Category Archives: US crime

A daring escape, a gunshot death: the tragic tale of an Alabama jailbreak

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Friends of Vicky White are baffled why she fled with her murder suspect boyfriend, before killing herself as police closed in

Maybe it was because she had endured the loss of two longtime partners over the last several years. Or perhaps she feared – if she didn’t go through with it – her loved ones would be killed.

Whatever the case, James Ballentine hopes there’s a good explanation for why his neighbor of nearly 40 years, Vicky White, ignited a romantic affair with an inmate of the rural Alabama jail where she was the assistant director, and helped him escape, before she shot herself to death as police closed in 11 days later and about 300 miles away. It was a story that captured national and global attention.

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Ex-eBay exec pleads guilty to terrorizing couple with spiders and funeral wreaths

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David Harville is one of six others charged for harassing the Boston duo who ran a new newsletter criticizing the company

A former eBay executive pleaded guilty on Thursday to participating in a scheme to terrorize the creators of an online newsletter that included the delivery of live spiders and other disturbing items to their home.

David Harville, eBay’s former director of global resiliency, is the final onetime eBay employee charged in the case to plead guilty. Six others have admitted to their roles in the harassment campaign targeting a Massachusetts couple who publish the newsletter EcommerceBytes, which eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.

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Man charged with murder in alleged scheme to inherit his mother’s fortune

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The man was rescued after his boat sank in 2016 but his mother was not. Investigators found the boat had been tampered with

A man found floating on a raft off the coast of Rhode Island in 2016 after his boat sank was charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with killing his mother at sea to inherit the family’s estate.

The eight-count indictment released in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, also says Nathan Carman shot and killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of an effort to defraud insurance companies, but he was not charged with that killing.

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Body of a Black girl found in dumpster in affluent Toronto neighbourhood

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Homicide investigators are trying to identify the child, whose cause of death is not yet known

Police in Canada are trying to identify a young Black girl whose body was found in a Toronto dumpster, a grim discovery that has shaken the city and seasoned investigators looking into the case.

The Toronto police service announced on Thursday that the body, discovered on Monday in an affluent neighbourhood, was that of a young Black girl, believed to be between the ages of four and seven.

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Ohio man who groped flight attendants gets 60 days in prison

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Maxwell Berry, 23, who was restrained in his seat with tape, also was sentenced to a year of supervised release after his jail time

An Ohio man who had to be restrained in his seat with tape after groping and assaulting flight attendants during a flight from Philadelphia to Miami last year has been sentenced by a federal judge to 60 days in prison.

Maxwell Berry, 23, also was sentenced by US district judge Robert Scola Jr to a year of supervised release after his jail time.

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‘Cheering section’ for violence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat

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The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boards

When police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.

The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan.

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Judge denies Trump’s request to end contempt order and $10,000-a-day fine

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New York judge said there was no evidence Trump had conducted a thorough search for the records sought by attorney general

A New York judge on Friday denied a request from Donald Trump’s lawyer to end a contempt-of-court finding against the former US president and kept in place $10,000-a-day fine over his failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the state attorney general investigating the business practices of Trump’s family company, the Trump Organization.

Justice Arthur Engoron in New York state court in Manhattan said he was not satisfied with an affidavit provided by Trump and said there was no evidence Trump had conducted a thorough search for the records sought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.

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Judge orders man who defaced Pride mural to write essay on Pulse shooting

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Judge says he needs more time to determine a punishment and orders Alexander Jerich to write 25-page essay on 2016 massacre

A Florida judge has ordered a man who defaced an LGBTQ+ Pride mural to write a 25-page essay about the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting.

Last June, the city of Delray Beach in south Florida unveiled a rainbow mural at an intersection on the fifth anniversary of the attack, in which a gunman killed 49 people at the club in Orlando.

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Donald Trump held in contempt in New York attorney general’s investigation

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New York judge holds former president in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents

A New York judge has held Donald Trump in contempt and fined him $10,000 a day, following the former president’s failure to hand over documents to prosecutors investigating his business practices.

Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, had asked for the contempt finding this month stating that Trump had not complied with a subpoena requiring him to produce documents and information.

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Florida bride and caterer charged after serving marijuana-laced food at wedding

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Police arrived at the venue to find wedding guests being treated for ‘symptoms consistent with that of someone who has used illegal drugs’

A Florida bride and her wedding caterer have been criminally charged after serving food laced with marijuana to their wedding guests, sickening them and sending several to hospital.

Danya Shea Svoboda, 42, and Jocelyn Montrinice Bryant, 31, who catered her wedding, face charges of violating Florida’s anti-tampering laws, delivery of marijuana and culpable negligence.

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Suspect in shooting that injured four near Washington school found dead, police say

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The man was identified from video he had posted on social media that appeared to show gunshots fired

A gunman opened fire on random victims from a sniper’s nest on the upper floor of an apartment building near an elite prep school in Washington, wounding four people before taking his own life as police burst into his dwelling.

Police said on Friday evening the suspect, Raymond Spencer, 23, of suburban Fairfax, Virginia, was initially identified from video he had posted on social media that appeared to show gunshots fired from the vantage point of an upper-floor window, with the misspelled label: “Shool shooting!”

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Actor Ezra Miller arrested on suspicion of assault in Hawaii

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The star ‘became irate’ after being asked to leave a private residence and reportedly threw a chair, which struck a woman

Fantastic Beasts star Ezra Miller has been arrested on suspicion of assault in Hawaii, just weeks after police on the Big Island arrested the actor for disorderly conduct and assault.

The star, 29, also known for playing the Flash in Justice League films, “became irate” after being asked to leave a private residence and reportedly threw a chair, which struck a woman on the forehead, according to a statement from the Hawaii police department.

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Sherri Papini pleads guilty to kidnapping hoax that led to massive search

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The California native pleads guilty to scheme that triggered three-week search before she resurfaced on Thanksgiving day in 2016

Sherri Papini, the California woman whose disappearance made national headlines and sparked a massive search before she reappeared on Thanksgiving day in 2016, pleaded guilty on Monday to faking her own kidnapping and lying to the FBI.

The 39-year-old from Redding, in the state’s far north, did not offer any explanation for the elaborate hoax or why she claimed two “Hispanic women” had kidnapped her at gunpoint and chained her to a pole for three weeks while depriving her of food, beating and branding her.

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Mayor calls for more psychiatric services after Brooklyn subway shooting

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Frank James, who allegedly shot 10 people on a subway train, openly talked about struggling with mental illness

Days after a man who openly talked about struggling with mental illness allegedly shot up a subway train in Brooklyn, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, called for his state to continue prioritizing an increase in the number of available psychiatric hospital beds.

Adams on Sunday said he understood the medical community’s shifting its focus to fighting the deadly coronavirus during the last two years, but at this point in the pandemic, it needed to pivot to addressing shortages in psychiatric services.

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Wealthy donor Ed Buck gets 30 years in prison for drugging gay men, two fatally

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He was found guilty on charges that he injected the men with methamphetamine in exchange for sex, leading to overdoses

The wealthy political activist and Democratic donor Ed Buck was sentenced to 30 years in prison on charges that he supplied and personally injected gay men with methamphetamine in exchange for sex, leading to two deaths and multiple other overdoses.

Buck, 67, was found guilty in July by a federal jury on all nine counts, including having a drug house, distributing methamphetamine and enticing men to travel for prostitution.

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Zack Tahhan is being hailed for his NYPD tipoff. That’s not the whole story

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After an arrest in the Brooklyn subway shooting, Tahhan has become a social media star. But there’s plenty of credit to go round

In the aftermath of the Brooklyn subway shooting, social media has found its latest star.

Zack Tahhan, 21, was quickly anointed as a hero on Wednesday following the arrest of Frank R James, the suspect in the attack that injured 29. But the real story, it seems, was more complicated – and Tahhan wasn’t the day’s only hero.

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Capitol riot defendant blames actions on Trump and false election claims

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Lawyer for man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol has vowed to show Trump abused his power to ‘authorize’ attack

Mentions of Donald Trump have been rare at the first few trials for people charged with storming the US Capitol, but that has changed: the latest Capitol riot defendant to go on trial is blaming his actions on the former president and his false claims about a stolen election.

Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol, doesn’t deny that he joined the mob on 6 January 2021. But his lawyer vowed Tuesday to show that Trump abused his power to “authorize” the attack.

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California jogger Sherri Papini admits faking her kidnapping in plea deal

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Papini will plead guilty to lying to authorities and mail fraud over 2016 incident that led to three-week search

Sherri Papini, the northern California woman charged last month with faking her kidnapping in 2016, accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors on Tuesday and acknowledged she had made up the story that prompted a frantic search and international headlines.

Her defense attorney William Portanova said his client would plead guilty to charges of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud.

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Brooklyn shooting: over 20 injured, including 10 shot, in subway attack

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Biden says ‘we’re not letting up until we find the perpetrator’ as manhunt under way for shooter

A gunman wearing a gas mask filled a crowded New York subway car with thick black smoke from a canister and opened fire on morning rush-hour passengers, injuring more than 20, including 10 with gunshot wounds.

A manhunt was under way on Tuesday after the shooter, described as a heavy-built Black male about 5ft 5in tall, wearing a green construction-type vest and hooded grey sweatshirt, fled the scene of the shooting. Officers were searching for a U-Haul truck with an Arizona license plate as of Tuesday afternoon, police told multiple media outlets, and the vehicle was later found.

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New York lieutenant governor quits after arrest on bribery and fraud charges

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Democrat Brian Benjamin pleads not guilty to several charges, as arrest creates political crisis for governor Kathy Hochul

New York’s lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, resigned on Tuesday in the wake of his arrest in a federal corruption investigation, the state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said.

The development created a political crisis for Hochul seven months after she selected Benjamin as a partner to make a fresh start in an office rocked by scandal after Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of bullying and sexual harassment.

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