which Scott and Karen met is something straight out of a Hollywood movie. As it happens, Scott was actually Dr. Scott as he was a practicing and fairly popular chiropractor. Karen worked in the same field, but as a physical therapist. There’s little doubt destiny brought this couple together…

Needing Treatment

Scott was just leaving his practice after a long day at work when he slipped and fell down the stairs. His injury was serious enough that he needed to go to the hospital and then needed a course of specialist physiotherapy to recover from his injuries; Karen was his physical therapist, and to Scott’s mind, a good one at that. They met twice weekly for a while and their chemistry just got stronger and stronger.

Wedding Bells

It was a freezing day in February when Scott finally tied the knot with Karen, following what some would call a very short courting period. The wedding was everything they expected and family and friends alike joined the newly-wedded couple, sharing their happiness with them on their big day…

Cruise Time

Scott said he wanted to do something special for Karen for their honeymoon. After all, honeymoons don’t happen so often and he wanted it to be just right. Scott knew that Karen had always wanted to go on a luxury cruise so he booked the best of the best, en-route to Mexico.

High Winds

On the last day of their honeymoon cruise, as the ship was headed back to San Diego, according to Scott, there was a storm of sorts and high winds on the cruise liner. It was the day before Valentine’s day, and things were about to take a turn for the worse. But there were no high winds off the coast of San Diego that night…

Late-Night Jog

According to Scott, for some reason, he and his new wife had gone for a late-night jog on the deck of the ship. In this case, late-night meant 2 am in the morning; a strange time indeed to go jogging. By 3 am Scott had reported to authorities on the ship that his wife had been blown off the deck and into the sea.

Bizarre Account

Scott Roston’s account of what had happened that night was bizarre, to say the least. For starters, the wind velocity was no more than 5 mph that night, so it was unlikely that Karen was blown off. But then he changed his story, alleging that his wife had “fallen” overboard and not due to the wind…

Totally Impossible

Scott now claimed that Karen fell over the side of the ship but that wasn’t possible in reality. For a start, the ship’s rail was over three-foot tall, while Karen was five-foot-three inches. Karen would have to have been a high jumper to clear that rail, besides, Scott had weird triangular gouges on his face and a bunch of scratches.

Fantasy World

Scott must have been living in some sort of fantasy world if he thought authorities would buy his story. He claimed he had hit his face on a control box but no blood or skin was found on the box meaning he must have been lying. The fact that the control box had no sharp edges made Scott’s allegations even less plausible…

Body Found

When the Coast Guard spotted two white sneakers bobbing in the Pacific waters around thirty miles off the coast on San Diego, they were pleased to have found Karen but weren’t surprised. Fortunately, but unfortunately for Scott, She had been kept afloat in the ocean due to air which was trapped inside her clothing.

Suspicious Marks

It was an open and shut case for the medical examiners when they checked Karen. Signs of hemorrhaging in her neck and eyes confirmed the team’s worst fears; Karen had been strangled then thrown overboard. But more than that, unequivocal evidence was provided which made her murder a foregone conclusion…

Up On Deck

When detectives took a closer look at the deck, they found parts of Karen’s earrings just a few feet away from the railing where she went overboard. There was also stands of Karen’s hair on deck, suggesting that a struggle must have taken place.

Third Version

Detectives had a hunch that Roston was lying, and after he was arrested he gave them another bizarre version of events which made them even more suspicious. During his investigation at the Terminal Island detention center, Scott claimed that Israeli secret agents had killed Karen because Scott “had published an expose last year of the countless crimes of [their] government.”

Doubling Down

Instead of admitting that the Israeli agent story was a hoax, Roston doubled down and claimed that this was really what happened on the ship. During his trial, Roston conceded that the outlandish story, “may at first blush appear impossible, contrived, unbelievable”, but Roston pleaded with the jury, saying, “these kinds of things do happen in the world of international intrigue.”

Life Sentence

Scott Roston received a life sentence without the possibility for parole from a jury of his peers. His appeal fell on deaf ears for the most part, although the Court of Appeals did remand for resentencing. As a result, Roston’s sentence was commuted to a term of a maximum of 33 years and nine months…

Third Appeal

Unsatisfied with the new sentence, a few years later and Roston’s defense team were appealing to the court for a third time. They argued at that time that the 405-month sentence was unwarranted. In this case, however, unfortunately for Roston, the court disagreed and he needed to stay put.

Already Suspicious

Rewind a little to the courting period between Scott and Karen and suspicions were already in place about this man. Karen’s mother, a Mrs. Waltz, told police that she had always been suspicious of Roston. When she first met him, for example, she said he seemed “too well rehearsed,” and the rind he gave to Karen for the engagement looked like a fake diamond to her. The fact that she never spoke about her suspicions before the murder is something she has to live with for life.

All About Power

Other suspicions were raised about Scott Roston when a woman on the cruise called Peggy Thompson who dined with him said that Roston had made a “startling statement.” According to Thompson, “He mentioned that one of the things he liked about being a chiropractor was the sense of power it gave you,” she said. “When he had the person in a position that he could either cure them or he could do great harm to them.”

Justice Served

Despite the convoluted nature of this murder case, as well as the numerous appeals made regarding the sentence, the fact is that justice was ultimately served as Scott Roston spent the best part of the remainder of his life behind bars. There he had plenty of time to think about what he had done, as Karen’s family got justice for their daughter.

Newly-Wedded Husband Claims Bride Fell Overboard On Cruise In “Stiff Wind” is an article from: LifeDaily

After a crime occurs, people trust that the police will be able to help make sense of it all. Unfortunately, some cases go cold and victims are forced to accept that justice will never be served.

After 2 Canadian families were left devastated by a savage and random attack, they demanded police find the person responsible and bring him to justice. When the case went cold, however, they feared that would never happen. Yet a new investigation method turned up a new lead more than 3 decades later…

A Short Road Trip

William Talbott Story — www.heraldnet.com

In 1987, a young Canadian couple from Saanich, British Columbia, decided to go on a short, overnight trip to Seattle. According to the pair’s families, the 20-year-old and his 18-year-old girlfriend were going to Seattle to buy some furnace parts for his family’s business.

Travel Plans

Since Seattle was only a little over 4.5 hours away from Saanich, they decided to drive together and stay the night in Seattle. According to the couple’s plans, they would leave for Seattle on November 18, 1987, and stay there overnight before returning home the next day…

Running Late

On November 19, however, the pair failed to return home when they told their families to expect them. At first, the families weren’t too worried and thought the couple was just running late. But as more time passed, they started to fear something happened to them.

The Worried Families

The family suspected the couple may have experienced car trouble or possibly missed the ferry back to Saanich, which is on the southern point of Vancouver Island. But it was unlike the normally responsible couple to not contact anyone if they were running late…

A Missing Persons Report

As more time passed with no word from the couple, their families contacted the police to file a missing persons report for 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg and 20-year-old Jay Cook. Police immediately sent the report to Seattle to notify the police there to be on the lookout.

Bad News

Over the next few days, the Canadian families prayed that Tanya and Jay would come walking into the door or that police would call them with news that they found them. Days later, on November 24, the police finally did call and explained they had some news. Tragically, it wasn’t the news they were hoping for…

1 Week Later

Police explained that on November 24, Tanya’s body was found in a ditch in rural Skagit County, Washington. The 18-year-old’s limbs had been bound with plastic ties and she had been shot in the head. An autopsy revealed even more gruesome details about her death.

The Autopsy

When the results of the autopsy came back, investigators learned that Tanya had been raped while she was alive. They also determined she had died on November 19 after being shot in the head from less than 2 inches away…

Another Victim

Jay’s body was nowhere to be found, and police rushed to track him down not knowing if he was still alive or not. If Jay was still alive, he would know what happened to Tanya. Yet just 2 days later, the police discovered that Jay hadn’t survived either.

Another Gruesome Discovery

On November 26, investigators found Jay’s body more than 50 miles away from where they had discovered Tanya’s body. According to the police, Jay was found covered in a blue blanket and had been beaten with rocks and strangled to death…

A Random Attack

The tan van, which belonged to Jay’s father, that the couple had taken for the road trip was nowhere to be found. According to Craig Matheson, Snohomish County’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor, the murders ‘were as random as they were savage.’

Demanding Justice

Tanya and Jay’s families were devastated by their deaths. Nothing would be able to make the situation right, but they demanded that the couple get justice and that the person responsible be punished for the grisly murders…

A Dead End

Detectives worked tirelessly to collect as much evidence as possible and follow up any leads that they came across. Unfortunately, they quickly ran out of leads and since it appeared to be a random killing, new leads were few and far between.

The Case Goes Cold

Months passed by without any new developments in the case and the police were no closer to finding the murderer. Eventually, both the investigators and the families started to fear whether they would ever find out who killed Tanya and Jay…

3 Decades Later…

Over the following decades, the couple’s families clung to the hope that 1 day a new piece of information would shed some light on the cold case. More than 30 years later, the day they had been hoping for finally came in the spring of 2018.

A Breakthrough

The new lead came after authorities sent DNA evidence from the cold case and many others to Parabon NanoLabs, a private lab in Virginia that conducts genealogy analysis. A lab genealogist, CeCe Moore, entered the DNA from the crime scene to GEDMatch, a free site where anyone who has ever had their DNA tested by sites like Ancestry or 23andMe can upload their results to expand their search for more relatives…

Connecting The Genetic Dots

After inputting the crime scene DNA, Moore found a partial match. “The significant matches were at about the second cousin level,” she explained. Moore then built out the family tree to the 2 second cousins’ great-grandparents.

The Main Suspect

After that, Moore worked her way through the family tree to the couple that tied the 2 families together. That couple had just 1 son, William Earl Talbott II, who was 24 years old at the time of the murders. Moore passed the information on to investigators, who then watched Talbott, now 55, for a few days…

A Match

When Talbott threw out a cup that he had drank from, officers surveilling him retrieved it collected DNA and tested it against the crime scene DNA. It was a match. The truck driver was taken into custody on May 17, 2018, and has since been charged with 2 counts of aggravated first-degree murder.

Justice Is Happening

Talbott has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is now awaiting his trial in jail. If found guilty, he will face life in prison. “We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer. Yesterday’s arrest shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives,” said Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary. “It’s a sense of some justice that’s starting to happen here,” added John Van Cuylenborg, Tanya’s brother.

Trucker Faces Life In Prison Thanks To Cousin’s Genealogy Site Profile is an article from: LifeDaily

For hundreds of years, human beings have killed, battled, and left a wake of destruction in an attempt to possess the earth’s riches.

When ships carrying those precious treasures fell victim to storms and naval battles, the hunt for the riches turned to the sea. Recently, 1 country claimed to have found the most famous of all shipwrecks, long thought to be lost at sea forever. Unsurprisingly, an international battle has broken out because of what was on board…

Searching For Shipwrecks

In November 2015, Columbia invited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), a Massachusetts-based institute known for its expertise in deep water exploration, to help them search for shipwrecks in the Caribbean Sea.

Exploration Experts

WHOI, who helped find the wreckage of Air France 447 off the coast of Brazil 2 years after it crashed in 2009, agreed to help and set out on the Columbian Navy’s ARC Malpelo, a research ship, that November and brought along their autonomous underwater vehicle called the REMUS 6000…

2,000 Feet Below

On November 27, the researches sent out the REMUS 6000 to survey the area they were searching that day. Later that day, the underwater vehicle’s sonar imaging detected a sunken vessel in about 600 meters, or almost 2,000 feet, of water.

A Closer Look

“During that November expedition, we got the first indications of the find from side scan sonar images of the wreck,” WHOI expedition leader Mike Purcell said. “From those images, we could see strong sonar signal returns, so we sent REMUS back down for a closer look to collect camera images…”

The Initial Findings

The REMUS was sent down to the ship and stopped about 30 feet above it, which was close enough to get some photographs the shipwreck while not disturbing the site. At first, the crystal-clear images showed dozens of cracked teacups and ceramics.

A Stunning Detail

“The wreck was partially sediment-covered, but with the camera images from the lower altitude missions, we were able to see new details in the wreckage,” said Purcell. Yet as the REMUS continued to photograph the wreckage, researchers saw something that stopped them dead in their tracks…

The Telltale Carvings

Research engineer Jeff Kaeli was on duty at the time and stopped the REMUS when he spotted the ship’s cannons. “The resolution was good enough to make out the decorative carving on the cannons,” Purcell said about the moment they realized what they had discovered.

The Holy Grail

Kaeli looked closely and was able to find dolphin engravings on the cannons, which was a distinctive detail on a Spanish ship, the San José, which is often called the ‘holy grail of shipwrecks’. “I just sat there for about 10 minutes and smiled,”Kaeli said…

The Search Is Over

“I’m not a marine archaeologist, but I know what a cannon looks like. So at that moment, I guess I was the only person in the world who knew we’d found the shipwreck,” Kaeli said about the groundbreaking discovery, which treasure hunters had spent hundreds of years searching for.

Loaded With Treasure

The San José was a Spanish galleon, a large multi-deck ship first used by the Spanish as armed cargo carriers, that had been loaded with gold, silver, and emeralds. According to historians, the treasure was meant to fund Spain fight against Great Britain in the 13-year-long War of the Spanish Succession…

A Doomed Journey

However, the treasure never made it. On June 8, 1708, the San José sunk just off the coast of Columbia. Even though the ship was loaded with 62 guns and 600 crew, it didn’t stand a chance after it encountered a British warship.

A Lone Voyage

The San José, which had been loaded with precious gems and metals from mines in Peru, would normally have been surrounded by a fleet of warship for protection. Yet when the fleet was delayed, fleet commander Admiral José Fernandez de Santillan decided to set sail for Europe anyway…

Outnumbered And Overpowered

That decision would end being extremely costly. While sailing off the coast of Columbia, the San José encountered 4 British ships, which outnumbered and overpowered the Spanish ship. During the attack, the San José’s powder magazine was hit and it quickly sunk with all 600 crew members and the treasure.

Lost To The Sea

Because of how quickly the San José sank, the large treasure was lost to the ocean before the British could take it. For the next 300 years, the treasure, estimated to be the most valuable ever lost at sea, was left relatively undisturbed on the seafloor off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia…

The Estimated Value

Today, the treasure on the San José is worth $17 billion, which is why researchers were speechless when they finally found it. However, the incredible discovery wasn’t made public until now after the Colombian government gave the agencies that helped with the search permission to announce the news.

A Secret

“We’ve been holding this under wraps out of respect for the Colombian government,” said WHOI’s vice president for marine facilities and operations, Rob Munier. However, even after the announcement, officials still haven’t shared the exact location of the discovery…

The Battle Begins

Part of the reason to keep the location a secret is to protect it because the San José is still sitting on the ocean floor. The other reason officials have decided to keep the location a secret is because the discovery has started an international battle over who the treasure belongs to.

Ownership Disputes

In the aftermath of the discovery, countries and private organizations, including Spain, who owned the ship, Colombia, whose waters the ship sits in, and an American salvage company called Sea Search Armada, who claims to have found and registered the shipwreck in 1982, have come forward to dispute the ownership…

Rightful Owners

Other experts believe that other South American countries like Peru and Bolivia will make claims to the treasure since the precious gems and metals were originally taken from them in the first place. For now, the San José remains at the bottom of the sea until it can be decided what will be done with the treasure and who it rightfully belongs to.

Worth More Than Money

According to Colombian officials, their hope is to build a new conservation lab and museum to salvage the treasure instead of letting a piece of history be exploited. “The San José discovery carries considerable cultural and historical significance for the Colombian government and people because of the ship’s treasure of cultural and historical artifacts and the clues they may provide about Europe’s economic, social, and political climate in the early 18th century,” WHOI added.

Battle Begins Over ‘Holy Grail Of Shipwrecks’ Because Of What’s On Board is an article from: LifeDaily

We all like to believe that there is a sort of fundamental guiding force in the universe; that someone or something up there is guiding our lives to positivity, to prosperity, to enlightenment. For a good deal of the world, that force is some sort of singular deity, but not for all.

Most of the people who seek out alternative religions tend to be of a more peaceful sentimentality. They seek personal enlightenment, love, peace, and understanding. Like anyone else though, they will defend themselves if necessary…

Under Attack

A small city of peaceful American retirees was, as far as they were concerned, under attack. Residents in the sleepy Pacific Northwestern town of Antelope, Oregon had no idea what to do about the new neighbors. It wasn’t that they were simply being bigoted either, the new arrivals had done much in the four years since they moved in that would not be considered particularly “neighborly.”

New Neighbors

All the people of Antelope knew was that these people, this strange commune of crimson-clad religious followers, possessed a very different set of religious sensibilities than they did. Their beliefs were not the beliefs of the Christian people of Antelope, and even more than that, it seemed that they were not the non-violent neighbors they had previously claimed to be…

Crimson-Clad Criminals

The neighbors had settled in on what was once a large ranch north of Antelope. They had come from all four corners of the globe and built a community there. At first, they seemed like nothing more than a few hippies seeking a place to live off the grid, but the more the people of Antelope learned about the red-wearing Rajneeshees, the less they liked them.

The Power of Meditation

These people were the neo-sannyasins, followers of an Indian guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He was a man that few people in the Pacific Northwest had heard of before, but who had amassed quite a following in the rest of the world up until that point. They’d settled in Oregon to make a peaceful home for themselves, but all they made over those five years, were enemies…

The Bhagwan

The Bhagwan came into the limelight in the 1960s, where he traveled throughout India as a public speaker. He was a vocal critic of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and Hindu religious orthodoxy. In fact, he was a vocal critic of most religious orthodoxy. He believed in the power of the self, or spiritualism, meditation, love, celebration, creativity, humor, and as unusual as it sounds, of materialism.

The Sex Guru

He believed that these were all qualities being suppressed by static belief systems and religious tradition. Unsurprisingly, given those things he valued, he advocated a more open attitude toward human sexuality. This, of course, caused controversy in his native India. But that didn’t stop him from finding willing followers everywhere…

Positivity in Capitalism

The Bhagwan wrote prodigiously on his spiritual teachings, commenting extensively on the writings of religious traditions, mystics, and philosophers from around the world. He became immensely popular and made many public appearances where he spoke to stadiums full of followers about his belief system. The Bhagwan was a rock star.

An Ashram in Pune

In the 70s, he opened up an Ashram in Pune, India, and many of his true believers followed him there. It was in Pune that he began establishing a number of spiritual and meditative techniques inspired by the Human Potential Movement. The government didn’t like his growing religious following in their backyard, however…

Worldwide Inspiration

They needed a new place to live. In 1981, the Bhagwan sent his personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela to seek out a new refuge for his followers somewhere in the world. She looked everywhere but finally found the perfect spot in a land well-known for helping religious groups find a homeland: the United States.

Rajneeshpuram

The neo sannyasins were composed of not only poor hippies but a number of intelligent, educated, wealthy, and talented individuals. Working together, they purchased a huge plot of land in Wasco, County Oregon. There, they built homes, a meditation pavilion, schools, and restaurants. They turned fallow fields into rich agricultural farmland and even built a lake. It was the paradise the Bhagwan had dreamed of…for a time…

Angry Neighbors

Despite the great strides they’d made with the arid land on the ranch, now called Rajneeshpuram, their neighbors in Antelope were not happy about the Rajneeshees being in their backyard. Free love was not a concept the elderly folks in Antelope enjoyed, so they began a campaign of hate with the end result of kicking the Rajneesh out of Oregon.

No Longer Antelope

In retaliation, Ma Anand Sheela and the other Rajneeshees decided to bring the fight directly to Antelope. They used their considerable financial resources to buy up all the available property in and around the town. Before long, the Rajneeshees outnumbered former town residents and insinuated themselves into the local government, police department. They even renamed the town, Rajneesh…

State Steps In

The Rajneeshees also began arming themselves for their own protection. They had a veritable army of skilled shooters at the ranch and some in the local police. Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer was contacted by a concerned citizen and he began to lobby complaints against the town from the county seat. The Rajneeshees had a plan for that too.

Wasco County Elections

The former residents of Antelope fought to have the town disincorporated but were outvoted by the Rajneeshees. The state tried the same thing, trying to say that the town violated the principle separation of church and state. Ma Anand Sheela decided Wasco County was going to try and control them. Their plan to supplant the county legislature started with thousands of street people across the US….

Street People

The Rajneeshees toured the country in buses, bringing thousands upon thousands of homeless people to Rajneeshpuram. They gave them free food, medical care, clothing, housing, and offered them jobs and enlightenment. All they had to do in return, was to vote in the Oregon elections to put Rajneeshee candidates into the county seat. The county disallowed new voter registration to counter this, but the Ma Anand Sheela wasn’t about to take it lying down.

Serious Allegations

A series of serious crimes against local Oregonians occurred soon after. There was a mass food poisoning attack with Salmonella bacteria in the nearby town the Dalles, later found to have been orchestrated by Sheela and her Rajneeshee scientists. And when word spread of an aborted assassination plot to murder U.S. Attorney Charles H. Turner, a longtime opponent of the group, the FBI stepped in…

Under the Bus

In the wake of the mounting investigation against them, Ma Anand Sheela and 20 other group members left Rajneeshpuram by airplane. They fled to Germany, hoping to find freedom and absolution outside the group, but found only betrayal. In the wake of their escape from justice, the Bhagwan spoke publicly for the first time in years. He told the world that Sheela and her close supporters had been responsible for all the alleged crimes.

Many Arrests

Eventually, after what could have been a bloody standoff outside Rajneeshpuram, the Bhagwan fled to Bermuda. The FBI caught up with him there, bringing him back to the US to face trial. Sheela and her followers faced the same in Germany. Sheela served 4 years in prison for the attempted murder and poisoning and the Bhagwan, now deported, went back to the Ashram in Pune…

The Guru Passes

The ranch was closed and Rajneeshpuram was no more. It was a failed experiment. The Rajneeshees went back to their homes, or the streets, and some even followed the Bhagwan back to India. The devoted stayed at his Ashram with him until he died. But the end of the Bhagwan wasn’t the end of the Rajneesh.

The Message

Today, despite the controversy surrounding their time in Oregon, the Bhagwan’s teachings are still followed the world over. Many ashrams are set up in the far east, in India, and in Europe. Ultimately, his lessons about love, courage, and the power of the self to fight against the world’s ills are more important than the mistakes made by Sheela and some of his misguided followers.

How One US State Nearly Lost All Control To A Most Unlikely Foreign Power is an article from: LifeDaily

To many of us, it doesn’t make sense when someone gives up a stable, even enviable situation in life for a chance at something else. Especially when it comes to romance, it can seem like an incredibly foolish thing, logically speaking.

But the heart wants what it wants. Over and over again, people are willing to put everything on the line to follow their desires, logic be damned. In storybook romances, it almost always works out. But in the real world, it can often lead to disastrous results.

Lifelong Pursuit

Ever since she was a kid, Shannon had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to do in life. Her mother and three of her aunts were all teachers so, even from a very young age, she and her sister wanted to follow in those footsteps.

Family Affair

“For birthdays and Christmas, they asked for teaching supplies,” Shannon’s mother said. Between her and the three aunts, “they got plenty of charts and stickers.” After they finished high school, both Shannon and her sister attended Texas Christian University, their mother’s alma mater…

Teaching And Learning

After graduating in 2006 with a degree in education, Shannon immediately began teaching first grade in Southlake, Texas. At the same time as she was working there, she kept on investing in her education, completing a master’s of education in counseling degree, again at TCU.

Settling Down

It was during her time teaching in Southlake that she met Joe, the man who would eventually become her husband. Joe had moved to Texas to work as a teacher and wrestling coach at a nearby school district. By 2013, just a couple of years after he’d moved to the state, Joe and Shannon were married and living in the house he’d built…

Career Advancement

The same year that they got married, Shannon left her job teaching first grade and began working as a counselor at Harwood Junior High School in Bedford, which was a step up both in terms of prestige as well as pay.

All Set

It seemed that everything was going great in Shannon’s life. She had a great career for herself in the field she loved with opportunities for upward mobility. She had a great husband who was also an educator, meaning he understood all of the things she faced day to day and he had the same summer vacation time. Things were going great…

The Other Guy

But there was one thing that happened during her time as a counselor that put Shannon’s ‘textbook’ good life at risk: she met Robbie. After years of marriage with Joe, Shannon was willing to throw everything away to be with this other guy, despite the consequences.

One Weird Thing

It wasn’t as if she had gone out of her way looking for romance outside of her marriage. In fact, when she’d first met Robbie through her work, romance was the last thing on Shannon Hathaway’s mind. But over the next few years, something developed between them that was too strong for her to ignore. It was the same story of adultery repeated countless times except for one thing: Robbie was one of her students…

Suspicious Behavior

Suspicions about there romantic “relationship” began to arise during the 2016-2017 school year when Robbie was In the 9th grade, though he’d been held behind a few times and was 17 years old at the time. They did their best to hide their relationship for obvious reasons but as you can imagine of a 17-year-old 9th grader and a 33-year-old who would date him, they didn’t go about things in the smartest way.

Unusual ‘Frinedship’

For one thing, they were spending a lot of time together in public. That would be strange enough on its own but suspicions were aroused even further when Robbie’s sister spotted him holding hands with Shannon a number of times. She was naturally creeped out by what she saw and reported it to the police…

Legal Technicality

Of course, there’s no law against holding hands with anyone and, although he was just a teenager, the age of consent in Texas is 17 years old. So despite the fact that a 33-year-old was dating someone born when she was 16, that by itself wasn’t any violation of the law.

Still Illegal

But in the particular case of Shannon and Robbie, any illicit relationship between them would be breaking a Texas law that prohibits a relationship between educators and their students. There was also the fact that it would mean the end of Shannon’s career, not to mention her marriage if word of her deeds got out…

Bombshell

Police had only just begun to investigate the possibility of misconduct on Shannon’s part when something happened that made that investigation pointless. Robbie’s mother came home one day to find her son in bed naked with the school counselor, a woman closer to her own age than to her son’s.

Domestic Explosion

You can imagine the sort of shouting that followed as the lust-driven school counselor was kicked out of the home by the angry mother. After she had gone, the shouting barely slowed down as Robbie was grilled for an explanation for his actions…

Sneaking Around

Apparently, he had been seeing Shanon for a few months though the secretive nature of their relationship meant that it was difficult to get alone time. In total, they had been “intimate” about a dozen times when they could sneak in some privacy, both at Shannon’s home and at Robbie’s place, where they were when they were discovered.

Smiling Criminal

When Robbie’s mother reported Shannon to the police, they put out a warrant for her arrest and she promptly resigned from her position and turned herself in. She had a bizarre look of glee on her face in her mugshot photo, a shot that went viral on social media, gaining national attention…

Outraged Parents

Parents of students in Shannon’s district were notified of the arrest and the school district’s superintendent Steve Chapman sent an automated message to parents reassuring them that the safety of students was their number one priority. He was also sure to say that there was “no evidence to suggest the alleged behavior happened on the Harwood Junior High campus.”

Worth It

Shannon was released from jail on $5,000 bail but if she was eventually found guilty of the charges against her, she would be facing up to twenty years in prison. All of that was worth it to her, apparently, because she was “in love with him.”…

Losing It All

She’d previously said that she was willing to leave her husband to be with the Robbie and after the news came out, her marriage was effectively over. But her relationship with the teenager became impossible after his mother forbade them from being together. She’d lost her marriage, her job, and potentially her freedom all for nothing.

Bad Counseling

Shannon was apparently not much of a counselor either, considering Robbie also dropped out of school shortly after the whole fiasco went down.   Because the student in this story was a minor, his identity was withheld from the public. We have used the name “Robbie” for the sake of smooth narration.

Middle School Counselor Risks Everything To Pursue Her Forbidden ‘Love’ is an article from: LifeDaily

Unsolved crimes are not only difficult for the officers and investigators who worked so hard only to come to no conclusion, they’re hardest for the families, whose subsequent years following the crime, are filled with doubt and a feeling of injustice.

Every so often though, these grieving unfulfilled loved ones will find their patience rewarded. Law enforcement does catch a break now and then, and sometimes the most valuable clues come from the most overlooked sources…

More Like a Mom

Michella Welch Story — www.fox5sandiego.com

Even as a bespectacled 12-year-old, Michella seemed like more of a mom than an older sister: at least as far as her two youngest siblings were concerned. If one of them fell and scraped their knee, she was the first one to jump in and try to help with a band aid and some boo-boo kisses. She was talented, intelligent, and above all else, kind.

Lunchtime Picnic

On the day of her disappearance, Michella had taken her two younger sisters to the park not far from their house for a lunch picnic. They had planned to spend the whole day in the park but Michelle had left their lunch at home in the fridge. After all, it was a short bike ride back down the road to get it…

Bathroom Break

While Michella was off getting lunch, the two younger girls crossed the street from Puget Park to use the restroom at one of the local businesses. Young as they were, they went back to the park to play. As children do, they lost track of time and in no time at all three hours had passed with no sign of their sister.

Gone Unnoticed

The girls came out of the gulch they had been playing in around 2 p.m. and noticed something strange. Michella’s bike and the lunch she had gone to get were at the spot where they were supposed to picnic, but Michella herself was nowhere in sight. For a girl who was always one to look out for her sisters, it seemed odd that she’d just run off and leave them without supervision…

Call For Help

The girls did what they had been taught to do, they notified their regular babysitter, who in turn contacted their mother. Before long, the police were called and a search of the area was quickly initiated. Seeing as they were already a few hours behind the criminal, they knew they had to work fast to find Michella.

Howl in the Dark

Around 11 p.m. that night, after a mere eight hours of searching, a howl went out in the night. The search dogs had found something deep in an isolated patch of the gulch. It was more than a quarter mile away from the area where the girls had been playing. There, in the mud, was Michella’s body….

Beautiful Loss

Michella’s sisters were heartbroken. Their surrogate mom, the link between them and their parents had not only been brutally murdered, she’d been sexually assaulted as well. “She was just a beautiful child. She loved music, was an amazing artist…she played the piano, she played the violin, loved to read…” explained Michelle, her younger sister years later.

No Evidence

Michella’s mother was similarly torn apart by the loss. The police had few leads, no one had seen her taken away by anyone in the park that way and her sisters had been too busy playing to notice anything. Things were not looking very good as far as finding her killer. Until they killed again that is…

Another Found

In August of that year, not long after Michella’s murder, thirteen-year-old Jennifer Bastian was also killed. At first, police thought the two killings were related, mainly due to the fact that the circumstances behind both killings seemed similar: at least in some respects.

No Match

Police were even able to collect a sample of male DNA from the crime scene evidence. They even developed a DNA profile as well but could find no match from it in either the state or national databases. Thus the case would remain cold for the next several decades. Until, in 2016, when the case was reopened…

Modern Genealogy

It was 2016, 30 years since Michella Welch had disappeared and been found murdered when police began working the case again. This time, they employed the assistance and expertise of a genetic genealogist. Their job was to use DNA mapping technology of today to create a sort of genetic profile of the killer.

Family Links

“Genetic genealogy uses DNA technology to identify subjects by matching the unknown profile to a family member,” explained Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramsdell. “Traditional genealogy is then used to build a family tree from publicly available websites.” Michella’s sisters, for their part, were hopeful that they would finally get answers…

Possible Suspects

As remarkable as it sounds, the genealogical tests identified two brothers as possible suspects. Police began surveillance and had Detective Steve Reopelle follow one of the men, a former male nurse named Gary Hartman, around as he went about his day. He even followed him to a restaurant when he met a coworker for coffee.

Nurse

In days gone by, Mr. Hartman worked for the state Department of Social & Health Services as a registered nurse. He had spent time working at Western State Hospital as a community nurse specialist and it was there that he met fellow medical worker Stephanie Brookens. Stephanie, as it happened, knew something was wrong with Hartman from the start…

Something Off

Stephanie Brookens, who worked with Hartman in 2007 said: “I knew there was something off but I didn’t know how bad it was you know? I would have figured cheat on his wife or something minor…A murder and a rape? I don’t understand how you can put that in a little box in your mind and then go into a helping profession.” And yet, that was apparently exactly what he’d done.

The Smoking Napkin

It was in that restaurant, waiting and watching from the booth across the way, that Detective Reopelle recovered what would become a necessary piece of the puzzle in solving Michella’s murder. During the course of the meal, he used his napkin several times. Then, thinking nothing of it, he crumpled the napkin up, put it in a paper bag, and threw it in the trash can before he left…

One Man’s Trash…

The fact that he’d voluntarily discarded the used napkin was enough to allow the detective to retrieve it from the garbage and use it to test for a DNA match. They compared Hartman’s DNA on the napkin to the sample from the case and found that it was a clear match to the older evidence.

Traffic Stop

Soon after the DNA was matched, a warrant was issued. The police used a routine traffic stop in order to track down the now 66-year-old Hartman and take him into custody. He was arraigned soon after and the judge, taking into consideration how brutal the accused crime actually was, set bail at $5 million. Now the Welch sisters just had to wait for justice to be served…

Caught Him

“It’s really sad to think that he’s been out there living a free life when he cut my sister’s life short…” said Michelle Eby, Michella’s sister. “You always hope they catch the guy. But in the back of my mind I figured that he was probably dead or maybe he found the Lord and is a great guy…” Now though, they were confident that Hartman would serve punishment for his crimes.

Different Killers

As for the other girl killed, Jennifer Bastian, well that was a different story. Unfortunately, the DNA comparison ruled out Hartman as the culprit for her murder. It seemed that both girls were killed by different people. The silver lining is that the same new DNA evidence led to the arrest of 60-year-old Robert D. Washburn, who was charged with Jennifer’s murder.

Police Crack 32-Year-Old Cold Case Thanks To Crumpled Napkins is an article from: LifeDaily

When there’s a problem between people that sits outside of the boundaries of law, more often than not, the people involved end up inside a courtroom. Once there, it falls to a judge, and sometimes a jury, to come up with a fair solution to the problem.

If you’ve spent enough time in court, you start to notice that a lot of court cases involve people who are unethical, unhinged, highly emotional or some combination of the three. That means that over the years, any given judge has gotten used to seeing all sorts of unusual people in their courtroom. But every now and then, even a seasoned judge is amazed by some of the people that come before them…

Emotinally Charged

Custody Battle Story — www.careermatch.com

Of all the particular varieties of court cases there are, perhaps the most emotionally charged child custody cases. The course of a child’s entire life hangs in the balance and the 2 parties involved believe that it’s essential that the child be given over to them, rather than the other party.

Impossible Position

And all of that is without even considering the desires of the child or children whose custody is being disputed. They are put into a situation where the only way of living they’ve ever known is going to change forever long before they’re equipped to understand what that means or to deal with the resulting emotions…

Seen It All

Needless to say, the judges who preside over child custody cases have seen some of the most emotionally distressed plaintiffs and defendants ever to step inside of a courtroom. But despite their feelings, most of them are smart enough to keep quiet and let their legal representation speak for them.

Let The Lawyer Work

It’s the smart move not just because a lawyer will be far more able to keep a cool head in regards to the situation. They’re also trained to understand all of the particulars and nuances of the justice system that, no matter how well a layman thinks they’ve prepared, can’t compare to the skill and experience of someone who spent years inside of classrooms and courtrooms learning…

Bad Client

But some people with their cases being heard do worse speaking out in ways not advised by their legal counsel. Some ignore those immortal words of Abraham Lincoln “he who represents himself has a fool for a client” and decide to be their own lawyers.

Bizarre Representation

In one particular case appearing before the Provincial Court of British Columbia in Canada, two parents were appealing a decision that took their 1-year-old baby from them and placed them in provincial custody. Not only did the couple forgo “traditional” legal counsel, they were being represented by perhaps the strangest lawyer imaginable…

Highest Power

Alice Jones and Daniel Kelly had chosen as their legal counsel none other than God himself, who had apparently chosen a stuffed lion as his vessel to speak with them. According to them, when they spoke to the judge and people on the stand, it was “their lawyer Jesus Christ asking the questions through the voice of the parent.”

Unusual Legal Strategy

Not only did they deliver the “word of God” as given to them by the stuffed animal, Daniel and Alice delivered that message by speaking “in tongues” at several points during the trial. The entire incident was strange, to say the least, including how the couple had lost custody of their daughter, Cindy. The whole thing had begun even before she was born when Alice had told a social worker some disturbing things about her husband and their relationship…

Abuse Allegations

Alice said that sometimes when she would cry, her husband would choke her to make her stop. He had also once tied her hands and covered her mouth with tape, which terrified her, and would sometimes strike her when he was displeased.

Cult Member

She also said that Daniel had grown up in a cult that was an extreme offshoot of Christianity and held some beliefs that the social worker found bizarre. For one thing, he believed that he and Alice should “role-play” sins where she played the victim and he played the perpetrator…

Twisted Beliefs

Most disturbing of all for the safety of a young child, Daniel believed sexual relations between children should be something that parents encouraged, Alice said. Naturally, the social worker reported what the expecting mother said to the local police.

‘I Never Said That’

But by the time Alice spoke with investigators, she was telling a different story and denied making those statements. That left police with no options other than directing their case to the Ministry of Children and Family Development…

Natural Birth

When Alice eventually went into labor, the couple was determined to have their child at home without any medical assistance whatsoever. Fortunately for Cindy, when Alice’s parents heard about it, they called an ambulance and a paramedic aided in delivering the baby in their house. After she was born, the parents refused any sort of medical treatment for Cindy, including standard blood tests, vaccinations, or even a simple hearing test.

By Any Other Name

There were also concerns about Alice’s mental health, which were exacerbated by her applications to have her own name changed to “Risen Lord Jesus Refinesfire Christ” and Cindy’s name legally changed to “Jesus JoyOfTheLord” just a couple of weeks after her birth…

Evil Influences

There were also several incidents around the time of Cindy’s birth where Alice and Daniel caused problems at several different churches by trying to “purge churches of evil influences.” This resulted in being banned from a number of those churches and even criminal disturbance charges against them.

Removed

The concerns over Daniel’s violence, the baby’s physical health, and Alice’s mental health, coupled with the couple’s refusal to have parental capacity assessments led the Ministry of Children and Family Development specialist assigned to the family to recommend that Cindy be removed from their custody…

Unfit Parents

At the initial trial, the judge found Daniel and Alice to not be fit parents and ruled in favor of the ministry, placing Cindy in foster care but granting the couple visitation rights. They immediately appealed the decision, claiming that it infringed upon their religious freedoms “as Christian parents.”

Obvious Love

But in the second trial, Justice MacDonald upheld the original ruling, as regretful as that choice was for her. “The parents obviously love their child and wish to raise her in their home with their Christian values,” she said in her decision. But it takes more than love to properly raise a child…

Not About That

“Christianity is not on trial,” Justice MacDonald continued. “The parent’s belief in direct revelation from God or in using the gift on tongues is not on trial. Home birthing is not on trial. The right not to use vaccinations or have one’s child not use vaccinations is not on trial.” Despite all that, she said, “It is clear that there was sufficient evidence before the trial judge to allow him to come to the conclusion that a continuing custody order was warranted in the circumstances.”

Child Safety

Justice MacDonald said her decision was based not on religious beliefs but rather evidence of domestic violence, concerns for the mother’s mental health, ignoring health care recommendations for the baby, and their refusal to work with anyone, including the state, public health officials, churches, or legal representation that would be willing to help them. The names Alice Jones, Daniel Kelly, and Cindy Jones match the initials of the people in this story but their real names have been withheld for privacy.

Religious Zealot Parents Lose Custody Battle Despite Unique Legal Representation is an article from: LifeDaily

When a woman mysteriously dies, investigator’s first suspect is almost always the husband or boyfriend as violence against women in relationships is sadly all too common.

After a North Carolina mother was found dead in her own home, the police immediately started building a case to prove that her husband was the culprit. However, in their haste to prove their own theory, the police may have overlooked another culprit who likely flew away from the scene of the crime…

The 911 Call

Michael Peterson Story — www.networkworld.com

In the early morning of December 9, 2001, a man from Durham, North Carolina, called 911 claiming that he had just found his wife unconscious at the bottom of the home’s staircase. According to the caller, his wife appeared to have fallen down the steps.

A Tragic Discovery

According to the Durham-based father, he had been outside by the pool all night and had come in around 2:40 in the morning. When he went to walk up the stairs to go to bed, he discovered his wife’s body at the foot of the staircase in a pool of blood…

Too Late…

During the call, the husband told the 911 operator that his wife was unconscious but still breathing. However, by the time first responders arrived at the home, she had died from her injuries and her body was taken to be examined to check that her cause of death was an accident like her husband had claimed.

The Autopsy

During the autopsy, a toxicology report showed the 48-year-old mother had a blood alcohol content of .07 percent and valium was in her system at the time of her death. Those factors seemed to prove the husband’s claims, however, forensic experts noticed something that made police rethink those claims…

Red Flags

The autopsy report of 48-year-old Kathleen Atwater determined that she had suffered a variety of severe injuries including 7 lacerations to the top and back of her head, which were likely caused from blows from a blunt object, as well as a fracture of the thyroid neck cartilage.

The Cause Of Death

Ultimately, Kathleen died from blood loss as she was left lying at the foot of the staircase bleeding out for somewhere between 90 minutes to 2 hours before first responders arrived at the home. According to police, this was enough to believe Kathleen’s death was not an accident…

Not An Accident

Instead, investigators believed that Kathleen had actually been attacked and murdered. Since her husband, Michael, was the only other person home at the time of Kathleen’s attack, he became the police’s prime suspect.

The Prime Suspect

Police found that Michael Peterson, who was born to Australian immigrants near Nashville, Tennessee, had studied at Duke University and went on to study law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After that, he had a civilian job with the U.S. Department of Defense and moved to Germany after marrying his first wife, Patricia Sue, who was a teacher at an elementary school at an airbase in West Germany…

A Father And A Veteran

After that, police discovered Peterson enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in Vietnam. After being honorably discharged after a car accident, he returned to Germany to live with his wife and their 2 sons. While in Germany, Peterson and his wife befriended another couple and ended up adopting their 2 daughters after the couple passed away.

A New Family

After Peterson and Patricia separated, Peterson moved back to North Carolina and became a novelist and columnist for a local newspaper. Shortly after, in 1989, Peterson met and fell in love with Kathleen Atwater. They ended up marrying in 1997 and lived together with Peterson’s sons, Clayton and Todd, his adopted daughters, Martha and Margaret, and Kathleen’s daughter, Caitlin…

The Charges

In the police’s eyes. Peterson was the murderer and they didn’t believe his wholesome family man persona. Shortly after, they charged Peterson with Kathleen’s murder and Peterson faced that charge in court in 2003, which ended up being the longest and most expensive trial in North Carolina’s history.

The Trial

Peterson pleaded not guilty, and during the trial, his defense had forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee testify that the blood-spatter evidence was consistent with an accidental fall. The prosecution, however, argued that Kathleen bled out from the lacerations on her scalp, not a fall, which they believed were the result of a homicidal assault and had Dr. Deborah Radisch, the medical examiner testify that Kathleen was beaten to death…

The Prosecution’s Argument

The prosecution also brought up scandalous details about Peterson’s personal life, like the fact that Peterson was bisexual and leading a secret ‘gay life’. They argued that when Kathleen found out, she demanded a divorce and Peterson snapped. “[Kathleen] would have been infuriated by learning that her husband, who she truly loved, was bi-sexual and having an extramarital relationship—not with another woman—but a man, which would have been humiliating and embarrassing to her. We believe that once she learned this information that an argument ensued and a homicide occurred,” Assistant District Attorney Freda Black said.

The Support Falters

The prosecution also argued that Peterson’s other motive was to collect Kathleen’s $1.5 million life insurance policy. After hearing the prosecution’s argument, Kathleen’s daughter, Caitlin, and her sister, Candace Zamperini, who both initially supported Peterson, were swayed to believe that he really did murder Kathleen…

The Sentence

The jury had also been convinced by the prosecution and charged Peterson with first-degree murder. After the 3-month trial concluded in 2003, Peterson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and was sent to the Nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, North Carolina to serve his sentence.

Clearing His Name

After all his attorney’s appeal attempts were denied, Peterson started to lose hope that he would ever get out of prison and clear his name. However, during that time Durham attorney T. Lawrence Pollard, a neighbor, started working a theory that he believed would clear Peterson’s name…

The Owl Thoery

According to Pollard, he believed Kathleen had really been attacked by an owl as owl attacks on people on common in the area and the SBI crime lab reported a feather in the evidence. They also found microscopic owl feathers and a wood sliver from a tree limb in a clump of Kathleen’s hair, which had been pulled out at the roots and was found held in Kathleen’s own hand.

An Unbelievable Explanation

Pollard argued that the scalp wounds were actually from an owl and the tri-lobed pattern was consistent with bird talons. “The multiple wounds present suggest to me that an owl and Ms. Peterson somehow became entangled. Perhaps the owl got tangled in her hair or perhaps she grabbed the owl’s foot,” Dr. Alan van Norman said in support of the theory. “The lacerations on Mrs. Peterson’s scalp look very much like those made by a raptor’s talons, especially if she had forcibly torn the bird from the back of her head. That would explain the feathers found in her hand and the many hairs pulled out by the root, broken or cut. The size and configuration of the lacerations could certainly indicate the feet of a Barred Owl,” said Kate P. Davis, director of Raptors of the Rockies, who also added that owls often kill species much larger than themselves and are known to attack people.

A Second Chance

On December 9, 2011, a judge granted Michael Peterson a new trial after it was discovered that Duane Deaver, a key witness for the prosecution, misrepresented important evidence. Even though Michael and his attorneys believed the owl theory, Michael was already 73 years old and didn’t want to risk a second trial.

A Free Man

Instead, Michael pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter under an Alford plea, which allowed him to maintain his innocence while also admitting that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict. “Accepting this Alford plea has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Michael said after submitting the plea on February 24, 2017. Michael was immediately released, and today, the 74-year-old lives in North Carolina. He spends his time working on another novel and reconnecting with his 2 sons and 2 adopted daughter.

Father Charged With Wife’s Brutal Murder Claims Real Killer Flew Away is an article from: LifeDaily

While many people love to travel, sitting in a confined space with a bunch of strangers for prolonged periods of time can be stressful and extremely unpleasant.

After a Transavia Airlines flight took off from Spain to the Netherlands, the passengers started complaining that another passenger smelled as if he hadn’t bathed for weeks. Ultimately, the odor became so unbearable that pilots were forced to make an emergency landing. Once on the ground, however, the tragic truth about the sickening stench was revealed…

A Dream Vacation

Andrey Suchilin Story — www.wonderopolis.org

On May 29, a Russian couple boarded a plane at the end of a holiday in the Canary Islands, a group of Spanish islands off the coast of northwestern Africa, where they spent their vacation swimming in turquoise waters and exploring the islands.

The Flight Plan

After the pair boarded the plane, the couple planned to travel from the Canary Islands and land in the Netherlands, which was supposed to be their final destination. Unfortunately, however, that never happened…

A Foul Odor

Shortly after taking off other passengers began to make complaints to the flight attendants that a 58-year-old Russian man had extremely bad body odor. According to flight attendants, the smell was so strong and so foul that other passengers actually started to get sick.

Containing The Smell

When other passengers on the flight started to actually vomit and faint because of the man’s body odor, the flight attendants had no choice but to ask the man to go sit inside 1 of the plane’s bathrooms in an attempt to contain the sickening odor…

An Emergency Landing

“It was like he hadn’t washed himself for several weeks,” a passenger said. “Several passengers got sick and had to puke.” Unfortunately, even the bathroom couldn’t contain the pungent smell and the pilots had no choice but to make an unscheduled emergency landing in Faro, Portugal.

An Unpleasant Situation

The experience, “was, of course, a very unpleasant situation for this passenger and his family, but certainly also for the other passengers and our crew,” Transavia Airlines said in a statement after the emergency landing in Portugal…

Normal Hygiene

Once on the ground, 58-year-old Andrey Suchilin was removed from the plane and the flight continued on to the Netherlands without the Russian couple. Andrey, a well-known Russian rock guitarist, explained to officials that he didn’t believe the smell was body odor as he didn’t normally smell so bad and was bathing regularly.

The Real Source Of The Smell

Instead, Andrey believed the smell was because of an infection. According to Andrey and his wife, Lidia, the guitarist didn’t smell because he had poor hygiene, but because he got an infection while on their vacation in Spain…

A Smelly Infection

“The tragic and comic component of this whole situation is that I caught a disease, which (let’s not say how and why) makes a person quite stinky,” Andrey wrote on his Facebook page after news of the emergency landing started to spread.

The Wrong Diagnosis

According to the couple, Andrey visited a doctor while in Spain. During the examination, the doctor told Andrey that he had an ‘ordinary beach infection’ and prescribed him antibiotics to treat it. But clearly, the doctor had been wrong…

Wasting Precious Time

Andrey knew he needed to get a second opinion about the infection and the smell, but he and his wife were forced to postpone treatment for another 5 hours as they argued with his insurance provider who refused to pay for his medical care since his insurance had just expired.

A Dangerous Infection

In the end, Lidia and Andrey had to call an ambulance themselves and had friends send them money so that Andrey could get seen by a doctor. After examining the 58-year-old, the doctor revealed that Andrey didn’t have an ‘ordinary’ infection, but an extremely deadly one…

The Real Diagnosis

Doctors explained to Andrey and Lidia that Andrey’s infection was really necrotic tissue disease, which had caused the 58-year-old’s body to start decomposing while he was still alive. Doctors couldn’t tell how Andrey contracted necrosis, but the bacteria can thrive in beach environments where water cuts off oxygen to a wound.

Rotting From The Inside Out

Necrosis is a dangerous condition where the body’s tissue dies after being starved of oxygen, which can be caused by frostbite, deep vein thrombosis, and an infection. What passengers on the plane thought was just extremely bad body odor was actually the smell of Andrey’s rotting tissue…

Easy To Miss

In Andrey’s case, the necrosis was caused by a flesh-eating bacteria, which his original doctor thought was just a typical infection. “Unfortunately, early necrotizing fasciitis is easily missed,” said epidemiologist Allen Cheng.

The Symptoms

“This is because the symptoms – fever, pain, swelling and tenderness at the affected site – may be non-specific or confused with a mild, superficial infection,” Cheng explained. “The hallmark of necrotizing fasciitis is pain far more severe than expected for what might otherwise look like a minor infection…”

An Unpleasant Progression

“As the infection progresses, the skin becomes tense and discolored, and patients may become severely unwell with low blood pressure and confusion,” Cheng explained about the condition, which can be treated surgically.

Treating The Infection

Andrey was rushed to the hospital to treat the necrosis, which can be treated by removing the dead tissue and stopping the spread of the bacteria. Unfortunately, by the time Andrey arrived at the hospital, the small window of time to treat and stop the necrosis had already passed…

Too Far Gone

In such an advanced stage, doctors decided it would be best to put Andrey in an induced coma to try and prevent organ failure. Yet, Andrey’s condition quickly deteriorated and he was put in intensive care in critical condition.

A ‘Pioneer’ Dies

The bacteria spread to Andrey’s kidneys, heart, and lungs. Sadly, there was nothing doctors could do to save him, and the guitarist, a ‘pioneer of rock music’ in Russia, died of organ failure on June 25, 2018. “Andrei’s gone. Alas,” said his devastated wife, who argued that he might still be alive if they weren’t forced to waste 5 precious hours arguing with the insurance company about coverage.

Tragic Diagnosis Behind Man’s Body Odor That Forced Emergency Plane Landing is an article from: LifeDaily

Some couples spend months planning their big day; the flowers, the food, the band – there’s a never-ending list of things that need to be organized and decided upon.

The planning for their wedding day was no different for Geroge and Kelly. The couple had been dating for a while and despite some tensions before the reception, everything was on time, albeit a tad over budget…

Wedding Plans

George Samson Story — George Samson / Facebook

Geroge and Kelly were no spring chickens and had in fact been dating other people randomly for quite a while before they met. When George finally popped the long-awaited question, Kelly felt that all her dreams had come true. He was a doctor, well-to-do, and had a lovely way about him, usually.

Planning Alone

For whatever reasons, the planning and execution of the wedding was 100 percent down to the bride and groom, as they received little help or even advice from their friends and family. Neither of them was majorly close with any of their family members, although some close family members came to celebrate together with them…

Short Tempered

George, who was actually a well-renowned anesthesiologist, was known for being a little short tempered at times. In fact, he was considered downright moody by some people and especially by Kelly’s folks. Everyone hoped George would be on his best behavior on his wedding day.

Financial Issues

Regardless of his standing as a doctor, George was encountering some serious financial problems as he was working less and less these days. It was embarrassing for him, but his credit card seemed to be refused more and more…

Paying Alone

While everything was in place for the big day, someone needed to pay for it. That task fell squarely at the feet of Dr. George who was left to pay for his own wedding reception with no assistance from Kelly’s family who were struggling financially at the time.

In A Mood

George and Kelly looked like a picture of happiness together. The guests had been greeted, photographs taken and the music was playing in the background while finger food was served along with pink champagne. But George was behaving like his usual ratty self, and people were noticing…

No Credit

The last time you want your credit card to max out is when you’re paying for your wedding reception. When George Samson handed his card to the cashier at the Ohio Building in downtown Terre Haute, he was worried it would be refused and refused it was. George was beside himself and simply couldn’t hold it together.

Storming Out

The incident annoyed George so much that he ended up storming out of his own wedding in front of his new bride and all the guests. Well, it was better than him having one of his outbursts in front of them all so Kelly was at least relieved about that. However…

Tensions Clear

As if that wasn’t bad enough, guests had already noticed that there were some serious tensions between the new couple, who looked frustrated with each other and had clearly been arguing. By the time the wedding party came around, the new couple wasn’t even talking to each other, but things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Simply Snapped

The after-party of the wedding had been a good one by all accounts, however, the arguments between the new couple went from bad to worse. Things got so bad that Kelly even called 911 at 1:20 a.m., claiming that George was beating her. She called a second time, then a third and then a fourth…

The Fourth Call

By the time the fourth call to the dispatcher came around, the person on the other end of the line was horrified to hear gunshots in the background. Police rushed to the address, although the noise and commotion had already woken George’s dad and Kelly’s son: They were lucky to be alive.

Utter Shock

Everyone was utterly shocked that George had shot his new bride, just 3 minutes after the party celebrating their new life together was over. The famous Indiana doctor was now a murderer and had shot his wife, after beating her, in cold blood. George clearly felt he had no other option now…

Committing Suicide

Having shot his wife to death, George calmly walked down the hallway to the garage where he kept his bullets. He then slowly walked down to his basement where he took his own life with a single gunshot to the head. The happiest day of this couple’s life had now become the most tragic.

Sending The Robot

As police at the scene weren’t sure what they’d find inside the house after reports of gunshots, they sent in a special police robot which found George dead in his basement. The toxicology report would be interesting as no one could believe that a man of George’s stature could do this…

Alcohol To Blame

While this newly-wedded couple clearly had some anger issues between them, the toxicology report confirmed that the arguments on the night, as well as the ensuing fight, was fuelled by alcohol. Both George and Kelly had been extremely intoxicated at the time they both died.

Venue Changed

It’s not that George was poor by any standards; he lived in a grand mansion where a huge marquee had been set up for the wedding reception. Due to a last minute change of plan, it ended up being at the Ohio Building, and George had clearly spent some serious cash for the big day. According to the police report, the last minute venue change had been the straw that broke the camel’s back…

Brutal Murder

The fact remains that no matter what was going on between this couple, the groom clearly harbored some serious hatred for his wife. He had shot Kelly numerous times in the torso and head, leaving her with no chance of survival and bringing a brutal end to her life.

Arsenal Found

The worrying thing for police was the fact that Dr. George Samson owned a huge arsenal of weapons including assault rifles and numerous handguns, as well as literally hundreds of rounds of ammunition…

“Terribly Wrong”

Meanwhile, Vigo County Coroner, Dr. Susan Amos, told reporters, “They had just gotten married and something went terribly wrong,” adding, “He shot her and then shot himself. We are still in a second autopsy to confirm that.”

Facing Tragedy

As is always the case in homicide/suicides such as these, it’s the family who is left to pick up the pieces of the disaster and to move on with their lives. That may be easy enough to say, but for Kelly’s ten-year-old son, being alone without a mother or stepfather is not going to be easy for the foreseeable future.

Doctor Takes New Bride’s Life Then His Own Minutes After “Dream” Wedding is an article from: LifeDaily