Tag: murders
Sicko convicted of raping, murdering young nursing student and bragging about it
SAVANNAH, Tenn. — A Tennessee man was convicted Friday of kidnapping, raping and murdering a 20-year-old nursing student who disappeared from her home six years ago.
Zachary Adams was found guilty after an 11-day trial in Savannah, Tennessee. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Holly Bobo was 20 when she was reported missing from her home in rural Parsons on April 13, 2011.
Bobo’s disappearance led to a massive search and her case received national attention. Her remains were found in September 2014 in woods not far from her home in Decatur County, about 100 miles southwest of Nashville.
After the jury was let out of the courtroom, Bobo’s mother Karen hugged prosecutor Jennifer Nichols and Bobo’s father Dana hugged Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn.
A sentencing hearing involving the same jury that decided the verdict will begin Saturday. The murder charge can carry the death penalty.
Rickey Alexander, a Bobo family friend, said the verdict was “6 1/2 years in the making.” Alexander noted that Bobo used to sing at church. “She finally has the peace in the valley that she sang about.”
Thompson, the defense attorney, said she was extremely disappointed in the verdict, and she said Adams was very upset. “He was really shaking his head. He was white as a ghost.”
Judge C. Creed McGinley moved the trial from Decatur County to neighboring Hardin County in search of an unbiased jury. The jury deliberated 3½ hours Thursday and about seven hours Friday before reaching a verdict.
“I’m not sure you can get an unbiased jury” in a case that has received so much attention in the area, Thompson said.
Prosecutor Paul Hagerman declined comment.
Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams’ brother John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.
Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend Shayne Austin had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river in the day she was reported missing.
Autry was on a list of witnesses who were offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.
Autry’s lawyer has told the judge that a trial does not need to be set for Autry, indicating he has reached a deal with prosecutors. A trial date has not been set for John Dylan Adams.
The TBI has said that the Bobo investigation is the most exhaustive and expensive in the agency’s history.
But investigators found no DNA evidence connecting Bobo to any of the men. Instead, they relied on Autry’s story and other testimony from friends and jail inmates who said Adams spoke of harming Bobo.
Thompson had accused Autry of selling his “tall tale” to prosecutors in return for the death penalty.
“A lot of people believed that if you say something, it must be true,” Thompson said.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/09/22/sicko-convicted-of-raping-murdering-young-nursing-student/
Trio charged in killing of teen found sexually mutilated, burned
Three people have been charged in the murder of a Missouri teen whose body was found burned and sexually mutilated.
Police charged a man and two women Thursday in the killing of 17-year-old Joseph Steinfeld, the Houston Herald reported. The suspects were identified as Andrew Vrba, 18; Isis Schauer, 18; and Briana Calderas, 24.
All three were charged with first-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse. Vrba and his girlfriend, Isis Schauer, were also slapped with armed criminal action charges.
The break in the case came when police discovered the female suspects had messaged each other on Facebook about the murder.
Vrba confessed to officers that he stabbed the teen to death and burned his body with the help of the women.
The female suspects told police that Vrba had bragged about sexually mutilating the teen and gouging his eyes out, according to the Houston Herald.
“It is a grisly terrible series of heinous acts by the accused,” Texas County Prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr. told the Houston Herald.
All three suspects are being held without bail.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/09/22/trio-charged-in-killing-of-teen-found-sexually-mutilated-burned/
Man guns down his own mother in hospital ICU
An active shooter scare at a New Hampshire hospital on Tuesday turned out to be a deadly domestic situation — with a man killing his own mother as she laid in the intensive care unit, officials said.
Pamela Ferriere, 70, was gunned down by her 49-year-old son, Travis Frink, shortly after he arrived at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, according to WCVB.
“The purpose of Mr. Frink’s visit to the hospital was to kill his mother,” Attorney General Gordon MacDonald said Tuesday night at a press conference.
It took Frink a total of nine minutes — from the moment he signed in at the visitors desk to the time he arrived at the ICU unit — for him to take his mother’s life, MacDonald said.
Cops swarmed Darmouth-Hitchcock, New Hampshire’s largest hospital, at around 1:24 p.m. after receiving reports of an active shooter. The facility was placed on lockdown for at least an hour while authorities searched for a suspect.
Frink was eventually captured by local police while attempting to leave the premises, WJAR reports.
He allegedly let off several rounds while inside the medical center, but Ferriere was the only person hit.
Her son appeared to arrive at the facility in a silver SUV, which was surrounded by police and being checked during the lockdown.
Rhode Island State Police later confirmed to WJAR that the vehicle did belong to Frink, who is a Warwick resident.
Authorities were reportedly conducting a “well-being check” at his home Tuesday night.
Frink is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on charges of first-degree murder.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/09/12/man-guns-down-his-own-mother-in-hospital-icu/
Husband thinks he killed wife in his sleep
A North Carolina man is using the bad dream defense — telling a 911 operator he awoke from slumber to find his wife stabbed to death and drenched in blood, reports said.
Matthew Phelps, 28, told the operator in Raleigh early Friday that he fell asleep after taking too much cold medicine and may have accidentally killed his wife in his sleep, ABC 13 reported.
“I think I killed my…,” Phelps said to the operator, according to the outlet.
“What do you mean by that? What happened?” the dispatcher asked.
“I had a dream and then I turned on the lights and she’s dead on the floor … I have blood all over me and there’s a bloody knife on the bed. I think I did it. I can’t believe this,” Phelps told the dispatcher.
Raleigh police charged Phelps with murder on Friday shortly after he made the emergency call. His wife, Lauren Ashley-Nicole Phelps, 29, was found dead from multiple stab wounds.
“I had a dream and then I turned on the lights and she’s dead on the floor,” Phelps can be heard saying on the call.
“How? How?” the dispatcher asked.
At the end of the call, which lasted 7 minutes, Phelps sobbed to the operator and said his wife didn’t deserve what happened.
“She’s not moving at all. Oh my God. She didn’t deserve this,” Phelps said.
He told dispatchers he took the cough medicine Coricidin because he has trouble sleeping.
The makers of the drug told ABC there’s no evidence to suggest it’s associated with violent behavior.
Police don’t believe the crime was a random act and Phelps is being held without bond. He’s due back in court Tuesday.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/09/04/husband-thinks-he-killed-wife-in-his-sleep/
Man headed to jail for murder over Hot Pockets
Hot Pockets can get people heated.
An Atlanta man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for a fatal shooting following a fight over the snack, according to news station WAGA.
Prosecutors said Nathaniel Mathis had asked his sister and her boyfriend, Rodney Benton, 34, to get pepperoni Hot Pockets last July using his card.
When the couple got to the store, the Hot Pockets were sold out so his sister called Mathis to let him know.
They tried to buy other food, but Mathis’ card was rejected. She called him back and an argument reportedly ensued.
The couple ended up going home empty-handed, where they were met by a furious Mathis.
“The defendant was home and still upset when he approached the SUV,” the Fulton County District Attorney’s office said.
Prosecutors said that Mathis went up to the passenger side and yelled “you know what’s going on” and shot Benton eight times.
He then fled for a nearby park where he approached a woman with a message for his sister, news station WXIA reported.
The woman told police he said, “I just snapped. I love her and didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
Authorities were able to track down Mathis in the woods, where he was shirtless and pointing a gun to his head. After two hours of negotiations, police shot him with a beanbag gun and took him into custody.
Mathis was found guilty of murder, possession of a firearm by a first offender probationer and criminal damage to property. He was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison plus ten years.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/05/17/man-headed-to-jail-for-murder-over-hot-pockets-i-just-snapped/
Lawyers want man using big-penis defense to show jury his erection
Lawyers in the murder trial of a Florida man who wants to show his penis to the jury went back and forth this week on whether he would need to be erect.
The trial for Richard Patterson, 65, of Margate began on Tuesday, but the judge has not ruled whether his genitals will be presented in the court room.
Patterson’s lawyers want to use his penis as evidence to argue that his girlfriend Francisca Marquinez, 60, choked to death while performing oral sex on him in 2015.
The prosecution reportedly doesn’t object, but argued at the trial that his penis must be erect, according to news station WPLG.
“Do we do it in the back? Do we do it in open court?” assistant state attorney Peter Sapak asked. “How is the defendant going to be erect when the jury views it? Because a flaccid penis, whether it be a picture or the jury actually seeing it, is completely irrelevant. It needs to be erect.”
Defense attorney Ken Padowitz slammed the prosecution’s argument, saying the court should hear from a medical expert about the logistics. Padowitz wants to call former Broward County medical examiner Ronald Wright as a witness to testify that Marquinez’s death “is consistent with being accidentally sexually asphyxiated during oral sex.”
“He’s telling the court, as if he’s a medical expert in his argument, that it matters whether the penis is erect or not,” Padowitz said. “But he’s merely speculating here since he’s never asked that question to Dr. Wright in definition, and he doesn’t, obviously, know, actually, what the expert opinion is what is needed or not needed in order for a human being to choke.”
Patterson faces second-degree murder charges and if convicted, could be sentenced to life in prison.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/05/17/judge-to-decide-if-murder-suspect-can-show-penis-to-jury/
Teens threw house party after killing grandparents
A Georgia teen accused in the brutal slaying of her grandparents earlier this month partied with her boyfriend in their house while the bodies began to rot, according to officials.
Police said that Cassandra Bjorge, 17, and her boyfriend Johnny Rider, 19, sealed the doors and windows to contain the stench of the decomposing bodies so they could throw a party at the home in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
The teen girl’s grandparents, Randall and Wendy Bjorge, both 63, had been dead for a week before their bodies were discovered during a wellness check on April 8, news station WXIA reported.
Bjorge and Rider were both charged with murder and aggravated assault in the deaths of the elderly couple. The teens allegedly slashed their throats, as well as kicked, beat and used a tire iron on the pair, according to the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The 17-year-old appeared at a preliminary hearing Wednesday, where she reportedly confessed to stabbing her grandparents.
“This is a very unique and disturbing case on so many levels and detectives are still exploring motive,” Gwinnett County police officer Deon Washington told the Gwinnett Daily Post. “We may never find a scenario that makes sense to a reasonable person.”
via: http://nypost.com/2017/04/19/teens-threw-party-in-house-after-killing-grandparents-cops/