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Police continue to search for one of two men who escaped from the Whitley County Detention Center early Sunday morning.
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Jail officials say Jessie Terry, 37, and Ronald Tracey Sisk, 44, were working in the kitchen around 5:15 a.m. when their supervisor stepped away. The two men forced a secure door open and escaped.
Officials say Sisk was caught around 5 p.m. Sunday. Terry remains on the loose.
BOLINGBROOK — Some fashion fans might argue, but Joliet Police Officer Jeff Fornoff believes there’s such a thing as too many purses.
After Joliet detectives and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized designer counterfeits from a flea market Sunday, the evidence officer had to decide where to store 12 vanloads of bogus bags.
“It’s a lot. I haven’t been able to total up everything as it’s come in,” Fornoff said Sunday afternoon as officers stacked storage boxes on carts and handtrucks at the auxiliary evidence vault behind city hall.
http://liarcatchers.com/fraud_investigation.html
Detective Sgt. Darrell Gavin said police were contacted by Edward R. Kirby & Associates, a private investigations firm, after manufacturers received complaints about the shoddy quality of some merchandise. The Elmhurst company handles copyright protection for various designers.
“This long-term investigation learned the items were being sold at Montana Charlie’s Flea Market on Route 53,” Gavin said.
On Sunday morning, undercover detectives and private investigators went to the flea market to pinpoint which booths were selling counterfeit items. Joliet detectives, ICE agents and Bolingbrook officers raided the market at 10:45 a.m. and took nine people into custody.
In addition to $4,000, police found phony purses that appeared to be made by Michael Kors, Dolce and Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Ed Hardy, Jimmy Choo, Coach, Chanel and Burberry.
Police took 10 vehicles belonging to suspects that were impounded and had allegedly contained purses. Other boxes were loaded into three police vehicles.
Police also seized some counterfeit sunglasses and “sports jerseys for every major team”, as well as designer emblems that could be put on other unmarked knockoffs, Gavin said.
Shaojian Zhu, 41, of Woodridge; Roberto Diaz, 63, of Plainfield; Victor Melo, 48, of Chicago; Li Fen Li, 60, of Vernon Hills; Dongmei Pan, 41, of Bolingbrook; Brian Savage, 40, of Oak Forest; Peter Lee, 78, of Naperville; Shifu Dong, 52, of Downers Grove, and Zhihua Li, 44, of Bolingbrook, were arrested on charges of violating the counterfeit trademark act.
On 8-11-12, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Deputies took a report of a missing adult from Cambria. 79 year old Robert Bruce Bell was last seen leaving his house at 1541 Stuart Street in Cambria to walk his chocolate Labrador Retriever dog “Kiki.” Bell suffers from dementia and Parkinson’s disease. He was last seen wearing a white hat with a full brim, brown plaid jacket, black t-shirt and black shorts.
The Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Team, Sheriff’s deputies, a Sheriff’s K-9 unit, and State Parks Rangers are involved in the search.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
The Sheriff’s Office conducted a reverse 911 call to residents who live in the Lodge Hill area to be on the lookout for Bell.
The Sheriff’s Office asks that anyone locating Bell contact the Sheriff’s Dispatch at (805) 781-4550 immediately so he can be contacted by law enforcement.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma is largely complying with federal mental health record-sharing standards regarding people prohibited from owning a firearm, but there are barriers that keep the state from releasing some information, a state official said.
The state meets record-sharing standards in nine of 10 categories of people barred from owning guns, but it will take legislative action to circumvent a state law that doesn’t allow the release of mental health records, she told The Oklahoman (http://bit.ly/QUy4ti) for Sunday’s editions.
http://liarcatchers.com/background_checks.html
“There’s a need to make sure that Department of Mental Health can transfer information to the courts,” Fudge said. “And then there’s the issue of the courts. … They don’t have an integrated court management system. So we have several areas of blockage, and we’re trying to address those barriers and move forward.”
Last month, federal prosecutors charged a Woodward teenager who had been committed to a mental institution with unlawful possession of firearms and making false statements with respect to purchase of firearms after he bought a shotgun and a rifle from a licensed dealer.
A taxi driver told authorities the teen asked him questions about how to hide bodies and avoid extradition before and after the deadly movie theater shootings in Colorado.
Federal and state law prohibits the sale of firearms to people who have been adjudicated by a court as mentally incompetent. The teen self-reported his mental health history on a paper form, where he allegedly lied.
According to a 2011 report by the gun control advocacy group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Oklahoma lags behind other states in supplying mental health records to the national database used for these types of background checks. Though federal law attempts to motivate states to submit these records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), Oklahoma has only sent three mental health records since 2009, the group reported.
Although the state Mental Health and Substance Abuse Department maintains a records database of individuals who have been involuntarily committed to a state hospital, it doesn’t include private hospital records and is only accessible by law enforcement during background checks for concealed carry permit applications.
Federal checks on gun buyers are conducted at the point of purchase by a clerk who runs application information by a NICS operator via telephone.
“It’s basically an honor system, and we don’t have any way of making sure that information is correct or not,” said Mike Blackwell, owner of Big Boy’s Guns & Ammo in Oklahoma City.
Jeff Dismukes, spokesman for the mental health department, said a multiagency task force is working to compile records for the federal database. Oklahoma remains in compliance with federal recommendations because the recommendation was for an accounting of the states’ mental health records, and not the individual records themselves, Dismukes said.
The state has provided the NICS database with an accounting of 37,500 records since the new law took effect, he said. That number represents all of the state’s electronic records that identify persons who have been adjudicated mentally defective, or who have been involuntarily committed to a state mental institution for 20 years leading up to 2011.
An Arkansas City resident has been arrested for stealing the identity of a Tennessee man and using it to gain employment here, according to a press release from the Arkansas City Police Department.
Pedro Mendoza was arrested for identity theft and transported to the Cowley County Jail, where he remained Sunday night in lieu of a $5,000 bond.
A male resident of Johnson City, Tenn., allegedly was the victim of identity theft on June 9, according to the release. Only his last name, Martinez, was given.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
An ACPD investigation on Friday linked the identity theft to a suspect, identified as Mendoza, who allegedly used Martinez’ identity to “gain employment with a local plant in Arkansas City.” The plant was not identified in the release.
Mendoza will be charged federally since the victim was in the United States Navy at the time of the incident, the release said.
He was a man with a bad leg and a big smile, and Bobby Joe Jenkins didn’t think much about him when things went bad in the summer of 1999.
Why would he? The man bought candy and ice cream for the youngsters and was the social butterfly of their poor east valley apartment complex, always bumming around for cold drinks and hot meals, Jenkins said. He was constantly drunk and a bit of a womanizer, but everybody knew and liked him.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
“He would try to play around, grabbing the women, chasing people even though he couldn’t run,” said Jenkins, 54. “But he would try anyway.”
Jenkins was the one who came up with the nickname: “Criptoe,” because of the man’s pronounced limp. It stuck.
He considered the man a friend, even if his eye sometimes wandered too close to Jenkins’ home.
“My sister used to tell me all the time, ‘Tell your friend to stop staring at me,’ ” Jenkins said. “It made her uncomfortable.”
But Jenkins had no reason to suspect him when his sister suddenly disappeared that August, and neither did the police.
He didn’t think much about Criptoe again until he saw his mugshot in the news on Wednesday morning, when he was shocked to learn that he and his sister had been living next to Nathan Burkett, a convicted killer whom police were calling one of Las Vegas’ first known serial killers.
Now Jenkins thinks about Criptoe. And he wonders about his sister.
Brigitte Mitchell Thomas, 33, disappeared on Aug. 19, 1999, from the Regatta Apartments at 2101 Sandy Lane, near Pecos Road and Lake Mead Boulevard.
Thomas left behind six children, her mother and her grandmother. She hasn’t been seen since.
Neighbors saw Thomas leave the complex in a blue truck with a pool company logo on the side, supposedly with a black man from Los Angeles and a Hispanic man from Mexico.
The story didn’t seem odd to Jenkins, at least at first. Although his sister often stayed with him, she was known to stay with friends in the complex, and it wasn’t unusual for her to be gone for days.
Jenkins last saw Thomas on Aug. 17, 1999, two days before the pool truck sighting.
His sister wasn’t perfect. Thomas smoked cocaine, Jenkins said, and at first that’s what police suspected. Jenkins recalled a conversation with a Las Vegas police detective about 12 to 14 months after Thomas went missing.
“He tells me, ‘She’s just on a smoking spree. She’ll be back.’ Well, it’s been almost 13 years,” he said.
The family reported her missing on Aug. 26, a week after she was last seen. It was clear to Jenkins then that something was wrong.
He began to doubt the pool truck story when one of the men from the truck came back to the neighborhood.
Jenkins and a large group confronted the man, who broke down in tears and vehemently denied everything. Jenkins believed him. Those beliefs were furthered after he learned a detective had interviewed the man and apparently cleared him, he said.
“I figured that if he had something to do with her being missing, he wouldn’t be coming back over there, right?”
Joyce Hamilton, 62, was one of the last neighbors to see Thomas.
“Brigitte was alone. I saw her go into her house, and she took a shower, changed clothes and left. When I saw her, she was by herself.”
A few candlelight vigils were held in the following months.
Many neighbors helped canvass the city in search of Thomas, plastering posters with her face from Henderson to the Strip, even though she never really left the area around her home.
Jenkins doesn’t remember hearing much from Burkett during that time. But he was still living at his apartment, just a few doors away.
Burkett, 65, was extradited from Mississippi last week and charged with murder in two Las Vegas cold-case killings: the death of 22-year-old Barbara Ann Cox on April 22, 1978, and the death of 27-year-old Tina Gayle Mitchell on Feb. 20, 1994.
Police said DNA linked him to both killings. Burkett also has been questioned by police in the 1994 killing of Alethea Maria Williams, a Los Angeles woman who was found dead in the same location Mitchell’s body was found.
Burkett has been convicted of killing at least two other people. Records show he served time in prison for manslaughter in Mississippi in the 1980s after his mother was found burned to death.
He was also arrested by Las Vegas police on a murder charge in October 2003. Valetter Jean Bousley, 41, was found dead on Sept. 4, 2002. Burkett beat the murder charge, but was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in Bousley’s death and served six years in prison.
In four of the five cases, the women were strangled.
“Mr. Burkett is a serial killer,” Lt. Ray Steiber said earlier this week. “He hasn’t committed one homicide in Las Vegas, not two, but we know he’s at least committed three.”
CASE CLOSED IN 2000
Jenkins had no idea about Burkett’s past when they met in 1996, two years after police say he killed Mitchell. They kept in contact until about 2002, when Jenkins moved from the Regatta apartments. That was the same year Burkett choked Bousley to death.
Police haven’t linked Burkett to Thomas’ disappearance, and the status of the missing person investigation is unclear.
Police spokesman Bill Cassell said the case was closed in 2000 after a relative said they had spotted Thomas, but was reopened five years later when the relative admitted they hadn’t seen Thomas.
Jenkins said the police statement confused him. None of his relatives ever reported seeing Thomas, he said, and he doesn’t know why police would have closed the case.
“Sounds like a mistake,” he said.
Police did not release the missing person report on Friday, but said the case doesn’t appear to fit the pattern of the other cases linked to Burkett, in which the bodies of women were found out in the open.
“We do not have any information at this time that would tie the two cases together,” Cassell said.
Jenkins, who has not yet spoken to investigators about his theory, said the coincidences were staggering.
“Hearing about all those other women, I don’t know. She knew him good enough to walk off somewhere with him.”
Cassell encouraged Jenkins to speak to detectives. “If we receive any new information in the future that would indicate a connection, we would pursue it aggressively,” he said.
‘CRIPTOE’ WAS STRONG
Only in retrospect has Jenkins thought hard about Burkett, the man he knew long ago as “Criptoe.”
That memorable limp doesn’t feel so endearing anymore. It feels deceiving.
Jenkins had forgotten how strong Burkett was . He would always greet the neighborhood kids with a cast-iron grip. It would be a game, to see if Burkett could shake their hand into submission.
“He don’t let go till they drop to their knees. And they’d be saying, ‘You’re not going to get me to my knees this time, Criptoe.’ And, well, they’d get to their knees quick. I have no doubt he choked those women. He could choke out an NFL player.”
Hamilton said she lived near Burkett for about six years . She was one of several former neighbors who called Jenkins after the news reports to ask about Criptoe and wonder, “What about Brigitte?”
Hamilton recalled how her stepsister let Burkett take her little daughter to a convenience store on the corner. The entire community was very trusting.
Hamilton shuddered when asked about it now. “We never imagined he could be anything like this,” she said.
Jenkins said he can’t get one fact out of his mind. On at least three occasions, Jenkins saw Burkett walking through the complex with a shovel on his back. When asked where he was going, Burkett would only say he had a job to do.
“I’d say to him, ‘Man, you know you don’t got no job,’ ” Jenkins said.
Burkett never used the front entrance to the complex, Jenkins said, instead preferring a side gate leading to empty lots with no cars and plenty of desert.
Jenkins said he hopes detectives reexamine his sister’s case as they are in other unsolved homicides in Las Vegas, even though she hasn’t been found and any evidence would be circumstantial.
But living across from a man police say is a serial killer is a pretty big circumstance, he said.
“If he did do something to her, and I keep thinking about those damn shovels, let me know where she’s at so we can get this over with. I mean, there’s nothing police can do without a body. No DNA without a body.”
Contact reporter Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283.
TRACING BURKETT’S MOVEMENTS
1978: Las Vegas police believe a killing spree began when Barbara Ann Cox, 22, was found strangled in a parking lot outside apartments at 211 W. Bonanza Road. Nathan Burkett was interviewed by police but was apparently not a suspect at the time.
1983: Five years after Cox’s death, Burkett was sentenced to prison in Mississippi for the killing of his mother, who was burned to death.
1992: Cox was scheduled to be released from prison.
1994: Police believe Burkett’s move back to Las Vegas coincided with the February killing of Tina Gayle Mitchell, 27, who was found behind a home on H Street near Washington Avenue. She had been strangled. Two months later, the body of Los Angeles woman Alethea Maria Williams was discovered in the same place Mitchell’s body had been found. Williams also had been strangled. Burkett has been questioned by police in her death but not charged.
1996: Burkett moved to the Regatta apartments near Lake Mead Boulevard and Pecos Road, neighbors said. He lived in the area until about 2002.
1999: Brigitte Mitchell Thomas, 33, disappeared from the Regatta apartments in August. She lived next door to Burkett and her family believes the cases could be linked. Police have not named Burkett a suspect.
2002: Valetter Jean Bousley, 41, was found dead on Sept. 4 outside a church on F Street near Monroe Avenue. She had been strangled.
2003: Burkett was arrested by Las Vegas police on a murder charge in October. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Bousley’s death. Officials took a sample of his DNA.
2009: Burkett was released after six years in prison.
2010: In January, Las Vegas police detectives reviewed Mitchell’s cold case. In May, Cox’s sister Connie Bainbridge called Las Vegas police and asked about her sister’s death. Detective David Culver was assigned both cases and began to enter DNA found at the scenes into a national database.
2011: Burkett was identified as a suspect in Cox’s killing from his DNA in November.
2012: The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations located Burkett in Picayune in July. That same month, Burkett’s DNA also proved to be a match in Mitchell’s death. Burkett was arrested. Burkett was extradited to Las Vegas Tuesday on murder and sexual assault charges in Cox and Mitchell’s killings.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A dismembered body was found Friday in several cement-filled buckets in a pond on property owned by the man suspected in the slaying, according to an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman.
OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said Justin Hammer, 30, of Elmore City, helped authorities find the body, which is believed to be his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.
“We interviewed him and he gave us a location where we could find the body,” Brown said. “It’s not often the suspect tells us the truth.”
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
Hammer, 30, of Elmore City, pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge Friday in Garvin County District Court. He was ordered held on $2 million bond pending his next hearing, scheduled for Aug. 14. Online court records do not yet list an attorney for him.
Brown said the OSBI began investigating Wednesday after a witness told authorities Hammer said he shot the person Tuesday, cut up the body with a saw and placed the parts into numerous 5-gallon buckets that he then filled with cement. Hammer was arrested Thursday.
Brown declined to discuss a possible motive for the slaying or name the victim, saying authorities were waiting for the state medical examiner to officially identify the body.
There is no evidence the slaying is connected to the highly publicized death and dismemberment of Carina Saunders, 19, whose body was found in a duffel bag in Bethany, an Oklahoma City suburb, Brown said. Bethany police have said they suspect Saunders’ slaying was connected to human trafficking, prostitution and a drug ring in the Oklahoma City area.
“I can’t imagine how it would have any relationship to that,” Brown said.
Elmore City is in rural Garvin County, about 65 miles south of Oklahoma City.
OVERLAND PARK, Kansas — The Overland Park Police Department would like your assistance in locating a missing person. Missing is 66 year old, David Lee Dotson, of Overland Park, Kansas.
Mr. Dotson was last known to be at his home the morning of August 9th 2012. Mr. Dotson may be wearing blue jeans, a yellow polo style shirt, gray tennis shoes and glasses.
Mr. Dotson is an insulin dependent diabetic. Mr. Dotson’s vehicle is a Red 2004 Toyota Highlander with a Kansas Tag of (328 CGM).
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of David Lee Dotson or his vehicle please contact the Overland Park Police Department at 913-895-6300.
The FBI and a criminal investigative division of the US Postal Service are working together to uncover a possible pedophile ring where Sandusky allegedly shared boys with other men connected to Penn State, reports RadarOnline. A source familiar with the investigation stated:
“Investigators have interviewed at least one man who claims to have knowledge of Sandusky and a very prominent man, with strong ties to Penn State, both sexually abusing a boy.”
http://liarcatchers.com/pedophile_tracking.html
The reason that criminal investigators from the USPS are involved is because sexual material involving the underage boys may have been sent through the mail. RadarOnline’s source went on to say:
“The investigation is in its early stages. They have not yet cast a wide net but it is ongoing and it is serious.”
Jerry Sandusky used to be the defensive coordinator for Penn State. He was accused of sexually abusing 10 boys over the course of 15 years, many of whom he found through the Second Mile charity, which the former football coach founded to help troubled youth. Radar’s source added:
“The new investigation is also looking at if boys from the Second Mile charity were shared by Sandusky with other men. The name of at least one very rich and powerful man connected to the university has come up in this new investigation.”
According to CBS Local, Mark Madden of 105.9 The X in Pittsburgh said of the new investigation that:
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The one thing I hear is being investigated right now, and I hasten to add this as only a rumor, but I know of at least two prominent columnists who are investigating the story, is that The Second Mile, and there’s no nice way to say this, pimped out young boys to wealthy donors.”
Hugh Armstrong says he hitchhiked and walked 1,000 miles south from New Hampshire without knowing who he was. Then he heard his granddaughter’s name in a McDonald’s in Asheville and started to fill in a few blanks.
Armstrong, 72, had been missing for more than two weeks, when he disappeared after going for a walk while on vacation near a New Hampshire lake. The retired IBM employee stacked hay for a Pennsylvania farmer along the way, hitched a ride to Virginia and made his way to his home state of North Carolina.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
A sheriff’s deputy found him walking on U.S. 70 at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, and identified him as a missing person by the initials on his wedding band.
“He’s my hero. That’s just a remarkable feat,” said Deputy Brian Walker of the McDowell County Sheriff’s Department.
Armstrong hadn’t been able to remember his name since he fell into a ravine while walking near New Hampshire’s Stinson Lake on July 25, but he knew his age and thought he might know someone in Asheville. That’s where he found himself in a McDonald’s trying to sort things out.
And he heard a name he knew. A mother called her child “Emma,” and Armstrong thought he might know someone by that name. He sat down with a phone book and looked at the street names listed in addresses. He wrote a letter to Emma in Wilmington and mailed it to her, telling her everything he could remember and that he was headed to her as soon as he could. Walker didn’t know whether the letter was delivered.
Deputies found him later, about 240 miles from home in Clayton, outside Raleigh. His wife and daughter drove to the sheriff’s office to take him home. Walker said.
“Immediately, when the car pulled in, he recognized the car. When his wife stepped out, he said, ‘That’s my wife,'” Walker said.
Armstrong last saw his family when he left for his walk alone, leaving a note saying he’d be back by 10 a.m. He had a small bag with him containing some medicine, but nothing with his name on it.
He apparently fell, and remembered waking up in a ravine in the dark, his family and authorities said. He started walking south.
He said he remembered hitchhiking his way to Pennsylvania, where the farmer took him in for several days and had him put up hay. He gave Armstrong a place to stay and food. Armstrong was found with extra clothes in a garbage bag that he thinks he got from the farmer.
The farmer gave Armstrong a ride to Roanoke, Va., after he told him he needed to get to Asheville.
After writing his granddaughter a letter, he started walking down Interstate 40; he couldn’t remember if he got a ride for part of the way.
“I really didn’t expect this outcome,” his son-in-law, Craig Black said. “I’m just glad to have him home.”
More than 60 people including volunteers had been looking for Armstrong in New Hampshire, searching the Stinson Lake area day and night and using helicopters, boats and dogs. By July 31, the search was scaled back to a small crew of about five divers who focused on the lake.
“He’s very, very resourceful,” Black said “He’s very strong. He just knows how to survive. He knows how to figure out where he needs to go, how he needs to get there.”