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The man the bikers really wanted to kill couldn’t be found, so they took his brother.

They kidnapped 24-year-old Kirk Knight, tethered him to a cement block and dumped him – bound, gagged and possibly still breathing – into the Detroit River.

Sunday marks the 33rd anniversary of Knight’s violent unsolved murder. Windsor police believe the slaying was payback for the shooting of Lobos biker gang member John Muzzatti, which Knight had nothing to do with.

“It was brutal,” said Det. Frank Providenti with the major crimes unit. “This young man didn’t have anything to do with the shooting. He had some issues with the Lobos, but he didn’t deserve to be bound and gagged and thrown in the river. It was just sheer violence. It must have been pretty scary. If he was alive when he was bound, and they’re strapping that block to him, and he knows he’s going in the water, can you imagine what would be going through his mind? It would be just terrifying.”

Along with a $5,000 reward, police are hoping DNA technology can help give them clues they need to close the case. Re-examining old cases with new technology is a practice that has worked before for Windsor police.

Last year, they used 12-year-old DNA from a cigarette butt to help solve the cold case murder of Michelle Charette. Peter Dale MacDonald, 54, already serving a life sentence for another murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February 2012.

They are hoping DNA analysis of evidence in the Knight case will bring similar results. Investigators still have the cement block used to weigh down Knight. They also have Knight’s clothes, the rope he was tied up with and a pop can left at the scene.

Investigators believe the catalyst for Knight’s demise happened three days before his kidnapping, with that drive-by shooting he didn’t do.

On May 16, 1980, Lobos gang member John Muzzatti was standing next to his motorcycle outside the Seminole Tavern, now known as Silvers. Someone put a bullet in his stomach from a passing car. He survived – and went on to become Lobos president until the gang patched over to the Hells Angels in 2001 – but police said the bikers didn’t let the attack go unanswered.

On May 19, three men rolled up to Knight’s home at 1737 Central Ave. in a green 1972 Chevy Nova. A neighbour saw the men force Knight into the car and peel away. The neighbour jotted down the licence plate number and called police.

Detectives ran the plate and learned the car was registered to Christina Rizok, a known associate of the Lobos. The manhunt began.

“They figured they find that car they’re going to find evidence, or even Kirk himself,” said Providenti.

Police found the car a few days later, on May 22, at a home on Belcraft Beach in Colchester. The vehicle itself offered up no clues.

“But it did tie another gentleman to the case,” said Providenti.

Police charged Michael Plantus with kidnapping Knight. But Plantus, now dead, walked away free when the case was quashed at a preliminary hearing.

“He was seen in that car hours before the kidnapping,” said Providenti.

Rizok was also in the car. They were questioned, along with several others.

“I think every Lobos was brought in and questioned,” said Providenti.

“Nobody was forthright and upfront with the police, because they’re all afraid.”

Then on May 25, 1980, a man went out for a Sunday boat ride, behind what was then the Rendezvous Tavern. The Rendezvous housing subdivision now covers the area.

Bobbing against some abandoned docks in shallow water, there was a body, tied to a cement block.

“It was payback, payback for John getting shot,” said Providenti. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

The Star’s efforts to reach Muzzatti, who still lives in Essex County, were unsuccessful.

The coroner ruled it death by asphyxiation. But he wasn’t strangled. Police will likely never know for sure if Knight was still alive when the killers threw him in the water.

“Did they choke him out before he went into the water or did the water cause the asphyxiation?” said Providenti. “He was bound and gagged. That could have caused his death before he hit the water.”

After Knight’s body washed up, police executed search warrants at several homes, and raided the Lobos clubhouse at 1527 Provincial Road. Officers swarmed in with shotguns. They lined up the Lobos, and some visiting Satan’s Choice members, along an outside wall as they searched the place.

“Looking for anything that would tie anybody to the murder, like evidence of ropes or locks or tape,” said Providenti. “If they could find it at someone’s house, then they could link it.”

But any evidence, if it had been there, was gone. No one was talking. Still, everything seemed to point to the Lobos.

Knight’s grisly death wasn’t his first run-in with the notorious bikers. After he disappeared, his father Ed told police that gang members had beat him up before.

And a few days before his appearance, Knight took another beating from someone.

“There were a couple of occurrences,” said Providenti. “He was having problems with the Lobos in regards to taking over bars. They’d come in and make the bar their bar.”

Knight and his brother Reginald didn’t like that. The brothers stood up to the bikers, which usually didn’t go well for the Knights.

“They got the best of them, on a few occasions,” said Providenti.

That feud may have reached a boiling point with the drive-by shooting of Muzzatti. Knight’s brother Reginald was a suspect in that shooting. Reginald has since left the Windsor area and couldn’t be reached for comment.

“His brother was suspected of shooting Muzzatti,” said Providenti. “So whether they couldn’t find Reginald that night and they took his brother, the next best thing, we won’t know. But that is one theory, that they grabbed him because they knew where he was.”

Anyone with information about Knight’s murder or any other cold case can call Windsor police at 519-255-6700 ext. 4390
[...]

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A woman whose husband was reported missing six years ago today was charged with his murder after investigators searched her Ventnor home and discovered his remains in a closet, the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office said.

This morning, detectives from the prosecutor's office cold case unit arrested Loretta Doyle Burroughs, 61, of Ventnor, for the fatal stabbing of her husband, 66-year-old Daniel Burroughs. She was charged with murder and weapons offenses.

Authorities say Loretta Burroughs fatally stabbed her husband in August 2007, when the couple lived on Leipzig Avenue in Mays Landing. He was reported missing a month later.

The Hamilton Township Police Department detective bureau and the State Police Missing Persons Unit investigated the disappearance at the time, and it remained a missing persons case ever since.

Following her husband's disappearance, Loretta Burroughs moved to Ventnor, according to the office of Acting Atlantic County Prosecutor Jim McClain.

In February, member of Daniel Burroughs' family contacted the prosecutor's office newly created cold case unit with information about the disappearance, and the case was reopened.

When she was arrested this morning, Loretta Burroughs was in the process of selling her Ventnor home, just south of Atlantic City, and moving to Villas in Cape May County, the prosecutor's office said. Villas is about 40 miles away, at the very southern tip of New Jersey.

Executing search warrants today, authorities found inside the Ventnor home human remains inside a closet, which were positively identified as Daniel Burroughs. Autopsy results are pending.

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Loretta Burroughs divorced her husband Danny after he disappeared in 2007. This morning, investigators found his body parts in her home, according to a source.
[...]

The remains were found in two containers in Loretta's home in Ventnor, N.J., according to a source close to the investigation who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Loretta Burroughs, 61, wept quietly this afternoon as she was formally charged with Danny's murder.
[...]

Investigators are not clear if they were put into containers due to decomposition, or if the body was mutilated. They do believe that the body was moved several times.
[...]

Danny Burroughs' family convinced investigators to re-open the case in February, after the county put together a Cold Case Unit. The family launched a Find Danny Burroughs Facebook page in 2010, and used the page to raise questions about Danny's disappearance. In the "about" section of the page, his brother wrote:

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SAN DIEGO - A private investigator told 10News he might know where to find the body of Jahi Turner, the two-year-old boy who disappeared 11 years ago in San Diego and is believed to be dead.

"It's very heart-wrenching," said private investigator Bill Garcia.

When young Jahi disappeared, San Diego police combed the Miramar Landfill. Jahi's stepfather was questioned after witnesses told police he was seen carrying a large bag to a Dumpster.

Jahi's stepfather had called 911 a few days later to say the boy had disappeared. It was suspected Jahi was killed and his body thrown in a Dumpster, which was emptied and taken to the Miramar Landfill.

"The most extensive landfill search, I believe, in San Diego history was launched at Miramar," said Garcia.

"I remember the odor. I remember wearing the white uniform in a line with other officers," said Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano, who was in charge of San Diego at the time and helped search Miramar.

However, Garcia said investigators got the wrong Dumpster and a different driver told them they got the wrong landfill.

"He has said that load had come here to Otay [Landfill] as opposed to Miramar," said Garcia.

Garcia was hired by Jahi's family to look for the boy shortly after he disappeared. He said chances are good the boy's body is in the Otay Landfill. Unfortunately, it would be covered under 11 years of garbage.

Bejarano said San Diego investigators worked closely with the FBI and San Diego County sheriff's investigators on the case.

"So I'm very confident that we reviewed every lead and looked under every rock," Bejarano said.

However, Garcia said the Otay Landfill was never searched, even though landfill engineers can pinpoint where and at what depth the garbage from that neighborhood could be found.

Garcia said it might cost millions to dig up that same part of the landfill, but he's hoping San Diego is willing to try.
[...]

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On Nov. 1, 1955, 6:52 p.m., 44 people boarded United Airlines Flight 629 for the flight from Denver to Portland, Ore. By 7:03 their corpses were scattered over a sugar beet field in Longmont, Colo, about 40 miles to the north.

Witnesses told of seeing a fireball in the air, but there was some disagreement over when the flames started. Some swore the plane blew up when it hit the ground, others were certain that it exploded while flying at 11,000 feet.

A month earlier, 66 people died when another United plane smashed into a mountain in Medicine Bow Peak, Wyo. During the previous decade, along the same route, the airline had lost two other planes.
That the Flight 629 crash was another tragic accident seemed the most likely conclusion. “Sabotage is not considered,” one UAL executive told reporters a day after the crash.

RELATED: JUSTICE STORY: 'JEWISH JEZEBEL' POLLY ADLER

FBI and local investigators began the grim task of identifying bodies and collecting debris, all scattered over a 5-mile area.

Thousands of fragments of wreckage, baggage, hundreds of pieces of mail and personal effects, were collected and gathered into a warehouse at Denver’s Stapleton airfield, where investigators tried to piece the plane and the story together.

As the investigation progressed, details emerged that suggested this was no accident. Six days after the crash, officials told the press that there were “some things that appear unusual” and that sabotage was definitely a possibility.

There were big signs, like the way the craft had come apart. The tail section had been neatly severed, almost as if sliced off by a knife. Reconstruction revealed that a rear compartment in the cargo hold had been torn apart with great force. Fragments of the wreckage smelled like gunpowder and residue on metal from the most-damaged area contained sodium carbonate, nitrate and sulfur, what would remain after a dynamite blast — a bomb.

One passenger’s luggage sustained more damage than any others. It belonged to Daisie King, 53, a successful Denver businesswoman.
[...]

Among personal papers found scattered around the wreckage were some peculiar newspaper clippings about King’s son, Jack Graham, 23. Gleaning from just these few shreds of paper, it was clear that this boy was trouble.

Graham became a person of interest.

That interest heightened when agents learned that Graham was in line for a fat inheritance, a large part of a $150,000 estate, upon his mother’s demise.

There was one other thing: He hated her.

Neighbors told of frequent quarrels between the troubled youth and his hard-working mother, the outcome of a lifetime of resentment. Born in the depths of the Great Depression, Jan. 23, 1932, he was Daisie’s second child, from a second husband. Her first marriage, which produced a daughter, had ended in divorce.

Husband No. 2 died of pneumonia in 1937 and poverty forced Daisie to leave her boy in an orphanage. She remarried in 1941, but she did not bring her son back to live with her until 1954, the year her third husband, Earl King, died, leaving her comfortably well off.

Over the years, her son had constantly been in scraps with the law — for forgery, illegal gun possession, and hauling liquor into dry states — but appeared to be trying to pull his life together. Daisie paid off his fines and set him up in a business, a drive-in restaurant. In September 1955, a gas explosion damaged the building. Police suspected that the blast was arson, but could not prove it. Graham collected a $1,200 insurance claim. Later, Graham tried to collect more insurance after he drove his car onto a railroad track, leaping out seconds before the impact.

Considering his background, and what he stood to gain after his mother’s death, FBI agents decided to take a closer look at him, searching his home. They found copper wire, the kind used in detonating primer caps, and a $37,000 airline insurance policy for Daisie King, with her son listed as beneficiary.

After a few days of questioning, Graham said, “OK, where do you want me to start?” In great detail he described building and planting the bomb that killed his mother and 43 others on Flight 629.

It had been a simple device, constructed of 25 sticks of dynamite, a six-volt battery, two electric primer caps — in case one failed — and a timer set to detonate in about 90 minutes. Working in an electronics shop for just two weeks had given Graham all of the expertise needed to build the bomb.

“I then took the sack of dynamite, with the battery and timer attached, and placed it in my mother’s large suitcase,” he told the agents.

At the time, the maximum federal penalty for sabotaging an aircraft during peacetime was 10 years in prison. So the case was turned over to the state, which could prosecute Graham for murdering his mother, and sentence him to death in the gas chamber.

Graham later recanted, but at his trial in April 1956, the five-page written confession, initialed by Graham on each page and signed on the last, was read in court.

The defendant did not testify at his trial, the first in which television cameras were allowed in court. It took 72 minutes for the jury to find him guilty. He went quietly to his death on Jan. 11, 1957, showing no remorse.

“Everybody pays their way and takes their chances,” he said shortly before the execution. “That’s just the way it goes.”

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Stephanie Mikles was hired in 2009 to be the behavioral specialist for Harford County Schools...but it is her behavior that may very well get her fired and did get her indicted.

The child advocacy center of Harford County began investigating Mikles last year, but did not anticipate finding evidence that would lead to the shocking indictment.

According to court records and evidence of still photos, a grand jury indicted Mikles with “unnatural or perverted sexual practice.”

The indictment lacks a lot of detail but does say she had “sexual intercourse with a dog.”

Police say according to evidence it happened in August of 2008 but in Maryland, there is no statute of limitations for beastiality and sources tell ABC2, the pet still lives with the family at their Jarrettsville home.
[...]

Investigators did say the findings of beastiality were a surprise and that it was a separate investigation by the child advocacy center that led them to this shocking discovery.

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The allegations against Mikles weren't brought to the attention of police until sometime around Christmas or early this year, Harford County State's Attorney Joseph Cassilly said Thursday.

Following her indictment, Mikles was released on $5,000 bond. A court scheduling conference is scheduled on May 20. The penalty for a conviction of an unnatural or perverted sex practice is 10 years in prison, according to Cassilly.

Cassilly said he was uncertain how many times the alleged unnatural or perverted sex practice occurred, but because the indictment says it occurred over a period of time, "[that] to me says it's more than one instance."

Cassilly said a complaint was made and investigated and charges were filed. Investigators seized a number of video recordings of the alleged acts that "took a while to go through," he said.

"As a result of what they found, they placed the charges," he added.

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A woman has been arrested and charged with the 1979 murder of her husband, a commodities broker who was shot in their Inverness home by intruders.

Authorities now allege that Jacquelyn Greco, 66, plotted the killing and made it look like a burglary – even directing the intruders to tie up her and three of her children to add to the ruse.

Greco, who has been living in Michigan, was ordered today held without bail in Cook County Jail .

Authorities said Greco had been having marital problems, was having an affair and had told someone prior to her husband’s death that she wanted to be rid of him. Her husband, Carl Gaimari, was a 34-year-old broker at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Greco’s boyfriend moved into her Inverness home days after Gaimari’s murder, prosecutors said, and the two were married four months later.

Authorities said Greco talked about the murder later and made threats to others who might have had knowledge of her alleged involvement.

The couple had four children, three of whom were home at the time of the murder. One of the children found Gaimari’s body, officials said.

Authorities said they started relooking at the case in 2012, and later recorded a conversation Greco had in which she spoke of planning the murder.

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For 16 years, authorities have been searching for Apollo Cardenas, the man they believe is responsible for killing his estranged wife with an ax inside their Maple Shade apartment.

The 61-year-old appeared before a judge in Burlington County Superior Court via video Monday after he was arrested for trying to enter the country from Honduras last month. That had followed a prolonged seclusion in his native Ecuador.

Youngsook Lee was 29 at the time of her death in 1996. Her body was found decomposed with a deep cut to the left side of her neck and wounds to her face. An ax stained with blood and covered in human hair was later found in a storage area of the unit at the Fox Meadow Apartments.

Authorities believe Lee was killed around Thanksgiving, but her body wasn’t found until the following January. Police were tipped off by residents at the apartment complex who noticed a window-mounted air conditioning unit was running around the clock despite the winter cold.

By then, Cardenas had fled to Ecuador, though authorities suspected he was responsible for Lee’s death.

In May 2007, an indictment on a first-degree murder charge was handed down by a Burlington County grand jury.

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Burlington County Assistant Prosecutor Alexis Agre said that while authorities believed Cardenas was in Ecuador after the murder, they could not extradite him because there is no extradition treaty between the South American country and the United States.
[...]

In 1997, authorities said Cardenas left the air conditioner running in the apartment off Emerson Road to slow the decomposition of Lee’s body. It also gave him time to flee, police said. They allege that he killed Lee with multiple blows of an ax as she lay sleeping in a makeshift bed of couch cushions on the living room floor, according to police at the time.
[...]

The county prosecutor at the time cited marital and financial problems.

“There were notes found that say there was some insecurity, some jealousy, on the part of the husband,” then-Prosecutor Stephen G. Raymond said in a Burlington County Times story in the days after the Jan. 7, 1997, discovery of Lee’s body.

Among evidence found in the apartment were letters detailing Cardenas’ extreme jealousy, according to the published report.

Cardenas and Lee met in Ecuador, where they married in 1990, and moved to the United States in 1991. At the time of her death, Lee worked as a waitress at the Shilla Korean restaurant on Castor Avenue in Philadelphia.
[...]

Authorities said that Cardenas was a “freelance architect,” but that at the time of the murder he mostly worked as a pizza maker. Police also believe the murder might have been triggered by the fact that Cardenas remained jobless while his younger wife worked, authorities said in 1997.

In court Monday, Cardenas said he understood the charges against him and told Palmer he has two children in Ecuador.

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Hissing and spitting like an animal, high tide surged across the sands of Virginia Key. Dark waves broke over the jagged shore and scattered flotsam on the stones like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. When the water receded, it left more than the usual behind.

As dawn bleached the black skies above Miami on April 4, 1985, something shone unnaturally in the early-morning light. A local beachcomber traced the glints to a bulky trash bag wedged between two boulders. He poked a finger through the dark green plastic. Something soft and pale was inside. It was human skin.

Nilsa Padilla's torso, wrapped in a green trash bag, washed up on Virginia Key in 1985.
When Miami-Dade police arrived and cut open the bag, out spilled a corpse — or part of one, at least. Like an ancient sculpture attacked by vandals, the young woman had been shorn of her head and limbs. It was the second such discovery in 24 hours. The day before, two fishermen had tried to rescue what they thought was an injured manatee near Miami Seaquarium. It turned out to be a man's rib cage. Both bodies appeared to have been sawed apart with the same instrument. Cops nicknamed the couple "Tommy and Theresa Torso."

Over the next week, body parts appeared all around Biscayne Bay. The woman's thigh washed up in front of a hotel in Sunny Isles Beach. Her leg landed ashore on Fisher Island. And her head was found floating in Government Cut. It was the height of the cocaine-cowboys era, and brutal murders weren't uncommon. But the sickening string of body parts stoked fears of a serial killer torturing the city with what Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan called a "grisly puzzle."

"Police... wonder why no one appears to have reported the couple missing," Buchanan wrote. Without leads, cops desperately tried to cull fingerprints from the female victim's one recovered hand.

Instead, it would be more than a quarter-century before police caught a break.

"Back then we were finding so many dope murders," says retired Miami-Dade homicide detective John Parmenter. "We all thought [the bodies] had something to do with drugs."

He pauses and adds quietly, "How wrong we were."

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Charles McCully receives at least one call per week, usually Fridays. The phone in the Miami-Dade Police Department's Cold Case Squad rings, and the hulking sergeant with a gravelly voice and the nickname "Buck" warily picks up. Usually it's someone looking for a long-lost family member. Occasionally, it's a drunk concocting a bogus murder story. One guy in particular calls regularly from California and disguises his voice just long enough to get the veteran cop's hopes up.

So when Gloria Hampton walked into McCully's office in the summer of 2010 with a story stranger than fiction, the sergeant was suspicious.

"I just need somebody to listen to me," Gloria pleaded. The short 29-year-old with wide hips, tan skin, and curly hair had been through years of psychiatric therapy, she said. From the haze of her hurtful childhood, however, she had pulled one particular memory and polished it until clear.

"I saw my father kill my mother when I was 4 years old," she said. "He put her body into an army-green bag."

McCully was still skeptical. Cops don't put much faith in recovered memories, and these were 25 years old. But after Gloria left, he cracked open musty boxes of cold-case files. He flipped through yellowing photographs and police reports for hours before pulling out a thin binder that hadn't been touched in years. It was the unsolved murder from April 4, 1985. And inside was a photo of a woman's body in an army-green bag.

DNA analysis quickly confirmed that Gloria's mother, Nilsa Padilla, was the murder victim known for decades as "Theresa Torso." Gloria's father, Jorge Walter Nuñez, instantly became the only suspect. For Miami-Dade police, it was a breakthrough in one of the department's oldest and most vexing cases. For Gloria, it was salvation.

"They thought I was crazy," she says of the cops, foster parents, and caseworkers who ridiculed her claims for years. "Now they know I'm not."

South Florida has long been a refuge for drifters, drug dealers, and the deranged. On average, at least three corpses join the ranks of Miami's nameless dead every year. Rarely do police uncover their identities.

Nilsa Padilla is the exception. Nearly 30 years after their mother's death, Gloria and her sister, Bernisa Davis, have helped solve one of Miami's most mysterious slayings. But as cops would soon discover, their incredible survival story is also a dark tale of rape, madness, multiple murders, and revenge like no other in this city's sordid history.

Despite the two sisters' painful testimony, however, one final piece is still missing from the grisly puzzle: Jorge Walter Nuñez.

Padilla's killer remains at large.

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Nilsa Padilla's short life was littered with beer cans and bad men.

She was born August 11, 1958, in the poor Puerto Rican fishing town of Cataño, near San Juan. Her parents were alcoholics whose binges left Padilla and her four siblings to wander the windswept malecón for days at a time. It didn't take Padilla long to get into trouble.

"My cousin wasn't a good influence on us," says Maggie Soto, who grew up with Padilla in Cataño. Padilla was plain but attractive, with dark hair and eyes like black marbles. What she lacked in beauty she made up for in boldness. "Boys would look at us and she would immediately walk to them, tell them her name, tell them that we were all single," Soto says. Padilla would also steal candy from the corner store to give to her cousins. Like the storms that swept into Cataño from the sea, the troubles that would sink Nilsa were already visible on the horizon. "She was the wildest," Soto says.
[...] much more @ link

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An alleged leading female member of a German neo-Nazi hit squad and four accomplices went on trial in Munich today charged with complicity in the racist murders of ten people and two bomb attacks in the country’s worst acts of far right violence since World War II. Beate Zschäpe, 38, her hair dyed brown, entered a heavily guarded courtroom in central Munich wearing a black suit. She folded her arms and, with defiant expression on her face, let it be known through her lawyers that she would not speak during her trial. As the trial opened Zschäpe’s lawyers attempted to disrupt the proceedings by claiming that the judge was biased against the defence council. Zschäpe, one of the alleged members of the neo-Nazi hit squad National Socialist Underground (NSU), is accused with complicity in the murders of eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman. Most of the NSU’s victims were small shopkeepers who were shot dead at point blank range between 2000 and 2007. She is also charged with complicity in two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne and 15 bank robberies, and will face life imprisonment if convicted. The case has shaken a country that believed it had learned the lessons of the past, and reopened a debate about whether it must do more to tackle the far-right and lingering racism. Authorities were sluggish in linking the killings, at first blaming them on criminal immigrant gangs. Zschäpe chatted with her lawyers before the judges entered, her back turned to the television cameras. One of four other defendants charged with assisting the NSU hid under a dark hood. Outside the courthouse, German-Turkish community groups and anti-racism demonstrators held up banners including one that read: "Hitler-child Zschäpe, you will pay for your crimes". About 500 police officers provided tight security, and members of the public and media even had their hair searched before being let in. The gang's existence was discovered in November 2011 when the two men believed to have founded the NSU with Zschäpe - Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt - committed suicide after a botched bank robbery and set their caravan ablaze. In the charred vehicle, police found the gun used in all 10 murders and a grotesque DVD claiming responsibility for them, in which the bodies of the victims were pictured with a cartoon Pink Panther totting up the number of dead. After the suicides, Zschäpe is believed to have set fire to a flat she shared with the men in Zwickau, in east Germany. Four days later, she turned herself in to police in her hometown of Jena, saying: "I'm the one you're looking for." Lawyers for the family of the first victim, flower seller Enver Simsek, said: "With its historical, social and political dimensions, the NSU trial is one of the most significant of post-war German history."

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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Michael Ackerman is charged with murder for the 1977 death of William T. Wood.

"I am afraid a lot. I have a lot of fears of the bad guy because I witnessed a bad guy," said Indy Jo Wood.

For 36 years, Wood has lived under the shadow of tragedy. She's lived with the memory of her little brother's scream, his face red and purple and then his lifeless body.

Michael Ackerman, their mother's then-boyfriend was babysitting. It was back on January 17, 1977. Police were called to an apartment on the city's eastside.

When they arrived, they found 18-month old Billy Wood lying on the living room floor. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

"My memory and the autopsy together I just always knew I had to do something," said Wood.

After nearly four decades, Indy Jo called IMPD. Detective Sergeant David Ellison dusted off the case file and it was the initial autopsy report; a skull fracture, hemorrhaging, lacerations to the liver and abdomen that put Ackerman behind bars, charged with murder.

Is this very common for abuse?

"Yes, and significant abuse," said Marion County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Denise Robinson.

Robinson calls it the oldest case she's filed.

"We want justice to be done so we intend to go forward with the case and hopefully successfully prosecute the case," said Robinson.

No matter how many years later?

"No matter how many years later," she said.

For Indy Jo, it was news she's waited for her whole life.

"I wish, in a perfect world, he would stand up and say, 'I did this and this and that and I’m sorry,'" said Wood. "That's what I want but am I going to get that? Only Michael Ackerman knows."
[..]
But if nothing else, it will mean Billy gets his day in court - 36 years later. Robinson says Ackerman's initial hearing should be scheduled Friday or Monday.

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A cold case dating back to the late 70's is officially in the process of being closed after a key witness has come forward.

Authorities arrested Michael V. Ackerman, 57, late Wednesday with the death of William (Billy) T. Wood, the 18-month-old son of his girlfriend at the time.

The arrest followed Indy Jo Wood, Billy's older sister, coming forward to the Indianapolis Police Department and informing them that she was in the room at the time and witnessed what transpired (at the age of three), according to IndyStar.com.
Indy Jo Wood recounted the events of that night to Sgt. David Ellison in February.


Ackerman was baby-sitting the two children while her mother, now Debra Shay, was at work. The two allegedly had an argument before she left.


At some point that night he took Billy to the bathroom for a bath and he let out a 'bloodcurdling scream.'


That's when Indy Jo ran to the room and saw '[Billy] sitting on the sink, screaming as loud as he could, his face red and purple, and Ackerman was holding him by the shoulders.'
[......]

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Ralph Perez Martinez was watching television with his ex-wife when a news report mentioned a $10,000 reward for information about a Indiana businesswoman found shot to death at the Majestic Star Casino.
"Is that all I'm worth?" he said, according to authorities.
The next day, the ex-wife called police and turned him in for the murder of Mary C. Austgen, 76, in March. Martinez, 57, was charged with murder, robbery and criminal confinement.

Police say video shows Martinez driving up to Austgen's family business in Griffith around 2:40 p.m. on March 28. As Austgen started walking down stairs toward the main door to leave, Martinez grabbed her and she fell, police said.

"The suspect is then observed to have a small silver colored semi-automatic handgun in his right hand and had it pointed at Mary and has the gun over her while she lay on the stairs," police said in an affidavit. "The suspect appeared to be saying something to Mary."

The two went back into the building and come back out about three hours later, police said. Austgen got into the driver's seat of her GMC Yukon Denali and Martinez got into the back seat, behind her, and they drove away. Video at the casino shows the SUV entering the parking garage around 6 p.m. and Martinez walking out about 15 minutes later, police said. He was picked up by a black BMW sedan.

Casino workers found Austgen dead in her SUV early March 29 in a parking garage, police said. She had been shot in the abdomen and two diamond rings were missing from her hands.

On Monday, detectives and the Austgen family made a public plea for help. They released photos of Austgen’s distinctive rings, and her son said there was a $10,000 reward for anyone who could help capture his mother's killer. Police also showed photos from the surveillance video.

"That's not me," Martinez said, according to police. "Lots of people with money get killed."

On Tuesday, the ex-wife called police. She said the photo resembled Martinez, and she remembered seeing a ring in the bedroom that resembled one of the stolen rings.

Also, surveillance video showed the suspect with a red and black bag similar to one Martinez used, police said. The ex-wife said she searched for the bag and found a silver handgun inside, court records said.

Officers executed a search warrant at a home in the 12200 block of Lawndale Avenue in Alsip and Martinez was led away in handcuffs. A search of the house revealed a cell phone that indicated Martinez was in the area of Austgen Electric and Majestic Star Casino on March 28, according to court records.
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Gary, Indiana-A $10,000 reward is being offered for anyone identifying the person who kidnapped and killed a 76-year-old Griffith, Ind., woman last month, said police, who also released photographs of two rings believed stolen from the victim.

Mary C. Austgen was attacked, then kidnapped at gunpoint from her family business, Austgen Electric, Inc., at 801 E. Main St. in Griffith, about 5:40 p.m. March 28, police said in a news release.

Casino workers found Austgen dead in her white 2011 GMC Yukon Denali about 2:10 am March 29 in the 2D parking garage located at 1 Buffington Harbor Dr., police said. The casino is almost directly north of the Griffith business on U.S. Highway 12. Austgen was reported missing to the Griffith Police Department the afternoon of March 28, police said at the time.

Police are trying to identify a person seen driving a black, four-door vehicle that picked up the suspected killer at the Valet area of the Majestic Star Casino about 6:45 p.m. March 28, police said.

Austgen suffered a gunshot wound to the lower left torso and was pronounced dead on the scene, according to the Lake County coroner's office. The coroner has ruled her death a homicide.

Two rings that Austgen was wearing were likely taken during the abduction, and police today released family photographs of the rings.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has offered a $5,000 reward in the case, and private donors have put together the other $5,000, police said.

Anyone with information on the kidnapping and slaying can contact Griffith Police at (219) 924-3141 or the department's tip line at (219) 922-3085 or can e-mail police at griffithpolice@griffith.in.gov. They can also contact Gary Police Detective Lorenzo Davis at (219) 881-4738 or the Gary Police tip line at (866) -274-6347. The ATF tip line is 1-800-ATF-GUN.[.....]

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The day Cynthia Hrisco was found dead near the whirlpool bath of her South Barrington home, her husband told police he might have killed her but could not remember, officials said.

Friday, 13 years after his wife's death, Frank Buschauer, 64, was charged with murder after a forensic re-enactment of the crime in the same bathtub, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez announced.

Buschauer, a retired engineer now living in Pell Lake, Wis., was arrested Wednesday at his home. On Friday he was ordered held without bail in the Cook County Jail on first-degree murder charges.

Authorities said he told police shortly after his arrest that he had quarreled with his wife about construction work at their home. "When confronted with the evidence, he stated he believed his wife's death was possibly the result of suicide, an accident or 'I killed her,'" the state's attorney's office said.

At the time of Hrisco's death, she and Buschauer had been married for about three years and were living on Overbrook Road in South Barrington with their 13-month-old child, whom they had adopted from Russia.

In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2000, Buschauer called 911 and reported that his wife had drowned in their bathtub, authorities said. Police found Hrisco lying facedown with no pulse on the bathroom floor, authorities said.

An autopsy found that she had suffered various hemorrhages, scrapes and bruises around her head and body. The Cook County medical examiner's office concluded that Hrisco drowned but couldn't say whether it was an accident, a suicide or a homicide.

In 2010, officials began a cold case review by conducting interviews and hiring forensic experts to re-examine evidence.

"It was never a closed case," said Ray Cordell, South Barrington deputy police chief. "As new forensic techniques have occurred, and we were able to take another look at it with the state's attorney's office, we were able to come to a more conclusive (result)."

The medical examiner reclassified the death as a homicide and said Hrisco was "forcibly submerged in the bathtub," prosecutors said.

Authorities said the couple's South Barrington home had been built by Buschauer's cousin in 1997, and Hrisco was "extremely upset with the poor workmanship of the house and alleged construction cost overruns, which she believed to be around $200,000."

Shortly before her death, Hrisco told a friend that her relationship with her husband had worsened because of the arguments over the home and that she was afraid of him, investigators said.

When Buschauer was interviewed in 2000, "he told investigators that it was possible that he killed his wife but doesn't remember, and that there could have been some period between the time he was watching TV and reading his book when he might have done something to his wife," according to a court record.

The case bears some similarities to that of Drew Peterson, the Bolingbrook police officer who was convicted of the murder of his wife Kathleen Savio, who in 2004 was found drowned in her bathtub with bruises and a cut on the back of her head. That death originally was ruled accidental before it was reinvestigated.

Dr. Larry Blum is a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Savio and testified against Peterson after concluding his wife was murdered.
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The burst blood vessels authorities said were found on Hrisco's scalp and left eye could have been caused by someone choking her, Blum said. Drowning by itself is not usually associated with such marks, Blum added, but experts would have to look at all the evidence to reach a conclusion.

Shortly after his wife's death, Buschauer moved into his parents' home in Pell Lake, according to a neighbor. His son is staying with another family member, according to police.

Phyllis Felts, who was Buschauer's neighbor when he lived in Des Plaines before marrying, called him "just a nice churchgoing guy ... very pleasant, calm and quiet. We feel really bad about it, because he was a sweetheart."

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Greensboro, NC -- Deputies with the Guilford County Sheriff's Office arrested a man charged with raping a child and abandoning the baby he conceived with her in the 90s.

Michael Cain Wilson was arrested Tuesday, but deputies said the case goes back to 1991.

Investigators said Wilson sexually abused a child at multiple locations in Guilford County from 1991 through 2003. Their investigation of these claims connects Wilson to a newborn abandoned in a stairwell November 12, 1999 on McKnight Mill Road.

"We have a case where this juvenile at a very young age found herself in the care and custody of a gentleman who was perpetrating on her in very very sad ways," said Detective Triche with the Guilford County Sheriff's Office.

According to deputies, Wilson delivered the baby he had with the girl - who was 13-years-old at the time - in his home to conceal the abuse.

The Sheriff's Office couldn't tell News 2 where the abandoned baby is now. The victim is now 28-years-old. The abuse started when she was 5-years-old and lasted until she was 17.

Detective Triche added, "The victim came forward within the last month and we were able to bring charges yesterday to make arrests."

Wilson was charged with:
•7 counts of first degree rape of a child (Class B1 Felony)
•3 counts of first degree statutory rape of a child 13-15 years of age (Class B1 Felony)
•10 counts of indecent liberties with a child (Class F Felony)
•6 counts of sex offense by a substitute parent (Class E Felony)
•1 count of child abuse inflicting serious physical injury (Class E Felony)
•1 count of child abandonment (Class I Felony)

He is currently being held in the Greensboro Jail under a $1.7 million bond.

Wilson's wife, Antoinette Rochelle Wilson, was also arrested for her involvement with this case.

She was charged with:
•1 count of aiding and abetting first degree rape of a child (Class B1 Felony)
•3 counts of aiding and abetting first degree statutory rape of a child 13-15 years of age (Class B1 Felony)
•4 counts of aiding and abetting indecent liberties with a child (Class F Felony)
•6 counts of aiding and abetting sex offense by a substitute parent (Class E Felony)

She was also placed in the Greensboro Jail. Her bond was set at $350,000.

Read: Safe Surrender Law In North Carolina
The law allows an overwhelmed parent to surrender his or her baby to a responsible adult and walk away.

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LAKE WORTH, Fla. -- More than twenty-five years after the death of a Lake Worth woman, murder charges have been filed against a Mississippi man.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has been investigating the death of Dana Fader since June of 1987.
In 2006, the sheriff's office received a federal grant and a DNA profile was conducted in the Fader case. No suspects were found at that time.

But when deputies placed the DNA into a database in 2012, they found a match to Rodney Clark
Clark was found in Jackson, Mississippi by investigators. Clark told investigators that he had lived in Palm Beach County in 1987, according to his arrest report.

Clark denied knowing Fader. PBSO deputies arrested Rodney Clark and charged him with first degree murder.

Fader was reported missing by her family, and at the time of her death, she was living with her then 3-year-old son and brother at the Willow Lake Apartments on 10th Ave North in Lake Worth.

A family member discovered her body in her car in the parking lot of the apartment complex.

An autopsy of the death revealed that Faber had been strangled.

He was booked into the Palm Beach County jail and made his first appearance in court

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Savannah, Mo., man has been charged with the February 1996 murder of Therese M. Campen of Raytown, Mo. Campen’s body was found in a rural cemetery near Amazonia, Mo., in Andrew County.

Prosecutors charged Michael Ray Wilson, 55, with first-degree murder, second-degree murder (as an alternative) and first-degree robbery.

According to the probable cause, on September 13, 2012, Wilson provided authorities with a five-page written confession in regards to Campen’s murder. Wilson said in February 1996 he was using narcotics very heavily and met Campen in Raytown, Mo. Wilson said upon meeting her he learned Campen worked as a prostitute and knew from that point he was going to kill.

According to the probable cause, Wilson said the two planned on meeting later in the day at a McDonald’s in Raytown. Wilson said he took a bus from Kansas City to Raytown and then walked to McDonald’s where he met Campen, who was driving a vehicle she said was her boyfriend’s.

At McDonald’s Wilson said he made arrangements with Campen to travel with him to buy a large quantity of narcotics, however Wilson said that was just a ploy to get Campen alone. Wilson said he drove Campen’s vehicle to the cemetery near Amazonia, stating that he knew it would be secluded.

Wilson provided police with further details of how after having consensual sex, he strangled Campen with a black rubber hose he found in the front passenger floor board. He then dragged Campen into a wooded area and used a portion of a limestone headstone that he kicked loose and threw it on Campen’s head.

Wilson said he then returned to Campen’s vehicle, tossed her belongings onto the ground and took $15 and some marijuana from Campen’s purse. Wilson then stated he drove back to Kansas City where he spent the night in a hotel. The following day he drove to Columbia, Mo., where he met friends and abandoned Campen’s vehicle at an apartment complex.

Wilson told authorities he wanted to put the case behind him [...]

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