Fatal Vision Murders: Jeffrey R. MacDonald on TPKs Stories

 https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Fatal-Vision-Murders-Jeffrey-R--MacDonald-Part-I-e1j91j1

 

 https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/Fatal-VisionJustice-Jeffrey-MacDonald-Part-II-e1jhgcv

 

Informant Barry Seal

 

Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 – February 19, 1986) was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel.

Early life

Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Mary Lou (née Delcambre) and Benjamin Curtis Seal, a candy wholesaler. Seal began to fly as a teenager, earning a student pilot certificate at 16 and a private pilot's certificate at 17. His flight instructor described him as a naturally gifted pilot.

In 1962, Seal enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard for six years: six months of active duty, followed by five and a half years of inactive duty. Seal's active duty began in July 1962. He was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group and graduated from the United States Army Airborne School selection and training. His non-active duty was served in the 245th Engineer Battalion, where his MOS was radio telephone operator.

Early career

In 1964, Seal joined TWA as a flight engineer and was soon promoted to the first officer, then captain, flying a Boeing 707 on a regular Western Europe route. He was one of the youngest 707 command pilots in the TWA fleet. Seal's career with TWA ended in July 1972, when he was arrested for involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle a shipment of plastic explosives to Mexico using a DC-4. The case was eventually dismissed in 1974 for prosecutorial misconduct, but in the meantime TWA fired Seal who had falsely taken medical leave to participate in the scheme.

Drug smuggling career

Seal admitted that he started smuggling small amounts of marijuana by air in early 1976. By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling.

Ironically, Seal's operations received an important boost when he was arrested and jailed in Honduras on the return leg of a drug-smuggling trip to Ecuador. Seal made important connections while in prison in Honduras, including Emile Camp, a fellow Louisiana pilot and smuggler who became one of Seal's closest associates, and Ellis McKenzie, a local Honduran smuggler. Also, after his release from prison Seal met William Roger Reaves on the flight back to the U.S. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medellín cartel.

To expand his smuggling capacity, Seal also hired William Bottoms, his ex-brother-in-law, as a pilot. From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations.

In 1981, Seal began smuggling cocaine for the Medellín Cartel. At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States.

Seal's smuggling method was to use low-flying planes and airdrop drug packages in remote areas of Louisiana. They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida. By 1982, Seal was using over a dozen aircraft in his smuggling operation. The number of planes and the frequency of flights soon attracted the attention of Louisiana State Police and Federal investigators.

To avoid this unwanted attention, Seal moved his aircraft to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas, where he did maintenance and modifications to improve the planes' carrying capacity and avionics. Seal's activities in Mena later became the subject of rumor and controversy, but according to Seal's biographer, former FBI agent Del Hahn, Seal did not use Mena as a drug transshipment point.

Florida indictments and convictions

By 1981, DEA agents in Florida were aware of Seal's smuggling activities. In April 1981, a DEA informant introduced Seal to an undercover DEA agent. After several months of contacts, the agent negotiated a deal with Seal to smuggle 1,200 pounds of methaqualone tablets into the United States (the tablets were counterfeits, made of chalk). The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted. Two indictments were returned against Seal in March 1983. The first indictment charged Seal alone with two counts of conspiracy to distribute methaqualone. The second indictment charged Seal and three others with multiple counts of possession and distribution of methaqualone, phenobarbital, and meperidine.

Seal surrendered to federal authorities at the end of April 1983 and attempted to make a deal, first with the Florida task force, then with the Baton Rouge task force. Both rejected any deals, even though Seal told them a little about his involvement with the Ochoa family. Without a deal, Seal was tried in February 1984 and after a month-long trial was convicted on all the counts in the first indictment.

Seal becomes an informant

Facing a heavy sentence, and having been rejected by regional drug task forces in both Florida and Louisiana, Seal decided to try contacting the Vice President's Drug Task Force, a special program in the office of then-Vice President George Bush. The office referred Seal to DEA headquarters, which assigned DEA agent Ernst Jacobsen to debrief Seal and evaluate his potential as an informant. Jacobsen was impressed with Seal's connections, especially the ones with the Ochoa family, and on March 28, Seal signed a letter agreeing to serve as a DEA informant. Seal then pleaded guilty to the second indictment in Florida and was released with his sentence to depend on his performance as an informant.

The Florida Task Force plan called for Seal to set up a cocaine purchase with the Ochoas and other cartel members, providing the basis for indictments in the U.S. Seal had previously dealt with the cartel through another associate so that they were unaware of his real name. Through his cartel contacts in Miami, Seal arranged a meeting using the name Ellis McKenzie (the real name of another Seal associate). He flew down to Medellín for the meeting on April 8, accompanied by a Miami based cartel pilot who was unaware of Seal's role as an informant.

Undercover work in Nicaragua

Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. The Colombian government had recently conducted a major raid on the cartel's manufacturing facilities at a remote jungle location called Tranquilandia, and they told Seal that they were making arrangements to set up shipping and production facilities in Nicaragua, where they had struck a deal with the Sandinista government.

These arrangements were not yet complete, so Seal's first shipment was to be a direct flight to the U.S. Originally planned for mid-April, the flight did not take place until the end of May. When it did, the overloaded plane crashed at the Colombia airfield on takeoff. The cartel provided a new plane, but it lacked the capacity for a direct flight to the U.S., so the cartel arranged a stopover in Nicaragua earlier than one planned at an airfield in Los Brasiles near Managua. After refueling, Seal left Los Brasiles flying without lights, and when he came close to Managua, he was fired on by Nicaraguan military units. The plane was hit and Seal had to make an emergency landing at Sandino International Airport in Managua. The drugs were unloaded by the military and Seal and his co-pilot were taken to detention in downtown Managua, where they were released to the cartel's Nicaraguan contact, Federico Vaughan. Vaughan was an aide to Tomas Borge, Nicaraguan Minister of the Interior.

In Managua, Seal met again with Pablo Escobar, who was setting up a cocaine lab for production. After a discussion about how to move the increased flow of cocaine, Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane.

The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to install hidden cameras inside the plane.

Seal returned to the Los Brasiles airfield in Nicaragua on June 25. The pickup went as planned this time, and the cameras successfully photographed Seal and several Nicaraguan soldiers loading cocaine, aided by Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha (another important cartel member), and Federico Vaughan. On his return to the U.S., Seal landed at Homestead Air Force Base and the drugs were transferred into a Winnebago camper, which Seal turned over to his Colombian contact.

The drugs could not be distributed, and the immediate arrest of those handling the vehicle would suggest to the Colombians that Seal had betrayed them, so DEA agents staged an accident with the camper, allowing the driver to escape. Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel.

Seal made one more trip to Nicaragua on July 7, bringing money to Escobar to pay the Nicaraguans for landing rights. Another shipment was also planned at this time, but under instructions from the DEA, Seal told Escobar his landing site was under DEA surveillance and unsafe for transport to avoid the need to seize a second load. The DEA felt this would be impossible to explain away, and Seal returned to the U.S. without cargo.

The DEA plan was to keep Seal working with the cartel on other parts of the supply chain, such as moving cocaine base into Nicaragua from Colombia and inspecting smuggling airfields in Mexico and the U.S. The ultimate hope was to arrest the cartel leaders in a jurisdiction where it would be easy to extract them.

However, the Nicaragua undercover operation came to an end soon after Seal's return from his second trip when it was reported in the press. A leak regarding the operation came to light before Seal's second trip. On June 29, General Paul F. Gorman, US Military Commander Southern Command, made a speech stating the US had evidence that elements of the Nicaraguan government were involved in drug smuggling, though Gorman did not mention Seal or the undercover flights. It is not clear whether Seal and his crew were informed of this before they returned to Nicaragua.

A more detailed account of American efforts in Nicaragua appeared on July 17 in an article by reporter Edmond Jacoby, published on the front page of the Washington Times.[34] Although not a complete account, it gave enough information to spell an end to Seal's work with the cartel, and to the DEA's hopes of capturing the cartel leaders outside of Colombia.

Undercover work in the U.S.

Following the exposure of the Nicaraguan investigation, the DEA had to move quickly to arrest the cartel distributors in Miami. The DEA had been informed before the publication of the Jacoby article, so they were still able to have Seal set up a meeting with the chief cartel supervisor in Miami, Carlos Bustamonte, and arrested him on July 17, along with other cartel employees.

The evidence acquired from the arrest, plus the evidence gathered by Seal, provided the basis for the first drug trafficking indictment in the U.S. against Escobar and the Ochoas.

Despite the exposure, Seal was able to put together a second major undercover operation for the DEA later that year. This operation involved a long, complicated cocaine shipment from Bolivia, refueling in Colombia, refueling again in Texas, and delivering the cocaine in Las Vegas. The DEA refused to let Seal leave the country due to the danger he was in, so Seal arranged for his ex-brother-in-law William Bottoms to make the flight. The flight, in January 1985, was successful and led to arrests and convictions.

In February, Seal also played a central role in an undercover operation against Norman Saunders, chief minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a former British colony south of the Bahamas. Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted.

Continuing legal problems

While Seal had come to an agreement with the DEA and the Florida drug task force in March 1984, he was still under active investigation by state and federal authorities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Little Rock, Arkansas. In October 1984, a grand jury in Louisiana was convened and began interviewing witnesses against Seal. Seal attempted to push back against the investigation by appearing in a television news series broadcast by WBRZ in Baton Rouge in November 1984. The series, titled "Uncle Sam Wants You", ran on five consecutive evenings. It included an interview where Seal denied he was a smuggler and depicted Seal as harassed by the government. The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed.

Soon after the broadcast, the heads of the Florida and Louisiana task forces met to work out an agreement that would allow Seal to continue working with the Florida task force and testify as a witness at trial. They agreed to a sentence for Seal's Louisiana activities no greater than the sentence he received for his Florida smuggling, with both sentences to run concurrently.

Contract on Seal

Seal was originally introduced to the Medellín cartel members as a pilot named Ellis McKenzie. Although the newspaper report and the arrest of their Miami distributors confirmed that their pilot was DEA, it was not until the cartel members received a copy of Seal's television documentary that they learned McKenzie was Seal. They put out a contract to kidnap or murder Seal.

Max Mermelstein, a high-level cartel distributor in Miami, later testified in court that he was shown the documentary a few days after it was broadcast and was told that the cartel wanted Seal either captured or killed: the price was $500,000 if Seal was killed, and $1,000,000 if he was captured alive. Mermelstein testified that he accepted the contract, believing that a refusal would mean death. He received a phone call from Fabio Ochoa and Escobar, who both thanked him for his help, and was given $100,000 for any costs he incurred. Before Mermelstein had located Seal, however, he was arrested by a federal task force in June 1985. He soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death.

Seal in court

Seal was taken into federal custody in June 1985 and spent several months testifying in court. He was the primary witness in three trials: the trial of Saunders and the other Turks and Caicos officials in July; the trial of the cartel distributors in Miami in August; the trial of the cartel distributors who had arranged the shipment of cocaine from Bolivia to Las Vegas, also in August. All three trials resulted in convictions for all defendants. Seal also made a public appearance before the President's Commission on Organized Crime, recounting his experiences as a drug smuggler.

Sentencing in Florida

Following his testimony in the Miami trials, Seal appeared in Florida court again over his second indictment in the Big Screamer operation. Although Seal had pleaded guilty, with the support of his DEA supervisors, he was sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation. Following his testimony in Las Vegas, Seal spent another month in a witness protection center. In October 1985 he returned to court over the first indictment in Big Screamer, for which he had originally been sentenced to ten years. After listening to summaries of Seal's successful work for the DEA, Judge Norman Roettger sentenced Seal to time served (a little over three months in witness protection) and three years probation.

Sentencing in Louisiana

When Seal received only time served and probation, Louisiana state and federal drug investigators were faced with a dilemma. They had anticipated Seal would serve substantial time in Florida and were now bound by the agreement Florida and Louisiana drug task forces had made in December 1984. The Florida sentence meant no jail time for Seal in Louisiana, yet Seal was pleading guilty to buying 200 kilograms of cocaine, already more serious than the Florida charges. Also, before the agreement was reached, the Louisiana task force investigation had been looking into Seal's involvement in smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine.

At Seal's sentencing hearing in January 1986, Judge Frank Polozola acknowledged that he was bound by the agreement, but informed Seal and his lawyer of his dissatisfaction with Seal's failure to receive jail time in Florida, forcing Polozola to sentence Seal to probation on much more serious charges in Louisiana. He warned Seal that he intended to set strict probation provisions and that if Seal violated these, the plea bargain could be revoked and Seal re-sentenced.

The probation conditions prohibited Seal from leaving Baton Rouge without written permission from Judge Polozola, who banned Seal from employing armed security personnel, and ordered him to spend every night at a halfway house for the first six months of his probation. Seal was assigned to the Salvation Army's Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge.

Assassination

On the evening of February 19, 1986, Seal was shot to death in front of the Salvation Army Center, three weeks into his probation. When Seal pulled into the center's lot and parked, a man got out of a car behind the center's donation drop boxes and opened fire with a suppressed MAC-10 sub-machine gun. Seal was hit six times and died almost instantly.

Six Colombians were quickly arrested in connection with the murder. Three of them, Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz, Miguel Vélez, and Bernardo Antonio Vásquez, were indicted on state charges for capital murder. A fourth man was indicted separately on lesser charges, and evidence of direct involvement was insufficient for two, who were released and deported.

In addition to the state charges against the killers, federal charges were filed against Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and a third cartel member, Rafael Cardona, for conspiring to violate Seal's civil rights by murdering him.

The murder trial

Widespread publicity and the general public outcry caused a delay of several months before Seal's murder trial began. It proved impossible to impanel sufficient jurors in Baton Rouge, so the venue was moved to Lake Charles. The trial began in April 1987. The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera.

Mermelstein, who had told the DEA of the murder contract after his arrest in 1985, testified that Ochoa, Escobar, and Cardona had asked him to take the contract and provided him with money and weapons to do the job. He had seen Cardona test-fire the murder weapon in Mermelstein's garage and bullets that matched the murder weapon were later extracted from the garage wall by FBI forensics. Mermelstein also knew the defendant Vélez. He testified that Vélez was present when he was given the contract and that Vélez later asked Mermelstein to turn the contract over to him.

Uribe-Munera was a Colombian drug smuggler for the cartel. He testified that in January 1986, he was ordered by Jorge Ochoa to kill Seal. When he learned that he would probably be killed afterward, he refused. He was then shot five times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. He was brought to the U.S. where he agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

There was also extensive eyewitness and forensic evidence against Quintero-Cruz, Vélez, and Vásquez. A witness identified Vélez as the driver of the vehicle in the halfway house parking lot. Another eyewitness saw Quintero-Cruz outside the car, handing the MAC-10 to the car driver through the window after the murder. All three men's fingerprints were found in the vehicle. Vasquez was identified as the purchaser of the halfway house vehicle by the car agency salesman and paid for hotel rooms and rental cars using his name. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.

Personal life

Seal was married three times. His first marriage, to Barbara Dodson, lasted from 1963 to 1971. The second marriage, to Lynn Ross, lasted from 1971 to 1972. In 1973, he married Deborah DuBois. The marriage ended with his death in 1986. Seal had six children; two from his first wife, one from a relationship he had in between marriages, and three more with Deborah.

Controversies

Seal's career as a smuggler and an informant, and his later violent death, has led to several controversies.

Exposure of the Nicaraguan undercover operation

In 1988, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing that looked into how Seal's 1984 trip to Nicaragua was leaked to the press. Questioned about the identity of the source, DEA agent Ernst Jacobson replied, "I heard that the leak came from an aide in the White House". He stated that Iran–Contra figure Oliver North had attended two meetings about the sting operation and had the motivation to release the information. UPI reported: "By linking the Sandinistas with drug traffic ... aid to the rebels accused of human rights violations might seem more palatable".

Subcommittee chairman William J. Hughes strongly suggested that North was the source of the leak, but Representative Bill McCollum said, "...we don't know who leaked this. No one has been able to tell us". Citing testimony of DEA Administrator John C. Lawn, the report of the Kerry Committee released in December 1988 pinned the leak on North stating he "decided to play politics with the issue". In an interview with Frontline, North said he was told by his superiors on the National Security Council to brief Senator Paula Hawkins about the operation, but he denied leaking the report. Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. Jacoby later denied that North was the source of his story and attributed it to a deceased staff member for Representative Dan Daniel.

Criticism of U.S. failure to protect Seal

Louisiana Attorney General William Guste wrote to United States Attorney General Edwin Meese criticizing the government's failure to protect Seal as a witness. At Guste's request, Meese launched an investigation to determine whether or not attorneys in Louisiana, Miami, and Washington had mishandled the case, and to determine whether or not Seal should have been forced into protective custody. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.

Media depictions

Films

Seal is portrayed by Dennis Hopper in Double-crossed (1991), a docudrama made for HBO.

Seal is portrayed by Michael Paré in the American crime drama film The Infiltrator (2016), in two brief, historically inaccurate scenes that exercise dramatic license to depict the film's title character, Robert Mazur, as a passenger in a car being driven by Seal who is killed in a motorcycle drive-by shooting.

Seal is portrayed by Tom Cruise in the crime drama-comedy film American Made (2017), loosely based on Seal's life, produced by Imagine Entertainment. Little of the film is historically accurate; most of the plot, such as the murder of Seal's brother-in-law, was invented for purposes of the film.

Television

Seal is portrayed by the actor Sebastián Sánchez in Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord as the character of Harry Beal.

Seal is portrayed by theater director Thaddeus Phillips under his real name also of his nickname Ellis McKenzie in the 2013 TV series Alias El Mexicano.

Seal is portrayed by Dylan Bruno in Season 1, Episode 4, of the Netflix series Narcos (2015).

 

2010 Austin Suicide Attack

 

The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota light aircraft into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager Vernon Hunter. Thirteen others were injured, two severely. The four-story office building housed an IRS field office occupying the top three floors, along with a couple of private businesses on the first floor. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note to his website, expressing his disillusionment with corporations and government agencies such as the IRS. Stack is also suspected of having set fire that morning to his two-story North Austin house, which was mostly destroyed.

In the aftermath, there was increased debate over the policies of the IRS, and different forms of protest. In response to the attack, the IRS spent more than $38.6 million, with $6.4 million spent to recover and resume work at the building, and over $32 million spent to increase security at other IRS sites in the U.S. However, the spending on security changes was questioned as being ineffective, as none of it would actually prevent airplanes from crashing into the buildings. The building was repaired by December 2011.

Joseph Stack

Andrew Joseph Stack III (August 31, 1956 – February 18, 2010) lived in the Scofield Farms neighborhood in North Austin, and worked as an embedded software consultant. He grew up in Pennsylvania and had two brothers and two sisters. Stack was orphaned at age four, and spent some time at a Catholic orphanage. He graduated from the Milton Hershey School in 1974 and studied engineering at Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975 to 1977, but did not graduate.[ His first marriage, to Ginger Stack, which ended in divorce, produced a daughter, Samantha Bell. In 2007, Stack married Sheryl Housh, who had a daughter from a previous marriage.

In 1985, Stack, along with his first wife, incorporated Prowess Engineering. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return. In 1998, the Stacks divorced, and a year later his wife filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing Federal tax liabilities totaling nearly $126,000. In 1995, Stack started Software Systems Service Corp, which was suspended in 2004 for non-payment of state taxes.

Stack obtained a pilot's certificate in 1994 and owned a Velocity Elite XL-RG plane, in addition to the Piper Dakota (aircraft registration N2889D) he flew into the Echelon building. He had been using the Georgetown Municipal Airport for four and a half years and paid $236.25 a month to rent a hangar. There has been speculation that Stack replaced seats on his aircraft with extra drums of fuel prior to the collision.

Stack's accountant confirmed that at the time of the incident, he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service for failure to report income.

Events

About an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000 house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin. (The house was mostly destroyed in the fire.) He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles to the north. He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and took off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time. He indicated to the control tower his flight would be "going southbound, sir." After taking off, his last words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."

About ten minutes later, his plane descended and collided at full speed with Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion. The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).

Suicide note

On the morning of the crash, Stack posted a suicide note on his website, embeddedart.com. The HTML source code of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST). The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).

In the note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions, politicians, the conglomerate companies of General Motors, Enron and Arthur Andersen, unions, drug and health care insurance companies, and the Catholic Church. He then describes his life as an engineer, including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks, airline bailouts that benefited only the airlines but not the suffering engineers, and how a CPA he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him.

The note also mentions Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization. While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.

The note ended with:

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

— Joe Stack (1956–2010), 02/18/2010

Aftermath

Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Revenue Officer Group Manager for the IRS, was killed in the incident along with Joseph Stack. Thirteen people were reported as injured, two of them critically. Debris from the crash reportedly struck a car being driven on the southbound access road of Route 183 in front of the building, shattering the windshield. Another driver on the southbound access road of Route 183 had his windows and sunroof shattered during the impact, and had debris fall inside his car, yet escaped uninjured. Robin DeHaven, a glass worker and former combat engineer for the United States Army, saw the collision while commuting to a customer's house for his job, and used the extension ladder on his truck to rescue six people from the 2nd floor of the building. By coincidence, the Travis County Hazardous Materials Team — an inter-agency group of firefighters from outside the City of Austin — had just assembled for training across the freeway from the targeted building, observed the low and fast flight of Stack's plane, and heard the blast impact. They immediately responded, attacking the fire and initiating search-and-rescue. Several City of Austin fire engines for the area of the Echelon building were already deployed at the fire at Stack's home at the time of the impact.

Georgetown Municipal Airport was temporarily evacuated while a bomb disposal team searched Stack's abandoned vehicle.

An inspection into the Echelon building's structural integrity was concluded six days after the incident and a preliminary decision was made to repair the building rather than demolish it. Those repairs were substantially complete by December 2011.

Economic costs to IRS

The IRS spent more than $38.6 million because of the suicide attack.

For the immediate response, document recovery, and to resume operations at the center, the IRS spent USD $6,421,942. Of this amount, USD $3,258,213 was spent on document recovery.

Also, the IRS spent a total of USD $32.3 million to improve IRS building security across the United States, with USD $30.5 million for more security guards. The IRS said, because of the 2010 Austin terrorist attack and the emergency plans in place, there was no direct budgetary impact on the IRS's ability to provide taxpayer services or enforce tax laws.

An additional $1,236,634 was spent on a security risk assessment to be performed by the private Georgia based logistical and engineering services firm Unified Consultants Group, Inc. A July 25, 2012 audit, released shortly after the incident cost analysis, performed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, determined that the contract was mismanaged by the IRS. The security-review process was determined to have had multiple problems, and many of the sites were not inspected by the contractor. The audit placed the blame on the IRS agency's individuals responsible for defining, negotiating, and administering the contract, with potentially 100% of funds being used inefficiently and the security improvements of IRS sites may have been ineffective.

Reaction

The United States Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying that the incident did not appear to be linked to organized international terrorist groups. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reaffirmed what Homeland Security said, and that President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident. The President expressed his concern and commended the courageous actions of the first responders. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched two F-16 fighter aircraft from Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, to conduct an air patrol in response to the crash. That action was reported as standard operating procedure in this situation.

The company hosting embeddedart.com, T35 Hosting, took Stack's website offline "due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI." Several groups supporting Stack on the social networking website Facebook appeared following the incident and the news of the accompanying manifesto. These were immediately shut down by Facebook staff.

Austin police chief Art Acevedo stated that the incident was not the action of a major terrorist organization. He also cited "some heroic actions on the part of federal employees" that "will be told at the appropriate time."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that it was investigating the incident "as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer" and that it was not being considered terrorism at this time.

However, two members of the United States House of Representatives, both of whose districts include the Austin area, made statements to the contrary. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) stated, "Like the larger-scale tragedy in Oklahoma City, this was a cowardly act of domestic terrorism." Mike McCaul (R-Texas), told a reporter that, "it sounds like it [was a terrorist attack] to me." Georgetown University Professor Bruce Hoffman stated that for this to be considered an act of terrorism, "there has to be some political motive and it has to send a broader message that seeks some policy change. From what I've heard, that doesn't appear to be the case. It appears he was very mad at the [IRS] and this was a cathartic outburst of violence. His motivation was the key." A USA Today headline used the term "a chilling echo of terrorism."

Citing the copy of Joseph Stack's note posted online, blogger Joan McCarter observed on the Daily Kos website that, "Obviously Stack was not a mentally healthy person, and he was embittered at capitalism, including crony capitalism, and health insurance companies and the government." She also stated that Stack could not be connected with the Tea Party movement, but argued that the incident "should inject a bit of caution into the anti-government flame-throwers on the right." The website Ace of Spades HQ disputed any connection to the movement and additionally stated Stack was not "right wing", citing Stack's criticism of politicians for not doing anything about health care reform.

In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, who now lives in Norway, stated initially that she considered her father to be a hero, because she felt that now people might listen. While she does not agree with his specific actions involving the plane crash, she does agree with his actions about speaking out against "injustice" and "the government." Bell subsequently retracted aspects of her statement, saying her father was "not a hero" and adding, "We are mourning for Vernon Hunter."

Five days after her husband Vernon Hunter's death, Valerie Hunter filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sheryl Mann Stack, Andrew Joseph Stack's widow in federal District Court. The lawsuit alleges that Sheryl had a duty to "avoid a foreseeable risk of injury to others," including her late husband and failed to do so by not warning others about her late husband. The lawsuit also mentions that Stack was required by law to fly his plane at an altitude 1,000 feet (305 m) above the highest obstacle. At a March 8, 2010, benefit event, Stack's widow, Sheryl, publicly offered condolences for the victims of the attack.

Iowa congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) has made several statements regarding Stack including,

I think if we'd abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn't have a target for his airplane. And I'm still for abolishing the IRS, I've been for it for thirty years and I'm for a national sales tax (in its place).

Academic and activist Noam Chomsky cited Joe Stack's letter as indicative of some of the public sentiment in the U.S., stated that several of Stack's assertions are accurate or based on real grievances, and urged people to "help" the Joseph Stacks of the world get involved in constructive popular movements instead of letting the Joseph Stacks "destroy themselves, and maybe the world," in order to prevent a process similar to how legitimate and valid popular grievances of the German people in the 1920s and 1930s were manipulated by the Nazis towards violence and away from constructive ends.

The Internal Revenue Service formally designates certain individuals as potentially dangerous taxpayers (PDTs). In response to an inquiry after the attack, an IRS spokesperson declined to state whether Stack had been designated as a PDT.

Disappearance of Helen Brach

 

Helen Vorhees Brach (born November 10, 1911 – disappeared February 17, 1977) was an American multimillionaire widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974. Brach disappeared on February 17, 1977, and was declared legally dead, as of the date of her disappearance, in May 1984. An investigation into the case uncovered serious criminal activity associated with Chicago horse stable owners, including Silas Jayne and Richard Bailey. More than a decade later Bailey was charged with, but not convicted of, conspiring to murder Brach; he eventually received a sentence of 30 years after being convicted of defrauding her.

Early life

Helen Brach was born on November 10, 1911, on a small farm in Unionport, Ohio. Helen married her high school sweetheart in 1928; the couple had divorced by the time she was 21. She found work at a country club in Palm Beach, Florida, where she met and married Frank Brach, son of Emil J. Brach and heir to the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company. The couple built a home in Fisher Island, Florida, shortly afterwards. The couple purchased another home in Glenview, Illinois, closer to the Brach company's factory in Chicago. Helen and Frank spent most of their time in South Florida. Her husband died in 1970.

Circumstances of disappearance

After a routine medical check-up at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Brach left for a flight to return to her mansion in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago, on February 17, 1977. A gift shop assistant near the clinic insisted that Brach had said, "I'm in a hurry, my houseman is waiting." This is the last sighting of Brach by an independent witness. The crew on the commercial airliner on which Brach was supposed to return did not report seeing her on the flight. Brach's houseman/chauffeur, Jack Matlick, said that he collected her at O'Hare Airport, further asserting that she spent four days without making a call before she was dropped off at O'Hare for a flight to Florida.

Matlick was the focus of police attention during the investigation. He repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and angrily denied to reporters that he knew what happened to Brach, but a former federal agent who worked on the case claimed after Matlick's death that he was indeed responsible for her disappearance. Brach's brother was of the opinion that Matlick had murdered his sister without any involvement from Richard Bailey or horse racing racketeers. On February 14, 2011, Matlick died in a Pennsylvania nursing home at the age of 79.

Richard Bailey and the horse racket connection

Brach was declared legally dead, as of the date of her February 17, 1977 disappearance, in May 1984. No one was ever convicted in her disappearance, although Bailey was sentenced to thirty years in prison for defrauding her.

According to a case filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Bailey, the owner of Bailey Stables and Country Club Stables, targeted wealthy middle-aged or older women with little knowledge of the horse business who had recently been widowed or divorced. In 1975, Bailey's brother, Paul, sold three horses to Brach for $98,000; unknown to Brach, Bailey also participated in the sale, and the horses were worth less than $20,000. Brach also bought a group of expensive brood mares. Early in 1977, Bailey arranged an extensive showing for Brach, hoping to persuade her to invest $150,000 in more horses. An appraiser Brach hired recommended she invest nothing in training one of her original three purchases, contrary to the $50,000 estimate of the trainer recommended by Bailey.

In 1989, the investigation was reopened and turned up evidence of criminal activity by associates of Bailey, such as Silas Jayne. Bailey was charged with conspiring with several others (named but not charged) to kill Brach; however some observers, including Brach's brother, have questioned if Bailey had in fact been guilty of the crime. Bailey was not convicted of Brach's murder but sentenced to thirty years for defrauding her; the judge made it clear that the sentence reflected evidence that Bailey was involved in a conspiracy to murder her. On March 21, 2005, in a tersely worded two-paragraph opinion, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bailey's request for a new sentencing hearing for the fraud charges to take into account new evidence suggesting his innocence of the murder conspiracy, saying that the "new evidence does not establish by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant is actually innocent of conspiring to murder Helen Brach and soliciting her murder." Bailey was released on July 25, 2019.

Brach's parents and husband are interred in Unionport, Ohio, near her birthplace of Hopedale. The marble monument includes an empty tomb with her name on it. In addition, two of Helen's dogs, Candy and Sugar, are buried there.

Wilbert Rideau

 

Wilbert Rideau (born February 13, 1942) is an American convicted killer and former death row inmate from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who became an author and award-winning journalist while held for 44 years at Angola Prison. Rideau was convicted in 1961 of first-degree murder of Julia Ferguson in the course of a bank robbery that year, and sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement on death row, pending execution. After the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states had to rework their death penalty statutes because of constitutional concerns, the Louisiana Court judicially amended his sentence in 1972 to life in prison.

During his 12 years on death row, Rideau had begun to educate himself, by reading numerous books. After being returned to the general prison population, from 1975 Rideau served for more than 20 years as editor of The Angolite, the magazine written and published by prisoners at Louisiana State Prison (Angola); he was the first African-American editor of any prison newspaper in the United States. Under his leadership, the magazine won the George Polk Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for its reporting, and it was nominated for others.

Rideau appealed his case four times. The Supreme Court of the United States and lower courts ordered a total of three new trials; SCOTUS overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial because of adverse pre-trial publicity. He was convicted again of murder two more times, in 1964 and 1970, each time by all-male, all-white juries. He served more than 40 years in the State Penitentiary; parole was never approved. In 2005 Rideau was tried a fourth time. He was unanimously convicted by the jury of the lesser charge of manslaughter; they did not believe he had planned the killing. Rideau was sentenced to the maximum of 21 years; as he had already served nearly 44 years, he was freed.

A Life magazine article in March 1993 referred to Rideau as "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America." He has written several books and edited compilations of articles. He participated in making two documentaries, including The Farm: Angola, USA (1998), about the lives of six men at Angola, including himself. It was drawn from his memoir Life Sentences (1992) and much of the film was made at the prison.

Childhood and youth

Wilbert Rideau was born in Louisiana in 1942. When he was six, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana (a city in Calcasieu Parish in the west of the state. It is about 30 miles from the Texas border). He attended racially segregated public schools, according to state law: Second Ward Elementary School in the lower grades, and starting at W.O. Boston Colored High School when he was in eighth grade. He soon started skipping classes. At 13, Rideau got a job at a grocery store and stopped going to school before finishing ninth grade. He became involved in petty crime.

Rideau was 19 when he committed an armed bank robbery in Lake Charles in 1961. He forced three white workers into a car and drove away with them as hostages. In the course of their trying to escape, Rideau fatally shot and stabbed bank teller Julia Ferguson and wounded another teller and the manager. The survivors testified to Rideau's guilt, noting that Rideau first shot Ferguson and then plunged a knife into the woman's chest. The two other bank employees survived by pretending to be dead.

Trials and imprisonment

Before Rideau was arraigned, a local television news station, KPLC-TV, filmed his being interviewed by the parish sheriff at the jail. Rideau responded to leading questions and admitted to killing teller Julia Ferguson in the course of a robbery. He did not appear to know he was being filmed, and he was without counsel. This material was broadcast three times in Calcasieu Parish, exposing a large part of the population to the interview and confession before Rideau was arraigned or taken to trial.

The defense requested a change of venue because of possible influence of the broadcast on potential jury members, which the court denied. Rideau was tried in 1961 before an all-male, all-white jury. At this time, blacks in Louisiana were still largely disenfranchised: excluded from voting, they were also excluded from juries and political office. He was convicted in less than an hour of first-degree murder in the death of teller Julia Ferguson. The jury included "two deputy sheriffs, a cousin of the dead victim and a bank vice president who knew the wounded manager". Rideau was sentenced to death, which is the punishment for first-degree murder.

His 1961 conviction was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court. In Rideau v. Louisiana (1963), the court ruled that the adverse pre-trial publicity and failure by the lower court to grant a change of venue had compromised his receiving due process. The majority decision said, "Yet in this case the people of Calcasieu Parish saw and heard, not once but three times, a "trial" of Rideau in a jail, presided over by a sheriff, where there was no lawyer to advise Rideau of his right to stand mute." The court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial.

The District Attorney of Calcasieu Parish, Frank Salter, Jr., re indicted Rideau for the killing of Ferguson. In 1964 another all-male, all-white jury quickly convicted Rideau again of first-degree murder. That conviction was overturned by appeal, and Rideau was tried a third time in 1970. Rideau was convicted a third time of first-degree murder by an all-white jury.

He was returned to death row at Angola, where he was held in solitary confinement pending his execution. During this time, he became determined to become educated. He started reading widely, and credits books with helping him survive and become a better person.

In 1972, following the Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, finding the current state laws unconstitutional as they varied widely in how they administered the death penalty, the court ordered states to void the death sentences of persons on death row. They ordered their sentences to be amended to the next most severe level, generally life imprisonment. Some 587 men and 26 women were moved off death rows across the country. Rideau's sentence was amended by Louisiana to life in prison.

Rideau was moved into the general prison population. After another appeal, based on the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that had indicted him in 1970, despite passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s to end racial discrimination, Rideau's last conviction was vacated.

A new trial was ordered and he was tried a fourth time in 2005. The jury was made up of ten women and two men, seven whites and five blacks. They "deliberated for nearly six hours before reaching an unanimous decision", convicting him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. Since Rideau had already served more than twice that time, nearly 44 years, he was freed immediately.

Legal history of the case

Rideau's criminal case reached the Supreme Court on appeal. In Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723 (1963), the court made a landmark ruling related to the effects of adverse pre-trial publicity and the refusal of the court to agree to a change of venue, which it ruled was a denial of due process of law for the defendant. The Court overturned Rideau's 1961 conviction because of the repeated broadcasts by the local television station of the sheriff's "interview" with Rideau in jail, and with no counsel. The Court said this resulted in "Kangaroo Court proceedings" and a kind of public trial in the media before his case ever reached court. In addition, the Parish Court had refused the defense attorney's request for a change of venue. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial.

Rideau was retried by the Parish District Attorney for first-degree murder in 1964 and again convicted. After another appeal because of errors, he was retried in 1970; each of those convictions for first-degree murder were also by all-male, all-white juries. He remained on death row at Angola.

In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that state laws for the death penalty were unconstitutional as currently written. States were ordered to judicially amend death sentences to the next level of severity, generally life imprisonment. Rideau and hundreds of other persons (mostly men) on death row across the country had their death sentences changed to life imprisonment.

In 2000, a federal appeals court ruled that Rideau's original indictment was flawed, because blacks had been excluded from the 1961 grand jury, which had indicted him on first-degree murder charges. (These charges were repeated by the prosecutor in subsequent trials.)

The Lake Charles, Louisiana, community divided largely along racial lines for four decades over the Rideau case. The parole board had repeatedly recommended he be given parole, but two Louisiana governors declined to approve it, largely due to strong local pressure from whites in Calcasieu Parish. In the fourth and final trial in January 2005, most white spectators sat behind the prosecutor's table and most blacks sat behind the defense.

Rideau had always admitted robbing the bank, fleeing with hostage employees, and killing one of them. Attorneys in the final trial presented two versions of these events. The prosecution held that Rideau used premeditation to line up his victims before shooting them, and that Ferguson had begged for her life. The defense said that Rideau had panicked and reacted impulsively - first, when a phone call interrupted the robbery, and then when hostage Dora McCain jumped from the get-away car and ran, followed by the other two employees. He said that Rideau killed in panic rather than by premeditation. The defense urged a verdict of manslaughter. The jury unanimously convicted Rideau of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. As Rideau had already served more than twice that long, he was immediately freed.

Prison journalism

In the early 1970s, Rideau wrote a column, "The Jungle", for a chain of black weeklies in Louisiana. He freelanced articles to mainstream media, including the Shreveport Journal and Penthouse. A headline referred to him as "The Wordman of Angola", saying "Rideau is Angola Penitentiary's Birdman of Alcatraz. He is a prisoner who has transformed the dark, drab, terror-filled life of prison into a greenhouse for the flowering of his talent."

Rideau had not gone beyond the ninth grade in his formal education before his arrest and incarceration. He educated himself by extensive reading while in prison.

In 1975, a federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, the result of a civil suit by the ACLU because of the high level of violence and abuse of prisoner rights. The consent decree required the prison to institute desegregation of programs and work assignments. The outgoing warden appointed Rideau as editor of The Angolite; he was the first African-American editor of any prison journal in the United States. The incoming warden ratified the choice and, with a handshake, gave Rideau freedom from censorship. This warden's progressive administration supported the nation's only uncensored prison publication. During his 25 years as editor, Rideau became well known nationally, gaining a reputation beyond the prison.

In 1979, Rideau and co-editor Billy Sinclair won the George Polk Award for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: The Sexual Jungle". In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and a 1981 Sidney Hillman Award. The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, and it was nominated seven times.

Rideau was permitted to travel the state accompanied only by an unarmed guard to lecture about the prison newspaper. He was permitted to fly to Washington, D.C. twice to address the nation's newspaper editors on the subject of prison journalism.

Rideau and co-editor Ron Wikberg were named "Person of the Week" for their journalism on Peter Jennings's World News Tonight in August 1992. Wikberg was the Angolite associate editor from 1988 to 1992 (he was paroled that year). He died in October 1994.

Books and compilations

After being released, Rideau wrote In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (2010), recalling his experiences in Angola. It won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was shortlisted for the British CWA Gold Dagger prize for non-fiction.

With Ron Wikberg, associate editor, Rideau edited The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana (1991), used as a textbook. This textbook was a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of University of Southwestern Louisiana. About half of the book's articles were first published in The Angolite. Rideau and Wikberg collaborated on the book with Professor Burk Foster of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Rideau and Wikberg also collaborated on Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, a 1992 anthology of articles from The Angolite. It was published in 1992 by Times Books, a subsidiary of Random House, but went out of print.

This book came to the attention of Elizabeth Garbus and Jonathan Stack, a pair of New York documentary filmmakers. They drew from it for their film The Farm: Angola, USA (1998). Rideau was credited for his work with them on the film; he was also among the six men featured in the documentary, which has won numerous awards.

Other media

In the 1990s, Rideau branched out into radio, television, and documentary film making. He became a correspondent for National Public Radio, produced a segment for ABC-TV's news-magazine Day One; and collaborated with radio documentarian Dave Isay for a piece entitled "Tossing Away the Keys."

He collaborated on creating and producing two documentary films, Final Judgment: The Execution of Antonio James (1996), directed and produced by filmmakers Jonathan Stack and Elizabeth Garbus, and The Farm: Angola, USA (1998), directed by the same pair, with credit also to Rideau. The latter drew from Life Sentences, the book which he and the late Ron Wikberg had edited together. The Farm won an Emmy Award and several others, as well as being as nominated for an Academy Award.

Clemency efforts

Mother Jones said in 2010 that "a mix of racial politics and tough-on-crime posturing blocked [Rideau's] release for more than three decades", even though several LSP wardens had said that Rideau was completely rehabilitated. The parole board recommended parole for him, but two governors declined to approve it. Many local people in Calcasieu Parish opposed any parole for him. Rideau remained incarcerated through the mid-1990s, while other inmates with similar sentences were paroled in this period.

An investigation by 20/20 revealed statements by Governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards, who said that he believed that Rideau was rehabilitated, but that he would not release the prisoner under any circumstances. Rideau said that governors did not advocate for his release because he had become "a political football" due to his appeals and retrials. He believed that it would be difficult for any prisoner in Louisiana to be released from prison.

Fourth appeal, trial, and aftermath

In 1998 the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP joined his case and participated in mounting a fourth appeal. In December 2000, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans threw out Rideau's 1970 murder conviction, based on grounds of racial discrimination in the grand jury process in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, which had indicted him. All the members of the grand jury were white.

To the surprise of many outside the area, the Calcasieu Parish prosecutor decided to try Rideau for a fourth time for first-degree murder. Rideau was indicted again in July 2001. The jury, composed of both men and women, and blacks and whites, unanimously found him guilty of manslaughter. They did not believe that he had planned the killing of the clerk. The judge sentenced Rideau to the maximum of 21 years, but he had already served nearly 44, more than twice that, so he was released. Whereas Rideau had been represented by local court-appointed defense attorneys in his first three trials, his defense team in 2005 included prominent civil rights attorneys: Johnnie Cochran, George Kendall, and famed New Orleans defense attorney Julian Murray, who all worked on the case for free, or pro bono.

The case was prosecuted again under the laws in effect at the time of the crime in 1961. The jury was free to convict Rideau of murder – the state elected to prosecute under the "specific intent" rather than the "felony murder" doctrine of the 1961 statute – or manslaughter, which in Louisiana is any homicide that would otherwise be murder if it is either committed without specific intent to harm an individual, or if it is committed in the heat of passion. The defense said that Rideau had become panicked during the robbery and especially by the hostages attempting to escape.

Shortly after Rideau's release, Judge David Ritchie, who had declared Rideau indigent at trial, ordered him to pay more than $127,000 to the court to cover the cost of the trial and conviction that ultimately freed him. This order was overturned 2006 by the Louisiana Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The Louisiana Court of Appeals stated:

[ . . . ] we find the trial court lacked legal authority to act for the parish of Calcasieu and lacked standing in its own right to seek recoupment of funds expended from the Criminal Court Fund. The trial court, however, retains authority to enforce the January 15, 2005 sentence which ordered Rideau to pay costs and to assess reasonable costs upon presentment by the parties who actually "incurred" the Article 887(A) expenses, consistent with this opinion and the Constitutions of Louisiana and the United States. We also vacate that portion of the March 15, 2005 Order directing Rideau to reimburse the IDB [Indigent Defender's Board] for all costs, expert witness fees and expenses associated with his defense.

After release

In 2008 Rideau married Linda LaBranche, a former college professor who had become one of his supporters years before.

In 2009, he co-directed and was included in the documentary The Farm: 10 Down (2009), Jonathan Stack's follow-up to the survivors among the six men he had featured in his earlier film on Angola. Rideau was the only one among them to have left the prison alive.

Since his release, Rideau has continued to write. He published a memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (2010), about his years at Angola. He has frequently been asked to speak about his experiences, and his work to rehabilitate himself while in prison.

In 2011 Rideau was one of the invited speakers at the Newark Peace Education Summit in Newark, New Jersey. In April of that year, he was invited to the Roosevelt Hotel to receive the George Polk Award for journalism and give a long overdue speech. He had won the journalism award in 1980 for a series of essays titled The Sexual Jungle, which he published in The Angolite when he was still in prison.

Murder of Amy Mihaljevic

 

Amy Renee Mihaljevic (December 11, 1978 – c. October 27, 1989) was a ten-year-old American elementary school student who was kidnapped and murdered in the U.S. state of Ohio in 1989. Her murder case received national attention. The story of her unsolved kidnapping and murder were presented by John Walsh on the television show America's Most Wanted during the program's early years. To date, her killer has not been found, yet the case remains active; new information in 2007 and 2013 has increased hopes of resolving the case. In February 2021, it was announced that a person of interest emerged in the case after a woman contacted authorities in 2019 with potentially valuable information.

Disappearance and murder

On October 27, 1989, Amy Mihaljevic was kidnapped from the Bay Square Shopping Center in Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The abductor had contacted Mihaljevic by telephone and arranged to meet her on the pretext of buying a gift for her mother because she had recently been promoted, as he told her. On February 8, 1990, the girl's body was found in a field, close to the road, off County Road 1181, Ruggles Township in rural Ashland County, Ohio.

Evidence found at the scene of the crime suggests that Mihaljevic's body was probably dumped there shortly after her abduction. Based on findings by the Cuyahoga County coroner, Mihaljevic's last meal was some sort of soy substance, possibly an artificial chicken product or Chinese food. Other evidence includes the presence of yellow/gold colored fibers on her body. It appears her killer also took several souvenirs including the girl's horse-riding boots, her denim backpack, a binder with "Buick, Best in Class" written on the front clasp, and turquoise earrings in the shape of horse heads. Blood believed to be that of Mihaljevic was found in her underwear, indicating she may have been raped or sexually abused. Mitochondrial DNA from the crime scene was sampled, which may be used in the future to compare to suspects.

Investigation

The Bay Village Police and the FBI conducted an extensive investigation into her disappearance and murder. The case generated thousands of leads. Dozens of suspects were asked to take lie-detector tests, but no one has ever been charged with the crime. Law enforcement continues to pursue leads and monitor suspects to the present day. 20,000 interviews have taken place during the investigation. This was described to be the biggest search in Ohio since the 1951 disappearance of Beverly Potts.

In November 2006, it was revealed that several other young girls had received phone calls similar to the ones Mihaljevic received in the weeks prior to her abduction. The unknown male caller claimed that he worked with the girl’s mother and wanted help buying a present to celebrate her promotion. The girls who received these calls lived in North Olmsted, a suburb near Bay Village; some had unlisted phone numbers. This new information was considered significant by investigators. Mihaljevic and the others who received such calls had all visited the local Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, which had a visitors' logbook by the front door. The girls may have signed the book and added personal information including phone numbers and addresses.

Bay Village police collected DNA samples from several potential suspects in the case in December 2006. As of early 2007, it was reported that a longtime suspect in the case had retained legal counsel.

In late 2013, investigator Phil Torsney returned from retirement to work on the case, to which he had been originally assigned after the murder. Torsney is well known for aiding in the capture of Whitey Bulger, who was a long-time member of the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted. Torsney stated that he believed that Mihaljevic was transported out of Bay Village after she was kidnapped, as the town is "too dense, too close-knit, to be a likely place to commit murder." However, he stated that the murder likely took place in Ashland County, which the murderer was probably familiar with.

The FBI announced in March 2014 that a $25,000 reward is available to anyone who can provide information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer of Mihaljevic. In October, it was increased to $27,000.

In 2016, it was discovered that a blanket and curtain located near Mihaljevic's body had hairs on them similar to the Mihaljevics' dog. They were possibly used to conceal the victim's body before she was left in the field.

In 2018, investigators were also following a potential link between identity thief Robert Ivan Nichols (alias Joseph Newton Chandler III) and the murder of Mihaljevic. In 2019, authorities stated that they have extensively investigated all suspects in the case and feel that if her killer were identified, he would likely be a part of their list.

2021 case update

On the 31st anniversary of the discovery of Mihaljevic's remains, a major development in the case was announced. A publicly unidentified man, age 64, was implicated by a former girlfriend, with whom he was involved at the time of the kidnapping and murder. She alleged that he was uncharacteristically absent from their residence, located in close proximity to the abduction site, when the victim first disappeared. The man called her late that evening, inquiring if she had seen media releases about the abduction. He was employed in the same city, and his niece was in the same grade as Mihaljevic.

Police interviews with the man included "suspicious statements", including the possibility he had met Amy Mihaljevic's mother, Margaret, before. His DNA was obtained without protest, and he later failed a polygraph test. A warrant to search a storage facility led to authorities confiscating certain items of interest.

Additionally, the two individuals who witnessed the yet-to-be-identified kidnapper lead Mihaljevic into his vehicle identified the potential suspect out of line-ups conducted in May 2020. The vehicle itself was consistent with what the man drove at the time, including the fact that its carpeting was similar in coloration to the fibers on Mihaljevic's body. A vehicle of the same make and model had been observed near the body's dumpsite on February 8, 1990, when the victim's body was recovered along a roadside.

Aftermath

In response to her daughter's death, Mihaljevic's mother, Margaret McNulty, co-founded a foundation to protect children from such situations that happened to Amy. However, McNulty had suffered from lupus after the death of Amy, resulting in her death at age 54 in 2001.

Murder of Ilan Halimi

 

The murder of Ilan Halimi (Hebrew: אילן חלימי) was the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a young Frenchman of Moroccan Jewish ancestry in France in 2006. Halimi was kidnapped on 21 January 2006 by a group calling itself the Gang of Barbarians. The kidnappers, believing that all Jews are rich, repeatedly contacted the victim's modestly placed family demanding very large sums of money. Halimi was held captive and tortured for three weeks, and died of his injuries. The case drew national and international attention as an example of antisemitism in France.

Kidnapping

Halimi was a mobile phone salesman living in Paris with his divorced mother and his two sisters.

On 20 January 2006, one of the perpetrators, Sorour Arbabzadeh (known as Yalda or Emma), a 17-year-old woman of French-Iranian origin, went to the phone store in Paris where Halimi worked and struck up a conversation with him. She eventually asked for Halimi's number, which he gave to her, and left the store. The woman called him the next evening and told him to come to her apartment for a drink. He was lured to an apartment block in the Parisian banlieues where he was ambushed and held captive by the group upon arrival. No one saw or heard from Halimi until the next afternoon, when his sister received an email containing a picture that showed Halimi gagged and tied up to a chair with a gun to his head. In text, the abductors threatened his life and demanded 450,000 euros from his family, stating that they would kill him if they went to the police. Not having the money, though, Halimi's family had no other option than to contact the police.

The abductors, who called themselves the Gang of Barbarians, tortured him and sent phone and video messages to his family while they were in contact with the police. During the 24 days of abduction, the leader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana, managed to travel back and forth to his home country of Ivory Coast. At some point he was suspected of being related to the gang and was taken to the police station, but they were forced to release him due to a lack of proof of his connection to the group. The demand for ransom, initially elevated at 450,000 euros, diminished as the abductors got more anxious with the attention they were drawing from the police and media. Suspicious neighbours said they did not go to the police station out of fear while others said they did not want to intervene in a business that was not theirs.

After three weeks and no success in finding the captors, the family and the police stopped receiving messages from the captors. Halimi, severely tortured, more than 80% burned and unclothed, was dumped next to a road at Sainte-Geneviève-Des-Bois on 13 February 2006. He was found by a passer-by who immediately called for an ambulance. Halimi died from his injuries on his way to the hospital.

The decision by the police to keep certain matters secret was seen as counter-productive, and may have prevented a facial composite of Sorour Arbabzadeh ("Emma"), the girl who lured Halimi to the apartment. Investigation showed that more than twenty people, some of them teenagers, took part directly or indirectly in the kidnapping. Some of them later claimed they never knew his fate, and Arbabzadeh (who was seventeen at the time), later sent a letter to his family to say how sorry she was.

A woman, referred to as Audrey L., surrendered after the police had released a facial composite picture. She pointed to the Barbarians, a gang of (North) African immigrants who had perpetrated similar abductions in the past. In the subsequent days, French police arrested 15 people in connection with the crime. The leader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana (born 1980), who had been born in Paris to parents from Côte d'Ivoire, fled to his parents' homeland together with the woman used as bait. They were arrested on February 23 in Abidjan and extradited to France on March 4, 2006.

Ransom

The kidnappers originally thought Halimi was wealthy because he came from a Jewish family, although he came from the same poor and working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris as the kidnappers did. According to then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, members of the gang confessed that they believed all Jews to be rich and it motivated them to target several Jews.

The kidnappers demanded ransom, initially EUR 450,000, eventually decreasing to EUR 5,000. It has been claimed that the family of Halimi was told that if they could not raise the money, they should get it from the Jewish community.

In order to convince Halimi's parents their son had been kidnapped, the abductors sent a picture of the young man being threatened by a gun and holding a newspaper to prove the date and time.

Police investigation

The French police were heavily criticized because they initially believed that antisemitism was not a factor in the crime. Police have attributed to the banlieues' gang subculture a "poisonous mentality that designates Jews as enemies along with other 'outsiders,'" such as Americans, mainstream French, and Europeans in general. "If they could have gotten their hands on a (non-Jewish) French cop in the same way, they probably would have done the same thing," a retired police chief opined. This may have hampered the original investigation. Antisemitism is an aggravating circumstance (French: circonstance aggravante) in a murder case in France.

Ruth Halimi, Ilan's mother, subsequently co-authored a book with Émilie Frèche titled 24 jours: la vérité sur la mort d'Ilan Halimi (24 days: the truth about the death of Ilan Halimi), released April 2009. In the book, Ruth claimed that French police never suspected her son's kidnappers would kill the 23-year-old after three weeks in captivity in 2006, partly because they would not face the antisemitic character of the crime (as reported in the French newspaper Le Figaro). Émilie Frèche stated that "by denying the anti-semitic character, ... [the police] did not figure out the profile of the gang." The book details how Ilan's parents were told to stay silent during the ordeal and were ordered not to seek aid in order to pay the ransom, nor show their son's photo to people who might have come forward with information about his whereabouts.

In an interview with Elle Magazine on March 27, 2009, Ruth Halimi stated that "The police were completely off the mark. They thought they were dealing with classic bandits, but these people were beyond the norm." Halimi stated that she wrote the book to "alert public opinion to the danger of anti-semitism which has returned in other forms, so that a story like this can never happen again".

Gang of Barbarians

The crime was committed by a group of persons belonging to a gang calling themselves les barbares, 'The Barbarians'. Many of them had criminal records and had been imprisoned. A total of 27 people were accused of involvement in the crime and were tried for kidnapping and murder in 2009. One person was acquitted and the rest were convicted. Gang leader Youssouf Fofana was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years before the possibility of parole. The woman who had lured Halimi to his abduction was sentenced to nine years imprisonment. Two of his close associates, Jean-Christophe Soumbou and Samir Ait Abdel Malek, received 18 and 15-year prison terms respectively, and Malek's prison term was later increased to 18 years upon appeal. Six others convicted over their involvement received sentences ranging from 12 to 15 years imprisonment, and seven others received sentences ranging from 8 months to 11 years imprisonment. While Fofana chose not to appeal his sentence, 14 of the 27 verdicts were appealed by the prosecution. The convictions were upheld on appeal in December 2010. In 2017, a Paris court sentenced Fofana to an additional 10 years imprisonment for other extortions he had committed.

During the investigation it appeared that key members of the group were probably implicated in at least 15 other cases of kidnapping or racketeering. Posing as members of the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica or members of the French division of the PFLP, they threatened several high-ranking CEOs including Jérôme Clément, president of the European TV operator Arte, Rony Brauman, former president and co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, and the CEO as well as another high-ranking member of a large company selling home appliances. They sent threatening pictures of an unknown man dressed as a middle-eastern Arab in front of a picture of Osama Bin Laden. In another case, the owner of a large grocery store was directed to pay 100,000 euros.

In total, 27 individuals were under investigation and were subsequently put on trial. Among these:

Youssouf Fofana (2 August 1980), the self-proclaimed Brain of the Barbarians. He was born in Paris to immigrants from Côte d'Ivoire and served time in prison for various crimes including armed robbery, car theft and resisting arrest. In an interview he denied killing Halimi, but showed no remorse for his actions.

Christophe Martin-Vallet, nicknamed Moko, a French man originally from Martinique, specializing in computers. He appears to have masterminded the kidnapping and to have been the lieutenant of Fofana.

He is suspected of other kidnappings and was responsible for the honeypot activities of the girls.

Jean-Christophe Soumbou, also known as Craps, Crim or Marc. Fellow inmate of Fofana.

Imprisoned for car theft with violence. Supplied the car with which Halimi was transported. He is also suspected of other kidnappings.

Jean-Christophe Gavarin, usually known as JC or by his nickname Zigo, one of the individuals who tortured Halimi. He was a minor at the time of the crime. He had been expelled from school and had been involved with the law because of a theft and possession of cannabis. He has admitted to pushing a burning joint in the face of Halimi.

Samir Aït Abdelmalek, nicknamed Smiler, who was the owner of the apartment and is considered the right-hand man of Fofana (he had known Fofana for more than ten years). Had been convicted for possession of drugs and car theft. He also furnished the acid used to burn Halimi.

Jérémy Pastisson involved in a number of kidnapping cases, his car was used to transport Halimi.

Tiffenn Gouret, former girlfriend of Jean-Christophe Gavarin and friend of Arbabzadeh, supplied Fonfana with "bait". She is also suspected in other kidnappings.

Sorour Arbabzadeh nicknamed Yalda (also known as "Emma"), a seventeen-year-old French-Iranian girl who acted as appât (bait, honeypot) to entrap Halimi.

Sabrina Fontaine, was used as bait in other kidnapping cases.

Audrey Lorleach, nicknamed Léa or Natacha, young student who was used as bait. She turned herself in and served 9 months in prison.

Others who were implicated:

Gilles Serrurier (1967), nicknamed the concierge, was the caretaker of the apartment building to which Halimi was taken and who lent the gang the apartment and cellar in which they held and tortured Halimi.

Yahia Touré Kaba, nicknamed Yaks, one of the jailers (gaolers).

Fabrice Polygone, one of the jailers (gaolers).

Jérôme Ribeiro, known as Coup de Tête (headbutt). Although he had left the group, he was promised a lot of money. One of the jailers (gaolers).

Guiri Oussivo N'Gazi and Francis Oussivo N'Gazi, friends of Ribeiro who acted as one of the jailers (gaolers).

Nabil Moustafa, known as Bilna, pizza delivery man, one of the jailers (gaolers).

Cédric Birot Saint-Yves, known as Babas, friend of Nabil Moustafa, one of the jailers (gaolers).

Many others were implicated, but their direct connection to the crime could not be proven.

2009 trial

The trial, which started on 29 April 2009, was conducted behind closed doors because two of the suspects were minors.

The Halimi family wanted the trial to be conducted openly. Francis Szpiner spoke for Ruth Halimi, saying, "A public trial would have helped [people] better understand the criminal machine, to make parents and teenagers reflect. It's the law of silence that killed her son, it would be unbearable for the trial to remain silent."

The trial took 10 weeks.

Incidents during and around the trial

A number of videos with Fofana appeared on YouTube.

Fofana appeared in court wearing a white T-shirt, smiling, pointing to heaven and saying Allāhu Akbar. He claimed he had nothing to say and would be silent to the grave. When asked his name and date of birth he answered: Je m'appelle arabe, africaine révolte armée barbare salafiste. Je suis né le 13 février 2006 à Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. (My name is arab, armed african rebellion salafist barbarian army and I was born on February 13, 2006 in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois: the date and place Ilan Halimi was found).

Fofana threw a shoe at the empty benches and again when he was taken down, shouting All the Jews in the world are there [in the empty box], they are my enemies. This is an Arab attack with a booby-trapped shoe!

Fofana claimed in court that he had friends who would "take pictures to identify people." Francis Szpiner, lawyer for the Halimi family, believed that Fofana was alluding to the jurors, and was implying that he was going to put a price on their heads.

Verdict and sentencing

On the evening of Friday, 10 July 2009, the verdict was given. Ilan Halimi's mother and others were absent from the court, as the Sabbath had already started.

Of the 27 people on trial, 3 were acquitted.

A number of others, whose implication was not direct, or related to other activities of the gang, received smaller sentences. Three persons were acquitted. Notable is that one person, for whom originally no sentence was asked, received a suspended sentence.

After the trial

Sorour Arbabzadeh, the then-17-year-old French-Iranian woman who acted as bait to trap Halimi, was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. While serving her sentence in the Versailles women's prison, she seduced a guard and the director of the prison, Florent Gonçalves, who is now imprisoned himself. For this she was sentenced to four months imprisonment.

2010 retrial

The sentences issued after the first trial were criticized as too lenient by some parties, while others such as the attorney general Philippe Bilger found the sentences "exemplary". Minister of Justice Michèle Alliot-Marie, demanded an appeal of 8 of the 17 heaviest verdicts.

Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, France's main Jewish organization, said that a law may soon be available that would preclude closed-door trials in this type of case. "Perhaps in a year's time there will be a new trial, and perhaps it will be public."

A Halimi relative said: "The important thing for me is not handing out heavier jail terms, honestly. The important thing is to open this to the press and public and make it a learning experience."

The retrial was officially announced Monday 10 July 2009. It started on 25 October 2010, and ended on 17 December 2010, with all convictions upheld and some sentences extended.

Similar assault

On 22 February 2008, six members of a group calling themselves Barbarians assaulted 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in the same Paris suburb of Bagneux where Halimi was kidnapped. For two hours the attackers tortured the young man. One shoved cigarette butts into his mouth, another took issue with Roumi's Jewish origin (paternal), grabbed correction fluid and scrawled sale juif ("dirty Jew") and sale PD ("dirty faggot") on his forehead. When the issue of his sexual orientation arose, one of them placed a condom on the tip of a stick and shoved it in Roumi's mouth. The six men proceeded to scream at him and threaten that he would die the way Halimi did. The men were all arrested.

Public interest and reaction

The case was widely reported on both in and outside France, and prompted strong reactions.

France

Paris demonstration in honor of Ilan Halimi and against antisemitism In 2006

Then French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin declared that the "odious crime" was antisemitic, and that antisemitism is not acceptable in France.

Six French associations called for a mass demonstration against racism and antisemitism in Paris on Sunday, February 26. Between 33,000 (as estimated by police) and 80,000 to 200,000 (as estimated by the organizers) people participated in Paris, as well as thousands around the country. Present were public figures such as Philippe Douste-Blazy, François Hollande, Lionel Jospin and Nicolas Sarkozy. Also among the participants were Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Paris Mosque and Chairman of the Council of Muslims in France, and Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. Right-wing politician Philippe de Villiers was booed by far-left militants and had to leave under police guard.

Outside France

On 9 May, the United States Helsinki Commission held a briefing titled "Tools for Combating Anti-Semitism: Police Training and Holocaust Education" chaired by Commission Co-Chairman Chris Smith (a Republican representative) who said: "[Halimi's] tragedy made brutally clear that Jews are still attacked because they are Jews, and that our work to eradicate all forms of anti-Semitism in all its ugly forms and manifestations is far from done."

Aftermath

Burial

Ilan Halimi was initially buried in the Cimetière parisien de Pantin near Paris, and the funeral drew a large Jewish crowd. At the request of the family, his remains were reburied in Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem, Israel on 9 February 2007. It was timed to allow his first Yartzeit, on Tu Bishvat, to pass before the reburial. The date and time (11:30 am) also marked "exactly one year after his burial in France according to the Jewish Calendar."

Memorials

A garden in the Jerusalem Forest was named after him. In May 2011, a garden in the 12th arrondissement of Paris where Halimi used to play as a child was renamed after him.

A tree commemorating Ilan Halimi was cut down in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois shortly before the anniversary of his death in 2019.

Legacy and analysis

The kidnapping brought many Jews to speak out against antisemitism and racism, but also stirred discussion about whether Jews could still feel safe in France or not. Emigration to Israel rose as a result.

In 2017 The Washington Post revisited Ilan Halimi's murder, describing it as similar to the murder of Sarah Halimi, because French authorities similarly refused to acknowledge the antisemitic nature of the murder or to investigate it as ethnically and ideologically motivated terrorism.

Books

A number of books have been written about the case. Among them:

24 jours: la vérité sur la mort d'Ilan Halimi; Ruth Halimi and Émily Frèche; Éditions du Seuil; April 2009; ISBN 978-2-02-091028-6. This books was written by his mother, Ruth Halimi, about her experience of the events, together with Émilie Frèche. In late April 2014, a movie by French filmmaker Alexandre Arcady about this case was released. Entitled 24 Jours: La vérité sur l’affaire Ilan Halimi (24 Days: The Truth about the Ilan Halimi Case), it is based on the above-mentioned book.

Si c'est un Juif : Réflexions sur la mort d'Ilan Halimi ; Adrien Barrot; Editions Michalon; January 2007; ISBN 978-2-84186-364-8

Ilan Halimi, le canari dans la mine : Comment en est-on arrivé là ?; Yaël König et al; Editions Yago; June 2009; ISBN 978-2-916209-70-8

Des Barbares Dans la Cité. Reflexions Autour du Meurtre d'Ilan Halimi; David Mascré; Éditions de l'Infini; April 2009; ISBN 978-2-918011-05-7

A novel, Tout, tout de suite written by Morgan Sportés was inspired by the events and published in 2011. A film version of the novel, starring Marc Ruchmann as Halimi was released in 2015.