History > 2006 > USA > Violence (V-VI)

After Years of Agony,

Death Turns Assaults Into Homicides

December 26, 2006
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

Sirkime Stevenson died this year, but he was killed in 1991.

Mr. Stevenson was tall, strapping and 18 that year, when bullets fired from a stranger’s gun struck his lower back, shattered parts of his spine and froze him from the waist down.

Even as his body withered around the wounds, he dreamed of walking again — until 1997, when bedsores ate his left leg to the bone and doctors amputated it at the hip. More infections brewed, eroding Mr. Stevenson’s insides before finally stopping his heart in January.

Armani Eaddy also died this year, but she was killed in 1997.

Armani was 4 months old that year when she was shaken so violently that delicate parts of her brain were destroyed. She went blind, was never able to walk and had to be fed through a tube tunneled into her stomach. To the amazement of her doctors, Armani survived past the age of 5.

But violent seizures plagued her throughout her life, one so ferocious that it put her in a coma last spring, when she was 8. Two days later, she died.

Two fatal wounds, two deaths years later.

The New York City medical examiner has ruled that both Mr. Stevenson and Armani were the victims of homicides, a medical finding that is not surprising, considering the nature of their wounds. But what is unusual is the amount of time that passed between the fatal wounds and the fatalities themselves.

Both Mr. Stevenson and Armani fell into a subset of crime called “reclassified” homicides, deaths linked to injuries incurred in months or years past. For reasons that no one can quite explain, a record number of reclassified homicides were recorded in New York City this year. In all, 35 deaths in the city in 2006 have been linked to wounds incurred as long as 30 years ago. That is roughly three times the historical average, and 14 more than the year before.

The Police Department has cited those figures as accounting for some of the rise in New York’s homicide rate, which has outpaced the rate in 2005: by mid-December, 566 homicides had been reported this year, compared with 517 for the same time in 2005.

For those 35, death came in myriad forms, connected only by the excruciatingly glacial tempo of its arrival. From blood poisoning leached from old shot wounds. From infected intestines, slit open in the 1970’s by knives. From pneumonia linked to paralysis, which in turn was traced to a bullet lodged long ago in a spine.

For Mr. Stevenson, those who knew him said, death also came from a broken heart. Up until the day that doctors amputated his left leg, he believed he would walk again.

He had been an accomplished basketball and football player, collecting trophies playing for Eastern District High School in Brooklyn. But one chilly autumn night in 1991, after seeing a horror movie called “The People Under the Stairs” with friends, Mr. Stevenson was caught in the middle of a fight. Bullets tore through his intestines, shattering his lower spine. The gunman was never caught.

Mr. Stevenson’s voice broke when saw his grandmother, Josephine Anderson, in the hospital. “Grandma,” he whispered hoarsely, “I can’t move my legs,” Ms. Anderson recalled.

Ms. Anderson and her husband, Joseph, had raised Mr. Stevenson in a series of public housing apartments. He had been their light. After the shooting, they tried to buoy his spirits, but after his friends dropped away, his loneliness hardened into despair.

The Andersons urged Mr. Stevenson to finish high school, but he felt alienated surrounded by people who could walk. He also dropped out of physical therapy because he hated being around people in wheelchairs. “I’m not like them,” he would say.

Yet even as his once-muscular legs wasted away, Mr. Stevenson clung to the hope of walking again.

After the amputation, Ms. Anderson saw something in her grandson flicker out. Then her own health and her husband’s declined. Mr. Anderson lost both legs to diabetes. Arthritis invaded Ms. Anderson’s joints.

Exhausted by caring for the family, Ms. Anderson had a nervous breakdown midway through 2005 and went to a nursing home. Early this year, Mr. Stevenson called her, sounding hopeless.

“Grandma, I’m going to die,” he said. Ms. Anderson’s response was quick and sharp. “The Lord did not bring you this far to drop you now,” she said.

But one icy morning a week later, the family’s home attendant heard a dull thump from Mr. Stevenson’s room. She raced to him, finding him unconscious, wedged between his bed and the wall.

He died at the hospital. The official cause of death was sepsis, a bacterial infection in the blood, linked to his paraplegia and the 1991 wounds, the medical examiner’s office said.

But Ms. Anderson said her grandson had simply lost the will to live. “His main friends did not stay with him,” she said. “I think he died of heartbreak.”

Beating the Odds, for a Time

For nearly four years, Armani Eaddy cheated death.

The brain damage she suffered after being shaken as an infant was so severe that doctors warned that she was unlikely to live more than a handful of years. Five years, tops, they said.

“After six came, then seven, I thought, ‘We made it,’ said Armani’s mother, Teresa Almonte, 33. “I would throw a big party for her, and buy the most expensive cake I could afford.”

Ms. Almonte said she had never felt vengeful toward Armani’s father, who was charged with attempted murder after Armani was hurt. Ms. Almonte said the man, Derek Eaddy, told her he had done nothing wrong, only found the infant in her crib, unwell. In 1999, he was convicted of assault and was sentenced to one year in prison.

Ms. Almonte did not know what to believe. All she knew was that her once-perfect daughter was now the victim of shaken baby syndrome, and that the brain damage could never be reversed.

At first, Ms. Almonte raged inward, slipping into an immobilizing depression. She went into therapy and was told she had bipolar disorder. She took mood stabilizers and antipsychotic medications, all the while raising her sons, now aged 11, 8 and 3. But she also devoted herself to Armani, who somehow helped Ms. Almonte forget herself.

Blind, incapacitated and able to make only gurgling sounds, Armani experienced the world through her ears. She adored being outside, listening to bird song and street noises, and feeling the sun’s kiss on her skin. Indoors, cloaked in the silence of the family’s basement apartment in the Bronx, Armani squealed in protest until someone flipped on the radio or television.

Caring for Armani, Ms. Almonte found, gave her a sense of resolve and purpose. “She taught me patience, how to be responsive,” she said. “She taught me how to be a parent.”

As Armani’s fifth birthday neared, paranoia consumed Ms. Almonte. Then, miraculously, the dreaded birthday passed. Armani seemed to be doing better than ever. At the urging of a neurologist, Ms. Almonte took her off her anti-seizure medications. She allowed herself a glimmer of hope.

The urgent call from Armani’s home attendant came on March 4. A violent seizure — “like a volt to the brain,” Ms. Almonte said — had put her in a coma. She was being kept alive by a breathing machine, her chest rising and falling amid a tangled octopus of tubes.

For two days, Ms. Almonte agonized. Then acceptance came. “I’m not getting her back,” Ms. Almonte realized. She told the doctor to take Armani off the machine, and watched her little girl slip away.

This year, Ms. Almonte and her sons celebrated Armani’s ninth birthday anyway. They brought balloons and cake to their favorite treed nook in Mullaly Park in the Bronx. Then they mourned. “The party this year was a memorial,” Ms. Almonte said. “And it was the worst.”

‘I Loved This Girl’

LaPriest Ward believed Shareema Williams was trying to kill herself before her injuries did.

He had loved her from the moment he set eyes on her, outside a friend’s building in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1993. She managed a smile, her brown eyes twinkling, even though tears of exhaustion were spilling down her cheeks. She was already in a wheelchair then. Mr. Ward was bewitched.

Ms. Williams was 18 and dancing in a Brooklyn nightclub in 1988 when an unwanted suitor refused to leave her alone. He groped her, and she swung at him. Moments later, he returned with a gun, and shot her in the back. Ms. Williams was paralyzed, and later doctors removed her hip joints, which had been shattered by the blasts. Bullet scars pocked her back and buttocks, which bore a patchwork quilt of skin grafts.

Mr. Ward was disabled too. A car accident in 1986 crushed his larynx, and afterward he could speak only in gasps. Yet he and Ms. Williams found solace in each other. He was her legs. She was his voice.

Mr. Ward said Ms. Williams refused to talk about her attacker, although the police said the man was charged with assault and is serving his sentence in Attica state prison.

“She’d say, ‘Don’t worry about it; what’s done is done,’ ” Mr. Ward said. But demons still stalked Ms. Williams. Before the attack, Mr. Ward said, she barely touched drugs, only occasionally using marijuana. She had left her family because of their drug abuse, Mr. Ward said. But after the shooting, she began to smoke crack.

“She felt insecure,” Mr. Ward said in gasps. “She was just trying to blend into her environment. It was a way to take her mind off of herself.”

Still, they moved in together and later had five children, including triplets. Mr. Ward, a man of sparkling intelligence, had to settle for jobs as a cook or a stock boy because of his disability.

He would return from work and hunt for Ms. Williams in the forbidding streets near their Bronx apartment. The triplets were taken from them because of her drug abuse, and their two other daughters were, too. Eventually Mr. Ward’s mother adopted all five of their children, and they live in Queens.

Mr. Ward, who insists he has never used drugs, still stuck with Ms. Williams, determined to save her from herself.

“I loved this girl, but I don’t know how I loved this girl,’ ” he said.

Repeated complications kept her returning to the hospital. Spasms. Urinary tract infections. Late in August, a kidney infection put her back in the hospital. Her body swelled up. Mr. Ward was convinced she would get better. She always had before. But she was so swollen, he barely recognized her.

On the morning of Sept. 12, Mr. Ward took a break from Ms. Williams’s bedside, overwhelmed. He walked to a welfare office in the Bronx, and sat down. Hours passed. Suddenly, in the late afternoon, a terrible feeling set in. He raced to the hospital, arriving at 5 p.m. A plastic sheet had been drawn over Ms. Williams. A nurse told him she had died at 4:45 p.m.

Two weeks later, the medical examiner determined that Ms. Williams had died from multiple complications caused by the old bullet wounds. Her death became the 28th reclassified homicide of the year.

    After Years of Agony, Death Turns Assaults Into Homicides, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/nyregion/26reclass.html

Reclassified Homicides Rise, but Reason Is Unknown

December 26, 2006
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

Experts are at a loss to explain why New York’s reclassified homicides set a record high of 35 in 2006. In 2005, 21 homicides were characterized as reclassified; the Police Department says the annual average has typically hovered around a dozen.

It is also a mystery why so many of this year’s reclassified homicides were caused by wounds decades old. Six deaths this year were linked to stab and bullet wounds inflicted in the 1970’s. Even in 2004, when the reclassified figure spiked to another unusual high, 32, less than a third of the injuries went back even 10 years, according to the Police Department.

Yet the medical examiner’s office has not revamped its forensic methods, a spokeswoman said; nor has it changed how it reports homicides. Criminologists cannot explain the surge either. The Police Department is stumped.

“It’s unusual that so many date back more than 10 years, but these are the numbers that the medical examiner’s office gave us. And we accept what they gave us,” said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. “They’re what we have to live with. It is a bit of a fluke.”

Still, reclassified deaths alone do not account for the increase in the number of reported homicides to 566 citywide from 517 for the same period last year. Not counting the 35 reclassified homicides, the figure has still gone up. Mr. Kelly noted that the 2005 figure represented the lowest rate in 43 years — a tough act to follow. Over all, crime across the seven categories tracked by the police is 5 percent behind the same rate for last year.

One implication of reclassifying a crime as a homicide is that the person accused of the crime stands to face greater charges. What once merely caused a serious injury would now be considered a homicide. So the person who stabbed Roslyn Rutherford on one steamy August day in Harlem in 1973 could now be charged with murder. Ms. Rutherford died on the operating table last January, and the medical examiner linked her death to complications from the original wound. Police say they have a suspect, who happens to be in jail on another charge.

“If the actions of one person cause the death of another person, that is the absolute definition of homicide,” said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city’s medical examiner. “It does not matter how many years intervene.”

But with at least a dozen of this year’s reclassified homicides, including that of Sirkime Stevenson, who was shot in 1991, the perpetrators were never found. In at least four cases, the suspects died, one of an overdose, another while in prison. As for the rest, where assailants were imprisoned, as in the cases of Shareema Williams and Armani Eaddy, district attorneys are still considering whether to upgrade their charges to homicides, representatives from those offices said this month.

    Reclassified Homicides Rise, but Reason Is Unknown, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/nyregion/26numbers.html

After false hope in 2006, JonBenet case still a mystery

Updated 12/25/2006 7:39 PM ET
By Robert Weller, Associated Press
USA Today

BOULDER, Colo. — A decade after the Christmastime slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, two aspects of the case endure: the public's fascination with the murder of the 6-year-old beauty contestant, and a sense for some that the notorious crime may never be solved.

Interest in the case was briefly rekindled this past year with the death of JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey. The one-time Miss West Virginia died June 24 of ovarian cancer at the age of 49 in Atlanta, where the family had moved after her daughter's slaying.

Then, in August, the case appeared to blow wide open with the arrest in Thailand of John Mark Karr, a sometime teacher obsessed with the little girl's slaying.

Karr made bizarre, detailed confessions to the killing, but after he was brought back to the United States he was freed for lack of corroboration for his claims — or even any solid indication he'd been near Boulder at the time of the killing.

District Attorney Mary Lacy has said the investigation remains open and DA's investigator Tom Bennett said in a recent interview that the office is still receiving information about the case. Bennett noted that the office has hundreds of other, more active cases. The Boulder Daily Camera reported Saturday that Lacy had asked county commissioners for $40,000 to hire another investigator on the case.

JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, a software entrepreneur, has said in recent interviews he believes the case will be solved.

JonBenet was reported missing from the family's Boulder home by her wealthy parents on the morning after Christmas 1996. While police were taking an initial look at evidence, including an unusual ransom note written on a notepad in the home, John Ramsey found his daughter's body in the basement.

She'd been strangled and bludgeoned and had signs of sexual molestation.

The case became an overnight media sensation, driven in part by photos and videos of the little blond girl competing in beauty pageants in provocative costumes.

This wealthy, politically liberal town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains became a regular backdrop for newscasts as the case wore on well past the holidays.

As months and then years passed without arrests or seeming progress, infighting between the police and prosecutors became public and endlessly debated. The district attorney's office was accused of treating the Ramsey family with kid gloves. The prosecutor reportedly thought the police too anxious to investigate the family.

Although leadership of both departments has changed, the agencies apparently remain at odds over the case.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said his department and the DA's staff aren't communicating about the case. "I have no idea what they are doing. They don't share that with us," Beckner said, noting his department wasn't involved in arresting Karr.

Lou Smit, a former DA's investigator who became a close friend of John and Patsy Ramsey, says DNA eventually will solve the case and prove an intruder killed their daughter.

"I still think the case can be solved. We need to wait for the DNA databanks to fill up," said Smit.

Former lead police investigator Steve Thomas, who has maintained from the start that suspicion points to the family, disputes that DNA will solve anything.

On one point, however, Thomas may agree with Smit and the others: "Boulder's criminal justice system was simply unprepared for this case," he wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Associated Press.

    After false hope in 2006, JonBenet case still a mystery, UT, 25.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-25-jonbenet-ramsey_x.htm

Bullet boy loses the fight to stop police searching his head

December 23, 2006
The Times
Tim Reid

In the middle of Joshua Bush’s forehead, two inches above his eyes, lies the evidence that prosecutors have just obtained a search warrant to retrieve: a 9mm bullet which, police say, is the proof they need to send the teenager to prison for attempted murder.

Prosecutors say that the bullet, lodged just under the skin, will prove that Mr Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a Texas second-hand car lot in July after opening fire on him.

Mr Bush and his lawyers are fighting to make sure that the bullet remains in his head, saying that the forced removal would be a denial of his civil rights, based on the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

Police say that the bullet became lodged in Mr Bush’s forehead during a gunfight with Alan Olive, a car salesman.

The teenager is accused of being part of a gang that broke into the car lot and tried to steal vehicles. According to police, Mr Bush tried to shoot Mr Olive, who then returned fire, with the bullet striking Mr Bush a glancing blow.

Mickey Sterling, the detective in charge of the investigation, said that Mr Olive shot Mr Bush with a Glock pistol from about ten metres (35ft), scoring a direct hit with a bullet that is designed to rip through flak jackets.

“The bullet hit the skull so hard it just fragmented,” Detective Sterling told The Times. “We all sit around in awe of why it didn’t hit his brain and kill him. The Good Lord was on his side that day.”

Mr Sterling said that, based on the evidence, he is “98 per cent sure” that it is Mr Olive’s bullet in Mr Bush’s head. Mr Olive, a competitive pistol shooter, said in court papers: “I just can’t believe I missed him at that distance.”

When Mr Bush was questioned, he admitted taking part in the attempted robbery but denied that he was involved in the shooting.

Ramon Rodriguez, a prosecutor, said: “The officers noticed this guy looked like hell. He tells the police he got hurt playing basketball.” A few days later, Mr Bush went to hospital and told doctors he had been hit by a stray bullet as he sat on a couch in his flat.

A judge took the unusual step in October of issuing a search warrant to retrieve the bullet. But a doctor determined that he did not have the proper tools to carry out the procedure.

Police obtained a second search warrant and scheduled the operation for last week at the University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston. The hospital decided not to participate for reasons that it would not discuss. Prosecutors said that they would keep looking for a doctor willing to remove the bullet.

Mr Bush is in jail on charges related to the robbery, but not the shooting.

    Bullet boy loses the fight to stop police searching his head, Ts, 23.12.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2516417,00.html

Many Leads, but No Arrests in Killings of Four Prostitutes

December 23, 2006
The New York Times
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI

ATLANTIC CITY, Dec. 22 — Five weeks after the barefoot bodies of four slain prostitutes were found in a ditch near here, investigators are seeking information about a host of possible suspects, including two men from Howard Beach, Queens, and a crack dealer from Philadelphia who lived for a while with one of the victims.

Last week, the authorities also questioned a 55-year-old man in Atlantic City who had a room for most of October at the same seedy hotel on Pacific Avenue where two of the prostitutes had occasionally stayed. A manager and a guest at the hotel recently notified the police about the man after seeing a criminal profile of a theoretical serial killer with a foot fetish and a collection of women’s shoes.

The man, Mark A. Hessee, said in an interview on Thursday that he had nothing to do with the deaths but had long warned prostitutes about “the sins” of drug use and of their trade, which he said was no different than working for “blood money and serving Satan.”

Mr. Hessee, who is unemployed and describes himself as a “minister of God and a man of love,” was released last year after serving four months in jail for illegally possessing a stun gun. He said that the two detectives who came to his rooming house on Dec. 15 said that they would follow up with him and that they planned to talk to two friends of his, one of whom knew the four slain prostitutes.

Since the discovery of the women’s bodies three days before Thanksgiving, law enforcement officers have been receiving tips about possible suspects from prostitutes and motel workers.

Denise Hill, a 43-year-old prostitute, said she contacted the police last month about a “white, greasy-haired, potbellied guy with a scruffy beard,” who frightened her by bragging about having killed some people.

She said that during the night she spent with him at the Best Western motel on Pacific Avenue, the man massaged her and obsessed about her shoes, slip-on Skechers.

Shawn Taylor, another prostitute, recalled that she talked to the police two weeks ago about a man who picked her up one evening on Pacific Avenue in a gray van, the type of vehicle that some here think may have been involved in the killings.

“The guy seemed really uptight and kept telling me to ‘Shut up, whore,’ ” said Ms. Taylor, 26. “I had a really bad vibe, so when we stopped at a traffic light, I just jumped out.”

There are lots of leads but no arrests in a case that appears to be baffling and frustrating for the task force, which is being run by the Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, and includes representatives of local and state police agencies as well as the F.B.I.

More recently, law enforcement authorities from Montgomery County, Md., arrived to pitch in, something a spokeswoman for Mr. Blitz declined to explain.

Mr. Blitz did not return calls to his office and home over the last three days seeking comment about the progress of the investigation. The task force has obtained mounds of information from motels along Pacific Avenue that are known to be hubs of prostitution. Asmat Hussain, a manager at the Flamingo Motel, said that investigators had taken more than 1,000 registration cards for the months of October and November and copied the motel’s security video for the same period.

The unsolved case continues to unnerve the prostitutes who work the seamy streets in the shadows of the grand casinos.

Tiffany Morgan, 28, said that she now solicited clients on the streets only in the company of one or two of her peers and that she had recently bought a pocketknife to carry along with her pepper spray.

“I had to pull my blade out once when a guy got freaky with me and wasn’t going to let me out of the room,” Ms. Morgan said. “It all makes you wonder how long you are going to be alive.”

The bodies of the four victims, whom friends and family members described as crack-addicted prostitutes, were found on Nov. 20 in a murky drainage ditch behind a stretch of squalid motels off the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township, just outside Atlantic City. Their feet were bare and their heads were facing east toward the city, details that have provoked endless speculation.

The medical examiner said the women, ages 20 to 42, were dumped in the ditch over a period of several weeks. Kimberly Raffo was strangled, Tracy Ann Roberts died of asphyxiation, and the bodies of Barbara V. Breidor and Molly Jean Dilts were too decomposed for the cause of death to be determined.

Fear on the streets has fueled talk and rumors of other missing women, like a prostitute known as Peaches, who, as it turns out, has been in the Atlantic County jail for the last several weeks on a previous warrant.

Motels continue to display a missing-person flier for a 16-year-old prostitute named Brittini, last seen on Aug. 20, but the state police said on Thursday that she had been found in early October. Law enforcement authorities said that some prostitutes in Atlantic City evaded both warrants and the cold weather by working the so-called circuit, which includes Tampa, Fla., and Las Vegas.

“It’s not unusual for us to not see somebody for a few months,” said Rafael Roman, a supervisor at the Oasis Drop-In Center in Atlantic City, a division of the South Jersey AIDS Alliance. “Sometimes they leave town for a while to try to beat their addiction, incarceration or to try to reconcile with their families.”

Steven Cicero, a friend of Ms. Raffo’s, said that he was interviewed by the authorities late last week and that they asked about a crack dealer who had been sleeping in the living room of her Ocean Avenue apartment, and about two men from Howard Beach. Mr. Cicero, who is from Ozone Park, Queens, said the investigators indicated that they had been to Queens over the last two weeks.

“They showed me pictures of two guys from Howard Beach, one scruffy guy and one with big ears,” Mr. Cicero said. “They said these guys are from your neck of the woods. They asked me if I knew Lenny’s Clam Bar in Howard Beach. I hate to say it, but it doesn’t sound like they really got anything right now.”

The owner and manager at Lenny’s Clam Bar said on Friday that no detectives had come to inquire about the Atlantic City killings.

Mr. Hessee, who stayed in Room 104 at the Fox Manor Hotel from Oct. 2 to Oct. 23, said he had met both Ms. Raffo and Ms. Breidor, who would each take a room at the hotel from time to time. He said that he was a born-again Christian who vigorously disapproved of prostitution, and insisted he was not involved in the killings.

“Prostitution is blood money,” he said. “A prostitute is already living in hell. It is a sin to pay for sex and a sin to take money for sex.” He added, “I do not associate on a social level with prostitutes or drug addicts.”

Mr. Hessee also denied that he had kept women’s shoes in his room at the Fox Manor, although a hotel manager and a female guest said they told investigators that they had seen about a half-dozen pairs. Mr. Hessee, who was wearing size 8½ white sneakers, said that when the two detectives interviewed him late last week at a room he now rents on South Florida Avenue, they looked through his closet for women’s footwear and found none.

The female guest at the Fox Manor said she told investigators that Mr. Hessee had wanted to caress her feet and that he had given her a pair of women’s shoes. Mr. Hessee, who said he once worked as a massage therapist, said he had offered to rub her feet because she was complaining about pain.

According to court records in Juneau, Alaska, where Mr. Hessee used to live, his wife at the time filed a domestic violence complaint in civil court in 2001, and a judge issued an injunction. Records show that after another domestic violence charge, the couple divorced in 2003.

    Many Leads, but No Arrests in Killings of Four Prostitutes, NYT, 23.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/nyregion/23slay.html

FBI: Violent Crime Still on Rise in 2006

December 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Murders and robberies continued to rise across the country during the first six months of 2006, on pace for an increase in violent crime for a second straight year, preliminary FBI data released Monday show.

The overall 3.7 percent uptick in violent crime between January and June comes amid a still-incomplete Justice Department study of 18 cities for clues on why criminal activity is increasing.

Property crimes like auto theft and other larcenies were down by 2.6 percent over the same six-month period, the data show. But the number of arsons shot up by nearly 7 percent, the FBI reported.

The numbers reflect what police across the country have been saying for months: that the lull in crime between 2001 and 2004 appears to be over.

''This is a concern we've been focused on,'' said Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which represents an estimated 20,000 law enforcement officials and has been pushing for more crime-fighting funding. ''A lot of (police) agencies are really stretched thin when it comes to the budget and their ability to aggressively combat crime.''

The Justice Department did not have an immediate comment.

Last month, the department launched what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called a study ''to figure out the whys behind the numbers,'' but Justice researchers have not yet visited all of the targeted regions, a spokesman said Monday.

The early data show:

--Murders rose by 1.4 percent, felony assaults by 1.2 percent and robberies by a whopping 9.7 percent in 2006, compared to the first six months of 2005. The number of rapes decreased by less than one-tenth of 1 percent.

--Burglaries increased by 1.2 percent. But car thefts dropped by 2.3 percent and other stealing incidents by 3.8 percent.

--Arsons rose by 6.8 percent.

The data is based on crime reports from 11,535 police and other law enforcement agencies nationwide. The total number of actual crimes reported was not immediately available.

------

On the Net:

The FBI's Semiannual Uniform Crime Report can be found at: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/prelim06/index.html 

    FBI: Violent Crime Still on Rise in 2006, NYT, 18.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Crime.html

With 101 Homicides, Newark Nears a Bleak Milestone

December 17, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREW JACOBS

NEWARK, Dec. 15 — The flickering votives, the tearful relatives and the angry activists scolding City Hall for the death of a young mother. It was a familiar tableau as a small crowd huddled to mark the killing of Taheerah Sweat, who the police say was shot twice by a man who had taken her out on the town but then left her to die on the chilly pavement after they had a fight.

Ms. Sweat’s killing early on Dec. 10 was the 101st homicide in Newark this year, the authorities said, one body short of a 1995 record, when Newark was buckling under a wave of crack-fueled mayhem.

With three times the number of homicides per capita as New York, Newark remains one of the most violent cities in the country. New York’s homicide rate has edged up this year, but it is nowhere near that of the late 1980s. Cities across the country, including Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando, San Antonio and Boston, have seen increased killings, part of a two-year rise in major crimes after a decade-long drop.

“If I were an epidemiologist instead of a criminologist, I would say it looks like we have the makings of an epidemic of violence in a number of cities across the country,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law enforcement group. “Newark is not alone.”

At a news conference here on Friday, Mayor Cory A. Booker and his police director, Garry F. McCarthy, tried to draw the focus away from homicides by highlighting successes of recent weeks, including a newly fortified warrant squad that had arrested 75 people, and an overall drop in crime.

Officials also noted an aggressive quality-of-life campaign that has yielded 600 summonses in recent weeks. With two weeks left in the year, City Hall is bracing for another killing and the inevitable headlines that will thrust Newark back into public consciousness as a blood-soaked city where young thugs, guns and drugs rule the streets.

For a mayor staking his administration on both the perception and reality of Newark as a safe place, every shooting is a blow.

“It’s frustrating because these murders are overshadowing all the progress we’ve made making Newark a safer city,” Mr. Booker said shortly after learning of the death of Ms. Sweat, whose killer is still on the loose.

On Friday, as he unveiled a “12 Most Wanted” poster with two mug shots triumphantly crossed out, the mayor added, “I want to be held accountable, but not for the 60 murders that happened this year before I took office.”

Every other category of crime, he repeatedly says, is down 25 percent since he took office in July, with shootings, robberies, rapes and car thefts all recording double-digit drops. And while homicides have edged up, Mr. McCarthy, the police chief, said that the pace of killings had slowed markedly since the summer.

“We have a hundred things going, and they will start to pay off in the coming months,” he said. “People just have to be patient.”

But patience is wearing thin on the streets of Newark, especially among the loved ones of victims of violence. “You can put a thousand cops on the street, and it isn’t going to stop these knuckleheads from killing people,” said Chris Sweat, 40, as she stood beside an impromptu sidewalk memorial for her niece. “I know it’s not the mayor’s fault, but something has to change. And soon.”

Since he came to Newark in September from the New York Police Department, Mr. McCarthy has pledged to shake up a department often criticized for sluggishness and a lack of professionalism. He has given more autonomy to precinct commanders, and demanded greater accountability from them, and he has shifted 150 uniformed officers from desk jobs to the streets.

Also in the works are a new narcotics division and a video surveillance program that will put 60 cameras in the city’s most crime-battered neighborhoods.

In Newark, as in other cities, the rise in homicides and other violent crimes is mostly in low-income, minority neighborhoods, where guns are plentiful and the narcotics trade is flourishing. In many cases, both perpetrators and victims have criminal pasts that involve drugs, the police here say.

Because guns are used in 90 percent of Newark’s homicides, a fundamental challenge is reducing their abundance. The streets are awash in Glocks, AK-47’s and .357 Magnums, and even someone unable to muster the $200 to buy a cheap pistol can rent one for the day, the police say.

“In the past, a drug dealer might have had a gun stashed nearby,” said Michael Wagers, executive director of the Police Institute at Rutgers University. “Now it’s in his waistband, so small disputes quickly lead to gunfire.”

Mr. McCarthy is taking a page from New York’s playbook, where the decade-long drop in homicides has been partly tied to a crackdown on illegal guns. He said the department was tracking buyers and sellers to other states and forcefully prosecuting people caught with illegal guns to discourage them from treating the weapons as everyday accessories.

Mr. McCarthy also said he was hoping that word of Newark’s participation in a tough federal program that leads to stiff sentences for some gun possession cases would trickle down to the streets.

“Instead of spending a half-hour in the county jail, you’re going to spend five years in a federal penitentiary in South Dakota where no one will visit you,” he warned.

But Tony Edwards, a former convict who helps run Street Warriors, a group that tries to steer young people away from trouble, said Mr. Booker’s success in reducing violent crime would depend not on how many prison cells he filled, but on how many jobs he created.

“Increased law enforcement is all good, but we have to look at the bigger picture,” Mr. Edwards said. “It’s about jobs, it’s about poverty, it’s about education and it’s about paying attention to our kids. If we all work together, I think we can turn this city around.”

Ms. Sweat, 25, whose death last week left four children without a mother, had not been planning to stick around for the dawn of a new Newark. According to relatives, she had grown weary of the violence and was weeks away from moving her family to Virginia.

    With 101 Homicides, Newark Nears a Bleak Milestone, NYT, 17.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/nyregion/17newark.html

Infant Kidnapped at Knifepoint in Fla.

December 10, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) -- A missing month-old boy kidnapped at knifepoint was taken as payment because his parents failed to pay human smugglers, police said Saturday.

Bryan Dos Santos Gomes' parents were brought into the United States illegally from Brazil, but failed to pay the smugglers' entire fee, Fort Myers Police Chief Hilton Daniels said.

Bryan has been missing since Dec. 1 when he and his mother, Maria Fatima Ramos Dos Santos, as well as another woman and a baby, were approached by a woman driving a black sports utility vehicle. The women, who did not know the driver, agreed to give directions and entered the SUV with their children, police said.

The driver later forced one mother and child out of the car, and made off with Ramos and her baby, police said. Ramos was released south of Fort Myers shortly afterward, but the woman in the SUV kept her baby.

''We are still looking for this woman, but it is not a woman who desperately needed a baby,'' police spokeswoman Shelly Flynn said in a story posted on the News-Press Web site. ''Now we are looking for a group of people.''

Police initially reported the baby's name as Brayn. A spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not have any additional information about the case Saturday.

Local churches have posted a $21,000 reward for Bryan's return.

    Infant Kidnapped at Knifepoint in Fla., NYT, 10.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Florida-Abduction.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In Glittery Atlantic City, 4 Walked Deadly Path

December 5, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

ATLANTIC CITY, Dec. 3 — In this seaside resort town where vice has long been a lucrative commodity, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about four crack-addled prostitutes who lost the struggle to survive in the underground economy that flourishes alongside the shimmering casinos.

Only two of the women had even been reported missing before their decayed bodies were found in a drainage ditch on the outskirts of town three days before Thanksgiving.

“Sometimes you don’t see a girl for a few weeks, but that’s the way it is,” said Zandra Kiesel, 32, who says she has been a prostitute here for five years. “We are just hookers. It’s like nobody would miss us if we were gone.”

In the 25 years since legalized gambling helped transform Atlantic City from a faded resort to a popular destination for weekend slots players, casino companies have reaped immense profits, but the city itself has experienced both boom and bust. Thirty-four million tourists come each year, pumping billions of dollars into the local economy and providing more than 45,000 jobs.

That economy has evolved into a two-tiered system catering to the addicted. Inside the casinos, where prostitutes work the sprawling halls, betting is legal and the state has even exempted gamblers from its indoor smoking ban. On the sketchy streets outside, sex and drugs are sold openly, around the clock, as dozens of prostitutes prowl the avenues and side streets just off the Boardwalk offering sexual encounters for as little as $10 — the price of a rock of crack cocaine and a five-minute high.

What has emerged in the days since the bodies were discovered in a spongy strip of land between the Black Horse Pike and the Atlantic City Expressway is that each of the four women came to Atlantic City to escape something: abusive relationships, relatives who objected to their drug habits, or street life in other cities considered to be more dangerous.

Once they were here, their drug-fueled descent landed them on the lowest rung in Atlantic City’s social order, a strip of rundown motels just outside of town where prostitutes are so desperate to feed their habits that rocks of crack cocaine are the preferred method of payment.

“These problems have been coming up the pike from Atlantic City and have been for years,” said James J. McCullough, the mayor of neighboring Egg Harbor Township, where the four slain women were found. “We are feeling a lot of frustration and a certain degree of helplessness.”

As the police hunt a possible serial killer, several officers who spoke on the condition of anonymity said there are no obvious suspects or solid leads.

The Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, has more than two dozen investigators on the case, showing photographs of at least two men as they canvass neighborhoods in and around the city. But an employee at the Quality Hotel, across the street from where the bodies were found, said that when the authorities came by on Wednesday, they acknowledged they were not close to solving the case.

“The police said they have no leads and are frustrated,” she said.

Local lore has long been that the Police Department takes a laissez-faire attitude toward prostitution. A lawsuit settled this year bolstered that notion: the city agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to a former vice-squad detective who claimed he was demoted in 2001 for defying a directive by the police chief at the time to stop arresting streetwalkers. The city’s current chief, John Mooney, declined to discuss the suit, but in the court file, officials never refute the contention that police commanders had disbanded the department’s prostitution unit and discouraged arrests.

In court papers, the detective’s lawyer put it bluntly: “They gave the green light to the red-light district.”

Kimberly Raffo

It was Atlantic City’s permissiveness that attracted Kimberly Raffo, a Brooklyn native who moved here from Pembroke Pines, Fla.

Sometime in 2002, relatives noticed a drastic shift in Ms. Raffo’s behavior, and she seemed eager to break free from the boredom of her suburban life. Her sister, Maria Santos, said Ms. Raffo began taking culinary courses in Hollywood, Fla., started an affair with a student there, and began smoking crack cocaine. She refused to give up her lover or her habit and instead left behind her husband, two children and four-bedroom home and fled to Atlantic City, her sister said.

“It’s so crazy,” Ms. Santos said. “If you knew the woman before the last three years of her life, she was like Martha Stewart.”

Ms. Raffo, 35, worked as a waitress in several restaurants here before turning to prostitution. Joseph Boccino, the owner of Papa Joe’s, a diner on Pacific Avenue here frequented by prostitutes, said she and others seemed to enjoy the independence of working the streets, where they could make their own hours and answer only to their addictions.

“They didn’t have pimps and they could come and go,” said Mr. Boccino, who gave Ms. Raffo a cosmetic kit for Christmas last year.

On the morning of Nov. 19, Mr. Boccino said, Ms. Raffo showed up at the diner shortly after it opened at 2:30 a.m. and ordered her usual breakfast: two fried eggs, American cheese and sausage on a kaiser roll, and a Mountain Dew. He said she then walked out on the street and got into a Black Nissan Maxima with out-of-state license plates. She was not seen again until the next day, when her lifeless body was one of four found face down near rusted train tracks.

Barbara V. Breidor

Barbara Breidor, who at 42 was the oldest of the victims, knew both sides of Atlantic City. She grew up in an affluent Philadelphia suburb, and spent many summers in Margate, N.J., another well-off town down the beach from the casinos. She later worked in a shop her mother owned, selling jewelry and Native American artifacts on the Boardwalk.

But after her mother sold the business, Ms. Breidor worked as a waitress at the Tropicana in the late 1980s, and friends and relatives said she soon began abusing prescription painkillers. Ms. Breidor — a bright young woman who studied briefly at Penn State, dreamed of a career in law and loved to watch the History Channel — then moved on to heroin and cocaine, starting the addiction that defined the rest of her life.

When she and her boyfriend had a daughter in 1997, they let Ms. Breidor’s relatives in Florida raise the child. In 2003, after the boyfriend spent time in prison for armed robbery, Ms. Breidor returned to Atlantic City in the hope of rekindling the relationship, said her sister, Francine Lentes. The reconciliation failed, but Ms. Breidor stayed for the reason so many gamblers are lured here: the prospect of making big money.

“She used to say how she dreamed about getting a real nice place to lay her head down,” said Tracy Morgan, a prostitute who worked the same tawdry strip,

But Ms. Breidor’s crack habit, which Ms. Morgan said cost as much as $300 a day, left little room for her to recapture the comfortable lifestyle of her youth. She drifted from flophouses to friends’ apartments, leaving behind a trail of belongings, personal papers and bail receipts. Wherever she went, Ms. Breidor was meticulous about caring for the glass crack pipe she kept wrapped in a napkin in her pocket like some holy relic, Ms. Morgan said.

Desperate for drugs, Ms. Breidor began trading her body for cocaine along Black Horse Pike, where even many of Atlantic City’s hardened prostitutes are reluctant to tread. By mid-October, her behavior had become so unpredictable that when she failed to return from a two-hour errand, friends waited weeks before notifying the police.

Tracy Ann Roberts

Tracy Ann Roberts, 23, who medical examiners say was asphyxiated before she was dumped in the ravine, gravitated to Atlantic City because it seemed a promising place to make a living as an exotic dancer. But drug use left her so emaciated that club owners deemed her unfit for the stage, so she turned to the streets, said a friend, Jannette Brown, herself a former prostitute and drug addict.

A native of Bear, Del., about 50 miles from Atlantic City, Ms. Roberts dropped out of high school at 16 and eventually began studying to become a medical assistant. But after bearing a child and breaking up with her boyfriend, she began using cocaine heavily, drifting between Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

Ms. Roberts made her final journey here in August, trying to escape an abusive relationship. But in early November, a man who wanted to be Ms. Roberts’s pimp punched her in the throat so hard that she coughed up blood and had to be hospitalized, said a friend, a 29-year-old prostitute who goes by the street name Kim Possible.

After the attack, Ms. Roberts, who had been known for her uncommon willingness to share drugs and for the Southern accent she had retained from a brief time in Georgia, became withdrawn, her voice a whisper.

“Her spirit changed,” said another prostitute who worked with Ms. Roberts. “She wasn’t the same.”

Molly Jean Dilts

Molly Jean Dilts was the only one of the four victims who did not have a criminal record for prostitution. But people in Atlantic City said Ms. Dilts — well known as a cherub-faced girl who called herself Amber or Princess — could often be seen flaunting her 20-year-old body on some of the town’s roughest blocks.

An aunt, Margret Dilts, said her niece fled home in Black Lick, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh, in mid-October after a string of tragedies: her mother died of cancer several years ago and her brother was fatally shot in 2005. Ms. Dilts, who had been arrested several times for assault, public intoxication and possession of drug paraphernalia, gave birth to a son, Jeremiah, 14 months ago, but gave the child to her relatives to raise.

Friends said her troubles haunted her despite countless vials of crack cocaine. In the weeks before she was killed, Ms. Dilts told friends she had been making herself throw up because she was concerned that her weight was making it harder to attract men.

One friend, Richard Hernandez, said that Ms. Dilts was a prostitute, and that she had told him she considered overdosing on pills or hanging herself. “Molly cried a lot,” said Mr. Hernandez, 30, who met Ms. Dilts when she was buying crack cocaine on Georgia Avenue. “I’d always hug her, because if you started talking with her, she’d cry.”

Back to the Status Quo

In the two weeks since the discovery of the four dead women, life here has largely returned to the sensory overload that is Atlantic City’s status quo. Busloads of tourists stream off the highways and head straight for the casinos, passing the swath of land where the bodies were found, as prostitutes and drug dealers do business in plain sight.

Local buzz quickly turned from concern over a serial killer roaming the streets to claims by a radio talk show host that she had been given a videotape of a city councilman receiving oral sex from a prostitute on the Boardwalk.

“It is important that business now gets engaged in seeking solutions,” said Joseph Kelly, president of the Atlantic City Regional Mainland Chamber of Commerce, though he acknowledged that “the business community doesn’t have an existing plan.”

Mayor Robert W. Levy has said little about the killings and even less about the city’s approach to enforcing vice laws. Reached at his home Saturday night, he emphatically declined to discuss Atlantic City’s prostitution and drug problems.

“This is my home, this is my night, this is my weekend,” Mr. Levy shouted. “I just came home from a funeral. I got nothing to say about nothing.”

Detectives are still not certain whether the killer may have claimed more victims, and have been inquiring about other streetwalkers not seen in weeks.

The authorities have also been searching for links between the current case and the attacks on three prostitutes whose throats were slashed earlier this year, leaving two of them dead, though Mr. Blitz has said they appear unrelated.

Despite those violent deaths — and the prospect that there may actually be two serial killers preying on the city’s prostitutes — local officials say they don’t expect any decrease in the number of people drawn to the excitement of Atlantic City.

“There are 30 million people a year who pass through this little town with 36,000 residents,” said William Southrey, president of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission. “So if someone is looking for action, there are things going on all the time, legal opportunities and perverse ones.”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

    In Glittery Atlantic City, 4 Walked Deadly Path, NYT, 5.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/nyregion/05slay.html?hp&ex=1165381200&en=2a22ad3413c9b5cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mother might have put baby in microwave

Updated 11/28/2006 9:22 PM ET
USA Today

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — An infant girl who died in August 2005 of a high body temperature might have been put in a microwave, and her mother has been charged in the death, authorities said Tuesday.

China Arnold, 26, was arrested at her home Monday on a charge of aggravated murder, more than a year after she brought her dead month-old baby to a hospital, police said.

"We have reason to believe and scientific evidence to support that a microwave oven might have been involved in the death of this child," said Ken Betz, director of the Montgomery County coroner's office.

At the time, Paris Talley's death was ruled a homicide caused by hyperthermia, or high body temperature, because of burns. Arnold was arrested initially, then released.

Betz said the case was difficult because "there is not a lot of scientific research and data on the effect of microwaves on human beings."

There was a lengthy investigation before prosecutors found enough probable cause to issue another arrest warrant, said Greg Flannagan, a spokesman for the county prosecutor's office.

Arnold's lawyer, Jon Paul Rion, said his client had nothing to do with her child's death and was stunned when investigators told her that a microwave might have been involved.

"China — as a mother and a person — was horrified that such an act could occur," Rion said.

The night before the baby was taken to the hospital, Arnold and the child's father went out for a short time and left Paris with a baby sitter, Rion said.

The mother didn't sense anything out of the ordinary until the next morning, when the child was found unconscious, Rion said.

Rion declined to say what the couple told hospital officials at the time.

Arnold, who has three other children, was being held in the Montgomery County jail and plans to plead not guilty, Rion said.

In 2000, a Virginia woman was sentenced to five years in prison for killing her month-old son in a microwave oven.

Elizabeth Renee Otte claimed she had no memory of cramming her son in the microwave and turning on the appliance in 1999. Experts said Otte suffered from epilepsy and that her seizures were followed by blackouts.

    Mother might have put baby in microwave, UT, 28.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-28-baby-microwave_x.htm

So Close to the Glitter of Atlantic City, a Corridor of Death

November 23, 2006
The New York Times
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI

EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 22 — Along the grimy strip of motels where four women were found dead in a drainage ditch on Monday, a room goes for about $30 a night. Getting a prostitute to share a bed can cost $300 for an hour or two.

That is, if she is willing to take the risk at all.

Several prostitutes who work the luminous streets around Atlantic City’s casinos say that the notorious row of motels here on the Black Horse Pike, a few minutes’ drive to the west, is so dangerous that they will venture there only in pairs — or simply won’t go with customers at all.

“It’s not worth going up there for no amount of money,” said Dana, who is in her 20s and spoke on the condition that only her first name be used, while soliciting passing drivers about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday on Pacific Avenue. “It’s funny. I think it’s safer here because there are more cops, and more girls. It would be hard to dump a body around here without someone seeing you.”

Decades ago, these modest motels drew vacationing families who would go crabbing in the nearby inlets or swim and sunbathe along the shore. By the 1990s, county welfare officials who had housed poor families there moved them elsewhere after town leaders raised objections about substandard and inappropriate living conditions.

Now a marshy, garbage-strewn patch of land behind the Golden Key Motel, one of more than a dozen that line the seedy five-lane stretch of Route 40 known as the Black Horse Pike, is the scene of a quadruple homicide investigation.

The only victim identified so far by the authorities, Kim Raffo, 35, had worked in Atlantic City as a prostitute for several years, her brother-in-law and a boyfriend said. Like Ms. Raffo, the three others were found face down in a few inches of water.

Public officials and business leaders in Egg Harbor Township said in interviews on Wednesday that the four deaths were a tragedy for this South Jersey community, and that they hoped the crimes would finally spur the long-sought redevelopment of the troublesome area. But obtaining the millions of dollars of private and public money to buy the 23 acres of motels and land from the various owners has been difficult.

“It has indeed been the tale of two cities,” said Gary Israel, president of the West Atlantic City Home and Business Association.

“On one side of Black Horse Pike, there are beautiful homes in tranquil settings,” Mr. Israel said. “On the other side are dilapidated, obsolete motels that long ago provided no more value to the community, and harbor people who are in the shadows of society and bring with them elements of crime.

“I can only make an analogy to a serious disease like cancer,” he added. “We are long past the growth. The cancer is spreading throughout.”

The Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, said in a statement on Wednesday that the fourth autopsy showed that the woman had been in the water between two weeks and a month. The woman, whose age and cause of death have not been determined, had a red and black tattoo of a bulldog at the small of her back, a tattoo of a Playboy bunny in a heart on her right shoulder, and a faded tattoo that reads “Yolly” near her navel, Mr. Blitz said.

By Wednesday evening, the prosecutor’s office still had identified only Ms. Raffo, but said she and one other woman had been confirmed as homicide victims.

Ms. Raffo died of ligature strangulation and is believed to have lain in the ditch for a “couple of days,” according to Mr. Blitz’s statement. A woman thought to have been in her 20s died of asphyxia. No cause of death has been found for the woman with the Yolly tatto or another woman thought to have been in her 30s.

The contrast between the north side of the Black Horse Pike, where the troublesome motels are located, and the south side of the same road, is quite stark.

The south side is lined with well-known chain hotels like Hampton Inn and Ramada Inn, and more than 130 luxury town houses are under development near the relatively placid residential neighborhoods beyond.

But the northern stretch is blighted by the motels, where desk workers in small front offices talk to patrons through thick protective glass.

“It’s not like prostitutes are walking around out here, flashing their stuff and soliciting people,” said Phil Mody, 24, a manager at the Star Motel, a drab green building that sits between the Golden Key and the parking lot of the Fortune Inn. “It’s just that the rooms are cheaper than in Atlantic City. It spills over to here.”

At the Quality Hotel Bayside Resort, directly across the Black Horse Pike from the Golden Key Motel, workers said that some prostitutes lived and worked for weeks at a time in rooms at the Golden Key provided to them by their pimps, bringing customers from Atlantic City. They said that the prostitutes sometimes ate breakfast at the Quality Hotel restaurant, but that there were strict rules there about not renting them rooms.

Staff members said that they had seen men hitting young women in the parking lot across the street, and that in one case, they watched a naked man chase a woman across the Black Horse Pike after she apparently stole his pants and wallet.

Mr. Mody said he often turned away patrons who seemed intoxicated, and regularly refused customers who had caused damage in the past. “The crack addicts, they steal the light bulbs,” he said.

James J. McCullough, the mayor of Egg Harbor Township, which has about 42,000 inhabitants, said the motel strip had been an “embarrassment, a hot seat” for prostitution, drugs and domestic violence. He also said that motel guests sometimes stumbled out onto the Black Horse Pike and were hit by cars.

The mayor said the Atlantic City Casino Reinvestment Development Authority had pledged to provide the township with $3 million in seed money to help it buy the motels and some adjacent property. But he said it would cost at least $20 million to buy all the parcels and revive the area. “I truly believe that the casino industry needs to do more to support this project,” Mr. McCullough said, adding that the development authority had provided grants of $75,000 and $40,000 about a decade ago to do a feasibility study and appraise the properties. “But nothing happened after that,” he added. “We wrote and called the C.R.D.A. and nothing happened until about a year ago.”

Thomas D. Carver, the development authority’s executive director, said that since he pledged the $3 million in late 2005, the next step was up to the township. “They asked for seed money and we gave them seed money,” Mr. Carver said.

Mr. Israel, of the home and business association, said that planned expansion of the casino industry — which could bring 24,000 new jobs to the area within the next seven years — had compelled some developers to take a fresh look at the motel properties on the Black Horse Pike.

Mr. Mody said that his family bought the Star Motel in the summer of 2005 for $900,000 knowing that the reinvestment authority had its eye on it as well. He said the family would consider selling the property for a good price. “If they want it, they’ll have to pay for it,” he said.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

    So Close to the Glitter of Atlantic City, a Corridor of Death, NYT, 23.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/nyregion/23slay.html

Last Autopsy Conducted on Bodies in N.J.

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD G. JONES and NATE SCHWEBER

EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 22 — Authorities are conducting an autopsy today on the last of four bodies discovered lying face down in a drainage ditch earlier this week behind a row of squalid motels here in the shadow of Atlantic City’s glittering lights.

All four of the dead are women, and the Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, said on Tuesday that all had been dead for days. Mr. Blitz said that after autopsies were conducted on three of them, two of the deaths had been classified as homicides.

The third body was so badly decomposed that her cause of death has not yet been determined, he said.

One of the women has been identified, using fingerprints and photographs, as Kim Raffo, 35.

The four bodies were discovered face down in several inches of water, head tilted slightly to the east. At least one had been strangled. None were wearing shoes or socks.

Aside from those chilling details, the authorities said that they did not know how the bodies of the four women ended up in a patch of water about the length of a football field behind a seedy stretch of Route 40 known as the Black Horse Pike. All four of the women were white and two are believed to be in their 20s.

Here in Egg Harbor Township — a working-class section of Atlantic County just a mile distant but a world removed from the opulence of Atlantic City — a measure of fear and uncertainty took hold as the authorities worked a quadruple homicide with several odd facts.

Mr. Blitz said Ms. Raffo was about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 140 pounds, was wearing Capri-style pants and a Hard Rock Cafe tank top and was known to have been living in an Atlantic City rooming house.

Mr. Blitz said she died of ligature strangulation and had been dead for “a matter of days.”

A news release from the prosecutor’s office, quoting the Atlantic County medical examiner, Dr. Hydow Park, said that results of the second autopsy gave the cause of death as “asphyxia by unspecified means.”

That victim, thought to be in her 20s, was about 5 feet 8 inches tall and about 120 pounds, had a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back, and was wearing blue jeans, a red hooded sweatshirt and a black bra. Mr. Blitz said she had been in the water for up to a week.

The third woman, wearing Capri-style blue jeans and a long-sleeved brown zippered jacket, was about 5 feet 7 inches tall and 140 to 150 pounds.

She is thought to have been in her 30s and to have been in the water for at least two weeks.

The fourth woman, about 5 feet tall and 160 pounds, was wearing a denim miniskirt, a bra and a mesh blouse. She is to be autopsied Wednesday morning.

Ms. Raffo’s father, Robert, reached at his home in New York, said his daughter was “a loving kid” who married young, had two children, and was “very close to her younger sister.”

A brother-in-law, from his home in Miramar, Fla., said that after Ms. Raffo and her husband separated about six years ago, she went to Atlantic City with a boyfriend and got involved with drugs and prostitution. Later, she worked for her ex-husband’s construction business on Long Island.

Her current boyfriend, Charles Coles, said Ms. Raffo had returned to Atlantic City in September and worked as a prostitute.

“It hurt her and broke her down,” he said. “She was trying to get her life together to get her kids back.”

Mr. Blitz declined to say whether investigators thought the women had been killed elsewhere and dumped in the marshy area between the pike and the Atlantic City Expressway. Nor would he say if the deaths seemed the work of a serial killer.

“We will opine about that after the post-mortem examinations are completed,” he said.

Mr. Blitz acknowledged that the bodies were in different stages of decomposition, which could indicate that the women were not placed in the ditch at the same time.

The first and second bodies discovered were 148 feet apart; the third body was 90 feet from the second, and the fourth was 83 feet from the third, the news release said.

Mr. Blitz said, “Some of the decomposition is in the face because of the way they were in the water.”

Mr. Blitz did note one unusual detail about the way the women were found.

“They were laying in the drainage ditch with head facing east, down,” he said. “Whether that’s a coincidence or not, it is what it is.”

The first body was discovered by two women walking behind the Golden Key Motel on Monday about 3 p.m. Egg Harbor officers who came to the scene discovered the other bodies.

The area where the women were found is strewn with trash. On Tuesday, the litter behind the Golden Key near the spot where the first body was found included an empty vodka bottle, a pair of black Jockey undershorts, a used condom wrapper and a battered copy of the James Patterson novel “Beach Road.”

“This is the worst place to live,” said Yasmin Olan, 28, who stays at the motel with her son while her husband works at the Atlantic City Hilton. “There is a lot of prostitution that comes in and out of here, plus all the drugs.”

Ms. Olan then pointed to bloodstains outside her bathroom window, which she said had been there for three days, and a hole that had been cut in her window screen about a week earlier when someone tried to steal a TV dinner on the windowsill.

Larry Huggup, 23, who has lived at the Golden Key for three months, said that on Monday afternoon he heard four or five loud pops, but did not investigate because he thought it was a car backfiring.

Jiniece Hamlett, 25, a cocktail waitress who lives with Mr. Huggup, said she was afraid the killings were related to a recent incident in which she was approached by a man driving a gray Plymouth van.

Ms. Hamlett, who leaves for work around 3 a.m., said she noticed the man in the van driving up and down the Black Horse Pike for weeks.

She said he often stopped to leer at women, including her, and had left only after Mr. Huggup came to her side.

Mr. Blitz said that investigators were keeping a range of options open as they worked on identifying the women.

Maria Newman contributed reporting from New York.

    Last Autopsy Conducted on Bodies in N.J., NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/nyregion/23slaycnd.html

Plea Deal in Seton Hall Dormitory Fire

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By RONALD SMOTHERS

NEWARK, Nov. 15 — Nearly seven years after an early-morning dormitory fire that killed three freshmen at Seton Hall University, two former students on trial for murder in the case pleaded guilty on Wednesday to arson and witness tampering, charges that carry five-year prison terms. The fire led to nationwide changes in fire safety codes on college campuses.

Prosecutors said they abandoned the murder charges to accept the pleas because of concern that the jury could be confused and unconvinced by a circumstantial case relying on complex scientific evidence. Under the agreement, which was announced as opening arguments in the long-awaited trial were scheduled to begin, prosecutors also dropped charges against the parents, sister and friend of one of the suspects, who they had said had helped cover up the crime.

Families of the three dead freshmen sat solemnly in the courtroom as the victims’ two former classmates, Joseph T. Lepore and Sean Michael Ryan, both 26, recounted their crime.

“I, along with Sean Ryan, lit a banner on fire that was draped across the couch in the third-floor lounge of Boland Hall on Jan. 19, 2000, at approximately 4 a.m.,” Mr. Lepore read without inflection from a copy of the signed agreement. “When doing so, I did not intend to injure anyone. It was a prank that got out of hand.”

The brief session in a courtroom crowded with relatives of the dead and some of the 50 people injured in the fire was an abrupt end to a trial that had barely begun, with a jury, painstakingly selected over eight weeks, sworn and charged; copious trial exhibits ready; and months of pretrial motions finally settled.

After a flurry of secret negotiations over 48 hours, Judge Harold W. Fullilove of Superior Court announced, in almost whispered tones, “I understand that an agreement has been worked out.”

Lawyers for each side claimed the deal as a victory and said the other was to blame for the long delay in reaching it.

“We can only be as good as our proofs,” Paula Dow, the Essex County prosecutor, said outside the courtroom. “The alternative might have been their walking away with a not-guilty verdict and a smirk on their faces.”

The defense lawyers, in turn, said the prospect of jurors feeling sympathy for the badly scarred burn victims who were expected to testify prompted them to avoid the risk of trial. Their clients had faced prison terms of up to 30 years; now, they can be eligible for parole after 16 months. They are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 26.

Joseph and Candice Karol, whose 18-year-old son, Aaron, was one of the three Boland Hall residents killed in the blaze, said they were satisfied with the pleas.

“We have an admission of guilt, and that was what we wanted,” Mr. Karol said in an interview later at his home. “It might not sound like much, but they will be in prison,” he added.

“Of course, nothing will give us what we really want, and that’s our son back.”

Also killed in the fire were John N. Giunta, 18, of Vineland, N.J., and Frank S. Caltabilota, 18, of West Long Branch, N.J.

To reach the agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of felony murder, reckless manslaughter and conspiracy to commit arson. Instead, Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan pleaded guilty to third-degree arson and to witness tampering, admitting that they met at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Madison, N.J., the day after the fire with other students who were in the lounge that night to urge them to lie to investigators about what they saw.

Mr. Lepore also pleaded guilty to resisting arrest when officers approached him in force when he was in his car near his Florham Park, N.J., home in June 2003, after a grand jury indicted him in the case.

Also as part of the agreement, the prosecutors dropped the charges of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to investigators against his parents, Joseph and Maria Lepore, his sister, Lauren, 27, and a friend, Santino Cataldo, 24, of East Hanover, N.J.

Michael G. Morris, the prosecutor who was in charge of the case along with Rachel Gran, said that he never believed that the two men had intended to kill anyone when they started the fire, but that murder charges were appropriate whenever someone was killed during a felony, like arson.

But without witnesses who saw the men start the fire, Mr. Morris said, “we never had something that the jury could see and hold in their hands.”

Mr. Morris said that prosecutors, as well as the victims’ families, were both “disappointed and relieved” at the outcome. “They could have come forward nearly seven years ago,” he said, “but instead they behaved like criminals, were pursued like criminals, and now they are going to jail like criminals.”

William J. DeMarco and Salvatore T. Alfano, Mr. Lepore’s lawyers, and Michael S. Bubb, Mr. Ryan’s lawyer, complained at a news conference after the pleas that the murder charges, as well as the charges against the Lepore family and Mr. Cataldo, represented “overkill” by investigators and prosecutors under pressure to solve what was a three-year-old case at the time the two men were indicted.

The reduced charges were “closer to what really happened,” Mr. DeMarco said. While their clients started the fire, Mr. Bubb added, it was a series of “intervening causes,” like the university’s failure to have sprinklers and fire-retardant furniture, that led to the resulting deaths and injuries.

Those causes are among the issues raised in the civil lawsuits that the families of those killed in the fire, as well as some of those injured, have filed against Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan as well as against the manufacturer of the furniture used in the dormitory lounge and Argenbright Security, a private firm contracted by the university. Seton Hall was also sued but reached a settlement with the families within about a year after the fire.

Anthony Marchetta, the attorney for Argenbright, said that the pleas would not hurt his client’s defense, because the security firm’s responsibility was keeping the campus secure from outsiders.

“These two guys were residents of the dorm, and in order to prevent this, the security company would have to have known what was in their heads,” he said.

The fallout from the fire in Boland Hall on an icy January night has been both broad and deep. Each year on the anniversary of the fire, Seton Hall has a memorial service at its main campus in South Orange, where a granite stone etched with the word “Remember” sits outside the entrance to Boland Hall.

New Jersey’s governor at the time of the fire, Christie Whitman, ordered a review of fire safety equipment in the state’s 31 public colleges and universities, and the Legislature unanimously passed a bill requiring all dormitories in the state to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems. The previous, 1980s-era laws had required sprinklers only in new dorms, and Boland Hall was built before that.

Nationally, several colleges and universities adopted regulations that require dorm furniture to be made of polyurethane foam that is sufficiently fire retardant to prevent full combustion. This was in response to investigators’ findings that the furniture in the Boland Hall lounge contributed to the thick black smoke and intense heat of the fire. Legislation is pending in Congress that would tie federal financial aid to colleges to the installation of sprinklers, smoke detectors and flame-retardant furniture.

In the courtroom on Wednesday morning, families of the dead and injured filled most of two rows and sat quietly during the admissions of guilt by the two men. Prosecutors had kept them informed as plea negotiations progressed, so they were unsurprised at the result.

John Holl contributed reporting.

    Plea Deal in Seton Hall Dormitory Fire, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/nyregion/16seton.html?hp&ex=1163739600&en=70da1a7f64317463&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Settlement Brings Back Memories of a Dark Day

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM and TINA KELLEY

In the years since the fire in a Seton Hall University dormitory burned more than half his body, Alvaro Llanos became a father, went back to school and had more than 30 operations: to help him move, to ease the tightness of his grafted skin, to hide his scars. His physical pain receded, but yesterday, the hurt of anger washed over him again.

“I’m waiting all this time for justice, and they get a slap on the wrist,” Mr. Llanos, 25, who is still a student at Seton Hall, said in a telephone interview. “In the beginning, I didn’t know how much I cared. Today I found out.”

Mr. Llanos lived across the hall from Sean Michael Ryan and Joseph T. Lepore, his classmates who pleaded guilty yesterday to reduced charges of arson and witness tampering, and face a maximum of five years in prison. He had also known John N. Giunta, one of the three students who died in the fire, from a program the summer before their freshman year.

“I think they deserved more,” Mr. Llanos said of the sentences, “for everything I’ve been through and the families that lost their kids in the fire.”

That bitterness joined a chorus of other raw emotions yesterday; from those who said the plea agreements would bring some closure, to others who said the victims deserved better.

Joseph Karol, whose 18-year-old son, Aaron, died in the January 2000 blaze, said justice was served.

“We learned today what we had known for some time,” he said, somewhat wearily, speaking by telephone from his home in Greenbrook, N.J. “They lied about it and deceived people because they are cowards who ran and hid for nearly seven years. They were finally forced to admit what they did when faced with a severe prison sentence.”

Aaron Karol, Mr. Giunta and another freshman, Frank S. Caltabilota, died from burns and smoke inhalation after the fire that tore through Boland Hall, the freshman dormitory, sending 600 other students fleeing into the snow. The disaster called national attention to the issue of dormitory safety, and led to the retrofitting of sprinkler systems in New Jersey’s older dormitories.

The teenagers who lived through the fire are now in their mid-20’s; they have children, are holding down jobs, or have moved far away from New Jersey. Many attend an annual remembrance ceremony for the victims. On campus, memory of the fire is still a part of daily life, felt primarily as a human tragedy, but also as the reason students undergo frequent safety drills.

The university president, Msgr. Robert Sheeran, said in a statement that it was not his place “to second-guess the legal or judicial aspects of this case,” and that he hoped Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan “will be able to rebuild their lives — lives which, in time, might help and heal others.”

“Today, as every day, I remember the three young men who lost their lives on Jan. 19, 2000,” Monsignor Sheeran said. “I also think of all the others who were injured that night. The loss is irreparable and the scars remain.”

As they entered Boland Hall yesterday, Amanda Albro and Ian Nunley said they were disappointed by the pleas. “Sixteen months, I don’t think that’s very just at all,” said Ms. Albro, 18, a freshman from Aberdeen, N.J., referring to how long the two men will have to serve before being eligible for parole. “I find that quite appalling.”

Mr. Nunley, also 18, from Ventura, Calif., added: “It doesn’t do justice to the students who suffered, or to the university, or to the town.”

“It’s not fair to the kids who lost their lives, or to us,” he said, referring to frequent fire drills students put up with, often in the middle of the night. “For the people who were here, that event stays with them for the rest of their life.”

Across the campus, students complained about the school’s stringent safety regulations, which prohibit toaster ovens, some coffee makers, light bulbs above a certain wattage, posters hung too close to the ceiling, and many kinds of chairs and sofas.

Tara Hart, who was the assistant director of housing and residence life at the time of the fire, said yesterday that it changed the university.

“Fundamentally, for myself and the students I work with today, it has taught us to lead a life of meaning and purpose, and service,” she said. “That’s the greatest testimony any of us can give to John, Frank and Aaron.”

Vincent Scerbo, who lived on the first floor of Boland Hall, said he thought the fire alarm that day was for a fire drill. He tried to sleep through it, he said, but still has not been able to shake the sight of classmates fleeing the building, he said. “I’m not one for ‘an eye for an eye’; I’d rather they had shorter sentences,” he said, adding that he thought Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lepore should apologize to the families of the victims, and show remorse.

“This is a Catholic university,” said Mr. Scerbo, who is now a high school soccer coach in Roxbury, N.J. “Forgiving and forgetting is part of religious belief. I’m pretty sure the families would be able to accept that.”

Mr. Llanos, who is still severely scarred by his burns, now works part-time compiling sports statistics for The Star-Ledger.

When he arrived at Seton Hall, he planned to study computer science. After the fire, he switched to physical therapy. More than six years later, he is still a sophomore.

John Holl contributed reporting.

    A Settlement Brings Back Memories of a Dark Day, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/nyregion/16react.html

Police: 4 Indiana kids were suffocated

Posted 11/15/2006 9:08 PM ET
AP
USA Today

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — Four young children found dead in the basement of their home were suffocated, police said Wednesday.

The children, two girls and two boys ages 2 to 8, were found dead Tuesday alongside their unconscious mother, Angelica Alvarez, who remains hospitalized under sedation, police Capt. Steven Mock said.

An autopsy determined they died of asphyxia, and the deaths have been ruled homicides, he said. Mock did not say how detectives think the children were suffocated.

He said detectives were reviewing records of police visits to the home that involved custody disputes between Alvarez and Gonzalo Lopez, the father of the two older children. Mock said detectives have interviewed Lopez but that they were not focusing their investigation on any particular person.

He said detectives found no sign Alvarez took part in killing the children. Firefighters said tests for carbon monoxide were negative.

Fernando Valdez, the father of the two younger children, discovered the bodies.

Ambulances that had left the home Tuesday night in the city 15 miles east of South Bend were called back 45 minutes later after Alvarez was found to have a faint pulse, police Sgt. Bill Wargo said.

At the corner of the home Wednesday, people left flowers, teddy bears and notes in memory of the four children.

Sylvia De La Cruz, a sixth-grader at Woodland Elementary School where two of the children were students, left several teddy bears, a rose, a cross and a note that read: "We will miss you very much."

"I just wanted to show that I really cared," she said.

    Police: 4 Indiana kids were suffocated, UT, 15.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-15-children-deaths_x.htm

Philly man charged as serial date rapist

Posted 11/3/2006 11:57 PM ET
By Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press
USA Today

PHILADELPHIA — He was an online dater's dream: Tall, clean-cut, with a fashionable address and a taste for upscale bars and restaurants. He said he was a doctor, an astronaut, a spy — though he was really an on-and-off nursing student. With woman after woman, he would slip something in their drinks and then rape them, police say.

Jeffrey Marsalis, 33, of Philadelphia, is facing trial on nine rape counts involving eight women, while a 10th charge is pending in Sun Valley, Idaho. He met most of the victims here through a popular online dating site, authorities said.

In court this week during Marsalis' preliminary hearing, the women told strikingly similar stories of meeting the smooth-talking Marsalis between 2003 and 2005, then feeling unusually intoxicated after returning from the bathroom or letting him buy a round from the bar.

They said they woke up hours later, back at his apartment — groggy, sometimes undressed — after an apparent sexual encounter or even in the middle of intercourse.

"It was like waking up from surgery," one woman said. "My body was there, and I could see what was going on around me, but I couldn't move."

Marsalis' lawyer says the women simply regret being duped about his accomplishments and dumped after consensual sex.

"Some of this may be buyer's remorse," defense lawyer Kathleen Martin said Thursday.

None of the Philadelphia victims — most of them well-educated professionals — went to police or a hospital afterward, Martin pointed out. Instead, police sought the women out after they seized Marsalis' computer as part of an earlier case.

Marsalis was acquitted of three similar assaults at a trial in Philadelphia in January. Before he could leave the courtroom, however, he was handcuffed by police and accused of the new charges. A judge later denied bail.

One of the women who testified this week said Marsalis posed as a doctor. When he visited her at a hospital he had a stethoscope around his neck and checked her chart, she said.

"This guy is not shy. He's confident. He's plotting," said Capt. John Darby, head of the city's sex crimes unit. "He showed IDs to a lot of these women supporting the various roles, positions that he seemingly held. He really put on a hell of a show."

Prosecutors say it's difficult to prove the use of date-rape drugs, because they metabolize before victims are alert enough to get a drug screen. A jury could still find him guilty of rape if it decides the women were too impaired to consent to sex.

The woman in the Idaho case says she was raped in October 2005. She went to the hospital the next day. There is a gag order in the case, but Sun Valley police said in a news release that she experienced symptoms "consistent with having ingested a date-rape-type drug."

Marsalis met most of the women through Match.com. The company said Thursday that it cannot monitor what goes on once their clients move from online communication to the real world.

    Philly man charged as serial date rapist, UT, 3.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-03-philly-rapes_x.htm

Florida searches for root of surge in violent crime

Updated 11/1/2006 12:23 AM ET
USA Today
By Kevin Johnson

ORLANDO — It was another day of brilliant sunshine and big crowds last Thursday at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios.
A few hours earlier, however, and a few miles away from the resorts that draw millions of visitors each year, a grim milestone had been reached: Orange County, excluding Orlando, recorded its 50th homicide of the year, topping last year's record of 49.

Orlando itself also is reporting homicides at an unprecedented pace: 42 so far this year, nearly double the 22 slayings last year in the city of 200,000.

The escalating number of killings in the Orlando area has made it one of the most extreme examples of the increasing violent crime rates being reported in dozens of cities across the nation, according to a recent analysis by the Police Executive Research Forum, a police advocacy group.

The FBI, which issues an annual report on crime nationwide, has not released numbers for 2006. However, the police group's report led the Justice Department to launch a review of possible demographic and economic triggers for violence in cities from Philadelphia to Sacramento. Meanwhile, the FBI has directed more than 100 additional agents to help local authorities fight violent crime.

There are a range of theories on the reasons for the jump in violence nationwide, including escalating gang wars and turf fights among drug rings. The Police Executive Research Forum used its analysis to underscore its claim that the U.S. government's focus on counterterrorism has undermined local authorities by directing federal money away from law enforcement.

In Florida, however, the violence seems to have roots that are more complex. Local authorities such as Ron Stucker, criminal investigations chief for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, say that although traditional gangs have a presence here, most of the homicides in this area appear to have stemmed from robberies or drug-related disputes that suddenly turned violent.

A troubling trend across state

Across Florida, police are reporting spikes in violence after a decade of historically low crime rates.

This month, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported that homicides statewide were up by 27% through the first six months of 2006, compared with the same period last year. Robberies were up about 11% from 2005, the department reported. Local officials gave similar reports:

•In Jacksonville, homicides were up 30% during the first nine months of 2006, compared with the same period last year.

•In West Palm Beach, homicides were up 50% in the first six months of this year, compared with the first half of 2005. Since then, Police Chief Delsa Bush says, murder has stabilized, but robberies have soared.

•In Miami, homicides and robberies both rose during the first half of 2006. Homicides were up 15%; robberies were up 7%.

"I don't think there is a particular reason (for the violence) that can identified," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said recently. "Yeah, I'm concerned when there is that level of violence. It's happening across the country."

Ask Stucker what's driving the surge in violence in the Orlando area, and he points to cases such as a slaying Oct. 25 outside a strip club and a brutal robbery hours earlier of a 78-year-old former sheriff's lieutenant.

Both, Stucker says, illustrate a new and increasingly deadly escalation of behavior in which offenders are quick to use lethal force. In the strip club case, an argument in the parking lot quickly became an exchange of punches and then a knife attack that killed a 24-year-old man.

Stucker and Sgt. Allen Lee, head of the Orange County Sheriff's Department's homicide division, say there was no evidence of a history of violence between the victim and an undisclosed number of suspects.

The same apparently was true of the robbery involving Paul Murphy. The retired sheriff's lieutenant was leaving a convenience store after buying a candy bar and a newspaper when he was beaten.

"It goes from zero to 100 mph and sometimes murder, just like that," Lee says. "You see minimal confrontations blow (up), and there is no hesitancy to kill."

Especially alarming, Lee says, is a rise in robbery-related homicides. At least 12 of the county's 50 killings this year have been linked to robberies, compared with three or four such incidents in recent years.

'It's flabbergasting'

The random nature of the robbery-related murders makes it more difficult to identify and pursue suspects, he says, and has contributed to a decline in clearance rates — from near 70% in previous years to about 50% today.

"It's flabbergasting to see suspects sit across from you" during questioning, Lee says. "They talk like death is the cost of doing business, an acceptable loss."

Orlando and the University of Central Florida are reviewing homicides in the city over the past five years to try to pinpoint causes of violence. Orlando Police Chief Michael McCoy and police Sgt. Richard Ring, who directs the city's homicide unit, say researchers will analyze the connections between offenders and victims.

There is little evidence to suggest the violence is slowing the region's $28 billion-a-year resort industry, which attracted 50 million tourists to the area last year, according to the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The area's tourist attractions have not been immune to violent crime, however. Last Friday, one person was wounded in a shooting in a parking lot at the Universal Orlando resort.

Resort spokesman Tom Schroder says it was the first such incident in the resort's 16-year history.

Stucker says that for the most part, the local violence has been limited to the west and south sides of Orange County, about 15 minutes from the resort areas. Beyond those areas, Stucker says, he isn't sure whether most residents view the rising violence as a big concern.

"People should be concerned, because it will spill out," he says.

    Florida searches for root of surge in violent crime, UT, 1.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-31-fla-crime-rate_x.htm