Tag: Murder
Man charged with shooting wife’s lover in the shower
A Texas man allegedly shot and killed his employee in the shower — after he found out that the worker had been having an affair with his wife, according to police and a new report.
Edwin Figueroa, 23, has been charged with murder in connection with the slaying of Rafael Nunez Serrano, 22, at the victim’s southwest Houston apartment around 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, police said.
An enraged Figueroa bought a pistol, did cocaine and downed some beer before heading to Serrano’s house — where he shot him in the shower, local station ABC 13 reported. Serrano was wounded but stumbled out into the apartment complex’s parking lot, prompting someone to call 911, according to the report.
As paramedics rushed him to the hospital, Serrano declared that he had been shot by his “boss,” police said. He died in surgery, ABC 13 reported.
Homicide investigators searching the area learned that Houston police officers had detained Figueroa. He was interviewed by detectives and confessed to shooting Serrano, whom he called a friend of about four years, according to police.
Figueroa had previously beaten up Serrano in a fight over the affair, ABC 13 reported.
During his court appearance, Figueroa’s bond was set at $100,000, according to the station. He’s set to return to court Monday.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/12/man-charged-with-shooting-wifes-lover-in-the-shower/
Man pleads guilty to killing wife, taking kids to dump her body
A Texas man pleaded guilty to killing his wife and then taking his kids on a road trip to dump her body, according to reports.
Jonathan Allee, 31, agreed to a plea deal Tuesday in Harris County Criminal Courthouse that would require he serve 35 years in prison for the 2016 murder, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Prosecutors allege the defendant beat and strangled his wife, 28-year-old Elizabeth Ferrell, before tossing her body in a waterway west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Her body was discovered with blunt force trauma to the head on April 23, 2016.
The prosecution team pointed to how Allee allegedly changed his story. He initially told investigators he saw his wife four days before her body was found, but then claimed he’d last seen her on April 21, 2016.
The couple’s 5-year-old daughter told police Allee took her and her baby sister on a road trip. Allee allegedly stopped the car at a point during the trip and got something from the trunk, according to the Houston Chronicle.
“God only knows how this will impact [their daughter] in the future when she figures out why he stopped on that bridge,” Ferrell’s cousin, Daphne Hesse, told the newspaper.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/03/05/man-pleads-guilty-to-killing-wife-taking-kids-to-dump-her-body/
Photo Credit: Jonathan Allee and Elizabeth Ferrell Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office
Good Samaritan Fatally Stabbed After Stopping To Give Woman Money
A Baltimore woman was fatally stabbed Saturday after she rolled down her car window to give money to a seemingly struggling young mother, according to police.
Jacquelyn Smith, 52, was in the front passenger seat of a car with her family when they stopped to help the woman, the Baltimore Police Department told HuffPost.
Believed to be in her 20s, the woman was reportedly holding a cardboard sign stating “Please Help me feed my Baby” while cradling either a baby or an object that had been wrapped to look like one, according to the police statement.
After handing the woman money, a black male reportedly approached the vehicle to thank the family, the statement said.
It is alleged he then “reached in to grab the female victim’s wallet when a struggle ensued.”
“The male suspect then produced a knife and stabbed the victim in the torso before fleeing the area on foot with the female suspect who was holding the sign,” the police statement said.
Doctors were unable to save Smith, who succumbed to her injuries.
Homicide detectives are currently working to identify both the male and female suspects.
via: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/baltimore-baby-stabbed-fatal-car_us_5c047719e4b0a173c0243b80
Honor student smiled, laughed as she stabbed pal in love-triangle
A Michigan teen accused of fatally stabbing a classmate was “smiling and laughing” during the attack, according to reports.
Two dozen students watched in horror as Tanaya Lewis, 17, killed Danyna Gibson, 16, with a kitchen knife in a classroom Wednesday at Fitzgerald High School in Warren, Mich., Fox 2 Detroit reported Friday.
“Witnesses said the defendant was smiling and laughing as she was chasing the victim,” Detective Donald Seidel of the Warren Police Department told a judge Friday, WXYZ-TV reported Saturday.
One blow penetrated Danyna’s heart, the station reported.
Prosecutors said Lewis screamed, “I’m going to kill her” as a teacher tried to shove her out of the classroom, according to the station.
Police said there was animosity between the two straight-A students over a boy.
Lewis is being held without bail on a capital murder charge.
She said “yes” to the judge when asked if she understood that she is facing life behind bars without parole.
Danyna’s family is soliciting funds on GoFundMe for her funeral.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/17/honor-student-smiled-laughed-as-she-stabbed-pal-in-love-triangle-cops/
Anaesthetist killed wife and daughter ‘with gas-filled yoga ball’
An anaesthetist gassed his wife and daughter to death using a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide, a Hong Kong court has heard.
Prosecutors told the High Court that Khaw Kim-sun left the inflatable ball in the boot of a car where the gas leaked out and killed them, according to reports from court Wednesday.
His wife and 16-year-old daughter were found on a roadside in a locked yellow Mini Cooper in 2015, in a case which initially baffled police.
The pair were certified dead at the same hospital where Khaw worked and a post-mortem concluded they had died from inhaling carbon monoxide.
Police found a deflated yoga ball in the back of the car.
Khaw cried Thursday as the pathologist who examined the bodies was called to testify and began to give details about the autopsy he carried out on his daughter, according to an AFP reporter in court.
Khaw has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.
Prosecutors had said Wednesday that Khaw, a 53-year-old Malaysian national, was having an affair with a student and his wife would not grant him a divorce.
They accused him of hatching a deliberate plot to murder his wife, the South China Morning Post reported.
Prosecutors said it was likely that Khaw had not intended to kill his daughter.
The court heard that in a police interview, Khaw had said he had urged his younger daughter to stay at home and finish her homework on the day of the deaths, according to Apple Daily.
Khaw had been seen filling two balls with carbon monoxide at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was an associate professor, reports said.
He told colleagues he planned to use the gas on rabbits but later told police that he had taken it to get rid of rats at home.
The family’s domestic helper Siti Maesaroh told the court Thursday that the couple’s three other children had gone to school on the day of the deaths, but Lily was having a holiday.
She said the children had a good relationship with their parents.
Siti added that Khaw and his wife had separate bedrooms and cooked their meals separately, but said she did not know anything about their relationship.
The couple’s eldest daughter is due to testify Friday.
Article via: Anesthetist killed wife and daughter ‘with gas-filled yoga ball’
Dad killed sleeping wife with hammer in front of son
A Florida man allegedly used a hammer to kill his wife while she was sleeping in bed with their young son, according to officials.
Marc Alan Berkowitz, 42, was arrested Thursday in the grisly murder of Anastasiya Savitskaya at their Plantation home, news station WBBH reported.
Police claim Berkowitz bludgeoned his 33-year-old wife because he was upset that she wanted to leave him and had exchanged texts with another man.
During the bloody assault, Berkowitz reportedly told his 7-year-old son who had awoken to “turn over” so he wouldn’t witness the scene.
The boy, however, later told investigators that he saw the “boo boo” on his mother’s head and watched his father drag her into the living room.
Authorities said the child told them that “mommy wouldn’t wake up” after the alleged assault.
Berkowitz admitted to police that he strangled his wife in the living room to “put her out of her misery.”
He then allegedly woke up his mother, Barbara Waterson, to confess to the horrific slaying, WBBH reported. Waterson called 911 but Berkowitz grabbed the phone and told the dispatcher, “I killed my wife.”
Berkowitz is being held without bail at the Broward County Jail on charges for premeditated murder.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/07/03/dad-killed-sleeping-wife-with-hammer-in-front-of-son-cops/
Man who gunned down girlfriend was ‘upset’ with her outfit
A jealous boyfriend in Arizona is accused of killing his girlfriend because he was “upset” about her outfit, authorities said.
Martin Larney, of Mesa, was arrested Monday in the shooting death of his 22-year-old girlfriend, Alina Duwyenie, AZCentral reported.
Police said Larney, 22, changed his story twice before confessing to shooting Duwyenie on Sunday morning at his apartment over her clothing choice.
Officers responded to the scene around 8:30 a.m. on reports of an accidental shooting. They rushed Duwyenie to a local hospital, where she died.
Larney’s brother was home at the time of the incident and told investigators that he heard a “loud noise.”
“[The brother] ran into the room and found the defendant sitting next to the victim holding her head where she was injured,” the police report stated.
Larney admitted to authorities that he owned the gun, which he said he purchased a month earlier for protection. The loaded weapon accidentally fired, he claimed, when he threw the firearm across the couch.
The boyfriend, however, then changed his story and claimed that he was attempting to load the gun when a shot fired.
Ultimately, he confessed to gunning down his girlfriend because he was “jealous and upset at [her] for what she was wearing,” according to police.
Larney was arrested and booked at Maricopa County Jail, where his bond is set at $750,000.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/05/15/man-who-gunned-down-girlfriend-was-upset-over-her-outfit-cops/
She wore the weapon in a photo with a friend — then killed her with it
It was just past midnight when the two friends huddled for a photo in March of 2015.
Cheyenne Rose Antoine’s right arm is outstretched, but disappears at a sharp angle — the telltale sign of a selfie. Brittney Gargol, with auburn hair draped across her shoulder, produces an upturned smirk.
And in the left bottom corner, peeking just into the frame, Antoine captures what would become the main piece of evidence used to put her away for manslaughter.
Antoine, now 21, pleaded guilty to killing Gargol and was sentenced Monday to seven years in a Canadian prison. The decision came nearly three years after the body of Gargol was found dumped on a road outside Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
An autopsy revealed Gargol was killed by strangulation, and a belt found at the scene matched the one Antoine wore in the photo posted by Gargol just hours before she was killed, investigators concluded.
Two years passed before evidence against Antoine started to mount, eventually leading to her arrest.
A person had approached the Gargol family to tell them about an alcohol-fueled rant that included Antoine’s confession that she had a fight with Gargol and choked her, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix reported.
But police by then were already doubting Antoine’s explanation to them of what occurred that night.
The two women readied for a night on the town and snapped the photo before going out, prosecutor Robin Ritter told The Washington Post.
Antoine later told police that she left Gargol sometime after midnight and met up with her uncle before dawn, to walk along a river.
But after reviewing surveillance videos that would have verified Antoine’s statement, police questioned her uncle again, and he admitted he told a lie to protect his niece.
[Commit a crime? Your Fitbit, key fob or pacemaker could snitch on you.]
Investigators uncovered digital clues, too.
For one thing, prosecutors said, Antoine’s phone pinged WiFi signals at locations and times consistent with an investigator’s reconstructed timeline of the slaying.
Modern society is awash in smartphones, smartwatches and other devices that can track, tag and pinpoint their users at exact moments. That has been a boon to investigators who can confirm details in photos and videos posted to social media, but can also help the wrongly accused show they were somewhere other than a crime scene.
That was apparently understood by Antoine, though her attempt to create an alibi was poorly executed. After the slaying, Antoine wrote on Gargol’s Facebook page: “Where are you? Haven’t heard from you. Hope you made it home safe.”
Ritter said the Facebook comment showed a deliberate attempt by Antoine to dupe investigators about her involvement, with a conveniently time-stamped message of concern. But investigators concluded Antoine knew her friend was not home safe, because she had strangled her to death outside of town.
The photo of Antoine’s belt proved to be a cornerstone of the prosecution’s evidence. Prosecutors said the belt was found at the crime scene, and they believe Antoine killed her friend with it.
The belt’s weave and color, evident in the selfie, were consistent with marks inside her friend’s car and indicated a struggle, said Ritter, a senior Crown prosecutor.
What appears more elusive is the motive, which Ritter said may have started over an argument about a cellphone. “I don’t think we’re ever going to get the answer,” he said.
In a statement read in court by her lawyer, Lisa Watson, Antoine said: “I’ll never forgive myself. It’s wrong and shouldn’t have happened.”
Antoine maintained she did not remember what happened after she and Gargol left a house party the night of the slaying.
Gargol’s family offered emotional statements and sharp rebukes of Antoine.
Gargol’s father, Everett Hillbom, told the court he was shocked by the death of his young daughter, who was 18 at the time. He expected to repair her car the day after she died — “the last time I would have hugged her,” he said, according to the Star Phoenix.
“You were her friend. She trusted you,” Gargol’s stepmother, Kristi Wickenhauser, told the defendant.
Though the prosecution crafted a strategy of damning information about Antoine from publicly available Facebook posts, mining data through personal devices and social media are on the frontier of criminal justice. Laws on recovering private data have not caught up with the proliferation of devices that record them, privacy experts in both the United States and Canada have warned.
“We have recognized for some time now that new technologies have the potential to eviscerate privacy rights,” said Nader Hasan, a Toronto attorney focusing on criminal and constitutional law.
The business research company Gartner estimates that 8.4 billion devices were connected to the Internet worldwide in 2017, a 31 percent increase over the previous year. By 2020, the company estimates there will be roughly three smart devices for every person on the planet.
Andrew Ferguson, a University of the District of Columbia law professor, called this an era of “sensorveillance,” The Post’s Justin Jouvenal reported.
Crime scenes and criminals are covered with hair follicles, droplets of blood and now, in the 21st century, data from smart devices.
[A teen was found buried in a shallow grave. His former classmate is now charged with murder.]
In one instance, Connecticut police used multiple segments of data to bring in Richard Dabate for the alleged 2015 murder of his wife, Connie. His alibi, that a masked intruder tied him and killed his wife after he returned to inspect a home alarm signal, contradicted information harvested from Connie’s Fitbit wristband that recorded her movements after he said she was dead. Police later learned the alarm was triggered by his own key fob, and an email he claimed to send to his boss from the car was tied to an IP address associated with his home, The Post’s Jouvenal reported.
And in another case, an Ohio man in 2016 was charged with arson and insurance fraud after he claimed his house was ablaze as he slept. Police filed a search warrant for data from his pacemaker, and his heart rate and cardiac rhythms appeared to show he was awake at the time.
Social media appears to be a particularly malleable form of covering tracks, though it may not always be convincing: After Antoine’s sentencing, Ritter, the senior prosecutor, said it was “quite remarkable” how investigators used Facebook and other technology to build their case.
Six months after her friend’s death, Antoine was back on Gargol’s Facebook page, posting a comment on the photo that would ultimately help send her to prison.
“i miss you soo much bert! wish heaven had visiting hours so i could come see you,” Antoine wrote. “but i’m so glad you came & visited me in my dream lastnight.”
“i’m blessed to have met you & have you be apart of my life,still can’t believe those last two days were going to be the last 2 days i got to be able to hug you, talk to you & laugh with you , i will cherish && hold all our good memories,” she added.
Danish inventor is charged with killing and dismembering reporter Kim Wall on his submarine
The Danish inventor at the center of the mysterious death of Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall, whose dismembered body was found off the coast of Copenhagen in August, was formally charged with killing her Tuesday.
Prosecutors say that during a trip on his private submarine, Peter Madsen, 47, either strangled or cut Wall’s throat before severing her body and tossing it into the sea. Madsen is charged with homicide, dismemberment and the indecent handling of a corpse.
“This is a very unusual and extremely brutal case which has had tragic consequences for Kim Wall and her relatives,” prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said in a statement from the Danish prosecution authority.
Wall’s disappearance and gruesome death has drawn international attention, demonstrating the risks female freelance journalists can face. Friends and family say Wall, 30, was a brave reporter who had reported from Sri Lanka, the Marshall Islands and North Korea.
Madsen in October denied killing Wall and said she died of carbon monoxide poisoning inside his submarine while he was on deck. Wall boarded the submarine on Aug. 10 to report a story about Madsen, according to her family. Madsen is known in Denmark for raising money through crowdfunding to build rockets and submarines.
She was reported missing the next day. Madsen was rescued from Koge Bay, according to police, after purposely sinking his vessel, a 60-foot UC3 Nautilus.
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Mom accused of drowning 10-day-old son in bath
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Authorities say an upstate New York woman has been charged with second-degree murder for the bathtub drowning of her 10-day-old son.
Rochester police say officers responded Monday afternoon to a report of an unresponsive child at a home and found a baby in a bathtub.
Officials say the child, named Jeremiah, was taken to Rochester General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Mitchell was arraigned on the murder charge Tuesday morning in Rochester City Court. She pleaded not guilty and was ordered held in jail without bail. The name of the public defender assigned to her case wasn’t available.
Police say Mitchell also has a 7-year-old child, who’s currently in the care of a relative.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/11/14/mom-accused-of-drowning-10-month-old-son-in-bath/