If they want to be a Dallas Cowboy, players will have to stand for the National Anthem
by Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
July 31, 2018
Refusing to stand for the playing of The Star Spangled Banner disrespects our flag and country. And that’s what many NFL players did all last season as a protest against police brutality. And to their shame, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and most of the team owners supported the protest on the field.
Bob McNair, owner of the Houston Texans, did not support the protests. In October he said, “We can't have the inmates running the prison.” He received so much flack from players throughout the league, so that he apologized for having made that remark. But then in April he said he wished he had not made that apology.
The NFL is really the UFL … Unpatriotic Football League. And one of the teams also needs a name change. No, not the Washington Redskins. It’s the New England Patriots that have sure been misnamed. Owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady have all supported the right of players to disrespect our flag and country by refusing to stand during the anthem. Patriots my ass!
Finally in May, after a continuing barrage of criticism and declining TV viewership of NFL games, Roger Goodell got off his ass and instituted a new National Anthem policy. All players on the field would have to stand during the anthem. Players who did not want to respect our flag and country would have to remain in the locker room until after the anthem.
The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) had a fit. Earlier this month the NFLPA filed a grievance against the NFL, claiming that “this new policy, imposed by the NFL’s governing body without consultation with the NFLPA, is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement and infringes on player rights.”
A spineless Goodell quickly caved in. On July 19 The NFL and NFLPA issued a joint statement which said “no new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks”
How disgusting! Respect for flag and country should never ever be subject to collective bargaining.
And that is how Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, must feel. On Wednesday a patriotic Jerry Jones defied an unpatriotic Roger Goodell and an unpatriotic NFLPA. He told reporters that his players would be forbidden from protesting or remaining in the locker room during The Star-Spangled Banner. “Our policy is you stand during the anthem, toe on the line.”
Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son and executive vice president of the Cowboys, said that players will have to stand “if they want to be a Dallas Cowboy.” He went on to say:
“We certainly are supportive of them when they have their personal issues or their personal things that they want to pursue. And we'll help them pursue them on Tuesdays. But when you're wearing the Dallas Cowboy uniform and a Dallas Cowboy helmet and you're working for the Dallas Cowboys, you check the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ at the door, and you're a part of a team.”
President Trump tweeted Friday morning, “Way to go Jerry. This is what the league should do!”
The NFL players have every right to publicly express their personal views on any subject. They can condemn police brutality against blacks on any street corner, on any TV news show and in interviews with the print media. And they can even express those views on the playing field in some manner, provided they have the league’s permission to do so. But they do not have the right to disrespect our flag and country in front of thousands of spectators and millions of TV viewers.
The players are employees subject to the reasonable work rules of their bosses. While salaries and playing conditions are subject to collective bargaining, respect for flag and country is not and cannot ever be subject to any kinds of negotiation.
Goodell apparently believes that inmates should run the prison. Jerry and Stephen Jones and Bob McNair believe the guards should be in charge. They are patriotic. Goodell, the protesting players and the owners and coaches who support the players make up the Unpatriotic Football League..
God bless Jerry and Stephen Jones, and God bless America!
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
POTENTIALLY FAR-REACHING TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY CASE
by Bob Walsh
Back in 1999 Patrick Murphy, who is a Creek Indian, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of George Jacobs, also a Creek Indian. The murder occurred on land assigned to the tribe when Oklahoma was still a territory and congress never formally disestablished the tribal borders though the land has not been a reservation for a very long time.
A federal appeals court has just ruled that the case should have been tried in federal court, not state court, due to the jurisdictional issue. SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case this fall. Inmates and defendants all over Oklahoma are now filing for dismissal of charges on the same basis.
There are 38 tribes based in Oklahoma. The Creek Nation alone covered about 3 million acres, including all of modern Tulsa. If this ruling is upheld in total it would give the feds original jurisdiction over most crimes committed by or against native people over most of eight counties with a population of close to 1 million people.
__________
The Grisly Murder Case That Could Turn Half of Oklahoma Back Into Tribal Lands
Did Congress fail to legally abolish the Muscogee Creek Nation's reservation? The Supreme Court may have to answer that question.
by Matt Ford
The New Republic
March 15, 2018
In a legal quirk for the ages, a 1990s capital murder case involving two Native Americans could restore tribal sovereignty to almost half of Oklahoma for the first time in a century—unless the Supreme Court intervenes, that is.
The federal government asked the justices last Friday to review and reverse the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Royal v. Murphy, an unusual case in which Patrick Murphy, a death-row inmate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, claimed Oklahoma lacked the jurisdiction to try him for the murder of another tribal member on what was part of the Creek Nation’s reservation.
Until now, state and federal officials assumed those boundaries no longer existed. To prepare Oklahoma for statehood in the late nineteenth century, Congress stripped the Creek Nation and other tribes in the territory of their courts, governments, and laws. The federal government also compelled the Creek to convert their tribal lands into allotments for private ownership by the tribe’s members, with the surplus land to be sold to white settlers. When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907, state and federal power held total sway.
A three-judge panel in the Tenth Circuit ruled last summer, however, that Congress never explicitly abolished the Creek Nation’s reservation along the way. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, the judges concluded, the oversight left the reservation legally intact until the present day. As a result, the panel ruled that the defendant’s murder case could only be tried in federal courts, like other major crimes between Native Americans on tribal land under current federal law.
That was good news for Murphy, who could be retried in federal court if the ruling stands. But the Tenth Circuit’s decision has ramifications beyond a single capital case. It effectively restores the Creek Nation’s sovereign territory after a century in abeyance, handing the tribe a significant and perhaps unintentional legal victory. (Tribal officials did not return a request for comment.) The ruling also raises the possibility of sovereignty claims by other Oklahoma tribes, including the other four of what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes.
“This is something that almost all other tribes in this country have outside of Oklahoma, and this would put Oklahoma tribes on an equal footing with Indian tribes elsewhere,” Judith Royster, a University of Tulsa law professor who specializes in Indian law, told me.
A reservation delineated by the Creek Nation’s 1866 boundaries alone would fill 4,600 square miles of eastern Oklahoma and include more than 750,000 inhabitants, the state of Oklahoma told the Supreme Court in its petition for review. “The 1866 boundaries also include most of Tulsa, the State’s second largest city and home to more than 403,000 Oklahomans,” the state told the court. “A reconstituted Creek territory would be by far the largest Indian reservation by population in the United States.” If the ruling is applied to the rest of the Five Tribes, the state added, just over 40 percent of Oklahoma would become Indian country.
If the Tenth Circuit’s ruling stands, the state’s criminal jurisdiction in that territory would be reduced to minor offenses like traffic violations and crimes against non-Indians. Federal and tribal courts would take over all other cases, with serious crimes left to the federal government to investigate and prosecute. State officials cast the loss of jurisdiction in dire terms, especially if the Murphy ruling is applied to other tribes. “Stripping Oklahoma of criminal jurisdiction over all Indians in this densely populated area, or even worse, in the entire eastern half of the state, would render Oklahoma a fractured, second-class state,” Oklahoma officials told the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who represents the federal government at the Supreme Court, joined the fight on Oklahoma’s side in a brief filed last week. The justices routinely invites solicitors general to weigh in on major potential cases that could affect federal law or foreign policy. This time, however, Francisco took the rare step of filing one before the court asked him for it, a move that underscores the government’s urgent interest in the case.
“The Tenth Circuit’s reasoning could well extend to the original territories of each of the Five Tribes, expanding federal jurisdiction over nearly all of eastern Oklahoma,” the solicitor general’s office warned the court. “And it could have significant implications for application of state tax and other civil laws to Indians in the former Indian Territory. The decision ... thus threatens to disrupt the distribution of governmental authority in nearly half of Oklahoma.”
Groups representing oil and gas companies and the state’s business community also urged the Supreme Court to intervene, framing the situation as economically disruptive. “By effectively declaring half the state to be Indian country, the Tenth Circuit’s decision will upend practically every aspect of Oklahoma’s legal and regulatory regime,” the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association complained in its brief.
Royster disputed that interpretation, telling me that the immediate impact on civil matters for Oklahomans would be minimal. “Nothing’s going to happen to my property, nothing’s going to happen to my day-to-day life,” she said. “Nobody except criminals and the federal courts are going to see any immediate changes because of this.”
Those effects are already apparent: State officials told the court last month that at least 46 defendants had already invoked the ruling in lawsuits challenging their own convictions.
The case’s disturbing origins didn’t hint at its unusual outcome. In 1999, an Oklahoma jury found Murphy guilty of mutilating and murdering his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, George Jacobs. Both men were members of the Creek Nation and the crime occurred within the 1866 borders. Jurors handed Murphy a death sentence, kicking off a nearly two-decade-long appeals process in state and federal courts.
Lengthy and byzantine appeals are a hallmark of American capital punishment. But Murphy presented an unusual claim along the way: that the federal government, and not the state of Oklahoma, had jurisdiction over his case. He cited the Indian Major Crimes Act, which gives the Justice Department the exclusive power to prosecute serious offenses like murder and kidnapping if they’re committed between Native Americans in “Indian country,” a federal legal term that includes reservations and other lands owned by a tribe.
For Murphy, the case’s stakes are life and death. Federal law also forbids the death penalty for crimes committed on tribal land unless the tribal government authorizes the punishment, which virtually none do. If the Tenth Circuit’s decision stands, Murphy could be retried by federal prosecutors for Jacobs’s murder—but not sentenced to death for it if he’s found guilty a second time.
The case also delves into the darkest chapters of American history. During the nineteenth century, the federal government brutally forced the Five Civilized Tribes—the Creek, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Seminole—out of their lands in the southeastern United States. From there, they migrated towards the Great Plains into what was called the Indian Territory. At the time, the federal government promised those lands to the resettled tribes in perpetuity. But influxes of white settlers—and constant accommodations of them by Congress—quickly undermined that pledge after the Civil War.
State courts acknowledged that Murphy and Jacobs were both members of Creek Nation. The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals also held that Murphy’s historical evidence was insufficient to prove that the land on which the crime occurred was still part of Indian country. Murphy then turned to the federal courts, where he argued that the state courts had wrongly interpreted existing precedents on tribal reservations.
Last year, the Tenth Circuit panel sided with Murphy and ordered his conviction to be vacated. In a voluminous 133-page decision, the judges admonished the state courts for ignoring precedents like Solem v. Bartlett, a 1984 Supreme Court case that laid out a three-part test for disputes about Indian reservation boundaries. In Solem, the high court had unanimously ruled that each reservation continues to exist in its original form unless Congress explicitly changes its borders or abolishes it altogether.
“Only Congress can do this,” Royster explained. “And so the question is, looking at all the treaties and statutes for a particular tribe, whether Congress has done this, and in this case the Tenth Circuit said it never did. And if it never did, that post–Civil War reservation is still intact.”
The panel went through each of the three steps in turn. Did Congress explicitly disestablish the Creek reservation at any point? No, the judges concluded, because none of the statutes cited by Oklahoma include specific language to do so. Only days after legislators passed Oklahoma’s statehood act in 1906, for example, they passed laws referencing the Creek Nation’s boundaries as a point of reference in a surveying law.
Is there contemporaneous historical evidence that indicates Congress intended to disestablish the Creek reservation, even if it didn’t do so explicitly? The state cited committee reports and a failed Senate resolution from before statehood, which the panel found unpersuasive of “unequivocal” evidence of intent.
Finally, did subsequent approaches by federal, state, and tribal governments confirm disestablishment? Other federal court rulings made “scattered” references to the reservation’s dissolution, the panel acknowledged, but they hadn’t directly wrestled with the issue.
Accordingly, the panel found that the reservation survived to the present day, and that Oklahoma had wrongly convicted Murphy for a crime committed within its bounds. “The decision whether to prosecute Mr. Murphy in federal court rests with the United States,” Judge Scott Matheson concluded for the unanimous panel. “Decisions about the borders of the Creek Reservation remain with Congress.”
In November, the Tenth Circuit panel declined Oklahoma’s request to reconsider its ruling. Nonetheless, Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich attached a concurring opinion in which he wrote that the “challenging and interesting case makes a good candidate for Supreme Court review.” The panel’s three judges faithfully applied the high court’s existing precedents to the facts at hand, he explained. At the same time, Tymkovich noted that the justices may find that “the square peg of Solem is ill suited for the round hole of Oklahoma statehood.”
If the Supreme Court takes up the dispute in the coming months, it’d likely rank among the most significant cases of the fall 2018 term. How the justices will decide the case is unclear. Perhaps the most interesting voice in the matter would be the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who sat as a member of the Tenth Circuit before his nomination to the high court by President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s tenure on a Western federal appellate court gave him more experience on tribal issues than most of his colleagues. His record also won the praise and support of native legal groups during his confirmation process.
“Our history with Native Americans is not the prettiest history,” Gorsuch told Arizona Senator Jeff Flake during his confirmation hearing, when asked about his experience with tribal cases. “As a judge, you try very hard to administer the law without respect to persons, equally.”
Back in 1999 Patrick Murphy, who is a Creek Indian, was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of George Jacobs, also a Creek Indian. The murder occurred on land assigned to the tribe when Oklahoma was still a territory and congress never formally disestablished the tribal borders though the land has not been a reservation for a very long time.
A federal appeals court has just ruled that the case should have been tried in federal court, not state court, due to the jurisdictional issue. SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case this fall. Inmates and defendants all over Oklahoma are now filing for dismissal of charges on the same basis.
There are 38 tribes based in Oklahoma. The Creek Nation alone covered about 3 million acres, including all of modern Tulsa. If this ruling is upheld in total it would give the feds original jurisdiction over most crimes committed by or against native people over most of eight counties with a population of close to 1 million people.
__________
The Grisly Murder Case That Could Turn Half of Oklahoma Back Into Tribal Lands
Did Congress fail to legally abolish the Muscogee Creek Nation's reservation? The Supreme Court may have to answer that question.
by Matt Ford
The New Republic
March 15, 2018
In a legal quirk for the ages, a 1990s capital murder case involving two Native Americans could restore tribal sovereignty to almost half of Oklahoma for the first time in a century—unless the Supreme Court intervenes, that is.
The federal government asked the justices last Friday to review and reverse the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Royal v. Murphy, an unusual case in which Patrick Murphy, a death-row inmate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, claimed Oklahoma lacked the jurisdiction to try him for the murder of another tribal member on what was part of the Creek Nation’s reservation.
Until now, state and federal officials assumed those boundaries no longer existed. To prepare Oklahoma for statehood in the late nineteenth century, Congress stripped the Creek Nation and other tribes in the territory of their courts, governments, and laws. The federal government also compelled the Creek to convert their tribal lands into allotments for private ownership by the tribe’s members, with the surplus land to be sold to white settlers. When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907, state and federal power held total sway.
A three-judge panel in the Tenth Circuit ruled last summer, however, that Congress never explicitly abolished the Creek Nation’s reservation along the way. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, the judges concluded, the oversight left the reservation legally intact until the present day. As a result, the panel ruled that the defendant’s murder case could only be tried in federal courts, like other major crimes between Native Americans on tribal land under current federal law.
That was good news for Murphy, who could be retried in federal court if the ruling stands. But the Tenth Circuit’s decision has ramifications beyond a single capital case. It effectively restores the Creek Nation’s sovereign territory after a century in abeyance, handing the tribe a significant and perhaps unintentional legal victory. (Tribal officials did not return a request for comment.) The ruling also raises the possibility of sovereignty claims by other Oklahoma tribes, including the other four of what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes.
“This is something that almost all other tribes in this country have outside of Oklahoma, and this would put Oklahoma tribes on an equal footing with Indian tribes elsewhere,” Judith Royster, a University of Tulsa law professor who specializes in Indian law, told me.
A reservation delineated by the Creek Nation’s 1866 boundaries alone would fill 4,600 square miles of eastern Oklahoma and include more than 750,000 inhabitants, the state of Oklahoma told the Supreme Court in its petition for review. “The 1866 boundaries also include most of Tulsa, the State’s second largest city and home to more than 403,000 Oklahomans,” the state told the court. “A reconstituted Creek territory would be by far the largest Indian reservation by population in the United States.” If the ruling is applied to the rest of the Five Tribes, the state added, just over 40 percent of Oklahoma would become Indian country.
If the Tenth Circuit’s ruling stands, the state’s criminal jurisdiction in that territory would be reduced to minor offenses like traffic violations and crimes against non-Indians. Federal and tribal courts would take over all other cases, with serious crimes left to the federal government to investigate and prosecute. State officials cast the loss of jurisdiction in dire terms, especially if the Murphy ruling is applied to other tribes. “Stripping Oklahoma of criminal jurisdiction over all Indians in this densely populated area, or even worse, in the entire eastern half of the state, would render Oklahoma a fractured, second-class state,” Oklahoma officials told the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who represents the federal government at the Supreme Court, joined the fight on Oklahoma’s side in a brief filed last week. The justices routinely invites solicitors general to weigh in on major potential cases that could affect federal law or foreign policy. This time, however, Francisco took the rare step of filing one before the court asked him for it, a move that underscores the government’s urgent interest in the case.
“The Tenth Circuit’s reasoning could well extend to the original territories of each of the Five Tribes, expanding federal jurisdiction over nearly all of eastern Oklahoma,” the solicitor general’s office warned the court. “And it could have significant implications for application of state tax and other civil laws to Indians in the former Indian Territory. The decision ... thus threatens to disrupt the distribution of governmental authority in nearly half of Oklahoma.”
Groups representing oil and gas companies and the state’s business community also urged the Supreme Court to intervene, framing the situation as economically disruptive. “By effectively declaring half the state to be Indian country, the Tenth Circuit’s decision will upend practically every aspect of Oklahoma’s legal and regulatory regime,” the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association complained in its brief.
Royster disputed that interpretation, telling me that the immediate impact on civil matters for Oklahomans would be minimal. “Nothing’s going to happen to my property, nothing’s going to happen to my day-to-day life,” she said. “Nobody except criminals and the federal courts are going to see any immediate changes because of this.”
Those effects are already apparent: State officials told the court last month that at least 46 defendants had already invoked the ruling in lawsuits challenging their own convictions.
The case’s disturbing origins didn’t hint at its unusual outcome. In 1999, an Oklahoma jury found Murphy guilty of mutilating and murdering his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, George Jacobs. Both men were members of the Creek Nation and the crime occurred within the 1866 borders. Jurors handed Murphy a death sentence, kicking off a nearly two-decade-long appeals process in state and federal courts.
Lengthy and byzantine appeals are a hallmark of American capital punishment. But Murphy presented an unusual claim along the way: that the federal government, and not the state of Oklahoma, had jurisdiction over his case. He cited the Indian Major Crimes Act, which gives the Justice Department the exclusive power to prosecute serious offenses like murder and kidnapping if they’re committed between Native Americans in “Indian country,” a federal legal term that includes reservations and other lands owned by a tribe.
For Murphy, the case’s stakes are life and death. Federal law also forbids the death penalty for crimes committed on tribal land unless the tribal government authorizes the punishment, which virtually none do. If the Tenth Circuit’s decision stands, Murphy could be retried by federal prosecutors for Jacobs’s murder—but not sentenced to death for it if he’s found guilty a second time.
The case also delves into the darkest chapters of American history. During the nineteenth century, the federal government brutally forced the Five Civilized Tribes—the Creek, the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Seminole—out of their lands in the southeastern United States. From there, they migrated towards the Great Plains into what was called the Indian Territory. At the time, the federal government promised those lands to the resettled tribes in perpetuity. But influxes of white settlers—and constant accommodations of them by Congress—quickly undermined that pledge after the Civil War.
State courts acknowledged that Murphy and Jacobs were both members of Creek Nation. The Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals also held that Murphy’s historical evidence was insufficient to prove that the land on which the crime occurred was still part of Indian country. Murphy then turned to the federal courts, where he argued that the state courts had wrongly interpreted existing precedents on tribal reservations.
Last year, the Tenth Circuit panel sided with Murphy and ordered his conviction to be vacated. In a voluminous 133-page decision, the judges admonished the state courts for ignoring precedents like Solem v. Bartlett, a 1984 Supreme Court case that laid out a three-part test for disputes about Indian reservation boundaries. In Solem, the high court had unanimously ruled that each reservation continues to exist in its original form unless Congress explicitly changes its borders or abolishes it altogether.
“Only Congress can do this,” Royster explained. “And so the question is, looking at all the treaties and statutes for a particular tribe, whether Congress has done this, and in this case the Tenth Circuit said it never did. And if it never did, that post–Civil War reservation is still intact.”
The panel went through each of the three steps in turn. Did Congress explicitly disestablish the Creek reservation at any point? No, the judges concluded, because none of the statutes cited by Oklahoma include specific language to do so. Only days after legislators passed Oklahoma’s statehood act in 1906, for example, they passed laws referencing the Creek Nation’s boundaries as a point of reference in a surveying law.
Is there contemporaneous historical evidence that indicates Congress intended to disestablish the Creek reservation, even if it didn’t do so explicitly? The state cited committee reports and a failed Senate resolution from before statehood, which the panel found unpersuasive of “unequivocal” evidence of intent.
Finally, did subsequent approaches by federal, state, and tribal governments confirm disestablishment? Other federal court rulings made “scattered” references to the reservation’s dissolution, the panel acknowledged, but they hadn’t directly wrestled with the issue.
Accordingly, the panel found that the reservation survived to the present day, and that Oklahoma had wrongly convicted Murphy for a crime committed within its bounds. “The decision whether to prosecute Mr. Murphy in federal court rests with the United States,” Judge Scott Matheson concluded for the unanimous panel. “Decisions about the borders of the Creek Reservation remain with Congress.”
In November, the Tenth Circuit panel declined Oklahoma’s request to reconsider its ruling. Nonetheless, Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich attached a concurring opinion in which he wrote that the “challenging and interesting case makes a good candidate for Supreme Court review.” The panel’s three judges faithfully applied the high court’s existing precedents to the facts at hand, he explained. At the same time, Tymkovich noted that the justices may find that “the square peg of Solem is ill suited for the round hole of Oklahoma statehood.”
If the Supreme Court takes up the dispute in the coming months, it’d likely rank among the most significant cases of the fall 2018 term. How the justices will decide the case is unclear. Perhaps the most interesting voice in the matter would be the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, who sat as a member of the Tenth Circuit before his nomination to the high court by President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s tenure on a Western federal appellate court gave him more experience on tribal issues than most of his colleagues. His record also won the praise and support of native legal groups during his confirmation process.
“Our history with Native Americans is not the prettiest history,” Gorsuch told Arizona Senator Jeff Flake during his confirmation hearing, when asked about his experience with tribal cases. “As a judge, you try very hard to administer the law without respect to persons, equally.”
MOST URBAN BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS ARE SHITHOLES … BUT RICK SHAFTAN IS A DISGUSTING RACIST
Spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart calls Baltimore, New Orleans and Memphis 'shitholes' and says business would be 'fools' to open in black neighborhoods
By Nic White
Daily Mail
July 30, 2018
A spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart called three majority-black U.S. cities 'shitholes'.
Rick Shaftan derided Baltimore, New Orleans, and Memphis in a series of tweets this year while working to get the Virginia candidate elected.
He reserved particular ire for Louisiana's biggest city: 'You can run your gang-infested shithole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars.'
Mr Shaftan was using the word President Donald Trump used to describe countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries in an anti-immigration tweet.
The racist posts were yet another gaffe in Mr Stewart's scandal-plagued campaign that has seen him pilloried as a white supremacist by Democrats.
Mr Shaftan is no stranger to openly denigrating black people and the neighborhoods they live in on his social media accounts.
Following the riots in Ferguson in response to police shooting an unarmed black man, he repeatedly warned businesses not to open in black neighborhoods.
'After Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood,' one of them read.
In response to news of a 2011 robbery he wrote: 'Another reason why white people (and Asians and Latinos) don't want to live with black people. #TheTruthHurts #Reality'
He also branded the NCAAP as the 'black KKK, only more violent' in a 2010 tweet.
Shaftan has a history of support controversial candidates, including far-right congress hopeful Paul Nehlen and accused pedophile Roy Moore.
He worked on a political action committee that supported Mr Nehlen, who has long expressed anti-Muslim views.
From late 2017 Mr Nehlen also started sharing anti-Semitic posts including an image of Jews' heads on pikes in the Oval Office.
'I was with [America Speaks PAC] back in 2016 where we boosted Nehlen. There was no sign he was anything other than a Trump guy, pretty much,' Mr Shaftan told the Daily Beast.
'I made an ad for him, I think in November, before he went wacko.'
Numerous other staffers for Mr Stewart's campaign have been exposed as having racist, anti-Semitic, or white supremacist views.
They include one who was a member of a chat group planning a sequel to the deadly Charlottesville rally, and another who praised the president of the American Nazi Party.
Mr Stewart's campaign also awarded Volunteer of the Month to a man with links to neo-Nazi groups.
By Nic White
Daily Mail
July 30, 2018
A spokesman for controversial senate candidate Corey Stewart called three majority-black U.S. cities 'shitholes'.
Rick Shaftan derided Baltimore, New Orleans, and Memphis in a series of tweets this year while working to get the Virginia candidate elected.
He reserved particular ire for Louisiana's biggest city: 'You can run your gang-infested shithole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars.'
Mr Shaftan was using the word President Donald Trump used to describe countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries in an anti-immigration tweet.
The racist posts were yet another gaffe in Mr Stewart's scandal-plagued campaign that has seen him pilloried as a white supremacist by Democrats.
Mr Shaftan is no stranger to openly denigrating black people and the neighborhoods they live in on his social media accounts.
Following the riots in Ferguson in response to police shooting an unarmed black man, he repeatedly warned businesses not to open in black neighborhoods.
'After Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood,' one of them read.
In response to news of a 2011 robbery he wrote: 'Another reason why white people (and Asians and Latinos) don't want to live with black people. #TheTruthHurts #Reality'
He also branded the NCAAP as the 'black KKK, only more violent' in a 2010 tweet.
Shaftan has a history of support controversial candidates, including far-right congress hopeful Paul Nehlen and accused pedophile Roy Moore.
He worked on a political action committee that supported Mr Nehlen, who has long expressed anti-Muslim views.
From late 2017 Mr Nehlen also started sharing anti-Semitic posts including an image of Jews' heads on pikes in the Oval Office.
'I was with [America Speaks PAC] back in 2016 where we boosted Nehlen. There was no sign he was anything other than a Trump guy, pretty much,' Mr Shaftan told the Daily Beast.
'I made an ad for him, I think in November, before he went wacko.'
Numerous other staffers for Mr Stewart's campaign have been exposed as having racist, anti-Semitic, or white supremacist views.
They include one who was a member of a chat group planning a sequel to the deadly Charlottesville rally, and another who praised the president of the American Nazi Party.
Mr Stewart's campaign also awarded Volunteer of the Month to a man with links to neo-Nazi groups.
ISRAEL’S ORTHODOX RABBIS IN LOCKSTEP WITH AMERICA’S CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES
Outrage in Israel After Rabbis Call LGBT Community 'Perverts'
Israel Today
July 30, 2018
The more liberal and progressive elements in Israeli society are fuming after a group of 200 leading rabbis published a letter labeling homosexuals as "perverts."
As a nation, Israel prides itself on tolerance toward and acceptance of homosexuals. There are openly-gay members of Knesset; the IDF touts its integration of the LGBT community; Tel Aviv is advertised by the Israel Ministry of Tourism as a top gay travel destination; and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently highlighted Israel's homosexual credentials at the American Jewish Committee conference.
But Netanyahu and his Likud Party also helped defeat a motion to include homosexuals in a new amendment to Israel's surrogacy laws. The amendment enables single would-be mothers to now make use of surrogacy on the state's dime. Homosexuals hoped to be included in the new regulations, and took to the streets of Tel Aviv in mass protest when the Knesset rejected their appeals.
In response to the liberal outcry, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern insisted that children born to gay couples would "enter a very strange and unnatural life," and that the government of Israel shouldn't be party to such a "wretched" state of affairs.
Rabbi Stern faced a severe backlash, which prompted the 200 prominent fellow rabbis to come to his defense in a letter reading:
"[Rabbi Stern] spoke simply about the eternal truth of our holy Torah and human normalcy, which the healthy majority of the State of Israel identifies with, and which is outraged by the provocations of the organizations of abomination, who carry out impudent marches in the cities of Israel and even arrange marches of abomination on the Fast of Av, a day of national mourning for the Temple which was destroyed in part due to illicit sexual relations and baseless hatred.
"The media's brainwashing that seeks to destroy the concept of family and turn perverts into heroes will not succeed, and nor will the attempt to silence rabbis and sane people and turn them into delusional extremists."
The letter was swiftly condemned by left-wing and centrist lawmakers in the Knesset, and a petition was started demanding that any of the 200 rabbis who draw a government salary should be fired immediately.
Israel Today
July 30, 2018
The more liberal and progressive elements in Israeli society are fuming after a group of 200 leading rabbis published a letter labeling homosexuals as "perverts."
As a nation, Israel prides itself on tolerance toward and acceptance of homosexuals. There are openly-gay members of Knesset; the IDF touts its integration of the LGBT community; Tel Aviv is advertised by the Israel Ministry of Tourism as a top gay travel destination; and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently highlighted Israel's homosexual credentials at the American Jewish Committee conference.
But Netanyahu and his Likud Party also helped defeat a motion to include homosexuals in a new amendment to Israel's surrogacy laws. The amendment enables single would-be mothers to now make use of surrogacy on the state's dime. Homosexuals hoped to be included in the new regulations, and took to the streets of Tel Aviv in mass protest when the Knesset rejected their appeals.
In response to the liberal outcry, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern insisted that children born to gay couples would "enter a very strange and unnatural life," and that the government of Israel shouldn't be party to such a "wretched" state of affairs.
Rabbi Stern faced a severe backlash, which prompted the 200 prominent fellow rabbis to come to his defense in a letter reading:
"[Rabbi Stern] spoke simply about the eternal truth of our holy Torah and human normalcy, which the healthy majority of the State of Israel identifies with, and which is outraged by the provocations of the organizations of abomination, who carry out impudent marches in the cities of Israel and even arrange marches of abomination on the Fast of Av, a day of national mourning for the Temple which was destroyed in part due to illicit sexual relations and baseless hatred.
"The media's brainwashing that seeks to destroy the concept of family and turn perverts into heroes will not succeed, and nor will the attempt to silence rabbis and sane people and turn them into delusional extremists."
The letter was swiftly condemned by left-wing and centrist lawmakers in the Knesset, and a petition was started demanding that any of the 200 rabbis who draw a government salary should be fired immediately.
MEXICAN CARTELS AT EACH OTHER’S THROATS
15 Cartels Fight Over Plazas Generating Wave Of Violence
By Ignacio Alzaga (Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat)
Milenio
July 29, 2018
Alliances, ruptures and the consolidation of criminal organizations make up the most recent map of drug trafficking in Mexico, where 15 groups define themselves as cartels and have generated a wave of violence over the control of places, the distribution of drugs and various criminal activities, especially the practice of illegal fuel takes known as "Huachicoleo".
Guanajuato has become the epicenter of a war between the Cartel of Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, particularly for the theft of fuel from Pemex pipelines or huachicoleo .
The Sinaloa or Pacific Cartel is going through an internal struggle, led by the sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán , know as "Los Chapitos" or "Los Menores" and the faction led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
This is revealed by intelligence reports of the National Security Commission (CNS), through the Federal Police, and the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) updated to July 2018.
Consulted on the recomposition of drug trafficking in the country, the head of the CNS, Renato Sales Heredia, maintained that there is a dispersion of the cartels that has increased the violence.
"This has happened precisely in border areas, in ports and in places like Guanajuato because of the issue of the huachicol , an entity in which groups that split up from the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel, CJNG and other groups have appeared to face each other .
What we have on the border and in Colima is the market that has to do with some drugs in particular.
"This dispersion of the criminal groups has also generated the increase in homicide rates."
THE HEAVY GROUPS:
The reports consulted by MILENIO reveal that they are 15 the most important criminal organizations operating in the country.
It is the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG); the Sinaloa Cartel; the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel; The Zetas ; the Northeast Cartel; the West Cartel; the New Juarez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel.
Also Los Viagras ; the Cartel of Tijuana Nueva Generación, CTNG ; The Arellano Felix; La Familia ; Los Beltrán Leyva; the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA) and the Cartel Nueva Plaza.
In recent weeks there has been a rebound in the rivalry between the CJNG and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel for the theft of hydrocarbons and narcomenudeo in Guanajuato.
In Baja California, executions are linked to the struggle between the Sinaloa-Los Arellano Félix and Jalisco-Tijuana Nueva Generación , ie CJNG and CTNG ,alliances for dominating retail drug sales.
According to federal authorities, in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez, the offensive of La Línea against the Los Aztecas gang for the control of the sale of drugs prevails , "which adds to its confrontation with the Sinaloa cartel that seeks to consolidate the crystal meth market. "
In Guerrero, Acapulco has remained the main focus of attention due to the rivalry between Beltrán Leyva and CIDA, who seek to handle extortion and drug dealing .
Other conflicts prevail in Michoacán, between CJNG and Los Viagras:
In Jalisco between the CJNG and the New Plaza; the entity occupies the third place for the number of narco laboratories detected and destroyed; from December 2012 to July 15, 2018, there have been 68.
The internal war continues in Sinaloa between fractions of that cartel, which increased after the recapture and extradition of "El Chapo" Guzmán to the US; while in Veracruz the battle is between the CJNG and Los Zetas .
The National Defense points out that in Colima where the CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Michoacana operate , while there is a bloody struggle between the first two criminal organizations.
In Baja California the rivalry is between the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, as well as between Tijuana Nueva Generación, CTNG and Sinaloa, the latter based in Baja California Sur.
According to the Sedena, in Tamaulipas the fight is between the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas and the Northeast Cartel, as well as several divisions of both groups.
On July 20, the Army found in the municipality of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero apparel with American-style military camouflage: 61 jackets, 147 pants and 138 pixelated camisoles.
The Gulf Cartel is based in Zacatecas and the CJNG in Aguascalientes, while the Sinaloa Cartel operates in Durango, which fights against the Cartel del Poniente, especially for the huachicoleo .
By Ignacio Alzaga (Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat)
Milenio
July 29, 2018
Alliances, ruptures and the consolidation of criminal organizations make up the most recent map of drug trafficking in Mexico, where 15 groups define themselves as cartels and have generated a wave of violence over the control of places, the distribution of drugs and various criminal activities, especially the practice of illegal fuel takes known as "Huachicoleo".
Guanajuato has become the epicenter of a war between the Cartel of Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, particularly for the theft of fuel from Pemex pipelines or huachicoleo .
The Sinaloa or Pacific Cartel is going through an internal struggle, led by the sons of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán , know as "Los Chapitos" or "Los Menores" and the faction led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
This is revealed by intelligence reports of the National Security Commission (CNS), through the Federal Police, and the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) updated to July 2018.
Consulted on the recomposition of drug trafficking in the country, the head of the CNS, Renato Sales Heredia, maintained that there is a dispersion of the cartels that has increased the violence.
"This has happened precisely in border areas, in ports and in places like Guanajuato because of the issue of the huachicol , an entity in which groups that split up from the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel, CJNG and other groups have appeared to face each other .
What we have on the border and in Colima is the market that has to do with some drugs in particular.
"This dispersion of the criminal groups has also generated the increase in homicide rates."
THE HEAVY GROUPS:
The reports consulted by MILENIO reveal that they are 15 the most important criminal organizations operating in the country.
It is the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG); the Sinaloa Cartel; the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel; The Zetas ; the Northeast Cartel; the West Cartel; the New Juarez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel.
Also Los Viagras ; the Cartel of Tijuana Nueva Generación, CTNG ; The Arellano Felix; La Familia ; Los Beltrán Leyva; the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA) and the Cartel Nueva Plaza.
In recent weeks there has been a rebound in the rivalry between the CJNG and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel for the theft of hydrocarbons and narcomenudeo in Guanajuato.
In Baja California, executions are linked to the struggle between the Sinaloa-Los Arellano Félix and Jalisco-Tijuana Nueva Generación , ie CJNG and CTNG ,alliances for dominating retail drug sales.
According to federal authorities, in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez, the offensive of La Línea against the Los Aztecas gang for the control of the sale of drugs prevails , "which adds to its confrontation with the Sinaloa cartel that seeks to consolidate the crystal meth market. "
In Guerrero, Acapulco has remained the main focus of attention due to the rivalry between Beltrán Leyva and CIDA, who seek to handle extortion and drug dealing .
Other conflicts prevail in Michoacán, between CJNG and Los Viagras:
In Jalisco between the CJNG and the New Plaza; the entity occupies the third place for the number of narco laboratories detected and destroyed; from December 2012 to July 15, 2018, there have been 68.
The internal war continues in Sinaloa between fractions of that cartel, which increased after the recapture and extradition of "El Chapo" Guzmán to the US; while in Veracruz the battle is between the CJNG and Los Zetas .
The National Defense points out that in Colima where the CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Michoacana operate , while there is a bloody struggle between the first two criminal organizations.
In Baja California the rivalry is between the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, as well as between Tijuana Nueva Generación, CTNG and Sinaloa, the latter based in Baja California Sur.
According to the Sedena, in Tamaulipas the fight is between the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas and the Northeast Cartel, as well as several divisions of both groups.
On July 20, the Army found in the municipality of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero apparel with American-style military camouflage: 61 jackets, 147 pants and 138 pixelated camisoles.
The Gulf Cartel is based in Zacatecas and the CJNG in Aguascalientes, while the Sinaloa Cartel operates in Durango, which fights against the Cartel del Poniente, especially for the huachicoleo .
Monday, July 30, 2018
JUST A BUGATTI OIL CHANGE
An oil and filter change on this car costs $21,000. But as you saw on this video, it's not a do-it-yourself job.
POISON TOOTHPASTE, PRISONERS HYPNOTISED TO KILL
How Mossad, Israel's secret service, has become the world leader in assassins with 800 operations in the last decade
By Dominic Sandbrook
Daily Mail
July 28, 2018
Forty years ago, Wadie Haddad was one of the world’s most wanted men. Bold, determined, ruthless, Haddad was the founder of the far-Left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.
Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a ‘kill order’, Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.
What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad’s inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.
Every time Haddad brushed his teeth, a tiny quantity of the toxin worked its way through his gums into his bloodstream.
Little by little, he began to die. His Palestinian friends contacted the East German secret police, who flew him to a hospital in East Berlin. Ten days later, bleeding from every orifice, Haddad died in agony.
The doctors were baffled. But back in Israel, Mossad congratulated itself on a job well done.
What happened to Haddad, argues Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in a riveting new book, was merely the most melodramatic example of what is now an enduring pattern.
Israel, a country born in bloodshed, has become the world leader in assassinations.
The numbers alone are extraordinary. Not only have Mossad’s secret agents killed more people than the agents of any other state since World War II, but the pace has rapidly increased, with some 800 operations in the past decade.
The number of deaths will never be known for sure, but they are in the thousands.
There is, of course, something irresistibly fascinating about the idea of the globe-trotting secret agent, moving through the murky world of Middle Eastern politics with a licence to kill. And some of Bergman’s stories do have the flavour of a Hollywood spy blockbuster.
One operation in 1968 was directly inspired by the film The Manchurian Candidate, with Mossad hiring a Swedish-born psychologist to brainwash a Palestinian prisoner into murdering Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The psychologist picked a suitable prisoner and spent three months hypnotising him with the simple message: ‘Arafat bad. He must be removed’.
The prisoner, known only as Fatkhi, was trained to shoot at pictures of Arafat, hidden in a specially prepared room.
On December 19, 1968, a Mossad team smuggled Fatkhi across the River Jordan, from where he was supposed to infiltrate Arafat’s headquarters.
Then they waited. Five hours later, news came. Fatkhi had wasted no time. He had gone straight to a police station and accused Mossad of trying to brainwash him. The operation was an abject failure.
In recent years, however, Mossad has lived up to its reputation as the most efficient secret killing machine in the world. One operation in Dubai proves the point. In January 2010, a team of several dozen Mossad agents flew to the oil-rich emirate on false passports, wearing wigs and false moustaches.
Disguised as tourists and tennis players — some of them even carried racquets — they broke into a room at the luxurious Al-Bustan Hotel.
There they waited for their quarry, top Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. As soon as al-Mabhouh let himself into his room, they grabbed him and used a high-tech ultrasound instrument to inject poison into his neck without even breaking the skin.
He died within moments. Four hours later, most of the team had already flown out of Dubai. Job done.
All this might sound swashbuckling or heroic. In reality, there is nothing glamorous about Bergman’s story.
Indeed, the first man to die in his book is not some Palestinian terrorist or Left-wing extremist. It is a British policeman: Detective Superintendent Tom Wilkin, from Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.
In the autumn of 1944, Wilkin was in Jerusalem, where he was in charge of cracking down on Zionist guerillas.
At the time, Jerusalem was part of British-governed Palestine, where the authorities were struggling to keep a lid on the tensions between Zionists — who wanted an independent Jewish state — and their Palestinian neighbours.
To the Jewish militants in the terrorist Stern Gang, Wilkin was not a man. He was a target. In September, 1944, as he was strolling down a street, a boy sitting outside a grocery store threw down his hat — a sign the target was in range.
Moments later, two young Jewish men opened fire with revolvers. Wilkin ‘managed to turn around and draw his pistol,’ one assailant, David Shomron, recalled, ‘but then he fell face first. A spurt of blood came out of his forehead, like a fountain.’
Shomron did not feel the slightest remorse. ‘Not even a little twinge of guilt,’ he said later. ‘We believed the more coffins that reached London, the closer the day of freedom would be.’
That terrible phrase — ‘the more coffins that reached London’ — captures the mood of Bergman’s book. For, as cold-blooded as this sounds, Shomron was proved right.
Faced with a wave of killings, including the infamous 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 mostly British officials were killed, Clement Attlee’s government decided to get out. The Zionists got what they wanted.
But the blood that gushed from poor Tom Wilkin’s head would soon become a torrent.
The state of Israel was born amid brutal ethnic cleansing, with Jewish and Palestinian neighbours slaughtering one another in their thousands, while the new country’s Arab neighbours tried to strangle it at birth. It is hardly surprising that, ever since, Israel’s leaders have been driven by insecurity. After all, Israel has always been surrounded by hostile states, most of which deny that it even has the right to exist.
On top of that, no Israeli can ever forget the awful shadow of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis.
Even today, hatred of Jews remains a monstrous feature of Europe’s political landscape — as evidenced by the appalling goings-on inside the Labour Party, where leader Jeremy Corbyn and his friends have turned a blind eye to the resurgence of the most poisonous anti- Semitism. No wonder, then, that in the struggle for survival, Israel’s leaders have reached so often for the bomb and bullet.
‘If someone comes to kill you,’ says the sacred Jewish text, the Talmud, ‘rise up and kill him first.’
As Bergman argues, that has been the principle guiding Mossad, as well as Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet and the army intelligence agency Aman, since the state’s foundation 70 years ago.
Former Mossad director Meir Dagan, who ordered hundreds of assassinations between 2002 and 2011, kept a picture of his Polish-born grandfather, on his knees and surrounded by German soldiers, moments before he was shot and thrown into a mass grave.
The lesson, Dagan told Bergman before his death in 2016, was that ‘most of the Jews in the Holocaust died without fighting. We must never reach that situation again, kneeling, without the ability to fight for our lives.’
Bergman’s own story, by the way, is fascinating. Although this book has earned him a reputation as a whistle-blower, he is the very antithesis of a simplistic, bleeding-hearted activist.
Born in 1972 to parents who were both Holocaust survivors, he did his national service in the intelligence unit of Israel’s Military Police Corps, has a PhD from Cambridge and is now a senior correspondent for Israel’s largest newspaper.
Based on 1,000 interviews and vast numbers of leaked documents, his book often reads like a John le Carre novel. But it took considerable courage for him to publish it.
While he was working on it, the chief of the Israel Defense Forces accused him of ‘aggravated espionage’ and even asked the security services to take action against him.
Why? The reason is that Bergman sheds an unsparing light on the human cost of Israel’s targeted killings policy. He shows, for example, that when operations have taken place overseas, Israel’s agents were, and probably still are, unforgivably casual about civilian victims.
Perhaps the most chilling section of his book concerns an operation in 1973 — and which was about as far from the glamour and romance of a James Bond thriller as you could possibly imagine.
That summer, Mossad was on the hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the most wanted men in the world. Salameh was chief of operations for Black September, the Palestinian terrorist group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Mossad wanted him dead, but the trail had gone cold. Then came a miracle. In Lillehammer, Norway, an Israeli secret agent spotted Salameh in a cafe. Word went back to Tel Aviv and a hit squad was assembled. On July 21, as Salameh and his girlfriend got off a bus on their way home from the cinema, the assassins were waiting in a rented Volvo. They leaped out of the car, fired eight shots, jumped back in their car and screeched away, leaving their target in a pool of blood.
It was almost the perfect hit, but for just one problem. They had killed the wrong man.
It was not Salameh, but Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter with a heavily pregnant wife.
In the aftermath, Norwegian police arrested six Israeli agents. Five served time in Norway, though all were released quickly under a secret deal. When the five returned to Israel, they were greeted as heroes. Few questioned the basic morality of the operation; it was just a shame, they thought, that Mossad had got the wrong man.
But they did get him eventually. On January 22, 1979, Salameh had just left his Beirut apartment when a female Israeli agent, watching from her balcony, pressed a button and a gigantic car bomb ripped through the street.
Eight bystanders were also killed, including a German nun and a British student, but nobody at Mossad cared. ‘You get used to killing,’ explains former security chief Ami Ayalon. ‘Human life becomes easy to dispose of. You spend a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, on who to kill.’
In a chillingly familiar phrase, Ayalon even calls this the ‘banality of evil’ — words borrowed from the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who used it to describe the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. That tells its own story.
And although Bergman shows why decent people can feel they have no choice but to take terrible decisions, he also shows the consequences of crossing the line between good and evil.
In the early Eighties, for example, Israeli defence minister, and later prime minister, Ariel Sharon’s obsession with killing Yasser Arafat led him into one of the darkest chapters in Israel’s modern history. At the time, Israel was embroiled in a horrific civil war in Lebanon, which killed at least 120,000 people.
There, on Sharon’s orders, his army colluded with the local Christian Phalange, a militia who murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslims in a Beirut slaughterhouse, cut off their ears as souvenirs and buried their bodies in lime pits. Almost incredibly, Sharon did not stop there.
Some of Bergman’s interviewees told him that on five occasions in 1982, Sharon seriously contemplated shooting down an ordinary civilian airliner when he heard that Arafat might be aboard.
On each occasion the Israeli military refused to obey, sometimes deliberately dithering until it was too late. Had they not done so, hundreds of ordinary passengers would have died in what Bergman calls ‘an intentional war crime’.
No doubt all this will be grist to the mill of Israel’s critics. On the Left, in particular, criticism of Israel has become an automatic reflex, often tinged with more than a hint of anti-Semitism.
There are, of course, good reasons to be critical of Israel. I find it impossible to justify its harsh treatment of the defeated Palestinians, or its callous, cynical policy of expanding Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
Yet after all the Jews have suffered — pogroms, persecution and the unspeakable obscenity of the Holocaust — what reasonable person would begrudge them a homeland of their own?
And who can blame them for fighting to defend that homeland from those who would destroy it?
Ever since 1948, as Bergman himself points out, the threats to Israel’s existence have been only too real. One of his book’s most powerful images is a picture of an Israeli woman, drenched in her own blood, being carried away after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Sharon used to show it to foreign diplomats whenever they questioned Israel’s targeted assassination programme. Given Israel’s bloody history and dangerous present, I understand why its agents feel they must act as they do.
The question, though, is whether the killings are working. For the past 70 years, the deaths have piled up, yet still there is no peace. The blood flows, but still Israel is not safe.
Its enemies, of course, deserve a large share of the blame. But perhaps killing has become so easy that Israel’s leaders have stopped looking for other solutions. Either way, the end is nowhere in sight — and so Mossad’s killings go on. Because of their secretive nature, they rarely make the headlines.
But even as you are reading these words, someone, somewhere, is planning the next hit.
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman is available in bookstores and Amazon.com.
By Dominic Sandbrook
Daily Mail
July 28, 2018
Forty years ago, Wadie Haddad was one of the world’s most wanted men. Bold, determined, ruthless, Haddad was the founder of the far-Left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.
Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a ‘kill order’, Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.
What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad’s inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.
Every time Haddad brushed his teeth, a tiny quantity of the toxin worked its way through his gums into his bloodstream.
Little by little, he began to die. His Palestinian friends contacted the East German secret police, who flew him to a hospital in East Berlin. Ten days later, bleeding from every orifice, Haddad died in agony.
The doctors were baffled. But back in Israel, Mossad congratulated itself on a job well done.
What happened to Haddad, argues Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in a riveting new book, was merely the most melodramatic example of what is now an enduring pattern.
Israel, a country born in bloodshed, has become the world leader in assassinations.
The numbers alone are extraordinary. Not only have Mossad’s secret agents killed more people than the agents of any other state since World War II, but the pace has rapidly increased, with some 800 operations in the past decade.
The number of deaths will never be known for sure, but they are in the thousands.
There is, of course, something irresistibly fascinating about the idea of the globe-trotting secret agent, moving through the murky world of Middle Eastern politics with a licence to kill. And some of Bergman’s stories do have the flavour of a Hollywood spy blockbuster.
One operation in 1968 was directly inspired by the film The Manchurian Candidate, with Mossad hiring a Swedish-born psychologist to brainwash a Palestinian prisoner into murdering Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The psychologist picked a suitable prisoner and spent three months hypnotising him with the simple message: ‘Arafat bad. He must be removed’.
The prisoner, known only as Fatkhi, was trained to shoot at pictures of Arafat, hidden in a specially prepared room.
On December 19, 1968, a Mossad team smuggled Fatkhi across the River Jordan, from where he was supposed to infiltrate Arafat’s headquarters.
Then they waited. Five hours later, news came. Fatkhi had wasted no time. He had gone straight to a police station and accused Mossad of trying to brainwash him. The operation was an abject failure.
In recent years, however, Mossad has lived up to its reputation as the most efficient secret killing machine in the world. One operation in Dubai proves the point. In January 2010, a team of several dozen Mossad agents flew to the oil-rich emirate on false passports, wearing wigs and false moustaches.
Disguised as tourists and tennis players — some of them even carried racquets — they broke into a room at the luxurious Al-Bustan Hotel.
There they waited for their quarry, top Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. As soon as al-Mabhouh let himself into his room, they grabbed him and used a high-tech ultrasound instrument to inject poison into his neck without even breaking the skin.
He died within moments. Four hours later, most of the team had already flown out of Dubai. Job done.
All this might sound swashbuckling or heroic. In reality, there is nothing glamorous about Bergman’s story.
Indeed, the first man to die in his book is not some Palestinian terrorist or Left-wing extremist. It is a British policeman: Detective Superintendent Tom Wilkin, from Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.
In the autumn of 1944, Wilkin was in Jerusalem, where he was in charge of cracking down on Zionist guerillas.
At the time, Jerusalem was part of British-governed Palestine, where the authorities were struggling to keep a lid on the tensions between Zionists — who wanted an independent Jewish state — and their Palestinian neighbours.
To the Jewish militants in the terrorist Stern Gang, Wilkin was not a man. He was a target. In September, 1944, as he was strolling down a street, a boy sitting outside a grocery store threw down his hat — a sign the target was in range.
Moments later, two young Jewish men opened fire with revolvers. Wilkin ‘managed to turn around and draw his pistol,’ one assailant, David Shomron, recalled, ‘but then he fell face first. A spurt of blood came out of his forehead, like a fountain.’
Shomron did not feel the slightest remorse. ‘Not even a little twinge of guilt,’ he said later. ‘We believed the more coffins that reached London, the closer the day of freedom would be.’
That terrible phrase — ‘the more coffins that reached London’ — captures the mood of Bergman’s book. For, as cold-blooded as this sounds, Shomron was proved right.
Faced with a wave of killings, including the infamous 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 mostly British officials were killed, Clement Attlee’s government decided to get out. The Zionists got what they wanted.
But the blood that gushed from poor Tom Wilkin’s head would soon become a torrent.
The state of Israel was born amid brutal ethnic cleansing, with Jewish and Palestinian neighbours slaughtering one another in their thousands, while the new country’s Arab neighbours tried to strangle it at birth. It is hardly surprising that, ever since, Israel’s leaders have been driven by insecurity. After all, Israel has always been surrounded by hostile states, most of which deny that it even has the right to exist.
On top of that, no Israeli can ever forget the awful shadow of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis.
Even today, hatred of Jews remains a monstrous feature of Europe’s political landscape — as evidenced by the appalling goings-on inside the Labour Party, where leader Jeremy Corbyn and his friends have turned a blind eye to the resurgence of the most poisonous anti- Semitism. No wonder, then, that in the struggle for survival, Israel’s leaders have reached so often for the bomb and bullet.
‘If someone comes to kill you,’ says the sacred Jewish text, the Talmud, ‘rise up and kill him first.’
As Bergman argues, that has been the principle guiding Mossad, as well as Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet and the army intelligence agency Aman, since the state’s foundation 70 years ago.
Former Mossad director Meir Dagan, who ordered hundreds of assassinations between 2002 and 2011, kept a picture of his Polish-born grandfather, on his knees and surrounded by German soldiers, moments before he was shot and thrown into a mass grave.
The lesson, Dagan told Bergman before his death in 2016, was that ‘most of the Jews in the Holocaust died without fighting. We must never reach that situation again, kneeling, without the ability to fight for our lives.’
Bergman’s own story, by the way, is fascinating. Although this book has earned him a reputation as a whistle-blower, he is the very antithesis of a simplistic, bleeding-hearted activist.
Born in 1972 to parents who were both Holocaust survivors, he did his national service in the intelligence unit of Israel’s Military Police Corps, has a PhD from Cambridge and is now a senior correspondent for Israel’s largest newspaper.
Based on 1,000 interviews and vast numbers of leaked documents, his book often reads like a John le Carre novel. But it took considerable courage for him to publish it.
While he was working on it, the chief of the Israel Defense Forces accused him of ‘aggravated espionage’ and even asked the security services to take action against him.
Why? The reason is that Bergman sheds an unsparing light on the human cost of Israel’s targeted killings policy. He shows, for example, that when operations have taken place overseas, Israel’s agents were, and probably still are, unforgivably casual about civilian victims.
Perhaps the most chilling section of his book concerns an operation in 1973 — and which was about as far from the glamour and romance of a James Bond thriller as you could possibly imagine.
That summer, Mossad was on the hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the most wanted men in the world. Salameh was chief of operations for Black September, the Palestinian terrorist group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Mossad wanted him dead, but the trail had gone cold. Then came a miracle. In Lillehammer, Norway, an Israeli secret agent spotted Salameh in a cafe. Word went back to Tel Aviv and a hit squad was assembled. On July 21, as Salameh and his girlfriend got off a bus on their way home from the cinema, the assassins were waiting in a rented Volvo. They leaped out of the car, fired eight shots, jumped back in their car and screeched away, leaving their target in a pool of blood.
It was almost the perfect hit, but for just one problem. They had killed the wrong man.
It was not Salameh, but Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter with a heavily pregnant wife.
In the aftermath, Norwegian police arrested six Israeli agents. Five served time in Norway, though all were released quickly under a secret deal. When the five returned to Israel, they were greeted as heroes. Few questioned the basic morality of the operation; it was just a shame, they thought, that Mossad had got the wrong man.
But they did get him eventually. On January 22, 1979, Salameh had just left his Beirut apartment when a female Israeli agent, watching from her balcony, pressed a button and a gigantic car bomb ripped through the street.
Eight bystanders were also killed, including a German nun and a British student, but nobody at Mossad cared. ‘You get used to killing,’ explains former security chief Ami Ayalon. ‘Human life becomes easy to dispose of. You spend a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, on who to kill.’
In a chillingly familiar phrase, Ayalon even calls this the ‘banality of evil’ — words borrowed from the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who used it to describe the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. That tells its own story.
And although Bergman shows why decent people can feel they have no choice but to take terrible decisions, he also shows the consequences of crossing the line between good and evil.
In the early Eighties, for example, Israeli defence minister, and later prime minister, Ariel Sharon’s obsession with killing Yasser Arafat led him into one of the darkest chapters in Israel’s modern history. At the time, Israel was embroiled in a horrific civil war in Lebanon, which killed at least 120,000 people.
There, on Sharon’s orders, his army colluded with the local Christian Phalange, a militia who murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslims in a Beirut slaughterhouse, cut off their ears as souvenirs and buried their bodies in lime pits. Almost incredibly, Sharon did not stop there.
Some of Bergman’s interviewees told him that on five occasions in 1982, Sharon seriously contemplated shooting down an ordinary civilian airliner when he heard that Arafat might be aboard.
On each occasion the Israeli military refused to obey, sometimes deliberately dithering until it was too late. Had they not done so, hundreds of ordinary passengers would have died in what Bergman calls ‘an intentional war crime’.
No doubt all this will be grist to the mill of Israel’s critics. On the Left, in particular, criticism of Israel has become an automatic reflex, often tinged with more than a hint of anti-Semitism.
There are, of course, good reasons to be critical of Israel. I find it impossible to justify its harsh treatment of the defeated Palestinians, or its callous, cynical policy of expanding Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
Yet after all the Jews have suffered — pogroms, persecution and the unspeakable obscenity of the Holocaust — what reasonable person would begrudge them a homeland of their own?
And who can blame them for fighting to defend that homeland from those who would destroy it?
Ever since 1948, as Bergman himself points out, the threats to Israel’s existence have been only too real. One of his book’s most powerful images is a picture of an Israeli woman, drenched in her own blood, being carried away after a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Sharon used to show it to foreign diplomats whenever they questioned Israel’s targeted assassination programme. Given Israel’s bloody history and dangerous present, I understand why its agents feel they must act as they do.
The question, though, is whether the killings are working. For the past 70 years, the deaths have piled up, yet still there is no peace. The blood flows, but still Israel is not safe.
Its enemies, of course, deserve a large share of the blame. But perhaps killing has become so easy that Israel’s leaders have stopped looking for other solutions. Either way, the end is nowhere in sight — and so Mossad’s killings go on. Because of their secretive nature, they rarely make the headlines.
But even as you are reading these words, someone, somewhere, is planning the next hit.
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman is available in bookstores and Amazon.com.
AFTER A 39-YEAR SEARCH FOR JUSTICE, A MURDER VICTIM’S SISTER FINALLY SAW THE KILLER ARRESTED AND DIE BEHIND BARS
'They never had a hope': How sister of a young doctor and his girlfriend who were stripped naked, trussed and thrown overboard to die by killer yachtsman during a dream trip four decades ago finally solved the mystery of their horrific slaughter
By Penny Farmer
Daily Mail
July 28, 2018
For the crew of the small wooden boat heading to the fishing grounds off the coast of Guatemala, it must have been a sickening discovery. Floating in the Caribbean waters less than 200 yards from the shore were the bloated corpses of two young Westerners, a man and a woman. They had been bound, tortured and weighed down with heavy engine parts. Their identities were unknown.
It was July 8, 1978, and 5,000 miles away in Manchester, we knew nothing except our deepening concern about the fate of my brother Christopher Farmer, a 25-year-old newly qualified doctor, and his lawyer girlfriend Peta Frampton, 24.
They had set off together at the beginning of December 1977 to fulfil their dream to see the world. For seven months they had kept their promise to keep in touch as they travelled through Australia and the Pacific islands to Los Angeles and then through Mexico to Belize. In the age before the internet, Chris made regular phone calls home and Peta sent wonderfully detailed letters to her mother, who lived across the road from us.
I was 17, and still at school. Then came silence – and the first steps in a deeply painful quest for the truth that would eventually span two continents and the best part of the next four decades as we fought our way to justice.
The last contact we had came in the form of a letter from Peta, dated June 28, 1978, which explained how they had agreed to sail down the Caribbean coastline from Belize to Honduras with an American sailor called Silas Duane Boston.
With his weather-beaten face, she wrote, Boston was an engaging character with a devil-may-care attitude, small, piercing blue eyes and a large tattoo of a mermaid on his left forearm. What he lacked in conventional good looks, he made up for in megawatt charm. It seemed he had been married no fewer than five times and had driven to Belize from his home in Sacramento, California, with his two sons, 13-year-old Vince and Russell, 12.
There he had bought a 32ft wooden sailing boat, the Justin B, which he used to ferry tourists to the palm-fringed Belizean islands for what he described as a ‘Robinson Crusoe’ experience, mooring at white sandy beaches and spearing fish for supper. Now, explained the letter, he had offered Chris and Peta the chance to sail 150 miles with him and his boys down the coast to Honduras for $500 (about £1,500 in today’s money). For the young couple, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
As the summer wore on we heard nothing else. That last letter was all we had to go on, and my father was growing increasingly desperate for information. On September 22, 1977, he wrote to the harbour master in Belize City asking for records of the Justin B. It was weeks later before he finally got a reply, and when it came it was worrying. It said that Christopher and Peta had indeed been on the crew list when it left port; yet there was no record of them on board when the Justin B next docked.
Another letter from the Honduran authorities revealed that the pair had bought visas for Honduras, but that they had never entered the country.
Back in Manchester, our efforts intensified. At the behest of my parents and Peta’s family, the Foreign Office alerted the British vice- consul in Guatemala, which borders Belize to the north and Honduras to the south.
The best chance of progress still lay with Boston himself and, in mid-October, the Foreign Office called to say that the man and his two sons had been located in California.
At first he was evasive. When an official from the British Consulate in San Francisco spoke with him on the phone in October, he insisted that he had dropped Chris and Peta back in Guatemala.
His vague responses raised more questions than they answered, and a few days later my parents, now deeply suspicious, went to Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
At the same time, the British Consul was sufficiently concerned that he sent an official to interview Boston in person on December 3, 1977. He appeared ‘calm and relaxed’, said the official.
However, when questioned about Chris and Peta, ‘Boston sat straight up in the chair, his eyes widened and his breathing became heavy’.
‘Following this, he slumped back in the chair, placing his face into his right hand, and in a softly spoken voice he said that he thought Chris and Peta would be back home by now,’ the official reported.
With no concrete evidence, the official investigations hit the buffers. In an attempt to keep the case alive, Dad, who worked for the BBC, placed articles in the British press and appealed for information in the Belize Times newspaper.
Among those who got in touch was American Dr Tom Lane, who in turn enlisted a Belizean friend, Alphonso de Pena, to act as a private investigator – and it was de Pena who made the first significant breakthrough. At the end of January 1979, de Pena was told by a Catholic priest in Livingston, Guatemala, just south of the Belize border, that local fishermen had made a terrible discovery: they had found the bodies of a young European couple in the water the previous July. A navy diver had cut the bloated corpses free from ropes anchoring them to engine parts on the seabed 200 yards from shore. Buried in unmarked graves, the dead couple were never identified.
The news hit our families like a hammer blow. We all knew it must be them. How many other missing young Europeans could there be in such a remote area?
We arranged for their dental records to be flown to Guatemala and paid £450 for an exhumation that would prove the matter.
Nine weeks later, we finally learned the truth about Chris and Peta. They had been tortured, tied and beaten before drowning.
Our belief that Boston was responsible was stronger than ever when we learned through Interpol that Boston’s third wife, Mary Lou (the mother of his two boys), had disappeared in September 1968.
Manchester Police asked detectives in Sacramento to interview Boston and his sons in May 1979, but it never happened. He had taken his sons and disappeared.
We lived with our loss for the next 37 years. While the passage of time means you think about it less, the sense of pain never diminishes. It was not until 2015, after my father’s death, that the lightbulb moment came. Mum said wistfully: ‘I wonder what Chris would have looked like. He’d have been 62 now. He’s forever young in our eyes, isn’t he?’
It suddenly struck me that we now live in a different age. We have the worldwide web as a source of almost limitless information, rather than the painfully slow exchange of letters of the late 1970s. I began to scour the internet, driven by the belief that if I looked hard enough, I would get to Boston – and the truth.
I didn’t have to dig far to find his eldest son Vince on Facebook. He was now a 50-year-old aviation electrician living in Arizona and a vocal opponent of America’s free-and-easy gun laws.
He wrote on his page: ‘My mother was killed at 23 with a gun.’ Remembering what the police had told us, my eyes popped out on stalks. His brother, Russell, I found, was a 49-year-old illustrator living near Laguna Beach, California. My head was spinning, we always knew the brothers were the two people we desperately needed to talk to and I sent them private messages urging them to tell me what had happened on the boat.
By now, I was like a dog with a bone and soon tracked down Boston himself. His Facebook picture was of a grizzled 74-year-old with a white beard wearing a T-shirt under a denim shirt, a baseball cap and sunglasses. To me, he looked like trailer trash – or a serial killer from a horror movie. Though I instantly hated him, my overwhelming feeling was relief he was still alive to face justice.
I decided to contact the cold case unit at GMP. Our expectations of them reopening the case were low. But we hadn’t banked on an extraordinary set of coincidences.
The first came soon after discovering the case files had not been lost. For some reason, the long-retired detective in charge had kept a complete copy. We were in business.
The new investigating officer, Detective Constable Michaela Clinch, contacted Interpol, where she was put in touch with an astonished Detective Amy Crosby at Sacramento Police.
Quite coincidentally, she had raised the case with Interpol at almost the same time because of Amy’s reinvestigation of the disappearance of Vince and Russell’s mother in 1968.
Vince gave a statement to Amy on October 13, 2015, 11 days after I had sent him a Facebook message and the day after we had been to GMP.
He told her that it was an open family secret that his father had killed his mother, but no one knew where he had buried her.
Vince then told Amy he had witnessed the cold-blooded murders of Chris and Peta on board the boat.
It would later emerge that he had repeatedly tried to alert the authorities to the killings, but with no success. Vince had joined the US Navy in 1982 at the age of 16, and his first act on escaping Silas Duane Boston’s evil grip was to tell police in London what he had seen four years earlier. He gave Chris and Peta’s full names, but was told there was no file on the case.
Further attempts by Vince and his brother Russell to get the case taken seriously on both sides of the Atlantic fell on deaf ears.
It was our visit to Greater Manchester Police in October 2015 that proved the game-changer. The case was no longer cold but suddenly very much active – particularly when Russell corroborated Vince’s account and produced crucial photographs showing Chris and Peta aboard the Justin B.
We were called to a meeting with GMP’s force review officer, Martin Bottomley, who had Russell and Vince’s statements in front of him. He quietly asked: ‘How much would you like to know?’ Without hesitation, Mum replied: ‘Everything.’
It seemed to us that Chris and Peta’s ghosts were talking from beyond the grave when Martin started reading.
As the story unfolded, we realised the stomach-churning terror they must have felt and just how unlucky they had been to chance upon a psychopath on a remote Central American island. It transpired Boston was in Belize because he had skipped bail on a charge of statutory rape of a minor in Sacramento. The boys described the purchase of the Justin B and how their father would become violent after drinking cheap local rum.
Chris and Peta were on the boat, they said, when a drunken Boston started beating up Russell. When Chris intervened, Boston tried to swing a punch at Chris and fell humiliatingly into the sea instead.
According to Vince, that was when Boston began plotting their murder. The following evening, he told Chris to pull up the anchor, crept up behind him and repeatedly bludgeoned him over the head. He then attempted to stab Chris in the chest with a fillet knife until the blade broke and Chris cried out: ‘I give up!’
The following morning, Boston told Chris and Peta he was going to drop them near Livingston, but would tie their hands and strip them naked to stop them reporting him to the police before he escaped. Over the next 36 hours, Boston taunted them before trussing them, putting plastic bags over their heads, tying them to blocks of metal and throwing them overboard fully conscious. They never had a hope.
When Martin finished reading, a shocked hush descended on the room. The fog that had enveloped their disappearance since 1978 had cleared and the full extent of Boston’s evil was revealed.
Even after all this time, the details were hard to bear. We left the room shell-shocked, but grateful for finally knowing the truth.
After a lifetime spent on the run, Silas Duane Boston’s loathsome past finally caught up with him at the age of 75. On December 1, 2016, he was charged with the murders of Chris and Peta.
It is unlikely they were his only victims. Today, Sacramento Police have two large files, totalling 2,000 pages, detailing five decades of crimes Boston is suspected of – including numerous murders. But after years of alcohol abuse, his health was already failing and Boston died in custody on April 24, 2017, three weeks before Mum and I were due to fly out for a pre-trial hearing.
Boston was defiant to his last gasp. The prison guards described him as ‘controlling with an evil glare right to the very end’.
Dead In The Water, by Penny Farmer, will be available August 9 in paperback at Amazon for $8.34.
By Penny Farmer
Daily Mail
July 28, 2018
For the crew of the small wooden boat heading to the fishing grounds off the coast of Guatemala, it must have been a sickening discovery. Floating in the Caribbean waters less than 200 yards from the shore were the bloated corpses of two young Westerners, a man and a woman. They had been bound, tortured and weighed down with heavy engine parts. Their identities were unknown.
It was July 8, 1978, and 5,000 miles away in Manchester, we knew nothing except our deepening concern about the fate of my brother Christopher Farmer, a 25-year-old newly qualified doctor, and his lawyer girlfriend Peta Frampton, 24.
They had set off together at the beginning of December 1977 to fulfil their dream to see the world. For seven months they had kept their promise to keep in touch as they travelled through Australia and the Pacific islands to Los Angeles and then through Mexico to Belize. In the age before the internet, Chris made regular phone calls home and Peta sent wonderfully detailed letters to her mother, who lived across the road from us.
I was 17, and still at school. Then came silence – and the first steps in a deeply painful quest for the truth that would eventually span two continents and the best part of the next four decades as we fought our way to justice.
The last contact we had came in the form of a letter from Peta, dated June 28, 1978, which explained how they had agreed to sail down the Caribbean coastline from Belize to Honduras with an American sailor called Silas Duane Boston.
With his weather-beaten face, she wrote, Boston was an engaging character with a devil-may-care attitude, small, piercing blue eyes and a large tattoo of a mermaid on his left forearm. What he lacked in conventional good looks, he made up for in megawatt charm. It seemed he had been married no fewer than five times and had driven to Belize from his home in Sacramento, California, with his two sons, 13-year-old Vince and Russell, 12.
There he had bought a 32ft wooden sailing boat, the Justin B, which he used to ferry tourists to the palm-fringed Belizean islands for what he described as a ‘Robinson Crusoe’ experience, mooring at white sandy beaches and spearing fish for supper. Now, explained the letter, he had offered Chris and Peta the chance to sail 150 miles with him and his boys down the coast to Honduras for $500 (about £1,500 in today’s money). For the young couple, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
As the summer wore on we heard nothing else. That last letter was all we had to go on, and my father was growing increasingly desperate for information. On September 22, 1977, he wrote to the harbour master in Belize City asking for records of the Justin B. It was weeks later before he finally got a reply, and when it came it was worrying. It said that Christopher and Peta had indeed been on the crew list when it left port; yet there was no record of them on board when the Justin B next docked.
Another letter from the Honduran authorities revealed that the pair had bought visas for Honduras, but that they had never entered the country.
Back in Manchester, our efforts intensified. At the behest of my parents and Peta’s family, the Foreign Office alerted the British vice- consul in Guatemala, which borders Belize to the north and Honduras to the south.
The best chance of progress still lay with Boston himself and, in mid-October, the Foreign Office called to say that the man and his two sons had been located in California.
At first he was evasive. When an official from the British Consulate in San Francisco spoke with him on the phone in October, he insisted that he had dropped Chris and Peta back in Guatemala.
His vague responses raised more questions than they answered, and a few days later my parents, now deeply suspicious, went to Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
At the same time, the British Consul was sufficiently concerned that he sent an official to interview Boston in person on December 3, 1977. He appeared ‘calm and relaxed’, said the official.
However, when questioned about Chris and Peta, ‘Boston sat straight up in the chair, his eyes widened and his breathing became heavy’.
‘Following this, he slumped back in the chair, placing his face into his right hand, and in a softly spoken voice he said that he thought Chris and Peta would be back home by now,’ the official reported.
With no concrete evidence, the official investigations hit the buffers. In an attempt to keep the case alive, Dad, who worked for the BBC, placed articles in the British press and appealed for information in the Belize Times newspaper.
Among those who got in touch was American Dr Tom Lane, who in turn enlisted a Belizean friend, Alphonso de Pena, to act as a private investigator – and it was de Pena who made the first significant breakthrough. At the end of January 1979, de Pena was told by a Catholic priest in Livingston, Guatemala, just south of the Belize border, that local fishermen had made a terrible discovery: they had found the bodies of a young European couple in the water the previous July. A navy diver had cut the bloated corpses free from ropes anchoring them to engine parts on the seabed 200 yards from shore. Buried in unmarked graves, the dead couple were never identified.
The news hit our families like a hammer blow. We all knew it must be them. How many other missing young Europeans could there be in such a remote area?
We arranged for their dental records to be flown to Guatemala and paid £450 for an exhumation that would prove the matter.
Nine weeks later, we finally learned the truth about Chris and Peta. They had been tortured, tied and beaten before drowning.
Our belief that Boston was responsible was stronger than ever when we learned through Interpol that Boston’s third wife, Mary Lou (the mother of his two boys), had disappeared in September 1968.
Manchester Police asked detectives in Sacramento to interview Boston and his sons in May 1979, but it never happened. He had taken his sons and disappeared.
We lived with our loss for the next 37 years. While the passage of time means you think about it less, the sense of pain never diminishes. It was not until 2015, after my father’s death, that the lightbulb moment came. Mum said wistfully: ‘I wonder what Chris would have looked like. He’d have been 62 now. He’s forever young in our eyes, isn’t he?’
It suddenly struck me that we now live in a different age. We have the worldwide web as a source of almost limitless information, rather than the painfully slow exchange of letters of the late 1970s. I began to scour the internet, driven by the belief that if I looked hard enough, I would get to Boston – and the truth.
I didn’t have to dig far to find his eldest son Vince on Facebook. He was now a 50-year-old aviation electrician living in Arizona and a vocal opponent of America’s free-and-easy gun laws.
He wrote on his page: ‘My mother was killed at 23 with a gun.’ Remembering what the police had told us, my eyes popped out on stalks. His brother, Russell, I found, was a 49-year-old illustrator living near Laguna Beach, California. My head was spinning, we always knew the brothers were the two people we desperately needed to talk to and I sent them private messages urging them to tell me what had happened on the boat.
By now, I was like a dog with a bone and soon tracked down Boston himself. His Facebook picture was of a grizzled 74-year-old with a white beard wearing a T-shirt under a denim shirt, a baseball cap and sunglasses. To me, he looked like trailer trash – or a serial killer from a horror movie. Though I instantly hated him, my overwhelming feeling was relief he was still alive to face justice.
I decided to contact the cold case unit at GMP. Our expectations of them reopening the case were low. But we hadn’t banked on an extraordinary set of coincidences.
The first came soon after discovering the case files had not been lost. For some reason, the long-retired detective in charge had kept a complete copy. We were in business.
The new investigating officer, Detective Constable Michaela Clinch, contacted Interpol, where she was put in touch with an astonished Detective Amy Crosby at Sacramento Police.
Quite coincidentally, she had raised the case with Interpol at almost the same time because of Amy’s reinvestigation of the disappearance of Vince and Russell’s mother in 1968.
Vince gave a statement to Amy on October 13, 2015, 11 days after I had sent him a Facebook message and the day after we had been to GMP.
He told her that it was an open family secret that his father had killed his mother, but no one knew where he had buried her.
Vince then told Amy he had witnessed the cold-blooded murders of Chris and Peta on board the boat.
It would later emerge that he had repeatedly tried to alert the authorities to the killings, but with no success. Vince had joined the US Navy in 1982 at the age of 16, and his first act on escaping Silas Duane Boston’s evil grip was to tell police in London what he had seen four years earlier. He gave Chris and Peta’s full names, but was told there was no file on the case.
Further attempts by Vince and his brother Russell to get the case taken seriously on both sides of the Atlantic fell on deaf ears.
It was our visit to Greater Manchester Police in October 2015 that proved the game-changer. The case was no longer cold but suddenly very much active – particularly when Russell corroborated Vince’s account and produced crucial photographs showing Chris and Peta aboard the Justin B.
We were called to a meeting with GMP’s force review officer, Martin Bottomley, who had Russell and Vince’s statements in front of him. He quietly asked: ‘How much would you like to know?’ Without hesitation, Mum replied: ‘Everything.’
It seemed to us that Chris and Peta’s ghosts were talking from beyond the grave when Martin started reading.
As the story unfolded, we realised the stomach-churning terror they must have felt and just how unlucky they had been to chance upon a psychopath on a remote Central American island. It transpired Boston was in Belize because he had skipped bail on a charge of statutory rape of a minor in Sacramento. The boys described the purchase of the Justin B and how their father would become violent after drinking cheap local rum.
Chris and Peta were on the boat, they said, when a drunken Boston started beating up Russell. When Chris intervened, Boston tried to swing a punch at Chris and fell humiliatingly into the sea instead.
According to Vince, that was when Boston began plotting their murder. The following evening, he told Chris to pull up the anchor, crept up behind him and repeatedly bludgeoned him over the head. He then attempted to stab Chris in the chest with a fillet knife until the blade broke and Chris cried out: ‘I give up!’
The following morning, Boston told Chris and Peta he was going to drop them near Livingston, but would tie their hands and strip them naked to stop them reporting him to the police before he escaped. Over the next 36 hours, Boston taunted them before trussing them, putting plastic bags over their heads, tying them to blocks of metal and throwing them overboard fully conscious. They never had a hope.
When Martin finished reading, a shocked hush descended on the room. The fog that had enveloped their disappearance since 1978 had cleared and the full extent of Boston’s evil was revealed.
Even after all this time, the details were hard to bear. We left the room shell-shocked, but grateful for finally knowing the truth.
After a lifetime spent on the run, Silas Duane Boston’s loathsome past finally caught up with him at the age of 75. On December 1, 2016, he was charged with the murders of Chris and Peta.
It is unlikely they were his only victims. Today, Sacramento Police have two large files, totalling 2,000 pages, detailing five decades of crimes Boston is suspected of – including numerous murders. But after years of alcohol abuse, his health was already failing and Boston died in custody on April 24, 2017, three weeks before Mum and I were due to fly out for a pre-trial hearing.
Boston was defiant to his last gasp. The prison guards described him as ‘controlling with an evil glare right to the very end’.
Dead In The Water, by Penny Farmer, will be available August 9 in paperback at Amazon for $8.34.
Sunday, July 29, 2018
THE LORD DOES INDEED WORK IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM
by Bob Walsh
In an act that is described by the Vatican as "unprecedented" the Pope has accepted the "resignation" of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick is moving to a "life of prayer and penance" prior to his church trial. McCarrick has been suspended from all religious functions and is facing accusations of sexual misconduct with seminarians and young members of the church.
As far as can be determined this order of prayer and penance has NEVER before been imposed prior to a trial.
The former Cardinal is now 80. He had previously been heavily involved in the church's response to allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
In a somewhat related story, the A.P. has just released a major piece about sexual abuse of nuns by priests. Apparently it was relatively common for sexually active priests to go after nuns back in the 1990s, during the heights of the AIDS scare, as they figured they would not catch anything nasty from them.
In 1994 Sister Maura O'Donahue wrote up a comprehensive, six-year study covering 23 countries concerning apparent sexual abuse against nuns by priests. Among other things she found one congregation in which 29 nuns had become pregnant during the time of the study.
The problem allegedly moved from Africa, where the rape of nuns by priests was said to be "common" to the Vatican. When nuns were sent to the Vatican for study they often approached seminarians and priests for help with their studies. Sexual favors were often the payment for this assistance.
The Vatican has never commented on what, if anything, they chose to do with this information once they had it. I am guessing they simply ignored it as being inconvenient. It must be nice to have you own country, all be it a small one, where the head guy can simply ignore shit if he wants to.
In an act that is described by the Vatican as "unprecedented" the Pope has accepted the "resignation" of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick is moving to a "life of prayer and penance" prior to his church trial. McCarrick has been suspended from all religious functions and is facing accusations of sexual misconduct with seminarians and young members of the church.
As far as can be determined this order of prayer and penance has NEVER before been imposed prior to a trial.
The former Cardinal is now 80. He had previously been heavily involved in the church's response to allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
In a somewhat related story, the A.P. has just released a major piece about sexual abuse of nuns by priests. Apparently it was relatively common for sexually active priests to go after nuns back in the 1990s, during the heights of the AIDS scare, as they figured they would not catch anything nasty from them.
In 1994 Sister Maura O'Donahue wrote up a comprehensive, six-year study covering 23 countries concerning apparent sexual abuse against nuns by priests. Among other things she found one congregation in which 29 nuns had become pregnant during the time of the study.
The problem allegedly moved from Africa, where the rape of nuns by priests was said to be "common" to the Vatican. When nuns were sent to the Vatican for study they often approached seminarians and priests for help with their studies. Sexual favors were often the payment for this assistance.
The Vatican has never commented on what, if anything, they chose to do with this information once they had it. I am guessing they simply ignored it as being inconvenient. It must be nice to have you own country, all be it a small one, where the head guy can simply ignore shit if he wants to.
KNOWN ISLAMIC TERRORIST GROUP FUNDED BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
Obama administration approved $200,000 grant to group with Al Qaeda ties
By Alex Pappas
Fox News
July 27, 2018
The Obama administration approved a $200,000 grant to a group in Sudan with ties to Al Qaeda even though it had been designated a terrorist-financing organization by the U.S. years earlier, a conservative think tank revealed this week.
Further, an agency official acknowledged the prior administration allowed taxpayer money to flow to the group even after its designation was discovered.
The 2014 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, was revealed by Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum in a story for the National Review.
“More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization,” Westrop wrote in the article.
USAID has since reviewed its policies, though the Trump administration stressed this all occurred in the Obama years.
“As this occurred under the prior administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or
subsequent license,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement to Fox News on Friday.
An official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, backed up the National Review account in an email to Fox News, providing a timeline of events:
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the Islamic Relief Agency in Khartoum in 2004 a terror-financing organization because of links to Usama bin Laden.
But 10 years later, in March 2014, USAID awarded $723,405 to a charity called World Vision Inc., with $200,000 of those funds being directed to the Islamic Relief Agency.
The money was directed “to help provide humanitarian aid, including emergency food, water, sanitation, and hygiene services, to displaced people affected by the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” the official said.
The grant to ISRA, though, soon set off alarms.
In November 2014, according to the official, USAID learned that the ISRA could be on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, or SDN, list.
“USAID directed World Vision to suspend all activities with ISRA, and not to engage in further transactions with the organization,” the official said.
But in May 2015, the Treasury Department still authorized “a one-time transfer” from that money of $115,000 to ISRA “for humanitarian assistance work already performed.”
According to the National Review story, there was pressure from inside USAID at the time to still pay ISRA, even after the designation was revealed. USAID’s mission director for Sudan, Larry Meserve, warned colleagues that the organization’s “whole program will be jeopardized” if ISRA was not paid, the story said.
“Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines,” Westrop wrote.
USAID now says the grant should not have been made. Because of the grant, the USAID said Friday, they have since conducted a review of policies on the screening of awardees.
“USAID has also updated trainings for our agreement officers to improve our screening of prime and sub-awardees,” the official said.
By Alex Pappas
Fox News
July 27, 2018
The Obama administration approved a $200,000 grant to a group in Sudan with ties to Al Qaeda even though it had been designated a terrorist-financing organization by the U.S. years earlier, a conservative think tank revealed this week.
Further, an agency official acknowledged the prior administration allowed taxpayer money to flow to the group even after its designation was discovered.
The 2014 grant to the Islamic Relief Agency, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, was revealed by Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum in a story for the National Review.
“More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization,” Westrop wrote in the article.
USAID has since reviewed its policies, though the Trump administration stressed this all occurred in the Obama years.
“As this occurred under the prior administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or
subsequent license,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement to Fox News on Friday.
An official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, backed up the National Review account in an email to Fox News, providing a timeline of events:
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the Islamic Relief Agency in Khartoum in 2004 a terror-financing organization because of links to Usama bin Laden.
But 10 years later, in March 2014, USAID awarded $723,405 to a charity called World Vision Inc., with $200,000 of those funds being directed to the Islamic Relief Agency.
The money was directed “to help provide humanitarian aid, including emergency food, water, sanitation, and hygiene services, to displaced people affected by the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” the official said.
The grant to ISRA, though, soon set off alarms.
In November 2014, according to the official, USAID learned that the ISRA could be on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, or SDN, list.
“USAID directed World Vision to suspend all activities with ISRA, and not to engage in further transactions with the organization,” the official said.
But in May 2015, the Treasury Department still authorized “a one-time transfer” from that money of $115,000 to ISRA “for humanitarian assistance work already performed.”
According to the National Review story, there was pressure from inside USAID at the time to still pay ISRA, even after the designation was revealed. USAID’s mission director for Sudan, Larry Meserve, warned colleagues that the organization’s “whole program will be jeopardized” if ISRA was not paid, the story said.
“Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines,” Westrop wrote.
USAID now says the grant should not have been made. Because of the grant, the USAID said Friday, they have since conducted a review of policies on the screening of awardees.
“USAID has also updated trainings for our agreement officers to improve our screening of prime and sub-awardees,” the official said.
HISPANIC COPS IN FLORIDA DID NOT LIKE BLACKS
Cop admits framing two black men as Florida town’s false arrest scandal widens
By Jay Weaver
Miami Herald
July 28, 2018
The federal investigation into a handful of former Biscayne Park police officers accused of framing innocent people widened this week, when another cop was accused of falsifying arrest warrants for two men at the direction of the police chief.
Guillermo Ravelo, who was fired from the force earlier this year, pleaded guilty Thursday in Miami federal court to a conspiracy charge that he violated the rights of the falsely accused men — one charged with a pair of home break-ins in 2013, the other with five vehicle burglaries the following year. The charges against the two men, both black, were eventually dropped.
Ravelo, 37, also pleaded guilty to using excessive force during a Biscayne Park traffic stop in 2013 when he struck a handcuffed suspect in the face with his fist.
Ravelo’s admission to the false police arrests intensifies the spotlight on former Biscayne Park police chief Raimundo Atesiano. The 52-year-old was indicted in June along with two other former police officers, Raul Fernandez and Charlie Dayoub, on a conspiracy charge of pinning four unsolved home burglaries on a 16-year-old so the chief could claim a perfect clearance rate on property crimes in 2013. The teen also was black.
The town reported clearing 29 of 30 burglary cases during Atesiano’s tenure as chief in 2013 and 2014. But now that seemingly stellar record — once touted by Atesiano to town leaders — has been shattered by the reality that at least 11 of those cases were based on false arrest reports, according to federal authorities.
On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Wallace added an additional charge to Atesiano’s civil-rights conspiracy indictment stemming from one of Ravelo’s arrests. Meanwhile, Fernandez and Dayoub plan to change their pleas to guilty at a hearing set for Aug. 3, court records show. Prosecutors say both officers were ordered by Atesiano to frame the teenager by falsifying arrest affidavits.
Fernandez, Dayoub and now Ravelo are all cooperating with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in the case against Atesiano.
Atesiano has strongly denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty as he awaits trial. His defense attorney, Richard Docobo, questioned the integrity of the cops who have flipped for the feds to reduce their potential prison time.
“There is a very good reason why juries are instructed that the testimony of flipped witnesses should be taken with caution,” Docobo said. “Witnesses who hope to gain more favorable treatment in their own cases may have a reason to make a false statement in order to strike a good bargain with the government.”
Biscayne Park’s new police chief and village manager insist they have overhauled the small department in the years since Atesiano resigned amid an investigation of allegations of racial profiling and other issues.
In the aftermath of Atesiano’s indictment in June, the Miami Herald obtained internal public records suggesting that during his tenure as chief, the command staff pressured some Biscayne Park officers into targeting random black people to clear cases.
“If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through our streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglaries,” one cop said in an internal probe ordered in 2014. “They were basically doing this to have a 100% clearance rate for the city.”
In a report from that probe, four officers — a third of the small force — told an outside investigator they were under marching orders to file the bogus charges to improve the department’s crime stats. While only one officer specifically mentioned targeting blacks, former Biscayne Park village manager Heidi Shafran, who ordered the investigation after receiving a string of letters from disgruntled officers, said the message seemed clear for cops on the street.
“The letters said police were doing a lot of bad things,” Shafran told the Herald. “It said police officers were directed to pick up people of color and blame the crimes on them.”
In February 2014, Atesiano told Ravelo that he wanted him to arrest Erasmus Banmah, 31, for five unsolved vehicle burglaries, despite knowing there was “no evidence” that he had committed the crimes, prosecutors allege in court records. A couple of days later, Ravelo filled out five arrest forms falsely accusing Banmah of the vehicle burglaries at five different street locations in Biscayne Park.
For each of the five burglaries, Ravelo “falsely claimed in an arrest affidavit that [Banmah] had taken him to the site of the respective burglary and confessed to the items that [he] had stolen,” they say.
In January 2013, Atesiano ordered Ravelo to arrest Clarens Desrouleaux, 35, for two unsolved home break-ins. The officer signed two arrest affidavits falsely claiming that Desrouleaux “had confessed to committing the burglary,” prosecutors allege.
On Thursday, Ravelo admitted his wrongdoing in federal court.
By Jay Weaver
Miami Herald
July 28, 2018
The federal investigation into a handful of former Biscayne Park police officers accused of framing innocent people widened this week, when another cop was accused of falsifying arrest warrants for two men at the direction of the police chief.
Guillermo Ravelo, who was fired from the force earlier this year, pleaded guilty Thursday in Miami federal court to a conspiracy charge that he violated the rights of the falsely accused men — one charged with a pair of home break-ins in 2013, the other with five vehicle burglaries the following year. The charges against the two men, both black, were eventually dropped.
Ravelo, 37, also pleaded guilty to using excessive force during a Biscayne Park traffic stop in 2013 when he struck a handcuffed suspect in the face with his fist.
Ravelo’s admission to the false police arrests intensifies the spotlight on former Biscayne Park police chief Raimundo Atesiano. The 52-year-old was indicted in June along with two other former police officers, Raul Fernandez and Charlie Dayoub, on a conspiracy charge of pinning four unsolved home burglaries on a 16-year-old so the chief could claim a perfect clearance rate on property crimes in 2013. The teen also was black.
The town reported clearing 29 of 30 burglary cases during Atesiano’s tenure as chief in 2013 and 2014. But now that seemingly stellar record — once touted by Atesiano to town leaders — has been shattered by the reality that at least 11 of those cases were based on false arrest reports, according to federal authorities.
On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Wallace added an additional charge to Atesiano’s civil-rights conspiracy indictment stemming from one of Ravelo’s arrests. Meanwhile, Fernandez and Dayoub plan to change their pleas to guilty at a hearing set for Aug. 3, court records show. Prosecutors say both officers were ordered by Atesiano to frame the teenager by falsifying arrest affidavits.
Fernandez, Dayoub and now Ravelo are all cooperating with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in the case against Atesiano.
Atesiano has strongly denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty as he awaits trial. His defense attorney, Richard Docobo, questioned the integrity of the cops who have flipped for the feds to reduce their potential prison time.
“There is a very good reason why juries are instructed that the testimony of flipped witnesses should be taken with caution,” Docobo said. “Witnesses who hope to gain more favorable treatment in their own cases may have a reason to make a false statement in order to strike a good bargain with the government.”
Biscayne Park’s new police chief and village manager insist they have overhauled the small department in the years since Atesiano resigned amid an investigation of allegations of racial profiling and other issues.
In the aftermath of Atesiano’s indictment in June, the Miami Herald obtained internal public records suggesting that during his tenure as chief, the command staff pressured some Biscayne Park officers into targeting random black people to clear cases.
“If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through our streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglaries,” one cop said in an internal probe ordered in 2014. “They were basically doing this to have a 100% clearance rate for the city.”
In a report from that probe, four officers — a third of the small force — told an outside investigator they were under marching orders to file the bogus charges to improve the department’s crime stats. While only one officer specifically mentioned targeting blacks, former Biscayne Park village manager Heidi Shafran, who ordered the investigation after receiving a string of letters from disgruntled officers, said the message seemed clear for cops on the street.
“The letters said police were doing a lot of bad things,” Shafran told the Herald. “It said police officers were directed to pick up people of color and blame the crimes on them.”
In February 2014, Atesiano told Ravelo that he wanted him to arrest Erasmus Banmah, 31, for five unsolved vehicle burglaries, despite knowing there was “no evidence” that he had committed the crimes, prosecutors allege in court records. A couple of days later, Ravelo filled out five arrest forms falsely accusing Banmah of the vehicle burglaries at five different street locations in Biscayne Park.
For each of the five burglaries, Ravelo “falsely claimed in an arrest affidavit that [Banmah] had taken him to the site of the respective burglary and confessed to the items that [he] had stolen,” they say.
In January 2013, Atesiano ordered Ravelo to arrest Clarens Desrouleaux, 35, for two unsolved home break-ins. The officer signed two arrest affidavits falsely claiming that Desrouleaux “had confessed to committing the burglary,” prosecutors allege.
On Thursday, Ravelo admitted his wrongdoing in federal court.
TEXAS COUNTY SHERIFF’S LOVER GOT BOTH OF THEM INTO DEEP SHIT ….. THAT’S TEXAS COUNTY, MISSOURI
Sheriff let girlfriend act as deputy before hiring her, and she ran amok, Missouri Highway Patrol alleges
By Kaitlyn Schwers
The Kansas City Star
July 19, 2018
A southern Missouri sheriff and a deputy he was dating are facing a slew of charges centered around multiple instances of misconduct within the sheriff’s office, including allegations of threats, assaults and bringing a child to jail around “sexually violent offenders and other dangerous” inmates.
The sheriff and the deputy are identified in court records as Texas County Sheriff James Sigman and Chief Deputy Jennifer Tomaszewski.
Sigman, 48, and Tomaszewski, 38, were each formally charged with first-degree assault,two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree harassment, misuse of official information by a public servant and false impersonation, according to online court records.
There is also a charge of first-degree robbery listed, but no details are provided.
Special prosecutors have been assigned to both cases.
Neither have attorneys listed on their behalf.
Aside from being co-workers, Sigman and Tomaszewski were also romantic partners, court records said.
The relationship began around the time she was first hired to work at the Texas County jail in 2016.
The investigation into the two law enforcement officers was led by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. It focuses on late 2016 when Tomaszewski was hired as a corrections officer up until last May when she graduated from the academy and received a peace officer license.
Court records list the following allegations based on an investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol:
For more than a year, the sheriff allegedly allowed Tomaszewski to conduct law enforcement duties when she wasn’t a commissioned officer, which included detaining suspects, going on ride-alongs and searches with other deputies, and acting as an “undercover officer.” She also wore a deputy uniform and carried guns owned by the sheriff’s office, court records said.
In one instance where she accompanied authorities serving a search warrant, court records said she pointed a gun at five individuals, including a 1-year-old, who were across the street from where officers were working because she “thought they were video recording the officers and taking pictures,” court records said. That incident happened in June 2017, court records said.
No one was reported injured, but the individuals told authorities they feared for their lives.
The court records also go on to describe times where Tomaszewski allegedly threatened an inmate’s life, elbowed an inmate in the face while he was unconscious and placed another on “permanent lockdown ... for no reason other than punishment for (the inmate).”
The last set of allegations center around Tomaszewski bringing a child to the jail. Court records said she and Sigman took the child there “resulting in the jail facility essentially being used as a child care facility by them.”
Sheriff’s office employees told the highway patrol they were concerned for the child because she was in danger.
Surveillance video also showed the child in the kitchen at the jail, where she allegedly “helped serve meals to the inmates and ate with two inmates in the jail kitchen” last November — one of which was described as a “sexually violent offender” from another county.
In nearly all of these incidents, authorities said Sigman was present and “did nothing to intervene,” court records said.
According to the Houston Herald, Sigman was first elected sheriff in 2012. In the past year, the newspaper reported “more than 40 employees” have either left the sheriff’s office or have been fired.
Court records also noted “all of the dispatchers” resigned when they refused to answer Tomaszewski’s law enforcement inquires using the sheriff’s badge number.
Sigman remained in the Greene County jail while Tomaszewski was taken to the Shannon County jail on Wednesday night. Their bail amounts are set at $500,000 each.
By Kaitlyn Schwers
The Kansas City Star
July 19, 2018
A southern Missouri sheriff and a deputy he was dating are facing a slew of charges centered around multiple instances of misconduct within the sheriff’s office, including allegations of threats, assaults and bringing a child to jail around “sexually violent offenders and other dangerous” inmates.
The sheriff and the deputy are identified in court records as Texas County Sheriff James Sigman and Chief Deputy Jennifer Tomaszewski.
Sigman, 48, and Tomaszewski, 38, were each formally charged with first-degree assault,two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree harassment, misuse of official information by a public servant and false impersonation, according to online court records.
There is also a charge of first-degree robbery listed, but no details are provided.
Special prosecutors have been assigned to both cases.
Neither have attorneys listed on their behalf.
Aside from being co-workers, Sigman and Tomaszewski were also romantic partners, court records said.
The relationship began around the time she was first hired to work at the Texas County jail in 2016.
The investigation into the two law enforcement officers was led by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. It focuses on late 2016 when Tomaszewski was hired as a corrections officer up until last May when she graduated from the academy and received a peace officer license.
Court records list the following allegations based on an investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol:
For more than a year, the sheriff allegedly allowed Tomaszewski to conduct law enforcement duties when she wasn’t a commissioned officer, which included detaining suspects, going on ride-alongs and searches with other deputies, and acting as an “undercover officer.” She also wore a deputy uniform and carried guns owned by the sheriff’s office, court records said.
In one instance where she accompanied authorities serving a search warrant, court records said she pointed a gun at five individuals, including a 1-year-old, who were across the street from where officers were working because she “thought they were video recording the officers and taking pictures,” court records said. That incident happened in June 2017, court records said.
No one was reported injured, but the individuals told authorities they feared for their lives.
The court records also go on to describe times where Tomaszewski allegedly threatened an inmate’s life, elbowed an inmate in the face while he was unconscious and placed another on “permanent lockdown ... for no reason other than punishment for (the inmate).”
The last set of allegations center around Tomaszewski bringing a child to the jail. Court records said she and Sigman took the child there “resulting in the jail facility essentially being used as a child care facility by them.”
Sheriff’s office employees told the highway patrol they were concerned for the child because she was in danger.
Surveillance video also showed the child in the kitchen at the jail, where she allegedly “helped serve meals to the inmates and ate with two inmates in the jail kitchen” last November — one of which was described as a “sexually violent offender” from another county.
In nearly all of these incidents, authorities said Sigman was present and “did nothing to intervene,” court records said.
According to the Houston Herald, Sigman was first elected sheriff in 2012. In the past year, the newspaper reported “more than 40 employees” have either left the sheriff’s office or have been fired.
Court records also noted “all of the dispatchers” resigned when they refused to answer Tomaszewski’s law enforcement inquires using the sheriff’s badge number.
Sigman remained in the Greene County jail while Tomaszewski was taken to the Shannon County jail on Wednesday night. Their bail amounts are set at $500,000 each.
DOUBLE DIPPING LEAVES NORTH CAROLINA TOWN WITHOUT A POLICE FORCE
NC coastal town's police force on leave after chief and lieutenant arrested
WECT
July 27, 2018
SOUTHPORT, N.C. -- All police operations in Southport have been suspended and the entire force placed on paid administrative leave after the city's police chief and a lieutenant were arrested Thursday and charged with double-dipping at a second job while on the clock at the police department.
Chief Gary Smith, 46, and Lt. Michael Christian Simmons, 48, were both charged with conspiracy to obtain property by false pretenses, willful failure to discharge duties, and obstruction of justice.
According to District Attorney Jon David, the joint investigation by the SBI and the FBI into Smith and Simmons began April 4 after law enforcement officers tipped off investigators about the pair.
State investigators said Smith and Simmons were driving overnight shifts for an unnamed local trucking company during the same hours they had claimed on their daily activity reports for the Southport Police Department.
David said Smith and Simmons' duties for the trucking company routinely required them to be out of town and even out of the county.
Smith was taken into custody Thursday morning and booked into the Brunswick County Detention Center under a $10,000 unsecured bond. He was later released after posting bail.
Simmons was taken into custody during Thursday afternoon's news conference announcing the results of the investigation.
Multiple search warrants were executed Thursday at the police department, town hall, and the trucking company.
"It is indeed that I get before you today with a heart laden with grief for all these events that happened today," said Mayor Jerry Dove. "It was a shock to me to hear all these, being a former chief and knowing the officers that worked in that department and hired at least half of them."
Dove said he consulted with the city board and they requested the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office assume all law enforcement functions within the city until further notice.
"We will be relying on (the sheriff's office) substantially on the road ahead to step into the void and provide a police presence," David said. "The sheriff's office already has overlapping jurisdiction with Southport. It's not new that they would be patrolling these streets. They know the lay of the land and I'm very confident that citizens will be well protected."
Despite the entire police force being put on administrative leave, David cautioned not to put all the officers in a negative light.
"A lot of these officers have done absolutely nothing wrong. Some of them are the ones that first came forward," David said. "This stain should not be extended to the officers who take seriously their duty to serve and protect."
David said the ripple effects from Thursday's revelations also extend to any pending cases from the City of Southport.
David said his office has a process in place to systematically review those cases and to ensure that they stand on firm footing.
The sheriff's office will aid the District Attorney's Office if any pending Southport cases need additional investigating because they weren't properly handled, David said.
"I don't have any reason to believe that is the case...but we are sensitive to that concern and will look into it in the future," David said.
WECT
July 27, 2018
SOUTHPORT, N.C. -- All police operations in Southport have been suspended and the entire force placed on paid administrative leave after the city's police chief and a lieutenant were arrested Thursday and charged with double-dipping at a second job while on the clock at the police department.
Chief Gary Smith, 46, and Lt. Michael Christian Simmons, 48, were both charged with conspiracy to obtain property by false pretenses, willful failure to discharge duties, and obstruction of justice.
According to District Attorney Jon David, the joint investigation by the SBI and the FBI into Smith and Simmons began April 4 after law enforcement officers tipped off investigators about the pair.
State investigators said Smith and Simmons were driving overnight shifts for an unnamed local trucking company during the same hours they had claimed on their daily activity reports for the Southport Police Department.
David said Smith and Simmons' duties for the trucking company routinely required them to be out of town and even out of the county.
Smith was taken into custody Thursday morning and booked into the Brunswick County Detention Center under a $10,000 unsecured bond. He was later released after posting bail.
Simmons was taken into custody during Thursday afternoon's news conference announcing the results of the investigation.
Multiple search warrants were executed Thursday at the police department, town hall, and the trucking company.
"It is indeed that I get before you today with a heart laden with grief for all these events that happened today," said Mayor Jerry Dove. "It was a shock to me to hear all these, being a former chief and knowing the officers that worked in that department and hired at least half of them."
Dove said he consulted with the city board and they requested the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office assume all law enforcement functions within the city until further notice.
"We will be relying on (the sheriff's office) substantially on the road ahead to step into the void and provide a police presence," David said. "The sheriff's office already has overlapping jurisdiction with Southport. It's not new that they would be patrolling these streets. They know the lay of the land and I'm very confident that citizens will be well protected."
Despite the entire police force being put on administrative leave, David cautioned not to put all the officers in a negative light.
"A lot of these officers have done absolutely nothing wrong. Some of them are the ones that first came forward," David said. "This stain should not be extended to the officers who take seriously their duty to serve and protect."
David said the ripple effects from Thursday's revelations also extend to any pending cases from the City of Southport.
David said his office has a process in place to systematically review those cases and to ensure that they stand on firm footing.
The sheriff's office will aid the District Attorney's Office if any pending Southport cases need additional investigating because they weren't properly handled, David said.
"I don't have any reason to believe that is the case...but we are sensitive to that concern and will look into it in the future," David said.
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Texas company cleared to put 3D-printed gun designs online
By Lisa Marie Pane
Associated Press
July 26, 2018
They look futuristic, the type of firearms that would-be assassins use in movies: 3D-printed guns made of a hard plastic that are simple to assemble, easy to conceal and tough to trace.
The future is here.
After spending years fighting the federal government for the right to do so, a Texas company was given the green light to post blueprints online showing people how to make 3D-printed guns from the comfort of their home.
Gun safety advocates and some law enforcement officials are appalled, worried that this is exactly what criminals and terrorists want: guns that can’t be flagged by metal detectors, don’t have serial numbers to trace, and don’t require the usual background checks. A coalition of gun-control groups filed an appeal Thursday in federal court seeking to block a recent Trump administration ruling allowing Cody Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, to post blueprints online to create a 3D-printed firearm.
“There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists,” said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the three groups that have gone to court. “There’s a real desire and profit mode in the criminal underworld as well.”
Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, first published downloadable designs for a 3D-printed firearm in 2013. It was downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were downloaded by people outside the United States.
But in a reversal that stunned gun-control advocates, the State Department in late June settled its case against Wilson and agreed to allow him to resume posting the blueprints at the end of July. Wilson took to Twitter, declaring victory and proclaiming he would start back up on August 1.
Wilson did not return an email seeking comment. His attorney, Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, declined to comment.
Gun industry experts say the guns are simply a modern-day equivalent of what already is legal and readily available: the ability to assemble your own firearm using traditional materials and methods at home without serial numbers. They argue that 3D-printed firearms won’t be a draw for criminals since the printers needed to make one are wildly expensive and the firearms themselves aren’t very durable.
“It costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to acquire a printer and the files and the knowhow to do this. They don’t work worth a damn. Criminals can obviously go out and steal guns or even manufacture quote-unquote real guns, not 3D printed,” said Larry Keane, executive director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers. “If you’re a gang banger in L.A., are you going to go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a printer to print a gun that doesn’t work very well or are you just going to steal one?”
Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, experts say the 3D-printed guns normally only last a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.
A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired. Wilson’s website will also offer blueprints for AR-style long guns besides its first product: a pistol called the Liberator.
A similar style of firearm was famously used by John Malkovich’s character in the 1993 movie “In the Line of Fire” in which he portrays a would-be assassin who surreptitiously brings the firearm into a hotel ballroom, assembles it underneath his dinner table and then tries to use it to kill the president.
Law enforcement officials express concern about allowing the designs for such firearms to be publicly available expressly because they’re easy to conceal and untraceable since there’s no requirement for the firearms to have serial numbers.
“When you think about all the rhetoric we here in our nation about tightening our borders and homeland security, and now we’re going to put out there for anyone who wants a recipe for how to overcome … TSA airport screenings or any other metal detector,” said Rick Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “It’s absolutely insane.”
The State Department decision came amid an obscure administrative change — begun under the Obama administration — in how the weapons are regulated and administered. Military grade weapons remain under the purview of the State Department, while commercially available firearms fall under the Commerce Department. The settlement with Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to ITAR, or International Traffic in Arms Regulations, overseen by State.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to review the decision.
Robert Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an expert on the Second Amendment, warned that while 3D-printed firearms are a novelty now — too expensive to make and too fragile to be used for more than a few shots — technology will soon catch up.
“Their popularity right now is limited,” Spitzer said. “There was interest in the blueprints because they’re sort of exotic and because sort of a taboo thing.”
Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s not very practical,” Pratt said. “Let’s be serious. First of all, you’re going to plunk out thousands of dollars just for the printers. This is a very expensive route to go just to get a piece of plastic that will only last a round.”
EDUTOR’S NOTE: On Thursday, a coalition of gun control groups went to the Federal Court in Austin, Texas and filed an appeal to block the settlement between the State Department and Defense Distributed. But on Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman denied the request for an order to block the settlement.
By Lisa Marie Pane
Associated Press
July 26, 2018
They look futuristic, the type of firearms that would-be assassins use in movies: 3D-printed guns made of a hard plastic that are simple to assemble, easy to conceal and tough to trace.
The future is here.
After spending years fighting the federal government for the right to do so, a Texas company was given the green light to post blueprints online showing people how to make 3D-printed guns from the comfort of their home.
Gun safety advocates and some law enforcement officials are appalled, worried that this is exactly what criminals and terrorists want: guns that can’t be flagged by metal detectors, don’t have serial numbers to trace, and don’t require the usual background checks. A coalition of gun-control groups filed an appeal Thursday in federal court seeking to block a recent Trump administration ruling allowing Cody Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, to post blueprints online to create a 3D-printed firearm.
“There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists,” said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the three groups that have gone to court. “There’s a real desire and profit mode in the criminal underworld as well.”
Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, first published downloadable designs for a 3D-printed firearm in 2013. It was downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were downloaded by people outside the United States.
But in a reversal that stunned gun-control advocates, the State Department in late June settled its case against Wilson and agreed to allow him to resume posting the blueprints at the end of July. Wilson took to Twitter, declaring victory and proclaiming he would start back up on August 1.
Wilson did not return an email seeking comment. His attorney, Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, declined to comment.
Gun industry experts say the guns are simply a modern-day equivalent of what already is legal and readily available: the ability to assemble your own firearm using traditional materials and methods at home without serial numbers. They argue that 3D-printed firearms won’t be a draw for criminals since the printers needed to make one are wildly expensive and the firearms themselves aren’t very durable.
“It costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to acquire a printer and the files and the knowhow to do this. They don’t work worth a damn. Criminals can obviously go out and steal guns or even manufacture quote-unquote real guns, not 3D printed,” said Larry Keane, executive director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers. “If you’re a gang banger in L.A., are you going to go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a printer to print a gun that doesn’t work very well or are you just going to steal one?”
Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, experts say the 3D-printed guns normally only last a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.
A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired. Wilson’s website will also offer blueprints for AR-style long guns besides its first product: a pistol called the Liberator.
A similar style of firearm was famously used by John Malkovich’s character in the 1993 movie “In the Line of Fire” in which he portrays a would-be assassin who surreptitiously brings the firearm into a hotel ballroom, assembles it underneath his dinner table and then tries to use it to kill the president.
Law enforcement officials express concern about allowing the designs for such firearms to be publicly available expressly because they’re easy to conceal and untraceable since there’s no requirement for the firearms to have serial numbers.
“When you think about all the rhetoric we here in our nation about tightening our borders and homeland security, and now we’re going to put out there for anyone who wants a recipe for how to overcome … TSA airport screenings or any other metal detector,” said Rick Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “It’s absolutely insane.”
The State Department decision came amid an obscure administrative change — begun under the Obama administration — in how the weapons are regulated and administered. Military grade weapons remain under the purview of the State Department, while commercially available firearms fall under the Commerce Department. The settlement with Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to ITAR, or International Traffic in Arms Regulations, overseen by State.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to review the decision.
Robert Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an expert on the Second Amendment, warned that while 3D-printed firearms are a novelty now — too expensive to make and too fragile to be used for more than a few shots — technology will soon catch up.
“Their popularity right now is limited,” Spitzer said. “There was interest in the blueprints because they’re sort of exotic and because sort of a taboo thing.”
Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s not very practical,” Pratt said. “Let’s be serious. First of all, you’re going to plunk out thousands of dollars just for the printers. This is a very expensive route to go just to get a piece of plastic that will only last a round.”
EDUTOR’S NOTE: On Thursday, a coalition of gun control groups went to the Federal Court in Austin, Texas and filed an appeal to block the settlement between the State Department and Defense Distributed. But on Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman denied the request for an order to block the settlement.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
THE COLOMBIAN SNIFFER DOG WITH A $70,000 PRICE ON ITS HEAD
German shepherd has busted so many stashes of drugs that Colombian gangs are now coming after her
By Julian Robinson
Daily Mail
July 27, 2018
A notorious drugs gang in Colombia has placed a $70,000 price on the head of a crime-busting police sniffer dog.
The Urabeños, considered the country's most powerful criminal organisation, offered the bounty after the German shepherd found almost 10 tonnes of the cartel's cocaine.
Sombra - meaning Shadow - is said to be responsible for the arrest of some 245 suspects over the years.
Many of these came during her work at ports on the Atlantic coast from which large quantities of cocaine are shipped to Central and North America.
The six-year-old dog is so highly prized that she has been moved to Bogota airport to take her out of the firing line.
She now receives special protection from extra officers as well as her usual handler.
The six-year-old only recently found 5.3 tonnes of cocaine in the port of Turbo. This followed her discovery of a four-tonne stash hidden in car parts that were set to be exported.
Six years ago, the feared Urabeños offered $500 to anyone who killed a police officer.
But the sum is dwarfed by that promised for the killing of Sombra, showing how damaging the dog has been to their criminal enterprise.
A police spokesperson told local media: 'Sombra is a huge headache for drug traffickers.'
By Julian Robinson
Daily Mail
July 27, 2018
A notorious drugs gang in Colombia has placed a $70,000 price on the head of a crime-busting police sniffer dog.
The Urabeños, considered the country's most powerful criminal organisation, offered the bounty after the German shepherd found almost 10 tonnes of the cartel's cocaine.
Sombra - meaning Shadow - is said to be responsible for the arrest of some 245 suspects over the years.
Many of these came during her work at ports on the Atlantic coast from which large quantities of cocaine are shipped to Central and North America.
The six-year-old dog is so highly prized that she has been moved to Bogota airport to take her out of the firing line.
She now receives special protection from extra officers as well as her usual handler.
The six-year-old only recently found 5.3 tonnes of cocaine in the port of Turbo. This followed her discovery of a four-tonne stash hidden in car parts that were set to be exported.
Six years ago, the feared Urabeños offered $500 to anyone who killed a police officer.
But the sum is dwarfed by that promised for the killing of Sombra, showing how damaging the dog has been to their criminal enterprise.
A police spokesperson told local media: 'Sombra is a huge headache for drug traffickers.'
TOMA ESTO USTED PERRA
Mexican husband shoots dead his wife as she breast-feeds their 9-month-old son because she was 'taking too long to get ready for a night out'
By Adry Torres
Daily Mail
July 27, 2018
A Mexican man gunned down his wife in cold blood while she was breast-feeding her nine-month old son after he became enraged she was taking too long to get ready for a night out on the town.
Gabriel Hernandez Reyes, 26, pumped two bullets into Hortencia Balcanzar, 26, the mother of his four children, ages nine months, two, four and eight, inside her parents ranch in Veracruz on July 19.
According to Blog Expediente, the abusive husband impregnated another woman in the town, causing Balcanzar to fall into a deep depression before her death on July 19.
In several interviews with Univision this week, neighbors recalled the harassment the victim had endured over the years.
Furthermore, those close to Balcanzar detailed how Hernandez Reyes would beat her with cables and used a hand gun to threaten her.
The victim's father wondered why his daughter's father and mother-in-law failed to intervene every time their son targeted her.
'He would take her back to his parent's house, but the in-laws provided her a bad life,' Anselmo Balcazar said. 'They used her as a cook, and when he beat her, they didn't get involved.
'She said she wouldn't return after the last incident occurred. The man pistol-whipped her face. His father promised to intervene and never did anything.'
The story shocked the tight-knit countryside community in Minatitlan, Veracruz.
Hortencia Balcanzar crashed to the floor along with the baby boy after being shot.
The nine-month old child and his four-year old sibling were not hurt in the gruesome murder.
Residents that heard the loud shots sprung to action and called authorities, but by the time they arrived on the scene, Hernandez Reyes had already escaped.
Mexican law enforcement officers still have no leads regarding the accused farmer's whereabouts.
The victim’s mother, Francisca, was overcome with emotion when she was interviewed by local media.
She said she felt useless and extremely saddened because she was unable to save her daughter.
‘I couldn’t defend her because I did not see if he was carrying a gun,’ said the grieving parent. ‘I left running and she screamed, "mama".’
By Adry Torres
Daily Mail
July 27, 2018
A Mexican man gunned down his wife in cold blood while she was breast-feeding her nine-month old son after he became enraged she was taking too long to get ready for a night out on the town.
Gabriel Hernandez Reyes, 26, pumped two bullets into Hortencia Balcanzar, 26, the mother of his four children, ages nine months, two, four and eight, inside her parents ranch in Veracruz on July 19.
According to Blog Expediente, the abusive husband impregnated another woman in the town, causing Balcanzar to fall into a deep depression before her death on July 19.
In several interviews with Univision this week, neighbors recalled the harassment the victim had endured over the years.
Furthermore, those close to Balcanzar detailed how Hernandez Reyes would beat her with cables and used a hand gun to threaten her.
The victim's father wondered why his daughter's father and mother-in-law failed to intervene every time their son targeted her.
'He would take her back to his parent's house, but the in-laws provided her a bad life,' Anselmo Balcazar said. 'They used her as a cook, and when he beat her, they didn't get involved.
'She said she wouldn't return after the last incident occurred. The man pistol-whipped her face. His father promised to intervene and never did anything.'
The story shocked the tight-knit countryside community in Minatitlan, Veracruz.
Hortencia Balcanzar crashed to the floor along with the baby boy after being shot.
The nine-month old child and his four-year old sibling were not hurt in the gruesome murder.
Residents that heard the loud shots sprung to action and called authorities, but by the time they arrived on the scene, Hernandez Reyes had already escaped.
Mexican law enforcement officers still have no leads regarding the accused farmer's whereabouts.
The victim’s mother, Francisca, was overcome with emotion when she was interviewed by local media.
She said she felt useless and extremely saddened because she was unable to save her daughter.
‘I couldn’t defend her because I did not see if he was carrying a gun,’ said the grieving parent. ‘I left running and she screamed, "mama".’
TOP 10 JUNK FORENSIC SCIENCES CHALLENGED IN TEXAS
By Scott Henson
Grits for Breakfast
July 25, 2018
In the wake of the Forensic Science Commission declaring blood-spatter evidence in a 30-year old murder case "not accurate or scientifically supported," Texas has lately again been getting deserved credit as a national leader on forensic reform. Our forensic commission is the best in the country, according to Innocence Project cofounder Peter Neufeld, and our first-of-its-kind junk science writ has made Texas one of only two states (California followed suit) with the means in place to challenge junk science in old convictions through habeas corpus writs.
The most commonly used forensics that were questioned by the National Academy of Sciences 2009 report, "Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward" - like fingerprints or ballistics matching - have yet to face concerted challenges. But quite a few second-tier forensic methods have begun to wilt under scrutiny.
Here's Grits list of the top 10 forensics challenged in Texas to date.
1. Dog-scent lineups
2. Outdated arson standards
3. Hair comparisons
4. Bite marks
5. Blood spatter
6. DNA mixtures
7. Field tests for narcotics
8. Future dangerousness testimony
9. Shaken baby syndrome
10. Forensic hypnosis
Honorable mention: Estimating suspects' height based on forensic video analysis.
Of these, only dog-scent lineups and flawed arson testimony have been eliminated, with hair comparisons mostly displaced by mitochondrial DNA testing in 21st century cases. A prosecutor in Collin County recently stipulated that bite-mark testimony is junk, so the Court of Criminal Appeals will soon get a chance to declare it non-viable. The rest are under dispute but still in use. Moreover, Texas has yet to figure out how to respond when forensic errors impact large numbers of already-decided cases.
That's why I've said before, Texas may be ahead of other states on forensic reform, but don't gloat. Most other states are behind because they never left the starting gate, and despite some notable progress, most of our needed forensic reforms remain in front of us.
Grits for Breakfast
July 25, 2018
In the wake of the Forensic Science Commission declaring blood-spatter evidence in a 30-year old murder case "not accurate or scientifically supported," Texas has lately again been getting deserved credit as a national leader on forensic reform. Our forensic commission is the best in the country, according to Innocence Project cofounder Peter Neufeld, and our first-of-its-kind junk science writ has made Texas one of only two states (California followed suit) with the means in place to challenge junk science in old convictions through habeas corpus writs.
The most commonly used forensics that were questioned by the National Academy of Sciences 2009 report, "Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward" - like fingerprints or ballistics matching - have yet to face concerted challenges. But quite a few second-tier forensic methods have begun to wilt under scrutiny.
Here's Grits list of the top 10 forensics challenged in Texas to date.
1. Dog-scent lineups
2. Outdated arson standards
3. Hair comparisons
4. Bite marks
5. Blood spatter
6. DNA mixtures
7. Field tests for narcotics
8. Future dangerousness testimony
9. Shaken baby syndrome
10. Forensic hypnosis
Honorable mention: Estimating suspects' height based on forensic video analysis.
Of these, only dog-scent lineups and flawed arson testimony have been eliminated, with hair comparisons mostly displaced by mitochondrial DNA testing in 21st century cases. A prosecutor in Collin County recently stipulated that bite-mark testimony is junk, so the Court of Criminal Appeals will soon get a chance to declare it non-viable. The rest are under dispute but still in use. Moreover, Texas has yet to figure out how to respond when forensic errors impact large numbers of already-decided cases.
That's why I've said before, Texas may be ahead of other states on forensic reform, but don't gloat. Most other states are behind because they never left the starting gate, and despite some notable progress, most of our needed forensic reforms remain in front of us.
ISRAEL PLANNING TO DESTROY THE DOME OF THE ROCK AND THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE BY CREATING EARTHQUAKES
Arab Media Claims Israel Wielding the Forces of Nature in War Against Islam
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
July 25, 2018
In addition to its military prowess, some Arab journalists are now telling their readers that Israel is wielding the very forces of nature in its supposed war against the Muslim world.
Such outlandish charges are nothing new in the Arab media's efforts to defame and incite hatred (and even fear) of Israel.
While these allegations sadly put genuine peace even further out of reach by turning Israeli Jews into a kind of bogeyman in the eyes of average Arabs, they are also a source of amusement here in the Jewish state.
There wasn't much to do but chuckle at the conclusions reached by Maal Zakarna, a columnist for Jordan's Ad-Dustour daily newspaper, when considering the recent string of earthquakes that struck northern Israel.
According to Zakarna, the location and frequency of the tremors raised serious questions. "It could be that they were caused by experimental explosions carried out by the Israeli occupation's army at a certain depth under the Kinneret," he wrote.
One of the goals of these explosions, Zakarna continued, could be preparing for "a major criminal action against sites in occupied Jerusalem which are holy to Islam and Christianity, and especially against the Al-Aqsa mosque, Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre...[to] create a pre-planned earthquake to destroy them in preparation for creating a Holy Temple in the attempt to Judaize Jerusalem."
Never mind that Israel sits on the Syrian-African rift, one of the world's most active fault lines. If there's potential calamity in the Middle East, then the Jews must be guilty.
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
July 25, 2018
In addition to its military prowess, some Arab journalists are now telling their readers that Israel is wielding the very forces of nature in its supposed war against the Muslim world.
Such outlandish charges are nothing new in the Arab media's efforts to defame and incite hatred (and even fear) of Israel.
While these allegations sadly put genuine peace even further out of reach by turning Israeli Jews into a kind of bogeyman in the eyes of average Arabs, they are also a source of amusement here in the Jewish state.
There wasn't much to do but chuckle at the conclusions reached by Maal Zakarna, a columnist for Jordan's Ad-Dustour daily newspaper, when considering the recent string of earthquakes that struck northern Israel.
According to Zakarna, the location and frequency of the tremors raised serious questions. "It could be that they were caused by experimental explosions carried out by the Israeli occupation's army at a certain depth under the Kinneret," he wrote.
One of the goals of these explosions, Zakarna continued, could be preparing for "a major criminal action against sites in occupied Jerusalem which are holy to Islam and Christianity, and especially against the Al-Aqsa mosque, Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre...[to] create a pre-planned earthquake to destroy them in preparation for creating a Holy Temple in the attempt to Judaize Jerusalem."
Never mind that Israel sits on the Syrian-African rift, one of the world's most active fault lines. If there's potential calamity in the Middle East, then the Jews must be guilty.
Friday, July 27, 2018
DICK GONE TO THE DOGS
Drunken man was furious because his friend tried to make whoopee with his wife, cuts off his dick and throws it to his dogs
Three buddies were drinking at Permsak Petprasert’s home in Ratchaburi, Thailand on Saturday night. When thy ran out of booze, Petprasert and one of the other buddies left to get some more.
While the two men were gone, Suwit Tipjantha sneaked into the bedroom and stroked the arm of Petprasert’s sleeping wife. That woke her up. She ran out of the house and screamed at her returning husband that Tipjantha was trying to fuck her.
That didn’t sit too well with Petprasert. The furious husband clocked Tipjantha with a hammer and then cut off his unconscious friend’s dick with a fruit peeling knife. Then he threw the severed dick to his pet dogs for a treat. After that, he had some neighbors take Tipjantha to a hospital.
When Tipjantha regained consciousness in the hospital, he told the police that he had no recollection of what happened after they started drinking.
Thai cops busted Petprasert and he copped to everything. He was charged him with physical assault leading to a serious injury of another person. If convicted, he faces six months to 10 years behind bars.
Tipjanth is 39, Petprasert is 50 and Petprasert’s wife is 52.
Alas, poor Suwit. Doctors cannot reattach your dick. It’s gone to the dogs. Noe you will find it hard to hit the spot whenever you pee. And from now on, when you want to make love to some gal, you can only do it ‘eating at the Y.’
I guess the moral to this story is, don’t leave your wife alone with a drunken friend.
Three buddies were drinking at Permsak Petprasert’s home in Ratchaburi, Thailand on Saturday night. When thy ran out of booze, Petprasert and one of the other buddies left to get some more.
While the two men were gone, Suwit Tipjantha sneaked into the bedroom and stroked the arm of Petprasert’s sleeping wife. That woke her up. She ran out of the house and screamed at her returning husband that Tipjantha was trying to fuck her.
That didn’t sit too well with Petprasert. The furious husband clocked Tipjantha with a hammer and then cut off his unconscious friend’s dick with a fruit peeling knife. Then he threw the severed dick to his pet dogs for a treat. After that, he had some neighbors take Tipjantha to a hospital.
When Tipjantha regained consciousness in the hospital, he told the police that he had no recollection of what happened after they started drinking.
Thai cops busted Petprasert and he copped to everything. He was charged him with physical assault leading to a serious injury of another person. If convicted, he faces six months to 10 years behind bars.
Tipjanth is 39, Petprasert is 50 and Petprasert’s wife is 52.
Alas, poor Suwit. Doctors cannot reattach your dick. It’s gone to the dogs. Noe you will find it hard to hit the spot whenever you pee. And from now on, when you want to make love to some gal, you can only do it ‘eating at the Y.’
I guess the moral to this story is, don’t leave your wife alone with a drunken friend.
HOT AND SMOKEY IN CALIFORNIA
by Bob Walsh
There are about a gazillion dead trees in CA forests, due to the years-long drought and bark beetle disease. Dead trees burn like dead trees. The CA fire season is now year around.
As of right now CA has spent 22 percent of it's wildfire fighting budget and we are less than one month into the fire season.
The environmental nutjobs don't want to clear-cut dead trees so there are large areas of tinder just waiting for a spark to set it afire.
It is really unpleasant in much of CA due to the smoke from the fires and it isn't going to get better any time soon. Life is hard, and sometimes unfair, and you can't always get what you want.
There are about a gazillion dead trees in CA forests, due to the years-long drought and bark beetle disease. Dead trees burn like dead trees. The CA fire season is now year around.
As of right now CA has spent 22 percent of it's wildfire fighting budget and we are less than one month into the fire season.
The environmental nutjobs don't want to clear-cut dead trees so there are large areas of tinder just waiting for a spark to set it afire.
It is really unpleasant in much of CA due to the smoke from the fires and it isn't going to get better any time soon. Life is hard, and sometimes unfair, and you can't always get what you want.
EDUCATION LAWSUIT IS MOVING AHEAD
by Bob Walsh
Last December a group of students in LA and Stockton filed a suit, asserting that education in their government schools suck ass. The suit noted that of the 26 shittiest large school districts in the country, 11 are in the formerly great state of California.
The State Dept. of Education tried to have the suit dismissed, asserting among other things that the state constitution does not necessarily guarantee a decent education, just a free one.
L. A. County Judge Yvette Palazuelos has just ruled that the suit may move forward.
The plaintiffs include the PTA and Calif. Teachers Association, a large union representing teachers.
EDITOR'S NOTE: California high school graduates can barely read or write, and cannot do simple math because their brains have been saturated with politically correct multiculturalism and diversity. But that holds true for most of the other states in our dumbed down country.
Last December a group of students in LA and Stockton filed a suit, asserting that education in their government schools suck ass. The suit noted that of the 26 shittiest large school districts in the country, 11 are in the formerly great state of California.
The State Dept. of Education tried to have the suit dismissed, asserting among other things that the state constitution does not necessarily guarantee a decent education, just a free one.
L. A. County Judge Yvette Palazuelos has just ruled that the suit may move forward.
The plaintiffs include the PTA and Calif. Teachers Association, a large union representing teachers.
EDITOR'S NOTE: California high school graduates can barely read or write, and cannot do simple math because their brains have been saturated with politically correct multiculturalism and diversity. But that holds true for most of the other states in our dumbed down country.
AND THEN THEY PEED ON THEIR OWN SHOES
by Bob Walsh
The eleven conservative members of the house who announced Wednesday evening that they were going to impeach Rod Rosenstein announced on Thursday that they were NOT going to impeach Rod Rosenstein but were instead going to move a contempt of congress motion forward.
Probably a smart move on their part, but you shouldn't draw a line and then back away less than one day later. It makes you look both weak and stupid.
The eleven conservative members of the house who announced Wednesday evening that they were going to impeach Rod Rosenstein announced on Thursday that they were NOT going to impeach Rod Rosenstein but were instead going to move a contempt of congress motion forward.
Probably a smart move on their part, but you shouldn't draw a line and then back away less than one day later. It makes you look both weak and stupid.
NO PROTEST DEMONSTRATIONS WHEN BLACK PIECE OF SHIT KILLS WHITE COP
Milwaukee officer 'loved by everyone' dies in shootout with a 'man suspected in domestic violence attacks and heroin possession'
Daily Mail and Associated Press
July 26, 2018
A Milwaukee officer who 'was loved by everyone' died during an exchange of gunfire in a house where police were searching for a man suspected of drug dealing and domestic violence.
The lone suspect, who was not injured in the shooting Wednesday, was arrested after he ran out of bullets and surrendered, Chief Alfonso Morales said at a news conference.
Morales said the officer was Michael Michalski, 52, a 17-year veteran of the department who leaves behind a wife and three sons.
'He is the person who you would want to cut out and cookie-cut and say, ''This is what we want the Milwaukee Police Department to represent,'' said Morales, as three dozen solemn-faced officers in uniform and plain clothes stood behind him.
Michalski is the second Milwaukee officer to die in the line of duty in less than two months.
He was a member of a special unit recently formed to target the most dangerous criminals in the city.
At about 5pm Wednesday on Milwaukee's north side, the unit went searching for one of those targets - a man Morales identified as Jonathan C. Copeland.
He was wanted for a parole violation, heroin possession, harassment, intimidation and domestic violence, Morales said.
Copeland's criminal record dates back to when he was a juvenile, the chief said.
Officers saw the suspect go into a house and followed him in, Morales said. That's when the suspect started shooting, he said.
Michalski was taken to Froedtert Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police vehicles with their squad lights activated later escorted his body from the hospital to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office.
'Pretty much everybody loved him,' Morales said of the fallen officer, whom he called a friend. 'I can't think of anybody who has anything negative to say about Officer Michalski.'
Charges against Copeland are pending but he remains in custody.
After the shooting, Mayor Tom Barrett responded to the scene at Metcalfe Park neighborhood and asked residents to pray for the families of the city's police officers.
Standing next to Morales on Thursday, he repeated those remarks and said the shooting 'is another tragic reminder of the stress' officers face every day.
'He went in there and made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the residents of the city,' Barrett said.
Michalski's death comes less than two months since the department lost another officer in the line of duty.
On June 7, Officer Charles Irvine Jr., 23, was killed in a squad car crash during the high-speed pursuit of a suspect. Irvine was the first Milwaukee officer killed in the line of duty in 22 years.
Gov. Scott Walker ordered that the Wisconsin and U.S. flags be flown at half-staff throughout the state until Michalski is buried.
Daily Mail and Associated Press
July 26, 2018
A Milwaukee officer who 'was loved by everyone' died during an exchange of gunfire in a house where police were searching for a man suspected of drug dealing and domestic violence.
The lone suspect, who was not injured in the shooting Wednesday, was arrested after he ran out of bullets and surrendered, Chief Alfonso Morales said at a news conference.
Morales said the officer was Michael Michalski, 52, a 17-year veteran of the department who leaves behind a wife and three sons.
'He is the person who you would want to cut out and cookie-cut and say, ''This is what we want the Milwaukee Police Department to represent,'' said Morales, as three dozen solemn-faced officers in uniform and plain clothes stood behind him.
Michalski is the second Milwaukee officer to die in the line of duty in less than two months.
He was a member of a special unit recently formed to target the most dangerous criminals in the city.
At about 5pm Wednesday on Milwaukee's north side, the unit went searching for one of those targets - a man Morales identified as Jonathan C. Copeland.
He was wanted for a parole violation, heroin possession, harassment, intimidation and domestic violence, Morales said.
Copeland's criminal record dates back to when he was a juvenile, the chief said.
Officers saw the suspect go into a house and followed him in, Morales said. That's when the suspect started shooting, he said.
Michalski was taken to Froedtert Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police vehicles with their squad lights activated later escorted his body from the hospital to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office.
'Pretty much everybody loved him,' Morales said of the fallen officer, whom he called a friend. 'I can't think of anybody who has anything negative to say about Officer Michalski.'
Charges against Copeland are pending but he remains in custody.
After the shooting, Mayor Tom Barrett responded to the scene at Metcalfe Park neighborhood and asked residents to pray for the families of the city's police officers.
Standing next to Morales on Thursday, he repeated those remarks and said the shooting 'is another tragic reminder of the stress' officers face every day.
'He went in there and made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the residents of the city,' Barrett said.
Michalski's death comes less than two months since the department lost another officer in the line of duty.
On June 7, Officer Charles Irvine Jr., 23, was killed in a squad car crash during the high-speed pursuit of a suspect. Irvine was the first Milwaukee officer killed in the line of duty in 22 years.
Gov. Scott Walker ordered that the Wisconsin and U.S. flags be flown at half-staff throughout the state until Michalski is buried.
AGE PROGRESSION PHOTO LEADS TO BABY MISSING 24 YEARS
Missing Phoenix girl found alive nearly 24 years later
By Lauren Reimer
azfamily
July 25, 2018
A Phoenix girl missing since 1994 has been found.
Aleacia Stancil disappeared without a trace nearly 24 years ago, leaving police with few clues. That is, until her age progression photo was recognized clear across the country.
Recently obtained police documents are shedding light on this case.
Her mother, Toni Stancil, had a hard life. After leaving the Air Force, she struggled with drug use and turned to prostitution.
One night in December of 1994, Toni gave her 9-month-old daughter Aleacia to a friend, saying she needed a few days to "clear her head."
The child was passed from person to person until she ended up with police, her identity unknown.
When Toni came back two days later, the baby was gone.
She went to jail soon after and didn't report Aleacia missing until March of 1995.
By then the little girl was under the care of Child Protective Services, but the information was never connected.
Toni was found murdered that same year.
"Without that one and only witness, I'm very limited in how to proceed with the investigation," said Det. William Andersen with the Phoenix Police Missing Persons Unit in a 2013 interview.
Fast forward to 2014. A young woman in Connecticut showed up at a hospital. She had no ID and did not know much about herself.
The nurse found it suspicious and looked online for missing people. She came across an age progression photo of Aleacia and called police.
Police took her DNA for testing. Three years later, the tests came back a match.
Aleacia had been adopted, and now goes by a different name.
Her grandmother, Frances Ford, who now lives in Georgia, says Aleacia wishes to stay out of the spotlight.
She says the two were able to meet in person. From that meeting, she deduced Alecia's life has been complicated and confusing. Ford wishes to one day have a relationship with her.
"I would want the world to know that these are the things that can happen to kids, and not every story is not a happily-ever-after, and it doesn't mean that they came from someone who didn't want them or didn't care," said Ford.
By Lauren Reimer
azfamily
July 25, 2018
A Phoenix girl missing since 1994 has been found.
Aleacia Stancil disappeared without a trace nearly 24 years ago, leaving police with few clues. That is, until her age progression photo was recognized clear across the country.
Recently obtained police documents are shedding light on this case.
Her mother, Toni Stancil, had a hard life. After leaving the Air Force, she struggled with drug use and turned to prostitution.
One night in December of 1994, Toni gave her 9-month-old daughter Aleacia to a friend, saying she needed a few days to "clear her head."
The child was passed from person to person until she ended up with police, her identity unknown.
When Toni came back two days later, the baby was gone.
She went to jail soon after and didn't report Aleacia missing until March of 1995.
By then the little girl was under the care of Child Protective Services, but the information was never connected.
Toni was found murdered that same year.
"Without that one and only witness, I'm very limited in how to proceed with the investigation," said Det. William Andersen with the Phoenix Police Missing Persons Unit in a 2013 interview.
Fast forward to 2014. A young woman in Connecticut showed up at a hospital. She had no ID and did not know much about herself.
The nurse found it suspicious and looked online for missing people. She came across an age progression photo of Aleacia and called police.
Police took her DNA for testing. Three years later, the tests came back a match.
Aleacia had been adopted, and now goes by a different name.
Her grandmother, Frances Ford, who now lives in Georgia, says Aleacia wishes to stay out of the spotlight.
She says the two were able to meet in person. From that meeting, she deduced Alecia's life has been complicated and confusing. Ford wishes to one day have a relationship with her.
"I would want the world to know that these are the things that can happen to kids, and not every story is not a happily-ever-after, and it doesn't mean that they came from someone who didn't want them or didn't care," said Ford.
FUN AND GAMES THE TJ WAY
Tijuana: 15 murders in the last 24 hours
Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Zeta Tijuana
Borderland Beat
July 25, 2018
In Tijuana, unstoppable violence continues. In the last 24 hours, 13 men and two women have been killed in different parts of the city.
At 07:00 hours in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood, two lifeless bodies were found and their faces were wrapped in plastic bags. They died from apparent strangulation.
A burned body was located in a water basin of the CESPT located on Roble Street, in the El Carmen neighborhood.
The corpse of a male aged 60 to 70 years was found in a bag located on the Libramiento Rosas Magallón in Cañón del Matadero.
In Palmas street in the Campestre Murua neighborhood, the charred body of a man was located.
In an armed attack occurring on Abelardo L. Rodríguez Street in the Ejido Matamoros neighborhood, Luis Javier Hernández Ramos died and another subject was wounded. Witnesses reported that three men aboard a golden-colored Cherokee pickup arrived at the scene and asked for "Luis" shooting their firearms.
Jesús Elías Salazar Ramírez was killed gunshots in the neighborhood of Mariano Matamoros Sur. The victim had received death threats from a person nicknamed "Fibi".
A woman was killed with a sharp object and her putrefying body was found in a bathroom at the Vicente Riva Palacios residence # 504, in the Otay Nueva Tijuana neighborhood.
A double homicide was registered in the El Peñón neighborhood, in the La Presa Delegation. The victims were identified as Iván Uriel de Jesús and Margarito de Jesús Frías.
Shot with a firearm, a woman between 25 and 30 years old died in Calle del Nogal Este, in the La Morita II neighborhood.
On the morning of July 25, when he was on board a vehicle, Arturo Gutiérrez Valle was killed at point-blank range on Avenida de La Amistad, inside the "Pera" parking lot, in the Empleados Federales neighborhood.
Outside the Hotel Niza, located on Coahuila avenue in the Central Zone, a blue suitcase with a corpse with signs of strangulation was found. Information revealed to ZETA indicates that the victim is allegedly Jhonatán Alexander Romero, alias "El Jhony", "El Moreno", "El Fory", "El 40". The now deceased was presumably shot on June 19 in the same area. On that occasion two men with a .45-caliber firearm were registered.
At 05:30 hours on Mitla street, in the Mariano Matamoros neighborhood, a man was shot to death, so far unidentified.
Finally, at 07:30 hours on the Tijuana-Tecate highway near Plaza Sendero, a lifeless body of a subject was located in a white plastic bag.
So far no people are being detained for the previous crimes.
Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Zeta Tijuana
Borderland Beat
July 25, 2018
In Tijuana, unstoppable violence continues. In the last 24 hours, 13 men and two women have been killed in different parts of the city.
At 07:00 hours in the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood, two lifeless bodies were found and their faces were wrapped in plastic bags. They died from apparent strangulation.
A burned body was located in a water basin of the CESPT located on Roble Street, in the El Carmen neighborhood.
The corpse of a male aged 60 to 70 years was found in a bag located on the Libramiento Rosas Magallón in Cañón del Matadero.
In Palmas street in the Campestre Murua neighborhood, the charred body of a man was located.
In an armed attack occurring on Abelardo L. Rodríguez Street in the Ejido Matamoros neighborhood, Luis Javier Hernández Ramos died and another subject was wounded. Witnesses reported that three men aboard a golden-colored Cherokee pickup arrived at the scene and asked for "Luis" shooting their firearms.
Jesús Elías Salazar Ramírez was killed gunshots in the neighborhood of Mariano Matamoros Sur. The victim had received death threats from a person nicknamed "Fibi".
A woman was killed with a sharp object and her putrefying body was found in a bathroom at the Vicente Riva Palacios residence # 504, in the Otay Nueva Tijuana neighborhood.
A double homicide was registered in the El Peñón neighborhood, in the La Presa Delegation. The victims were identified as Iván Uriel de Jesús and Margarito de Jesús Frías.
Shot with a firearm, a woman between 25 and 30 years old died in Calle del Nogal Este, in the La Morita II neighborhood.
On the morning of July 25, when he was on board a vehicle, Arturo Gutiérrez Valle was killed at point-blank range on Avenida de La Amistad, inside the "Pera" parking lot, in the Empleados Federales neighborhood.
Outside the Hotel Niza, located on Coahuila avenue in the Central Zone, a blue suitcase with a corpse with signs of strangulation was found. Information revealed to ZETA indicates that the victim is allegedly Jhonatán Alexander Romero, alias "El Jhony", "El Moreno", "El Fory", "El 40". The now deceased was presumably shot on June 19 in the same area. On that occasion two men with a .45-caliber firearm were registered.
At 05:30 hours on Mitla street, in the Mariano Matamoros neighborhood, a man was shot to death, so far unidentified.
Finally, at 07:30 hours on the Tijuana-Tecate highway near Plaza Sendero, a lifeless body of a subject was located in a white plastic bag.
So far no people are being detained for the previous crimes.
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