Free Republic

Neighbors in the active Tuscany block are reeling over an alleged murder committed there. The victim, Franklin Manuel Santana, had just moved from the Miami area a month ago with his wife Raquel and baby daughter. Santana did not know Tyrirk Harris, but he would meet Harris for the first and last time in a quarrel over dog poop.

Florida executed a 65-year-old man on Wednesday who had spent more than three decades on death row for the murder of a woman he met at a bar. Robert Waterhouse was put to death by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, the fourth inmate executed in the United States this year. He was pronounced dead at 8:22 p.m. local time, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. He was sentenced to die for the January 1980 murder of Deborah Kammerer, a 29-year-old St. Petersburg woman who encountered Waterhouse at a bar in the Tampa Bay area.

KARAK, Dec 9: Unidentified gunmen shot dead a young man as he came out of a court in Takht Nusrati after the proceedings of the alleged gang rape of his sister in Karak on Friday. Alamzeb Khattak, 24, had steadfastly supported his sister`s fight for justice in the face of threats and unrelenting pressure from the accused who include three policemen. His cold-blooded murder in the precinct of a court prompted the provincial home department order “a thorough and transparent probe into any security lapse” ... Police had arrested the four accused in the rape case, including inspector Peer Mohsin...

Police in Tennessee have arrested the jilted woman's father and another man and charged them with murder. Billy Clay Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth were killed last month after they deleted Jenelle Potter, the daughter of one of the suspects, from their "friends" list. Both were shot in the head and Mr Payne's throat was cut. The couple's eight-month-old baby was found in the mother's arms, unharmed, when the bodies were discovered. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen," said Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece, who has worked in local law enforcement for 27 years. "We've had murders, but nothing...

A Tennessee couple who 'unfriended' a woman on Facebook were murdered in their home by the jilted woman's father and another man, police said on Thursday. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen," Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece said, adding he had never seen anything like it in his 27 years in law enforcement in the area. "We've had murders, but nothing like this. This is just senseless." He said Billy Clay Payne, Jr. and Billie Jean Hayworth were killed last month after they deleted Jenelle Potter, the daughter of one of the suspects, from their 'friends' list. Both were...

EDINURG — A capital murder suspect made his involvement in the kidnapping and slaying of a coworker too obvious when he hid the body at his brother’s property, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. A passer-by found the body of German Duque Gonzalez, 65, on Feb. 1 under a pile of tires in the 4600 block of Marshall Street north of Palmview. Gonzalez, a baker, left his Alton home at 1 a.m. that same morning to begin his bread-making shift at Valeria’s Bakery in Mission — a routine he had followed for the past two years. He never made it to work....

Alyssa Bustamante A Missouri teenager who told authorities she wanted to know what it felt like to kill pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder, telling a judge that she strangled a 9-year-old neighbor with her hands, stabbed her in the chest and cut her throat with a knife. Alyssa Bustamante pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Oct. 21, 2009, killing of Elizabeth Olten in St. Martins, a rural town just west of Jefferson City. -Snip- Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce then asked Bustamante to describe what she did. “I strangled her and stabbed her in...

Josh Powell Tragedy: Son Said Mom Was In Trunk of Car, Lawyer Claims The young sons of Susan and Josh Powell, who died with their father when he ignited an explosion in their Washington home, were beginning to verbalize that their mother was in the trunk of their father's car on the night that she disappeared in 2009, a lawyer for the missing woman's parents said. Attorney Steve Downing told the Associated Press that Braden and Charles Powell, who were 2 and 4 at the time of Susan Powell's disappearance, were beginning to tell their grandparents details about the night...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Susan G. Komen bunch, the Race for the Cure, whatever? They have caved big time to the feminazis at Planned Parenthood. It is stunning! Yesterday everybody was holding firm, and today Nancy Brinker who runs the Susan Komen group (I think it was her sister) made a big time cave. Biiiig time. Abortion is the sacrament to the religion of liberalism. Nobody is gonna mess with that money's flow. Nobody is gonna mess with that pile of money. Nobody's gonna mess with that at all. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to talk about this Susan G....

A Guatemalan wife and mother of two, Cristina Siekavizza, went missing July 7. Authorities believe her husband murdered her, and Guatemalan news media have reported the English-speaking husband, Roberto Barreda de León, has probably fled to the United States.

We are 23 days into the 2012 session of the Virginia General Assembly, and things are moving fast! Over the past few days, we've had some really awful legislation pass committees, including HB62. HB62 is an attempt to repeal Medicaid funding for abortion for women whose pregnancies have been diagnosed with severe fetal abnormalities. These cases are rare and often these pregnancies are very wanted by the families. HB62 will punish the poorest women of Virginia by adding a crippling financial impact to a devastating diagnosis. Please take action and let your Delegate know you OPPOSE HB62!

MEXICO CITY -- The U.S. Embassy in Mexico says two Americans have been slain outside the northern industrial city of Monterrey, an area plagued by drug violence. It identifies them as John and Wanda Casias. The embassy says the former Amarillo, Texas, couple's family has been notified and it is providing relatives consular services. The embassy hasn't confirmed reports that the killing happened Tuesday. Its statement provides no other details. Valerie Alirez in Greeley, Colo., is John Casias' eldest child. She says he and his wife were found dead Tuesday in Santiago, Nuevo Leon, by one of her brothers.

It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup, goes the old Washington cliché. In the case of the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, it’s both. As Attorney General Eric Holder gets ready to face more congressional grilling Thursday, something’s clearly rotten at the Justice Department. The stench goes all the way to the top — to Holder. Friday, the feds disclosed documents that show that despite Holder’s claim during congressional testimony that he’d only learned of F&F “a few weeks” earlier (a claim later amended to “a couple of months”), he has known (or should have known) about it all along...

Yesterday, the Senate Education & Health Committee passed Senate Bill 484, which would force women to have an ultrasound 24 hours prior to having an abortion for political—not medical—reasons. Your Senator is expected to vote on this bill early next week. Tell Your Senator: VOTE NO ON SENATE BILL 484! This bill is an intrusion into private, personal medical decisions that women should make in consultation with their physician. It and others like it are being pushed this year by opponents of women’s health in states all across the country. Mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods are simply delay tactics that...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A key witness in a murder case fears for her life, according to her attorney. Oklahoma City attorney David Slane represents a woman who says she witnessed the brutal murder of Carina Saunders.

In the Times of January 24 is an article headlined, "2 Palestinian Legislators Are Arrested in East Jerusalem Protest." The article reported, "Israel arrested two Palestinian legislators affiliated with Hamas as they staged a protest in the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in East Jerusalem on Monday, an act criticized by the Palestinian leadership as a blow to the first direct meetings between the Israeli and Palestinian sides in more than a year now underway in Jordan." Actually there were three men protesting: Muhammad Totah, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, Khaled Abu Arafeh, a...

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) — Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel on Tuesday again insisted on his innocence in a 1975 killing, as he pleaded with a three-judge panel to reduce his prison sentence of 20 years to life. Skakel's lawyer, Hubert Santos, argued in Middletown Superior Court that the sentence Skakel received after his 2002 murder conviction in the beating death of Martha Moxley when the two were teen neighbors in wealthy Greenwich was excessive. Santos repeated his claim, which has been rejected by other state courts, that Skakel should have been tried in juvenile court, where the maximum sentence for a...

When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti. That never happened. Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

Los Angeles police completed their biggest search in recent memory Friday, with 120 investigators scouring seven acres in the Hollywood hills looking for additional body parts of a man whose severed head, hands and feets were discovered earlier this week, authorities said. But the search, which began Tuesday, didn't find additional limbs or a torso, and detectives are continuing their investigation, police said Friday. "We have no updates of new body parts," said Cleon Joseph, a police spokesman. Upon concluding the hillside search, police Friday reopened Bronson Canyon Park beneath the Hollywood sign and urged hikers and other recreational visitors...

The chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona has cited his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in refusing on Friday to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in its ongoing investigation into the failed “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and committee chairman, said the prosecutor, Patrick J. Cunningham, had been subpoenaed by the committee to testify on Tuesday but his attorney notified the panel that Mr. Cunningham intended to exercise his right not to incriminate himself at his scheduled deposition. “The assertion of the Fifth Amendment by...

Here's something Chicagoans can celebrate. Or is it? Police Supt. Garry McCarthy announced Thursday the city of Chicago went 24 hours without a murder or shooting. Wednesday marked Chicago's first shooting- and murder-free day for almost a year. Early 2011 was the last time the city was this still, McCarthy said.

NEW YORK – A 24-year-old man who pleaded guilty to murder and other crimes in a violent stabbing rampage in New York City last winter was sentenced Wednesday to 200 years in prison during a hearing in which he hurled epithets at one of his victims and was told by the judge that he was a "sociopath." Maksim Gelman, born in Ukraine, pleaded guilty in November in Brooklyn to murder and other charges in the spree in February 2011, which included stabbing his stepfather and two others to death, fatally running down a pedestrian, stealing a car and attacking a...

A Texas medical student well-known in her community as an Iranian activist was mysteriously shot and killed in her car, just yards from her home. Gelareh Bagherzadeh, 30, was driving through her Houston townhouse complex around midnight on Monday when she was shot dead through her car window. "When officers arrived, they found a vehicle had run into a garage door at that location with the engine running and tires spinning on the pavement. Ms. Bagherzadeh was found slumped over in the driver's seat," the Houston Police Department said in a statement. Authorities said nothing appeared to have been stolen...

This is chilling. This is in Texas. Iranian grad student, activist killed in Houston KSAT News (hat tip Armaros) HOUSTON - A woman whom Houston police described as an activist on behalf of Iranian women's civil rights was found shot dead at the wheel of her car after it crashed into a townhouse garage. Houston police said the shooting happened around 12:30 a.m. Monday in a posh development near the Galleria. According to investigators, someone walked up to the passenger's side of 30-year-old Gelareh Bagherzadeh's car and shot her in the head. Bagherzadeh's body was found inside her running car,...

Rewards totaling $15,000 were posted today for information leading to the arrests and convictions of the men who beat Kevin Kless to death in the Historic District over the weekend. After the city announced it was offering $10,000, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which represents Philadelphia police officers, said today it would put up another $5,000. Police, at the same time, offered a slightly different account of events leading up to the killing early Saturday. In a statement, police said that after leaving an Old City bar with his girlfriend and another woman, Kless tried to flag down...

MONTEVIDEO — Unconditional bail was set at $750,000 this morning for Darek Jon Nelson, 24, of Montevideo, who faces murder and manslaughter charges for the stabbing death of 18-year-old Vinessa Lozano Friday night in Montevideo. Nelson made his first appearance before District Judge Dwayne Knutsen in Chippewa County District Court. According to the complaint, Nelson began planning to kill Lozano on Jan. 9, after he became upset that Lozano didn’t come to his home on Jan. 8. Nelson told investigators that he hid a knife in his hooded sweatshirt while he worked his shift at the Pizza Ranch restaurant. He...

...Gelareh Bagherzadeh was studying molecular genetic technology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She was of Iranian descent and was active in promoting Iranian women's rights, Houston Police Department spokesman Victor Senties said. She was a vocal critic of the Iranian government, according to prior interviews with the Houston Chronicle. Whether discrimination or her personal background was connected to her death was not clear, Senties said. "At this point, it does not appear that she was targeted," Senties said. Investigators do not know the motive for the shooting, he said. Bagherzadeh was shot about 12:30 a.m. outside the family's home in...

After having exhausted the indignant possibilities of protesting the extinction of whales, pelicans and polar bears, the left has found a new endangered species to be outraged about. Iranian nuclear scientists. It's one thing to hug a polar bear or a tree, but it's another to embrace an Iranian nuclear scientist, who may well be a jolly and colorful fellow with a family and a paint by numbers coloring kit of an atom, but also happens to be a participant in a plot to kill millions of people. The left which has all the moral sense of a squashed peanut...

A lay leader of Israel's Christian minority was stabbed to death during an Orthodox Christmas procession by a person dressed as Santa Claus, his church said. Six Israeli Arabs have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in Friday's murder of Gabi Kadees in Jaffa, a predominantly Arab port district of Tel Aviv. Mr Kadees was stabbed in the back during a parade marking Jesus's birth according to the Eastern church calender, Israeli media said. Last month, Mr Kadees won a third term as the lay leader of the Greek Orthodox community in the town in an election Israeli media says...

Crime rates in the Arab sector are a cause for concern as Ministry of Public Security figures reveal that in 2011 Arabs were involved in 67% of the murder cases and 70% of attempted murder cases. In efforts to fight the soaring crime rates, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch will on Sunday present ministers with a perennial plan to improve personal and community security within the Arab sector. The data also revealed that Arabs were involved in 38% of aggravated assault cases as well as 36% of robbery cases and 52% of arson incidents. Nevertheless, the crime rates referring to...

Widow of Marine Corps Colonel Involved in Haditha Trials Launches Campaign to Prove Her Husband Was Murdered PRESS RELEASE January 12, 2012 – Easley, SC – Kimberly Stahlman, widow of Colonel Michael Stahlman USMC, is fighting to prove that her husband did not commit suicide but was instead murdered. However, the Marine Corps refuses to help. As part of this fight she partnered with Tracy Shue, widow of Colonel Philip Shue USAF and writer/military family advocate Cilla McCain and drafted a Bill of Rights for Bereaved Military Families. To bring this campaign to the public, they have started a petition...

A mentally ill grandfather died after police officers strapped him naked to a chair, smothered him with a 'spit hood' and pepper-sprayed him 10 times during a 43-hour ordeal, it has been claimed. Nick Christie, 62, was allegedly tortured in the 'Devil's Chair' at Lee County jail after being detained by Florida police officers in March 2009 following a 'mental breakdown'. The hood, designed to stop him from spitting at officers, meant he could not escape the noxious spray's fumes - and he was never allowed to clean the residue from his body. His family is now suing Lee County...

We can only link the Arizona Republic.

Seven teenage boys were packed into the Toyota Corolla, sitting on top of each other, when the car pulled over on the 1500 block of East Luzerne Street in Juniata Park. It was about 10:30 Tuesday night, and the youths were looking for a fight, police said. It had started in school with an argument between some of the friends in the car and three teenage brothers, spilled onto Facebook with threats, and escalated into plans to settle the matter with a physical battle. As the teens waited in the car, a man in a gray hoodie came out of...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Two depositions of doctors who conducted psychological evaluations on Casey Anthony before her murder trial last summer were unsealed and released by the court Wednesday. Jeffery Danziger deposition - April 7, 2011 Dr. Jeffrey Danziger and Dr. William Weitz both conducted psychological evaluations on Anthony and before her murder trial, both doctors were deposed on what she told them regarding the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008 and alleged sexual abuse by her father. The depositions were done on April 7, 2011 and April 13, 2011 and were ordered sealed by...

For the first time in 45 years, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top causes of death... the murder rate fell enough in 2010 to drop it out of the top 15 causes. Criminologists have not reached a consensus about what's been driving murder rates down

(AP) SALT LAKE CITY - A bodybuilder who was shot in the head during a carjacking outside a Nevada casino — then drove herself to get help — was released from a Salt Lake City hospital just days after the shooting, which authorities said figured in a two-state crime spree. Rattana Keomanivong, operator of the Animal House Training and Nutrition gym in West Wendover, Nev., is a tough woman who earned the title "Wendover Strongest" during a weightlifting fundraiser last summer, police Sgt. David Wiskerchen said Wednesday. Keomanivong was able to drive herself to the police station after being shot...

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - A young man dressed as "Father Frost" - the Russian equivalent of Father Christmas - was stabbed to death in Tajikistan on Monday in an attack police believe was motivated by religious hatred, two police sources said. A crowd attacked 24-year-old Parviz Davlatbekov and stabbed him with a knife as he visited relatives in the early hours of Monday dressed as Father Frost, who by tradition brings Russian children presents at New Year. Russian cultural influence remains strong in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic. "We have witness statements that say the crowd beat Parviz and stabbed him...

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County investigators trying to determine a motive behind a New Year's Day murder-suicide involving two Navy pilots and two other people are looking at whether jealousy may have played a role. Sheriff's Capt. Duncan Fraser said Thursday investigators are looking at all aspects, including whether there was a relationship between one of the pilot's sisters who was also killed and the Navy pilot who committed suicide. John Robert Reeves, 25, shot himself in the head, and the three others with him were murdered, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said, citing autopsy results. Fellow Navy...

Euthanasia is once again in the spotlight. The Carter case, now before the courts in B.C., seeks to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada. It’s a constitutional challenge which seeks to legalize these practices as medical treatment and to be regulated within provincial health-care regulations.On April 21, 2010, Canada’s parliament soundly defeated Bill C-384, which sought to amend the Criminal Code, allowing the right to die with dignity. It was a bad piece of legislation which, had it passed, would have directly threatened the lives of persons with disabilities.We won this battle. However, Canada’s right-to-die lobby aren’t giving up...

A murder investigation is under way in England after a woman's body was found on the grounds of Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham country estate. The remains were discovered on the vast estate in Eastern England shortly after 4 p.m. on New Year's Day, according to multiple reports. Sky News reported that the body was found by a member of the public in woodlands in Anmer, a tiny village 115 miles northeast of London that is situated on the 20,000-acre Sandringham estate. The remains were reportedly located about a mile from the main gate to Sandringham House, where the queen spent New...

A shooting in Coronado, Calif., that left four people dead, including two Navy pilots and one of their sisters, is being investigated as an apparent murder-suicide. The New Year's Day shooting in a condo there claimed the lives of siblings David and Karen Reis, 25 and 24, respectively, as well as David's roommate, John Reeves, 25, and a fourth unknown man. David Reis and Reeves were both pilots in the Navy, and shared the condo home in Coronado, sources told ABC affiliate KGTV. The other dead man is a 31-year-old civilian who lives in Chula Vista, according to the county...

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A trusted family friend who confessed to police that he bludgeoned to death a 9-year-old Indiana girl in his care then dismembered her just days before Christmas was formally charged Friday in the killing. Michael Plumadore, 39, was charged in Fort Wayne with murder, abuse of a corpse and removing a dead body from the scene in the Dec. 22 death of Aliahna Maroney-Lemmon. Allen County prosecutor's office chief investigator Danielle Edenfield said the charges will be read to Plumadore in jail, where he was being held without bond. An initial court hearing on the formal...

Authorities are investigating human remains found at the same U.S. border lake where a Colorado man was reported to have been killed by Mexican drug cartel members last year. A professional fisherman found the skeletal remains on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border, according to multiple reports. The skeleton was found about 15 miles from where 30-year-old David Hartley was last seen alive on Sept. 30, 2010. His wife, Tiffany Hartley, said the couple had set out on Wave Runners to take photos of a half-submerged church on the Mexican side of the lake when they...

[SNIP] Murders are up again this year in Philadelphia, and the city still has the highest homicide rate of the nation's 10 most populous cities, according to stats provided by each city's police department. At the same time, fewer murders are getting solved. With a few days left in the year, the city's homicide tally stood at 324 Wednesday, including the eight victims allegedly killed in previous years by West Philly abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Last year, 306 people were killed, and the year before, 302. But despite the jump in homicides this year, city officials prefer to focus on the...

Truth be told, I quickly discounted my initial reaction that Muslims might be involved because the killer was reported to be in a Santa costume. Stupid me. The ‘Santa’ who massacred his family on Christmas morning was a Muslim who was enraged that his daughter was dating a non-Muslim.

A babysitter and trusted neighbor has confessed that he bludgeoned a 9-year-old Indiana girl to death with a brick then dismembered her, hiding her head, hands and feet at his home and dumping the rest of her remains nearby, police said Tuesday. Allen County sheriff's investigators said in an affidavit that 39-year-old Michael Plumadore admits he killed Aliahna Lemmon on Thursday. According to the affidavit, Plumadore told police that after beating Aliahna to death, he stuffed her body into trash bags and hid her in the freezer at his home in a rundown trailer park in Fort Wayne. He said...

Islamic honor killing in Texas: "Santa" who murdered family on Christmas morning was Muslim who didn't like his daughter dating a non-Muslim Aziz Yazdanpanah, a Muslim, didn't like his daughter's non-Muslim boyfriend and was exhibiting stalker behavior. “She couldn’t date at all until she was a certain age, but when he was going to let her date she couldn’t date anyone outside of their race or religion.” Again and again we have seen honor killings in which fathers kill daughters who are dating non-Muslims or have supposedly besmirched the family honor by some sexual indiscretion. Lt. Todd Dearing says that...

A Lancaster County woman was beaten to death in Kershaw County with a baseball bat after being kidnapped and assaulted, authorities said. A suspect is in custody and the attack appears random, Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews said. “This was a horribly brutal and senseless crime,” he said. “One of the worst I have ever seen.” According to Matthews: Beverly Hope Melton, 30, of the Town of Kershaw, was in a convenience store around noon Monday and reportedly was harassed by a man later identified as Nickolas Jermaine Miller, 23. Around 1:15 p.m., Melton’s grandmother contacted Chesterfield County sheriff’s deputies...

Grapevine police investigate the scene where they found seven people dead outside Dallas in Grapevine, Texas, Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011. Four women and three men who police believe to be related were found apparently shot to death, and authorities said they believe the shooter is among the dead. Six members of a Texas family apparently opened Christmas presents just before a relative dressed as Santa Claus showed up, opened fire and killed them before killing himself, police said Monday. Grapevine police spokesman Sgt. Robert Eberling said the shooter showed up in the Santa outfit shortly before gunfire erupted and was...