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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Connecticut Home Invasion Murder: GUILTY
 |
| Steven Hayes, 48 (left) and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 31 (right) |
Anyone who knows me pretty much knows that I am not a death
penalty supporter. I followed the Casey Anthony trial, and although I did want
her to be found guilty, there was something about sentencing her to death that
just didn’t sit right with me. I felt the same way about the Scott Peterson
trial, believe it or not. Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes are different
stories, however, and I can't help but think that no one is more deserving of
the death penalty than these two.
On July 23, 2007, Komisarjevsky and Hayes broke into the Petit family home in Cheshire, Connecticut during the early morning hours. Inside the home, fast asleep, were Dr. William A. Petit, Jr., a well-known endocrinologist, his 48-year-old wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The day before, Komisarjevsky had spotted Jennifer shopping at a local grocery store, and, unbeknownst to her, had followed her home.
Once inside, Komisarjevsky and Hayes severely beat Dr. Petit, tied up the daughters in separate rooms, and forced Jennifer to go with them to the bank to withdraw $15,000. While at the bank, Jennifer told the bank teller that her family was being held hostage at their home and to please send help right away. The teller was able to call police, but it wasn't in time. The teller would later testify in court that Jennifer had sounded 'petrified.’
As soon as they arrived back at the house, Komisarjevsky and Hayes raped and strangled Jennifer, sexually assaulted one of the daughters, and then set the house on fire. Dr. Petit managed to escape and made it to a neighbor's house to call for help, but it was too late for the rest of his family. His wife and two daughters died in the fire.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes were apprehended as they were fleeing the scene by the arriving police officers.
Hayes went to trial last year, was convicted, and was sentenced to death.
Komisarjevsky's trial concluded Thursday, ending with a conviction on 17
charges which included capital felony killing, sexual assault, kidnapping, and
arson. Sentencing is scheduled to begin on October 24.
Dr. Petit was brave enough to re-live the nightmare over and over again, testifying at both trials. Hopefully he can find some sort of closure now that this is all over.
To read more about this case, below are some great articles. This has saddened me on so many levels, and it just goes to show you that you are never truly safe, even in your own home.
SOURCES:
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Update: Search continues for Baby Lisa - Day 8
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| Photo from the search site courtesy of KMBC.com |
The massive search for 10-month-old baby Lisa Irwin is continuing today, with investigators at the scene of an abandoned house about a half-mile from the Irwin home. A well was discovered underneath the deck in the backyard of the home, and the Kansas City Fire Department is on scene to assist in accessing the well.
It is not yet known what has brought investigators to this location, but I am absolutely on edge today, hoping they aren't going to find this little baby in the well.
I have to say that KMBC, the local Kansas City news station, is doing a fantastic job covering this story. There is an excellent live blog that they are updating continuously throughout the day. Click here to see live updates, as well as a streaming news feed directly from the search site.
Click here for my original entry about Lisa Irwin...
UPDATE 10/11 11:10 PM
The search at the abandoned home with the well in the backyard ended up being a dead end. The well was completely drained, and the house was demolished. Police confirmed to KMBC that they had received a tip that had led them to that location, and that they will continue to follow up on all tips that come in.
Local news stations also reported that they have received Grand Jury subpoenas requesting video footage of interviews with the family, friends of the family, and neighbors. One of the requests was for this interview with Lisa's parents. In the video, the reporter tells them that the KCPD had been searching a local landfill due to reports of a dumpster fire not far from the Irwin home. I tried to see if i could pinpoint anything that would be of particular interest to investigators, but I can't put my finger on anything. The mere fact that they are even requesting all this footage from these news outlets suggests to me that they definitely have a suspect in mind.
Another interesting development in this case today is that the Irwin family has hired a private investigator, Bill Stanton, to assist in the search for Lisa. Word is, this guy is a publicity hound (also involved in the Natalee Holloway case), but at this point, any extra hands and a fresh viewpoint might be a good thing.
SOURCES:
- http://livewire.kmbc.com/Event/Live_Blog_Amber_Alert_Issued_For_Missing_10-Month-Old
- http://www.kmbc.com/news/29450328/detail.html#ixzz1aUQCEAAc
- http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_missouri/northland/search-for-lisa-irwin-moves-to-nearby-vacant-house#ixzz1aUQIpV52
- http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-additional-interview-footage-lisa-irwins-parents-20111011,0,5050853.story
- http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_missouri/northland/clay-co.-subpoenas-nbc-action-news-footage-in-irwin-case
- http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_missouri/northland/Irwin-family-seeks-assistance-from-private-investigator
Monday, October 10, 2011
Urgent: 10-month-old baby missing from Kansas City, MO
Lisa Irwin, a 10-month-old baby from Kansas City,
vanished from her home sometime in the middle of the night last Monday, October 3. Lisa’s mom, Deborah
Bradley, put her to bed at about 7:30 p.m., and then went to bed herself by
10:30 p.m. Lisa’s father, Jeremy Irwin, was
working the late shift and when he came home at 4 a.m., he discovered the front
door unlocked, most of the lights on in the house, and a window with a bent
pushed in screen. When he woke up his
wife to ask her why she had left the lights on and the door unlocked, they
noticed that Lisa was missing.
Earlier in the night, Bradley had been transferring phone
numbers from an old cell phone into a new one, and she had left the phones on
the counter (there were 3 phones total, one was broken). The intruder reportedly
took these phones, according to Bradley and Irwin, to prevent them from calling
for help. Irwin used his work cell phone
to call police.Today marks seven days that Lisa has been missing, and the outcome looks worse with each day that passes. The case is gaining national media attention and the parents have appeared on Good Morning America and The Today Show. Massive search efforts have been conducted by the FBI, including canine searches, ground area searches, and neighbor interviews.
Hopefully, baby Lisa is alive and well, and someone is
caring for her. The alternative is just
too sad to imagine. I read a lot of true crime blogs and forums, and there has been a lot of speculation about whether or not this is a real abduction, or if this is a cover-up by the parents. I haven't seen anything concrete to point me in either direction, so I'm just going to try and break down the possible scenarios.
Intruder Theory
Let’s think about the intruder theory for a second. First, is this theory even possible? If yes, is it even probable? According to the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children, there have been 278 infant abductions in the U.S. since 1983. This of course doesn’t mean that it could never happen; it’s just interesting to note how rare it is.
Let's say that someone broke into the house in the middle of the night. Someone would have to get into the house (either through the window with the bent screen or through the unlocked door), take the sleeping baby (without the baby making a sound), turn on all the lights in the house, take three cell phones from off the kitchen counter, and leave with the baby (either through the window or through the unlocked door). I would think it would be especially difficult to hold on to a baby while going through the window, so perhaps they exited through the front door. Below are two pictures of the house, both from the front. Yesterday, investigators went back to the Irwin house to re-create the scene, and as you can see from the pictures, it certainly does look possible for someone to crawl into the house through the window, as the investigator is seen doing.
Captain Steve Young, from the Kansas City Police Department, told Good Morning America they were able to confirm that a neighbor reported seeing someone walking down the street at about 2 a.m. that night, with what looked like a baby in a diaper in his arms. Unfortunately, nothing has come out of that lead thus far, and witnesses like this are not always reliable.
This intruder scenario leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions. First, the family has said they have a black lab mix that lives with them at their home. The night of the disappearance, the dog was sleeping outside on the deck. Neither the family nor the neighbors reported hearing the dog bark that night. Why didn't the dog bark, as this intruder was lurking around outside and going through windows in the middle of the night? The mother reported that she always had the baby monitor on, yet she didn’t hear anything? Not a peep, or a footstep, or anything? The father said that this was the first night he worked the late shift at his job, and the mother said that this was the first time she had accidentally left the front door unlocked….lucky intruder, huh? The father just happens to be gone, and the door is unlocked.
The parents also say that the screen to the window looked
like it had been bent, possibly taken out, and then put back in place by the
intruder. Why would the intruder bother to replace the screen?
The taking of the cell phones “to make sure they couldn’t
call for help” is also very bizarre to me.
Why would the intruder just assume that those three phones were the only
phones in the house? And if the intruder
didn’t want them to call for help, and therefore taking their cell phones,
wouldn’t that only buy him/her a few minutes? Surely, they would find another
way to get help right away, ie: go to a neighbor’s house, drive to the police
station, etc.
But if Lisa wasn’t abducted by an intruder, what the heck
happened?
I’m completely on the fence as to whether I think Lisa was abducted by a stranger, or not. An interview with Lisa’s parents, shortly after the disappearance,
can be found here. They both seem like distraught parents to me, and it’s
actually very heartbreaking to watch.
In a later interview given on Good Morning America, however, Bradley admits that investigators told her
that she failed her lie detector test. I know that lie detector tests aren’t
the most reliable things in the world, and they certainly aren’t admissible in
court, but it just makes you wonder. Irwin
said that he has not yet been asked to take a lie detector test, but he will do
so if asked.
Investigators have now been to the home twice, and both
times they removed items from the property. No word on what was taken. On Thursday, investigators spoke to the media
and said that Bradley and Irwin were no longer cooperating with the
investigation. The next day, Bradley and Irwin came out to the media and denied
that was true. Whether or not they are
in fact cooperating, there’s no doubt that they have not been ruled out as
suspects, at least not yet. The good news about the intruder scenario is that if it is true that Lisa was taken by a stranger, there's a very good chance that she is still alive. Another statistic provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that out of the 278 infant abductions in the U.S., only 12 of those children are still considered missing (1 child was found deceased).
Accidental Death?
I think that because I followed the Casey Anthony case so
closely, my mind quickly went to an accidental death scenario when I first heard about this. There
are still a lot of unanswered questions with this scenario too though, and I’m
not really sure that this makes any sort of sense either. Let’s say for a second that the mother was
home with Lisa, and something horrible happened that resulted in little Lisa
passing away. She would have disposed of the body, cleaned up any evidence, hid
the cell phones (was she concerned that the phones ‘pinged’ somewhere and so
she had to place that on the intruder?), bent the window screen to look like a break-in, and got into
bed so that it would appear that she was sleeping when her husband got home.
The questions with this scenario would be: Would she have
left the house to dispose of the body? Would neighbors have heard her leave? Why
wouldn’t she call for help in the hopes of saving her daughter, if in fact something
did happen? And finally, if she was acting in those media interviews, she definitely deserves an Academy Award, because she certainly looks devastated to me.
Nothing has come out in the media to suggest that either Bradley
or Irwin have any sort of criminal or violent past, so I’m not even really letting my mind go that route yet.
This case is just so confusing to me, and every day new
info seems to leak out. I’ll keep
updating as I hear things.Lisa is described as 30 inches tall with blue eyes and blond hair. She weighs between 26 and 30 pounds and was last seen wearing purple shorts and a purple shirt with white kittens on it. She has two bottom teeth, a small bug bite under her left ear, and a "beauty mark" on her right outer thigh. She had a cold with a cough, before she disappeared.
To report any info about this case, please call 816-474-TIPS.
SOURCES:
- http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-08/us/us_missouri-missing-girl_1_missing-missouri-missouri-girl-police-station?_s=PM:US
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/09/lisa-irwin-missing-statistics-stranger_n_1002196.html
- http://video.foxnews.com/v/1208764392001/exclusive-parents-of-missing-baby-lisa-speak-out/
Monday, October 3, 2011
Amanda Knox: Appeal Update
An Italian jury is now deliberating Amanda Knox's appeal, and a verdict could come in at any moment. For those unfamiliar with the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, Knox's 21-year-old flatmate, a short article summarizing the case can be found here. I wont go into too many details about the actual case, but I highly suggest reading up on it if you can.
Knox's case has always been a controversial one. Kercher, a British exchange student, was found dead in their Perugia, Italy apartment, her throat slit. Knox, her boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito, and a drifter named Rudy Guede, were all arrested and later convicted of Kercher's murder. Knox is serving a 26 year sentence, while Sollecito is serving 25 years, and Guede, only 16. Knox and Sollecito were both convicted at a joint trial, and are also appealing their verdicts together.
In Italy, after being found guilty of a crime, the case is automatically sent through an appeals process, which is basically a re-trial in which reasonable doubt must be proven. Knox's re-trial began last November, and today in court, Knox and Sollecito were both given the opportunity to plead their case to the judge and jurors.
Knox, now 24, spoke in Italian for about 10 minutes, and claimed her innocence, saying, "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not present at this crime." Sollecito also addressed the court for about 15 minutes.
There are four possible rulings that could come down today, according to In Session:
1) Conviction could be completely overturned
2) Conviction could be partially overturned (meaning other charges could still stand)
3) Conviction could be upheld
4) Conviction could be upheld, and a new sentence could be given (prosecution is requesting a new sentence of life in prison, however the sentence can be decreased as well)
If Knox's conviction is completely overturned, she could be on a plane back to the United States tonight.
As soon as a verdict comes in, I will post it. The verdict is due to come in by 1 p.m. CST.
Supporters of Amanda Knox have started a web site for her, http://friendsofamanda.org/home_eng.html, which details their case for Knox's freedom. Whether you are convinced of Knox's innocence or guilt, it still makes for an interesting read.
Detailed entries on the appeal (day-by-day) can be found at this blog - http://amandaknoxappealforum.blogspot.com/.
UPDATE: 2:55 P.M. 10/3
Knox and Sollecito have been cleared in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and both ordered immediately released. Knox collapsed into tears and was seen sobbing as she was escorted out of the courtroom.
They could be freed within a few hours.
As for my own personal thoughts on the case, I honestly could never decide on whether or not Knox and Sollecito had anything to do with Kercher's murder. Their actions the night of the murder, as well as in the days and weeks afterwards were always suspicious, however, I felt that there was never enough evidence to actually convict them.
The third man convicted of the killing, Rudy Guede, is still in prison. Guede was identified by police after his bloody handprint was found at the scene of the crime.
SOURCES:
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044444/Amanda-Knox-latest-news-Court-hears-plea-freedom.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
- www.friendsofamanda.org
- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/03/earlyshow/main20114646.shtml
Knox's case has always been a controversial one. Kercher, a British exchange student, was found dead in their Perugia, Italy apartment, her throat slit. Knox, her boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito, and a drifter named Rudy Guede, were all arrested and later convicted of Kercher's murder. Knox is serving a 26 year sentence, while Sollecito is serving 25 years, and Guede, only 16. Knox and Sollecito were both convicted at a joint trial, and are also appealing their verdicts together.
In Italy, after being found guilty of a crime, the case is automatically sent through an appeals process, which is basically a re-trial in which reasonable doubt must be proven. Knox's re-trial began last November, and today in court, Knox and Sollecito were both given the opportunity to plead their case to the judge and jurors.
Knox, now 24, spoke in Italian for about 10 minutes, and claimed her innocence, saying, "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not present at this crime." Sollecito also addressed the court for about 15 minutes.
There are four possible rulings that could come down today, according to In Session:
1) Conviction could be completely overturned
2) Conviction could be partially overturned (meaning other charges could still stand)
3) Conviction could be upheld
4) Conviction could be upheld, and a new sentence could be given (prosecution is requesting a new sentence of life in prison, however the sentence can be decreased as well)
If Knox's conviction is completely overturned, she could be on a plane back to the United States tonight.
As soon as a verdict comes in, I will post it. The verdict is due to come in by 1 p.m. CST.
Supporters of Amanda Knox have started a web site for her, http://friendsofamanda.org/home_eng.html, which details their case for Knox's freedom. Whether you are convinced of Knox's innocence or guilt, it still makes for an interesting read.
Detailed entries on the appeal (day-by-day) can be found at this blog - http://amandaknoxappealforum.blogspot.com/.
UPDATE: 2:55 P.M. 10/3
Knox and Sollecito have been cleared in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and both ordered immediately released. Knox collapsed into tears and was seen sobbing as she was escorted out of the courtroom.
They could be freed within a few hours.
As for my own personal thoughts on the case, I honestly could never decide on whether or not Knox and Sollecito had anything to do with Kercher's murder. Their actions the night of the murder, as well as in the days and weeks afterwards were always suspicious, however, I felt that there was never enough evidence to actually convict them.
The third man convicted of the killing, Rudy Guede, is still in prison. Guede was identified by police after his bloody handprint was found at the scene of the crime.
SOURCES:
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044444/Amanda-Knox-latest-news-Court-hears-plea-freedom.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
- www.friendsofamanda.org
- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/03/earlyshow/main20114646.shtml
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