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Miriam Rodriguez Martinez

 

Miriam Elizabeth Rodríguez Martínez (5 February 1960 - 10 May 2017) was a Mexican human rights activist. She became one of the many "Missing Child Parents", (a class of victims of organized crime, labeled as such by local news media) after her daughter was abducted and killed. Miriam was killed by gunmen who broke into her home on 10 May 2017.

Life

Miriam Elizabeth Rodríguez Martínez was born on 5 February 1960 in San Fernando in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Her daughter, Karen Alejandra Salinas Rodríguez, disappeared in 2012. Karen's remains were eventually discovered in 2014. Rodríguez pursued her daughter’s killers for years. Some of the men arrested for her daughter's case have escaped prison after their arrest. Along with finding her daughter, she was making efforts to help other parents whose children had disappeared, and from it came the Colectivo de Desaparecidos (The Vanished Collective) organization.

Rodríguez was killed on 10 May 2017, the day Mexico celebrates Mother's Day. She was shot 12 times by gunmen who broke into her home, and died on her way to the hospital. In solidarity with her, protesters raised their voices in protest the day she was killed, calling on the Mexican and U.S. governments to ensure the safety of human rights defenders.

The Cleveland Abductions: Ariel Castro

 

The Ariel Castro kidnappings took place between 2002 and 2004, when Ariel Castro kidnapped Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus and held them captive in his home in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The three girls were imprisoned until May 6, 2013, when Berry escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while imprisoned, and contacted the police. Police rescued Knight and DeJesus and arrested Castro within hours.

On May 8, 2013, Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. He pleaded guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping, and aggravated murder, as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole. On September 3, 2013, one month into his sentence, Castro died by suicide after hanging himself with bed sheets in his prison cell.

Perpetrator background

Ariel Castro (July 10, 1960 – September 3, 2013) was born in Duey, Yauco, Puerto Rico, the son of Pedro Castro (1938–2004) and Lillian Rodriguez (born 1942). Castro's parents divorced when he was a child, and he moved to mainland United States with his mother and three full siblings. They settled in Reading, Pennsylvania, and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Castro's father and other family members were living. Castro had nine siblings (both full and half) and graduated from Cleveland's Lincoln-West High School in 1979.

Castro met his girlfriend Grimilda Figueroa when his family moved into a house across the street from hers in the 1980s. They lived with both sets of parents, but moved into their own home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in 1992. Their home was a two-story, 1,400-square-foot (130 m2), four-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a 760-square-foot (71 m2) unfinished basement built in 1890 and remodeled in 1956. Figueroa's sister Elida Caraballo said that "all hell started breaking loose" when the couple moved into their new home. Caraballo and her husband Frank claim that Castro beat Figueroa, breaking her nose, ribs, and arms and causing a blood clot on her brain that resulted in an inoperable tumor. He also threw her down a flight of stairs, cracking her skull. In 1993, Castro was arrested for domestic violence but was not indicted by a grand jury.

Figueroa moved out of the home in 1996 and secured custody of her four children. Police assisted in the move and detained Castro, but they did not press charges. Castro continued to threaten and attack Figueroa after she left him, according to Caraballo. Figueroa filed charges in 2005 in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court accusing him of inflicting multiple severe injuries on her and of "frequently" abducting their daughters. The court granted her a temporary restraining order against Castro, but it was dismissed a few months later. Figueroa died in April 2012 due to complications from her brain tumor. Friends and relatives gathered on Denison Avenue on April 29, 2012, for memorial services in her honor.

Before his arrest at age 52, Castro worked as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District until he was fired for "bad judgment", including making an illegal U-turn with children on his bus, using his bus to go grocery shopping, leaving a child on the bus while he went for lunch, and leaving the bus unattended while he took a nap at home. He was earning $18.91 per hour when he was discharged. At the time of his arrest, Castro's home was in foreclosure after three years of unpaid real estate taxes.

Kidnappings

Castro kidnapped his victims by offering them a ride; he drove each to his home, lured them inside, took them to the basement, and restrained them in his house at 2207 Seymour Avenue, located in Cleveland's residential Tremont neighborhood. The house has since been demolished.

Michelle Knight

Michelle Knight (born April 23, 1981) disappeared on August 23, 2002, after leaving a cousin's house. She was 21 years old at the time. On the day of her disappearance, she was scheduled to appear in court for a child custody case involving her son Joey, who was in the custody of the state.

Following Knight's rescue, police acknowledged that limited resources had been spent on investigating her disappearance, in part because she was an adult. Authorities believed that she had run away voluntarily due to anger over losing custody of her son. According to Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba, she was "the focus of very few tips". Some have criticized her removal from the National Crime Information Center database. This event happened 15 months after she disappeared, so she was largely unknown prior to her rescue. Cleveland Police and the FBI maintain that her inclusion or exclusion had no bearing on her rescue.

Amanda Berry

Amanda Marie Berry (born April 22, 1986) disappeared on April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday. She was last heard from around 8:00 PM when she called her sister to tell her that she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King at West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue. The FBI initially considered her a runaway until a week after her disappearance, when an unidentified male used her cell phone to call her mother. He said: "I have Amanda. She's fine and will be coming home in a couple of days".

Berry was featured in a 2004 segment of Fox's America's Most Wanted (re-aired in 2005 and 2006), which linked her to Gina DeJesus, who by that point had also gone missing in Cleveland. Berry and DeJesus were profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Montel Williams Show, where self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne told Berry's mother Louwana Miller in 2004 that her daughter was dead and that she was "in water". This pronouncement devastated her mother, causing her to take down pictures and give away Berry's computer. However, Miller continued to search for Berry before dying from heart failure in early March 2006. Later that year, on December 25, 2006, Berry gave birth to a daughter. DNA evidence has confirmed that Castro was the father of the child.

Robert Wolford was a prison inmate who had lived in Tremont, and he claimed in July 2012 that he had information about the location of Berry's body. He led police to an empty lot on Cleveland's West Side, where they conducted a fruitless search. He was sentenced in January 2013 to 4½ years in prison for obstruction of justice, making a false report, and making a false alarm.

Gina DeJesus

Georgina "Gina" Lynn DeJesus (born February 13, 1990) went missing at age 14. She was last seen at a payphone around 3:00 PM on April 2, 2004, while on the way home from her middle school at West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue. At the time, she was friends with Ariel Castro's daughter, Arlene Castro. Shortly before Gina disappeared, she and Arlene had called Arlene's mother, Grimilda Figueroa, for permission to have a sleepover at DeJesus's house, but Figueroa replied that they could not and the two girls parted ways. Arlene was the last person to see DeJesus before her disappearance.

DeJesus was under the impression that Castro was picking her up to drop her off at home, and she trusted Castro because she was friends with his teenage daughter. No one witnessed her abduction, and an AMBER Alert was not issued, which angered her father. He said in 2006, "The Amber Alert should work for any missing child. ... Whether it's an abduction or a runaway, a child needs to be found. We need to change this law".

A year after her disappearance, the FBI released a composite sketch and description of a male suspect, described as "Latino, 25 to 35 years of age, 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m), 165 to 185 pounds (75 to 84 kg), with green eyes, a goatee, and possibly a pencil-thin beard". According to court records, Castro was 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), 179 pounds (81 kg), with brown eyes and a goatee.

DeJesus was featured in the America's Most Wanted segment which linked her to Berry.[68] The disappearances received regular media attention into 2012, while the families held public vigils. Castro attended at least two of these vigils, reportedly participated in a search party, and tried to get close to the DeJesus family. Castro's son Anthony was a journalism student in 2004, and he interviewed DeJesus's mother for an article about the disappearances in the Plain Press. Police kept the investigation open and offered a $25,000 reward for information.

According to Castro's uncle, his family knew the DeJesus family and had lived in the same West Cleveland neighborhood. Castro eventually claimed that he was not aware that DeJesus was a member of that family when he abducted her.

Captivity

Castro kidnapped Knight, took her upstairs, tied her hands and feet together, and pulled her up using her hands, feet, and neck. He left her there for three days without food. Prosecutors at Castro's sentencing wrote that diaries kept by the women "speak of forced sexual conduct, of being locked in a dark room, of anticipating the next session of abuse, of the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family, of being chained to a wall, of being held like a prisoner of war, of missing the lives they once enjoyed, of emotional abuse, of his threats to kill, of being treated like an animal, of continuous abuse, and of desiring freedom". The women were kept in locked upstairs bedrooms, where they were forced to use plastic toilets that were "emptied infrequently". They were fed one meal a day and allowed to shower twice a week at most.

Knight told police that Castro had impregnated her at least five times and had induced miscarriages each time through beatings, hitting her with dumbbells, punching her, and slamming her against walls. He also starved her. Knight's grandmother told reporters that she would require facial reconstruction surgery due to the beatings that she endured, and she lost hearing in one ear. At one point, she had a pet dog while in captivity, but Castro killed it by snapping its neck after it bit him while trying to protect Knight. DeJesus told law enforcement that she was raped but did not believe that she was ever impregnated.

On Christmas Day 2006, Castro allegedly ordered Knight to assist in the birth of Berry's child, which took place in a small inflatable swimming pool, and he threatened to kill her if the baby did not survive. At one point, the baby stopped breathing, but Knight was able to resuscitate her. Castro occasionally took her out of the house, including to visit his mother; she called him "daddy" and Castro's mother "grandmother". In 2013, he showed one of his adult daughters a picture of her and said that she was his girlfriend's daughter from a previous relationship. He had told others that she was his granddaughter. Berry taught her daughter how to read and write.

According to a statement from Cleveland Police, officers visited Castro's home only once following the kidnappings to discuss an unrelated incident. Castro did not appear to be home at the time and was later interviewed elsewhere. Neighbors claimed to have called the police about suspicious activity observed at the home, but police have said that they have no record of any such calls. Castro's son Anthony reported that there were certain areas of the house that were inaccessible due to being locked. He also mentioned an occasion three weeks before the women's escape when Castro asked him if Berry would ever be found. Anthony said that he told Castro that Berry was likely dead, to which Castro responded: "Really? You think so?"

NBC affiliate WKYC reported that Castro recalled each of the three abductions in great detail during his interrogation and indicated that they were unplanned crimes of opportunity. According to WKYC's sources, Castro did not have an "exit plan" and believed that he would eventually be caught. He referred to himself as "coldblooded" and a sex addict. Police found a suicide note in his home in which he discussed the abductions and wrote that his money and possessions should be given to the kidnapped women if he were caught.

Escape and rescue

On May 6, 2013, Berry was finally able to make contact with Castro's neighbors, leading to her escape with her 6-year-old daughter and the rescue of DeJesus and Knight by authorities. According to police, Castro left the house that day and Berry realized that he failed to lock the "big inside door", although the exterior storm door was bolted. She did not attempt to break through the outer door because she thought that Castro "was testing her", according to the police report. Previously, Castro had tested the women by leaving the house partially unlocked and exits unsecured. If they attempted to escape, he beat them. Instead, Berry screamed for help when she saw neighbors through the screen.

Neighbor Angel Cordero responded to the screaming but was unable to communicate with Berry because he spoke little English. Neighbor Charles Ramsey joined Cordero at the house's front door during the rescue. They kicked a hole through the bottom of the storm door and Berry crawled through, carrying her daughter. Ramsey said that Berry told him that she and her child were being kept inside the house against her will. Upon being freed, she went to the house of another Spanish-speaking neighbor and, with Ramsey's assistance, called 9-1-1, saying "Help me, I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for ten years. And I'm here. I'm free now!"

Responding police officers entered Castro's house. They walked through an upstairs hallway with guns drawn, announcing themselves as Cleveland Police. After peeking out from a slightly opened bedroom door, Knight entered the hallway and leaped into an officer's arms, repeatedly saying, "You saved me." Soon afterward, DeJesus entered the hallway from another room. Knight and DeJesus walked out of the home, and all three women, plus the child, were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center. Berry and DeJesus were released from the hospital the next day, and Knight was discharged four days later on May 10.

The rescue of the women also reignited hope for the family of Ashley Summers, another young woman who disappeared in the Cleveland area in early July 2007 after leaving her home after a dispute with her parents. Police initially believed that there could be other captives in the Seymour Avenue home, but found none. As of January 2021, Summers is still missing.

Arrest and legal proceedings

Castro was arrested on May 6, 2013. He was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape on May 8, which carry prison sentences of ten years to life in Ohio. Two of Castro's brothers were also initially taken into custody, but were released on May 9 after police announced that they had no involvement in the kidnappings.

Castro made his first court appearance at the Cleveland Municipal Court on May 9, where bail was set at $2 million per kidnapping charge, adding to a total of $8 million. Additional charges were reported to be pending, including aggravated murder (for intentional induction of miscarriages), attempted murder, assault, a charge for each instance of rape, and a kidnapping charge for each day each captive was held. On May 14, Castro's attorneys said he would plead "not guilty" to all charges if indicted for kidnapping and rape.

A Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment against Castro on June 7. It contained 329 counts, including two counts of aggravated murder (under different sections of the Ohio criminal code) for his role in the termination of one of the women's pregnancies. The indictments covered only the period from August 2002 to February 2007. The county prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, stated that the investigation was ongoing, and that any further findings would be presented to the grand jury. McGinty said that pursuing a death penalty specification would be considered following completion of indictment proceedings.

After entering a not guilty plea for Castro on June 12, one of his attorneys, Craig Weintraub, said that although some of the charges against Castro were indisputable, "it is our hope that we can continue to work toward a resolution to avoid having an unnecessary trial about aggravated murder and the death penalty". He noted, "We are very sensitive to the emotional strain and impact that a trial would have on the women, their families and this community". Castro was found competent to stand trial on July 3.

On July 12, a Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment for the remainder of the period after February 2007. It brought the total to 977 counts: 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 of rape, seven of gross sexual imposition, six of felonious assault, three of child endangerment, two of aggravated murder, and one of possession of criminal tools. On July 17, Castro pleaded not guilty to the expanded indictment.

Castro pleaded guilty on July 26 to 937 of the 977 charges against him, including charges of kidnapping, rape, and aggravated murder, as part of a plea bargain which called for consecutive sentences of life in prison plus 1,000 years, all without parole. Under the plea deal, Castro forfeited his right to appeal, and could not profit in any way due to his crimes. He also forfeited his assets, including his home, which prosecutors said would be demolished. Castro was told by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Russo, "You will not be getting out. Is that clear?" to which Castro responded, "I do understand that, your honor." Castro also made comments about his "addiction to pornography" and "sexual problem", but was cut off by Judge Russo, who said such issues could be discussed at the August 1 sentencing hearing. A law firm representing Berry, DeJesus, and Knight released a statement that the three women were "relieved by today's plea. They are satisfied by this resolution to the case, and are looking forward to having these legal proceedings draw to a final close in the near future".

At the sentencing hearing on August 1, Castro was sentenced to consecutive life terms in prison, plus 1,000 years, all without any possibility of parole. He was also fined $100,000. The court forfeited all of his property and assets to the Cuyahoga County government. Before his sentencing, Castro addressed the court for nearly 20 minutes, in which he said he was "a good person" and "not a monster", but that he was addicted to sex and pornography, and had "practiced the art of masturbation" from a young age. He claimed that he had never beaten or tortured the women, and insisted that "most" of the sex he had with them "was consensual". He shifted between apologizing and blaming the FBI for failing to catch him, as well as blaming his victims themselves for getting in a car with a stranger, along with insisting to the court that when he had sex with them he discovered they were not virgins. He would alternatively shift back into apologetic comments, saying: "I hope they can find in their hearts to forgive me because we had a lot of harmony going on in that home".

The sentencing judge also heard from Knight and family members of Berry and DeJesus. Knight told Castro: "You took eleven years of my life away. I spent eleven years in hell, now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all that has happened, but you will face hell for eternity. I will live on, you will die a little every day as you think of the eleven years of atrocities that you inflicted on us ... I can forgive you, but I will never forget."

Aftermath

Survivors

Knight, Berry, and DeJesus released a video statement on July 9, 2013, thanking the public for their support. An attorney for Berry and DeJesus said that the women "still have a strong desire for privacy" and did not wish to speak to the media about their ordeal. The Cleveland Courage Fund is a bank account set up to help the women in their transition to independent life which had collected approximately $1.05 million at the time of the video's release. Before Berry's disappearance, her grandfather had promised to give her a classic Chevrolet Monte Carlo, built in the year when she was born. He kept the car after her kidnapping in case she was still found alive. He still had it for her when she was released, although it was in need of restoration from having been unused. Several automotive shops offered to perform the restoration for free.

Knight discussed some of her ordeals in an interview with People Magazine one year after her release, as well as her life leading up to her abduction. Since her rescue, she legally changed her name to Lily Rose Lee, and began to get several tattoos as her way of coping with the healing process. She also revealed that her son was adopted by his foster parents while she was in captivity and that she wanted to see him, but she does not want to bring him into the ordeal which she has had to deal with, and planned to see him after he becomes an adult. She planned to open a restaurant and dreamed of getting married, which she did in 2016, and hopes to adopt children, as her years of abuse and torture have made it unlikely for her to ever be able to give birth again. She also planned to reunite with Berry and DeJesus in the future, but began focusing on getting her own life back on track.

Berry and DeJesus received honorary diplomas from John Marshall High School in 2015. In an interview with WKYC-TV, DeJesus says that she is currently volunteering for the Amber Alert committee, offering comfort to families of abducted children. She remains in touch with Berry and her family. In February 2017, Berry joined the staff of WJW (Fox 8) in Cleveland, where she hosts short recurring segments in which she reports missing person cases. She does this to help families reunite with missing family members. In April 2019, Berry reunited with Charles Ramsey, six years since her rescue, at an interview that was broadcast by Fox 8.

House demolition

As part of the plea bargain, the house where Castro had lived and held the women captive was demolished on August 7, 2013. Knight was present and handed out yellow balloons to spectators, which she said represented missing children. The balloons were released before DeJesus's aunt began the demolition with a swing of a crane. The house has been completely blurred out on the street view of Google Maps.

Castro's death

Castro was found hanging from a bed sheet in his detention cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, Ohio, on the evening of September 3, 2013, one month into his life sentence. He was 53 at the time of his death. Prison staff performed CPR on him before he was taken to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, where he was pronounced dead shortly after. The following day, Franklin County coroner Jan Gorniak announced that a preliminary autopsy had found the cause of Castro's death to be suicide by hanging.

On October 10, 2013, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction released a report which suggested that Castro may have died accidentally from auto-erotic asphyxiation rather than suicide. Gorniak rejected the possibility, standing by her ruling of suicide. The report also said that two prison guards had falsified logs documenting their observation of Castro hours before he was found dead. Castro was not on suicide watch at the time of his death but had been subjected to routine checks every 30 minutes due to his notoriety.

A consultant's report was released on December 3, and officially concluded that "all available evidence pointed to suicide, including a shrine-like arrangement of family pictures and a Bible in Castro's cell, an increasing tone of frustration in his prison journal and the reality of spending the rest of his life in prison while subject to constant harassment." The Ohio State Highway Patrol also reviewed the case and reached the same conclusion.

Media depictions

Books

Ramsey, Charles (2014). Dead Giveaway: The Rescue, Hamburgers, White Folks, and Instant Celebrity...What You Saw on TV Doesn't Begin to Tell the Story... Cleveland: Gray & Company. ISBN 978-1938441516.

Knight, Michelle; Burford, Michelle (2014). Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: a Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings. New York: Weinstein Books. ISBN 978-1602862579.

Knight, Michelle (2018). Life After Darkness: Finding Healing and Happiness After the Cleveland Kidnappings. Paris: Hachette Books. ISBN 978-1602865754.

Glatt, John (2015). The Lost Girls: The True Story of the Cleveland Abductions and the Incredible Rescue of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1250036360.

Berry, Amanda; DeJesus, Gina; Jordan, Mary; Sullivan, Kevin (2015). Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0698178953.

Films

Cleveland Abduction (television film). Lifetime. 2015.

Pamela Hupp

 

Pamela Marie Hupp (née Neumann; born October 10, 1958) is an American woman who in 2016 murdered Louis Gumpenberger in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri, a crime for which she is serving a life sentence. The O'Fallon Police Department believe Hupp murdered Gumpenberger as part of a plot to implicate Russ Faria in the 2011 murder of his wife, Betsy Faria, a crime for which he was convicted in 2013, in part due to testimony from Hupp, and subsequently exonerated in 2015 after evidence implicating Hupp as the perpetrator of the murder was permitted to be submitted. The murder of Betsy Faria has never been solved; the investigation was reopened in June 2019. Hupp has also been investigated in connection with the 2013 death of her mother, Shirley Neumann, which was originally judged to be an accident before being changed to "undetermined" in November 2017.

The Betsy Faria murder and the conviction of Russ Faria was extensively reported upon by the local St. Louis station Fox 2 KTVI, with reporter Chris Hayes attending every day of Russ Faria's first trial and producing more than half a dozen television reports before national media picked up on the story. The murder went on to be featured in five Dateline NBC episodes airing from 2014 to 2019, with NBC News Studios announcing plans for a scripted television series based on the case.

Early life

Born on October 10, 1958, Neumann grew up in Dellwood, Missouri, attending Riverview Gardens High School. Hupp held several jobs in the life insurance industry; on two occasions, she was fired for forging signatures. In 2001, Hupp and her husband began living in O'Fallon, Missouri, where she worked as an administrator for State Farm, as well as flipping houses as a side venture. By 2010, Hupp had stopped working and was claiming disability benefits for back, leg, and neck pain.

In 2011, Hupp and Betsy Faria reportedly collected money for a family impacted by cancer. Though never investigated by police, it was later found in a report by Fox 2 News that the family did not know about the collection. Fox 2 News reporter Chris Hayes took his findings in 2014 to Lincoln County authorities, but they did no further investigation. There was no evidence to suggest Betsy Faria knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends reporting Betsy saying she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying. Betsy's friend Kathleen Meyer told Fox 2 News, "this was going to be a legacy for her to leave, something like this behind in her memory."

Criminal accusations and convictions

Investigation into the murder of Betsy Faria

Death of Betsy Faria

Elizabeth "Betsy" Kay Faria (1969–2011) was a coworker of Pam Hupp at State Farm. She lived in Troy, Missouri, with her husband, Russell "Russ" Scott Faria, and two daughters from a previous relationship. In 2010, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In October 2011, she learned that the cancer had metastasized to her liver and was terminal.

On December 22, 2011, unbeknownst to her family, Betsy Faria changed the sole beneficiary of her $150,000 State Farm life insurance policy from her husband to Hupp. Hupp originally claimed that Betsy Faria had asked her to give the money to her daughters when they were older, before later claiming that Betsy Faria had wanted her to keep the money for herself. Betsy Faria's daughters launched a legal challenge against Hupp and her husband to attempt to claim the life insurance policy in 2014; it was dismissed in 2016, despite Hupp admitting that she had lied about what she intended to do with the life insurance proceeds Prosecutors speculated that her husband had been angered by her actions, giving him a motive for her murder. Russ Faria remained the beneficiary on a separate $100,000 policy.

On December 27, 2011, Betsy Faria underwent chemotherapy at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and then visited her mother's house, after which she was driven home by Hupp, making Hupp the last confirmed person to have seen her alive. Betsy Faria had originally been scheduled to be driven home by a family friend until Hupp had driven to her mother's house and insisted on driving her home. Hupp claimed that she had dropped Betsy Faria off at approximately 19:00. Russ Faria spent the evening at his friend Michael Corbin's home watching films until 21:00, then drove to an Arby's in Lake St. Louis before returning home. At 21:40 that evening, Russ Faria called 9-1-1 and reported that he had returned to his home to find his wife had committed suicide. Betsy Faria had been stabbed over 55 times with her arms almost entirely severed and the murder weapon, a serrated kitchen knife, left lodged in her neck. A second knife was found under a pillow on the couch she had been lying on. First responders arrived at 21:49 and concluded that Betsy Faria had been dead for at least one hour and likely longer.

Conviction of Russ Faria

Suspicion swiftly fell on Russ Faria, and he was arrested on the day following the murder. His initial assertion that Betsy Faria had killed herself was considered to be "ludicrous" by first responders who observed her body. A search of the house by police found a bloodstained pair of slippers in his closet. His volatile emotional state was regarded as "suspicious" by police. He ostensibly failed a polygraph test administered by police. When interviewed by police, Hupp claimed that Russ Faria had a "violent temper", that he was a heavy drinker, that he had threatened Betsy Faria, and that Betsy Faria had been considering leaving him. At the behest of Hupp, police searched Betsy Faria's laptop and found a document in which Betsy Faria purportedly expressed fears that her husband would murder her (it was later revealed that the document was written in Word 97, software that was not installed on the laptop, and was the only document on the laptop with "author unknown"). On January 4, 2012, the day after Betsy Faria's funeral, Russ Faria was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. As he was unable to meet the bail of $250,000, he was held in the Lincoln County jail until his trial began on November 18, 2013.

During Russ Faria's trial, his defense attorney, Joel Schwartz, argued that the testimonies of the four friends he had been visiting and evidence of him making purchases from multiple different stores over the course of the evening demonstrated that the timeline did not allow for him to commit the murder, particularly given there were no traces of blood on his body or clothes. The prosecuting attorney, Leah Askey, countered by arguing that Russ Faria's friends were providing a false alibi and that they had colluded with him to carry out the murder. The trial judge, Chris Mennemeyer, refused to allow Schwartz to present evidence implicating Hupp as an alternative suspect, including cellphone records showing that Hupp had been in the vicinity of the Faria house for up to 30 minutes after the time she had claimed to drop her off at or the fact of Hupp being named as sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy shortly before the murder. On November 21, 2013, Russ Faria was convicted on both counts. On December 22, 2013 he was sentenced to life plus 30 years imprisonment and sent to the Jefferson City Correctional Center. Although a central premise of the prosecution's case was that Russ Faria's four friends had been complicit in the murder, no charges were ever brought against them; the four men were not aware they had been accused in prosecuting attorney Leah Askey's closing arguments until Fox 2 KTVI reporter Chris Hayes informed them.

Acquittal of Russ Faria and reopening of investigation

In January 2014, Fox 2 KTVI partnered with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to explore the case. In February 2014, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an exposé into the case. The exposé revealed that the $150,000 received by Hupp had been kept by her rather than put into a trust for Betsy Faria's daughters and that Hupp had made many contradictory statements during her interviews with police, initially claiming she had not entered the Faria house after driving her home and then revising this account twice. TV/newspaper joint investigative reports featured an interview with the 9-1-1 operator who had taken Russ Faria's call, who stated that she believed his hysterical state upon making the call was genuine. The exposé also claimed that prosecuting attorney Leah Askey had been in a relationship with Mike Lang, the then-captain of investigations for the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and one of the investigating officers in the Betsy Faria murder case, who testified against Russ Faria in his trial. Two members of the jury in Russ Faria's trial approached the media to flag concerns that this information had been withheld.

Schwartz appealed the verdict. In February 2015, the Missouri Court of Appeals sent the case back to the 45th Circuit Court for a hearing on a retrial. After judge Chris Mennemeyer recused herself from the case, in June 2015, 22nd Circuit Court judge Steven Ohmer granted a motion by Schwartz for a new bench trial based on the evidence that had emerged, with Russ Faria released on bond pending the trial. During the retrial, Schwartz was allowed to introduce evidence implicating Hupp as the perpetrator. CSI agent Amy Buettner, who had examined the crime scene, stated that she believed the bloodied slippers found in Russ Faria's closet had not stepped in blood. During the trial, police officers disclosed that Hupp - who was not called to testify in the trial - had claimed in interviews conducted in June that she and Betsy Faria had been in a sexual relationship. Hupp also stated to police that she had "remembered" seeing Russ Faria and another man in a car parked in a side street outside the Faria home as she drove Betsy Faria home. On November 7, 2015, Faria's conviction was overturned; he had been imprisoned for slightly under four years.

In July 2016, Russ Faria lodged a civil rights lawsuit against Leah Askey and three officers of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office on the basis that they had "fabricated evidence, ignored exonerating evidence and failed to investigate the other obvious suspect." Meanwhile, Fox 2 KTVI began finding other problematic cases involving the judge in the Faria case, reporting on other questionable rulings in 2014 and again in 2016. In January 2017, Judge Chris Mennemeyer was suspended by the Supreme Court of Missouri for misconduct unrelated to the Faria case. In August 2018, both Mennemeyer and Leah Chaney (formerly Leah Askey) were voted out of office, with the handling of the murder case and subsequent trial cited as a major contributor. The decision not to investigate Pam Hupp as the potential perpetrator of the murder had been widely criticized; a former employee of the Lincoln County Prosecutor's Office stated in November 2016, "There were several of us that kept thinking, why are we not pursuing Pam Hupp? [...] They were just locked down on Russ." In September 2019, federal judge for the Eastern District of Missouri John Andrew Ross dismissed Chaney from the lawsuit on the basis of prosecutorial immunity.

In August 2016, the Lincoln County prosecuting attorney and Lincoln County Sheriff's Office issued a press release stating that they were cooperating with the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri in a review of the Betsy Faria murder case. In January 2018, attorneys acting for Russ Faria depositioned Hupp as part of Faria's lawsuit against Lincoln County, asking her 92 questions relating to the murder of Betsy Faria. Hupp declined to answer the questions. In response to the refusal, Faria's attorneys sought a court order to force a response. In June 2018, 11th Circuit Court judge Jon Cunningham ruled that prosecutors in the trial of Hupp for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger could present evidence relating to Faria's murder. In June 2019, following Hupp's entering of an Alford guilty plea to the murder of Gumpenberger, Lincoln County prosecuting attorney Mike Wood announced that he would be reopening the Betsy Faria murder investigation. In October 2019, Wood requested a case review by the Major Case Squad. In March 2020, Russ Faria received a settlement worth over $2 million. In August 2020, Rick Harrell - the new sheriff of Lincoln County, Missouri - stated that the Betsy Faria murder case had inspired him to run for sheriff.

Investigation into the death of Shirley Neumann

Shirley Mae Neumann (née Russell; 1935–2013) was the mother of Pam Hupp and three other children. She graduated from St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley and the University of Missouri–St. Louis, subsequently working as a teacher in Jennings and Ferguson, Missouri. Predeceased by her husband in 2000, by 2013 she was living alone in a third-floor apartment in the Lakeview Park Independent Senior Living Community in Fenton, Missouri and suffering from dementia and arthritis.

Neumann spent the night of October 29, 2013, with Hupp following a hospital visit. At approximately 17:00 on October 30, Hupp dropped her off at her apartment, instructing staff not to expect her for dinner that evening or breakfast the following day. A housekeeper found Neumann dead beneath the balcony of her home at 14:30 on October 31, 2013. The aluminum balcony railing was broken. Following a police investigation, assistant medical examiner Raj Nanduri concluded that she had died from blunt trauma to the chest resulting from an accidental fall. An autopsy found that she had .84 micrograms of the sedative Zolpidem in her blood; over eight times the expected concentration for someone having taken a normal dose.

In November 2013, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous note that suggested Hupp had murdered her mother to receive life insurance. Hupp was the last person known to have seen her mother alive. Hupp and her siblings each received approximately $120,000 of investments held by Neumann, as well as sharing a $10,000 life insurance payout. Earlier that year, prior to her mother's death, Hupp had been videotaped saying "my mom's worth half a million that I get when she dies [...] if I really wanted money, there was an easier way than trying to combat somebody that's physically stronger than me". The police reopened their investigation but after interviewing the housekeeper who had found Neumann's body and Neumann's son Michael - both of whom stated that Neumann was "unsteady" - again concluded that her death was accidental. They did not interview Hupp. In January 2014, Fox 2 KTVI journalist Chris Hayes interviewed Hupp about the death of her mother (and the murder of Betsy Faria).

In 2016, after Hupp was charged with the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, the St. Louis County Police Department police reopened the investigation. Neumann's son Michael reiterated that he believed his mother's death to have been accidental. Detective Matthew Levy attempted to get a subpoena for the location of Hupp's cellphone at the time of her mother's death but was unsuccessful. Levy also attempted to organize forensic tests on the balcony railing at the Missouri University of Science and Technology but the Lakeview Park Independent Senior Living Community refused to provide a railing for testing. Fox 2 journalists Chris Hayes and Dave Sharp worked with engineers to conduct tests on railings similar to those on the balcony.

In November 2017, Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County, changed the manner of Neumann's death from "accidental" to "undetermined". Case stated, "since [Neumann's] death, many things have happened that involved the daughter. And so all of that investigation, including the one in Lincoln County and the one in St. Charles, became pertinent information [...] I was no longer willing to say it could be an accident." The investigation into Neumann's death was not reopened.

In May 2018, St. Charles County Circuit Judge Jon Cunningham ruled that prosecutors in Hupp's trial for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger could not present evidence relating to Neumann's death.

Murder of Louis Gumpenberger

Louis Royse Gumpenberger (1983–2016) was a resident of St. Charles, Missouri. Following a car crash in 2005, he suffered from severe mental and physical impairments.

On August 16, 2016, Gumpenberger died after being shot five times by Hupp in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri. A note was found on his body bearing instructions to "kidnap Hupp, get Russ's money from Hupp at her bank, and kill Hupp" and to "Take Hupp back to house and get rid of her. Make it look like Russ' wife. Make sure knife sticking out of neck." in return for a reward of $10,000. As Hupp had called 9-1-1 shortly before shooting Gumpenberger, the audio of the incident was recorded.

Immediately after shooting Gumpenberger, Hupp voluntarily went to the headquarters of the O'Fallon Police Department. Her first words in the recorded police interview were, "Is this going to be filmed? Because I always appear on the news with Chris Hayes." She went on to say she blamed Hayes' reporting for attracting threatening people.

Hupp claimed that Gumpenberger, armed with a knife, had jumped out of a car (driven by another person) into her driveway, accosted her while she sat in her sport utility vehicle in her garage, and demanded she drive them to a bank to retrieve "Russ' money". Hupp claimed that she had knocked the knife out of Gumpenberger's hand and then fled into her house, shooting Gumpenberger in self-defense with a Ruger LCR she kept on her nightstand after he pursued her.

The St. Charles County prosecuting attorney and the O'Fallon chief of police theorized that Hupp had lured Gumpenberger to her home by presenting herself as "Cathy", a producer for the television program Dateline NBC, and offering to pay him to reenact a 9-1-1 call, then shot him in order to implicate Russ Faria in an attempt on her life (and "take heat off her"), planting the knife and the note on his body.[56] Several pieces of evidence were identified:

Cellphone records showed that Hupp had been in Gumpenberger's neighborhood less than one hour before the shooting, contradicting her claim that she had never met him before.

On August 10, 2016, a police report had been filed with the St. Charles County police stating that a woman matching Hupp's description had approached O'Fallon resident Carol Alford posing as a Dateline NBC producer and offering her $1,000 to reenact a 9-1-1 call; security camera footage showed that the woman in question had been driving Hupp's car. A second witness, Brent Charlton, informed police that Hupp had approached him with a similar proposition.

Police investigators found nine $100 bills in Gumpenberger's pocket; a tenth $100 bill found on Hupp's dresser had a sequential serial number to four of the nine bills.

Police investigators suggested that the knife had been purchased at the Dollar Tree in O'Fallon alongside several other items found in Hupp's house.

The knife found in Hupp's car was found wedged between the passenger seat and the central console. Knives in Hupp's kitchen were similarly stored wedged between the stove and counter.

A carpet swatch found by police appeared to have been positioned to protect a rug in Hupp's home from Gumpenberger's blood.

Police investigators were skeptical that Gumpenberger's severe physical and mental impairments following his accident would have allowed him to carry out the acts Hupp described him doing.

Conviction and imprisonment

On August 23, 2016, Hupp was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Upon being arrested, she asked to visit a bathroom, where she used a ballpoint pen to stab her neck and wrists in an apparent suicide attempt; St. Charles County assistant prosecutor Phil Groenweghe described the act as "consciousness of guilt". Bail for Hupp was set at $2 million. On December 16, 2016, a grand jury indicted Hupp for first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Hupp appeared in court on January 31, 2017, pleading not guilty to the charges. In March 2017, prosecutors stated that they would seek the death penalty due to the apparently arbitrary choice of Gumpenberger as the victim. In August 2018, Hupp's trial date was set for June 2019.

On June 19, 2019, Hupp entered an Alford guilty plea to the charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action, waiving her right to a jury trial. As a condition of a deal struck with prosecutors, Hupp did not face the death penalty. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole on August 12, 2019. She is serving her sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri. In a phonecall to her husband, Hupp claimed that she had pled guilty so her family would not have to "witness an ugly trial".

In October 2019, Gumpenberger's mother Margaret Burch filed a lawsuit for wrongful death, fraud, and misrepresentation against the incarcerated Hupp, seeking "a sum in excess of the jurisdictional limits of this court". In July 2020, Burch was awarded a wrongful death judgment of US$3 million. Burch's attorney Gary Burger subsequently filed to garnish Hupp's prison trust account, into which her $1,200 COVID-19 CARES Act relief stimulus was paid.

In September 2020, Hupp filed a motion to vacate her conviction, claiming she was pressured to take a plea. An initial hearing was scheduled for January 2021, but was postponed after it was revealed that Hupp's attorney was no longer a public defender.

In October 2020, Hupp's husband Mark Hupp filed for divorce, describing their marriage as "irretrievably broken".

Media coverage

The local St. Louis station Fox 2 KTVI broke the story, reporting continuously on the Betsy Faria murder case from December 28, 2011 to the present, generating more than 50 reports and investigations since December 2011. Fox 2 reporter Chris Hayes was the only reporter to attend Russ Faria's first trial in November 2013 and was the first to report questions about Pam Hupp that same month; upon his release from prison, Russ Faria thanked Hayes for his coverage.

The murder of Betsy Faria was the subject of five Dateline NBC episodes: "The House on Sumac Drive" (2014), "Game Night" (2015), "Return to Game Night" (2016), "Stranger Than Fiction" (2016), and "The Thing About Pam" (2019). Faria's murder has received more coverage from Dateline NBC than any other subject aside from O. J. Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey.

In July 2019, filmmaker Daniel Blake Smith announced that he was writing and producing a feature film based on the stories of Russ Faria and his defense attorney Joel Schwartz, "PROOF".

In September 2019, the murder of Louis Gumpenberger was the subject of the inaugural Dateline NBC true crime podcast. The podcast spent several weeks as one of the most popular Apple podcasts.

In October 2019, the Riverfront Times dubbed Hupp St Louis' "best local girl gone bad" of 2019, stating "few stories are quite so made-for-TV" and "the tale of Pam Hupp screams for serialization".

In May 2020, NBC News Studios and Blumhouse Television announced that they were co-producing a new scripted television series based on the murder of Betsy Faria.

The Disappearance of Brittanee Drexel

 

On the night of April 25, 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel of Chili, New York, left the Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she had been staying with friends on a spring break trip that she had taken without her mother's knowledge or permission. She walked to another hotel a short distance away, and from there, texted her boyfriend to say that she was going to see another friend at another hotel. She has not been seen since.

Police had no leads until 2016, when it was announced that a prison inmate had told them that Drexel had been abducted and killed. The man accused by the informant denied knowledge of any alleged crime. Based on that information, the FBI considers the case a homicide, although it has not identified any suspect.

Background

Brittanee Drexel was born in the Rochester, New York, area in 1991, to her mother Dawn and a man of Turkish descent. Shortly after Brittanee was born, Dawn married Chad Drexel, who adopted Brittanee at that time. After Chad's military service ended, the family lived in the suburb of Chili. Drexel took an early liking to soccer. Friends and family recall her as being particularly fast with the ball despite her small stature.

Drexel aspired to a career in nursing or cosmetology, or even modeling. She had been born with persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous in her right eye, which required several surgeries, and was blind in that eye. To cover the eye's tendency to wander, she wore contact lenses that gave her a distinctive appearance.

Dawn and Chad Drexel separated in 2008, a development that was not easy for Brittanee, adversely affecting her academic performance; Chad says that it also aggravated the depression from which she had long suffered. She remained with her mother but kept in close contact with Chad. In April 2009, she asked Dawn if she could go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, over spring break with her boyfriend and some girlfriends. Her mother refused, since she did not know the other teenagers and there were no accompanying adults on the trip; she also had a premonition that something bad would happen. This led to arguments between the two for several days until April 22, when Brittanee asked if she could go to a friend's house for a day or two to calm down, to which Dawn agreed. That day, Brittanee left for South Carolina with the other students without telling her mother.

Three days later, Brittanee called her mother once during the daytime after having arrived in Myrtle Beach, where the group stayed at the Bar Harbor Hotel, telling her mother that she was at the beach. Dawn was not alarmed, as she assumed that Brittanee had been referring to a beach along the Lake Ontario shoreline. A trip there seemed plausible to her since the temperature had reached a high of 83 °F (28 °C) in the area that day.

Disappearance

That night, around 8 p.m., Drexel left her friends at the Bar Harbor Hotel on the beachfront to walk 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south down South Ocean Boulevard to another hotel, the Blue Water Resort, to visit a longtime friend who was staying there. Security cameras at the Blue Water Resort showed her arriving, wearing a black-and-white tank top, flip-flops and shorts, carrying a beige purse and then leaving around 8:45.

Drexel continued texting her boyfriend, John Grieco, who had stayed in the Rochester area because of work commitments. At around 9:15 her texts suddenly stopped, and Grieco began calling her friends in Myrtle Beach to see if they knew where she was or what had happened. When those efforts failed, he called Brittanee's mother.

Dawn Drexel had not known that her daughter was in Myrtle Beach until hearing from Grieco. She called her estranged husband and then the Rochester police, hoping that they could establish communications with their counterparts in South Carolina. Repeated calls and texts to Brittanee's phone went unanswered.

Investigation

The Myrtle Beach police began looking for Drexel the following morning. They located the security camera footage from the Blue Water Resort and found the friends whom she had visited. The last person who had seen Drexel before she had left was identified as Peter Brozowitz, a 20-year-old nightclub promoter whom Brittanee had known from the Rochester area and who was also vacationing in Myrtle Beach. They had apparently met at a local nightclub the night before. After police interviewed Brozowitz and the men with whom he was sharing his hotel rooms, they said that "no one has been ruled in or out," adding that they did not have any persons of interest.

Police searched Drexel's hotel room, finding all of the clothes she had packed, but not her purse or cell phone. The phone's network pings were tracked on a path leading 50–60 miles (80–97 km) south of Myrtle Beach, in an area along U.S. Route 17 near the Georgetown–Charleston county line. The pings had stopped abruptly early on the morning of April 26. Areas near there and around Myrtle Beach where a body might have been disposed of were then searched for 11 days. In 2011, police searched an apartment in Georgetown County, but that effort did not yield any information that helped identify a suspect.

Dawn Drexel and Brozowitz had several confrontations on the television show Dr. Phil, during which Brozowitz often expressed frustration at the damage to his reputation. The Investigation Discovery show Disappeared devoted a segment to the case in October 2010.

Dawn, who had driven to Myrtle Beach the day after her daughter's disappearance, eventually relocated there permanently to be close to where Brittanee had last been seen and better monitor the progress of the investigation. In a 2014 newspaper article on the case's fifth anniversary, she expressed her theory that Brittanee had defied her to go to Myrtle Beach because she had been "promised something" of interest, such as a modeling job. Dawn believes that her daughter was trafficked, but the Myrtle Beach police did not believe this was a strong possibility as little or no trafficking takes place in their jurisdiction.

Taquan Brown allegations

In June 2016, the FBI, which had also been involved in the case, announced at a news conference that they believed that Drexel had been killed shortly after her disappearance. She had been abducted from Myrtle Beach to somewhere in the vicinity of Georgetown, near where the cell phone pings had ended, and killed there. The bureau put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the resolution of the case.

Two months later, The Post and Courier reported on the allegations in more detail, based on a transcript of a bond hearing for Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor, an inmate then serving time in state prison on an unrelated charge. FBI agent Gerrick Munoz testified that earlier that year, another South Carolina inmate, Taquan Brown, who had begun serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter, told them that in 2009, shortly after Drexel disappeared, he had gone to visit a "stash house" – a house where weapons and supplies are hidden – in McClellanville to give money to Shaun Taylor, Timothy's father.

As he walked through the house, Brown had told Munoz, he saw Timothy Taylor sexually abusing Drexel, with others present. He continued to the backyard, where he found Shaun Taylor and made his payment. As they talked, she ran from the house but was soon recaptured. Brown said he saw Timothy Taylor pistol-whip her, then take her back inside the house, where he heard two gunshots, which he assumed were the sounds of Drexel being killed. Brown claims to have seen a wrapped body being removed from the house, which was then dumped in one of many alligator ponds in the area.

Brown's statement to investigators, Munoz said, was partially corroborated by information received from another informant, unidentified but described as incarcerated at the Georgetown County jail at the time he had talked to authorities. According to the second inmate, Timothy Taylor had picked up Drexel in Myrtle Beach and taken her to McClellanville, where he showed her off to friends and tried to sell her to them for trafficking purposes. But when the case drew heavy media attention, Taylor decided to kill her to avoid arrest.

Federal charges

The bond hearing had been held after Timothy Taylor's arrest on a federal indictment for interfering in interstate commerce by threat or violence, stemming from a 2011 robbery of a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Pleasant in which he had been the getaway driver. Unusually, he had already been convicted for his involvement in the crime in state court and had been sentenced to probation, which he had finished by the time of the federal charges. Taylor's lawyer called the new charge a "squeeze" based on nothing more than the statement of two jailed informants; his mother called them "craziness", since she believed that her son and husband could never commit such a crime.

Winston Holliday, the federal prosecutor at the hearing, admitted to the judge that the suspicions in the Drexel case were among the government's reasons for having brought the new charge for the conduct South Carolina had already sentenced Timothy Taylor for. In response to questions of whether this amounted to double jeopardy, Holliday cited a federal law that states that the federal government may bring charges for a crime if it believes the state prosecution led to an unfair outcome. In this case, Holliday noted that the other two participants in the robbery had both been sentenced to prison, with the gunman, who shot the restaurant's cashier twice, serving a 25-year minimum term.

In March 2018, Myrtle Beach's WPDE-TV reported that nine months earlier, as part of his plea bargain negotiations, Timothy Taylor had agreed to take a lie detector test, which he failed. According to the federal government's sentencing memorandum, the only possible knowledge of the case to which he admitted involved having overheard part of an argument between two people over who had Drexel's cell phone, a discussion that he said had made him suspicious. But when Taylor was connected to the lie detector and asked whether he had seen Drexel after her disappearance, or if he knew he was involved, the examiner determined he was not being truthful. Under the plea agreement he would thus face at least 10 years in prison for his role in the 2011 robbery. After reviewing the results with Taylor's lawyer, the examiner attempted to continue but Timothy was too angry to do so.

The government's memo therefore recommended the minimum sentence. Before the sentencing hearing was scheduled, Taylor was found to have violated the terms of his bail and was held in Charleston County Jail. But in August, presiding federal district judge David C. Norton ordered Taylor's bail reinstated on the condition that he remain on house arrest until the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Gamble v. United States, a constitutional challenge to the dual sovereignty doctrine, which allows separate state and federal prosecutions for the same criminal offense. The development pleased activists who had been attempting to draw national attention to what they considered to be a "witch hunt".

In June 2019, the Supreme Court decided Gamble in favor of the government, upholding dual sovereignty and allowing the federal government to proceed with its case against Taylor. Six months later, Norton sentenced him to time served, 319 days, after a guilty plea forced by his similar disposition in state court.

2019 interview

In February 2019, Brown gave a telephone interview to Rochester's WHEC-TV from McCormick Correctional Institution, where he is currently incarcerated. He said he had actually seen Drexel four times after her disappearance. In addition to the first encounter, Brown said he had seen her again a month later, and it was at that time she was killed.

The first time Brown said he saw Drexel was April 27, two days after her disappearance. She was in the stash house, amid a group of 8 to 12 young men, and was being sexually assaulted. He also recalled that she had a visible black eye. He did not recognize her at the time but realized who she was a month later when publicity arose surrounding the case. His second encounter with Drexel came a few days later; this was the event that he had described to the FBI with the gunshots inside the building, and the body being carried out in a rug.

Brown told WHEC that he had seen Drexel again five days later. This time he had driven to Jacksonboro, 80 miles (130 km) south of McClellanville, to show a cousin the car that he had just bought. At the cousin's house, on a lightly traveled dirt road with few residences, he saw her.

Brown claimed to have seen Drexel for the last time in late May, once again on his cousin's property, while visiting with another friend. According to Brown, Drexel was near the rear property line, in a wooded area, with a group of men around her. As they walked by, a man whom Brown knew only as "Nate" shot her twice with a double-barreled shotgun. Brown and his friend left immediately, fearing being considered as accomplices if they had remained.

WHEC was able to corroborate some of Brown's account. His description of the McClellanville stash house matched the station's own reporting from a 2016 visit. His account of the second visit, when he believed Drexel had been shot, is consistent with his original story as told to the FBI. The station was unable to locate the friend whom Brown said had accompanied him on the last visit. Brown's cousin who owned the property where Drexel was purportedly killed is now dead. Another witness whom Brown had named could not be found.

Brown has filed suit against Munoz, Holliday and other federal officials whom he says had identified him publicly or played a role in doing so. By doing so, he alleges, they gave him a reputation as a "snitch", and put his life in danger. Brown says that Taylor has offered $15,000 to anyone who kills Brown and that he has already been assaulted.

The Disappearance of Kyron Horman

 

Kyron Richard Horman (born September 9, 2002) is an American boy who disappeared from Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, on June 4, 2010, after attending a science fair. Local and state police, along with the FBI, conducted an exhaustive search for Horman and launched a criminal investigation but have not uncovered any significant information regarding the child's whereabouts. His disappearance sparked the largest criminal investigation in Oregon history.

Background

Kyron Richard Horman was born September 9, 2002, in Portland, Oregon, to Desiree Young and Kaine Horman, an engineer for Intel. Desiree and Kaine Horman divorced eight months into her pregnancy with Kyron, with Desiree citing irreconcilable differences. The two had been granted shared custody of Kyron until 2004, but when Desiree was diagnosed with kidney failure that required extensive medical intervention, Kaine took over full custody; notwithstanding this fact, Desiree still remained an active part of Kyron's upbringing.

In 2007, Kaine married Terri Moulton (born March 14, 1970), a substitute teacher originally from Roseburg, Oregon. Kaine became romantically involved with Terri around 2001 when he and Desiree were in the midst of divorcing. Kaine and Terri married in 2007 while in Kauai. In December 2008, Terri gave birth to a daughter, Kiara. Meanwhile, Kyron was a student at Skyline Elementary School near Forest Park.

Disappearance

On June 4, 2010, Kyron was taken to school by his stepmother, Terri, who then stayed with him while he attended a science fair. Terri stated that she left the school at around 8:45 a.m. and that she last remembered seeing Kyron walking down the hall to his first class. However, he was never seen in his first class, a math class, and was instead marked as absent that day.

Terri's statements to the police indicate that, after leaving the school at 8:45 a.m., she ran errands at two different Fred Meyer grocery stores until about 10:10 a.m. Between then and 11:39 a.m., Terri stated that she was driving her daughter around town in an attempt to use the motion of the vehicle to soothe the toddler's earache. Terri said that she then went to a local gym and worked out until about 12:40 p.m. By 1:21 p.m., she had arrived home and posted photos of Kyron at the science fair on Facebook.

At 3:30 p.m., Terri and her husband, Kaine, walked with their daughter, Kiara, to the bus stop to meet Kyron. The bus driver told them that the boy had not boarded the bus after school, however, and to call the school to ask his whereabouts. Terri did so, only to be informed by the school secretary that, as far as anyone there knew, Kyron had not been at school since early that day and that he had accordingly been marked absent. Realizing then that the boy was missing, the secretary called 9-1-1.

Initial search efforts

The search efforts for Kyron were extensive and primarily focused on a 2-mile (3.2 km) radius around Skyline Elementary and on Sauvie Island, approximately 6 miles (9.7 km) away. Law enforcement did not disclose their reasons for searching the area where they did, which included a search of the Sauvie Island Bridge.

On June 9, 2010, the Horman family, who had initially refused to speak with the media, released a statement to the press:

Kyron's family would like to thank people for support and interest in finding their son. The outpouring of support and continued effort strengthens their hope. We need for folks to continue to assist us in our goal. Please search your properties -- cars, out buildings, sheds, etc. Also check with neighbors and friends who may be on vacation or may need in assistance in searching. There are a lot of resources here to help you search, so please don't stop. It is obviously a difficult time and they want to speak to the public so you can hear it from Kyron's family as they come together to share their message. Their objective is to keep the focus on Kyron and not about anything else.

On June 12, around 300 trained rescuers were on the ground searching wooded areas near Skyline Elementary. The search for Kyron, which spanned over ten days, was the largest in Oregon history, and included over 1,300 searchers from Oregon, Washington, and California. A reward posted for information leading to the discovery of Kyron, which was initially $25,000, expanded to $50,000 in late-July 2010.

Legal proceedings

In late June 2010, in the midst of the investigation into Kyron's disappearance, Kaine Horman was reportedly told by investigators that Terri had offered their landscaper, Rodolfo Sanchez, "a lot of money" to kill him. Sanchez testified in a deposition that Terri approached him to help kill her husband in January 2010, five months before Kyron's disappearance but when Terri's attorney Stephen Houze asked if Terri asked him to kill her husband, he said no. Investigators convinced Sanchez to confront Terri while wearing a wire, but they were unable to obtain any evidence and could not make an arrest. On June 28, Kaine filed for divorce, and obtained a restraining order against Terri. The divorce was granted and Terri was eventually granted supervised visitation with her daughter.

During this time, Terri failed two separate polygraph examinations regarding Kyron's disappearance. In August 2010, it was announced that law enforcement were searching for an individual allegedly seen by two witnesses sitting inside Terri's truck outside Skyline Elementary the day of Kyron's disappearance. Bruce McCain, a former sheriff for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, told CBS News: "The identity of that second person, if he or she existed, could be critical in determining what happened to Kyron after 9 a.m. on June 4."

Meanwhile, in July 2010, a Multnomah County grand jury subpoenaed several friends of Terri Horman, including DeDe Spicher, whom Young and Kaine Horman described as having "been in close communication with Terri" and "providing Terri with support and advice that is not in the best interests of our son." According to law enforcement, Spicher was "extremely cooperative" and allowed a search of her property and car, as well as enduring three hours' worth of questioning from detectives. On the day of Kyron's disappearance, Spicher abruptly left her work gardening for a homeowner at their residence on Germantown Road in Northwest Portland around 11:30 a.m., and returned around 90 minutes later. She also allegedly helped Terri purchase an untraceable cell phone. During this time, Spicher told journalists: "There's this horror that my friend is going through. If I thought for a second that she was capable of [foul play], I would not have been there. She would not have been my friend in the first place."

In early August 2010, both Young and Kaine were subpoenaed and testified during the grand jury, as well as the school principal of Skyline Elementary. In December 2010, it was reported by The Oregonian that the grand jury had yet to provide compelling evidence yielding a potential indictment. By November 29, 2010, search efforts in Kyron's case had cost an estimated $1.4 million according to county commissioners, and yielded 4,257 tips.

In May 2017, it was reported by KGW that a secret grand jury panel continued to hear evidence in Kyron's disappearance, and had convened on multiple occasions. During the report, Kyron's case was described as still "active and ongoing." Two months later, in July 2017, law enforcement conducted further searches along Skyline Boulevard, but the searches yielded no results. In June 2018, Horman's mother, Desiree, posted on the official Find Kyron Horman Facebook page: "Stay tuned, something big is coming, I promise you."

Lawsuit against Terri Horman

On June 1, 2012, Kyron's mother, Desiree Young, filed a civil lawsuit against Terri claiming that she was "responsible for the disappearance of Kyron." The lawsuit attempted to prove that Terri had kidnapped Kyron on the day he disappeared. Young sought $10 million in damages from Horman. On August 15, 2012, a federal court judge denied a motion by Terri to delay the lawsuit.

In early-October 2012, Spicher refused to answer 142 questions during a deposition regarding Young's lawsuit. Among these questions were ones regarding Spicher's whereabouts on June 4, 2010, and her contact with Terri that day. She also declined to identify a photo of Kyron, whether she had met him before or not, and whether she knew his father, Kaine.

During testimony provided by Kaine Horman in a separate hearing the same year, he stated that police had told him they "have more probable cause to think Terri Horman was involved in Kyron's disappearance than they did two years ago." On July 30, 2013, it was announced that Young had dropped the lawsuit against Terri so as not to interfere with the ongoing police investigation.

Depiction in media

Terri Horman appeared as a guest on Dr. Phil in 2016, during which she told Phil McGraw: "I was advised from the beginning by law enforcement, by my husband at the time, by attorneys in the beginning, not to say anything. I've always wanted to. I've asked multiple times to speak out and have not been allowed." She denied having any involvement in Kyron's disappearance, and also stated her belief that he was kidnapped, adding: "There was a man in a white pickup truck, Ford, parked on Highway 30 at the 7-Eleven, which is not near the school. He was acting very strangely and he was addressed by one of the employees because he had been pacing back and forth in front of the 7-Eleven for about an hour."

Boy Missing: The Search for Kyron Horman, written by Rebecca Morris, was released in May 2020. The book claims Kyron's regular bus driver, a classmate, and two of the classmate's family members witnessed Kyron walk through the school parking lot with Terri Horman and her infant daughter on June 4, 2010.

"Vanished from School," season 2, episode 2, of the television show Real Life Nightmare on Discovery ID explores the case. The episode aired November 15, 2020.

The Illuminati Part II on TPKs Stories

The Tragic Story of Cinnamon Brown

 

Cinnamon Brown made national news in the 1985 murder of her stepmother for which her father urged her to do. She was the subject of two books and a television miniseries. Free after serving serving seven years in a California Youth Authority facility.

At age 21, Brown was paroled after a 2-1 vote by the Youth Authority review board. She is now living in Orange County and working at a clerical job. She earned a high school diploma and an associate of arts degree at Ventura School in Camarillo.

Brown was convicted of shooting her stepmother, 23-year-old Linda Brown at the age of 14, taking full responsibility for the killing. Brown could have been committed to the Youth Authority until she reached 25.

After she was incarcerated, Brown learned her father, David Brown had collected $835,000 on Linda Brown's life insurance policy, living in luxury with his new wife, Patti Bailey, Brown's teen-age sister in Anaheim Hills.

In 1988, Brown finally told authorities that Linda Brown's shooting was masterminded by her father and that he was plotting it for months.

Brown told prosecutors that on the night of March 1985, her father woke her up and told her to shoot her stepmother. After David Brown gave Brown medication to make it look like a suicide, Brown survived because she vomited.

David Brown was finally convicted of his role in Linda Brown's murder in 1990; Patti Bailey was convicted for her part in the murder and committed to the Youth Authority.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. S. Robinson, who prosecuted David Brown, said Friday that “had Cinnamon Brown not decided . . . to come forward, we would still be wondering why David Brown is still out and flourishing. But for Cinnamon Brown’s courageous decision, David Brown would still be a leech on society.”

The case was the subject of two books, “A Killing in the Family” and “If You Really Loved Me,” and the miniseries “Love, Lies and Murder.”

In his dissent to Cinnamon Brown’s release, Youth Authority parole board member Victor Wisehart Jr. acknowledged that although she “has made great progress in her program, her reasons for the well-planned, coldblooded killing of her victim are not to be believed.”

Wisehart wrote that she “was able to conceal the truth and show no emotion or remorse for several years before she saw the light and pointed out her father as the person behind the crime. . . . (She) has not explored all the reasons she was able to twice shoot her victim.”

However, for Robinson, who supported an earlier parole bid by Cinnamon Brown, “the real story is the courage of this kid who was abandoned by her family; a 14-year-old-kid who was completely brainwashed for a number of years by her father; who herself has been the victim of terrible crimes and has now paid her debt to society, maybe even more of a debt than she should have. Yet her battle will be a very, very tough one, because her case is of such a high profile, a girl who has been earmarked as killer for the rest of her life,” he said.

The Murder of Sydney Loofe

 

After a first date with a woman named “Audrey” after meeting on a social media site, Sydney Loofe text her friend, “just got done chilling with a super cute girl.”

The 24-year-old Menards clerk was wary after past relationships matched via Tinder with women with requests that involved men, “I hope she doesn't have a boyfriend.” Loofe texted her friend.

But Audrey, later known as Bailey Boswell, did have one. The trial testimony of the boyfriend, Aubrey Trail, revealed the first date led to a second were Loofe was accidentally choked to death in a sex game involving Boswell, Trail and Loofe.

Texts from Boswell's cellphone became part of the trial, as Boswell, 26, was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and improper disposal of human remains in the death and dismemberment of Loofe, who'd gone missing after a November 15, 2017 date.

Trail, 53-year-old ex-convict, was found guilty of first-degree in his trial in Wilber. The Tennessee native as yet to know if he will be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Boswell, a Leon, Iowa native, faces the death penalty if convicted of the murder of Loofe. Boswell's trial was moved to Lexington, Nebraska due to publicity of Trail's trial.

Pleading not guilty, Boswell's attorneys have made suggestions that Trail was “controlling” her actions.

Prosecutors say that Boswell “got off sexually” of killing and torture, and say that she and Trail have conspired for months to lure females to their Wilber apartment to murder them.

Courtroom testimony focused on the flight of Trail and Boswell who disappeared after Loofe's remains were found scattered on country roads between December 4 & 5, 2017.

Trail and Boswell's movements were tracked via their cellphones and documented in video surveillance tape, when they were staying at Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs, motels in Grand Island and Kearney, and motels in Spencer, Iowa and Ames, Iowa, before being apprehended in Branson, Missouri on November 30, 2017.

A cellphone video by Boswell just before being apprehended—which was never posted on Facebook unlike others by Trail and Boswell—showed Boswell complaining that she had nothing to do with Loofe's disappearance, “they were still on my back.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything at all. I really do hope that they find her,” Boswell said on the video.

Testimony by a Lincoln police investigator that they were looking into Loofe's slaying and dismemberment and inquiry of “other bodies.”

Investigator Chris Milisits testified that after Loofe's disappearance, there was a picture of a cornfield posted on Trail's Facebook page, and investigators in Saline County, were probing suspicions of “other bodies” in the area.

Unable to discern the field's location, according to Milisits, several missing persons cases were reviewed, but no other bodies have been found.

Jurors saw surveillance from a Lincoln Home Depot store showed Boswell and Trail buying several items before Boswell's final date with Loofe—items that included a hacksaw, utility knife and tinsnips, but were never recovered.