The Realtor from Hell

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Realtor accused of chaining woman 'like a dog' killed at least 7, officials say https://t.co/Kd0mvRlPCO

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 6, 2016

StarTrib update:

A South Carolina man killed at least seven people in a hidden crime spree that lasted more than a decade and only was uncovered when police rescued a woman chained at the neck in a storage container, authorities said Saturday.

Todd Kohlhepp accepted responsibility for an unsolved massacre one day before the 13th anniversary of the deaths that stumped authorities, said Sheriff Chuck Wright, first elected a year after the murders.

Kohlhepp, 45, confessed to the deaths of the owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper of Superbike Motorsports, a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, in Spartanburg County. He faces four counts of murder and a single kidnapping charge, according the Spartanburg County Sheriff website on Sunday.

"God answered our prayers. If it wasn't for Him answering our prayers and Todd talking to us, I don't know that we'd ever solve that case," Wright said.

Wright says Kohlhepp also showed law enforcement officers Saturday where he says he buried two of his other victims on his 95-acre property near Woodruff. Kohlhepp, in handcuffs and wearing an orange jumpsuit, was at the site for less than an hour.

Those are in addition to the body found Friday at the site. Wright and Coroner Rusty Clevenger identified that victim as 32-year-old Charles Carver, the boyfriend of the woman found Thursday in a locked metal container.

Carver and the woman went missing around Aug. 31. Their last known cellphone signals led authorities to the property. 

Taco Bell Exec - Ben Not-so-Golden - fired after Uber attack

A Taco Bell executive has lost his job with the fast food company after being caught on video in a violent incident with an Uber driver in California, Taco Bell told CNBC.com.

Excerpt:

Benjamin Golden, who led Taco Bell's mobile commerce and innovation initiatives, according to an online bio, lost his position at the company after a video posted by the Uber driver went viral. "Given the behavior of the individual, it is clear he can no longer work for us," Taco Bell said in a statement emailed to CNBC. "We have also offered and encouraged him to seek professional help." CNBC reached out via email and phone to the 32-year-old Golden, but received no response. His LinkedIn account was no longer available, and his Twitter link was blocked from public sight. According to his bio, Golden was a "seven-year veteran of Yum Brands," the parent company of Taco Bell. Golden was also described in the bio as "a southerner who enjoys mint juleps and horse racing."

Comment: Images: Bio link / screen capture from article.

The ‘Ferguson effect’ and the New Nationwide Crime Wave

The New Nationwide Crime Wave

Excerpt:

Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years. In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing. Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

... The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months. Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force. Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

... This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%. Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014. “Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City officer tells me. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”

... “There are no real consequences for committing property crimes anymore,” Los Angeles Police Lt. Armando Munoz told Downtown News earlier this month, “and the criminals know this.” The Milwaukee district attorney, John Chisholm, is diverting many property and drug criminals to rehabilitation programs to reduce the number of blacks in Wisconsin prisons; critics see the rise in Milwaukee crime as one result. If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime. The black death-by-homicide rate is six times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other black civilians, not the police. The police could end all use of lethal force tomorrow and it would have at most a negligible impact on the black death rate. In any case, the strongest predictor of whether a police officer uses force is whether a suspect resists arrest, not the suspect’s race.

Comment: Image source - movie poster from 1954's Crime Wave.

Sosefina of God

Mother held in newborn’s death in convent; Samoan came to become nun

Excerpt:

Sosefina Amoa came to the United States this month and joined a convent in the District with an eye toward studying to become a nun.

She didn’t know she was pregnant.

So when she delivered a baby boy alone on the floor of her room with the Little Sisters of the Poor last week, police said the 26-year-old Samoan woman panicked and put a cloth over the infant’s mouth and nose, suffocating the boy minutes after he was born.

The disturbing details were laid out in an affidavit filed by D.C. police in support of a warrant charging her with first-degree murder in the child’s death.

The court papers said that on Oct. 10, leaning on her bed for support, Ms. Amoa birthed the child onto the floor. She named him Joseph, and she laid with him for a time. But after giving birth, “she didn’t know what to do and was afraid that someone would hear the child crying and learn of her pregnancy.” So Ms. Amoa pressed a wool garment over his face until he stopped breathing.

Comment: The film referenced

They should have robbed a candy store

1 dead, 2 wounded after breaking into SC gun shop Comment: Bert ... thought you would like this

Brazen armed robbery of Plymouth bank

Masked men rob US Bank in Plymouth

Excerpt:

Two masked men robbed the US Bank at 4105 Lancaster Lane N. in Plymouth at about 6:45 a.m. Monday, authorities say.

The robbery occurred as bank employees were opening the bank for business. The two robbers, one armed with a semi automatic handgun and the other a knife, forced bank employees to the vault, where they held a handgun to a bank employee's head and demanded money.

After receiving an undisclosed amount of cash, the robbers bound and blindfolded the bank employees in the vault, then fled the bank.

One robber is described as a black male, approximately 5 feet, 8 inches to 6 feet tall with a heavy build, wearing dark clothing and a black ski mask. The other robber is described as a black male, approximately 5 feet, 8 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall with a slim build, wearing dark clothing and a dark mask.

These bank robbers are believed to be responsible for the Aug. 4 robbery of the Wells Fargo Bank in Champlin and the attempted robbery of the TCF Bank in Chanhassen on Aug. 30.

Comment: Location. 1.2 miles from our house.

"Wardriving": How the TJX hacker did it

Prosecutors to seek 25 years for TJX hacker

A computer hacker who helped orchestrate one of the largest thefts of credit and debit card numbers in U.S. history faces sentencing this week for hacking into computer systems of major retailers, including TJX Cos., BJ's Wholesale Club and Sports Authority.

Prosecutors plan to ask for a 25-year prison sentence for Albert Gonzalez, a former federal informant from Miami who pleaded guilty last year in three separate hacking cases brought in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

The sentence sought by prosecutors is the maximum under the terms of plea agreements in cases against Gonzalez brought in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. He will be sentenced in all three cases during hearings Thursday and Friday in U.S. District Court.

His lawyer will argue that Gonzalez should get no more than 15 years.

Prosecutors said Gonzalez victimized millions of people and cost companies, banks and insurers nearly $200 million. They said just two of Gonzalez's computer servers contained more than 40 million distinct credit and debit card numbers.

"The sheer extent of the human victimization caused by Gonzalez and his organization is unparalleled," Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann said in a sentencing memorandum filed in court.

Gonzalez, 28, pleaded guilty in September to hacking into the computers of TJX Cos., BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, BostonMarket, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and the Dave & Busters restaurant chain.

In December, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computer servers at the Maine-based supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers; the convenience store chain 7-Eleven Inc.; and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a New Jersey-based processor of credit and debit cards.

Gonzalez's Boston attorney, Martin Weinberg, did not immediately return calls seeking comment on his sentencing recommendation of 15 years.

Weinberg said during an earlier court hearing that he would ask for a lesser sentence based in part on a defense psychiatrist's report that Gonzalez shows behavior consistent with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. The report described Gonzalez as an Internet addict with an "idiot-savant-like genius for computers and information technology," but socially awkward.

Gonzalez, who was known online as "soupnazi," was a self-taught computer genius.

He was first arrested for hacking in 2003, but he became a government informant, helping the Secret Service find other hackers. But prosecutors said that over the next five years, he hacked into the computer systems of major retailers while continuing to be an informant for the government.

During that time, authorities said, he amassed $2.8 million and lived a lavish lifestyle. As part of the plea deals, Gonzalez must forfeit more than $2.7 million, plus his Miami condo, car, Rolex watches and a Tiffany ring he gave to his girlfriend.

Authorities said Gonzalez and two foreign co-defendants used hacking techniques that involved "wardriving," or cruising through different areas with a laptop computer and looking for retailers' accessible wireless Internet signals. Once they located a vulnerable network, they installed "sniffer programs" that captured credit and debit card numbers as they moved through a retailer's processing computers — then tried to sell the data overseas.

Comment: We had at least one card that was compromised. The card issuer contacted us, canceled the card and issued a replacement.

CSI: Minneapolis

Body encased in ice found on Ham Lake golf course

Excerpt:

The face of a man's body encased in ice startled groundskeepers working near the 16th hole of a north metro golf course Friday.

While checking conditions of the Majestic Oaks Golf Course in Ham Lake at about 1:15 p.m., they discovered what appeared to be a face sticking out of the ice covering a pond, said Lt. Paul Sommer of the Anoka County Sheriff's Office.

Initial reports indicated that the head had been severed, but the body appears to be intact, Sommer said Friday night. Because the body was contorted, with its head partially above the ice and body below, along with the apparent toll animals had taken, authorities were initially misled. Most of the face and head appeared to have been eaten at, exposing the throat, Sommer said. It is too early to determine an age of the victim or cause of death, although authorities suspect foul play. Other than damage to the face, the cold appears to have preserved the remainder of the body, Sommer said.

Only a portion of the body was exposed when the workers found it. The remainder was trapped in 2 feet of ice. Authorities used a steamer from the Anoka County Highway Department to remove the body from the ice so as not to damage it.

Comment: I'm thinking of Ducky from N.C.I.S.

Rudy: Pizza shop hero

Comment: Great video. 17 old 'kid' flat knocks out robber!

Taking responsibility for sin

Flock forgives minister who confesses to 1994 slaying

Excerpt:

Calvin Wayne Inman, 29, remains jailed without bail since he was charged Wednesday with capital murder in the stabbing death of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. He was 16 at the time.

During Sunday's service at the 800-member Elim Church, congregants praised the recently ordained Inman as a born-again role model taking responsibility for his sin.

"He's a hero, really," said Kelley Graham, 24. "I don't know how many people would do what he did. The Bible says you just need to confess to God. Calvin took an extra step."

Inman went to authorities on February 5 and admitted that he stabbed Iqbal Ahmed, 64, nearly 14 years ago in suburban Pasadena.

According to police, Inman said he and a 13-year-old friend planned to rob the convenience store. When Ahmed asked to see identification before giving them tobacco, Inman stabbed Ahmed in the chest with a kitchen knife, police said.


Comment: Elim Church. I John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness"

Can economic theory address criminal punishment?

Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

National
Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: November 18, 2007
Studies indicating that executions are a deterrent against future murders have been the subject of sharp criticism.

Excerpt:

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

Comment: Is capital punishment a disincentive to crime? Studies say ..... "Yes"

The Return of the Thought Police

The Return of the Thought Police: "Hate crime" legislation is an assault on civil liberties

Excerpt:

Is it necessary or fair to expand federal criminal jurisdiction to allow for dual federal and state prosecutions of alleged hate crimes? Arguably--if strong empirical evidence demonstrates that states are generally unwilling or unable to prosecute these crimes. Otherwise federal hate-crime legislation addresses an illusory threat to civil rights, while it exacerbates an actual crisis for civil liberty.


The continuing expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction has given federal law enforcement officials unprecedented power over each of us. As Gene Healy of the Cato Institute has observed, the federal criminal code is so vast and comprehensive that it enables prosecutors to "pick targets they think they should get rather than offenses that need to be prosecuted." Mr. Healy estimates that about 4,000 crimes are "scattered throughout the tens of thousands of pages of the United States code," stressing that the exact increase in federal crimes has been difficult to track. One frequently cited 1999 study by the American Bar Association noted that 40% of all federal criminal laws enacted after the Civil War dated back only to 1970.


Comment: Consider early CFG comments on "hate crime" legislation: Should 'Hate Crimes' bill be vetoed? and Don't muzzel free speech

Crime: New Orleans two years later

The Most Dangerous City : Two years after Katrina, New Orleans desperately needs law and order.

Excerpt:

To understand how New Orleans is doing two years later, consider a few recent stories. This past weekend, seven family members and friends were enjoying a quiet evening outside their home in a tranquil neighborhood on the city's east side, which was badly flooded by Katrina. Then, according to New Orleans police, gunmen forced them into their house, robbed them, and shot them all, killing two. It was the neighborhood's second such crime in two weeks. Previously, gunmen had murdered a couple, Anjelique Vu and Luong Nguyen, leaving their infant and toddler unharmed.

"The slayings . . . were the latest in a series of armed home invasions and robberies in eastern New Orleans," wrote the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Several crews of gunmen . , . have robbed and shot workers . . . and homeowners in the area, where many residents are rebuilding their flood-damaged homes." Also last week, gunmen lined up six laborers and shot three, killing El Salvadoran Julio Benitez-Cruz. (New Orleans has experienced a post-Katrina influx of Hispanic laborers, both legal and illegal, who are tempting targets for criminals because they carry so much cash from contracting jobs.)


Comment: Maybe this city should just die!

Names of victims fill church's 'murder board'

Father Bill Terry of St. Anna's Episcopal Church in New Orleans wants everyone to know what's happening in New Orleans: too many murders with too few people held accountable.

He keeps track of the slayings on what he calls the "murder board," a plastic board that hangs outside his church. He started listing murder victims earlier this year to humanize the headlines.

At first, the names were neatly typed by a printer. But as the killings continued at a rampant pace, he says, he resorted to adding victims' names by hand with permanent marker.

"Numbers are very easy to deal with emotionally. When it becomes a human being, then we start to personalize and it's harder to deal with. I want people to squirm. I want people to feel uncomfortable about the murders going on in the city," Father Bill told CNN.

In the first 29 days of this month alone, the city witnessed 27 killings, according to the New Orleans Police Department. So far in 2007, police say 137 people have been killed. That puts the city on pace for roughly 200 slayings this year.

When crime stopped at zero!

The official murder rate in New Orleans had dropped to zero

Excerpt:

“This is one of the most interesting experiments in crime we’ve ever seen. Without effective courts, corrections, or rehabilitation, we have reduced the crime rate by 100 percent.”

New Orleans Crime Swept Away, With Most of the People

Excerpt:

But the bullets and the drugs and the fear are gone now, swept away by Hurricane Katrina, along with the dealers and gangs and most of the people.

There has not been a single killing in this violence-prone neighborhood, or anywhere else in New Orleans, since the chaos that immediately followed Hurricane Katrina subsided. New Orleans, the nation's most dangerous city, has suddenly become perhaps its safest, and what had easily been the country's murder capital now has a murder rate of exactly zero. Although several people were believed to have been killed in the disorder that followed the floods for several days, the last killing officially recorded by the police was on Aug. 27, two days before the hurricane hit. A bar owner was found shot to death that day in his establishment on Magazine Street.

And when the city was finally evacuated, the criminals left, too.

Since then some 60,000 to 80,000 residents have returned, a fraction of the city's previous population of 450,000. What is remarkable to criminologists, though, is how few criminals seem to be among them.

Comment: As a student of economics, I have read Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything . Freakonomics is a daily feature of the NYTimes and generally interesting. As tragic as Katrina was (This is the 2 year anniversary), there were some silver linings to those swirling storms! The crime rate dropped.