USA > History > 2006 > Violence (III)

Christian Nielsen, 31, right,

is escorted into Oxford County Superior Court on Tuesday.

By Joel Page, AP

 Maine bed and breakfast slayings a shock        UT        6.9.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-06-maine-slayings_x.htm

Father: Missing Boy Was Abused by Mother

September 29, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A missing 2-year-old boy was shuttled between two feuding parents and even into foster care in the months before he vanished and his mother committed suicide, newly released documents show.

The boy's father had reported Melinda Duckett threatened to harm their son on several occasions during their marriage. He even alleged she held a knife to his leg and threatened to kill him last year.

Florida Department of Child & Families investigators determined that was the only allegation that could be verified. In several others, there were ''some indicators'' for possible child neglect, but little evidence to support abuse, according to the five-page document released Wednesday.

DCF spokesman Tim Bottcher said there were ''never really any clear-cut indicators that Trenton was abused.''

Duckett committed suicide almost two weeks after reporting the boy missing Aug. 27 from his bedroom at her Leesburg home. She has since been named the primary suspect in the boy's disappearance after investigators found some of Trenton's toys, photographs and a sonogram photo in a trash bin in her apartment complex.

The case has drawn national attention from a spot on America's Most Wanted and several nights' coverage on CNN Headline News' Nancy Grace program. Some blamed Duckett's suicide on Grace's aggressive questioning in an interview the day before she shot herself. Grace accused Melinda Duckett of hiding something because she refused to take a polygraph test after her divorce attorney advised her not to.

The boy's father, Josh Duckett, has repeatedly criticized the state for allowing Melinda to have custody of their son. Court documents show he didn't complete the agency's requirements to keep the boy, such as taking several counseling classes.

Duckett told The Associated Press he didn't have enough money to complete the last class.

According to the court document, the last known dispute between Josh and Melinda occured July 5, when she told authorities she received a threatening e-mail from him.

Detectives investigating Trenton's case have since found Melinda sent that letter to herself. Before she killed herself, they prepared charging documents based on that fraudulent threat so they could arrest her if she tried to flee before they completed their investigation into the disappearance.

Then they waited and watched, hoping Melinda would lead them to the boy.

She did not. Repeated searches of woods and remote areas near her home have failed to find him.

    Father: Missing Boy Was Abused by Mother, NYT, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Missing-Boy.html


 

 Despite Continuing Decrease in Crime in the City, Troubling Signs Emerge
NYT        29.9.2006,
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/nyregion/29crime.html

Despite Continuing Decrease in Crime in the City, Troubling Signs Emerge

September 29, 2006
The New York Times
By EMILY VASQUEZ

A person is more likely this year than last to be murdered in Orlando, robbed in Oakland or assaulted in Milwaukee. But so far this year, the streets of New York City have been growing ever safer, just as they have been for more than a decade.

Over all, crime is down in New York by roughly 5 percent from the same period last year, according to the most recent police statistics, even as it is creeping up in many other American cities.

But digging deeper into the city’s numbers uncovers some worrisome trends. Crime committed by young people, including murder, is rising. Stemming the flow of illegal guns is a vexing challenge, police officials say.

And the official murder rate has risen, though police officials attribute the increase to an unusual factor: A high number of crime victims have died this year from injuries sustained long ago, and their deaths are still classified as 2006 murders.

Of those arrested on charges of murder so far this year, about 14 percent were under 18, nearly double the city’s average, 8 percent, for the past three years.

Juvenile arrests for murder and other major felonies increased to 4,842 in this fiscal year from 4,352 in the past one. That is an increase of 11.3 percent, whereas since at least 2002 there have been annual increases no greater than 2.1 percent, according to a city report released this month.

Criminologists attribute the spurt in youth crime in some places to what they call an evolving subculture among juveniles and young adults that encourages violent responses to seemingly trivial disputes.

“What everybody sees is street rules saying if you’re dissed you have to do something,” said David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And what counts as being dissed is getting more and more minor.”

But Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said he had seen no indication that was a major contributing factor in New York. He said he was not certain what was causing the uptick in juvenile crime. What is clear, Mr. Kelly said, is that New York, like other cities, is struggling with the impact of illegal guns on crime.

“We are victimized by lax gun control in other states,” he said. “There’s way too many guns on the street. Everybody accepts that.”

In response to the continued buildup of guns, Mr. Kelly said the Police Department had intensified its debriefing program, which views anyone arrested for gun possession as a source of information on illegal weapons and their sources. In addition, he said the department merged its separate gun units in April into a better coordinated gun suppression unit and funneled extra resources its way.

Through Sept. 24, gun arrests in New York City had risen 14.3 percent, to 2,750 from 2,404 during the same period last year. Handgun seizures through Aug. 31 rose to 849 this year from 498 over the same period last year. And despite the remaining reservoir of guns on the streets, shootings citywide so far this year have fallen, to 1,135 from 1,175 during the same time frame in 2005.

But while the citywide picture remains relatively rosy, certain neighborhoods, after years of declining crime, are more dangerous.

In the neighborhoods that constitute Harlem’s 32nd Precinct, which stretches north from 127th Street, for example, there were 37 shootings through Sept. 24, up from 27 during the same period last year. Gun arrests increased to 83 from 47 during the same time frame. There were 13 homicides in the precinct through Sept. 24, compared with 6 in the same period of 2005.

In the 120th Precinct in Staten Island, which covers the area north of the Staten Island Expressway, auto thefts were up 18.8 percent and robbery had increased 17.1 percent by Sept. 24, compared with the same period last year. During the same time frame the precinct recorded 13 homicides, compared with 7 last year.

Still, underscoring how much improved the crime picture is from a decade ago, people who live in the neighborhood say they feel safer.

“It’s gotten better,” said Denise Allen, 50, who has lived all her life in Stapleton Houses, a public housing complex in the 120th Precinct. “You don’t hear as much killing and shooting. You used to be scared here walking.”

The official number of citywide homicides had increased through Sept. 24 to 409 from 403 for the same period last year.

What has inflated the 2006 statistic is an unusual number of deaths this year that were classified as homicides because the medical examiner determined they were directly related to crimes from previous years, the police said.

One such case is that of 72-year-old Kam Tsang, who was shot under unknown circumstances in Lower Manhattan in 1974, the police said. Mr. Tsang was left paralyzed after the shooting but died in April of pneumonia. In June the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, attributing his susceptibility to pneumonia to the initial gunshot wound.

Twenty-five such reclassified deaths were included in the homicide count by Sept. 24, and 12 of those were related to injuries sustained at least 14 years ago, the police said. Last year only 13 such reclassified deaths were counted by Sept. 24, and the rise appears somewhat of a fluke, the police said.

The rates for other major crimes in New York, including robbery and felony assault, are down so far this year from the same period in 2005. As a result, New York stands in stark contrast to other cities.

For example, the murder rate in Orlando jumped more than 200 percent, to 37, through Aug. 31, compared with 12 for the same period in 2005. Oakland, Calif., had roughly 850 more robberies by Sept. 24 this year than it did by the same date last year, about a 42 percent increase. And in Milwaukee, the number of assaults jumped by more than 700, a 22 percent increase, during the first six months of the year compared with the first half of 2005.

“What we’re seeing here over the past 18 to 24 months is an emerging trend of increased violence in three areas: aggravated assault, robbery and homicide,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based organization that focuses on law enforcement issues. “It’s widespread and it is significant”

The causes for such increases vary by city, and whether they suggest a prolonged trend remains unclear, Mr. Kennedy said. But what is certain is that “New York is really standing on the other side of this,” he said.

Richard Aborn, the president of New York’s Citizens Crime Commission, a group that monitors police policies in New York, said the success comes even as the Police Department has about 4,600 fewer officers than it did in 2000.

Mr. Kennedy said, “I, like a lot of other people, are firmly convinced it’s about how the N.Y.P.D. is operating.”

He added, referring to changes in crime over time: “New York has consistently managed to show these are not inexorable tidal forces that you just watch. N.Y.P.D.’s core conviction is that the police can do something about crime if they stay at it.”

Ann Farmer contributed reporting.

    Despite Continuing Decrease in Crime in the City, Troubling Signs Emerge, NYT, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/nyregion/29crime.html

Judge orders psych tests for woman charged with killing of mother and fetus

Updated 9/25/2006 12:16 PM ET
AP
USA Today

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — A judge on Monday ordered a psychological examination for a woman accused of killing a pregnant acquaintance and cutting her fetus from her womb.

Tiffany Hall, 24, looked sullen as she appeared at an arraignment hearing via video conference from the St. Clair County Jail, where she is being held on a $5 million bond.

Prosecutors say she killed Jimella Tunstall, 23, who was about seven months pregnant, and her fetus.

St. Clair County Associate Judge Heinz Rudolph entered not guilty pleas on Hall's behalf on charges of first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child. Each charge carries a penalty of 20 to 60 years or life in prison, prosecutors said. The murder count could be punishable by the death penalty.

According to authorities, Hall told police she also drowned Tunstall's three children — ages 7, 2 and 1 — and stuffed them into a washer and dryer at the apartment they shared with their mother. Hall has not been charged in the children's deaths.

Police have not offered a motive.

Rudolph asked Hall whether she planned to hire a lawyer or needed a public defender. She replied simply: "I don't know."

Rudolph appointed public defender Randy Kelley and granted Kelley's requests for a psychological evaluation and that Hall be segregated from the rest of the inmates for her protection.

"Any time you've got a charge of this nature that has some volatility, I just think it's in her best interest that she be protected from the influence of other inmates or possible harm to her," Kelley said after the hearing.

Preliminary autopsies on the children appeared to show they were drowned, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner. There were no signs of physical abuse or trauma on the three children and toxicology tests were pending "to see if they were poisoned or possibly drugged," Hart said.

The community turned to prayer Sunday to understand the slayings at a service for the family.

"This is an opportunity for people to turn to God," said Debra Kenton, a member of the New Life Community Church. "Who else can explain things like this?"

In the days after authorities say she killed Tunstall and her fetus, Hall went about everyday life, chatting with her daughter's elementary school teacher and helping her daughter with homework, Hall's mother, Beverly Cruise, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Monday's editions.

An autopsy showed that Tunstall bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, Hart has said. Authorities believe her womb was cut open after she was knocked unconscious.

Authorities suspect Tunstall was slain on or about Sept. 15.

That day, Hall summoned police to a park, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child, Hart said. She was arrested after she told her boyfriend during the baby's funeral that the baby wasn't his and that she had killed the mother to get it, authorities said.

Tunstall's body was found Thursday, and authorities began a furious search for her children. Police said the children were last seen with Hall on Sept. 18.

Authorities had visited Tunstall's apartment Friday but noticed nothing amiss while looking for photographs of the children for media outlets to publicize in their search, Hart said.

While in custody, Hart says, Hall told investigators she killed the children and hid them in the washer and dryer.

Hart said he understood why investigators may have overlooked the children during their previous trip to the apartment. "Who would be looking in the washer and dryer?"

By Saturday night, Hart said, "you could find them by the smell."

The oldest, 7-year-old DeMond Tunstall, was found in the dryer and the younger two children — 2-year-old Ivan Tunstall-Collins and 1-year-old Jinela Tunstall — in the washer. Two of the children were found nude, the third wearing only underpants, Hart said.

Mourners left stuffed animals outside Tunstall's apartment, its door crisscrossed with white evidence tape. There was a white teddy bear, and a stuffed race car with DeMond's name.

Relatives say Tunstall grew up with Hall and had let the woman baby-sit her children. Hall has two children of her own. Illinois State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said they are "safe and sound."

DNA tests should determine definitively whether the baby was the one Tunstall was carrying, Hart said.

Funerals for Tunstall and her children were scheduled for Friday.

    Judge orders psych tests for woman charged with killing of mother and fetus, UT, 25.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-23-illinois-kids_x.htm

Kids of slain Ill. woman are found dead

Updated 9/24/2006 1:26 AM ET
AP
The New York Times

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — Three young children were found dead Saturday, hours after a woman was charged with killing their pregnant mother and her fetus in a grisly attack in which authorities believe her womb was cut open after she was knocked unconscious
The two boys, ages 7 and 2, and their 1-year-old sister were found together in an apartment in the East St. Louis public housing complex where their mother lived, Illinois State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said.

The kids were last seen Monday with family friend Tiffany Hall, 24, now charged with first-degree murder in the death of their mother, who is believed to have been slain days before her children disappeared. Hall is also charged with intentional homicide of an unborn child, prosecutor Robert Haida said.

Koehler declined to say whether Hall was suspected in the children's deaths. The cause of their deaths had not been determined and autopsies would be performed Sunday, he said.

The bodies of DeMond Tunstall, 7, Ivan Tunstall-Collins, 2, and Jinela Tunstall, 1, were found in an apartment at the John DeShields public housing complex.

Authorities said a lead directed them to check the apartment, which had not been searched previously. They declined to release more information.

"Anytime you have three deceased children, it's a very emotional time," Koehler said late Saturday as he fought back tears. "All these investigators have worked tirelessly with one outcome in mind — to find these children alive."

The body of their mother, Jimella Tunstall, 23, was found Thursday in a weedy East St. Louis lot.

An autopsy showed Tunstall, who was seven months pregnant, bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner. He called the slaying "very graphic and very brutal."

Relatives say Tunstall grew up with Hall and had let her baby-sit her children.

"She said (Hall) was looking out for her," Tunstall's brother, Ernest Myers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Family members told the paper Tunstall had lost custody of her children at one point but was trying to get her life back on track. "She had a heart of gold," Myers said.

Officials suspect Tunstall was slain on or about Sept. 15, Haida said. The same day, Hall summoned police to a park, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child, Hart said.

Hall and the fetus were taken to a hospital, where she would not let doctors examine her and offered conflicting reasons for why she went into labor, alternately saying she had consensual sex and was raped, Hart said. The dead baby showed no signs of trauma, and an autopsy the next day failed to pinpoint a cause of death, Hart said.

Hall has two children of her own. Koehler said they are "safe and sound."

Authorities say Hall acknowledged to her boyfriend during the baby's funeral Thursday that the child wasn't his, and that she had killed the mother to get it. The boyfriend, reportedly a sailor home on leave, told police, who arrested his girlfriend hours later, investigators said.

Hall, jailed on $5 million bond, will likely be arraigned Monday on the two charges, each carrying a 20 to 60 years or life in prison, Haida said. The murder count could be punishable by the death penalty.

DNA tests should determine definitively whether the baby was the one Tunstall was carrying, Hart said.

The baby was buried Thursday as Taylor Horn after a funeral arranged by L. King Funeral Chapel, whose president said Hall called minutes after the service was to start, asking if she could reschedule for a different day so more relatives could attend. At the time, Levi King said, only two relatives were there.

The woman showed up two hours late, ultimately signing an affidavit for the funeral home stating that the child was hers, King said.

The East St. Louis case is the second recent case in the area involving babies.

Shannon Torrez, 36, of Lonedell, Mo. — south of St. Louis, about an hour's drive from here — is accused of slashing a young mother's throat and kidnapping her baby on Sept. 15. The baby was returned unharmed Tuesday, the same day Torrez was arrested.

Also in Missouri, Lisa Montgomery is to stand trial April 30 on charges of snatching a baby from the womb of Bobbie Jo Stinnett at her Skidmore, Mo., home in 2004. The baby survived.

    Kids of slain Ill. woman are found dead, UT, 24.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-23-illinois-kids_x.htm

As Time Stands Still in Court, Justice for a Broken Girl Waits

September 23, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

The friendless death of Nixzmary Brown in Brooklyn last January demanded a reckoning. She was broken and starved, 7 years old, left in a den her brothers and sisters called “the dirty room.” Child welfare workers, teachers, the police and the parents all came under scrutiny.

In some quarters, consequences were swift. A week after Nixzmary was found, the child welfare agency suspended or reassigned six city workers. Soon hundreds of children were placed in foster care, the police commissioner was summoned before the City Council, and the mayor created and filled a new position for the protection of children.

But the case against the girl’s mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, and her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, has followed a different schedule.

They were charged with murder in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where the clocks sometimes seem to serve a decorative function. So far, the case against Ms. Santiago has accomplished little more than holding back the prosecution of Mr. Rodriguez.

Lawyers have asked to seal the case; invoked the Federal and State Constitutions; alluded to Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson; asked for joint trials; asked for separate trials; asked for psychological tests; asked to withhold the results of those tests; and then asked for new psychologists.

And that was just to start the process of disclosing evidence. The trial date is anybody’s guess. “It won’t be this year,” said Justice L. Priscilla Hall, speaking from the bench.

Justice, when it arrives, comes by famously slow means, and the Brooklyn courts offer no special chariot. And defense lawyers often stall as a tactic, knowing that witnesses can disappear or forget details, and that the passage of time, in general, is bad for prosecutors. But the case of People v. Nixzaliz Santiago, through a series of redundant arguments and colorful court filings, has elevated inaction to something approaching spectacle, on display every few weeks with no end in sight.

“The defendant has a strong incentive to slow things down,” said James A. Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University. “If the judge is putting up with all this nonsense as far as motions, it seems the judge needs to put her foot down.”

Prosecutors have become so frustrated with the pace of proceedings in this case that they have now asked to try Mr. Rodriguez separately. “There’s a public expectation that charges like these are resolved within a year,” said Roger B. Adler, chairman of the criminal justice section of the State Bar Association.

Outside the courtroom, neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers would openly discuss their strategies. When the parents were arrested last winter, the case started at a quick pace.

On Jan. 17, six days after Nixzmary was found, a grand jury handed up charges of second-degree murder. Prosecutors said that Mr. Rodriguez had tortured and beaten the girl, and that Ms. Santiago had been a willing and active participant.

Ms. Santiago, 28, has a plump face and almond-colored hair, dyed the burnt side of golden and worn in a long ponytail. She dresses for court in loose pink T-shirts and sweat pants, and she walks with a shuffle. She has a Spanish interpreter.

At a hearing on Feb. 1, Ms. Santiago was ordered held without bail, but after that her case slowed considerably. Ever since, she has been joined in court by Robert W. Abrams, leader of an expanding, contracting, secretive and highly combative defense team. His rhetorical specialty is the considered restatement. “I’ve tried to get her to change her mind by writing her and saying, ‘Please change your mind,’ ” Mr. Abrams said of one potential witness. “Well, I didn’t say, ‘Please change your mind,’ but I asked her to reconsider.”

Mr. Abrams wears a floppy fedora and, over his right eye, a black patch under his glasses. He enlivens legal memorandums with sarcastic quotation marks.

At a hearing on April 21, Mr. Abrams said he would offer psychological evidence, in particular an evaluation of Ms. Santiago. He also asked the judge to order lawyers not to speak to reporters, mentioning that his own sister had remarked on the horror of the crime. The judge told him to put his request in writing. After the hearing, Mr. Abrams gave interviews. Two weeks later, he filed his motion to keep participants from speaking to reporters.

“As a result of this publicity barrage,” Mr. Abrams wrote in the motion, “your affirmant has received telephone calls from at least 13 people telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for representing such a bad person as NIXZALIZ SANTIAGO. (‘Bad person’ is my euphemism for more hateful words and phrases.)”

In hearings over the next few months, variations on a single argument played out. The judge would ask to see the psychological report, or a draft of it, or a description of what it might say, and Mr. Abrams would tell her that was not possible.

On Aug. 30, the lawyers appeared in court to resolve the matter of the psychological report. Mr. Abrams told the judge that a psychologist named Klein, whose given name he would not disclose at the time, had interviewed Ms. Santiago. But, he said, he did not have the report because he had spent the night at his sister’s house. He said he could get the report, but he would rather not file it anyway. This Dr. Klein, he said, had recently revealed that she would be unable to testify. Mr. Abrams added that Dr. Klein was on vacation.

“I suppose she’ll be back on the 5th,” Mr. Abrams said, “but I don’t know if she’ll be back.”

Then he argued that turning over the psychological report would force Ms. Santiago to incriminate herself, creating a conflict between state evidentiary procedure and the Fifth Amendment. Justice Hall ignored this tack, for the moment.

“When did Dr. Klein say she would be unavailable?” the judge asked.

Mr. Abrams said: “Two weeks ago. I got an e-mail from her within the last two weeks.”

The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Jane S. Meyers, asked the judge to demand the report.

“Every time we come in here, there’s yet another reason why these things can’t be turned over to us,” Ms. Meyers said. “It’s almost September now. It’s been this, it’s been that. The latest is, ‘I got an e-mail.’ ”

Then Ms. Meyers turned to the argument about the Fifth Amendment.

“There’s no constitutional issue involved in any of this,” Ms. Meyers said, offering case law citations. “That issue was decided 35 years ago.”

A newspaper reporter yawned. Ms. Santiago’s mother flipped the pages of a newspaper. Mr. Abrams argued that case law was fallible. He told the judge that courts “upheld ‘separate but equal’ for nearly 100 years.”

At the next hearing, last week, Justice Hall ordered Mr. Abrams to turn over the report, and he did. Then he asked to start over with a new psychologist.

The lawyers argued over rights to more documents, then agreed to consult a transcript of an earlier hearing to determine whether the issue at hand had already been resolved.

“I want to ensure,” the judge said, “we’re not going on forever.”

The judge ended the hearing and called the lawyers to the bench for a private conference. A cellphone started playing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” a court officer shouted to shut it off, and Mr. Abrams’s partner ran to get it.

Ms. Santiago sat there in handcuffs beside her silent interpreter, them both watching the lawyers argue in English while the music played.

    As Time Stands Still in Court, Justice for a Broken Girl Waits, NYT, 23.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/nyregion/23trial.html?hp&ex=1159070400&en=2da6f330801c6a0e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Crime-Fighting Mayor Finds Himself Embroiled in Charges

September 21, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

JACKSON, Miss., Sept. 20 — Most politicians who run afoul of the law are accused of bribery, kickbacks or ethics violations.

But not here in the state capital, where Mayor Frank Melton, an erratic figure who took office in July 2005, does nothing by the book. Mr. Melton has disdained such basic functions as drawing up the city’s budget in favor of cruising through the city’s worst neighborhoods in a police department “mobile command center.”

He is known for carrying two guns, wearing a police jacket and a badge, searching cars, knocking on doors and raiding nightclubs while brandishing a large stick.

Mr. Melton’s activities now threaten to derail his career. Last week, he was indicted on eight charges, including burglary, malicious mischief and causing a minor to commit a felony. Prosecutors said he had illegally carried sidearms and improperly helped demolish a duplex he says was a crack house.

Although no drugs were found in the house, occupied by a man with a history of mostly petty crimes, the mayor’s sledgehammer-wielding crew took down its front wall.

Despite the indictment, the city’s frustration with crime has kept the mayor a popular figure. At the City Council meeting on Tuesday, he was bolstered by people chanting, “Fight, Frank, fight,” and criticizing other officials for inaction.

The mayor portrays himself as a man whose mission, lowering the city’s crime rate, has been hampered by the slow-moving wheels of government.

“The only mistake that I made was a procedural mistake,” Mr. Melton said when asked this week about the duplex demolition. He did not take the time to have the house declared a nuisance, he said, because young children next door were being exposed to the drug trade.

In June, he declared a state of emergency for the city, using the latitude this gave him to impose a curfew on the homeless.

Yet it is not clear that Mr. Melton’s unorthdox tactics have had any beneficial effect. This year, crime in Jackson has increased by about 16 percent over the same period in 2005, according to police reports leaked to local newspapers. (The city generally declines to release statistics.)

In April, the Hinds County district attorney, Faye Peterson, was forced to drop murder charges against an accused gang member, she said, when it came to light that Mr. Melton had provided an apartment and cash to a crucial prosecution witness.

Tricia Raymond, the executive director of SafeCity, a watchdog group on whose board Mr. Melton once served, said the increase in crime might be a result of underreporting by the previous administration.

“I can’t say there’s been a positive long-term effect,” Ms. Raymond said of the mayor’s focus on crime. “I do know that the community just feels energized simply because we have a mayor that’s willing to address the problem.”

But Mr. Melton’s vigilantism has raised concerns from critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that he is bypassing due-process rights and engaging in racial profiling by focusing on black neighborhoods. (The mayor, like 77 percent of Jackson, is black.)

Though state officials have warned him that he cannot perform law enforcement duties or carry a gun in certain public places like parks and schools, Mr. Melton says he needs protection because he has “taken down some of the biggest gangs in Mississippi.”

A former local television executive, Mr. Melton was fixated on crime well before he took office. As the host of a commentary segment called “The Bottom Line,” he took out billboards featuring names and photographs of wanted drug dealers and helped negotiate the surrender of several suspects.

In 2002, Mr. Melton was appointed to lead the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, where he got into trouble after leaking a memorandum accusing two agents of illegal conduct. He said in a deposition that he did not leak it, but later admitted he had.

Though there is no evidence that Mr. Melton has ever been formally certified as a law enforcement agent, his anticrime platform and reputation as a man of action helped him rout the incumbent, Harvey Johnson Jr., in the Democratic primary with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Mr. Melton is known for his deep familiarity with the poorer neighborhoods of Jackson, often addressing criminals and street addicts by name and regularly volunteering at the YMCA. Over the years he has taken in dozens of teenagers and young men who he says have no one else to care for them.

He says he has put many of them through college and has paid for the funerals of others who did not take his advice. Although he is not officially a foster parent, the youths live in his gated home in Jackson and, before his indictment, often rode with him on his nighttime crime raids.

Some were with him on the night of Aug. 26, when the mayor and his two bodyguards approached the home of Evans Welch, 45.

Accounts of what happened next are somewhat jumbled, but Mr. Welch said in an interview in his parents’ home, where he is now staying, that the mayor came through the back door with a gun and that Mr. Welch was ordered to leave.

The mayor cut his hand on broken glass and left to get treatment, but returned later and ordered his youth crew to demolish Mr. Welch’s side of the duplex with sledgehammers. Mr. Welch was then arrested on charges of violating the open-container law and possession of drug paraphernalia, which court papers describe as a crack pipe. He pleaded guilty, but a new lawyer is now trying to withdraw the plea on the ground that Mr. Welch is mentally ill.

Mr. Melton said the house was a known crack den that had been repeatedly visited by the police, but his administration has offered no documentation to support that contention. Neighbors said that although there was plenty of crime in the neighborhood, Mr. Welch’s house was not the source of disturbance.

In an interview at his parents’ house, where he is now staying, Mr. Welch said he feared that the mayor would find him. “I’m afraid he might kill me,” Mr. Welch said. “Why did he do this to me?”

At least for now, Mr. Welch can rest easy. As a condition of his bail, Mr. Melton has been ordered to stay away from guns, drugs, alcohol and minors. And police vehicles.

    Crime-Fighting Mayor Finds Himself Embroiled in Charges, NYT, 21.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/us/21jackson.html

Autopsy: Woman died while being dragged by vehicle

Updated 9/19/2006 10:52 PM ET
AP
USA Today

DENVER (AP) — Neighbors are struggling to come to grips with the gruesome discovery of a woman's mangled body that had been dragged along a paved road through a pastoral subdivision, leaving a long trail of blood and questions.

Douglas County sheriff's deputies on Tuesday were still trying to learn the identity of the woman, whose body was found before dawn Monday in the Surrey Ridge subdivision, a neighborhood of scattered homes near Castle Rock, about 20 miles south of Denver.

Investigators said they found a trail of blood more than a mile long behind the body. The victim's face was unrecognizable and an orange tow rope was found around her neck, said Nancy Foley, who lives near the house where the body was found.

"I was trying to sleep last night thinking about how this poor lady was dragged, treated worse than an animal," Foley said. "She was really mangled."

Preliminary results of an autopsy Tuesday indicated the woman died of asphyxiation and head injuries from being strangled by being dragged by a vehicle, sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Castellano said. Toxicology results could take up to three weeks.

Castellano said investigators detained several witnesses for questioning. No one had been arrested or identified as a possible suspect, she said.

A photo of an unidentified couple was found nearby but investigators didn't know yet whether it was connected to the death. The public has offered "a lot of information" about the photo, Castellano said. She would not elaborate.

Castellano said investigators were checking missing-person reports from around the country for clues to the woman's identity.

Foley said sheriff's patrols have increased in the once-quiet neighborhood, and residents are more vigilant and are locking their doors at night.

"We're still shocked. It's just not something that you would normally wake up to," she said. "It's a very safe neighborhood, or it has been anyway."

The blood has been cleaned off the road but traces remain, upsetting neighbors, Foley said.

"We don't want to attract any more attention that what we're already getting. This is our little piece of heaven," she said.

    Autopsy: Woman died while being dragged by vehicle, UT, 19.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-19-dragging-death_x.htm

Abducted Missouri newborn girl found alive

Updated 9/19/2006 10:44 PM ET
USA Today

UNION, Mo. (AP) — A newborn abducted after her mother was slashed was found alive Tuesday in excellent condition, and a woman who had recently miscarried was arrested, officials said.

Peter McCarthy, an emergency room physician at St. John's Hospital in Washington, Mo., said 11-day-old Abigale Lynn Woods has been reunited with her mother, father and other relatives. She was expected to be released from the hospital later Tuesday.

"The family is elated and thankful to everyone in the community who prayed for them," McCarthy said. "The baby was hydrated, nourished and in good condition when she arrived at the hospital."

FBI agent Roland Corvington identified the suspect as Shannon Beck, who lives a few miles from the home of the mother and baby.

The case broke when Beck's sister-in-law, Dorothy Torrez, contacted authorities.

"She's the hero," Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said. "She's the one that made it happen."

On Sunday, Beck contacted Torrez to say she had given birth, Corvington said. Beck had been pregnant but apparently miscarried shortly before her own child was to be born.

Torrez visited Beck on Monday and urged her to take the child to a doctor, the FBI agent said. Beck agreed, and Torrez accompanied her to St. Louis on Tuesday, about 45 miles away.

Torrez noticed what appeared to be makeup on the baby's forehead, Corvington said. When she rubbed the forehead, makeup came off what was covering a small birthmark.

In publicizing the abduction, police had described Abby's strawberry-red birthmark. Her suspicions aroused, Torrez confronted Beck, who gave her the baby, Corvington said.

Torrez contacted police, and the baby was handed over to authorities around 5 p.m. Tuesday.

"An outstanding ending, obviously," Toelke said.

Toelke said the county prosecutor would address criminal charges on Wednesday. It wasn't immediately clear where Shannon Beck was or whether she had a lawyer.

The family has declined to speak with the media.

The child's mother, 21-year-old Stephenie Ochsenbine, told police Friday a woman entered her rural home, attacked her with a knife and stole the baby, who was a week old at the time.

Police had received more than 500 leads in the investigation. On Tuesday, they gave the baby's father, James Woods, a polygraph test, which he passed.

The abductor had been profiled as someone who had a child die recently or as someone who could not have children, told people she was pregnant and needed to steal a child so her lie would not be found out.

    Abducted Missouri newborn girl found alive, UT, 20.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-19-baby-kidnapped_x.htm

Violent crimes rise after years of falling

Updated 9/18/2006 11:40 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson

WASHINGTON — The nation's murder rate rose 1.8% last year after hitting a two-decade low in 2004, the FBI said Monday in a report that raised questions about whether violent crime rates will continue to head up after years of decline.

The overall rate for violent crimes — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — rose 1.3% in 2005 but remained far below the high set in 1991, when homicide rates in many cities soared amid a sluggish economy and gang wars. Last year, in fact, the rate for rapes alone fell 2.2% and was the lowest it had been in more than 20 years.

The jump in the overall rate for violent crimes, however, gave ammunition to several police officials who have complained that the U.S. government has allowed anti-crime initiatives to languish as it has focused on anti-terrorism efforts here and abroad.

"This report should serve as a strong wake-up call," said Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske in Seattle, which recorded a 25% increase in gun-related crime last year. "We better realign our focus to the war going on in some of our cities."

Edward Flynn, police commissioner in Springfield, Mass., said local police agencies have yet to recover from the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led the federal government to redirect tens of millions of dollars in grants away from policing projects and toward homeland security programs.

"Police can't be good homeland security partners if they cannot do their core missions," said Flynn, whose city of 155,000 had 18 homicides last year, double the number from 2000. "People need to see this as a sign for concern."

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday that it was "too soon" to determine whether the FBI report represented a significant departure from the annual declines in crime recorded during much of the past decade.

During a briefing at the Justice Department, McNulty said anecdotal evidence from the first part of this year suggests there "might be a rise in violent crime in some jurisdictions." However, he noted that the overall crime rate — for violent and property offenses — remained low compared with the past 30 years.

McNulty said the recent increases in violent offenses could reflect a convergence of factors: a rise in gang membership, the spread of highly addictive methamphetamine and the increasing numbers of young people who are 18 to 24, the age group that generally commits the most crimes.

"The terrorism mission," he said, "has not cost us anything" in fighting crime domestically.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national association of law enforcement officials, said the FBI report was "not all gloom and doom." He cited declines in reported property crimes.

However, Wexler said members of his group are concerned about increasing violence across the nation. "We believe we're on the front end of a tipping point on violent crime."

    Violent crimes rise after years of falling, G, 18.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-18-violent-crimes_x.htm

 

Seven-day old Abigale Lynn Woods
is seen In this photo released by the Franklin County Sheriff's Department.

AP

 Family begs attacker to return Mo. baby        NYT        17.9.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-16-baby-kidnapped_x.htm

 

Family begs attacker to return Mo. baby

Updated 9/17/2006 1:43 AM ET
AP
USA Today

UNION, Mo. (AP) — A grandmother of a newborn girl stolen from a rural home pleaded Saturday for the baby's safe return, as authorities searched for an abductor who stabbed and seriously injured the infant's mother before fleeing with the child.
"The family's in agony," Raylene Ochsenbine said at a news conference. "Just give her back."

The attacker walked into the home, told Abby Woods' mother "I'm here to take your child," then slashed the young mother's throat and fled with the 1-week-old child.

The baby's pediatrician, Andy Zupan, said the abduction comes at a time when the baby is still adjusting to life. She is already overdue for a doctor's visit, Zupan said, and had been breast-feeding.

"We just want her to just take her to a church or a hospital," Ochsenbine said. "Just give her back."

Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said authorities had some good leads in their search for the attacker and the baby but "nothing has headed us in a certain direction."

The child's mother said she did not know her attacker, police said. Stephanie Ochsenbine, 21, was in stable condition Saturday following surgery.

"She's torn apart," Raylene Ochsenbine said.

The FBI, Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Missouri National Guard were helping with the investigation, Toelke said. The sheriff asked the public to report any woman who had talked about wanting a child or acted pregnant recently.

"The description is not locked in concrete," Toelke said. "It could be someone who had a child die recently or could not have children and has told people they were pregnant and needed to steal a child so their lie would not be found out."

Franklin County Maj. Mike Copeland noted that a sign celebrating Abby's birth was displayed in the front yard and was plainly visible from a highway.

The attacker had gained entry to the family's home in Lonedell, about 45 miles south of St. Louis, on Friday afternoon by asking to use Stephanie Ochsenbine's telephone. Ochsenbine's boyfriend and Abby's father, James Woods, was at work at the time, police said.

They fought after the woman told Ochsenbine "I'm here to take your child," and Ochsenbine was stabbed several times and her throat was slashed.

Ochsenbine's 1-year-old son, Connor, also was in the house but was unharmed.

Ochsenbine passed out and police aren't sure how long she was unconscious.

When she regained consciousness, she picked up Connor and went for help, trying two houses where no one was home before arriving at neighbor Pat Bearden's home.

"She was standing there with blood all over her and said 'Somebody stole my baby,'" said Pat Bearden, 69.

While no one has been ruled out as being involved, Ochsenbine and Woods are not considered prime suspects, Toelke said. "We're not focusing on them," he said.

    Family begs attacker to return Mo. baby, UT, 17.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-16-baby-kidnapped_x.htm

Text message led to girl's safe return

Posted 9/16/2006 10:44 PM ET
USA Today

LUGOFF, S.C. (AP) — A text message sent by a kidnapped 14-year-old to her mother led to her rescue Saturday, when police found her in a hand-dug, booby-trapped bunker.

Elizabeth Shoaf's message also led investigators to name a suspect in her Sept. 6 abduction — police were searching a wooded area where the girl was found for 37-year-old Vinson Filyaw, said Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill.

Shoaf was found by deputies about a mile from her home in a 15-foot deep hole in the side of a hill that was covered with plywood. The bunker had a hand-dug privy with toilet paper, a camp stove and shelves made with cut branches and canvas.

McCaskill said the girl appeared to be unharmed but was taken to Kershaw County Medical Center for evaluation. Police have not interviewed her, saying they would leave her alone until she's ready to talk.

"We're just glad that she's alive and she's safe and that she will be home with us," her mother, Madeline Shoaf told WLTX-TV in Columbia. "She's a good girl. ... We never believed that she ran away."

Investigators say Filyaw, 36, may have posed as a police officer when he met Shoaf. The unemployed construction worker also is wanted on an unrelated sexual assault charge.

"He dug this pit and this child was in this pit," McCaskill said. "He is linked to her disappearance and he's got to answer for that."

The sheriff said the girl was walked around in the woods by her captor until she became disoriented. In the bunker, she was threatened with handmade grenades and a flare gun.

The sheriff said the text message the girl sent to her mother came from Filyaw's cellphone and deputies began looking for him Friday night.

Investigators used cell towers to determine a general location of the phone used to send the message. "That was the first break," McCaskill said.

McCaskill said the girl cried out as searchers approached the bunker where she was found.

"She was standing at the mouth of the bunker with the door open," sheriff's Capt. David Thomley told WLTX-TV in Columbia. He said Shoaf was not tied up and was very coherent.

The bunker was protected by a booby-trap, the sheriff said.

Police tracking hounds were brought in to aid in the search for Filyaw, and helicopters with spotlights circled overhead as night fell. A $5,000 reward was offered for information leading to his capture. Filyaw was considered armed and dangerous.

Deputies have been searching for Filyaw for months on an unrelated charge of criminal sexual conduct against a 12-year-old girl, McCaskill said.

Officers tried to arrest Filyaw at his home earlier this week, but he had an elaborate escape plan, involving a tunnel dug from his bedroom to a shed, the sheriff said.

"When deputies came to serve the warrant, he was able to escape, going under the mattress, going under the trailer and hiding and eluding the arrest," McCaskill said.

This is the second case this year in South Carolina involving an abducted teenage girl taken to an underground hideout.

Kenneth Hinson of Hartsville is charged with kidnapping two 17-year-old girls March 14 and taking them to a closet-sized dungeon behind his home. Authorities said the girls freed themselves and walked to safety, and Hinson was captured after a four-day manhunt.

    Text message led to girl's safe return, UT, 16.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-16-text-message_x.htm

Mexico drug kingpin extradited to U.S.

Posted 9/16/2006 8:24 PM ET
AP
USA Today

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico extradited drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the United States on Saturday, making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to face drug charges.

The extradition was a victory for U.S. officials who have been pushing Mexico to send them more drug lords.

The former head of the Arellano Felix drug clan was handed over in the Texas border town of Matamoros after serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico. He will be taken to California to face trial on charges stemming from a 1980 case in which he allegedly sold cocaine to an undercover police officer in the United States.

U.S. authorities requested Arellano Felix's extradition on June 2, 2003. A federal judge approved that request in 2004, but it took two years for the Foreign Relations Department to send him.

Francisco Rafael was the oldest brother in a family accused of running what was one of Mexico's largest and most violent drug smuggling gangs in the 1990s.

The Arellano Felix gang developed a reputation as one of the most bloodthirsty smuggling rings.

Most of the seven Arellano Felix brothers have been arrested or killed, weakening the group. But Mexican and U.S. officials said the gang still moves tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States from its operations base in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

Arellano Felix was arrested in December 1993 in Tijuana and was convicted under Mexico's tough weapons laws rather than for drug offenses.

His brother Benjamin, reputedly the planning chief of the gang, was arrested in March 2002 in Puebla, east of Mexico City.

Another brother, Ramon, was shot to death a month earlier in the Pacific tourist port of Mazatlan. Police say he had been the group's feared enforcer, in charge of killing to settle scores.

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix was captured on a fishing boat last month by the U.S. Coast Guard in international waters off the coast of La Paz, Mexico.

    Mexico drug kingpin extradited to U.S., UT, 16.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-16-drug-extradition_x.htm

Escaped killer caught in Tennessee after 30 years

Updated 9/14/2006 10:57 PM ET
USA Today

NASHVILLE (AP) — A convicted murderer who escaped from a Michigan psychiatric facility in 1976 was back behind bars Thursday after living most of his 30 years on the run as an otherwise law-abiding family man in Tennessee, authorities said.
Thomas Ball, 76, was arrested at his Nashville home Wednesday morning, Deputy U.S. Marshal Danny Shelton said.

Ball had been using the name Thomas Fry and had run a storage business near Nashville for years with a woman he called his wife, Shelton said. After she died last year, he turned to the government for financial help, and that led the marshals to his door.

"Maybe he never thought the knock would come, but it did yesterday," Shelton said Thursday.

Ball was convicted in the 1964 of stabbing a 19-year-old woman to death at the Strand Hotel in Detroit, said Michigan Corrections Department spokesman Leo Lalonde. He said Ball had known the woman for about a week.

Ball was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison and would have been released on parole by 1980 if he hadn't escaped, according to Michigan records.

In 1976, he was at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti, Mich., when he made his break.

"He was transferred after some psychiatric problem," Shelton said. "He says it was because of a mental breakdown, but he could have done that to attempt an escape, because some of these facilities are less secure than a prison."

Authorities believe Ball moved to Tennessee shortly after his escape and assumed the name of a dead man who was the same age. Shelton said Ball didn't appear to have had any run-ins with the law there and was cooperative with the marshals during his arrest.

His longtime partner, Dollie Walton, had legally changed her name to Fry before her death in September 2005. Her daughter, Sue Roach, said she and others in the family had suspicions about Ball but she doesn't think her mother knew he was a fugitive.

"He's always been an evasive person," said Walton's son, Jerry Walton. "He said he couldn't remember his Social Security number."

Ball never had a driver's license or a birth certificate, which made it hard for him to find employment, Walton said. "So she'd get a job and then he'd use her to get a job at the same place," he said.

After their mother's death, Roach said, Ball no longer had a way to support himself.

Bryan Matthews, an office supervisor with the Michigan Corrections Department, said his office alerted federal authorities on Sept. 8 after Ball tried to get federal assistance.

"Through database checks ... we developed information that he got government benefits in the Tennessee area," Matthews said. He said marshals in Nashville then put Ball under surveillance and were able to confirm his identity.

    Escaped killer caught in Tennessee after 30 years, UT, 14.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-14-killer-caught_x.htm

Gunman Takes Hostages at Illinois Bank

September 13, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:58 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DOLTON, Ill. (AP) -- A gunman took at least two people hostage Wednesday during an attempted bank robbery near Chicago, authorities said.

Dolton village spokesman Sean Howard said there was at least one gunman inside the bank, and two to four possible hostages. He did not know if the hostages were employees of the Heritage Community Bank or customers.

Howard said officers had communicated with people inside the building, but he wouldn't say what was discussed. He said no one had been injured, and four to five customers and employees were able to escape.

Authorities blocked off several streets around the building as police from at least three towns, FBI agents and the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force worked to resolve the situation.

Jorge Hernandez, 21, an employee at nearby Pepe's Tacos said two bank employees came in around 11:00 a.m. saying their manager had told them to get away. He said they told him a gunman was in the bank vault with at least two hostages.

''They were scared more than upset,'' Hernandez said in a phone interview. ''They were scared for their co-workers.''

Hernandez said he and other employees were locked inside the restaurant on the instructions of police, who also told him to stay away from the windows. He said the two bank employees were escorted out by police.

The last successful robbery at the bank was in 1990, Howard said. Dolton is less than 20 miles south of Chicago.

    Gunman Takes Hostages at Illinois Bank, NYT, 13.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bank-Standoff.html

Escaped Prisoner Suspected of Rape Is Found in Alabama

September 10, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Sept. 9 — An escaped prisoner accused in the abduction and rape of a woman was captured Saturday after the authorities swarmed an apartment and found him hiding in a closet.

The prisoner, Dedrick Griham, 35, was found in Birmingham, about 90 miles north of the state prison where he escaped Thursday night. He had stuffed his bunk with clothes to make it appear he was under the covers and cut through a chain-link fence.

Investigators said they suspected that Mr. Griham had help escaping and were questioning several people who were in the apartment with him.

A lawyer for Mr. Griham, Eric Guster, denied that he had any help from outside prison. “It will be interesting when they investigate to see if he had some internal help,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Agents got a tip that Mr. Griham was in the area and cordoned off a block around the small apartment complex, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman with the Alabama Department of Corrections.

“They found him hiding in an upstairs apartment in a closet,” Mr. Corbett said. “He was not armed.”

Mr. Griham, who has a long criminal record and apparently was out on parole by mistake at the time of the abduction, is accused of rape, sodomy and robbery in the May 31 kidnapping, which was captured by a parking lot surveillance camera as the woman, a lawyer, got out of her car.

The abduction drew wide notice as the videotape, which shows a man pushing her back inside her car before driving off, was broadcast repeatedly on national television.

The woman’s ordeal ended nine hours later when she was rescued from a motel room where law officers said she had been held against her will.

Mr. Corbett said Mr. Griham would face additional escape charges in state and federal court.

    Escaped Prisoner Suspected of Rape Is Found in Alabama, NYT, 10.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/us/10escape.html

Fugitive Wanted in Shootings of 3 Troopers Surrenders

September 9, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON and DAVID STABA

DUNKIRK, N.Y., Sept. 8 — The fugitive Ralph J. Phillips surrendered to the police on Friday night, ending a five-month manhunt in which one state trooper was killed in an ambush and two were wounded.

About 8 p.m., Mr. Phillips, hands in the air, emerged from the woods across the New York State line in northern Pennsylvania, where he had been cornered in a one-square-mile swath of tall brush.

His surrender came just minutes before the search was to be halted for the night, the New York State Police said. Mr. Phillips, 44, was quickly taken out of the woods near the town of Akeley, Pa., in a police car while state troopers cheered inside a command tent.

Mr. Phillips, also known as Bucky, slumped with his head against the rear seat, his hair long, thin and tangled. He appeared to be exhausted, but unhurt.

“Bucky Philips, as I told you before, he could run, but he couldn’t hide, and he is in custody,” said Superintendent Wayne E. Bennett of the state police.

In the previous hours, he was chased by cars, tracked by helicopters and bloodhounds and fired at by a trooper, and finally surrounded.

Many of the people who lived nearby, as well as Mr. Phillips’s friends and relatives, had speculated that he would not be taken alive, and they expressed relief when he was.

After the capture, residents clapped and shouted along the dark roads.

Mr. Phillips had been a fugitive since April 2, when he escaped from the Erie County jail where he was serving a 90-day sentence on a parole violation. He is expected to be arraigned Saturday on escape charges and of charges connected with the June 10 shooting that left a trooper injured during a traffic stop in Chemung County in central New York.

Mr. Phillips is also a suspect in the Aug. 31 shooting of two state troopers outside his former companion’s house in Stockton, in western New York.

Trooper John A. Longobardo was struck in the thigh and died on Sunday, a day after doctors amputated his leg.

Trooper Donald Baker Jr., who was hit in the abdomen, remained in critical condition in an Erie, Pa., hospital on Friday.

Mr. Phillips has not been charged in those shootings.

Less than an hour before the capture, as dusk approached, the authorities said that the search would be suspended when it grew dark, and that troopers would secure the area with a tight perimeter of officers and cars.

The searchers got a break at 1:55 a.m. on Friday when a sheriff’s deputy from Warren County, Pa., chased a stolen car. The car crashed into a tree, and the driver fled into the woods, the police said.

At 2:25 a.m., a second car in the area was reported stolen. The police saw that car about 20 minutes later and gave chase.

This time, the driver jumped out of the car while it was still moving, the police said. Again, he scrambled into the woods.

Hundreds of troopers and officers from other agencies swarmed into the area. The police found evidence in the car — exactly what was not disclosed Friday — that was used to give bloodhounds the suspect’s scent.

“We need scent,” Superintendent Bennett said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

“What occurred with the stolen cars was spontaneous — there was no time to put any plan into effect,” Superintendent Bennett said on Friday afternoon in the first of three afternoon news conferences.

“That’s an advantage to us. He didn’t have any time to contact anyone or get to a safe house.”

At 9:10 a.m., two troopers and a police dog came upon a man they identified as Mr. Phillips from behind, a short distance away. At the sound of the dog’s growl, Mr. Phillips spun around with a pistol in his left hand, pointing it at the troopers, and one of the troopers shot at him, the police said.

Mr. Phillips did not fire. He fled, and it was unclear at the time whether he had been struck by the bullet. But he was uninjured, and unarmed, when he surrendered, the police said.

About five hours later, around 2 p.m., there were two more sightings of Mr. Phillips within 30 minutes, one by a trooper and one by a civilian. He had been running in one instance and crawling through brush in the other, Superintendent Bennett said.

Mr. Phillips had crisscrossed creeks in the area in an apparent attempt to confuse the police dogs tracking his scent, the police said.

The searchers closed in on him from the ground and above.

“He got to the point where there wasn’t any place to go,” Superintendent Bennett said. “You get to the point where there’s a helicopter over your head and people with high-powered rifles coming toward you. The game is up.”

In April, Mr. Phillips used a can opener to pry open a hole in a kitchen ceiling and escape from jail.

His criminal background, while long, included no violent crimes, and so the June 10 shooting of Trooper Sean M. Brown in Chemung County surprised residents who knew Mr. Phillips.

Trooper Brown was shot in the abdomen, and his injuries were the least severe of the three troopers struck.

By the end of the manhunt, the reward for information leading to Mr. Phillips’s capture had grown to $425,000, and he had been added to the F.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted List, just three names down from Osama bin Laden.

Seven people have been charged with aiding Mr. Phillips during his flight, including his daughter, her boyfriend and her mother,

“I would have to believe he’s somewhat exhausted,” Superintendent Bennett said after the surrender. “You constantly have to look around. You constantly have to look over your shoulder. I would say he’s exhausted. We put a big chase on him today.”

    Fugitive Wanted in Shootings of 3 Troopers Surrenders, NYT, 9.9.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/nyregion/09bucky.html?hp&ex=1157860800&en=481316ccb7fb19c2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

After Years Behind Bars, Now a Life on the Run

September 8, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

STOCKTON, N.Y., Sept. 7 — His father went by the nickname Buck, and so he was called Bucky, a smiling boy in the old pictures, the woods behind him. He lived in a shack near here with a sister and poor parents, and played outside, sitting on a make-believe couch and watching a pretend television, both made of hay.

“He’d play in the woods,” said Shawn Horton, 46, a lifelong acquaintance. “Hide-and-seek. Small-game hunting. A normal country boy.”

But as the boy, Ralph J. Phillips, grew, his game of hide-and-seek became far less innocent. “At one time, he had quite a cache of stolen vehicles in the woods,” Ms. Horton said. “I believe it was just the thrill of it for him.”

His latest round of hide-and-seek has brought hundreds of state troopers, national attention and tragedy to these woods in Chautauqua County. The police said he was the prime suspect in the Aug. 31 shootings of two state troopers, one of them killed, the other critically injured in an ambush from the woods. He is also a suspect in the shooting of a trooper on June 10 during a traffic stop, in which the officer was wounded, and in the robbery of a gun store.

Mr. Phillips, 44, has a long criminal history, stretching back perhaps 30 years, but it is not a history of bloodshed. That contradiction has left his family and old friends wondering just what it was, if he was the gunman, that transformed him from a unrepentant thief into someone ready to commit murder.

Most believe that when the police, four months into the hunt, arrested his daughter, her boyfriend and Mr. Phillips’s former girlfriend, and the authorities temporarily took custody of his daughter’s three young children, Mr. Phillips went from a man bent on escape, and who they say had already shot one trooper, to a man filled with rage.

He is believed to be hiding in or near Chautauqua County, a sweeping arc of woodlands threaded with narrow dirt lanes and pocked by abandoned cabins and cars with the keys tucked above the visor or dangling from the ignition.

He has survived, the police believe, with the help of a network of former girlfriends, friends from the nine state prisons where he has served time, and by using stolen cars and motorcycles. While his early exploits seemed to make him something of a folk hero, the killing of the trooper ended that. The vast majority of people in Chautauqua County want him caught.

A letter he wrote to his lawyer shortly before his escape on April 2 seemed to foreshadow his new existence. “I am just not cut out for the life you folks live,” Mr. Phillips wrote. “I tried it. It didn’t work. Oh well.”

His old friends listen to police scanners day and night, updating each other on cellphones, and seem to know almost as much about the progress of the manhunt as the police do. Seven people have been arrested and charged with harboring him.

The latest, Todd A. Nelson, let Mr. Phillips stay in his home, in Ludlow, Pa., for as long as 11 days, sharing beer and pizza, the authorities said.

The reward for Mr. Phillips’s arrest was raised to $425,000 on Thursday. And he was added to the F.B.I.’s most wanted list.

In interviews, Mr. Phillips’s daughter, her maternal grandmother, his former brother-in-law and his estranged wife paint a complex picture of the fugitive. In their telling, Mr. Phillips grew from an abused and neglected boy to a thief who stole just for the rush of it, preferably leading the police into a chase.

For more than half his life — since 1983 — he has lived almost entirely behind bars. Short periods of freedom ended in crime and capture. He seemed, they said, more comfortable locked up.

Some women were drawn to him. He was gentle, handsome, mysterious. Indeed, Mr. Phillips, since his escape, has returned to several of the women from his past, according to the police and his wife, Terry Phillips, 43, who admits that she spent a day with him during his flight, early in the summer. They ran mundane errands, calmly strolling through a grocery store to buy detergent.

That was June 9, Ms. Phillips said. The next day, the first trooper was shot.

“What the hell is he doing?” she asked during a telephone interview on Wednesday, given on the condition that her current residence, in another state, not be revealed, for fear of putting herself in danger. “Why is he doing that?”

Mr. Phillips was born on June 19, 1962, to Ralph and April Phillips. His father was some 40 years older than his mother, and was prone to drink and to violent outbursts, several members of Mr. Phillips’s extended family said.

“He’d make him sleep in a barn,” said Emery Masiker, 43, a contractor and Christmas tree farmer who was once married to Mr. Phillips’s sister, and who was close to his mother until her death. “He was just an old, tired man.”

His father may have steered him down the wrong path early on. “He was the one who taught him how to jump cars,” said Norma Gloss, 65, whose daughter had a child with Mr. Phillips.

Mr. Phillips and his future wife, Terry, played together as early as age 7, she said, recalling playing house in bales of hay and provoking a bull so it would chase him. She said Mr. Phillips was sent to a home for delinquent boys, though she did not know for how long, and they had not seen each other for six years, when he pulled up with a smile and a stolen car. He was 13. “He came up to the driveway and said, ‘Come on, let’s go for a drive,’ ” she said.

Then he was in custody again, she said. His juvenile record was not available, but those who know him said Mr. Phillips was a compulsive thief.

“He went from bicycles to tractors to cars,” said Art Clever, 62, who owns a general store near the Phillips family’s now-crumbling home. He said Mr. Phillips was once chased into the store by four police officers, their guns drawn, and was arrested in the back office.

Mr. Masiker said what he stole did not seem to matter. “Cigarettes, guns, money,” he said. “ He’d steal a set of pop machine keys and come back with piles and piles of coins. He’d be all right for a couple of days, but then, like an alcoholic, he’d go back again.”

He fathered a daughter in December 1982 with his girlfriend Kasey Gloss, but he has spent most of the 23 years since then in prison, according to records.

He spent three years shuttling between three prisons for stealing property from a garage in 1983. Nine months after his release, he was locked up again, for entering a home and threatening the residents with a rifle. He was released three years later, and was back in prison nine months after that.

“I call them sabbaticals,” Ms. Horton said of the stints of freedom.

His longest stint behind bars, for burglary and selling drugs, began on Nov. 5, 1992, and lasted 13 years. Soon after he began serving that sentence, one of his girlfriends was caught trying to sneak him a handcuff key hidden in her mouth, according to parole records and his friends.

A Native American by blood, he enmeshed himself in Indian prison groups, his daughter said. He corresponded with Terry, his childhood friend and future wife, and she became a frequent visitor at Auburn Correctional Facility. They were married in a prison ceremony in 1995, she said.

“In the visiting room, you’ve got time to talk, when it’s just you two,” she said. “We talked about our pasts as children, when we were 13. That’s all he wanted.” But a series of disciplinary violations, including one for “tampering with electricity,” resulted in his transfer to prisons farther away.

“He built a CB radio in prison,” Ms. Phillips said. “He would invent. He did something with wires and a battery and he made a little night light.”

They split up in 2003, at his urging, and he told her to live her own life, she said. They never divorced.

He was released last November, a 43-year-old man, and moved to a halfway house in Buffalo. He seemed eager to reconnect with his daughter, whom he knew almost exclusively from her few prison visits.

“I don’t drink or drug anymore,” he wrote in one of the many letters that the daughter, Patrina Wright, now 23, keeps in a shoebox, and from which she read excerpts. “My new image, you might say. No more prison for me, love. All done.”

He continued: “I’m doing everything I am supposed to do, so don’t worry, O.K.? Things are different now, and I want to just be free.”

He was free, for 49 days. Then he was accused of violating his parole, after a counselor at the halfway house reported that Mr. Phillips had threatened his daughter and her family.

Mr. Phillips’s lawyer, John Keaney, said there was no threat. In his brief period of freedom, the lawyer said, Mr. Phillips had been given a pass to leave Buffalo.

While away, he shared a Christmas dinner with, among others, a former friend who had let Mr. Phillips take the blame for some of his own crimes in 1992, Mr. Keaney said.

The counselor wondered if spending more time in Chautauqua County, with his daughter, as Mr. Phillips wanted to do, was a good idea, because of the people like the former friend with whom he came into contact.

Mr. Phillips replied that there was no problem, with unfortunate bluntness. Referring to the former friend, “He said: ‘If I wanted to — I was carving a turkey two feet away from him. I could have stabbed him. I could get a gun and shoot him, and I wouldn’t be sitting here asking you for a pass,’ ” Mr. Keaney said.

Mr. Phillips’s daughter said her father would never have threatened her. “He just wanted his family,” she said. “He wanted to be a grandpa.”

He wrote her from his cell: “I want you to know the depth of my love for you, and I’ll prove myself to you by proving I can put the past behind me.” He escaped several weeks later.

A question arises: how can a man who has been locked up for so long be so knowledgeable about the outdoors? Mr. Masiker said he did not believe that his old friend was the survivalist he has been painted to be.

“He goes to work like everybody else,” he said, referring to recent thefts. “He’s not woods guy, he’s not skinning raccoons. He’s not this Indian hunting guy. He’s an opportunist.”

The grocer, Mr. Clever, predicted a violent end. “He’s a dead man walking,” he said. “Everyone around here has guns. If anybody sees him, they’re going to shoot him.”

His wife was surprised, two months after the escape, to receive a call from him. “He said, ‘Hey, can I come over?’ ” she said. “I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I gave him my address. I’m like, ‘You’re going to go to the Laundromat with me?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ ”

They shopped, and washed the clothes, and he returned to her home for a few short hours. His departure bore little resemblance to that teenager’s hopeful arrival in the driveway 30 years earlier, played in reverse this time and drained of light. “We said goodbye,” she said, “and he walked away in the dark, toward the car.”

    After Years Behind Bars, Now a Life on the Run, NYT, 8.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/nyregion/08bucky.html?hp&ex=1157774400&en=878d76895fa1a1b7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Nurse strangles intruder with bare hands

Posted 9/8/2006 5:46 PM ET
AP
USA Today

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A nurse returning from work discovered an intruder armed with a hammer in her home and strangled him with her bare hands, police said.

Susan Kuhnhausen, 51, ran to a neighbor's house after the confrontation Wednesday night. Police found the body of Edward Dalton Haffey, 59, a convicted felon with a long police record.

Officer Katherine Kent said homicide detectives have determined that Kuhnhausen killed Haffey in self-defense. She said a prosecutor is investigating but that the case is not expected to go to a grand jury.

Police said there was no obvious sign of forced entry at the house when Kuhnhausen, an emergency room nurse at Providence Portland Medical Center, got home from work shortly after 6 p.m.

Under Oregon law people can use reasonable deadly force when defending themselves against an intruder or burglar in their homes. Kuhnhausen was treated and released for minor injuries at Providence.

Haffey, about 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, had convictions including conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, robbery, drug charges and possession of burglary tools. Neighbors said Kuhnhausen's size — 5-foot-7 and 260 pounds — may have given her an advantage.

"Everyone that I've talked to says 'Hurray for Susan,' said neighbor Annie Warnock, who called 911. "You didn't need to calm her. She's an emergency room nurse. She's used to dealing with crisis."

    Nurse strangles intruder with bare hands, UT, 8.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-08-strangle_x.htm

Two charged in alleged Wisconsin sex assaults

Posted 9/8/2006 10:14 PM ET
AP
USA Today

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Two more people were charged Friday in the case of an 11-year-old girl who authorities say had sex with as many as 20 people as a 16-year-old girl coached her.

Freeman Gurley, 40, the 16-year-old's uncle, and Darnell Chaney, 17, were charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child.

The 16-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy also have been charged in juvenile court with being a party to sexual assault of a child. A police spokeswoman said they were still seeking five others in the case.

Also on Friday, Alderman Mike McGee Jr. said he met with the girl, whom he described as distraught. He said she has been infected with HIV since birth and that her mother died of AIDS.

"You can't expect her to be doing well," he said.

The likelihood of someone spreading the AIDS virus through a single sex act is not well known. A key factor is how much virus is in the infected person's blood, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers who have studied the topic. Treatment with AIDS drugs greatly reduces the amount of virus in the blood.

The 11-year-old girl told police she was interested in the teenage girl, who looked and dressed like a boy, authorities said in court records.

According to the complaint filed in adult court against Gurley and Chaney, the 11-year-old said the 16-year-old told her she should perform various sex acts on a number of young men at the teen's house and she agreed.

She was in a bedroom and began performing sex acts on a number of males, the complaint said. When Gurley came home from work the teenage girl encouraged the 11-year-old to have sex with him. Initially, the 11-year-old refused but then gave in.

Gurley admitted he had unprotected intercourse with the girl on the bed, the complaint said. In the juvenile court documents, Gurley said his niece coached the 11-year-old.

Chaney admitted the girl performed oral sex on him. He also told police the 16-year-old was directing the 11-year-old girl, the complaint said.

The public defender's office said no attorneys had been assigned to Gurley and Chaney as of Friday.

According to court records from the juvenile court case, the 11-year-old told police after the incident in the bedroom she went to the basement, where there were about 15 males and "began to choose who she wanted to perform oral sex on."

The 16-year-old denied encouraging her, court records said.

No child can give legal consent for sex, District Attorney E. Michael McCann said Friday.

"Whether the 11-year-old child consented or not is utterly irrelevant," he said.

    Two charged in alleged Wisconsin sex assaults, UT, 8.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-08-milwaukee-rape_x.htm

Man arrested in 2005 Phoenix attack

Updated 9/7/2006 11:11 PM ET
By Judi Villa and Michael Kiefer, The Arizona Republic
USA Today

PHOENIX — Police have arrested a construction worker on suspicion of sexually assaulting two sisters whose attack has been blamed on the city's "Baseline Killer."

However, police said the man has not been linked to the rash of crimes in the Phoenix area — including eight killings and 11 sexual assaults — that police have said may be the work of a single predator.

Mark Goudeau, 43, was arrested Wednesday on charges he is the man who attacked two sisters in a Phoenix park in September 2005. He was booked on suspicion of aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual abuse. He was held without bail.

"This suspect has been arrested for the sexual assault in one case only and is not connected to any other case in this series at this time," Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said. "We will continue to pore over evidence we have obtained, and further analysis is forthcoming."

Police Cmdr. Kim Humphrey said investigators spent Thursday contacting victims and witnesses from other crimes to see whether any could pick Goudeau out of a photo lineup. Humphrey said Goudeau resembles a widely circulated police sketch depicting the Baseline Killer as a man with dreadlocks.

The address listed for Goudeau, an ex-convict, is in an area where many of the Baseline Killer's 23 crimes were clustered.

In the past, the Phoenix police have said that the attack on the two sisters was believed to be part of the series of sexual assaults, robberies and slayings blamed on a serial predator whose earliest crimes happened along the city's Baseline Road.

The Baseline Killer has been linked to crimes dating to August 2005, including eight killings, 11 sexual assaults of women and girls, and several robberies. Investigators have said they connected the crimes through either forensic evidence or similarities in the way they were committed.

Only 11 of the 23 Baseline Killer crimes have been forensically linked. The sexual assaults of the two sisters in which Goudeau is charged is not one of the 11, police Sgt. Andy Hill said.

Hill said forensic evidence tied Goudeau to the attack on the sisters crimes but provided no details.

Goudeau's family said he was singled out because he lived in the area and fits the killer's profile.

"He's innocent," said Goudeau's niece, Ebony Goudeau. "They need a scapegoat. He didn't do it."

Goudeau's wife, Wendy Carr, said, "My husband is innocent. This is a huge miscarriage of justice."

Records from the Arizona Department of Corrections show Goudeau was released from prison in March 2004 after serving 13 years for aggravated assault, armed robbery and kidnapping.

Harris said police first got a tip with Goudeau's name in mid-July. Another tip was passed along to Phoenix detectives by investigators at the corrections department. Goudeau was questioned after his name surfaced, but he didn't become a suspect until last weekend, Humphrey said. At that point, police put Goudeau under surveillance.

Wednesday, a DNA sample that Goudeau provided in prison was matched to evidence from the September 2005 sexual assaults, Humphrey said. Corrections Director Dora Schriro said her agency had made Goudeau's DNA sample available to Phoenix police.

Goudeau was arrested during a traffic stop about 5 p.m. Wednesday. Police then searched his east-central Phoenix home and two cars.

Assistant Phoenix Police Chief Kevin Robinson said detectives simply need time to "work through everything else."

"Further charges are quite possible, but we're not there yet," Robinson said.

The Baseline Killer case is one of two serial-killer cases that have shaken the Phoenix area. In the other, dubbed the Serial Shooter investigation, police arrested Dale Hausner, 33, and Samuel Dieteman, 30, last month.

The roommates are charged with murder and attempted murder in 16 shootings, two of them fatal.

Contributing: Arizona Republic reporter Lindsey Collom and the Associated Press

    Man arrested in 2005 Phoenix attack, UT, 7.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-07-phoenix-killings_x.htm

Maine bed and breakfast slayings a shock

Updated 9/6/2006 2:46 PM ET
AP
USA Today

NEWRY, Maine (AP) — Julie Bullard and her daughter, Selby, tried to put tragedy behind them when they moved from California to Maine to run a bed and breakfast here. It was to be a fresh start after Selby Bullard's husband died in a car accident.

Now, both are dead, and a man who lived as a guest in their inn was charged Tuesday with killing them and two others in Maine's biggest homicide case in more than a decade.

The carnage at the 130-year-old converted farmhouse on a dead-end road unfolded over the Labor Day weekend and prompted State Police Chief Col. Craig Poulin to call it "a crime of horrific proportions."

Police said Christian Nielsen, 31, who had worked as a cook in an inn's kitchen in neighboring Bethel, offered no resistance when he was arrested on four murder charges.

Poulin said the investigation was too new to comment on a motive, but added, "We believe no one else was involved and there are no additional victims."

Nielsen, who had been living at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast for a couple of months, told police that his first victim on Friday was James Whitehurst, 50, of Batesville, Ark., whose remains were burned and discarded in the nearby town of Upton, authorities said.

Inn owner Julie Bullard, 65, was killed Sunday, police said. The following day, her daughter Selby and Cynthia Beatson, 43, were also killed when they arrived at the inn unexpectedly, a state police affidavit said. All three women were dismembered.

State police were alerted to the carnage Monday evening by Bullard family members who arrived at inn to find a woman's body and blood outside. Nielsen's father told troopers that he thought his son had committed the killing, according to prosecutors.

Nielsen, questioned by detectives Monday night, admitted killing all four people, the affidavit said. He then led a detective to Upton, where Nielsen said he had disposed of Whitehurst's body, the document said.

Whitehurst, described as a handyman who was helping out Julie Bullard, had been staying in the inn, a white clapboard farmhouse with a red metal roof, while he was in the area.

Julie Bullard had purchased the building, which had been converted into a bed and breakfast with a pool and tennis court, after moving to Maine two years ago. She had operated a bed and breakfast in San Francisco that she sold prior to coming to the area, a magnet for skiers and other outdoor enthusiasts.

"Her daughter, Selby, had just lost her husband in a car crash and I think in some ways she and Selby were doing something together, getting a fresh start," said Robin Zinchuk, executive director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce.

Julie Bullard decided in February to close the Black Bear, Zinchuk said, and there was a "For Sale" sign out front. Selby Bullard had recently been working part-time with Beatson at Apple Tree Realty Inc.

As news of the murders spread Tuesday, people in the community reacted with shock and horror. Newry is near western Maine's border with New Hampshire and about 75 miles northwest of Portland.

"The whole thing is surreal. It's a shock to this small community," said Nancy White, co-owner of the Sudbury Inn, where Nielsen worked. White described him as a reliable employee, a good cook and "soft-spoken, quiet individual."

Police stressed that the string of killings, unusual in a state with a low crime rate, was over. Nielsen knew at least two of the victims — Whitehurst and the older Bullard — and "probably" knew all four, Poulin said.

Nielsen, who formerly lived and worked in Farmington in western Maine, had a history of driving offenses that included an arrest for drunken driving, but nothing more serious, Farmington police said. His license was revoked a year ago, said Farmington Lt. Jack Peck.

Nielsen was ordered held without bail. He appeared in court Tuesday wearing an orange jumpsuit and bulletproof vest. Nielsen uttered only two words in court: "I am," when the judge asked if he was present. He appeared calm and smiled as he was brought into and left the courtroom.

    Maine bed and breakfast slayings a shock, UT, 6.9.2006,  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-06-maine-slayings_x.htm

Man charged in grisly killings

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Portland Press Herald / MaineToday.Com
By DAVID HENCH and GREGORY D. KESICH, Staff Writers

NEWRY - Maine State Police today will resume their search for answers into what provoked a shooting rampage over Labor Day weekend, in which police say a 31-year-old cook burned a man's body after killing him and then dismembered three women he shot later.

Christian Nielsen remains at the Oxford County Jail, charged in one of the grisliest murders in recent Maine history, a crime that has left this tourist town reeling with shock and loss. Three of his victims were well-known professional women in the Bethel area. Two of them left behind young children.

The women's bodies were found outside the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast, where Nielsen was renting a room. The carcasses of three golden retrievers were found inside.

Police say Nielsen has been cooperative since his arrest Monday night, but concede that they still don't know why a man with almost no criminal record could suddenly turn so violent.

"The police didn't get involved until Monday," said Deputy Attorney General William Stokes. "How it happened, when it happened and why it happened is still unclear."

Police believe that Nielsen, a line cook at the Sudbury Inn on Main Street in Bethel, shot James Whitehurst of Batesville, Ark., on Friday night, burning the body and hiding the remains in deep woods a few towns away in Upton.

Whitehurst and Nielsen - who acquaintances described as "an awkward loner" - were renting rooms from Julie Bullard, 65, owner of the bed and breakfast on Monkey Brook Road near the Sunday River ski area. Bullard had been painting the 1830 inn, a smart, white 2‡-story building with a swimming pool and tennis court, and was trying to sell it.

Nielsen had been staying there for about two months, Whitehurst for about a month.

Police, who spent several hours interviewing Nielsen on Monday night, said Tuesday that he killed Julie Bullard at the inn on Sunday, though it's unclear whether it was before or after the shift he worked at the restaurant.

Friends say that on Monday, Bullard's daughter Selby Bullard, 31, and her friend Cynthia Beatson, 43, both area real estate agents who live in Bethel, went to check on Julie Bullard because they hadn't been able to reach her by telephone and were concerned.

Police said Nielsen killed both women. They said the three bodies were dismembered, but provided no further details.

Police first learned something was wrong at 5:34 p.m. Monday when Nielsen's stepmother called police and told them there was a body behind the Black Bear. Nielsen's parents, who live in nearby Bryant Pond, came to the bed and breakfast after talking with Nielsen on the telephone. She said Nielsen had told his father that he had killed four people, according to a police affidavit filed in Oxford County Superior Court.

"It's a crime of horrific proportions," said Col. Craig Poulin, chief of the state police.

News of the killings swept through Bethel and Newry on Tuesday, making some residents wonder if the peaceful mountain towns will ever be the same.

Dorothy Duddy, a Bethel real estate broker who knew three of the victims, said the tightly knit western Maine towns of Newry and Bethel were in a state of shock. "We are a small community, and up until today, we were in a paradise," she said.

Nielsen, who grew up in the Farmington area, smiled slightly and raised his eyebrows Tuesday afternoon as he was led past news cameras in Oxford County Superior Court in South Paris to his initial appearance before a judge.

Tall and thin with closely cropped light hair and a tattoo on the back of his neck, Nielsen wore a bulletproof vest over a jail-issue orange jumpsuit. His lawyer, Ron Hoffman, said police took that precaution because of the nature of the case and not any specific threat against Nielsen.

Nielsen did not enter a plea, and spoke only to acknowledge his name when Justice Robert E. Crowley asked him to. Nielsen was returned to Oxford County Jail and will be held without bail at least until a court hearing next Tuesday. The case is expected to go before a grand jury the first week of October.

Nielsen graduated from Mount Blue High School in Farmington in 1994. He was a fairly anonymous student who apparently didn't participate in extracurricular activities, said assistant principal Randy Cook.

In the school yearbook, Nielsen was one of a handful of seniors who left a blank space in the part of the page used to describe school activities. That was uncommon, Cook said.

"It was rare that we had kids like that. We almost always have something for somebody," Cook said.

Robin Zinchuk, director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce, said she supervised Nielsen in a church youth group in the mid-1980s, but recalled little else about him.

A classmate, Christopher Neal, 30, of Farmington said Nielsen was popular among a group of students who enjoyed alternative music known as "grunge music."

He said Nielsen was a quiet student who sometimes displayed a dark or "barbed" sense of humor. "I never knew him too be psychotic," he said. "It is quite shocking to learn that he might be."

State mental health officials said they could not release information on whether Nielsen had ever sought treatment for mental illness.

Carol Carothers, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Maine, cautioned against assuming Nielsen is mentally ill because of the details of the crime.

"I think that there's sometimes a perception that if a person is really violent, they're mentally ill. That's not necessarily true," Carothers said. "Generally speaking, all human beings can be violent."

Kenny Brechner, 44, who owns a downtown bookstore, said Nielsen often came in to pick up books for his father, Charles Nielsen, head of the English Department at Dirigo High School in Dixfield.

The father is a highly respected member of the community, Brechner said. But his son was seen as a loner. "He was an odd kid," he said. "His affect was not normal."

But there was nothing about him that suggested he would commit crimes like the ones he is accused of, Brechner said.

Nielsen's parents declined comment when contacted by telephone. Nielsen declined media requests for an interview.

Before Nielsen moved to the Bethel area, he lived in a five-unit apartment house at 248 High St. in Farmington. For several years he worked as a cook at Farmington restaurants, including the Homestead on Broadway. About a year ago he was fired from his job at the Family Fare after working for only a few months, said Dominique Nelson, 26, a waitress there.

She described him as an "awkward loner" who kept to himself and was often rude to co-workers. "He didn't last long. Nobody got along with him," Nelson said. "He was very strange."

Still, he was not the kind of person who could be violent or even get in a fistfight, Nelson said. He seemed to be struggling with an internal conflict, she said.

"He had a lot on his shoulders," she said. "He was burdened by something."

Nielsen had little in the way of a criminal record before his arrest Monday. He had several traffic offenses and was charged with drunken driving in 1998.

"The name didn't jump out as somebody that we knew," said Farmington Police Chief Richard Caton III.

Nielsen's last brush with Farmington police was in August 2005 when he was issued a summons for driving after his license was suspended.

Nancy White, proprietor of the Sudbury Inn where Nielsen worked as a cook, was stunned to hear about the allegations.

"He was a reliable employee, a competent cook and a soft-spoken individual," she said. "I'm shocked and stunned and appalled. It's horrible."

Hoffman, Nielsen's attorney, said he had not discussed the details of the case with Nielsen and knew little about the man. Hoffman is working on the case with Margot Joly, a former prosecutor in Androscoggin County who was retained by Nielsen's father.

Little is known about Whitehurst, the man whose killing set off the violent spree on Friday. Police said his last known address is Batesville, Ark., and that he had come to Maine on "family business." They did not know what relationship he had with Nielsen.

Julie and Selby Bullard had lived in San Francisco, where the mother ran the Church Street Bed and Breakfast. They moved to Maine to buy the Black Bear about two years ago, friends said. The Black Bear has had a "for sale" sign out front since February. Bullard had cut back on her business and began renting rooms.

Selby Bullard began selling real estate in Bethel a year ago and met Beatson, who was also a new broker at Apple Tree Realty, run by Bonita Sessions. The two women were best friends and did a lot together, she said.

On Monday, Bullard became concerned when she couldn't reach her mother by cell phone. She drove to Newry with Beatson, Sessions said.

The four-victim homicide is believed to be Maine's deadliest crime since December 1992, when four people were killed in an apartment fire in Portland, set by Virgil Smith.

Staff Writers Elbert Aull, Trevor Maxwell and Beth Quimby contributed to this report from Bethel. Tom Bell reported from Farmington. Gregory D. Kesich reported from Portland.

    Man charged in grisly killings, Portland Press Herald / MaineToday.Com, 6.9.2006, http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/060906newry.shtml




 

Man Charged in 4 Killings at Maine Bed and Breakfast

September 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ARIEL SABAR

NEWRY, Me., Sept. 5 — A cook staying at a bed and breakfast near the popular Sunday River ski resort here was charged Tuesday in the grisly killings of four people, including the innkeeper and her daughter, the police said.

Officials described the four-day rampage over the Labor Day weekend as the largest multiple homicide in Maine since an arson fire killed four in Portland 14 years ago.

“This is a particularly gruesome and unusual type of crime to happen in Maine,” Col. Craig A. Poulin, chief of the State Police, said here. “It’s a crime of horrific proportions.”

Colonel Poulin said it was too early to discuss possible motives.

The police said the cook, Christian C. Nielsen, 31, who worked in a nearby town, shot and then dismembered the innkeeper, her daughter, her daughter’s friend and an inn guest.

The bodies of the three women were found Monday evening at the 1830’s-era inn, the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast, a remodeled seven-bedroom farmhouse at a picturesque bend in the road in the rolling hills of western Maine. The police said the killer had tried to burn the body of the inn guest, a 50-year-old man from Arkansas. Detectives and officials from the state medical examiner’s office were working Tuesday to remove his remains from remote woods in the nearby town of Upton.

Mr. Nielsen, who last lived in Farmington, Me., was charged Tuesday in Oxford County Superior Court with four counts of murder and was being held at the local jail, the police said. Officials said he had been arrested once for drunken driving.

The killings began at the start of the long weekend. The suspect told detectives that he killed James Whitehurst, 50, in Upton on Friday, and then dumped his body in the woods there, according to a court affidavit. Mr. Whitehurst, of Batesville, Ark., had been staying at the inn for about a month on undisclosed “personal business,” said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

On Sunday, Mr. Nielsen told the police, he killed Julie Bullard, 65, the innkeeper. The next day, he told the police, he killed Ms. Bullard’s daughter, Selby Bullard, 30, and Selby’s friend, Cynthia Beatson, 43, when the two showed up unexpectedly at the inn.

Officials said Tuesday that Mr. Nielsen had called his father and stepmother in Bryant Pond, 13 miles away, later Monday and urged them to come to the Black Bear. When they arrived at about 5:30 p.m., the couple found a trail of blood and a woman’s body behind the inn and called the police. The suspect was arrested there without incident. Three dead dogs were also found at the inn.

The slayings unsettled people in the pastoral towns near the Sunday River resort, about 80 miles northwest of Portland. The days between Labor Day and the start of the foliage season, they said, are a typically quiet stretch when tourists canoe and fish in the Androscoggin River or play at the Sunday River Golf Club.

“Everybody is just numb with shock,” said Robin Zinchuk, executive director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce. “It’s something out of a horror movie.”

Ms. Zinchuk said Julie and Selby Bullard had moved to Maine from the San Francisco Bay area three years ago. Selby Bullard’s husband had been killed in a car accident, Ms. Zinchuk said, and the family had been looking for a new start. Julie Bullard had run an inn in California.

Ms. Zinchuk said Julie Bullard had decided recently to look for a “different adventure” and this spring had put the Black Bear up for sale. A broker’s sign was still posted on the property Tuesday, not far from the lines of yellow crime scene tape marking off a swimming pool and sections of the freshly mown lawn.

Ms. Zinchuk said Selby Bullard had a 12-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. She had run an eyeglass shop, did nails and occasionally waited tables. She had recently earned a real estate license and had worked alongside Cynthia Beatson at Apple Tree Realty in Bethel.

Mr. Nielsen moved to the Black Bear about two months ago, after answering a newspaper advertisement for a job as a line cook at The Sudbury Inn, in Bethel, a few miles away. He worked the dinner shift Sunday night, after the police say he had already killed at least one of his victims, and had been expected back Tuesday night.

“He was reliable, and a soft-spoken and quiet guy,” Nancy White, a co-owner of The Sudbury Inn, said Tuesday. “I was as surprised and shocked as the next person.”

A woman who answered the phone at the home of Mr. Nielsen’s father and stepmother in Bryant Pond, referred questions to a family spokeswoman, who did not respond to several phone messages Tuesday.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting from Augusta, Me., for this article.

    Man Charged in 4 Killings at Maine Bed and Breakfast, NYT, 6.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/us/06maine.html

Circumstances Made Him a Hero, and Then Cost Him His Life

September 5, 2006
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

A sanitation worker who caught a 4-year-old girl last year as she was thrown to safety from a burning building was shot in the head and killed early yesterday on a Brooklyn street, the police said.

The man, Damon Allen, 33, was once again trying to help others, the police and witnesses said, urging them to take cover from the crossfire of a gun battle that erupted around 2 a.m. in Crown Heights.

In homes and on streets across the neighborhood, thousands of revelers, some in costume, some playing steel drums, were celebrating J’ouvert, a celebration held every year on the eve of the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade.

“Nearly one year ago, Damon Allen was the city’s hero for saving the life of a little girl,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said to reporters at the parade yesterday. “Today he lies dead, the victim of an apparent random shooting.”

Three others were shot, and two of them remained in critical condition at Kings County Hospital Center, according to the police, who did not release their names.

The violence may have been sparked by a dispute over a robbery nearby; by all accounts, Mr. Allen had nothing to do with the dispute.

There have been no arrests in the case, but the police said they believed that at least two people fired shots because two guns were found at the scene, one a .40-caliber automatic weapon and the other a pistol.

Mr. Allen had been attending a birthday party for a friend on Prospect Place, the street where he was shot, witnesses said.

Because of past problems during J’ouvert, which originated in a commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies in the 19th century, the police presence in the area was heavier than normal. During the parade itself, someone was shot in the leg and another person was stabbed at a different location, the police said. Both were expected to survive.

Before the violence in the morning, police officers stopped by the house on Prospect Place where the birthday party was taking place around 1:15 a.m. to warn the people there of suspicious activity nearby, including a robbery on Nostrand Avenue, according to a witness who declined to be quoted by name, expressing fear of becoming a target. Shortly after the police left, the witness said, several strangers approached the house and tried to get in. They were told to leave and they did, but they lingered outside. The host of the party was growing anxious and tired and asked all the guests to go home.

The guests, including Mr. Allen and other neighbors and family and friends, filed into the street just before 2 a.m.

A cousin of Mr. Allen’s, Debbie Griffin, who lives a block from where the shooting happened, said that as everyone was leaving, she heard sustained bursts of gunfire.

“I ran around the corner,” she said. “They are yelling out names. ‘He’s hit! She’s hit!’ ”

Other witnesses said that Mr. Allen reacted quickly, telling several young women near him to hit the ground.

A similar account was given by Vito A. Turso, a deputy sanitation commissioner, who was briefed about the death.

“He cautioned everyone to get down,” Mr. Turso said. “And as he was doing so, he was hit in the head.”

Ms. Griffin said that almost immediately after the gunfire, more than a dozen police officers were chasing after people.

“I have never seen a sea of blue like that,” she said. Then she heard someone scream: “A man is down. A man is down.” The next thing she heard was someone else shout: “It’s Damon. It’s Damon.”

As the ambulance took Mr. Allen to the hospital, his mother, Cynthia Allen, ran after it, screaming for her son, witnesses said. Mr. Allen was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

Yesterday there were pools of blood on both sides of Prospect Place. Smashed glass littered the street and cars sat on airless tires, punctured by bullets.

Mr. Allen lived a block away with his mother. Yesterday, she was inside during the parade, wailing uncontrollably. Her daughter, Natasha Allen, 26, a student at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, tried to comfort her.

“From what I understand, he was looking out for others instead of looking out for himself,” she said, before taking a reporter up to her brother’s room.

There, hanging on the wall, he kept a blue-and-gold medal, a citation for valor he was given by the city last year after saving the 4-year-old, Imani McCovery.

Last Sept. 14, Mr. Allen and his partner, Michael Kalinowski, were returning to the sanitation garage around 4 a.m. when they noticed smoke pouring out of a nearby building and heard frantic cries for help.

They made their way to the building, where the girl’s panicked father was holding her over a third-story balcony. Mr. Allen had the father toss the girl down to him and caught her. His partner then helped the father down.

Mr. Kalinowski, in an interview yesterday, recalled that they both just reacted on instinct. “We didn’t think like we wanted to be a hero or nothing like that,” he said.

Mr. Kalinowski, who continued to work with Mr. Allen picking up trash in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn several days a week, said that Mr. Allen often talked about his two daughters, who are 5 and 13.

“He was basically just a real nice guy,” Mr. Kalinowski said. “He wouldn’t put himself around bad people, and that is why this is so devastating to so many people. We couldn’t believe it.”

Karen Tapper, 35, the mother of the young girl Mr. Allen saved from the building, said that she had kept in touch with him ever since that day. She reflected that without Mr. Allen, she might not have a daughter today.

But while he was there to save her life, she said, “Nobody was there to save his.”

Diane Cardwell and Ann Farmer contributed reporting for this article.

    Circumstances Made Him a Hero, and Then Cost Him His Life, NYT, 5.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/nyregion/05slay.html

New York Trooper Shot in Manhunt Dies of Injuries

September 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STABA and JENNIFER 8. LEE

FREDONIA, N.Y., Sept. 3 — Three days after he was ambushed during a hunt for a notorious fugitive, a New York State trooper died on Sunday from a bullet wound despite efforts to save his life by amputating his leg.

The trooper, Joseph Longobardo, 32, of Middle Grove in upstate New York, became the first fatality connected to the search for Ralph Phillips in the five months that he has been on the run. Mr. Phillips — who is widely known by his nickname, Bucky — also is accused of shooting two other troopers, including one who remained in a medically induced coma.

Trooper Longobardo had lost large amounts of blood because a bullet, which entered his leg, severed an artery. He was flown immediately after the shooting to Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, where doctors induced a coma. They amputated his leg on Saturday. He never regained consciousness after the shooting.

At a news conference here on Sunday evening, Superintendent Wayne Bennett, head of the state police, said: “He was your advocate, he was our trooper. Don’t ever forget it, please.”

The other trooper who was shot on Thursday night, Donald Baker Jr., 38, on Sunday had surgery for a third time and was in serious condition at Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa. He was shot in the side, with the bullet exiting his body.

Both troopers were stationed in Albany as part of the state’s elite mobile response team and had been called to western New York to help search for Mr. Phillips.

Trooper Longobardo, who had been on the force for almost eight years, was married and the father of a baby boy who had his first birthday a few weeks ago. The couple’s wedding anniversary would have been this Thursday.

His neighbors were stunned. “He was a tremendous guy and very low-key,” said a neighbor who asked not to be identified because Trooper Longobardo’s family had requested that neighbors not comment on his death. “He never bragged about his accomplishments and the cases he was involved with. You wouldn’t know that he was in the job he was in. You wouldn’t know that he was facing the danger that he was.”

Mr. Bennett, the police superintendent, said that people in the upstate area, who at times seemed amused by Mr. Phillips’s fugitive status, have become more cooperative since the shootings on Thursday.

On Sunday the police received several reports of sightings of Mr. Phillips, but none proved to be accurate, he said.

“There has been a marked difference in the cooperation we are receiving, and I thank those people for coming forward,” he added. “They finally realized if they were sitting on the fence, the time for fence-sitting is gone.”

After the news conference, troopers performed a flag ceremony as darkness fell, lowering the American and New York state flag to half-staff. A trooper sang “Amazing Grace. ”

Ever since Mr. Phillips, 44, escaped from the Erie County Correctional Facility on April 2, cutting through a ceiling with a can opener, the police hunt for him has escalated in scope and seriousness.

On June 10, a man thought to be Mr. Phillips shot a police trooper in the abdomen during a traffic stop. While that trooper survived, the reward for Mr. Phillips was doubled to $50,000. Since Thursday’s shootings, the reward for his capture has jumped to $225,000. “I want him to know that the ante just went up because of what he did,” Mr. Bennett said.

Mr. Phillips, a career criminal, has evaded capture through a combination of camping, stealing and relying on a sympathetic network of family and friends, the authorities said. He is suspected of stealing 41 guns, including a number of high-powered rifles similar to the one used in Thursday’s shooting, from a sporting goods store in nearby Ellington, N.Y. , the week before the shooting. He is believed to have stolen and abandoned as many as 15 vehicles since his escape.

When the two troopers were shot, they had been surveying a house that belongs to Kasey Crowe, Mr. Phillips’s former companion and the mother of his daughter. Mr. Phillips had been reported in the vicinity of the house, which is on Bachelor Hill Road in Stockton, a few weeks earlier. Ms. Kasey and her daughter, Petrina Wright, are among six people charged with helping Mr. Phillips to hide.

The government had removed Ms. Wright’s children from her custody, after accusing her of allowing them to spend time in Mr. Phillips’s company even when he was armed.

Taking the children away is believed to have enraged Mr. Phillips, who his friends have said escaped when he did so as not to miss his granddaughter’s birth. Last week, the state police said it had received threats from Mr. Phillips, though without specifying how.

Mr. Bennett said Trooper Longobardo’s death had cast a shadow over a case that now involves close to 300 state police officers. “You have to be vigilant out there, especially on the highway,” he said. “You can’t be sure who is in that car. You can’t be sure who is in those woods.”

Still, he hoped for a peaceful resolution. “They know we’re not looking for this to end in violence,” he said. “We’re looking for it to end in surrender.”

Last night, two men who knew Mr. Phillips offered a safe haven for him to turn himself in. “If he turns himself in, we’ll have the news media present to witness it to make sure he’s safe,” said Dan Suitor, a friend and former employer of Mr. Phillips, who along with John Keavey, Mr. Phillips’s parole lawyer, are offering him an opportunity to surrender. “Anything to stop this,” Mr. Suitor said.

David Staba reported from Fredonia and Jennifer 8. Lee reported from New York.

    New York Trooper Shot in Manhunt Dies of Injuries, NYT, 4.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/nyregion/04bucky.html

5 shot in Newark, N.J.; 3 dead

Posted 9/3/2006 3:07 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Three people were shot to death and two others were wounded Saturday in what authorities say was a targeted attack at an apartment.

Police responding to reports of gunfire around 4:30 a.m. in the city's Vailsburg section discovered the three dead in the apartment, which was engulfed in flames. They had been shot multiple times.

Killed were Sandra Bellush, 42, a tenant in the apartment; Brielle Simpkins, 15, of Elizabeth; and Eric Jackson, 19, of Newark.

Police also found a 17-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man at the building, but it was not clear if they were in the apartment. They were identified only as Newark residents.

Both were taken to University Hospital. A hospital spokesman said the teenager was treated for a single gunshot wound and released, while the man, who was shot several times, remained in fair condition Saturday afternoon.

Authorities said they believed the shootings were carried out by more than one assailant. The victims did not appear to be blood relatives, they said.

There were no signs of robbery or forced entry into the building, a house that had been converted into apartments, Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said.

A dog and a cat were also shot to death, Dow said.

"This was a targeted attack by heinous individuals," Mayor Corey Booker said at a news conference. "This is Newark, New Jersey, and this is not acceptable."

Arson investigators think the fire was intentional, said Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

"They're quite sure the fire was set to cover up the shootings," he said.

The rest of the building suffered minor damage.

The shootings brought to 77 the number of slayings in Newark, a city of about 280,000.

Dow and Booker said the building had no history of drug activity. A former resident of the neighborhood echoed that assessment.

"It's not a drug area, a high-crime area," said Harcourt Lucious, who used to live a few blocks from the building before moving to nearby Irvington. "This is an odd place for something like this to happen."

    5 shot in Newark, N.J.; 3 dead, UT, 3.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-03-newark-shooting_x.htm

On Back Roads and in Deep Woods, Fugitive Has Edge Over Pursuers

September 3, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON

DUNKIRK, N.Y., Sept. 2 — The police helicopters have gone from a novelty for the residents in the small upstate towns they hover over to something like tea leaves in the manhunt. There goes another one. Did that one seem to be in a hurry? Do you think they caught him?

Today marks five months since Ralph Phillips, 44, escaped from an Erie County jail with less than 10 days remaining on a 90-day sentence for a parole violation. Nothing in his background of nonviolent theft, and his numerous arrests, suggested that he had the wherewithal to elude a full-scale manhunt this long, and frustration with the search has grown steadily since it began in earnest in June, after a state trooper was wounded in a shooting.

The manhunt intensified on Thursday night, when a sniper in the woods ambushed troopers outside a home where Mr. Phillips had been spotted.

Two troopers were struck by rounds from a high-powered rifle, and they remained in stable but critical condition on Saturday, the police said.

Now, the question arises everywhere, with each trooper’s outstretched palm at a country roadblock, or when the helicopter takes off from its landing pad outside the Cassadaga Elementary School, long ago commandeered by state troopers.

Why haven’t more than 200 troopers working 24 hours a day been able to catch one middle-aged man hiding in the woods? There have been repeated sightings of Mr. Phillips, better known as Bucky, in the area. How long can he stay one step ahead of his pursuers?

The truth is, a fugitive with some outdoors experience and outside support can prove surprisingly elusive. Wayne Bennett, the state police superintendent, said as much at a news conference after the ambush, acknowledging that Mr. Phillips had a good head start on the officers responding to sightings.

“If he knows where we are,” Superintendent Bennett said, “it’s because somebody is telling him.” Indeed, hours later, troopers removed several items from the home where he may have been hiding, including a police scanner that may have been used to monitor the manhunt.

Victor G. Oboyski, a retired United States marshal in the southern and eastern districts in New York who, as the head of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area fugitive task force, chased many violent drug fugitives, warned that survivalist skill, support and knowledge of the area go a long way.

“I am sure they set up roadblocks and what not,” he said. “But if he’s in an area that he is familiar with, he can avoid them. He may know places to hide or he may know people in that area that would be sympathetic, and he may know back roads. He’ll know little small dirt roads he can maneuver around, abandoned buildings, abandoned cabins. I mean, the possibilities are endless.”

Mr. Phillips, a Seneca Indian, was raised in the area and has ties to several Indian reservations in western New York, as well as contacts from his many stints in jails and prison, the police have said.

For example, shortly after his escape, Mr. Phillips sought refuge with the family of Joshua Rickard, with whom Mr. Phillips had once been incarcerated at Comstock Correctional Facility. Mr. Phillips had looked out for Mr. Rickard, 20 years his junior, in jail, Mr. Rickard’s mother, Peggy Rickard, said later. In return, they took him in at the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County.

Over the summer months, Mr. Phillips is suspected of stealing as many as 15 vehicles, most of them parked with the keys inside, and is a suspect in a burglary of a hunting store last weekend, in which 41 guns were stolen.

In New York State, fugitives have gotten by with a lot less.

In 1973, Robert F. Garrow Sr., the suspect in the stabbing murder of an 18-year-old honor student, eluded an extensive manhunt in and around the town of Speculator in the Adirondack State Park for 11 days. Like Mr. Phillips, he had deep ties to the area, and was captured only after the police caught his 16-year-old nephew carrying food into the woods for him.

Mr. Garrow — who later confessed to three other murders — was shot during the capture, and was believed to have been partially paralyzed. But in 1978, he left his wheelchair in his cell and a dummy in his bed and escaped from a disabled prisoners’ ward, again taking cover in the woods. He was spotted two days later and fired a pistol at state troopers before they shot and killed him.

Likewise, in Mr. Phillips’s case, the police have stepped up their pressure on his supporters, arresting six friends and family members, including his daughter, Petrina Wright. Even before her arrest, when Ms. Wright gave birth to a daughter several weeks ago, a police helicopter hovered over the hospital.

In 1992, a 68-year-old fugitive named Henry Krauss was found hiding in the Shindagin Hollow State Forest in upstate Tompkins County, N.Y., five years after he failed to report to his probation officer. Mr. Krauss had been living in something resembling a spider hole, an earthen mound 8 feet deep and 6 feet wide. The lair was insulated and contained a wood-burning stove, as well as a loaded rifle.

Outside New York, the most famous rural manhunt in recent years was for Eric R. Rudolph, the suspect in bombings at abortion clinics and at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Mr. Rudolph was able to stay free for five years in the forests of Appalachia until he was caught in 2003, rooting in a Dumpster behind a North Carolina grocery store.

Mr. Oboyski, the retired marshal, saw parallels between Mr. Rudolph’s flight and the hunt for Mr. Phillips.

“It’s hard to get somebody in their own backyard, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “That guy Rudolph, he knew those woods. I mean, they could send A.T.F. and everybody in there, hundreds of agents, but he knew those woods and they couldn’t find him. It makes it very difficult for law enforcement when they are dealing with a guy who has intimate knowledge of the area where he is hiding.”

The search for Mr. Phillips continued on Saturday, at times during heavy rainfall, the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. If anything, the rain could give troopers an advantage, the superintendent said. “He’s going to be in the same weather we are,” Mr. Bennett said. “Dogs work better in wet environments, scent-wise, than they do in dry.”

In Cassadaga, officials canceled a planned Labor Day weekend celebration after Thursday’s shooting of the two troopers. School begins on Wednesday, but the troopers are still using the elementary school as a staging area.

One local resident, who gave only his first name, Ben, said the troopers will never find Mr. Phillips by relying on road blocks and family arm-twisting. “I could take you down here and show you paths the state police don’t know about,” Ben said. “I’ve got eight empty places near my house. I guarantee you he’s been in three of them.”

Al Baker and David Staba contributed reporting for this article.

    On Back Roads and in Deep Woods, Fugitive Has Edge Over Pursuers, NYT, 3.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/nyregion/03bucky.html

Dragnet Widens as 2 Troopers Are Shot in Ambush

September 2, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON and DAVID STABA

CASSADAGA, N.Y., Sept. 1 — Nearly 300 state troopers converged on this western New York village on Friday as a five-month manhunt for an escaped inmate became even more urgent after the ambush of two troopers by a sniper in the woods.

The state police said they believed that the fugitive, Ralph Phillips, 44, was the man who opened fire from the trees, guerrilla style, outside the home of his former companion in rural Stockton. The gunman struck one trooper from behind on Thursday evening, the round piercing his bulletproof vest. The other was struck in the leg, the police said. The gunman, believed to be firing a high-powered rifle, then fled.

The troopers — Joseph A. Longobardo, 32, and Donald Baker Jr., 38, who are both stationed in Albany — remained in what the police called “extremely critical” condition on Friday. Trooper Longobardo, who was struck in the leg by a bullet that severed an artery, was being treated at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo. Trooper Baker, who was struck in the side, was at Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa.

The manhunt, marked by a cat-and-mouse dance of near-misses, has intensified since June 10, when another trooper was shot in the abdomen during a traffic stop. Mr. Phillips is a suspect in that shooting, and the trooper is recovering. The number of troopers involved has increased in the weeks since.

On Friday, the dragnet widened with the arrival of 75 more troopers, making the number in the area almost 300. The state police said they had more than quadrupled the reward being offered for information leading to Mr. Phillips’s arrest. It is now $225,000, up from $50,000.

The search has focused on Cassadaga and surrounding towns in Chautauqua County, where Mr. Phillips has lived most of his life. He is believed to be living in the woods of the Southern Tier and in empty houses when not being sheltered and fed by friends and family. A 10-year-old boy told the police that he saw Mr. Phillips shoot a deer from inside a home, then walk outside and gut the animal, a trooper said in court on Friday.

Until now, Mr. Phillips — who is widely known by his nickname, Bucky — has been a source of amusement to some townspeople, who knew him when he was a boy and say he would not hurt anyone. They have joked about his escape, on April 2, from the Erie County jail, where he was serving 90 days for a parole violation. Using a can opener, he pried open a hole in the ceiling of the jailhouse kitchen.

A popular local restaurant, Grandma’s Family Kitchen, served “Bucky Burgers” for a week (made only to go), and T-shirts that read “Run, Bucky, Run,” were sold in Indian reservation tobacco shops and online. Mr. Phillips is a Seneca Indian and grew up on a reservation.

But Thursday’s shootings cast a dark mood over what is traditionally a happily busy holiday weekend here. The fear emerged that Mr. Phillips — a car thief and a petty criminal for most of his life — might be capable of cold-blooded murder, and that he might have a death wish.

At a news conference, Superintendent Wayne E. Bennett of the state police said troopers were prepared to use deadly force in the event of an armed confrontation, and he urged residents not to view the escapee as a folk hero.

“I don’t know anybody who can say, after what happened last night, that Ralph Phillips is not a violent person or can say they don’t have the responsibility, as a citizen and as a human being, to provide whatever information they might have,” Superintendent Bennett said. “He will control the final page in his book. He’ll write that page, that chapter, and we’ll respond.”

He appealed to Mr. Phillips to surrender. “We want to avoid a shootout, because that presents additional risks for us, as well,” Mr. Bennett said. “That’s not the way we want this to end. We want to bring this to a conclusion without any further bloodshed, his or ours.”

But one Cassadaga resident said he feared the worst.

“He’s going to go down in a blaze of glory,” said a man who gave his name only as Ben.

The police have put pressure on Mr. Phillips’s friends and relatives in the last week or so. Six people have been charged with assisting him, including Mr. Phillips’s daughter, Petrina Wright, and her mother, Kasey Crowe, Mr. Phillips’s former companion. State workers removed Ms. Wright’s three children, including a 3-week-old daughter, from her custody, saying that they were being endangered.

The police have said she let Mr. Phillips spend time with the children while he was armed.

Ms. Wright, a tough-talking defendant in her court appearances who the police said punched an officer during her arrest, has not been allowed to be with the baby to breast-feed her, her lawyer said.

The removal of the children is believed to have enraged Mr. Phillips, who, his friends have said, escaped when he did so as not to miss his granddaughter’s birth.

On Monday, the state police said that they had received threats from Mr. Phillips, but they did not describe the threats or how they were delivered.

“This really started escalating when the state police took the children from the mother,” said the Rev. Patrick Elis, a Roman Catholic priest who has urged Mr. Phillips to turn himself in safely. “There’s been a feeling that that would put him over the edge, and it has.”

The police said Mr. Phillips was also considered a prime suspect in the theft of a small arsenal — 41 guns, 6 of them rifles — from a hunting shop in nearby Ellington last weekend.

The police have not disclosed physical evidence of this, but Superintendent Bennett said Friday that some of the rifles were high-powered, like the type of gun believed to have been used in Thursday’s shootings.

Mr. Phillips is also accused of stealing as many as 15 vehicles since his escape. Many of them were empty, with the keys left inside, as is the custom among many here.

Sightings have been reported in Chautauqua and surrounding counties, as well as in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Last week, witnesses in Warren, Pa., reported seeing Mr. Phillips in a bar and buying cigarettes in a store, the police said. Officers arrived quickly, but if it was Mr. Phillips, he was already gone.

On Thursday night, the sniper fired four rounds from somewhere in the heavily wooded area near his former companion’s home, Superintendent Bennett said. Troopers searched for shell casings or other clues but did not report finding any.

From Mrs. Crowe’s home, investigators removed Styrofoam food containers, a radio scanner, night-vision gear, two-way radios and, to test for a DNA match with the fugitive, an empty can of Bud Light and some pizza crust, Trooper Dennis Zampese said at a bail hearing for Mrs. Crowe on Friday.

As evidence that Mr. Phillips was at the home on Thursday night, Trooper Zampese repeated a statement he said Mrs. Crowe made after the shooting. “She was yelling that she had to get out of there before we, the state police, killed or slaughtered Bucky,” he said.

Judge John T. Ward of Chautauqua County Court raised her bail to $100,000, from $10,000.

Gary Colon, a state police senior investigator, said several people reporting having seen Mr. Phillips in the area. Another woman charged with harboring Mr. Phillips, Natasha Berg, told the police that he appeared at her home on a motorcycle recently and stayed a few days before saying he was leaving for Mrs. Crowe’s home on Bachelor Hill Road, the police said.

The search for Mr. Phillips has grown to include several agencies. Sport-utility vehicles belonging to the Border Patrol division of the Department of Homeland Security were parked alongside troopers’ cars on the main street through Cassadaga on Friday. Officers looked inside every passing vehicle, and many motorists were ordered to pop their trunks for inspections.

A friend and former employer of Mr. Phillips, Dan Suitor, said the state police had escalated the search to the point of violence.

“The state police have no one to blame but themselves, taking those children away,” Mr. Suitor said. “It’s like pulling up to a burning house and trying to put it out with gasoline. What did they think, that he was going to say, ‘O.K., I’ll surrender now’? ”

He added: “Everybody I talked to that night said, ‘He’s going to start a war.’ And I said, ‘Exactly.’ I’m surprised it didn’t start before this.”

Judge Ward, in raising Mrs. Crowe’s bail on Friday, said he could not take any chances. “Whether it was Mr. Phillips or not, two troopers were shot and wounded on her property,” he said. “The stakes are getting higher and higher.”

    Dragnet Widens as 2 Troopers Are Shot in Ambush, NYT, 2.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/nyregion/02bucky.html?hp&ex=1157256000&en=686cf3287de49e72&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Dad, sons die in apparent murder-suicide

Posted 9/2/2006 9:57 PM ET
AP
USA Today

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — A father and his two sons died Saturday in an apparent murder-suicide at a university, authorities said.
Douglas W. Pennington, 49, shot sons Logan, 26, and Benjamin, 24, before shooting himself with a .38 caliber revolver on the Shepherd University campus, state police said. Both sons were identified as Shepherd students.

Police said the elder Pennington traveled to the campus to visit his sons, but offered no reason for the shootings.

The gunfire occurred about 2 p.m. in a parking lot, near residence halls on the campus' west side. The Penningtons were pronounced dead at local medical facilities.

"We are stunned to hear about this terrible tragedy," University President David Dunlop said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims."

University spokeswoman Valerie Owens described the campus as quieter than usual this weekend because many students have left for the Labor Day holiday. About one quarter of Shepherd's 4,000 students live in campus residence halls and apartments.

University counselors have been talking to students all afternoon and a formal counseling session on campus Saturday evening. Owens had no information on whether any students or faculty witnessed the shootings.

Shepherdstown is about 80 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., in eastern West Virginia.

    Dad, sons die in apparent murder-suicide, UT, 2.9.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-02-university-shooting_x.htm