Did an HBO Show Solve a 14-Year-Old Murder Case? [+video]

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By Jessica Contrera and Peter Holley. From the moment the HBO series “The Jinx” made its debut, it has been called “the new ‘Serial.’” Both the series and the podcast are about unsolved murders. Both let viewers into the process of uncovering what happened. Both tell stories so compelling, it’s easy to sometimes forget the characters are real.

But on Saturday, HBO achieved something “Serial” never could. The subject of its six-episode documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” has been arrested.

Robert Durst, a New York real-estate heir, is known for his alleged connection to three deaths: his wife, who went missing in 1982; his neighbor, who was dismembered in 2001; and a close friend, who was shot in the head in 2000. Until Saturday, the 71-year-old has walked free.

But days after HBO aired the fifth episode of “The Jinx,” which included a previously uncovered piece of evidence, Durst was taken into custody in New Orleans and will be charged with the Beverly Hills murder of his friend, Susan Berman . . .

“He’s maintained his innocence for 10 years now. Nothing has changed,” Lewis told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday. He accused prosecutors and the filmmaker, Andrew Jarecki, of timing of the arrest as a publicity stunt for the last episode of “The Jinx,” which will air at 8 p.m. Sunday. (Read more from “Did an HBO Show Solve a 14-Year-Old Murder Case?” HERE)

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Wealthy Eccentric Says in HBO Finale He ‘Killed Them All’

By Janet Mcconnaughey and Brian Melley. The arrest of Robert Durst, a wealthy eccentric linked to two killings and his wife’s disappearance, came on Sunday just before the finale in an HBO show about his life in which he said he “killed them all.”


Durst was arrested on a murder warrant just before Sunday evening’s finale of an HBO serial documentary about his links to three sensational killings.

In the finale, Durst was asked about similarities in handwriting in a letter he wrote and another linked to one of the killings. Later, filmmakers said Durst wore his microphone into the bathroom.

What followed was a bizarre rambling in which Durst said, apparently to himself, “There it is. You’re caught” and “What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Rental Car Company Installing Cameras in Their Vehicles

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This week I got an angry email from a friend who had just rented a car from Hertz: “Did you know Hertz is putting cameras in rental cars!? This is bullsh*t. I wonder if it says they can tape me in my Hertz contract.” He sent along this photo of a camera peeping at him from out of his “NeverLost,” a navigational device that the company has started putting in many of its cars.

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” he said. A Googling expedition revealed that my friend was not the first person driven to disturbance by the in-car surveillance system. A Yelp user was revved up about it. Disgruntled renters on travel forums like MilePoint and FlyerTalk want Hertz to put the brakes on “spy cams.” A loyal Hertz customer who rented a car in Chicago said it might make them never want to rent with Hertz again:

The system can’t be turned off from what I could tell. Further investigation revealed that the camera can see the entire inside of the car. I know rental car companies have been tracking the speed and movements of their vehicles for years but putting a camera inside the cabin of the vehicle is taking their need for information a little TOO FAR. I find this to be completely UNACCEPTABLE. In fact, if I get another car from Hertz with a camera in it, I will move our business from Hertz completely.

Hertz has offered the NeverLost navigational device for years, but it only added the built-in camera feature (which includes audio and video) to its latest version of the device — NeverLost 6 — in mid-2014. “Approximately a quarter of our vehicles across the country have a NeverLost unit and slightly more than half of those vehicles have the NeverLost 6 model installed,” Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice said by email. In other words, one in 8 Hertz cars has a camera inside — but Imperatrice says that, for now, they are inactive. “We do not have adequate bandwidth capabilities to the car to support streaming video at this time,” she said.

So why is Hertz creeping out customers with cameras it’s not using? “Hertz added the camera as a feature of the NeverLost 6 in the event it was decided, in the future, to activate live agent connectivity to customers by video. In that plan the customer would have needed to turn on the camera by pushing a button (while stationary),” Imperatrice explained. “The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so.” (Read more from “Rental Car Company Installing Cameras in Their Vehicles” HERE)

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Government Worker Tells Woman She Must Trade Sex for Food Stamps

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A woman desperate for help said she was told she’d have to trade sexual favors to feed her family.

The allegations are at the heart of a lawsuit which raises serious questions about the state’s Food Stamps program.

Shameka Bransford, a pregnant single mother who suffers from sickle cell anemia, claims an employee with the state Department of Human Services wanted something in return when she went to apply for food stamps.

“Basically if I did all these things I would qualify and get my food stamps,” Bransford said.

Bransford’s attorneys, Mary Parker and Stephen Crofford, are now suing the state. They said their client refused the state employee’s alleged demands, which included meeting him under a nearby bridge for sexual favors. (Read more from “Government Worker Tells Woman She Must Trade Sex for Food Stamps” HERE)

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Obamacare Killing Rural Hospitals, Already Beset by Financial Problems

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Despite residents’ concerns and a continuing need for services, the 25-bed hospital that served this small East Texas town for more than 25 years closed its doors at the end of 2014, joining the ranks of dozens of other small rural hospitals that have been unable to weather the punishment of a changing national health-care environment.

For the high percentages of elderly and uninsured patients who live in rural areas, closures mean longer trips for treatment and uncertainty during times of crisis. “I came to the emergency room when I had panic attacks,” said George Taylor, 60, a retired federal government employee. “It was very soothing and the staff was great. I can’t imagine Mount Vernon without a hospital.”

The Kansas-based National Rural Health Association, which represents about 2,000 small hospitals across the country and other rural care providers, says that 48 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, the majority in Southern states, and 283 others are in trouble. In Texas alone, 10 have closed.

“If there was one particular policy causing the trouble, it would be easy to understand,” said Mark Holmes, a health economist at the University of North Carolina. “But there are a lot of things going on.”

Experts and practitioners cite declining federal reimbursements for hospitals under the Affordable Care Act as the principal reasons for the recent closures. Besides cutting back on Medicare, the law reduced payments to hospitals for the uninsured, a decision based on the assumption that states would expand their Medicaid programs. However, almost two dozen states have refused to do so. In addition, additional Medicare cuts caused by a budget disagreement in Congress have hurt hospitals’ bottom lines. (Read more from “Obamacare: Rural Hospitals, Beset by Financial Problems, Struggle to Survive” HERE)

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Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California

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By the time Wendy Leeds reached him, the sea lion pup had little hope of surviving.

Like more than 1,450 other sea lions that have washed up on California beaches this year, in what animal experts call a growing crisis for the animal, this 8-month-old pup was starving, stranded and hundreds of miles from a mother who still needed to nurse him and teach him to hunt and feed. Ribs jutted from his velveteen coat.

The pup had lain on the beach for hours, becoming the target of an aggressive dog before managing to wriggle onto the deck of a million-dollar oceanfront home, where the owner shielded him with an umbrella and called animal control. In came Ms. Leeds, an animal-care expert at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which like other California rescue centers is being inundated with calls about lost, emaciated sea lions . . .

Experts suspect that unusually warm waters are driving fish and other food away from the coastal islands where sea lions breed and wean their young. As the mothers spend time away from the islands hunting for food, hundreds of starving pups are swimming away from home and flopping ashore from San Diego to San Francisco.

Many of the pups are leaving the Channel Islands, an eight-island chain off the Southern California coast, in a desperate search for food. But they are too young to travel far, dive deep or truly hunt on their own, scientists said. (Read more from “Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California” HERE)

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General Jerry Boykin: Navy Forcing out Evangelical Chaplain After he was “Deliberately Set Up” by Homosexual Activist

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As Restoring Liberty reported earlier this week, a Navy chaplain with an incredibly distinguished service record has been relieved of his duties and may be forced out of the military just shy of his 20-year mark because he discussed the bible’s view on homosexuality.

Shortly thereafter, General Jerry Boykin appeared on The Joe Miller Show and announced that he had actually spoken with Chaplain Wes Modder that day and described for listeners what was really going on with the case (see interview below).

[Editor’s note: General Boykin’s discussion about Chaplain Wes Modder begins at 9:30 in the below YouTube]

Among other outrages, General Boykin said that the chaplain’s case was a set-up by a homosexual navy officer who is “married to another man.” Apparently, this service member had been temporarily assigned to Chaplain Modder’s office and he sought – on multiple occasions – private counseling from Chaplain Modder on the biblical view of sexuality, specifically homosexuality. The chaplain, an ordained Assembly of God minister, told the junior office that the bible disagrees with all sexual sin: homosexuality, adultery, etc.

The setup was complete when the junior officer marched in to the chaplain’s office with two “equal opportunity officers,” announced charges of “intolerance and bigotry,” and the chaplain was relieved of duty. General Boykin, the former Delta Force Commander, said that it was obvious the “Navy acted unacceptably” in this case.

General Boykin went on to observe how screwed up the military has become with soldiers and retirees not getting necessary colonoscopies, but convicted traitors and others are getting sex changes on the public dime. He also discusses the problem with women in combat. He believes that everyone must get active to save this country.

You can start by signing a petition of support for Chaplain Modder. Click HERE to sign the Family Research Council’s petition.

General William “Jerry” Boykin is Vice President of the Family Research Council. He served as Commander, Delta Force, has received numerous military awards, served in multiple combat missions, and was the US Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Bush Administration.
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More than 40,000 rally for Navy chaplain accused of being anti-gay

By Todd Starnes. Thousands of Americans, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and famed evangelist Franklin Graham, have come to the defense of a chaplain who could be thrown out of the Navy because of his Christian faith.

Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder has been accused of failing to show “tolerance and respect” in private counseling sessions regarding issues pertaining to faith, marriage and sexuality – specifically homosexuality.

Modder, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, has also been accused of being unable to “function in the diverse and pluralistic environment” of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, S.C.

The highly decorated, 19-year military veteran previously served in the Marine Corps and has had several high-profile assignments – including being named force chaplain of the Navy SEALs.

Just a few months ago, Modder’s commander called him “the best of the best” and a “consummate professional leader” worthy of an early promotion. (Read more from this story HERE)

U.S. Economic Data is the World’s Most Disappointing

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It’s not only the just-released University of Michigan consumer confidence report and February retail sales on Thursday that surprised economists and investors with another dose of underwhelming news. Overall, U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators’ expectations by the most in six years.

The Bloomberg ECO U.S. Surprise Index, which measures whether data beat or miss forecasts, fell to the lowest since 2009, when the nation was in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

There’s been one notable exception to the gloom, and it’s a big one: payrolls. The economy added 295,000 jobs in February and 1.3 million over four months, a reflection of a healthier labor market in which the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest in almost seven years. [Editor’s note: these numbers ignore the massive number of Americans who have quit looking for work. Read about that crisis HERE and HERE]

Most everything else? Blah.

This month alone, personal income and spending, manufacturing as measured by the Institute for Supply Management, auto sales, factory orders, and retail sales have all come in a bit weak. (Read more from “U.S. Economic Data is the World’s Most Disappointing” HERE)

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Intoxicated Secret Service Agents Who Wrecked into White House Disrupted Active Bomb Investigation

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Two Secret Service agents suspected of being under the influence while striking a White House security barricade drove through an active bomb investigation and directly beside the suspicious package, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident.

These and other new details about the March 4 incident emerged Thursday from interviews and from police records obtained by The Washington Post.

The revelations spurred fresh questions Thursday from lawmakers about whether the newly appointed director of the Secret Service, Joseph P. Clancy, is capable of turning around the troubled agency.

Among lawmakers’ questions was whether Clancy, a 27-year Secret Service veteran appointed to his job last month after a string of embarrassing agency missteps, has been aggressive enough in his handling of last week’s incident.

Clancy placed the two senior agents involved in the incident in new “non-supervisory, non-operational” jobs pending an investigation — a less stringent approach than the service has taken in the past, when staffers suspected of misconduct were put on administrative leave or pressed to resign or accept demotion. Also, Clancy did not take action against a senior supervisor on duty that night who, according to officials briefed on the incident, ordered Secret Service officers to let the agents go home without giving them sobriety tests. (Read more from “Intoxicated Secret Service Agents Crashed into White House Disrupted Bomb Investigation” HERE)

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State Department Shuts Down Email After One of the Most Serious Cyber Attacks in Department History

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The State Department shut down large parts of its unclassified email system today in a final attempt to rid it of malware believed to have been inserted by Russian hackers in what has become one of the most serious cyber intrusions in the department’s history, U.S. officials told ABC News.

“The Department is implementing improvements to the security of its main unclassified network during a short, planned outage of some internet-linked systems,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement to ABC News.

The outage could last though the weekend, according to officials. But as of now there is no time limit and no real indication of when the system will be back online.

Last November, the State Department conducted similar repairs to its system stemming from a cyber-attack it suffered the month before. The attack targeted the unclassified email system and is believed to have been executed by Russian hackers. (Read more from “State Department Shuts Down Email After One of the Most Serious Cyber Attack’s in Department History” HERE)

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American Scientists Are Trying to Genetically Modify Human Eggs

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Several teams of researchers around the world are believed to be working on ways of modifying the chromosomes of human egg cells with a view to moving towards “germ-line” gene therapy, as the process is called. Germ-line refers to the “germ” cells – sperm and eggs – that pass on genes to future generations.

However, other scientists have called for a moratorium on editing the human germ-line, arguing that it is ethically unacceptable because it is too unpredictable and too risky.

Nevertheless, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have attempted to use the Crispr (pronounced “Crisper”) gene-editing technique on human ovarian tissue cultured in the lab to see if it might be possible to correct the defective BRAC1 gene involved in inherited breast and ovarian cancer. As ovarian cells develop into egg cells, the research is likely to have involved the altering of some immature egg cells, known as oocytes.

The work was carried out last year by Luhan Yang, a researcher working in the lab of the veteran Harvard geneticist George Church. But the study has not been published in a scientific journal and Dr Yang was unavailable for comment.

Professor Church emphasised that the work was purely experimental. He said that it was carried out on human ovarian cells cultured in a laboratory dish and there was no intention of fertilising any eggs or transplanting them into a woman. (Read more from “American Scientists Are Trying to Genetically Modify Human Eggs” HERE)

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