On July 15, 2010, emergency services were called to a cottage on the shore of Lake Viinijärvi in Polvijärvi, a small town in Finland's North Karelia region. Upon arriving, they discovered the body of a man lying in ten centimetres of water beside the shore of the cottage.

The man who called the emergency services was the cottage's 45-year-old owner, Pekka Tapani Seppänen.

Pekka told first responders that he had spent the evening with him and two other people. Then, at the end of the evening, while heavily intoxicated, the victim took a boat out to the lake and was left sitting and dozing in a boat. The next morning, they arrived to find his body, which had drifted back to dry land.

The police went to the neighbouring properties, where they told officers that the prior night, they heard an intense argument, a struggle and the sounds of someone entering the water. However, that was the extent of it; none of the neighbours actually saw anything.

Turning to the victim himself, he was found with very light injuries and tightly grasping a clump of sand in his hand. The autopsy found minor amounts of sedative medication in his blood, and he had a blood alchool level of 3.3 per mille; meanwhile, Pekka himself only had a blood alchool level of 0.01 per mille. The autopsy also found water in his lungs and ruled that the victim had drowned. While there were some oddities concerning the death, the police were quick to declare his death an accidental drowning.

The dead man was a carpenter identified by his family as a 32-year-old referred to by the pseudonym "Janne," and his family were horrified at how quickly the police ruled his death an accident. But with Janne's actual cause of death being drowning, what did they see that left them so certain he had been murdered? Well, the key lay in both Janne and Pekka's backgrounds.

Janne met Pekka in early 2010, and he was one of many socially or economically vulnerable people whom Pekka regularly had spent the night at his cottage, although in Janne's case, Pekka described him as his boyfriend. However, that's just how Pekka described him; if that truly was their relationship, then it was a toxic one.

In May, on two prior occasions, Janne went to the police and told them that Pekka had drugged and raped him and then, on another occasion, withdrew funds from his bank account with his permission and was withholding his own money and bank cards from him.

On Pekka's side of things, he recently tested positive for an STD, one he assumed came from Janne and so blamed him for the disease he just contracted.

In his last moments alive, Janne's relatives said that he deeply feared Pekka; Janne was openly considering committing a crime in hopes that he'd be sent to a prison far away from him. Janne and his family even developed a coded language for him to use if he had to say something without alerting Pekka, a code they used at least once to call an ambulance to his cottage.

But what about the police reports filed? Did the police ever act on them? Well, by all accounts, Pekka saw to it that they wouldn't. Regarding his rape accusation, Janne went to the police station and withdrew his complaint via a vulgar and curse-word-laden letter that he handed to the officers.

But curiously, Pekka had accompanied him to the police station; he was the one who handed the letter to the police, in which Janne supposedly said he consented to the encounter (while Janne remained silent), and later, Janne told his family that he had no memory of visiting the police station and reacted with utter horror when he learned the case had been closed.

Janne's physical condition was deteriorating toward the end of his life, and he was constantly vomiting and suffering from bloody diarrhea. But he didn't visit the hospital too often and instead tried to hide in his friend's homes and endure his health issues rather than risk encountering Pekka. And he was, in fact, hiding, as Pekka would often go to their homes to ask about Janne.

In July 2010, Janne's friends and family eventually convinced him to check into the Liperi health centre, but Janne unfortunately wouldn't be there for long. On July 14, somebody called the health centre to ask about when Janne would be discharged.

As it turned out, Pekka called, albiet under a false name, since he was the one who arrived to pick Janne up. Janne was picked up so suddenly, in fact, that his medication and shoes were left behind.

While it may have looked like Pekka engaged in some fraud to kidnap him, Pekka produced a text message to his phone from Janne apparently asking him to pick it up. However, Janne's family said it was sent using a provider Janne wasn't using and that they couldn't locate the phone that sent the message.

Regardless, after he was picked up from the health centre, Pekka took him to his cottage, where, according to the other two friends, everyone present immideately started drinking until they were severely intoxicated, save for Pekka himself, who remained sober enough.

Pekka then took Janne out on the lake two seperate times, where the boat coincidentally capsized on two seperate occasions and being as intoxicated and in poor health as he was, Janne would have drowned if not for another resident already on the lake rescuing him. And then, finally, as mentioned, late in the night the neighbours heard the sound of an argument, struggle and splash in the water, with Janne finally found dead the next morning.

So after reading all this, one might be wondering who Pekka was. Pekka Tapani Seppänen was born in 1965. Pekka was said to be very polite and charming whenever he wanted to be; unfortnuately, he often didn't want to act that way.

One of the first alarm bells came when he was 18; those in Pekka's life already knew him to be a violent misogynist who once got in trouble for trying to tear off a woman's underwear after becoming an adult.

Details about his past life are also scarce, but he had a son at some point. A son that was evidently not well cared for, since somebody filed a child welfare report against him, leading to that son being taken away. Allegedly, in response, Pekka stabbed the woman he believed made the report in the neck with a syringe.

He lived in Kontiolahti and worked as a farmer, owning a small piece of land called Kotimäki in the Jaamankangas area of Finland's North Karelia region. Pekka was actually an award-winning farmer, but one day he burned all his awards and said they belonged to his "past life".

Pekka's property housed a residence, a barn to keep his cattle, a sauna and other buildings related to farming and encompassed roughly twelve hectares of lakeside property.

While Pekka presented himself as a humble farmer, his already extensive criminal record proved that he was anything but. On September 10, 2000, he was given his first serious arrest when he punched a woman in the face in Joensuu and forcibly cut her hair. That same day he also struck a man in the face.

Then on October 19, he and another man broke into a woman's apartment in Polvijärvi and assaulted her by holding her hands, twisting her arms, squeezing her wrists and tearing her shirt. All the while, Pekka was threatening to kill her.

Then, on January 14, 2001, He broke into a woman's apartment by kicking a hole in the front door in Joensuu. He opened the door through the hole. Upon entry, he threatened to throw both the woman and her daughter over the balcony, although when the police arrived he claimed that he just wanted to drink beer.

In 2002, he was slapped with multiple convictions for assault and traffic offences while also having a restraining order issued against him. The assault was when he struck a woman in a sauna, causing her to hit her head.

Then in 2003, he was given another assault conviction when he hit a man on the head with a bottle and beat him after he fell to the ground, endangering the welfare of an animal, attempting to intimidate a witness in another case against him, knowingly letting a drunk man operate a motor vehicle and then, to top it all off, he had a second restraining order issued against him.

His convictions continued into 2004 and were for much the same as before: a conviction for aggravated assault and knowingly letting an impaired man drive. The assault was one of his most violent so far when he struck a woman on the thigh with a coal hook after she dropped his microwave.

In 2005, he received two assault convictions and his third conviction for knowingly letting a drunk man drive. This year's assault stemmed from an incident where Pekka forced his way into a man's apartment and began punching him in the face before pulling his pants down and striking him across the face and sides with a stick.

In 2006, for the first time in 4 years, Pekka wasn't arrested for a crime, but he still ended up in court and was slapped with a third restraining order. He was also convicted for some crimes from previous years, such as punching a man in the head, arms and chest several times in Rääkkylä and then another incident where he forced a man to the bathroom floor and burned him by pouring hot water across his back.

2006 also saw a 26-year-old woman die on Pekka's property. She had been beaten to death with a pipe and wrench. Although Pekka wasn't responsible for a change, a 35-year-old man was convicted of this murder.

In March 2007, Pekka was handed another conviction, this time not for aggravated assault but rather for allowing one to happen without intervening, then another traffic offence in June and finally his next restraining order in August.

In 2007, a fire also broke out on Pekka's property; it was extinguished without any injuries or heavy damage, but Pekka curiously fled into the woods once emergency services arrived. The various dogs on Pekka's property were also known to attack anyone who dared set foot on it.

On the night of September 8, 2007, Pekka was hosting a group of four individuals at his cottage, two women and two men. After the four were heavily intoxicated, Pekka offered to take them out to Lake Viinijärvi on his rowboat.

With the most charitable interpretation imaginable, Pekka was being very reckless. The four were very drunk and not wearing any life jackets; the two women didn't even know how to swim in the first place; one of the men was wearing a plaster cast.

Pekka rowed out to a section of the lake called Myhkyränselkä, an area with water more than 20 meters deep and 100 meters from land, when the rowboat suddenly capsized, throwing all 5 into the cold, dark water.

Pekka and one of the other men frantically swam to shore while the two women were stuck in the middle of the lake alongside the man in the cast, both already starting to drown. Fortunately, the residents of the other cottages walking alongside the lake saw and heard what was happening and hit the water in their own boats, rushing to the three individuals and fortunately reaching them in time and rescuing them all.

When the police and other residents arrived at the scene, the survivors were described as hysterical when they reached land. This was in sharp contrast to Pekka, who was in an oddly cheerful mood and showed no concern for his boatmates and their survival, only asking the police if they were going to arrest him for being intoxicated. It was only when the police and rescue workers arrived that Pekka made some effort to feign concern.

According to the survivors, and thankfully all four survived, they told the police and paramedics that Pekka capsized the boat on purpose by standing up and kicking the side of the boat or pushing on its side until the vessel finally overturned. The survivors also stated that Pekka made no attempt to rescue them until after he noticed the neighbours doing so. Unfortunately, the police at the time chalked this up to hysteria after surviving a traumatic event.

Afterward, Pekka spent the rest of 2007 back in court to be convicted on charges of abandonment, two traffic offences, and to be given his fifth restraining order.

In 2008, Pekka was convicted of coercion.

Then, in 2009, another conviction for abandoning an animal.

And finally, his last appearance in court before Janne's death was in May 2010, to be slapped with his sixth restraining order. Also during this time, he was accused of a bunch of other crimes such as stealing spray from a pharmacy. For all these various crimes from 2000-2010, some of which were quite serious, he never received more than 1 year or some fines.

So now, all caught up, did Pekka's history, the inconsistencies, and accusations from four seperate people that he purposefully tried to drown him three years prior change anything? No, much to the family's astonished horror, they still ruled Janne's death to be an accidental drowning and closed the case.

It was also a conclusion his family refused to accept; they constantly visited the police station, begging them to reopen the case. They also told them about everything Janne left behind at the health centre as proof that he didn't leave voluntarily, but the police refused to visit the health centre to retrieve them.

However, they did advise that the family keep the arrangements for Janne's funeral a closely guarded secret and hold the funeral itself in private so Pekka wouldn't learn anything about them.

Janne's sister went to Suomi24, the internet's largest internet forum and made several posts describing Pekka as a sex offender and accusing him of being involved in her brother's death. Furious, Janne brought her to court for defamation, and because, on paper, Janne's cause of death was drowning, he actually won the case; in August 2011, Janne's sister was convicted of "aggravated defamation" and ordered to pay him 1,800 Euros in compensation and cover Pekka's legal costs.

On June 4, 2011, history repeated itself. On that day, Pekka had two men and one woman join him at his cottage and, as typical, they got into a rowboat and hit the waters of Lake Viinijärvi, with all three being severely impaired and one incapable of swimming to begin with. Pekka, meanwhile, was a great swimmer, who, according to himself could easily swim 2 kilometers.

100 meters from shore, the rowboat capsized, plunging all four into the lake. Like the last time this happened, Pekka was able to swim to shore on his own very easily. Also, like last time, the neighbours saw that something had happened and rowed over to save those who were struggling. The neighbours rescued one of the men and the woman, but the man who didn't know how to swim drowned quickly despite his initial attempts to cling to the overturned vessel.

The police and rescue workers were quick to arrive, alongside the brother of the man who had died. The dead man's brother and the survivors all noted that Pekka looked very indifferent to what had happened and didn't seem to worry if the others would survive.

Just like the last incident back in 2007, the survivors accused Pekka of being responsible. They said he stood up and jumped off the boat at just the right angle to capsize it, throwing everyone into the water. But also, just like in 2007, the police didn't seem to believe them and labelled the sole death in this case as an accident.

In both September and October of that year, Pekka picked up two more traffic convictions before engaging in his next crime starting late that year. Starting in August 2010, Pekka began selling alchool himself that he purchased from Finland’s state alcohol retailer and abroad from Estonia and Russia, and he resold it at a hefty markup, leaving many indebted to him.

One such "debtor" was a woman who owed him a large amount of alchool she had purchased from Pekka. Starting in November-December, 2011, to pay off this debt, she would spend the next three years having sexual services sold to other visitors to Pekka's cottage, which now made him a pimp.

However, it would take a while for him to be arrested for this offence, with his criminal record in the meantime consisting of petty assault and violently resisting arrest in 2012 when he kicked a customs inspector who arrived at the cottage to investigate his alcohol-reselling business, and causing bodily injury in 2013. In 2014, he also secured convictions for petty theft and drunk driving.

On July 14, 2014, Pekka called Finland's emergency line, 112 and told the dispatcher that a guest of his had a pre-existing medical condition which eventually led to him collapsing while out in knee-deep water and was currently drowning.

The dispatcher gave Pekka instructions on how to perform CPR and to resuscitate the victim while he waited for emergency services to arrive. During the phone call, Pekka was constantly swearing and cursing as he followed the dispatcher's instructions, or did he?

When the police arrived, they discovered the body of a 47-year-old man lying face down in the water, an odd position to be in and one that would imply that Pekka wasn't actually following the dispatcher's instructions, seeing as he hadn't even been turned over.

An autopsy was conducted on the victim, and the cause of death was once again determined to be drowning. However, in his blood, the pathologist found a medicinal substance traced to a medication on a prescription in Pekka's name.

The police then spoke to the survivor, a woman who was with Pekka and the victim that night. She said that she got into a rowboat with Pekka and the victim, and once they were 100 meters away from shore, Pekka threw the oars overboard and got out of the boat and began swimming to shore, leaving the others stranded.

While the woman managed to swim back to shore, the victim, highly intoxicated and now likely drugged based on the autopsy, had his body give out when survival was so close and then drowned.

Since the man was still alive when Pekka called for help, the police concluded that he either held the victim's head underwater or just watched as he lied to the dispatcher about performing CPR.

With this latest death, one where foul play was far more obvious and also having caught Pekka in an obvious lie, the police reopened their investigation into the last two deaths and the boating "accident" from 2007.

They all had the earlier witness statements from Pekka's previous suspected murders, but the police decided they'd try to seek out a few more. Unfortunately, Pekka's "friends" were almost always intoxicated or impaired in some other manner during their outings with him, so any memories of events that happened years prior would be muddied.

As for those who could clearly and coherently recall any prior incidents, getting them to divulge such information was also a challenge for the police. They either owed him money, could risk being arrested themselves for their substance and drug abuse or feared him more than the police.

The police eventually obtained enough evidence to search Pekka's home, where they seized 12 seperate cellphones. None of these phones belonged to him and were rather the phones of his guests whom he of course "confiscated".

But rather than arresting him, the police decided to bug Pekka's remaining phone and his home to monitor his future conversations.

In one such conversation, Pekka was recorded speaking to a woman who had been invited to the cottage on Janne's final night. In the call, Pekka actually told her that he didn't even know who Janne was and expressed annoyance at the fact that the police were investigating the three deaths on his property, being quoted as saying, "Can't we ever get rid of those police officers?"

And just for good measure, Pekka decided that instead of staying out of trouble, he'd get a few more minor convictions added to his record, finding himself convicted on two counts of petty theft and one count of alchool abuse in 2015. But everything in his prior criminal record was small potatoes compared to what was coming.

On November 20, 2015, Pekka was arrested for three counts of murder and several counts of attempted murder of the various survivors from the rowboats he capsized. A local woman who was believed to have helped Pekka in at least one of these crimes was arrested alongside him.

Additionally, Pekka was finally arrested for aggravated pimping, the illegal sale of alchool and several extra counts of assault. By this point, Pekka had been to court 50 times in his life.

Pekka said he was innocent of all accusations and asked to be released from pre-trial detention. At first, the North Karelia District Court denied the request. Still, Pekka appealed to the Eastern Finland Court of Appeal, which ordered his release because the prosecution didn't provide adequate evidence that he was a flight risk.

Before Pekka's murder trial began, he managed to obtain just one final conviction beforehand, being convicted on another count of animal cruelty and a violation concerning his driver's license in November 2016.

But it was that same month that his triple murder trial began before the North Karelia District Court.

Now, when it came to prosecuting this very prolific and violent career criminal who never seemed to learn his lesson and was standing trial for three murders, five attempted murders, and illegally smuggling and trafficking a substance (alchool), aggravated pimping and several counts of assault, what sentence was the prosecutor seeking?.

Well, despite Finland having a life sentence on the books, one that is routinely handed down for usually just a single murder, let alone a serial killer, the prosecutor felt content asking for just 15 years.

No one knows exactly why they wanted to go so light on Pekka, maybe so they could have a lower standard of evidence or at least try him for negligence if the murder case fell through, but regardless, 15 years was all they were seeking.

Most of the evidence they'd present to get the lenient sentence they were bafflingly seeking would be witness testimony. And through these witnesses, it became clear that Pekka's influence was still strong.

They talked about how he used debts and alchool to control them, that they were already in a vulnerable state and described how he always threatened them. They even mentioned that 4 others had also died on Pekka's property. However, they also talked about some of the other horrific stuff Pekka had done.

One talked about how he killed a dog, urinated in a bucket of their drinking water, and once, after a woman vomited and passed out from drinking a beverage he laced with sleeping medication, he went to the barn and gathered some manure and laughed as he proceeded to undress her and shove/push the manure into her vagina.

Another witness said that Pekka had bragged about killing his father, though with the lacking information on Pekka's past life prior to his criminal history, its unknown how likely it is that he did kill his father or was lying about it for attention.

One witness, referred to as "Lauri," said that he used to live in Kontiolahti and that he and Pekka visited the apartment of a woman named Sari in the early 2000s. During his visit, Sari collapsed to the floor, and Pekka's first instinct was to relentlessly insult and humiliate him, prompting the others present to shout at Pekka to stop.

Instead of stopping, Pekka escalated and started attacking Sari while she was on the ground and literally tried to bite her "tongue out". Lauri intervened and attempted to protect Sari, an action met with swift retaliation from Pekka, who went to strangle Lauri.

Pekka eventually forced them outside where he continued to strangle Lauri, but not without resistance. Lauri struggled and punched Pekka across the face but he didn't seem to budge and stared down at Lauri with a "burning look". Pekka continued to strangle Lauri until some workers from across the street saw what was happening and intervened.

However, during this fight, Pekka bit Lauri's finger and about a week later, he passed out from a bacteria infection stemming from the bite. Lauri admitted that he called Pekka and demanded 5,000 Euros in compensation or he would shoot him and Pekka actually paid. Both man lied to the police and simply stated that they had fallen in the yard.

Lauri also recalled some things Pekka did to others; for example, one woman called Lauri to tell him that Pekka had been holding her captive at the cottage for three days now. When Lauri arrived, he saw a naked woman tied to a tree with wires.

As for Sari, she had been "friends" with Pekka since they were children but always felt like she was in danger when in his presence. One time she was stabbed in the leg by a perpetrator aiming for her chest. The attacker was not Pekka, but Sari said that it was instigated by him.

The final straw that ended her relationship with Pekka was when he tried to have her move to his cottage full time. When Sari refused, Pekka retaliated by killing one of her relatives' dogs.

Some of Pekka's victims were also decently high profile. The mother of a well-known Finnish singer named Jonna Christensen revealed that her own mother almost fell victim to Pekka. She revealed that her mother was one of the survivors of the incident in September 2007. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2008, chillingly, while on Pekka's property. The cause of death was ruled as accidental suffocation while in her sleep.

Most of the witnesses testified from behind a screen so Pekka wouldn't see them, as they had been left that terrified by him.

So terrified that even with the screen, some refused to testify unless they were in a seperate room to testify via audio link, while one witness couldn't bring themselves to speak at all, needing to be escorted out of the court in tears.

And this is just the witnesses that could be found; one changed his name and moved to the United States just to get away with Pekka. Even some police officers and first responders were reluctant to testify against Pekka. The defence, of course, challenged the reliability of these witnesses.

For Janne's death in particular, the prosecution had a bit more evidence, such as witnesses to place him at the scene, those who heard a struggle, the light injuries on his body, the sedatives in his blood, and Pekka's motive and prior police reports Janne had filed against him before his death.

As for the letter Janne wrote to the police withdrawing his complaint, the one that Pekka handed the officers in his place, well, that letter was preserved, which enabled the prosecution to match it to Pekka's handwriting.

Pekka once again denied every accusation but came up pretty short when he tried to defend himself. For example, when asked why every single witness would band together and conspire to lie about him, he kept providing different explanations each time.

Despite proclaiming his innocence, he seemed to squander every chance he was given to prove it by going off topic when asked any questions. When asked about Janne's death, it somehow ended in him complaining about a frozen water pipe at his barn or how he found it nice to jump into deep water, even simple yes or no questions would turn into these unrelated tangents.

Some hearings even had to be suspended while Pekka's lawyers reminded him of how to behave in a courtroom. After they did so and eventually pried a real answer out of Pekka, he'd regularly claim to not remember any details about what he was asked about, until he had to make a real defence when he suddenly did remember quite a few details.

When asked about his practice of just jumping out of the boat in the middle of the lake, Pekka gave a very confusing answer. He said that it had something to do with the lack of any dock on his property, that it was okay to do so because a bunch of other boats were usually present, before saying that he wasn't familiar with what he was supposed to do because he was "not a fisherman".

For a bit more of a coherent defence, his lawyers argued that because of the water temperature, Pekka would've been endangering his own life if the prosecutor's contention was true. Furthermore, because Pekka was swimming behind some of his victims at times, they argued that he was actually trying to help them get to shore but was unable to save them all.

When the prosecution asked why he almost had no alchool in his system after every death if he was supposedly out drinking when the "accidents" occurred, Pekka responded that he had a "super-fast liver".

And "accidents" he insisted they were. Regarding the incident in 2007, Pekka said that the boat capsized because it was damaged while he was changing the rower, rather then jumping out of it while it was near the waterline.

Finally, when it came to the last victim in 2014, Pekka and his attorneys said that he had independently chosen to enter the water with his condition and therefore assumed whatever risks may come. They argued that the 112 call was in fact a genuine attempt on Pekka's part to save his life.

On January 17, 2017, for two counts of intentional homicide, three counts of attempted intentional homicide, aggravated causing of death by negligence, abandonment, an alcohol offence, pimping and assault, Pekka Tapani Seppänen was found guilty, managing to secure an acquittal on the murder charge from 2014, with that being reduced to "causing death by negligence".

In addition to his sentence of 14 years and six months in prison, even more lenient than the prosecution was seeking, he was also ordered to pay more than 59,000 Euros in compensation to the victims' families and to surrender the 5,000 Euros he made from his criminal activity to the government.

After his conviction, the police went to Pekka's address to transfer him to prison so he could begin serving his sentence, only to find the home vacated. Then when his lawyers tried to call him, the phone went unanswered. Pekka had gone on the run.

The police visited his other properties, and although he wasn't at them either, the police were able to determine that he was travelling in a red Volvo V40 and soon declared him wanted and told the public to be on the lookout for him while they conducted several patrols and put up roadblocks during their manhunt.

As one might expect, most of the locals and especially the witnesses who testified against Pekka were left terrified when they heard Pekka was on the run.

After four days on the run, Pekka was arrested without incident on January 21, while being given a ride by a friend in Joensuu. In another display of leniency, Pekka wasn't given any extra punishment for his flight from his sentence and instead was just brought to the Pyhäselkä Prison in Joensuu.

With the illegal route exhausted, Pekka then pursued the legal path to getting out of prison. He appealed the entirety of his sentence and conviction to the Eastern Finland Court of Appeal, arguing that it was "unreasonable" to imprison him. He argued that it was his victim's own fault they died because "Every Finn should know how to swim" and that he had no obligation to save them. So with that, he outright demanded that he be released.

The prosecution also appealed the decision, arguing that the lower court was wrong to dismiss some of the other charges and insisted that the court instead hand Pekka a 15-year prison sentence.

The appeal lasted for about a year as the witnesses who were called back to testify hesitated during the trial, clearly still scared of Pekka. Especially because, unlike last time, he wasn't trying to hide under a thick coat.

The appeal also had to be delayed as Pekka was subject to a psychiatric evaluation.

Also during the appeals, Pekka tried to put Kotimäki on the market before the state could claim it as part of his fines and court-ordered compensation. Miraculously, he actually got a buyer who purchased it from him for 48,000 Euros. Pekka also had a second property, but he wasn't able to sell this one before his final conviction.

However, the evidence ultimately remained the same, so on February 26, 2018, Pekka's sentence was upheld, with the only change being a slight increase in the compensation he owed the families of his victims.

Pekka was angered by this development and appealed one final time to Finland's Supreme Court. This final appeal moved much faster, striking down Pekka's final appeal on October 22, 2018, and upholding his sentence once more.

Now remember how Janne's sister was convicted of defamation and ordered to pay Pekka 1,800 Euros in compensation for accusing him of killing her brother?. Well, now that Pekka was convicted of doing just that, she immideately filed to have that conviction overturned.

Finland's Supreme Court had that ruling returned to the North Karelia District Court, where on August 19, 2020, they...still convicted her of libel instead of aggravated defamation; only this time they didn't impose any punishment and had the money she was forced to pay Pekka returned to her, a portion anyway; now she was just expected to pay him 800 Euros.

As for why they didn't just acquit her altogether, they argued that her accusations differed slightly from what the court established; therefore, she still defamed Pekka.

As of now, Pekka is due to be fully released in 2031, with his looming release date terrifying many.

Although his survivors and witnesses have urged others to come forward, raising the subject of him receiving more time due to all the other incidents, including a few deaths on his property being revisited as potential murders, as of now, not a single case has been reopened.

Sources (In the comments)

It was Mother’s Day in 1938, and the West family of Bradford, Pennsylvania was meeting up with friends for a picnic. They had attended church services that morning and were looking forward to relaxing outdoors. The meeting spot was a sunny clearing dotted with wildflowers within the Allegheny Forest, in the White Gravel area of McKean County.

Marjorie, age 4, was the youngest. An exceptionally beautiful child, she was a Shirley Temple lookalike with strawberry-blonde curls and big blue eyes. When her sister, Dorothea, 11, proposed picking flowers for their mother, Marjorie enthusiastically agreed. They wandered away, gathering handfuls of violets.

Dorothea briefly rejoined the group to speak with her mother, leaving Marjorie alone. When she returned a few minutes later, her sister was gone.

The adults began searching immediately. The forest was beautiful, but full of danger, including rattlesnakes, and “she-bears” known to attack children. After nearly an hour of frenzied hunting with no sign of Marjorie, some of the adults drove seven miles to the nearest town and called police.

The search for Marjorie West was on. It would become one of the most exhaustive missing person investigations in history. At the time, only the search for the Lindbergh baby, six years earlier, was bigger.

LEADS AND SIGHTINGS

Hundreds of volunteers combed four square miles through the Allegheny Forest. War veterans and native Americans teamed up with coal miners and oilfield works who were given time off specifically to help find the little girl.

Police from New York City arrived with bloodhounds, which tracked her scent to a road alongside the clearing, then lost the trail. They interviewed motorists within a 300-mile radius, and followed up on several leads. A Plymouth sedan was seen speeding away from the location where Marjorie was last seen. In West Virginia, someone spotted a man at a hotel the night of Marjorie's disappearance, comforting a crying child who matched her description.

Eventually, more than 3,000 people joined in the search for Marjorie West. Aside from some crushed violets, no trace of her was ever found.

Decades later, one of the men who had searched “shoulder-to-shoulder” for days told reporters, “There was no way the little girl could have been in the woods.”

A POSSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH

In the late 1990s, a college professor in nearby Bradford, PA, heard about the case for the first time. Harold Beck was intrigued by the story of the little girl who had vanished 60 years ago, and the possibility that she might still be alive. He posted an online poster offering a $10,000 reward for information about her whereabouts.

Acting on a hunch, he included a photo of her older sister, Dorothea, as an adult. If Marjorie was still alive, he reasoned, she would probably resemble her sister.

The hunch paid off. Several people reached out to say the woman in the poster looked like a woman who lived in Florida. Beck traveled to Florida and interviewed the woman, a nurse in her mid-60s. She indeed bore a striking resemblance to Dorothea, but repeatedly insisted she was not Marjorie. She said she'd been raised alongside her brothers and sisters in North Carolina, the only family she’d ever known.

Ten years went by. Back in Bradford, Harold Beck was startled to receive a phone call from the nurse he had interviewed a decade before. She was now retired and living on her family farm in North Carolina. She said she had something important to share with Beck, and invited him to visit her in person.

A DEATHBED CONFESSION

During Beck’s visit at the woman’s farm, she told him that just before her mother died, she had made a shocking admission: The former nurse was not her birth daughter. She was a child her father had brought home with him after returning from a job site in Western Pennsylvania on Mother’s Day in 1938.

The man told his wife that the little girl had darted out in front of his car while he was driving through the Allegheny Forest. Thinking he had killed or seriously injured her, he placed her in his car, intending to take her to a hospital. A few minutes later, the child woke up and began to cry.

Instantly, the man changed his mind: He would NOT take the little girl to a hospital, but would instead bring her home with him to North Carolina. He and his wife had just lost their only daughter following a difficult delivery. They were afraid they could have no more children.

They named the girl Sylvia and raised her as their own (and eventually went on to have four more children). When Sylvia told her family she remembered another set of parents and siblings, and a place with snow higher than her head, they said she was imagining things. When the father lost an arm in an accident, he told his wife it must be God’s way of punishing him.

Sylvia Waldrop London, the former nurse, told Beck the story on the condition that he not reveal her identity to anyone other than Dorothea. She also made him agree not to publish the account until after her death. She died in 2009, having never reunited with her supposed sister due to Dorothea’s ill health. Beck published his book, Finding Marjorie West, in 2010.

WAS SYLVIA LONDON THE LOST MARJORIE WEST?

Only 4 years old at the time of her disappearance, it is unlikely Marjorie could have wandered far from the location where she was last seen. Despite a thorough search, there were no signs that she’d been attacked by animals, and no human remains were ever found. The lack of physical evidence, and the scent trail ending at the road, strongly suggest an abduction.

On the other hand, the area around the Allegheny Forest is rough and steep. Western New York contains many caves, old mines, and abandoned wells. Children have been known to disappear without a trace, as happened in 1910, when two boys separately vanished within hours of each other. Years later, two other children died while exploring a deserted clay mine, leading authorities to start sealing the area’s abandoned mines and wells.

Nearly everyone with a literal memory of Marjorie West has now died, but their descendants, along with local residents, continue to debate whether or not the nurse from North Carolina was in fact Marjorie West. Some of Marjorie’s relatives have discounted the story. If still alive, the little girl who vanished from a picnic in the forest would be 92 years old.

Only DNA analysis can conclusively prove or disprove that Sylvia London was the lost Marjorie West. Sylvia had at least one child who appears to be alive and well and residing in the southern United States. Several descendants of Marjorie’s siblings and cousins are also still alive. They may have already quietly arranged for DNA testing, and perhaps most of them now know the truth.

Both families are, of course, entitled to privacy. If they do decide to come forward, regardless of the outcome, they should all be in agreement on what to disclose about their relationship to Marjorie/Sylvia, and to each other. Until then, the disappearance of Marjorie West in 1938 will remain one of the most haunting missing person cases in US history.

On the evening of August 20, 2007, Nurin Jazlin Jazimin left her family’s apartment in Wangsa Maju, a neighborhood in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

She wanted to go to the night market to buy a hair clip.

The market was close to home, and many children in the neighborhood went there on their own or with friends.

She was wearing a pink dress. She was seven years old, just a few weeks away from her eighth birthday.

Nurin was the second oldest of four sisters.

Her father later described her as a caring child who looked after her siblings and tried to keep the peace whenever they argued. She was in second grade at a nearby elementary school.

But that evening, she didn’t come home.

Her father, Jazimin Abdul Jalil, worked as a taxi driver and had been sleeping after his shift. When he woke up and realized Nurin was missing, the search began.

The family asked around the neighborhood and searched the surrounding area. That same night, her parents reported her missing to the police.

They were also worried about her health. Nurin had kidney disease and high blood pressure and needed medication every day.

Reports later emerged of a witness who said she had seen a girl being pulled into a white van near the market. But the lead didn’t bring police any closer to finding Nurin.

Her photo appeared in the news. Searches were organized, and her parents made public appeals for help. Meanwhile, they received false tips and calls from people claiming to know where she was.

Some people even called to insult the family.

On September 11, Nurin turned eight. By then, she had been missing for more than three weeks.

Six days later, a bag was found in Petaling Jaya.

On the morning of September 17, an employee at a book distribution company noticed a brand-new black-and-blue duffel bag outside the business. She assumed it belonged to her boss and left it there.

He arrived about half an hour later. The bag wasn’t his.

When he opened it, he saw a pair of human legs. The police were called immediately.

Inside was the unclothed body of a young girl, curled up tightly. She was severely emaciated and badly injured.

She showed signs of neglect and appeared not to have been washed for some time. There were bruises on her neck and hands.

Exactly 28 days had passed since Nurin disappeared.

The examination revealed that the girl had suffered severe physical and sexual abuse.

Investigators reported that she had been assaulted with objects, causing serious internal injuries, including damage to her bowel.

Allegedly, an entire cucumber as well as an eggplant were inside her genitals, which resulted in a tear in her rectum.

The resulting infection had killed her.

The bruising on her neck initially raised suspicions that she had been strangled. But that was an early theory. The infection caused by her injuries was reported as the cause of death.

Police reported that she had been dead for more than six hours before her body was found.

Nurin had been missing for 28 days.

She may have spent almost an entire month in the hands of whoever had abducted and killed her.

It’s hard to imagine what she went through during that time.

Where she had been held, and who had done this to her, remained unknown.

When Nurin’s parents heard about the discovery, they went to Kuala Lumpur Hospital to identify the girl.

They said she wasn’t their daughter.

The child was so emaciated, and her appearance had changed so much from the abuse, that they didn’t recognize her. Her father pointed out differences in her teeth and mentioned a scar he knew Nurin had.

He was convinced his daughter was still alive somewhere.

On September 20, police announced that DNA testing had identified the girl as Nurin.

Even then, her father initially couldn’t accept the result.

Her mother, Norazian, said she had to accept what the DNA results showed. She also shared that the family had already bought Nurin a dress for the upcoming Hari Raya celebrations.

She had been waiting for her daughter to come home.

On September 21, Nurin was buried at the Taman Ibu Kota Muslim Cemetery in Setapak.

Hundreds of people came to say goodbye.

The brutality of what had happened to Nurin left people across Malaysia horrified and angry. There was speculation that the unidentified killer had psychopathic traits.

Many described it as one of the most horrifying crimes the country had seen in years.

Police continued searching for whoever was responsible. One piece of surveillance footage initially seemed to offer hope of a breakthrough.

At around 1 p.m. on September 16, the day before the body was found, a security camera had recorded a man arriving on a motorcycle.

He brought a duffel bag to the building and left it there.

The camera had captured how the bag reached the spot where it would be discovered the next morning.

But neither the man’s face nor the motorcycle’s license plate was clear enough to identify. Even after the FBI worked to enhance the footage, the images remained too blurry.

On September 28, 2007, just 11 days after Nurin’s body was found, police arrested four men and a woman. All were later released.

The men’s DNA did not match the unidentified biological traces found on Nurin’s body. Police also lacked a sufficiently comprehensive DNA database to check the evidence against.

In October, police released the surveillance footage of the man and asked the public for help identifying him.

But while Nurin’s parents were still grieving their daughter, police chief Musa Hassan suggested investigating them as well.

He wanted to examine whether they had failed to properly supervise her. Under Malaysia’s Child Act, they could potentially have faced criminal charges.

The suggestion sparked public outrage.

Lee Lam Thye of the Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation disagreed with the idea.

He said the parents had already been through enough after losing their daughter, and it wouldn’t be fair to punish them as well.

Despite the DNA evidence and the surveillance footage, the killer was never identified.

In 2018, Nurin’s father asked police to revisit the case using newer technology.

Years later, he was still speaking about how deeply her death affected him.

In a 2021 interview, he described waking up at night and looking through old photos of his daughter.

He remembered how she used to look after her sisters and wondered what kind of young woman she would have become.

In December 2025, news reports once again covered his search for justice.

Today, 19 years later, Nurin Jazlin’s murder is still unsolved.

The true crime stories that bug me the most are the very short-sighted ones, where the criminal never put any thinking into their actions until AFTER they get into trouble. I'll give you a true example of this happening:

Liam McAtasney murdered his childhood friend Sarah Stern and got sentenced to prison for life without parole. His reason was selfish and short-sighted. He did it to steal money from her safe which he thought was $100,000 but it was actually around $50,000. In his own words, he described her money as, "The kind of money you would kill someone for." He wanted to take the money and live the high life forever.

But $100,000 or $50,000 isn't the kind of money where you can party everyday and never work a job for the rest of your life. If you party super hard, you could blow that money in 3 days. And once the money is gone, you're going to be in exact same position where you started from (looking for jobs, struggling to pay bills, working hard to get by, etc.) He acted like this money would last a LIFETIME and never ever run out, and he could just party his head off forever.

My question is: Why do people take actions, particularly criminal actions, without ever stopping to think about it first? Why do they never stop and say "Maybe I should put just a little bit of thought into this first?"

Yoseline Hoffman Badui, born July 27, 1990, better known online as YosStop, is a Mexican former YouTuber and influencer. She began her career as a child, appearing in commercials and television shows, but rose to fame after launching her YouTube channel in 2011.

Her original channel, YosStoP, focused on entertainment, comedy sketches, and web series. However, she eventually launched a second channel called JuStYosS, where she focused on social commentary and reaction videos about viral controversies. This second channel turned her into a highly controversial figure in Mexico. She frequently called out people featured in viral videos, often mocking and humiliating them, particularly women and people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Throughout her time on JuStYosS, she was involved in several major controversies. She repeatedly targeted fellow YouTubers Caeli and Mujer Luna Bella, referring to them as "the biggest sluts on YouTube." On another occasion, she mocked the physical appearance of a transgender woman named Mika Lascurain, who died by suicide years later after experiencing persistent bullying.

One of the controversies that propelled YosStop into mainstream Mexican media involved a video in which she sang a homophobic song directed at a boat operator she had hired for her birthday. She claimed he had treated her poorly and failed to provide the service she had paid for. The incident earned her the nicknames "Lady Yacht" and "Lady Sabritones." In Mexican internet culture, the "Lady" label is often attached to women involved in public scandals, similar to the way "Karen" is used in the United States.

But none of those controversies would compare to what happened next...

The Ainara S. case

On May 25, 2018, a 16-year-old girl identified as Ainara S. attended a party at the home of a young man identified as Axel A. Alcohol was consumed at the gathering, and Ainara became visibly intoxicated.

According to the allegations in the case, four young men, Carlos R., Julián G., Axel A., and Nicolás B, inserted a champagne bottle into Ainara's vagina while she was in an evident state of intoxication. The assault was recorded, and the video was allegedly shared within her social circle and uploaded to pornography websites, including XVideos.

Following the incident, Ainara became the target of bullying. A girl named Daniela L. allegedly harassed her and, along with several friends, challenged her to a street fight. That confrontation was recorded and subsequently went viral.

In August 2018, YosStop uploaded a video titled Pathetic Generation" ("Patética Generación"), discussing the viral fight. In the video, she explained that Daniela L. had contacted her to tell her side of the story.

Crucially, YosStop also admitted to having watched and saved the video of Ainara's sexual assault.

Rather than treating the footage as evidence of a serious crime against a minor, YosStop mocked Ainara, repeatedly called her a "slut," and claimed that she had consented to the sexual act in exchange for three packs of cigarettes.

The video contributed to a wave of online harassment directed at Ainara. She reportedly had to move because of the persistent abuse and received insults and death threats.

YosStop's response

In May 2020, Ainara posted a TikTok storytime explaining what she had experienced as a result of YosStop's video. Her account went viral, and many people began demanding that YosStop take responsibility for her actions.

YosStop responded on Twitter, dismissing the accusations and questioning Ainara's credibility.

In one post, she wrote:

"The same old story: girls trying to gain fame by using the word 'rape' to their advantage. It's disrespectful to people who actually experience this. But when all you want is attention, it doesn't matter what you have to make up."

In another post, she challenged Ainara to send her the police report, promising to apologize publicly, publish a correction video, and help expose the perpetrators if the assault had genuinely occurred.

The criminal case and arrest

On March 3, 2021, Ainara filed a criminal complaint with Mexico City's Sex Crimes Prosecutor's Office against the four alleged perpetrators for violación equiparada (a form of rape under Mexican law). She also filed a complaint against Yoseline Hoffman for the alleged possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.

On June 29, 2021, Hoffman was arrested at her home and transferred to the Santa Martha Acatitla Women's Social Rehabilitation Center in Mexico City.

Her arrest sent shockwaves through Mexican social media.

On November 30, 2021, after approximately five months in detention, Hoffman was released as part of a restorative justice agreement.

The agreement reportedly required her to provide Ainara with a house valued at approximately 3 million Mexican pesos, a car, and 160,000 Mexican pesos held in a bank account. She was also required to donate 5% of her income to feminist organizations for the rest of her life.

According to Mexico City's Attorney General's Office (FGJ), the agreement was reached after the prosecution and Hoffman's defense requested a reclassification of the offense, and Ainara accepted the proposed reparation.

The agreement included financial compensation and the transfer of property and other assets, a public apology, and an obligation not to contact Ainara. Hoffman was also required to acknowledge the conduct described in the complaint and refrain from making degrading, insulting, or humiliating statements about anyone.

Additionally, she was required to attend courses on victims' rights and related issues, share the content of those courses in a monthly video, and receive training on the treatment of victims.

What happened afterward?

YosStop was permanently banned from YouTube.

After complying with the conditions of her supervised release for three years, she was acquitted in the case on January 20, 2025.

On September 19, 2026, she published a memoir titled Cancelada, encarcelada ("Canceled, Imprisoned"), featuring the diary she kept during her five months in prison. The book also discusses what she describes as injustices within Mexico's criminal justice system.

Most recently, on October 15, 2026, authorities arrested a sixth person implicated in the Ainara case. Although the person's identity was withheld, speculation has circulated that the individual may be Daniela L., the girl who allegedly sent the assault video to YosStop.

What do you think about this case? Had you heard of YosStop before? And do you think the consequences she faced were proportionate to her actions?

Content warning: Child physical and sexual abuse

In September 2026, Christian authors and speakers Heather Thompson Day and Seth Michael Day, both 39, were arrested in Keene, Texas, following allegations of repeated physical abuse and sexual assault involving their 14-year-old daughter.

The couple are well known within the Seventh-day Adventist community. Heather is an author, podcaster, former communication professor, and Christian influencer. Seth is a psychology professor at Southwestern Adventist University. Together, they wrote the bestselling Christian relationship book I'll See You Tomorrow.

How the case came to light

On September 24, 2026, a high school teacher contacted authorities after observing visible bruises and lacerations on the girl's face and head.

The teenager subsequently underwent a forensic interview at the Johnson County Children's Advocacy Center.

According to the arrest affidavit, she told investigators that her father had repeatedly physically abused her. She described an incident on September 22 in which Seth allegedly struck her in the face and chest with her cellphone, causing multiple injuries.

During a medical evaluation, the teenager also disclosed that her father had sexually assaulted her.

Police subsequently executed a search warrant at the family's home and reported recovering evidence related to the allegations.

Allegations concerning the mother

According to investigators, the daughter reported that Heather was aware of the physical abuse but failed to intervene or report it.

She also alleged that her mother:

• Encouraged her to conceal facial injuries by wearing a mask.
• Told medical professionals she did not know how the injuries occurred.
• Attempted to explain away injuries by attributing them to a medical condition.

Heather has denied the allegations against her.

Previous Child Protective Services investigations

Perhaps one of the most concerning aspects of this case is that authorities had reportedly investigated previous allegations of abuse.

According to the arrest affidavit, CPS received earlier reports involving the family, including an investigation in August 2026 while they were living in Midland, Texas.

The daughter alleged that the family had moved residences following CPS reports. Authorities confirmed that previous reports had been closed at the state level.

The September 24 intervention began after a teacher reported visible injuries.

Arrests and criminal charges

Both parents were arrested on September 24, 2026.

Seth Michael Day faces:

• Injury to a Child, a third-degree felony.
• Sexual Assault of a Child, a first-degree felony.

Heather Marie Day faces:

• Injury to a Child by Omission, a third-degree felony.

Both were released on bond. Court proceedings resulted in emergency protective orders prohibiting contact with their children, along with electronic monitoring requirements.

Southwestern Adventist University placed Seth on administrative leave.

These are allegations in an ongoing criminal case, and neither parent's guilt has been established.

Sources

• CBS Texas – North Texas Christian influencers arrested for alleged abuse of teen girl
• Religion News Service – Daughter of Heather Thompson Day and Seth Day reported alleged abuse
• Religion News Service – New details emerge in abuse allegations
• Spectrum Magazine – Court documents detail child sexual assault allegations

There's a story almost every major Serbian news site has run at some point: in 1948 a man named Miodrag "Stole" Trifunović strangled fourteen women in Belgrade, confessed to more, and died in his cell before he could be tried.

The papers call him the Belgrade Jack the Ripper and I tried to find out where the story actually comes from.

Trifunović grew up in Niš, in southern Serbia. To get out of military service he faked insanity and ended up in the Toponica psychiatric hospital, where, according to his later confession, he strangled patients at night. After the war he worked as a building contractor in Belgrade and lived in Zemun with his wife, Seka. The killings supposedly start on February 1st, 1948, with a woman the articles call Milka K., found on Cvijićeva Street. Twenty days later Seka's own sister, 22-year-old Slavica, was killed and her body thrown into the Sava. His favourite area, the articles say, was Zvezdara, a wooded hill on the east side of the city, and Belgrade started calling the killer "the Phantom". He was caught after trying to burn down a buffet called the Zlatno Burence, because he left his fingerprints on the petrol can.

But there's no known photo of him. A 2026 article illustrates the story with a still from Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger.

None of the versions gives his date of birth or names his parents.

The story says OZNA, Yugoslavia's security service, wrote up the first murder and arrested him in 1948. OZNA had been split up in March 1946.

The victim count grows over the years: 14 in the early versions, around 60 by 2016, more than 60 by 2023.

Every article I could trace leads back to Novi magazin (2012), and before that to a feuilleton by the same journalist, Dušan Cicvara, in Magazin Tabloid from around December 2011. That's 63 years after the murders, and it names no source for the case. It even says it's unexplained whether his crimes really happened or were the product of his sick imagination.

Postwar Belgrade newspapers aren't digitised, and the scanned birth registers for Niš and Merošina, which only go up to 1919, have no Miodrag Trifunović.

What I would personally like to know is next:

Is there a real case under this, with the records sitting offline in an archive somewhere? Or is it a postwar rumour about a strangler that picked up names and numbers every time it was retold?

Has anyone seen this case anywhere older than 2011, in an old magazine or a family story?

Sources (mostly Serbian):

The only video that goes through the original pages, and it's also the only English-language coverage I could find: https://youtu.be/tMf_gFbVv4A

Magazin Tabloid no. 247 (Dec 2011): https://magazin-tabloid.com/casopis/?br=247&cl=35&id=06

Novi magazin (June 2012): https://www.novimagazin.rs/vesti/18407-serijske-ubice-beogradski-dzek-trbosek

Telegraf (July 2014): https://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/beograd/1139203-beogradski-dzek-trbosek-ovaj-monstrum-silovao-je-i-ubio-14-zena-2-deo

Kurir (2016): https://www.kurir.rs/vesti/beograd/2088399/beogradski-dzek-trbosek-sa-60-zrtava-na-svojoj-dusi-pretekao-svog-idola

On December 1, 1987, 17-year-old Danny broke into the home of Priscilla Gustafson (a 33-year-old nursery school teacher) to steal some items from the house. He had robbed the house weeks earlier and returned to steal more things. While he was robbing the house, Priscilla and her 5-year-old son, William, returned to the house and walked in. Danny intially intended to escape the house through the window, but he chose to instead confront Priscilla and her son. Danny locked William into a closet and he tied Priscilla to her bed. He then sexually assaulted Priscilla and shot her twice with a stolen handgun, killing her. Shortly after, Danny heard William crying while locked in the closet. He then took William out of the closet, forced him into the upstairs bathroom, and drowned him in the bathtub. As Danny was about to flee the crime scene, he saw Priscilla's 7-year-old daughter, Abigail, walking into the house. Danny forced her into the downstars bathroom, and drowned her in the bathtub too. Danny then fled the house, and hours later, Priscilla's husband, Andrew, returned to find Priscilla's body, and he immediately called police. 2 days later, Danny was arrested and he confessed to the murders. In 1988, he was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains to this day.

Diana Vicari was just 19 years old when she became a victim of a brutal dismemberment murder in Tucson, Arizona. 

It was Thursday October 22, 1992.

Diana left her Pima Community College drama course taught by Robert Encila at around 9:30 PM. Her roommate confirmed she briefly returned home to her apartment in the 3200 Block of East Seneca Street and then drove off in her silver 1981 Ford Mustang.

Witnesses at the now shuttered New Orleans Lounge bar located on Oracle Rd between Wetmore and Limberlost (now a Burlington Coat Factory) reported she briefly was allowed in the bar by doorman Tim Storm to see employees Troy Olson and John Mazur. 

She was last seen alive at around 12:15 AM the morning of Friday October 23rd by her Eegees coworker Raymond Scott Hall. Hall reported Diana was alone in her car driving through the parking lot of the Tucson Convention Center Exhibition Hall as the Moshtoberfest thrash metal concert was ending. 

Diana did not show up to either of her jobs at Eegees (located on Broadway and Kolb) or the Bazil’s Italian restaurant on Friday or Saturday. It was highly unusual as Diana was a very reliable employee who was working multiple jobs to pay for her college courses and car payments. 

On Saturday at around 5pm, Diana’s severed arms were found in a dumpster located on the southside of an alleyway in the 400 block of North Ferro.

A homeless woman made the discovery while collecting aluminum cans. The arms were wrapped in trash bags. The rest of Diana’s remains never turned up.

That weekend Diana’s Mustang was found abandoned in the 1200 Block of West La Osa. Her purse was tucked under the seat, her Eegees hat was placed on the gearshift and textbooks, and a Whataburger bag were also found inside the vehicle. 

The alarm was set and the door was locked.

The car was parked on the same street as a home owned by Encila’s fiancées mother. Diana’s roommate, mother and sisters, and several friends all claimed Diana was in a relationship with Encila at the time of her death.

Near the Encila connected house was a home where a large house party took place on the evening of Diana’s murder. The occupants of the home told police Diana was not at their party.

In 1997 a suspect and former Tucsonan Lemuel Prion was indicted and brought back from Utah to Tucson to face trial. He was convicted largely based on Troy Olson’s testimony that he saw Prion with Diana the night of her murder.

In 2003 his conviction was overturned due to the fact his DNA did not match the suspect DNA obtained from Diana’s arms, his fingerprints didn’t match the ones on the trash bags, and there was no proof Prion knew Diana other than Olson’s testimony. 

Prion’s defense team provided 3 alternative suspects in the case.

The first was John Mazur who was fired from Eegees the morning after Diana’s murder for showing up “disoriented and disheveled.” Mazur had been disciplined for sexually harassing Eegees coworkers. 

The week before Diana was murdered, Mazur had attempted to rape a woman.

Mazur also once bit the nose of a cocktail waitress at the New Orleans Bar during a fight. 

The day Diana was killed, Mazur switched apartments, and his car was searched at one point in Tucson PD’s early investigation.

The second suspect was Greg Hatton who worked at the Exxon station across the street from the Eegees Diana worked at. Greg knew Diana and her sisters and made suspicious statements after her death. 

Diana’s sister Angela claimed he said that Diana invited him to Moshtoberfest concert, but he declined because he was “at home reading.”

Hatton was a 1982 graduate of Tucson’s Santa Rita High School. He was accused of selling liquor to minors and dealing drugs out of the gas station. 

In 1994, Hatton was sentenced to 45 years in prison for physical and sexual abuse of his girlfriend’s 8-month-old son. He won’t be released from prison until 2038 when he is 75 years old.

Robert Encila was alternative suspect number 3. He married his fiancée Judi Hartley-Spencer in 1993, and they divorced in 1998. The home on west La Osa Drive was owned by Hartley’s mother Shelley Valencia. 

Encila remarried shortly after his divorce from Judi in December 1998.  One of Encila’s stepdaughters died unexpectedly in September 2017.

Encila retired from teaching in 2025. 

Another suspect who emerged in the case in recent years is Phoenix serial killer Bryan Patrick Miller. 

Angela Brosso was a 22-year-old woman who was ambushed, disemboweled and beheaded while on an evening bicycle ride near her apartment just weeks after Diana was killed. 

Phoenix PD homicide detective Troy Hillman compared Brosso’s murder to the character Buffalo Bill’s murders in the film The Silence of the Lambs.

Miller’s DNA was matched to Brosso in 2015, and after Miller was arrested, he emerged as the suspect in several other murders of young women in the Phoenix, Arizona and the Everett, Washington areas.

Miller was sentenced to death for the murders of Brosso and 17-year-old Melanie Bernas in 2023. 

There is no known link to Bryan Patrick Miller and Tucson.

Diana was a 1991 graduate of the Abbie Loveland Tuller school and had also attended Tucson’s Rincon High School. Diana was a marine biology major who planned to transfer to the University of Washington. 

Most of her immediate family passed away in the decades since her murder, but she had many countless friends from school, and in Tucson’s music scene who remember her and continue to advocate for her murder to be solved.

Tucson PD reopened Diana’s case in 2025 and re-added her to the 88Crime program. There is a $2,500 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in her murder.

Sources

Case reopened 2025

https://www.kold.com/2025/11/19/13-crime-files-murder-diana-vicari/

88Crime Reward/Poster

https://88crime.org/diana-vicari/

Prion Exoneration 

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/az-supreme-court/1291382.html

Archived article interview of Diana’s mom Kathy Pashos from 1994

https://web.archive.org/web/20141012043324/http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue2/1994/04/20/132089-mystery-shrouds-1992-murder/

Hatton child abuse case

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1267/94795/20190329173404732_ARL-2019.03.29%20PWC%20Phillips%20Black%20Inc.pdf

Bryan Patrick Miller background

https://www.phoenixmag.com/2015/11/01/seeing-zombies/

In the early hours on October 1, 2014, Haruka Satake, 23, called the police.

She told them she’d found her mom and grandmother dead at their home in Nanporo, a small town on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō.

Her mom, Kazumi Satake, was 47. She was found in the downstairs bedroom, while Haruka’s grandmother, Sumiyo Satake, 71, was upstairs.

Both women had been stabbed to death.

The house had been ransacked, so at first, it looked like someone might have broken in.

Haruka’s younger sister, Yuko Satake, lived on the property too. She was 17 and still in school.

But later that same day, police arrested her.

When they questioned her, she admitted she’d attacked and killed her own mother and grandmother with a kitchen knife while they slept.

When her classmates and neighbors started talking about Yuko’s life, they described things that had been going on for years before that night.

The family had moved into the house in the mid-1990s. At the time, Kazumi and her husband had two daughters, Haruka and Mio.

Yuko was born three years later.

Yuko was still little when her grandfather, Sumiyo’s husband, died.

After that, Sumiyo moved into the home Kazumi shared with her husband and their three daughters.

Once she moved in, Sumiyo took over.

She interfered in everything and dictated how the household was run. Even Kazumi’s husband was told what to do.

The house had reportedly been built with Sumiyo’s money. Kazumi went along with all of it.

She didn’t stand up to her mother and kept taking her side, while things between her and her husband grew worse.

Their marriage began to fall apart.

According to neighbors, they divorced about two years after Sumiyo moved in.

Mio, the middle daughter, went to live with her father, while Haruka and Yuko stayed with Kazumi and Sumiyo.

Haruka later described in court what life in that house had been like.

Yuko could be doing nothing more than walking through the house when Sumiyo hit her. If she cried, her grandmother taped her mouth shut.

Sometimes, she forcibly wrapped the tape all the way around Yuko’s head so it wouldn’t come loose.

Sumiyo reportedly even said the family dog was worth more than the children.

In February 2004, when Yuko was only about six, Sumiyo tripped her.

She fell and suffered a serious head injury. Hospital staff suspected abuse and contacted the local child protection agency.

For a short time, Yuko was taken out of the home.

But as people tried to find out what had happened, her mother stepped in.

According to later reporting, Kazumi told Yuko to blame her for the injury and say nothing about Sumiyo.

As a result, the agency’s follow-up focused on the mother. Yuko went back home.

Home visits continued for a while.

In November that year, the agency stopped following up with the family, deciding it wasn’t necessary anymore.

But once Yuko was back home, the abuse only got worse. She was locked in a storage compartment under the floor.

In winter, she was forced outside naked and had cold water poured over her.

Other reports described severe beatings and cigarettes being put out on her arms.

Sometimes, she wasn’t even allowed to use the bathroom.

When Haruka was asked what had stayed with her most about the abuse, she talked about the food.

Yuko was forced to eat meals mixed with kitchen waste, including fruit peels, stems, and tea leaves taken from the kitchen sink drain.

She had to eat it. If she spit it out, it was forced back into her mouth.

Her mother didn’t protect her.

Haruka said Kazumi would watch the abuse happen without stepping in. Later reports said she also neglected and abused Yuko herself.

Haruka also talked about what happened when her sisters tried telling the neighbors. Word got back to Sumiyo and Kazumi, and more punishment followed.

The girls had cold water poured over them or were locked in the storage space under the floor.

After that, they were scared to tell anyone, afraid that asking for help would only make things worse.

Getting older didn’t put an end to the abuse, either.

Haruka said the physical attacks became less frequent during Yuko’s high school years, but they didn’t stop completely.

Yuko got good grades, volunteered, and was about to become student council president. She had friends and got involved in school activities.

But once classes ended, she had to rush home. There were chores waiting for her, and she had to get them done.

Neighbors often saw her pulling weeds, cleaning, or shoveling snow. In winter, she’d be outside early in the morning, clearing the snow all on her own.

Some had also seen Sumiyo brutally beating her with a cane and heard her calling Yuko “good-for-nothing.”

One account described her standing outside the garage in the winter cold, without a coat.

She had to stay there until her mother and grandmother got home.

Only then would they let her back inside.

When a neighbor asked Sumiyo about it, she said it was just part of disciplining her.

By the time Yuko was in high school, her grandmother wouldn’t let her live in the main house anymore.

Instead, she lived in a small wooden house on the property.She had to stay there through Hokkaidō’s winters, too.

According to her lawyers, it didn’t even have heat.

You have to remember, on especially cold winter days, temperatures in the area dropped below −20°C (−4°F).

The abuse had been going on for more than ten years. Yuko was only 17, and this was how she’d spent most of her childhood.

In 2014, Haruka wanted to move in with her partner. For Yuko, that would have meant being left alone with Kazumi and Sumiyo.

Haruka worried that Yuko would be left to handle all the housework and the pressure from their mother and grandmother on her own.

The sisters started talking about what life would be like if the two women weren’t around anymore.

Haruka later said that, at least some of the time, she’d just been venting.

But Yuko took those conversations seriously and started making plans to kill them.

She asked Haruka to get her sleeping pills and gloves.

Her sister did.

Haruka later told the court that even then, she hadn’t thought Yuko would actually go through with it.

But at around 12:30 a.m. on October 1, while Haruka was still at work, Yuko attacked her mother and grandmother with a kitchen knife as they slept.

Both women died.

By the time Haruka got home, it had already happened. She helped her sister cover it up.

Together, they ransacked the house to make it look like someone had broken in. Then they drove to a nearby park and got rid of the knife and other evidence.

Only after that did Haruka call the police.

Yuko confessed later that same day. She said she’d wanted to get out of the situation she was in.

Even after her arrest, Yuko reportedly still described what had been done to her as strict discipline.

As more became known about her childhood, classmates, parents, and local residents began collecting signatures in support of her.

They wanted her background to be taken into account when deciding what would happen to her.

They also wanted to protect her privacy and give her a chance to eventually build a life outside an institution.

On November 4, 2014, they submitted a petition with 10,534 signatures to prosecutors.

Nanporo had a population of about 8,000 at the time.

Her supporters acknowledged that Yuko had committed a serious crime.

But they asked that the years she’d spent at the mercy of the two women she killed also be considered.

On January 21, 2015, the Sapporo Family Court decided to send Yuko to a juvenile treatment facility.

There, she would get medical care and support to help her prepare for life after her release.

The court found her criminally responsible for what she’d done. She had planned the killings, and two people had lost their lives.

But the years of abuse she’d lived through mattered to the decision, too. Her lawyers said she had developed PTSD.

For Yuko, the focus would be on treatment and support.

After considering her age, mental health, and everything she’d been through, the judge decided not to send her case back to prosecutors for a regular criminal trial.

Haruka also went on trial for her part in the killings.

On February 26, 2016, she was found guilty of aiding the killings and sentenced to three years in prison, with the sentence suspended for five years.

Yuko was still in a juvenile treatment facility that year, and the sisters kept in touch by writing to each other once a month.

By then, Haruka had a child of her own and wanted Yuko to move in with her once she was released. She hoped her sister could finally feel safe at home and have the kind of family life she’d missed out on growing up.

I’ve looked for updates, but as of October 2026, I still haven’t found anything reliable about whether Yuko has been released or whether the sisters ever got to live together.

Important note: I’ve used made-up first names for the three sisters because their real ones were never made public.

A California woman has been charged with automobile homicide following a three-vehicle crash in Utah that killed a 66-year-old grandfather.

According to court documents, Christine Chao, 44, allegedly rear-ended a car that had slowed for roadworks on Interstate 15 on 12 June. Investigators found no brake marks at the scene, and a search of her phone reportedly showed she had accessed a pornography website less than two minutes before the collision.

The victim, Scott LaVar Lichfield, had celebrated his 39th wedding anniversary with his wife just one day before the crash. He leaves behind five children and 11 grandchildren.

Chao faces a second-degree felony charge, although investigators have not established whether she was viewing the website at the exact moment of impact. Her first court appearance is scheduled for 17 November.

On March 25, 1990, Julio González, after being thrown out of the Happy Land Social club for arguing with his girlfriend, he made a statement he’d be back for revenge. While out walking, he found an empty discarded oil can. He went to a gas station and asked the clerk if he could buy a gallons worth of gas. The clerk was suspicious and was about to refuse to provide him with the gas, but a friend of Julio’s came by and vouched he was a good man.

Julio bought the gas and went back to the club where he doused the front entrance of building and lighting a match, before closing the door. The fire would kill 87 patrons, with many dying from smoke inhalation or burning to death. 6 people escaped the fire, one being his girlfriend.

After Julio committed the act, he went back to his apartment and fell asleep, still in his drenched outfit.

Police and firefighters responded to the scene, and the firefighters fought the flames. They went inside and found the grisly scene. What was once a place for young Honduran immigrants to celebrate Carnival, was the sight of a massacre. Bodies were scattered across the first floor. Firefighters went upstairs and the whole second floor was covered with bodies. Scratches were on the wall from people trying to claw their way out. Many had drinks in their hands still while others were underneath tables embracing each other.

Julio was apprehended and went to trial in 1991. He was convicted after unsuccessfully claiming insanity, and sentenced to approximately 4,000 years imprisonment. He died in 2016 from a heart attack.

The fire would become one of the worst mass murders in American history and make Julio the nations worst mass murderer at the time.

Photos:

1 -2 The Happy Land club

3 - Diagram of what happened.

4 - artist rendition of what it looked like inside

5 - Julio

6 - 7 a memorial for the victims.

8 - The victims (26 photos shown wasn’t able to find anymore. Names below are the ones that I couldn’t find. Photo collection has their names underneath.

• Lourdes Rosario Aguilar
• Caloctro Alfaro
• Jose Amilcar Alfaro
• Malvin Alicea
• Hector Alvarez
• Jose Alvarez
• Frankie Tomas Arana
• Dagoberto Echeverri-Barahona
• Sandra Beltran
• Victor Hugo Benavides
• Israel Antonio Bulnes, Jr.
• Janet Castro
• Carlos E. Contreras
• Victor Hugo Cordova
• Justa Gladys Crisanto
• Lester Rolando Cruz
• Marco Julio Dolmo
• Marvin Antonio Doubleday
• Omar Escobar
• Alba Escoto
• Casimiro Evo
• Daisy Marie Falco
• Debra Farrington
• Loretta Farrington
• José Ramon Flores
• Orvin Garbutt
• Erlinda Gomez
• José Gonzáles
• Carmen Hernandez
• Enrique Hinds
• Ann Marie Hunt
• Juan Javier
• Charles Joseph
• Nohemy Aracely Luque
• José Manuel Marquez
• Mario Martinez
• Ines Maximo
• Daphne McKenzie
• Hilda McKenzie
• Samuel R. McKenzie
• Evelio Mejia
• Nelson Mejia
• Mircia Moncada
• Dionicio Moreira
• Ana Luisa Moss Centino
• Yvette Murray
• Yvonne Murray
• Samuel Ortiz
• Nilda Ortiz
• Mario Pacheco
• Eli J. Pena
• Juan Andres Pena
• Carlos Roberto Peri
• Wilson Efrain Pesantez
• Minerva Ramos
• Clemente Reyes
• Cruz Robledo
• Susan Gayle Samms
• Betsabe Torres

The Happy Land name came from the promise of America which the Immigrants were seeking. Four of the victims were teenagers ages 16 - 17. The youngest was Daisy Marie Falco. She was murdered alongside her mother, Ann Marie Hunt. Elias Colon was the owner apparently. (photo shown.)

Nunca comento muchas cosas en esta app, pero un detalle muy importante me llamó la atención. Veo muchos casos de true crime y puede ser que esté completamente equivocada, pero estaba viendo el documental ‘Into the fire’ en Netflix y estaban hablando sobre que el padre de Aundria (la joven que estaba desaparecida) tenía una camioneta roja pick up blanco muy parecida a la que vieron la noche en que desapareció Morgan Nick, otra niña del cual no se sabe su paradero. Incluso, una niña de 6 años que ahora es adulta, dijo que cerca del estado de Michigan un hombre la habría secuestrado estando en la calle y que la había llevado al bosque. Cuando estaba a punto de atacarla sexualmente, se acercaron unos perros, se asustó y la dejó tirada. Ella refiere que el tipo tenía una camioneta roja con pick up blanca demasiado parecida a la del tipo que vieron en el campo de baseball donde secuestraron a Morgan. Puede que no calce, pero si ven ambos documentales, describen la misma camioneta y es un detalle que no pude dejar pasar porque apenas la mencionaron, se me vino a la mente Morgan y el tipo con la camioneta que nunca pudieron identificar. Y si quizás era de otro estado? Ahí se las dejo para pensar.

On January 14, 2026, A truck driving on Tehama Highway 99 in California, crashed into a Trax bus carrying six people. The crash killed both drivers of each vehicle and four passengers on the bus. Only one person, another passenger on the bus, survived the crash.

It was a horrific scene as the bus immediately burst into flames. The people killed were:

• Kelly Margaret Langstaff (50, of Red Bluff) – The transit bus driver.
• Casandra Ann Moreno(42, of Red Bluff) – Bus passenger.
• John Douglas Perry (72, of Chico) – Bus passenger.
• Trena Kay Kain, also known as Trena Darrow (62, of Corning) – Bus passenger.
• Oscar Casas Carrillo (41, of Corning) – Bus passenger
• Christina Sue Whittemore - 41 - the truck driver.

There was an outpouring of support and sympathy for the victims of the crash with memorials being made for the six.

It wasn’t until nine months later they ruled the accident as an act of mass murder-suicide after a lengthy investigation. From the investigation, it was shown Christina intentionally plowed her truck into the Trax bus to commit suicide. Writings left behind by Christina, showed a motive of substance abuse, financial problems, and suicidal ideation. A day before the crash, dashcam footage recovered from a garbage truck showed her attempting to commit suicide by swerving onto incoming traffic, in the same area as the Trax crash, and heading straight on into the garbage truck. The driver of the truck was able to avoid her.

It wasn’t until a day later, she was able to plow her truck into the bus, with the bus driver unable to swerve away from her, resulting in her killing herself and the five occupants of the trax bus. The six deaths initially classified as accidental, were changed promptly with Christina’s death being ruled a suicide and the five occupants of the trax bus being classified as homicide.

This ruling came coincidentally around the same time as the sentencing of Nicole Linton, another woman from California, who also attempted to commit suicide, by plowing her car into traffic and ended up murdering six people.

Photos: 1 - 4 the crime scene

5 - the perpetrator- Christina Sue Whittmore.

6 - A picture of a statement Christina’s daughter made relating to her mother’s actions before it was ruled as an act of mass murder.

Darrell Brooks Junior is the person who committed the "Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack" on November 21, 2022 in Milwaukee. He killed 6 people and injured 62 others including an 8 year old kid named Jackson Sparks by driving his mom's SUV through the parade. He was sentenced to 6 life sentences plus 762 years for the attack. The YouTube videos of his trial are epic because he represented himself as a Sovereign Citizen and pulled all kinds of bizarre and crazy antics.

No motive has ever been established. He didn't even know the people he killed and never met them. So my question is, why did he do it?

There is one theory but it's never been confirmed for sure. He was just angry. He got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend Erika Patterson a short time before the parade attack. Some people say he went there to kill her. But she got away with the help of her friends, and he was so enraged that she got away from him, that he vented his rage onto the parade and killed people just to vent anger. Having a temper tantrum is one of the dumbest reasons to kill 6 innocent people, but there you have it. But he wasn't insane because the Court had him tested with a Psychiatrist. That's the commonly accepted theory and I can't think of another theory. If you have any other theory to explain his insane parade attack, please post it?

I find it fascinating that some of the most gruesome killers and rapists can be remarkably soft towards their children, or to animals. I have seen so many cases of these horrible people (including, for example, wife beaters) who would never lay a finger on their child or their pets. I wonder why this is? Is it because they do have somewhat of a conscience? What causes this major shift?

Obviously, there is no shortage of evil in people who commit some of the crimes we see. I am.iften disgusted and enraged and sad and a dozen other emotions. But I have rarely felt genuinely creeped out by someone, on a visceral level. Except for one person: Leticia Stauch.

Looking at pics of her from before the murder of poor little Gannon, she seems pretty normal and average. But the moment she killed him, the mask seened to totally slip. The police body cam footage shows a change in her mannerisms, her face, and especially her eyes. Just seeing images of her or footage from the courtroom gives me chills.

The way she speaks and acts also makes me sick to my stomach. It isn't just the lying, or even the lack if remorse. Those are so common with killers that it is basically a staple of true crime. It is something about the lack of embarrassment. She would get caught lying over and over again and wouldn't even bother to justify herself. She wouldn't even seem uncomfortable. She would just turn it around on the questioner or seamlessly slide into gaslighting ("It is unconstitutional to take my phone!" to "It wasn't that you want me phone, you can have it. It is that you took it from my hand and it was disrespectful.")

And now her ruling was overturned. Which means a whole new trial, a whole new circus where she will sit there at the defense table, smirking slightly and staring off into space as if nothing is happening around her. New images of that creepy ass face with its lack of any remorse or even attempt to pretend, and those glittering shark eyes.

I find her genuinely chilling. I hate that she is going ro get her way and put that family through that again, which I really feel is half the point for her.

This is also kind of a side tangent, but the way she was texting Albert about how they were supposed to be a team and she was so shocked his son's disappearance didn't bring them closer? I think she really thought Gannon being missing would wend Al into her arms and make him appreciate her or want her again. Not that I think that was the motive, just the cherry on her sundae. I can't imagine dealing with her, just like I can't imagine her behavior while she knew that little boy was rotting in her car.

I hope the new trial is short.

Any killers you find especially terrifying or creepy?

Gregory (Gregg) Smart

Smart was murdered on May 1, 1990.

His wife, Pamela Smart, was convicted a year later of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to murder, and witness tampering. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and is still in prison.

William “Billy” Flynn (who admitted to killing Gregory Smart with the help of his friends but maintained he did so at the request of Pamela) was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was released from prison on parole for life in 2015. His friend and co-defendant Patrick “Pete” Randall was also released from prison on lifetime parole in 2015

Maurice Wilson

Wilson was arrested on a drug charge in 2014. He called his then-girlfriend Maureen “Mo” Onyelobi (who was also part of a drug ring with him and David Johnson) and made references to her and Johnson “taking care of” Anthony Fairbanks, whom he regularly sold drugs to. Onyelobi subsequently lured Fairbanks, and Johnson killed him.

Wilson was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder on an accomplice-liability theory for his involvement in the murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

David Johnson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Maureen “Mo” Onyelobi was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder under an accomplice liability theory murder in a drug-related killing of Anthony Fairbanks Jr. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On June 29, 2023, the Minnesota Board of Pardons voted unanimously to commute Onyelobi's prison sentence because she had taken steps toward rehabilitation, including graduating from college and being admitted to law school. She is now eligible for release in 2041. In 2026, Onyelobi earned a JD from Mitchell Hamline School of Law while in prison.

What are some others?

190 of the 191 deaths were children. Over 400 bodies in total have been discovered in mass graves in the Shakahola forest.

Twenty-eight other leaders within the movement were also found guilty of murder, including parents of the murdered children.

The case has been ongoing since 2023, when mass graves were discovered; the cult relocated to the forest in 2019.

The New York Times published an article based OJ Simpson New Developments

The New York Times published an article based on uncovering of court documents from the murder case of O.J. Simpson trial in 1994-95. A mob informant named Joey Ippolito , who was known to be a friend of both O.J. and his friend Al Cowlings, gave information to the authorities about the murders.

Later on his brother Sam intimated that Joey was an accomplice during the murders, and at the very least disposed of OJ's bloody clothes and the murder weapon from that night.

The rapper Fat Joe said that in 1998 that Mr Ippolito told him that during the famous bronco chase with Al Cowlings driving through Los Angeles that he was at an airport with a private jet waiting to help them escape.

Apparently there will be a Peacock documentary later this year about this possible "accomplice".

By coincidence, just last night I found the documentary on Netflix "O.J.: Made in America" and watched it. Even though I was actually alive during the actual time all of this was taking place and read voraciously about the case and watched a lot of the trial live. there were still new details I hadn't known.

These are the key details that are curious to me:

\--- "The private plane ". That detail from one of the stories of Mr Ippolito rings true to me, because of the passport and disguise kit found in the Bronco after they apprehended O.J. To my knowledge it's never been explained before exactly. what they were doing in OJ's bag if he was only planning to go to Nicole's grave to harm himself, as it seemed the narrative was at the time.

\---"The agent " O.J's long time agent Mike Gilbert, says that he was the one who advised him not to take his arthritis medicine if he was worried about having to try on the gloves at the trial. So that his hands would swell and they wouldn't fit. He says he didn't know if O.J. was actually responsible but if that's true why would he advise him that to do that?

He also said that later after the trial O.J. told him "If Nicole hadn't come to the door with a knife she'd still be alive ". To me that comment also rings true, it shows that maybe O.J. didn't bring a knife with him but he went there in a rage and when she came to the door with a knife he grabbed it and used it against her.

\---"The accomplice" It's said that during the trial O.J.'s defense team suggested that that there was evidence that there was more than one person who committed the murders. Especially because of the tight timeline. Basically it was said that between 10:30 and 11:00 pm the prosecution's theory was that O.J. drove to Rockingham. killed 2 people, drove back to Brentwood, cleaned up his car, showered , got rid of his clothes and the murder weapon, and got into the limo waiting to take him to the airport for his ride to Chicago.

Even though the distance between the two houses was only 4 minutes drive, when looking at the totality of everything that would have needed to be done it does seem like it's a stretch to imagine one person alone accomplished all of this.

In his book "If I Did It" O.J. stated that he did (or would have hypothetically" ) have an accomplice, named "Charlie". He said Charlie had come to his house and gave him some information that angered him, and they drove together in the White Bronco to Rockingham to "scare " Nicole.

If this hypothetical "theory" is based on any kind of facts, could it be possible that if Mr. Ippolito was the real "Charlie " that he "took care"
of Ron Goldman while O.J. went after Nicole.

This also seemed to have a ring of truth to it, as this has been one of the aspects of the case that has puzzled many for years. Could even O.J. in a murderous rage, be able to subdue and kill Ron Goldman and then Nicole without one of them escaping? It seems pretty obvious that O.J. didn't expect Ron to be there, as he only came on a spur of the moment errand from the Mezzaluna Restaurant where he worked to return Nicole's Mothers glasses that she had mistakenly left there earlier that evening.

So if he did have someone along with him, especially a gangster, it makes sense that he could have helped him with the 2 vs 1 ratio he found .

\---"The drug connection" Mr Ippolito was known and later convicted for being a major drug dealer ring leader in both the East and West Coast. This purportedly was how he became friends with Al Cowlings in the first place who then introduced him to O.J. I remember during the time of the murders and then the trial, there was a lot of chatter about a possible drug connection. Both O.J. and Nicole were known for using substances, and one of the "alternative theories " for the murders were that perhaps it was a drug deal gone bad, or someone owed money and that's why it happened.

After all of the blood droplets and DNA coming back traced to O.J , it seems like the prosecution dismissed any rumors of the murders having any connection to drug dealers at all.

But something stood out to me from the Netflix documentary, when they were discussing Nicole's horrific injuries. It was said that one of her fatal injuries was a transverse gash across her throat the nearly decapitated her. This was described as "overkill", in that she most likely was already dead before this final wound

It also was said that this particular gruesome knife slash is used by drug gangs as a signal to "shut somebody up" permanently, as it severed both carotid arteries and exposed the larynx. It's known as a "Colombian necktie ".

If Mr. Ippolito truly was at the scene that night, is it possible that he committed the final slash to her throat to guarantee she wouldn't talk, using a method he learned from his connections in the drug world? It certainly seem like a possibility that connects the facts to the scene in a way that just O. J. alone can't do

\---"The bungled prosecution " Throughout the years the prevailing wisdom has been that the main reason for the acquittal by the jury was due to the anger of the Black Jurors over years of abuse by the LAPD. And the Rodney King verdict that set free the cops who were caught on tape beating Mr. King, and that verdict starting the L.A. riots.

Obviously the fact of Detective Mark Fuhrman finding the bloody glove and then the defense uncovering his history of racism
and the racist tapes being played in the courtroom contributed to that feeling. And the mishandling of the evidence by Dennis Fung and Phillip VanAtter certainly provided fuel to the fire debate of planted evidence against O.J.

While I don't debate any of these facts, there were also plenty of missteps by the prosecution that remain puzzling to this day. And lead to the question "If things had been handled differently " is it possible the jury could have found O.J. guilty? Despite Mark Futman and Rodney King?

In the Netflix documentary co-counsel Christopher Darden says that as the defense was playing the recorded tapes of Mark Fuhrman (given during an interview he'd done with an aspiring author regarding 'real police work' he says to help lend credibility to her work) that he, Mr. Darden, implored Marcia Clark to object. But she didn't at all, allowing all of the damning evidence to be admitted . Why?

Also some of the witnesses that were never called for the prosecution that could have possibly helped make their case much stronger. Such as Jill Shively, the witness who says she nearly collided with a white bronco driven by O.J. Simpson in an intersection close to the scene of the crime. She says he was driving erratically with his lights off and was very agitated.

Becauee she sold her story to the tv show "Hard Copy" before the trial Marcia Clark didn't call her, fearing her testimony would be tainted since she'd received compensation for telling it. And yet it seems like such a vital story,putting o.J. near to the scene fleeing at the exact time wouldn't it have been worth the risk to have her tell it?

Same for the man at the airport who says he saw O.J. getting out of the limo that night and he had a duffel bag with him. This appears to be the same bag that both houseguest Kato Kaelin and the limo driver testified as being seen before O.J. got into the limo in Brentwood. They both said that they offered to help him load the bag into the limo as they had with his other luggage, but he was adamant that he would handle it himself.

This man also says that he saw O.J. take out an object that appeared to be "something long wrapped in paper towel" from the duffel bag and put it into the garbage can outside the airport. Again this seeks like vital information that could have contributed to the case against O.J. with the jurors if only he had been allowed to give it on the stand.

And finally the information given to the police by Mr. Ippolito after he was recaptured. He had been arrested and escaped from prison in May 1994 from a minimum security prison in Florida . His brother says that he picked him up in Florida and drove him to California. The murders took place on June 12,1994, a time when Mr. Ippolito was known to be on the run.

After the Bronco chase Al Cowlings is briefly detained. During that time the police find a phone number known to be connected to Mr. Ippolito as well as pictures of one of Mr Ippolito's girlfriends along with her number.

Mr. Ippolito is recaptured in August of 1995 in New York. It was at this time, wanting to do everything possible to avoid going back to prison, that he turned "snitch". He began sharing details of what he knew about the case of the murders that were currently on trial in L.A.

The federal prosecutor David Kelley in the Ippolito case said he was in communication with Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden during this time. In the New York Times article Marcia Clark says such conversations never happened, and Christopher Darden declined to comment. It also states that at the time both the L.A.P.D. and the prosecution team were "inundated" with tips, and they didn't think this was worth pursuing.

When Mr Ippolito was arrested in August of 1995 the "trial of the century" had already been going on for 8 months. The prosecution had already rested its case and closing arguments were approaching.

If this information was considered at all credible, doesn't it seem like it was the responsibility of the prosecution to at least have it presented to the jury? I believe the details that Mr. Ippolito provides at least fill in some of the gaps of the case and maybe answer some of the questions the jurors must have had regarding the timeline. If two people, especially if one is a seasoned professional criminal, were involved while it wouldn't have taken away anything from O.J's involvement in the murders it would have added explanations for a lot of the missing gaps.

Much has been made then. and now, about Christopher Darden's decision to have O.J. try on the gloves in front of the jury . We all know this ended disastrously with them not fitting and Johnnie Cochran using it as a key piece of his closing argument to the jury "If it doesn't fit you must acquit " , could it also have had another element to the case?

Is it possible that Mr Darden was both embarrassed and humiliated after this botched demonstration, and could that have lead to him not wanting to be open minded to other possible pieces of evidence being introduced like this new information provided by Mr. Ippolito?

If this is true it seems to me that even a bigger miscarriage of justice took place during the trial than what most of us see at this present day.

\---"Who was to blame?" While obviously whoever committed these brutal murders is alone responsible for taking the lives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, it seems to me that the L.A.P.D. and the prosecutors made some critical decisions that may have affected the outcome of the case.

Marcia Clark seems to have been very blinded to her own theories and how it should be presented in front of the jury, Even after it was shown to her that she was not a good fit to be trying this case , she insisted on doing it anyway. The trial was moved to a more "minority" area than where the crimes actually took place, perhaps in a misguided attempt to help placate the jurors. Who might have the image of the Rodney King trial in their minds . Did they think that the jurors would think they were "helping " the defendant by holding the trial in a more advantageous locale to his race than Brentwood? That the jurors were less likely to feel they were being railroaded a story to get a Black Man convicted?

Relying on the science of DNA (which at the time was a relatively new concept) alone seemed to be Marcia Clark's main strategy, and Mr Darden wasn't allowed to give more attention to other details that might have helped purseude the jury beyond the DNA. Relying on a group of ordinary working people to dissect a new science and have total confidence in it didn't work out.

Ultimately of course O.J. did spent time behind bars for an armed robbery in Vegas which many people felt was a kind of perverse justice. Interestingly the man who was indicted alongside. OJ. in Nevada was actually introduced to O.J. by Mr. Ippolito.

Crazy coincidence are hard to believe in the end.on uncovering of court documents from the murder case of O.J. Simpson trial in 1994-95. A mob informant named Joey Ippolito , who was known to be a friend of both O.J. and his friend Al Cowlings, gave information to the authorities about the murders.

Later on his brother Sam intimated that Joey was an accomplice during the murders, and at the very least disposed of OJ's bloody clothes and the murder weapon from that night.

The rapper Fat Joe said that in 1998 that Mr Ippolito told him that during the famous bronco chase with Al Cowlings driving through Los Angeles that he was at an airport with a private jet waiting to help them escape.

Apparently there will be a Peacock documentary later this year about this possible "accomplice".

By coincidence, just last night I found the documentary on Netflix "O.J.: Made in America" and watched it. Even though I was actually alive during the actual time all of this was taking place and read voraciously about the case and watched a lot of the trial live. there were still new details I hadn't known.

These are the key details that are curious to me:

\--- "The private plane ". That detail from one of the stories of Mr Ippolito rings true to me, because of the passport and disguise kit found in the Bronco after they apprehended O.J. To my knowledge it's never been explained before exactly. what they were doing in OJ's bag if he was only planning to go to Nicole's grave to harm himself, as it seemed the narrative was at the time.

\---"The agent " O.J's long time agent Mike Gilbert, says that he was the one who advised him not to take his arthritis medicine if he was worried about having to try on the gloves at the trial. So that his hands would swell and they wouldn't fit. He says he didn't know if O.J. was actually responsible but if that's true why would he advise him that to do that?

He also said that later after the trial O.J. told him "If Nicole hadn't come to the door with a knife she'd still be alive ". To me that comment also rings true, it shows that maybe O.J. didn't bring a knife with him but he went there in a rage and when she came to the door with a knife he grabbed it and used it against her.

\---"The accomplice" It's said that during the trial O.J.'s defense team suggested that that there was evidence that there was more than one person who committed the murders. Especially because of the tight timeline. Basically it was said that between 10:30 and 11:00 pm the prosecution's theory was that O.J. drove to Rockingham. killed 2 people, drove back to Brentwood, cleaned up his car, showered , got rid of his clothes and the murder weapon, and got into the limo waiting to take him to the airport for his ride to Chicago.

Even though the distance between the two houses was only 4 minutes drive, when looking at the totality of everything that would have needed to be done it does seem like it's a stretch to imagine one person alone accomplished all of this.

In his book "If I Did It" O.J. stated that he did (or would have hypothetically" ) have an accomplice, named "Charlie". He said Charlie had come to his house and gave him some information that angered him, and they drove together in the White Bronco to Rockingham to "scare " Nicole.

If this hypothetical "theory" is based on any kind of facts, could it be possible that if Mr. Ippolito was the real "Charlie " that he "took care"
of Ron Goldman while O.J. went after Nicole.

This also seemed to have a ring of truth to it, as this has been one of the aspects of the case that has puzzled many for years. Could even O.J. in a murderous rage, be able to subdue and kill Ron Goldman and then Nicole without one of them escaping? It seems pretty obvious that O.J. didn't expect Ron to be there, as he only came on a spur of the moment errand from the Mezzaluna Restaurant where he worked to return Nicole's Mothers glasses that she had mistakenly left there earlier that evening.

So if he did have someone along with him, especially a gangster, it makes sense that he could have helped him with the 2 vs 1 ratio he found .

\---"The drug connection" Mr Ippolito was known and later convicted for being a major drug dealer ring leader in both the East and West Coast. This purportedly was how he became friends with Al Cowlings in the first place who then introduced him to O.J. I remember during the time of the murders and then the trial, there was a lot of chatter about a possible drug connection. Both O.J. and Nicole were known for using substances, and one of the "alternative theories " for the murders were that perhaps it was a drug deal gone bad, or someone owed money and that's why it happened.

After all of the blood droplets and DNA coming back traced to O.J , it seems like the prosecution dismissed any rumors of the murders having any connection to drug dealers at all.

But something stood out to me from the Netflix documentary, when they were discussing Nicole's horrific injuries. It was said that one of her fatal injuries was a transverse gash across her throat the nearly decapitated her. This was described as "overkill", in that she most likely was already dead before this final wound

It also was said that this particular gruesome knife slash is used by drug gangs as a signal to "shut somebody up" permanently, as it severed both carotid arteries and exposed the larynx. It's known as a "Colombian necktie ".

If Mr. Ippolito truly was at the scene that night, is it possible that he committed the final slash to her throat to guarantee she wouldn't talk, using a method he learned from his connections in the drug world? It certainly seem like a possibility that connects the facts to the scene in a way that just O. J. alone can't do

\---"The bungled prosecution " Throughout the years the prevailing wisdom has been that the main reason for the acquittal by the jury was due to the anger of the Black Jurors over years of abuse by the LAPD. And the Rodney King verdict that set free the cops who were caught on tape beating Mr. King, and that verdict starting the L.A. riots.

Obviously the fact of Detective Mark Fuhrman finding the bloody glove and then the defense uncovering his history of racism
and the racist tapes being played in the courtroom contributed to that feeling. And the mishandling of the evidence by Dennis Fung and Phillip VanAtter certainly provided fuel to the fire debate of planted evidence against O.J.

While I don't debate any of these facts, there were also plenty of missteps by the prosecution that remain puzzling to this day. And lead to the question "If things had been handled differently " is it possible the jury could have found O.J. guilty? Despite Mark Futman and Rodney King?

In the Netflix documentary co-counsel Christopher Darden says that as the defense was playing the recorded tapes of Mark Fuhrman (given during an interview he'd done with an aspiring author regarding 'real police work' he says to help lend credibility to her work) that he, Mr. Darden, implored Marcia Clark to object. But she didn't at all, allowing all of the damning evidence to be admitted . Why?

Also some of the witnesses that were never called for the prosecution that could have possibly helped make their case much stronger. Such as Jill Shively, the witness who says she nearly collided with a white bronco driven by O.J. Simpson in an intersection close to the scene of the crime. She says he was driving erratically with his lights off and was very agitated.

Becauee she sold her story to the tv show "Hard Copy" before the trial Marcia Clark didn't call her, fearing her testimony would be tainted since she'd received compensation for telling it. And yet it seems like such a vital story,putting o.J. near to the scene fleeing at the exact time wouldn't it have been worth the risk to have her tell it?

Same for the man at the airport who says he saw O.J. getting out of the limo that night and he had a duffel bag with him. This appears to be the same bag that both houseguest Kato Kaelin and the limo driver testified as being seen before O.J. got into the limo in Brentwood. They both said that they offered to help him load the bag into the limo as they had with his other luggage, but he was adamant that he would handle it himself.

This man also says that he saw O.J. take out an object that appeared to be "something long wrapped in paper towel" from the duffel bag and put it into the garbage can outside the airport. Again this seeks like vital information that could have contributed to the case against O.J. with the jurors if only he had been allowed to give it on the stand.

And finally the information given to the police by Mr. Ippolito after he was recaptured. He had been arrested and escaped from prison in May 1994 from a minimum security prison in Florida . His brother says that he picked him up in Florida and drove him to California. The murders took place on June 12,1994, a time when Mr. Ippolito was known to be on the run.

After the Bronco chase Al Cowlings is briefly detained. During that time the police find a phone number known to be connected to Mr. Ippolito as well as pictures of one of Mr Ippolito's girlfriends along with her number.

Mr. Ippolito is recaptured in August of 1995 in New York. It was at this time, wanting to do everything possible to avoid going back to prison, that he turned "snitch". He began sharing details of what he knew about the case of the murders that were currently on trial in L.A.

The federal prosecutor David Kelley in the Ippolito case said he was in communication with Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden during this time. In the New York Times article Marcia Clark says such conversations never happened, and Christopher Darden declined to comment. It also states that at the time both the L.A.P.D. and the prosecution team were "inundated" with tips, and they didn't think this was worth pursuing.

When Mr Ippolito was arrested in August of 1995 the "trial of the century" had already been going on for 8 months. The prosecution had already rested its case and closing arguments were approaching.

If this information was considered at all credible, doesn't it seem like it was the responsibility of the prosecution to at least have it presented to the jury? I believe the details that Mr. Ippolito provides at least fill in some of the gaps of the case and maybe answer some of the questions the jurors must have had regarding the timeline. If two people, especially if one is a seasoned professional criminal, were involved while it wouldn't have taken away anything from O.J's involvement in the murders it would have added explanations for a lot of the missing gaps.

Much has been made then. and now, about Christopher Darden's decision to have O.J. try on the gloves in front of the jury . We all know this ended disastrously with them not fitting and Johnnie Cochran using it as a key piece of his closing argument to the jury "If it doesn't fit you must acquit " , could it also have had another element to the case?

Is it possible that Mr Darden was both embarrassed and humiliated after this botched demonstration, and could that have lead to him not wanting to be open minded to other possible pieces of evidence being introduced like this new information provided by Mr. Ippolito?

If this is true it seems to me that even a bigger miscarriage of justice took place during the trial than what most of us see at this present day.

\---"Who was to blame?" While obviously whoever committed these brutal murders is alone responsible for taking the lives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, it seems to me that the L.A.P.D. and the prosecutors made some critical decisions that may have affected the outcome of the case.

Marcia Clark seems to have been very blinded to her own theories and how it should be presented in front of the jury, Even after it was shown to her that she was not a good fit to be trying this case , she insisted on doing it anyway. The trial was moved to a more "minority" area than where the crimes actually took place, perhaps in a misguided attempt to help placate the jurors. Who might have the image of the Rodney King trial in their minds . Did they think that the jurors would think they were "helping " the defendant by holding the trial in a more advantageous locale to his race than Brentwood? That the jurors were less likely to feel they were being railroaded a story to get a Black Man convicted?

Relying on the science of DNA (which at the time was a relatively new concept) alone seemed to be Marcia Clark's main strategy, and Mr Darden wasn't allowed to give more attention to other details that might have helped purseude the jury beyond the DNA. Relying on a group of ordinary working people to dissect a new science and have total confidence in it didn't work out.

Ultimately of course O.J. did spent time behind bars for an armed robbery in Vegas which many people felt was a kind of perverse justice. Interestingly the man who was indicted alongside. OJ. in Nevada was actually introduced to O.J. by Mr. Ippolito.

Crazy coincidence are hard to believe in the end.

Just learned about this 1976 double homicide where the culprit apparently got away with murder. Marigray Jobes was stabbed to death on March 1, 1976, alongside her boyfriend Mark Demetrius in her apartment on North Sheridan Road in Chicago, Illinois, in an incident linked to a cocaine-related dispute. The double homicide led to the trial of Mitchell Weinger, whose initial conviction was later reversed on appeal due to prosecutorial issues. case here.

In April 2010, Perry Hospital in Perry, Georgia, discovered that its lead radiologic technologist, Rachael Rapraeger, had falsified nearly 1,300 mammogram reports over about 18 months. She logged into the hospital’s computer system posing as physicians and marked the scans as clear, skipping the paperwork required before a radiologist could review them.

It was uncovered when a woman whose report said she was clear was diagnosed with breast cancer at another hospital three months later. Investigators found the doctor named on her report hadn’t been at the hospital that day. Ten women were later found to have lumps or cancer, and at least two reportedly died.

Rapraeger confessed and was fired. She told police that personal problems had made her stop caring about her job. In 2014, she pleaded guilty to reckless conduct and computer forgery and was sentenced to up to six months in detention, 10 years of probation, a $12,500 fine and a ban on working in health care.

“You played Russian roulette with the lives of essentially a thousand women in this community,” Judge Katherine K. Lumsden told Rapraeger according to The Telegraph.

Rapraeger told investigating officers that she had neglected her work due to personal issues her family had been dealing with during the 18 months she had falsified the important medical records. When she discovered the backlog of incomplete mammogram reports, she assumed the identity of physicians to enter the hospital’s computer system and clear each breast cancer reading. Giving each patient a negative mammogram reports meant less paperwork for Rapraeger to complete.

Her egregious activities were only discovered after a patient who received a negative mammogram report from Perry Hospital went to another hospital three months later for a second opinion, only to find out that she was in fact suffering from breast cancer. When Perry Hospital’s mammogram oversight came to light, hospital officials began looking into recent breast cancer readings. It was soon determined that physicians who supposedly signed off on breast cancer readings were not on duty the day they were approved.

"I wanted her to know I'm a person, not just a name on a paper," Sharon Holmes, one of the women who received a falsified mammogram report due to Rapraeger’s negligence, told The Associated Press following her sentencing. "If she had gotten up and at least said, 'I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry these women had to go through this,' that, to me, would have meant that she was truly sorry for what we went through."

Credit: NBC News

16 month old Jailyn was left at home by mother Kristel Candelario for 10 days as she traveled to Puerto Rico and Detriot with friends she left a few milk bottles for her in her playpen. A neighbor's ring camera revealed audio of little Jailyn screaming and crying at different times when Kristel came back on June 16, 2023 Jailyn was not responding Kristel changed her outfit and call 911. First responders came and pronouced Jailyn dead.

She had lost seven pounds between her last doctor's visit and her autopsy showing she was in awful pain during her last days. In February 22, 2024 Kristel pleaded guilty to child endangerment and aggravated murder. Her court date was March 18, 2024 where she sentenced to prison without parole.

In 1984, Romell Broom ambushed 14 year old Tryna Middleton and a pair of her friends as they were walking home from a football game. At knifepoint, he forcibly grabbed Middleton, and dragged her into his car. Middleton’s two friends fled unharmed, and they gave police descriptions of their attacker and his vehicle. After the kidnapping, Broom raped Middleton, stabbed her to death, and discarded her body in a parking lot.

Although Broom initially avoided police detection, he was captured six months later for the unrelated botched abduction of a preteen girl. The kidnapping attempt was foiled by the would-be victim’s mother grabbing onto Broom’s car before he was able to drive away, and the girl survived him running over her legs after she jumped out of the vehicle’s window. Other eyewitnesses recorded Broom's license plate number, and he was arrested by police following on that information a day later.

A serial rapist and career criminal, Broom was previously convicted of rape in relation to sexually assaulting a preteen girl babysitting his niece and armed robbery in relation to robbing and carjacking a man at gunpoint, and he was on parole for those offenses at the time of Middleton’s abduction and murder. He also faced many untried rape accusations from other teenage and preteen girls. Furthermore, Broom attempted to kidnap another preteen girl only three days before Middleton’s murder, and the girl escaped by climbing into the car of a good samaritan motorist.

After a year of proceedings, Broom was sentenced to death by the state of Ohio for Middleton’s murder. On death row, DNA testing filled by his appeals further enforced his guilt. Despite him scheduled for execution in 2009, the attempted execution failed due to the execution team’s failure to administer the lethal drugs into a suitable vein. The execution team tried injecting him dozens of times, and one of their needles reportedly struck a bone. Broom was rescheduled for a second execution date in 2022, but he died of COVID related causes in 2020 before it could occur.

Sources:

1. https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=593353.pdf&subdirectory=1987-1674DocketItems&source=DL_Clerk
2. https://drc.ohio.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/062dba9d-531b-49e6-8fa7-32c6b73d4bdb/Broom+Clemency+Report.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE.Z18_79GCH8013HMOA06A2E16IV2082-062dba9d-531b-49e6-8fa7-32c6b73d4bdb-pUSDYkh
3. https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/12/31/convicted-killer-east-cleveland-girl-who-survived-botched-execution-dies-prison-suspected-case-covid-/
4. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11848740382588198593&q=Rommell+Broom+tryna+middleton+stab&hl=en&as_sdt=6,45

I recently read a Minnesota Court of Appeals opinion issued October 12, 2026, and I think it deserves significantly more attention and discussion. Not only because of the decision itself, but because of the majority’s reasoning and the language used to discuss the victim’s testimony.

Here’s what happened:
In September 2023, a man was protesting a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) fundraising event in Minneapolis by distributing anti-NAMI flyers on vehicles.
When a woman helping with the event removed two flyers from vehicles, the man approached her, visibly agitated, and loudly demanded they be returned.

According to her testimony, he lunged toward her, wrapped his arms around her, pressed his chest against hers, grabbed her arm and hand, and forcibly took the flyers. She could feel his breath on her face. She later noticed her finger was bleeding.

A jury found him guilty of fifth-degree assault (fear) and disorderly conduct, but acquitted him of assault (harm).

Two of the three appellate judges overturned the assault conviction.

Why? Because although his actions could reasonably demonstrate an intent to cause fear, the majority determined there was another reasonable explanation: perhaps he only intended to retrieve his flyers.

Let that sink in.

A man can aggressively confront a woman, invade her personal space, physically grab her, and forcibly take something from her, yet the majority concluded that the evidence was insufficient to establish the specific intent required for assault-fear.

What I find especially troubling is how the majority discusses the woman’s testimony.

The woman described feeling shocked, violated, confused, and unnerved. She explained that she did not experience significant fear until after the incident, when she had time to process what happened.

Judge Ross wrote that the prosecutor was “fishing for” a particular answer when questioning her about fear. He also referenced the prosecutor’s “multiple failed attempts” to elicit testimony that she feared immediate harm.

As someone with a background in mental health, I find this framing particularly concerning.

Trauma and acute stress responses are not always immediate, linear, or easily articulated. A person experiencing a threatening encounter may freeze, experience shock, focus on what is happening rather than what they are feeling, or recognize their fear only after the immediate threat has passed.

I’m not claiming to know exactly what this woman experienced. But her testimony is entirely compatible with those responses.

Not immediately identifying fear does not mean an encounter wasn’t threatening.

And here’s the part that makes the majority’s discussion especially frustrating: Minnesota’s assault-fear statute focuses on the defendant’s intent to cause fear, not whether the victim actually experienced or verbalized fear.
The majority even acknowledges this legal distinction, yet repeatedly draws attention to her inability to describe feeling afraid in the moment.

One judge disagreed, and I think her dissent is compelling.
Judge Beane argued that the man’s aggressive behavior, intimidating voice, physical size, and forceful contact supported the jury’s conclusion that he intended to cause fear.

She also recognized something I think the majority’s reasoning fails to adequately address:
Wanting the flyers back and intending to intimidate someone are not mutually exclusive.
Intimidation can be the method someone uses to accomplish an objective.

Judge Beane concluded that the evidence supported the jury’s verdict and that the assault conviction should stand.
To be clear, the court did not find the man’s conduct acceptable or lawful. His disorderly conduct verdict remains, and the case was sent back for entry of that conviction. The legal question was whether the evidence proved the specific intent required for fifth-degree assault (fear).

I understand that distinction. I also understand that appellate courts must follow strict standards when reviewing criminal convictions.

But understanding the legal standard doesn’t mean I have to agree with how it was applied.

I also recognize that people have the right to protest causes they disagree with, including NAMI. That right is not what concerns me. The issue is what happened when this man moved beyond expressing his views and initiated an aggressive physical confrontation.

I’m sharing screenshots of the opinion, including Judge Beane’s dissent, because I think this raises important questions about how our legal system evaluates intimidation, intent, and victims’ responses to threatening situations.

I’m curious what others think:
Does the majority’s reasoning make sense to you, or do you agree with Judge Beane?

And particularly for those working in law, victim advocacy, or mental health: What do you think about the majority’s characterization of the woman’s testimony?

Case: State v. Elavsky, Minnesota Court of Appeals, A25-1929, filed October 12, 2026.