USA > History > 2006 > Violence (IV)

St. Louis tops Detroit

in violent crime rankings

Mon Oct 30, 2006
5:43 PM ET
Reuters
By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - St. Louis may still be celebrating its World Series baseball victory over Detroit, but on Monday Missouri's "Gateway City" learned it has topped Michigan's Motor City in another category -- violent crime.

St. Louis reclaimed the title of America's most dangerous city, which it last held in 2002, based on crime statistics reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and compiled by publisher Morgan Quitno Press.

Detroit was the second most dangerous city, while Flint, Michigan, and Compton, California, were third and fourth, respectively. Camden, New Jersey, most dangerous in last year's rankings, fell to fifth.

The survey is based on 2005 crime rates per 100,000 population for six basic categories -- murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. It included 371 cities with populations over 75,000 that report the data to the FBI.

The cities ranked safest were mostly wealthier suburban and rural communities, led by Brick Township, New Jersey, on the state's central Atlantic shore. Amherst, New York, near Buffalo, was second, followed by Mission Viejo, California, south of Los Angeles; Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston, and Troy, Michigan, a Detroit suburb.

However, expanding beyond city limits for rankings by metropolitan areas, the study showed that the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Michigan, area was the most dangerous, followed by Memphis, Tennessee; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Las Vegas-Paradise, Nevada, and Florence, South Carolina.

The five safest metropolitan areas were Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; State College, Pennsylvania; Bangor, Maine; Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Appleton, Wisconsin.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay disputed the findings, saying the survey's methodology was "flawed."

"St. Louis is not a dangerous city," he said in a message posted to his personal Web site. "There are certainly some high-crime neighborhoods, just like in every city. But the vast majority of St. Louis neighborhoods are safe places to live, work, and raise families."

Nonetheless, Slay took the opportunity to plug a November 7 ballot initiative to fund new youth recreation programs, which he said would provide "alternatives to getting into trouble."

Morgan Quitno, based in Lawrence, Kansas -- the 291st most dangerous among the 371 cities -- said the study excludes communities in Illinois because that state's rape figures do not meet the FBI's uniform crime reporting guidelines. Thus, Chicago and East St. Louis, Illinois, among other cities, were omitted from the list.

The publishing house said it conducted a separate internal ranking excluding the rape category to see how Chicago would fare and it came in as the 52nd most dangerous city.

    St. Louis tops Detroit in violent crime rankings, R, 30.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-30T224322Z_01_N30400502_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-CIIIES.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

3 Are Bludgeoned to Death in the Bronx

October 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER 8. LEE and KATE MEYER

A 38-year-old Bronx man was arrested last night and charged with bludgeoning to death three people, including his longtime companion and her son, in the basement of the family’s apartment building, the police said. A bloody dumbbell and metal pipe found at the scene are believed to be the murder weapons, they said.

The three victims, who also included a 60-year-old man who was filling in as a superintendent, were found shortly before noon yesterday in the building where the couple and her son had lived, a few blocks south of Crotona Park.

The police said they believed that the man, Rafin Vellon, had killed his companion, Gloria Valdez, 56, and her 36-year-old son, Carl Valdez, in their basement apartment while the other victim, Polonio Peralta, was attacked later in a basement hallway, perhaps after he encountered the killer on his way out.

Mr. Vellon was charged with three counts of second-degree murder. As he was led out of the 41st Precinct station house last night, wearing a gray sweatshirt, he stared straight ahead and did not respond to reporters’ questions.

All three victims had all been beaten severely on the head, investigators said. The Valdezes were found dead in their apartment, the police said, and Mr. Peralta was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he later died. A number of bloodied objects were found at the scene, including a dumbbell and a metal pipe, and investigators believe that they were the weapons used, the police said.

Just three weeks ago, investigators said, Mr. Vellon was accused of using a similar weapon in a violent rampage at a car service office. He was arrested on a charge of criminal mischief on Oct. 2, suspected of using a five-pound free weight to bash in windows around the car service, Mega-Radio Dispatch at 951 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx, the police said. He is accused of bashing in the front door of the office along with some car windshields in the area. He has also been charged with assault in a previous case, the police said.

T. J. Trinidad, an employee of Mega-Radio, said last night in a telephone interview that he was at the office on Oct. 2 when a woman came into the office crying. “She was out of breath and she was tearing a lot,” he said. “She asked for a cab quick, the quickest cab she could have.”

About four or five hours after she left, an enraged man came into the office. “The reason he was supposedly mad was because we supplied the cab service for his girlfriend to leave,” Mr. Trinidad said. “He broke the main entrance door, the window right next to the main entrance door and the radio dispatcher glass — the one in front of the computers.”

“After that, he went outside and went on a wild rampage. He broke the windshields of about seven cars,” he said. “He had a butterfly knife and slashed the tires of every car of which windshield he bashed.”

The car service office is just a few blocks from the building where the killings took place, at 1029 Hall Place. The police said Mr. Peralta was found by a maintenance worker who had gone downstairs to get some tools.

He had been filling in for the building’s superintendent, Rafael Diaz, while he was in the Dominican Republic for the month, said Jose Romero, Mr. Peralta’s grandnephew, who lives in the neighborhood. Mr. Peralta was a retired construction worker living in Philadelphia who came up to help out. “He didn’t even work here,” Mr. Romero said. “He was just doing someone a favor.”

The Valdezes were discovered later by investigators when they arrived at the building, and found that it had been carved up into a mazelike warren of single-room apartments. The basement also functioned as a storage area for tools and contained the superintendent’s residence.

Mr. Vellon and the Valdezes had moved into the building just last year, said Lydia Colon, a neighbor. But they mainly kept to themselves, she said, because newcomers in a neighborhood where families had lived for multiple generations.

Neighbors remembered Mr. Valdez as being hungry for company. “Every time he talked to someone, he would talk your ear off because he didn’t have many friends. It was the same with his mother,” said Ms. Colon, who said she was one of the few residents who talked to them regularly.

The two were often seen walking their Chihuahua, Taco, around the block. Ms. Colon said that she clearly felt the tension between Mr. Vellon and Ms. Valdez one day when the two women were talking. “We were standing in front of the building one day and talking and all of a sudden a big guy came out of a cab,” she said. “He had a very solemn face, sort of serious and tough. Her whole tune changed. She seemed really nervous. She introduced him as her husband. He was scary. I didn’t like to talk to him.”

Neighbors said Ms. Valdez had a distinctive style. She often wore summer dresses on top of dresses, even in the winter, residents said. “It was her fashion sense. It was a really strange fashion sense,” said Ms. Colon.

One of her favorite dress combinations was a combination of stretchy black and purple striped dress layered with a red dress with orange butterflies, said Ms. Colon. Mr. Valdez was known for practicing martial arts near the building, and had earned the nicknames Ninja Boy and the Karate Kid. “He would always be dressed up like some samurai carrying swords,” said Luis Reyes, 29, a resident of the building. “I feel sorry for the Karate Kid; that kid was gentle,” Mr. Reyes said. “He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.” He was also a big fan of the movie “Scarface,” boxing and a cartoon called “Naruto.”

Ms. Valdez and her son were both unemployed, but scraped together a living from government disability checks and selling odds and ends, neighbors said. Ms. Colon said her last interaction with Mr. Valdez had been helping him sell “Scarface” collector sets. “He said he had bought them for $25 and that he was trying to sell them for $20 and I said: ‘No, no, honey. You have to sell them for more than you bought them for.”

She also advised him, “Shine them up so they look good.” The sets eventually sold.

Al Baker and Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting.

    3 Are Bludgeoned to Death in the Bronx, NYT, 24.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/nyregion/24triple.html

Man accused of having sex with the family dog

Posted 10/21/2006 11:54 PM ET
AP
USA Today

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A man accused of having sex with the family dog has been charged under the state's new animal cruelty law, which makes bestiality a felony, a prosecutor said.

Michael Patrick McPhail, 26, of nearby Spanaway, pleaded not guilty Thursday to one count of first-degree animal cruelty in Pierce County Superior Court.

Assistant Pierce County Prosecutor Karen Watson said McPhail was the first person in Pierce County to be charged with the new bestiality offense.

She said the dog was taken by animal control.

McPhail posted $20,000 bail on Friday.

Judge Katherine Stolz has set a trial date of Dec. 11.

McPhail's wife told investigators that she found her husband on their back porch Wednesday night having intercourse with their 4-year-old female pit bull terrier, the Pierce County sheriff's office report said. The dog was squealing and crying, according to charging papers.

The woman took photos with her cellphone and called the sheriff's office.

Calls to McPhail's public defender, David Katayama, were not immediately returned Friday.

The bestiality law, which took effect in June, was prompted by a case near Enumclaw in which a Seattle man died after having sex with a horse. Before the law was enacted, Washington was one of 14 states where bestiality had not been explicitly prohibited.

    Man accused of having sex with the family dog, UT, 21.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-10-21-bestiality-charge_x.htm

Mourners remember slain Iowa family

Posted 10/19/2006 9:36 PM ET
AP
USA Today

BONAPARTE, Iowa (AP) — A community mourning the loss of five family members, who police said were gunned down by the parents' only son, was asked Thursday to mix some forgiveness with the grief.

"Would we serve well the memory of these who loved so much ... by hating the one they called son or brother?" the Rev. John Spiegel asked the more than 1,500 people who jammed into the gymnasium, halls and two classrooms for the funeral service at Harmony High School.

Spiegel spoke facing the four copper caskets and an urn. He drew comparisons to the anguish, confusion and mercy experienced by the Pennsylvania Amish in the wake of a shooting rampage at a school this month that left five girls dead.

"When the balance of our lives is weighted down with very great hurt, it will not be made to balance by a great hate," said Spiegel, a priest at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Ottumwa and a longtime family friend.

Michael Bentler, 53; his wife, Sandra, 47; and their three daughters, Sheena, 17, Shelby, 15, and Shayne, 14, were shot to death in the family's home atop a wooded bluff outside Bonaparte early Saturday morning.

Shawn Bentler was arrested hours later in Quincy, Ill., where he had been living and working as a used car salesman. On Tuesday, Bentler was charged with five counts of first-degree murder and is being held on a $2.5 million bond in the Van Buren County Jail.

So far, investigators have offered no motive for the slayings, one of the worst mass killings in Iowa history.

For the Bentlers' friends, relatives, classmates, employees and so many others in this rural corner of southeastern Iowa, Thursday's funeral Mass capped a tragic and emotional period.

Michael and Sandra Bentler were successful in business, owning lumber and mill businesses in Mount Pleasant, Donnellson and Mount Hamill. They were also deeply involved in the community and the lives of their daughters.

Funeral organizers said about 2,000 people attended a wake held at the school Wednesday night. As the funeral procession Thursday snaked its way from the school to the Bonaparte Cemetery, dozens of people in town stepped outside their home or work place to pay their respects.

"He was about family, friends and this community," Greg Bentler said of his older brother, Michael.

Friends said the daughters were book smart but also jokesters who were involved in a variety of sports and other activities.

    Mourners remember slain Iowa family, UT, 19.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-19-iowa-mourners_x.htm

Dismemberment suspect lived it up before suicide

Updated 10/19/2006 8:56 PM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — After one last drink on the roof of the classy Omni Royal Orleans hotel, Zackery Bowen was ready to reveal the secret he had apparently been hiding in his French Quarter flat for nearly two weeks.

In his pocket, he had a note with directions to the one-bedroom apartment where he said police would find the remains of his dismembered girlfriend. Drink in hand, after the Caribbean music had died down for the night, Bowen disappeared from view of the rooftop surveillance camera, according to a hotel spokesman, Don Zimmer.

Then he leapt to his death, leaving more questions than he'd answered.

Police spokesman Anthony Cannatella said the note indicated Bowen had killed his girlfriend after a fight Oct. 5 by strangling her and cutting up her body. After discovering Bowen's body Tuesday night, police said they found a woman's remains — a charred head, legs and arms, and a torso — in a bag in the apartment's refrigerator.

While police haven't identified the woman, Det. Ronald Ruiz confirmed authorities were looking for Bowen's girlfriend, Adriane Hall.

Bowen apparently lived it up in the days before committing suicide, according to a report in The Times-Picayune newspaper. Quoting a second note found in the apartment, the newspaper said Bowen wrote, "I scared myself not by the action of calmly strangling the woman I've loved for one and a half years ... but by my entire lack of remorse."

Bowen wrote he had $1,500 in cash and spent it lavishly before killing himself, according to the newspaper: "So that's what I did: good food, good drugs, good strippers, good friends and any loose ends I may have had."

Police Capt. Joseph Waguespack wouldn't confirm the existence of a second note, and police refused to confirm excerpts from the suicide note, citing an ongoing investigation.

Some of those who knew Bowen, 28, remembered him as an outgoing bartender who'd had an on-again, off-again relationship with Hall. Police say Bowen also had an estranged wife, for whom he left a contact number.

Hall and Bowen were often profiled in media stories following Hurricane Katrina as die-hard residents who stubbornly refused to leave their adopted home in the French Quarter. Friends said that they occasionally fought, but that it seemed as if they were in love.

"I'd seen them have little arguments at the bar before, but the last times I'd seen them, it was totally different," said Eura Jones, who worked with Hall at the Spotted Cat. "He came in here, brought her a dozen roses and kissed her and loved her."

Jones said she remembers Hall last showing up for work at the bar Sept. 27, the Wednesday after the Saints' Monday night football game. She said that while it was strange for Hall not to show up for work, Jones wasn't worried: She said Hall was reachable by cell but sometimes would forget to buy extra talk time.

Leo Watermeier, the owner of the apartment where the couple lived, said his first impression was that Hall was "the boss." He said he last saw her Oct. 5, four days after the couple put down a deposit on the $750-a-month, recently renovated apartment above a voodoo shop. Later that day, Watermeier said Bowen called him, upset, saying the woman was kicking him out.

Watermeier said Hall told him Bowen was cheating on her. "Whether that's true, she seemed to believe it, for sure," he said.

Holly Jacker, a bartender at Buffa's, said Bowen was at the dimly lit joint Sunday, two days before he leapt from the roof of the luxury hotel where he once tended bar. A regular said she saw him there, eating and drinking.

On Tuesday, police found his body and the remains in the apartment, leaving them to piece together what happened and acquaintances with dozens of questions.

"I'm having a hard time reconciling the person I remember with the person who did this," said Tim Eskew, manager of a bike shop frequented by Bowen, who delivered groceries by bicycle.

    Dismemberment suspect lived it up before suicide, UT, 19.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-19-new-orleans-dismemberment_x.htm

Feds arrest 125 people nationwide in child-porn investigation

Posted 10/19/2006 12:42 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEWARK (AP) — A Bible camp counselor and a Boy Scout leader were among 125 people arrested nationwide in an Internet child pornography case in which subscribers purchased photos and videos of children engaged in sex acts with adults, federal authorities said Wednesday.

The case originated in New Jersey, but quickly spread to 22 states. The defendants were charged with either possession or receipt of child pornography. Additional arrests were expected.

Prosecutors said the website alerted subscribers that its content was illegal and urged them to be discreet about their purchases.

"When I say 'hard-core' pornography, I am talking about child pornography that includes images of children as young as six months involved in bondage and sodomy," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said. "This type of depraved conduct is something a civilized society cannot tolerate."

Christie said none of the defendants appeared in any of the images they obtained from the website. He would not identify the website or say whether it is still in operation.

Among those arrested were a Bible camp counselor from Vancouver, Wash.; a Boy Scout leader from Mission, Texas; and a pharmaceutical researcher in New Jersey.

Several of those arrested nationwide have prior records for molesting or sexually assaulting children, officials said.

One defendant from San Diego told agents at his arrest that he had molested at least eight children over a 30-year period, and boasted of being able to identify particularly vulnerable children, Christie said.

Another defendant from Sacramento, was found to be in possession of a handheld video camera with a videotape showing him sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl, Christie said.

"I'm the father of four young children between the ages of 13 and 3," Christie said. "This is every parent's worst nightmare. It is just deeply disturbing to know there are people like this out there in our neighborhoods."

    Feds arrest 125 people nationwide in child-porn investigation, UT, 19.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-19-child-porn-arrests_x.htm

Man's suicide note leads to girlfriend's dismembered body

Updated 10/18/2006 8:16 PM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found a woman's charred head in a pot, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso in the refrigerator, police said Wednesday.

Zackery Bowen, 28, leapt from the seventh floor of a luxury hotel in the Quarter on Tuesday night, police said. His note, found in his pocket, identified the woman as his girlfriend but did not mention her name.

The body was found in the second-floor apartment that Bowen and his girlfriend, Adriane Hall, had shared on the edge of the Quarter above a voodoo shop, according to the landlord. Authorities said they were trying to find Hall, but did not speculate on the identity of the dismembered woman.

A woman who identified herself as Priestess Miriam Chamani in the Voodoo Spiritual Temple and Cultural Center below the apartment said Wednesday that the couple had recently moved in.

"You see people and never know what's going on with them," the woman said.

The apartment's owner, Leo Watermeier, said he last saw Hall on Oct. 5, four days after the two put down a deposit on the one-bedroom, $750-a month flat. Later that same day, Watermeier said, Bowen called him, angrily saying the woman was kicking him out.

Watermeier said Hall told him she had caught the boyfriend cheating.

Police spokesman Anthony Cannatella said the motive appeared to be a dispute over rent. Cannatella said the note indicated Bowen strangled the woman following an argument and cut up her body — using a hand saw and knife, according to police.

"He took his life to compensate for the life he had taken," Cannatella said.

The couple was profiled in several news stories following Hurricane Katrina as resilient residents who remained in the city after the devastating hurricane despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

A story published by Newhouse News Service described the couple gathering limbs for cooking fires at night and trading beer and alcohol — easy to get because of their jobs as bartenders — for clean water. The couple also figured out a creative way to make sure police continued to patrol their house: Hall would flash her breasts at police vehicles to make sure they kept driving by, according to a profile in The New York Times.

"We've been able to see the stars for the first time," Hall told Newhouse after the storm last year. "Before, this was a 24-hour lit city. Now it's peaceful."

Cannatella said an immediate identification of the body parts wasn't possible. Det. Ronald Ruiz said police hoped to make a positive ID, using DNA or dental records, sometime next week. He said police estimated the dismembered woman was in her mid to late-20s.

The note, Cannatella said, indicated the woman was killed early in the morning of Oct. 5, in apparent conflict with the landlord's account.

Joy Spaulding, who works at the nearby Nawlin's Flava cafe, said she occasionally saw Hall and Bowen. "To be honest, they seemed like a real nice couple. They were good-looking people, young people trying to do something with their lives."

Contributing: Associated Press Writer Mary Foster contributed to this report.

    Man's suicide note leads to girlfriend's dismembered body, UT, 18.10.2006,http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-18-dismembered_x.htm

Dozens of cities see jump in murders, robberies

Updated 10/12/2006 11:30 PM ET
USA Today
By Kevin Johnson

WASHINGTON — Less than a month after the FBI reported that violent crime rates rose across the nation in 2005, there is fresh evidence that homicides and robberies are continuing to increase in dozens of cities.

A review of 55 cities' crime data from the first six months of this year indicates the overall number of homicides rose by 4.2% compared with the same period in 2005, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a police advocacy group. In a report Thursday, the group also said robberies rose nearly 10% and that aggravated assaults were up slightly.

The report is the latest turn in a debate over whether the U.S. government has neglected local law enforcement needs by directing tens of millions of dollars to anti-terrorism initiatives. The police executives' group has been among those pressing for more police funding to counter rising numbers of violent incidents involving gangs and drugs. Among other things, the group has cited the FBI's report last month that detailed a 1.8% increase in the nation's murder rate in 2005, after a two-decade low in 2004.

Chuck Wexler of the police group said Thursday's report is an "early warning" that many cities could be at "the front end of a tipping point of violent crime."

While emphasizing the need to prevent terrorism, the Justice Department has acknowledged that crime is continuing to rise in some cities this year. However, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and other officials say it is too soon to tell whether the increases are a significant departure from the historically low crime rates of the past decade.

Of the 55 cities surveyed by the police group, 19 had double-digit percentage increases in homicides. More than 40 cities reported jumps in robberies. Among them:

•Orlando had 30 homicides in the first six months of the year, up from seven during the same period in 2005. Orlando police Sgt. Barbara Jones says about 60% of this year's slayings have been linked to drugs.

•In Memphis, homicides rose 43.6%, robberies were up 35% and aggravated assaults rose 7.4% in the first six months of 2006, compared with the same period last year. Tom Kirby of the Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission cites gangs that have had turf battles and preyed on immigrant communities.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., chairman of the House Appropriations panel that oversees the Justice Department, called Thursday's report "staggering." He urged Robert Portman, head of the Office of Management and Budget, to meet with police officials "to better understand their needs."

Homicides have declined in some cities in 2006, the report said. Among them: Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk and Washington, D.C.

    Dozens of cities see jump in murders, robberies, UT, 12.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-12-violent-crime_x.htm

Fla. Man Charged With Locking Up Son

October 12, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET
The New York Times

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- A man has been charged with torturing his 9-year-old son by keeping him locked in a bedroom for much of the past three years, with a surveillance camera tracking his every move, authorities said Thursday.

The home of Randall Warren Piercy, 41, was like a prison that had cameras in almost every room, with the father monitoring the boy on television and computer screens, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Lt. Annie Smith said.

During the past three years, the boy has not attended school, received medical attention or had contact with people outside his family, Smith said. The police report said he was home schooled but could not read children's books.

The state Department of Children & Families took the boy from the home, sheriff's spokesman Ken Jefferson said.

Relatives told police that the boy was usually allowed to use the bathroom once a day because his father was tea ching him to control his body.

Piercy was arrested Wednesday on charges of aggravated child abuse in the torture, malicious punishment and unlawful caging of the boy.

As officers walked him into jail, he said he was wrongly accused and was the victim of a vendetta by his in-laws. He told police he kept the child in the room because he ''believed it was in the best interest of the child,'' Smith said.

He was ordered held on $1 million bond at a court hearing Thursday. It was not known if he had an attorney.

The child's mother, Michelle Piercy, was not charged, but police said they are still investigating her involvement. She told WTLV-TV that her son was not abused.

''We are very protective,'' she said, adding that the cameras are so his parents can make sure he doesn't hurt himself. She said the boy was hyperactive and was locked in his room at night to prevent him from going outside and getting hurt.

According to a police report, investigators were told Michelle Piercy allowed her husband to make all the decisions regarding the boy. The report said her husband only let her see the boy at certain times and usually for an hour a day.

The case began when an investigator posing as a real estate investor went to the home earlier this month with the boy's paternal grandfather, Dan Boswell, a real estate broker. The undercover officer found the boy in a locked room, sitting on a bed in his underwear. The room smelled faintly of urine, and had a camera mounted on a wall, aimed at the child's bed, according to a report.

A call to the grandfather was not returned. No one answered phone messages left at the Piercy's home and business. The business phone answered as ''My Computer Land.''

    Fla. Man Charged With Locking Up Son, NYT, 12.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Boy-Locked-Up.html

A History of Sex With Students, Unchallenged Over the Years

October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

BAYONNE, N.J. — Many in this gray, insular city are at a loss to explain why Diane Cherchio West was allowed to continue working in the public school system for two decades after she was caught in 1980 kissing and groping a 13-year-old student at an eighth-grade dance.

Why, after her promotion to guidance counselor at Bayonne High School, no one alerted social services, school officials or the police when she became pregnant by an 11th grader she supervised, Steven West, and married him upon his graduation in 1985.

Or why, when that baby, Steven Jr., grew to be a teenager, no one balked as his 15-year-old friend moved in with Ms. West, who then seduced the friend with Scooby-Doo boxer shorts and evening jaunts to sports bars and used her school authority to rearrange his classes around their secret trysts.

It was not until 2001, when relatives of the boy, Christopher Castlegrande, filed a complaint with the police of statutory rape against Ms. West, that she left her $74,000-a-year job and lost her unfettered access to Bayonne High School’s students.

After Ms. West was arrested, school officials insisted for more than a year that the allegation was the only accusation of misconduct in a sterling 24-year career. They allowed her to take an early retirement package that fattened her pension, and gave her a farewell party with cake and ice cream. When Ms. West pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexual assault charges, glowing references from co-workers, supervisors and friends helped persuade a judge to sentence her only to probation. She was also spared the ordeal of having to register as a sex offender

Now, with Mr. Castlegrande suing the school district for failing to protect students from a woman with a sexual appetite for under-age boys, this city of 62,000 has been forced to examine how little was done to stop her earlier. Even as the news media were saturated with coverage of teachers like Pamela Smart and Mary Kay Letourneau who slept with their students, Bayonne averted its eyes for years.

Some blame small-town politics; Ms. West’s father is a prominent businessman here. Others see a double standard in which people are reluctant to view teenage boys as victims. Mayor Joseph Doria attributes the silence to shock, shame and misplaced civic pride from people afraid the case would tarnish the reputation of Bayonne schools.

“No one bothered to do the math,” said Mr. Doria, who, like many people in town, knew that Ms. West had married a former student, but did not seem to realize that the relationship had started — and that their child had been born — when her husband was still in school. “And the people who suspected didn’t want to make it a big issue.”

The legal age of consent in New Jersey is 16 — except if the adult is acting in loco parentis, like a teacher or guardian, in which case it is 18.

Bayonne, on a peninsula jutting between Upper New York Bay and Newark Bay, has an assortment of Irish, Polish, Italian, Egyptian and Hispanic enclaves crammed next to one another yet separated by language, culture and economic status. Ms. West, now 52, was raised in one of the city’s more comfortable Italian sections, the daughter of John Cherchio, a regular on who’s who lists here, who ran a successful construction and waste-carting business.

Ms. West declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, and her lawyer did not respond to several telephone messages left at his office. Nor did her father, or his lawyers.

But court records summarizing her presentencing psychiatric evaluation say Ms. West described her upbringing as happy and uneventful until age 14, when she became pregnant by an abusive boyfriend and gave the child up for adoption.

By 23, Diane Cherchio had graduated from college and was a special education teacher at Dr. Walter F. Robinson elementary school. Her intelligence and dedication won the admiration of supervisors and colleagues, who told investigators decades later that they had been stunned to see her pawing at a 13-year-old student named Jorge at an eighth-grade dance.

The school principal at the time, Daniel Doyle, swore in a statement to prosecutors last year that he spoke to a half-dozen teachers and became convinced that she and the student were sexually involved. “Diane has a thing for young boys,” Mr. Doyle recalled being told, according to court records.

Mr. Doyle said in the statement that he wrote to the superintendent asking that Ms. Cherchio be fired, but was startled to learn, upon returning to school in the fall, that she had instead become a guidance counselor at the high school.

“I accepted it as a political maneuver,” said Mr. Doyle, now retired, who grew up near the Cherchio family. He added that he suspected her father’s business and political connections allowed her to escape punishment.

But the superintendent who promoted Ms. Cherchio, James Murphy, said in a recent interview that he does not know her father, and was never pressured by city officials. Mr. Murphy insisted that he was never told about the accusations, adding, “That’s a very serious matter, and I would have treated it that way if I had been informed of it.”

Neither school officials nor Mr. Doyle can locate any written report about the episode.

At Bayonne High School, the young counselor’s enthusiasm when helping with class schedules and college applications — along with her fashion sense and fluency in pop culture — made her a hit with students, according to interviews with several faculty members. When she became pregnant in 1984, former colleagues recalled, she said that her baby’s father was a musician in the hit musical “Beatlemania.”

Within months, however, another story began to circulate. According to records in the Hudson County prosecutor’s office, Mary Cerreta, an elementary school teacher, had heard from her niece that Steve West, then a junior at the high school, was an expectant father; Mr. Doyle, the elementary school principal, heard from his stepson that the mother-to-be was his — and Steve’s — guidance counselor.

Asked about the relationship years later by a court-appointed psychiatrist, Ms. West said that when they met, Steve had been recovering from a suicide attempt and she had been desperately lonely. “I looked at it like we were saving each other,” she said, according to the summary in the court file.

In his statement to prosecutors, Mr. Doyle said he was shaken by the news that his former employee had again become sexually involved with a student. But he said he did not report it to school administrators or legal authorities because his previous complaint had accomplished nothing. “She was somebody else’s problem now,” he is quoted as saying in the statement.

Diane Cherchio was 31 when she married Steve West after his graduation. The couple became fixtures on West 26th Street, said James Rentas, who lived across the street. In the years that followed, they were often seen walking the family’s terrier or hurrying their three children to soccer and baseball practice.

But the unusual thing neighbors noticed was the large bay windows that the Wests had installed on the side of the house overlooking the Bayonne High School athletic field. On many afternoons, they said, Ms. West watched intently as the football, baseball or soccer teams practiced.

By the spring of 2000, one star on that baseball diamond was Christopher Castlegrande, a freshman so burly and quick with a bat that he became the varsity’s starting catcher.

Though he excelled athletically, Chris had a learning disability and a troubled home life.

Ms. West, who had been divorced since 1996, was close to Chris’s father, Joseph Castlegrande, their sons having played Babe Ruth baseball together. When Mr. Castlegrande complained about his debts and his strained relationship with his son, according to his statements to the authorities, Ms. West invited Chris to live with her and her three children.

Now 21 and considering a career in law enforcement, the younger Mr. Castlegrande declined to be interviewed for this article, along with his lawyer, Robert Bianchi, his father and the aunt and uncle who reported the affair to the police. Mr. Castlegrande also sued Ms. West — who settled for $400,000 last year, according to court records — and then the Bayonne district and its top administrators, in a civil case now pending in federal court in Newark.

According to Ms. West’s and Chris’s statements to the authorities at the time of her arrest, several weeks after the teenager moved in, she sat next to him on the couch while watching television, put her hand on his leg and kissed him. Within a week, the statements say, they were having sex.

At school, Chris told investigators, Ms. West rearranged his classes so they could meet at home during lunch. She wrote him excuses for absences and hall passes, and gave him her electronic security card to enter and leave the school building. “Stick with me, I can get you into a good school and get you a baseball scholarship,” she told him, according to Chris’s statement to the police.

At home, Ms. West fluctuated between surrogate mother and secret lover. Chris told the authorities that she had opened a bank account for him, had taken him on vacations to Utah with her children, had set his curfew and bedtime, and had helped arrange an operation on his foot. And, several times a week, he said in the statement, she sneaked him into her bedroom to spend the night.

Eventually, according to the police statements from Chris and Ms. West, Steven Jr. grew troubled by the close relationship, so Chris moved in with an aunt and uncle.

The aunt, Tammy Laszkow, told prosecutors that she was suspicious that the relationship between Chris and Ms. West had turned sexual and began secretly recording Chris’s telephone calls from her home. In December 2001, Mrs. Laszkow taped Ms. West reading Chris a newspaper article about a boy who had shot his father during a hunting trip, and began to fear for Joseph Castlegrande’s life, so she called the police.

In talking about the relationships with a court-appointed psychiatrist last year, Ms. West said that when she took up with Steve and Chris, she thought it was acceptable because she had had a child at 14. Later, she said, she realized teenage boys can suffer emotional damage if they become sexually involved with an adult, especially an authority figure like a teacher.

It is unclear what lessons, if any, Bayonne school administrators took from the episodes because they, too, have declined to discuss the matter, citing the pending lawsuit.

Like many who live here, Enrique Santana, 21, who played baseball with Mr. Castlegrande and had Ms. West as a counselor, said he was shocked to learn about the relationship — but not about the tepid response.

Asked whether he was confident that the town would be more vigilant in protecting children like his own daughter in the future, he shrugged. “Even if you knew, really knew it was happening at the time, who could you go to?” Mr. Santana said in an interview. “This is Bayonne, a small town.”

Sandra Jamison contributed research.

    A History of Sex With Students, Unchallenged Over the Years, NYT, 10.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/nyregion/10teacher.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=c58e9e8b2041d18a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Threats of Violence as Homes for Sex Offenders Cluster in Suffolk        NYT        9.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/nyregion/09offenders.html

Threats of Violence

as Homes for Sex Offenders

Cluster in Suffolk

October 9, 2006
The New York Times
By COREY KILGANNON

MASTIC, N.Y. — Not long after four men moved into the small ranch-style home at 115 Eleanor Avenue this summer, another man is said to have readied a special greeting.

Donald Keegan, a fellow resident of this working-class Suffolk County town, prepared a concoction of paint thinner and road flares to burn the place and, the police said, kill the occupants, who had all recently served prison time for crimes including rape and sodomy.

The four housemates, ranging in age from 36 to 74, were all registered as Level 3 sex offenders, the highest rating, saved for those the state deems “most likely to re-offend.” One had attacked a man in a wheelchair; the others’ victims were girls ages 8, 9 and 11.

Mr. Keegan was arrested before the plot could be carried out, but his case has exposed a raw and widespread fear over spreading clusters of sex offenders in Suffolk County’s lower-income neighborhoods. In Mastic, opponents say 76 offenders live within a five-mile radius, and in nearby Coram and Gordon Heights, 39 offenders, most having assaulted children, live within a square half-mile, many grouped in the same houses. This is the highest concentration of Level 2 and 3 offenders on Long Island.

As laws across the country have radically restricted where sex offenders can live once released from prison, a growing number of landlords here and elsewhere are marketing their properties to the ex-convicts, who often receive government rent subsidies. While some landlords see a business opportunity or even a moral calling in opening their doors to such a vilified population, many residents say the clusters threaten the safety of their children.

Mr. Keegan, 36, is in the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead, with bail set at $1 million, and is facing a sentence of up to 25 years on charges of attempted murder and attempted arson. A county maintenance worker, he lives with his wife and their 2-year-old daughter on Patchogue Avenue, whose residents include two convicted child rapists, state records show.

In a jailhouse interview, Mr. Keegan insisted on his innocence but said, “I would do anything to protect my daughter.”

The situation at 115 Eleanor developed even as the authorities moved to evict the four men, having decided that after-school programs at the community center on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation — a block from the house — should have disqualified the site for sex offenders. A new county law took effect in June barring registered offenders from living within a quarter-mile of a school, playground or licensed day care center.

Though two of the four offenders have already moved out of the house, state and local politicians are now scrambling to reduce these clusters; one Suffolk County lawmaker has introduced legislation that would bar the Department of Social Services from putting more than one offender in a single house.

Charles Manolakos, who owns 115 Eleanor Avenue, defended his tenants as “citizens who have paid their debt and have a right to live there.” But Joyce Pulliam, who lives across the street, complained that the authorities “protect the sex offenders more than us.”

“They’re letting four and five offenders gather in a single house to create little sex offender clubs to prey on our children,” said Ms. Pulliam, who has worked strenuously to rally neighbors against the newcomers to her block. “The police have the manpower to arrest Keegan, but they don’t have the manpower to protect us from sex offenders.”

Situated between the high-priced Hamptons and the densely populated, upper-middle-class precincts of Nassau County, this area over the past decade has become a magnet for sex offenders upon their release from prison.

Of some 24,000 registered sex offenders in the state, 825 live in Suffolk County, nearly twice the 452 in neighboring Nassau, whose population is only slightly smaller. Some blame the county’s Department of Social Services for referring offenders to landlords who have bought inexpensive houses in neighborhoods with little political clout.

“D.S.S. has seen this building for a long time in these neighborhoods, and they’ve never done anything to stop it,” said Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan’s Law, a national group based on Long Island that works to prevent sexual abuse of children.

But given the number of sex offenders in Suffolk, “There is no way they could all be placed in neighborhoods without kids,” said Dennis Nowak, a Social Services spokesman.

Required by state law to help find and finance housing for sex offenders released from prison, the department refers offenders to nonprofit agencies, which connect them with landlords who will accept them — and the $309 monthly rent stipend allocated by the county — in homes that meet state and local regulations.

“This is an issue that communities across the country are facing, and there’s no easy solution,” Mr. Nowak said. “We’ve become a lightning rod for the issue, but it’s much bigger than us.”

The lightning struck in Mastic this summer, when the four men moved into the Eleanor Avenue house, paying $550 each per month. It is next door to a family with seven young children, and across the avenue from a residence for 12 women recovering from drug and alcohol abuse.

“With all these kids on this block and 12 vulnerable women in a house, this is where they allow a house full of sex offenders?” said one of the women, Denise Mello, 32, a recovering heroin addict.

Soon, parents on the block began keeping their children indoors. Neighbors picketed in front of the house, and members of the Mastic Park Civic Association went door to door distributing fliers with the offenders’ names, police photos and criminal records.

At one homeowners’ meeting at the local library, a resident, not Mr. Keegan, stood up and said, “I’ll burn the house down,” recalled the civic association president, John Sicignano. In response, he said, “Fifty people stood up and started clapping.”

“He definitely expressed it the wrong way, but who knows, if something threatened my kid, maybe I’d react the same way,” Mr. Sicignano, 49, who runs an aircraft engineering firm, said of Mr. Keegan.

Mr. Manolakos commented ironically: “This guy was doing what the whole neighborhood wanted to do. He’s a local hero.”

Mr. Keegan said that his lawyer had warned him not to talk about the case, and that he was a law-abiding man with no time for mischief.

“I have three jobs,” said Mr. Keegan, who does private landscaping after his maintenance work with the county. “I come home exhausted every night and turn on the Discovery Channel.”

Mr. Keegan denied plotting to burn down the house Sept. 9, when he was arrested with road flares on the front seat of his Ford Mustang. The police, acting on a tip, had sent a detective to befriend Mr. Keegan and caught his threats on tape.

Fred Hollman, 36, who served time for first-degree rape of an 11-year-old girl, moved into 115 Eleanor Avenue in June after living briefly in western Suffolk County, but said in an interview in September that he was looking for a new home because of the furor.

“The last place I was staying, in Brentwood, all the neighbors knew about my status and were friends with me,” he said. “We all hung out together.” But, Mr. Hollman added, he has four children and “wouldn’t want them living around sex offenders either.”

Mr. Hollman said he saw Mr. Keegan “in and out of the neighbors’ houses a bunch of times” before his arrest.

Mr. Manolakos, who co-owns a number of homes on Long Island and rents rooms mostly to mentally disabled tenants, says he plans to fight the mid-September order to remove the sex offenders within 45 days. He argued that the Indian reservation, a 250-resident maze of scruffy suburban streets lined with smoke shops and trailer homes, has no legal bearing on the block, since it operates as its own sovereign territory, outside of many state laws and regulations.

Other landlords defend their right to rent to sex offenders.

“They just want to live their lives,” said Bernadette Parks, whose mother, Mary Dodson, rents to 27 offenders in 11 houses in a small area in Coram and Gordon Heights nicknamed Dodsonville.

On a single block of Homestead Avenue, Mrs. Dodson owns homes filled with 15 offenders, said Mrs. Parks, who manages the properties. The extended Dodson family, with many young children, lives in the surrounding neighborhood.

“They’re being closely watched, and they’re more scared than the other folks here,” said Mrs. Parks, a devout Christian who sees the family’s thriving rental operation as a kind of religious mission, and invites the sex offenders to join her grandchildren in tending rabbits, for therapy.

“My grandchildren all play on this block,” Mrs. Parks said, cradling a bowl of newborn bunnies in her living room. “That’s how much I trust these people. They’ve been deemed to enter back into society and they’ll have to suffer the rest of their lives with being labeled.”

Don’t tell that to Chief Harry Wallace, who runs the Poospatuck Indian Reservation. A Dartmouth-educated lawyer with a ponytail, he keeps two sets of business cards on his desk, one for his law practice, the other for his Poospatuck Smoke Shop and Trading Post.

“What these landlords are doing by renting out to sex offenders,” Chief Wallace said, “are undermining communities trying to better themselves.”

    Threats of Violence as Homes for Sex Offenders Cluster in Suffolk, NYT, 9.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/nyregion/09offenders.html

Texas Moms Who Killed Kids Make Friends

October 8, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:09 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DALLAS (AP) -- Two Texas women who killed their young children in cases that drew nationwide attention have formed a friendship at a state hospital, a newspaper reports.

Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in the bathtub, and Dena Schlosser, whose baby died after she severed the girl's arms with a kitchen knife, became roommates at the Maple unit of the North Texas State Hospital after each was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

''We talk about our past, we talk about our memories, our fun memories, the things that our kids did,'' Schlosser told The Dallas Morning News. With the support of her family, Schlosser agreed to be interviewed several times by phone.

Yates did not want to come to the phone. But her ex-husband Rusty Yates, who still regularly visits her at the hospital in Vernon, 174 miles northwest of Dallas, said Schlosser has become a friend.

''Hopefully, they can help each other through the long recovery process,'' he said.

The two women will probably be in the state's care for years, remaining at Vernon or another hospital until their doctors and judges agree they can be released.

Conversations between the women often revolve around their young daughters -- Mary Yates was 6 months old and Maggie Schlosser was 10 months old when they died.

Schlosser's parents, Connie and Mick Macaulay of Canada, said their daughter once tearfully called after talking with Yates.

''They'd talked a lot about Mary and Maggie,'' said Mick Macaulay, a mental health counselor. ''They were feeling guilty, remorseful and sad.''

Schlosser, 37, was already at the hospital when Yates, 42, arrived this summer. Yates drowned her children at her family home in suburban Houston in 2001 and Schlosser cut off her daughter's arms in her family home in suburban Dallas in 2004.

The women have much in common. Both were married, stay-at-home moms who followed out-of-the mainstream religious leaders. Both suffered from postpartum depression and psychosis after the birth of their daughters.

Yates, who had been a nurse, believed when she drowned her five children -- Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah -- that she was protecting them from Satan. Schlosser, who has a degree in psychology, wanted to offer her baby to God.

While Schlosser has no distinct memories of what she calls ''the tragedy,'' she knows she killed Maggie.

During her trial, psychiatrists said that in her delusional mind, she believed God wanted her to cut off the baby's arms.

''I had delusions that were going on that I didn't understand, but I believed them. I thought I was doing the right thing,'' she said.

Schlosser eventually hopes to reconcile with her surviving daughters. The girls, now 8 and 11, live with their father, who has filed for divorce.

She's written her daughters a letter a week since her arrest, telling the girls how much she loves and misses them. But she's waiting to mail them until the girls are ready to read them.

She also knows they aren't ready to see her yet.

''I'm willing to wait. I'll wait as long, I'll wait for the rest of my life,'' she said. ''I love them dearly. My kids are my world, and they always will be.''

Yates has no living children but will one day be buried with her children, a right she won in the divorce.

    Texas Moms Who Killed Kids Make Friends, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Schlosser-Yates-Friendship.html

Police Say Gym Teacher Had Sex With Student

October 7, 2006
The New York Times
By NATE SCHWEBER

PERTH AMBOY, N.J., Oct. 6 — The police have charged a middle school gym teacher and cheerleading coach with having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student, the Middlesex County prosecutors office said on Friday.

The teacher, Amy Burke, 32, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with sexual assault and criminal third-degree sexual assault. She was being held at the Middlesex County jail, where on Thursday morning a county judge set her bail at $300,000 and stipulated that she would have to post the entire amount to be released from jail.

Officials at the McGinnis Middle School learned of the alleged misconduct when they received a telephone call from a mother of a student on Wednesday morning. The Perth Amboy police questioned and arrested Ms. Burke that afternoon.

Ms. Burke has been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the criminal investigation, Superintendent John M. Rodecker said Friday.

The police are interviewing people in and around the school to “determine if there were others, or other witnesses,” said Andrea Carter, an assistant prosecutor for Middlesex County.

She added that there was no evidence that Ms. Burke acted inappropriately toward any other student. Ms. Carter said investigators believed the relationship between the suspect and the boy began in March and lasted through the summer.

Ms. Burke, who lives in nearby Carteret, N.J., with her husband and 3-year-old son, has worked in Perth Amboy schools since 1999, Mr. Rodecker said. On Friday afternoon Mr. Rodecker called the alleged affair “against everything you teach in our school system.”

Students at the middle school and their parents expressed outrage. Domingo Ramos, 43, whose two children attend McGinnis School, called the allegations “unacceptable” and added that before this episode he had warned his son and daughter not to allow teachers to touch them inappropriately.

“This is unbelievable,” Mr. Ramos said. “Every week I warn both my kids there’s a lot of sickos out there.”

Mr. Ramos’s daughter Stephanie Ramos, 11, had Ms. Burke as a gym teacher. She described Ms. Burke as a stern disciplinarian who would often yell at her students.

Neighbors of Ms. Burke, who lives in a two-story modified Cape Cod-style house with children’s toys on the front porch and on the side lawn, said the family kept to itself.

A man identified by neighbors as Michael Haskins, Ms. Burke’s father, refused to speak with reporters on Thursday and put a sign on his front door, stating: “We have no comment at this time.”

A neighbor, Aldona Hojecki, 73, said the Burkes had lived in the house for three years. She said she never noticed any young boys visiting Ms. Burke but, pointing at Carteret High School and Carteret Middle School, each a block from Ms. Burke’s house, “seeing them coming and going is not unusual.”

    Police Say Gym Teacher Had Sex With Student, NYT, 7.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/nyregion/07teach.html

Pollen produces new clue in 1979 slaying

Posted 10/4/2006 11:39 AM ET
By Ben Dobbin, The Associated Press
USA Today

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Three grains of pollen might help solve a 27-year-old murder mystery.

To try to unmask the identity of a teenage girl found slain in a cornfield in western New York in 1979, investigators have turned to a pollen-analysis technique rarely used in the United States in hopes of pinpointing where she once lived.

A forensic botanist in Texas determined that three microscopic pollen grains from an Australian pine that were recovered this summer inside the girl's red jacket and her pants pocket could have come only from Florida, Arizona or most likely southern California, provided she didn't leave the country.

"The chances of one of those pollen grains reaching that area of New York on air currents might be, I don't know, a billion to one," said Professor Vaughn Bryant, director of the Palynology Laboratory at Texas A&M University. "But three of them, unh-unh, I'm sorry, it's not possible."

Based on an assortment of about 40 other pollen types that were also found, the girl seems to have resided in or at least traveled through coastal regions in southern California such as San Diego, Bryant said, adding that "with more effort, it's possible we could narrow this down further."

The girl, believed to be about 15 years old, was shot in the forehead beside a country road in Caledonia the night of Nov. 8, 1979, then was dragged into the field and shot again in the back, police said. The next morning, a farmer spotted her brightly colored jacket and walked over, thinking a hunter was trespassing.

John York, the first police officer on the scene, has since combed through more than 10,000 leads, interviewed two notorious serial killers who claimed responsibility, saturated the South and Southwest with thousands of fliers and got the case profiled repeatedly on America's Most Wanted.

"It was not only a very difficult case, especially when a child's that young, but it's become personally quite difficult. We don't have many open homicides here," said York, who's been sheriff of largely rural Livingston County since 1989.

"I think every homicide investigator will tell you the same thing: You go to the scene, conduct the investigation and it's only a matter of just a short time before you can identify the victim and, in turn, it will take you to a perpetrator; 27 years later, we're still trying to do that."

Forensic palynology is used regularly as evidence in criminal trials in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and has helped unlock wartime mass-murder riddles in Bosnia and Hungary. But it's been tried fewer than a dozen times in U.S. crimes, said Bryant, one of only two such specialists in the country.

The idea for applying the method came from Paul Chambers, an investigator at the medical examiner's office in Rochester who studied forensic archaeology during his years as a police constable in England. "The reason it's not used more often in this country is it's just not well-known," Chambers said.

"It's just like DNA, blood analysis, mineral studies, a tool that in some cases has proven extremely useful," Bryant said. "I've been beating the drum since 1975 trying to get people interested but most of it fell on deaf ears until 9/11. This is just one of many new techniques the federal government has become interested in to try to prevent terrorism."

It rained for 11 hours before the girl's body was found, obliterating most of any physical evidence.

Her clothes, however, "have been pretty much kept contamination-free since the murder," Bryant said. "What happens in a lot of places is they repeatedly open and shut the bags containing evidence and the potential for atmospheric pollen contamination is usually so bad the results wouldn't stand up in court."

The girl was white, 5-foot-3, 120 pounds and had tan lines, suggesting she'd recently been in warmer climes. Her key chain bore the inscription, "He who holds the Key can open my heart."

A slug from the murder weapon — a .38-caliber handgun — was tested against hundreds of others fired from guns seized by police as far away as Europe and Mexico, but to no avail.

Ottis Toole, a one-time companion of mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas, claimed he picked up the girl in a park near Philadelphia, traveled with her for a while and was with Lucas when he killed her in Caledonia.

York said he interviewed them separately and "both told me the same thing without knowing what the other said." But he couldn't confirm the pair, now dead, were involved, he said.

"We're using every means available," the sheriff said. "This kid has a right to an identity."

    Pollen produces new clue in 1979 slaying, UT, 4.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-10-04-pollen-murder-case_x.htm

4 fatal shootings push city murder total to 299

Posted on Tue, Oct. 03, 2006
The Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com
By Peter Mucha and Stephanie L. Arnold
Inquirer Staff Writers

Philadelphia stopped short of 300 murders for the year yesterday, with four fatal shootings occurring in a span of six hours in different parts of the city.

No additional homicides were reported overnight, police spokesman Raul Malveiro said this morning.

Yesterday's first first killing occurred in the 4200 block of North Sydenham Street in Nicetown shortly before 4 p.m., when Carlton Griffin, 30, was shot multiple times inside his home. He was pronounced dead on the scene, Malveiro said.

The second shooting occurred shortly after 3:30 p.m. in the 6000 block of Greenway Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. An unidentified man was found dead in the rear alley with gunshot wounds to the head.

He also was pronounced dead at the scene.

Then, about 8:30 p.m., two men were shot and killed at their residence in the 1700 block of South 55th Street.

William Hilton, 26, was pronounced dead at the scene with gunshot wounds to the torso.

Darnell DeLoatch, 17, was shot multiple times in the head and back. He was transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he was pronounced dead shortly before 8:30 p.m.

The fatal shootings bring the city's homicide count this year up to 299, Malveiro said.

Police said they do not have any suspects or motives in any of the shootings.

    4 fatal shootings push city murder total to 299, PI, 3.10.2006, http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/15667710.htm