I must admit that this story hit me pretty hard this morning. It’s not often that I get upset – I mean it seems like every day we’re bombarded with stories of violence, crime and debauchery, so it takes a lot these days to upset me.
I’m not really sure why this story affected me so much when I read it, but something about it hit me deep down inside. Maybe it’s because this man was a father, maybe it’s because he was just trying to do something nice for his parents, or maybe it’s because I’m so sick of seeing good people hurt by a culture that’s out of control.
Last week, National Guard Sergeant First Class Jim Vester was killed while trying to buy his parents an iPad that he found listed on Craigslist.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-12-12 01:15:392013-12-12 01:15:39Vet Brutally Murdered Trying to Buy a Christmas Present on Craigslist
Photo Credit: rakkhi/flickrA New York woman and her four young children were hacked to death with a meat cleaver in their Brooklyn home, and the father’s cousin was charged with their murders on Sunday, the New York Police Department said.
Responding to an emergency call on Saturday night, police found two boys, two girls and their mother with multiple wounds at their home in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
Ming Dong Chen, the 25-year-old cousin of the children’s father, was at the home and was taken into custody. He was charged with five counts of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and assaulting a police officer, a police spokesman said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-28 00:09:102016-04-11 11:15:32Mother, Four Children Killed with Meat Cleaver in New York
A Florida woman who became famous for her uncontrollable hiccupping was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday night and will serve life in prison without parole.
A Pinellas County jury deliberated for four hours before delivering the verdict against 22-year-old Jennifer Mee.
Mee wept in the Clearwater courtroom as the verdict was read. Minutes later, Judge Nancy Moate Ley explained that the only possible sentence for the charge was life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The verdict and five-day trial was a sad end to a chapter in Mee’s short and sad life. Her attorneys said she suffered from schizophrenia and Tourette’s Syndrome, and a court psychiatrist said Mee’s intelligence was “low normal.”
As a 15-year-old, Mee developed a case of the hiccups that wouldn’t go away. She appeared on several TV shows and while on the “Today” show, was hugged by fellow guest and country music star Keith Urban. She tried home remedies and consulted medical specialists, a hypnotist and an acupuncturist, until the hiccups finally stopped on their own, though not for good.
One of the most shocking things about the Penn State sex abuse scandal when it came to light in 2011, was the fact that the local District Attorney who knew about the case back in the 1990s disappeared.
The mother of one of the children abused by football coach Jerry Sandusky, reported the crime to DA Ray Gricar in 1998 but he decided not to bring up charges.
Gricar, 59, was never able to explain why he let Sandusky slip away, since Gricar himself vanished in 2005.
After the sex scandal revelation, some hypothesized that Gricar’s disappearance was somehow tied to Penn State.
But now a former person of interest in his disappearance has told the Altoona Mirror that it was a former Hell’s Angel that carried out the killing and had nothing to do with Penn State.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-09-22 01:08:152013-09-22 01:08:15Source Reveals What Happened to Body of Missing DA in Penn State Sex Scandal Case
A Georgia teen convicted of fatally shooting a baby in a stroller was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole after the grieving mother asked a judge to punish the gunman for taking “the love of my life.”
De’Marquise Elkins, 18, stood silent and showed no emotion as he was sentenced in a courtroom less than two weeks after a jury found him guilty of murder in the slaying of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago during a robbery attempt.
“His first word was never heard. His first sentence was never said,” Sherry West, the baby’s mother, said through tears on the witness stand as she read a statement made to rhyme like a poem or a nursery rhyme. “He never got to sleep in a toddler bed.”
The baby was in his stroller and out for a walk with his mother when he was shot between the eyes March 21 in the Georgia coastal city of Brunswick. West and a younger teenager charged as an accomplice testified at trial that Elkins killed the baby after his mother refused to give up her purse.
Elkins was spared the death penalty because the killing occurred when he was 17, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is too young to face capital punishment. Under Georgia law, the only possible punishments for Elkins were life with or without a chance of parole.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-09-13 01:30:512013-09-13 01:30:51Teen Convicted of Killing Baby Gets Life in Prison
Mexican and U.S. authorities are scrambling to find a 60-year-old former drug lord — who was behind the brutal killing of an American agent nearly two decades ago — following his recent, and unexpected, release from a Mexican prison.
Rafael Caro Quintero walked out of Jalisco State prison shortly after midnight on Aug. 9 — a free man on a legal technicality, a decision which drew international condemnation and which the White House warns could lead to the release of other drug criminals in Mexico.
Security guards were assigned to follow Quintero after his release, but the former cartel boss was able to shake them after only 10 minutes, a source familiar with the events told FoxNews.com.
As both governments now try to figure out a way to re-apprehend and detain Quintero, outrage continues to build in the U.S., with current and former federal drug agents vowing to seek justice. The turn of events already threatens to deeply damage ties between the U.S. and Mexico. Attorney General Eric Holder has contacted his Mexican counterparts about the release, the Justice Department confirmed to FoxNews.com this week.
The case of Quintero, for U.S. agents, is personal. Quintero spent the last 28 years locked up for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of American DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. He was originally sentenced to spend 40 years behind bars.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-28 00:45:232013-08-28 00:45:23Agents Shocked as Cartel Boss Involved in Torture Death of DEA Colleague Slips Away
The mischaracterization of the alleged violence by Chancey Luna, Michael Jones and James Edwards began when one of the trio claimed they had hunted down and shot dead Australian Chris Lane because they were “bored.”
The statement is so devoid of humanity and so headline-ready that the media seized upon it as a literal and complete explanation for why these three accused killers acted so inhumanely.
But the statement is a smokescreen. Boredom—of the kind sane people experience—had nothing, whatsoever, to do with Lane’s death and explains nothing about how it happened.
When normal people are bored, they go to the movies, go shopping or skateboarding or take a drive to the beach. Only when people are severely psychologically disordered do they think up murder as an antidote to boredom. Only when extraordinarily disordered patterns of thought, feeling or perception fill one’s mind does the vacuum of boredom draw someone to the idea of using a gun to shoot a stranger in the head…
So why would these three allegedly do this if it had nothing to do with boredom? Probably because Chris Lane, a strong man running the streets on a bright day, was as good a symbol as any of what they had lost: their humanity. They had lost the capacity to feel for others. They could not perceive the suffering of Lane during his death, nor of his family members after his death. They had lost that singular, defining human quality called empathy.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-26 01:45:222013-08-26 01:45:22‘Boredom’ Was not the Reason Behind Chris Lane’s Murder (+video)
Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan was found guilty on all 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder Friday, making him eligible for the death penalty.
The sentencing phase of his trial was set to begin Monday.
A military jury deliberated for roughly one day before announcing the verdict.
Hasan sat emotionless, stroking his beard when the judge announced a verdict had been reached. He stood and looked at the juror panel president when the verdict was read, then turned and looked back down.
A few family members of the victims cried and hugged each other at the announcement, but there were no courtroom outbursts.
WWII veteran Delbert Belton survived being wounded in action during the Battle of Okinawa only to be beaten and left for dead by two teens at the Eagles Lodge in Spokane on Wednesday evening.
Belton, 88, succumbed to his injuries Thursday morning at Sacred Heart Medical Center.
Witnesses say Belton was in the parking lot of the Eagles Lodge at 6410 N. Lidgerwood, adjacent to the Eagles Ice-A-Rena, around 8 p.m. Wednesday when the two male suspects attacked him as he was about to head inside to play pool.
Police responded with K-9s to track the suspects’ scent but were not able to locate them.
“It does appear random. He was in the parking lot, it appears he was assaulted in the parking lot and there was no indication that he would have known these people prior to the assault,” Spokane Police Major Crimes Detective Lieutenant Mark Griffiths said.
An 18-year-old accused of killing a bicyclist with his car has had a vehicular manslaughter charge upgraded to murder in part because he boasted about speeding on Twitter, prosecutors said Thursday.
Cody Hall, of Pleasanton, was being held without bail after he was charged Wednesday with the murder of 58-year-old Diana Hersevoort, the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune reported.
Hall was going more than 80 mph in a 40 mph zone when he hit Hersevoort and her husband along a busy boulevard in Dublin on June 9, prosecutors allege. Hersevoort’s husband only broke an arm, but she was killed.
An analysis of Hall’s driving record, along with Twitter posts in which he discussed how fast he liked to drive, persuaded prosecutors to change the charge to murder, the Alameda County district attorney’s office told the Chronicle.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-15 22:08:162013-08-15 22:08:16Calif. Man’s Charge Upped to Murder after Boasting about Speeding on Twitter
