Posted on 05/21/2010 9:18:20 AM PDT by DCBryan1
Arkansas police authorities have sent the bodies of two people killed in a Thursday gunbattle with police to the state crime lab for identification.
They refused to discuss any details about their investigation of the events that left two West Memphis police officers dead and two other law enforcement officers wounded.
“The Arkansas State Police is not confident of the identification that we have at this moment in time, as of 8:40 on Friday morning ," said spokesman Bill Sadler. "We are waiting for results from the state crime laboratory. We don’t play CSI around here. We want it right.”
People claiming to be relatives of the two, however, told The Commercial Appeal they could identify them from numerous videos and photographs taken at the crime scene and available on Memphis media websites. They identified the men as Jerry Kane, 45, of Ohio and his 16-year-old son, Joseph.
Kane's own website this morning bears a note indicating the two were "shot down" by law enforcement in West Memphis.
The Commercial Appeal could not independently confirm the suspects' identification.
Attempts to verify the information led to a woman named Donna Lee in central Florida who said she was married to Jerry Kane and that Joe, as she called him, was her 16-year-old stepson. She wanted to emphasize Joseph Kane is a minor. She said the white minivan belonged to Jerry and was positive from photos and videos from the scene that the two unidentified dead suspects were Jerry and Joe Kane -- and that the dog she saw exiting the minivan was a labrador-rottweiler mix named Olie.
The shelter in West Memphis confirms that there was another dog found in the van, something police had not made public. The family said that dog, who was found dead, is named Little Missy. Lee also said that Joe’s mother died three years ago and said her name was Hope.
A background check of Jerry Kane shows that he had been married to a woman named Hope.
When she saw the news footage of the shootings in West Memphis on Thursday, Donna Lee said she knew.
The lifeless body of a boyish-looking suspect in front of a white minivan, she said she is sure, is that of her 16-year-old stepson. She said she believes he was handcuffed. The white Plymouth Voyager minivan, she is positive, belongs to the man she calls her husband, Jerry Kane.
Lee said Jerry Kane owned an AK-47 and carried it with him on trips because he liked taking it to local shooting ranges.
"Yes, we had an AK-47, but we've taken it down to the local shooting range and shot it but there were other people there with those big sniper rifles," she said.
Lee insists that Jerry and Joe Kane were doing good work, helping people with financial troubles keep their homes.
"They were literally staying in hotels all over the country so they could help people stay in their homes," Lee said.
Another man, Jake Jefferson, said he was a nephew of Jerry Kane's and said he was positive that the dead person he saw in news accounts was 16-year-old Joe Kane, that the white minivan had belonged to Jerry for some time and they traveled the country helping people with mortgage and foreclosure issues. He also said he recognized the dog, and that Jerry and Joe had spent a month with him at his home in the Phoenix area over Christmas.
Jefferson and Lee both said Joe's mother had died previously. Jefferson said they traveled with a box of her ashes in the van.
"That's them," he said. "And why do I think they fired on police? Because they must have believed the police were going to fire on them."
Lee, who said their marriage was not certified "by the state" but common-law, said she believes there was another dog traveling with Joe and Jerry, who she said called her from Little Rock on Thursday morning on their way back to Florida. Kane's website shows that he had seminars planned in Florida for the end of next week, and that he had been in Las Vegas for seminars last weekend.
"It's an absolute tragedy and I'm in absolute shock right now," she said.
Lee rejected Internet speculation that the suspects were white supremacists. She said Jerry Kane tried "to help everyone, it did not matter what their color, or if they were striped or anything."
A background search using the information from the website shows a Jerry Kane, born in Ohio in December of 1964 and most recently associated with addresses mainly in Ohio. The van, which authorities said had Ohio tags, was traced to New Vienna, Ohio, and a church called House of God's Prayer, according to several sources.
That church's address is associated with a deceased white supremacist named Harold R. Redfeairn, who the Associated Press reported in 2003 headed a chapter of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian in New Vienna. That church espoused views of the white-supremacist doctrine of Aryan Nations.
A story published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., on Redfeairn has the headline, "The Cop-Shooter." The story said that in 1979, Redfeairn shot 22-year-old Dayton, Ohio, police officer Dave Koenig three times after Koenig had stopped him.
It was unclear whether Jerry Kane knew Redfeairn, and Lee said it was "ridiculous" that Kane would associate with "terrorists." She said Kane knew a pastor in Ohio who helped people who had been incarcerated.
Another reference to Jerry and Joe Kane and the shooting came from a blogger named George Tran touting a foreclosure advising business. He called Jerry Kane the man he had learned "most of this technique" from and that "we lost a beautiful man and boy today."
A "YouTube site showing a video of Jerry Kane conducting a seminar includes a comment from a user identified as FossilRock: "Jerry Kane and son Joe were killed today."
They did. But folks right here on FR tried to blame this on “illegal aliens”. Both proved to be wrong.
There’s a lesson there for anyone willing to learn it.
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Really???? I’m sure you can go and find a few replies from some FReepers - FReeping off the top of their head - but I never saw anyone blaming “illegal aliens”.
Unless those “illegal aliens” were from Pakistan.
Yesterday you quoted BREAKING: illegal immigrants involved. “Hispanic man dead on scene”.
So, who made the leap from Hispanic to illegal? Was it you? What kind of "fog of war" results from listening to a scanner?
I hope not. A stock market crash with worldwide economic collapse occurring with increased incidences like this may be a harbinger.
Self ping.
There’s a video still up on the suspect’s memorial page:
http://privateaudio.homestead.com/Jerry-and-Joe-Kane-Memorial.html/
Video unavailable at the moment, at the chop shop.
There was a time when I was inclined to give the cops the benefit of the doubt, tht time however, is passed. Have seen far too much escalation simply because “you didn’t do what I said”.
Where is the information about the apartment incident and removing the license plates coming from? I had not heard about this and have not seen it anywhere.
Thanks.
Interesting. Where did you find that?
I just watched his videos on You Tube, checked out his website and other things related to him. I don’t really have much to say. It doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe as more comes out it will but at this point I just feel profound sadness for all. The officers and that 16 year old child laying on the ground. Very sad.
MSM is gonna POUND Tea Partiers and attack gun rights HARD.
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Let them pound, they do it daily. They don’t need an excuse.
You going to blame me for the "AK47" myth? ...(as we all know...a Ruger 10/22 is an AK47 to the MSM).
Take the chip off your shoulder and do a FOIA request for all the transcripts shouted for 2 hours in West Memphis LEO radio.
There are some things that do not add up here
Yesterday the BOTL was for “two hispanics” that ran from the crime.
Today they are not hispanic but very much white, and are in a white van, common as dirt.
Where are the plates for the van?
Why were “cop killers” parked in a Wal-Mart? Back in town?
Either there are BIG portions of the story missing or the real story is not going to look good.
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I wondered the same thing and I’m NOT buying this story. Neither of them look even remotely Hispanic. It’s not adding up, not yet anyway.
See my link in post 22. There are plenty of such posts...right through to today...even after the perps have been identified and photos posted.
3 Live TV Report this AM:
http://www.kfsm.com/videobeta/?watchId=0a812182-b1fd-49eb-a338-989dc127e193
Another report has another witness in same apartment parking lot saw the men taking off plates. They both called police...this one got interviewed with her side of the story.
the shootout video seems to confirm it
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No, it doesn’t
Just tell them to pound sand-just like the libs do. Take away blacks, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners, and you have violent crime rates lower than Canada’s.
But if that’s said, true as it is, it becomes “hate speech”. Just tell them not to “unfairly profile” Tea Partiers. Turn the tables and stand your ground.
There were reports in Cincinnati, Ohio that the van had been reported stolen from Clinton County, Ohio before all this got started.
That might have something to do with it.
The video has since disappeared. Damnit.
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No it hasn’t. I saved it and I don’t see what you are saying that you saw.
Tanker KC is right. I jumped the gun when I heard the ASP police scanner. Lots of misinformation going over the waves for 2 hours. If you live in this part of the country Hispanic = illegal immigrant more often than not, esp. when they have a BOLO out immediately after the murder of a police officer.
The dumbass is driving around in a van with NO PLATES
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How do you know there was no plate on the van that was originally stopped?
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