FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A woman who family members believe was the toddler kidnapped by a babysitter 51 years ago has been reunited with her family in Texas, in a meeting filled with long-overdue hugs & joyful tears.
Melissa Highsmith was 22 months old when she was abducted by a purported babysitter in 1971. She lived in Fort Worth most of her life & is now known as Melanie Brown. They say she didn’t know she was kidnapped until her biological father, Jeffrie Highsmith, submitted DNA to 23andMe & learned that he was a match to Brown’s children.
The family said in a news release that they worked with an amateur genealogist to help interpret the DNA results & mine public records to find Melissa, who reunited with her parents & 2 of her siblings this past weekend in Fort Worth.
“It was just a mixture of joy & terrifying. Being terrified & excited & just trying to understand, you know, make sense of everything,” Melissa Highsmith told KDFW-TV. A woman who sent out a news release on behalf of the family said that at this time, Melanie Brown is planning to change her name back to Melissa.
In a statement Monday, the Fort Worth Police Department said it was “overjoyed” to hear that 23andMe led the Highsmiths to Melissa & added they will conduct official DNA testing to confirm her identity & will provide an update once those official results are in. The investigation into her kidnapping will continue.
INDIANAPOLIS (Fox59) – Marcus Garvin was free on bail and wearing a GPS ankle bracelet when prosecutors allege that he stabbed his girlfriend to death on July 24. Garvin was free because of a non-profit called The Bail Project, a national non-profit organization that pays the bails for suspected criminals.
While The Bail Project is backed by some high profile donors including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, according to the Central Indiana Community Foundation the City of Indianapolis gave the non-profit a total of $150,000 in 2019 through the city’s crime-prevention grant programs. The group has paid the bails for 878 Marion County defendants since November 2018 according to WRTV.
“I don’t think taxpayers are going to be real hip to their money going to something like that,” Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police President Rick Snyder told WRTV on Friday.
Garvin’s initial bond was set at $30,000, but Judge Shatrese Flowers lowered it to $1,500 with GPS monitoring. The state objected to lowering the bond, and we are still working on discovering why they objected.
Garvin’s public defender reached out to the Bail Project to pay for Garvin’s release. The program released this statement to FOX59:
“We received a referral for bail assistance from Mr. Garvin’s public defender in January after the court lowered his bail from $30k to $1.500 and imposed GPS monitoring as a condition of release. As we do with all referrals, we interviewed Mr Garvin to gather information about his legal history, his ability to return to court, and to identify any unmet needs. He had a stable place to live with family and a plan to return to court to resolve his case.
Generally speaking, we take several factors into consideration, including the types of needs the person might have and whether we can connect them to adequate services. In this case, the bail reduction was a key factor in the decision as it indicated that the court wanted to facilitate his release.” David Gaspar, National Director of Operations at The Bail Project.
The Bail Project has received at least $150,000 over the last two years from taxpayers through the Violent Crime Prevention Grants Program. The money is allocated annually by the Indianapolis City-County Council and managed by the Central Indiana Community Foundation.
We reached out to the Marion County courts and Garvin’s public defender. The Marion County Public Defender’s Office said they have no comment. The presiding judge said they would not comment on a pending case or another judge’s decision.
Seven months later, Garvin allegedly murdered his longtime girlfriend, Christie. Court records detail a gruesome murder.
After being stabbed to death at the Always Inn on East 21st Street last month, Holt was left to decompose for nearly a week. Records said they were called to the hotel on July 30 before 5:00 a.m. on a report of a suspicious person pulling a sheet “with something heavy” into a wooded area.
They found Christie’s body wrapped in the sheet. The motel manager told police Christie and Marcus had been living in the hotel since December 2020.
Surveillance video showed a man dragging the heavy sheet, and at one point a human arm fell out and the man quickly placed it back into the sheet, documents say.
Court records show when officers arrived, they found Garvin had cut off his GPS monitor and appeared ready to flee. They also state Garvin later went into detail about what and why the incident occurred.
Christie’s loved ones said they feared Garvin would fatally hurt her after years of abuse by him.
“When I say abuse it wasn’t just like he punched her one time,” Felicia Myers said. “He beat her until he felt that he was done.”
The Marion Superior Court Probation Department, charged with monitoring those on pre-trial release, said people on pre-trial GPS monitoring have ‘unrestricted movements’ aside from any places ordered by the court to stay away from or those in a protective order.
The department said Garvin was placed on GPS monitoring on January 22 and was to have no contact near the noted individuals’ in the protective order and to maintain the operation of the device at all times. We are still working to learn whether Holt was a person he was ordered to stay away from.
“If they would have left him in there, he wouldn’t have killed her, he wouldn’t have had a chance because he’d be locked up,” Lisa Fox, Christie’s biological mom, said. “So, I blame a lot on the system right now. They let Christie down.”
Holt’s family say changes are needed for pre-trial monitoring.
“It makes you wonder, when is there going to be change,” Patty Myers, Christie’s aunt, said. “When is there going to be a time that they start realizing something has to be done? Because what’s going to happen is women are going to keep being afraid to talk. They’re going to be afraid to come forward.”
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is again threatening to send federal agents to New York City if local authorities don’t stop a surge of violence that has left seven people dead and more than 50 people shot since Friday.
Trump, who’s running for re-election on a law-and-order agenda as a counterweight to the police and criminal justice reform movement, reacted to the news of the mayhem in his hometown Sunday night on Twitter.
“Law and Order,” Trump wrote, directing his message at the city’s Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio. “If (he) can’t do it, we will!”
It was the latest in a string of bloody weekends that have roiled the city in the wake of coronavirus-related shutdowns, rallies against police brutality and a month-long protest encampment in front of City Hall.
According to police, 51 people were shot from Friday through Sunday, six of whom died from their injuries. Another man died after a physical altercation, police said.
Eight people were shot and five people were killed over the same span last year.
De Blasio on Monday dismissed Trump’s tweet as “bluster,” telling reporters that a recent uptick in gun arrests was a hopeful sign that the NYPD “will turn this tide.”
De Blasio’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, noted that Trump sent his tweet hours after retweeting a pundit who said Democratic cities should be left to rot.
Trump has used violent spikes in Democratic-led cities such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia to justify claims that recent reforms and cuts to police budgets have handcuffed officers and allowed criminals to run amok. His re-election campaign has been airing farcical television commercials suggesting no one will be there to answer 911 calls if his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, is elected president.
“The only thing rotten is Trump’s mind,” Neidhardt tweeted in response.
If New York is overwhelmed with deaths from the coronavirus, prisoners will dig mass graves.
The Daily Beast reports New York City has a worst-case scenario contingency plan for a plague, such as the coronavirus COVID-19, that would require Rikers Island inmates to dig mass graves for burying up to 51,000 bodies. The plan was drawn up in 2008 by the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner while Michael Bloomberg was mayor of NYC.
According to the Daily Mail, the plan comes from a report preparing for a pandemic where up to 70 percent of deaths would occur in hospitals or assisted living centers, overwhelming morgues. The city would then deploy death professionals like morticians, forensic photographers, and medical students to remove between 50 and 5,000 cadavers a day, such as to mobile refrigerated storage units that can hold up to 44 bodies each.
Disposing of larger numbers of bodies may require cremation or, as a last resort, sending corpses to Hart Island in the Long Island Sound. Inmates from nearby Rikers Island would then be required to dig mass graves and bury them.
The CDC and World Health Organization have not declared coronavirus a pandemic, but the virus has infected more than 113,000 people worldwide and killed more than than 4,000. According to The New York Times, at least 730 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the U.S., including more than 140 in New York state; Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday.
Cuomo said Monday that he already plans to use prison inmates to make hand sanitizer. CorCraft, a company that uses NYS prison labor paid between 16 cents and $1.14 an hour, will produce 100,000 gallons a week of New York-branded hand sanitizer, and distribute it to government offices and schools free of charge.
In New York City, more changes could come in response to the virus, such as school closings and travel recommendations. Gov. Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and MTA chairman Pat Foye have already said commuters should avoid taking mass transit if other transportation options are available.
“If you can get around without riding the subway, do it," Foye said, according to the New York Post. He said the trains are safe, but recommended alternatives like telecommuting, biking, walking or taking transit at less-crowded times of day.
NEW YORK (AP) — Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood’s most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated “Boyz N the Hood” and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities in his native Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 51.
Singleton’s family said Monday that he died after being taken off life support, about two weeks after the director suffered a major stroke.
Singleton was in his early 20s, just out of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, when he wrote, directed and produced “Boyz N the Hood.” Based on Singleton’s upbringing and shot in his old neighborhood, the low-budget production starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube and centered on three friends in South Central Los Angeles, where college aspirations competed with the pressures of gang life. “Boyz N the Hood” was a critical and commercial hit, given a 20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and praised as a groundbreaking extension of rap to the big screen, a realistic and compassionate take on race, class, peer pressure and family. Singleton would later call it a “rap album on film.”
For many, the 1991 release captured the explosive mood in Los Angeles in the months following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. “Boyz N the Hood” also came out at a time when, thanks to the efforts to Spike Lee and others, black films were starting to get made by Hollywood after a long absence. Singleton became the first black director to receive an Academy Award nomination, an honor he would say was compensation for the academy’s snubbing Lee and “Do the Right Thing” two years earlier, and was nominated for best screenplay. (“The Silence of the Lambs” won in both categories). At 24, he was also the youngest director nominee in Oscar history.
“I think I was living this film before I ever thought about making it,” Singleton told Vice in 2016. “As I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and cinema became an option, it was just natural that this was probably gonna be my first film. In fact, when I applied to USC Film School they had a thing that asked you to write three ideas for films. And one of them was called Summer of ’84, which was about growing up in South Central LA.”
In 2002, “Boyz N the Hood’ was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, which called it “an innovative look at life and the tough choices present for kids growing up in South Central Los Angeles.”
None of Singleton’s subsequent movies received the acclaim of “Boyz N the Hood” and he was criticized at times for turning characters into mouthpieces for political and social messages. But he attracted talent ranging from Tupac Shakur to Don Cheadle and explored themes of creative expression (“Poetic Justice”), identity (“Higher Learning”) and the country’s racist past, notably in “Rosewood,” based on a murderous white rampage against a black community in Florida in 1923. He also made the coming-of-age story “Baby Boy,” a remake of the action film “Shaft” and an installment in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, “2 Fast 2 Furious.” More recent projects included the FX crime drama “Snowfall,” which he helped create. Starring Damson Idris, “Snowfall” returned Singleton to the Los Angeles of his youth and the destructive effects of the rise of crack cocaine.
“Drugs devastated a generation. It gave me something to write about, but I had to survive it first,” Singleton told the Guardian in 2017. “It made me a very angry young man. I didn’t understand why I was so angry, but I wasn’t someone who took my anger and applied it inward. I turned it into being a storyteller. I was on a kamikaze mission to really tell stories from my perspective — an authentic black perspective.”
Singleton was married twice, and had five children. Besides his career in movies, Singleton also directed the video for Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time,” which included Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson. He cast hip-hop artists and other musicians in many of his films, including Ice Cube in “Boyz N the Hood,” Janet Jackson and Shakur in “Poetic Justice” and Tyrese Gibson in “Baby Boy.”
Singleton’s early success didn’t shield him from creative conflicts or frustration with Hollywood studios. He blamed the commercial failure of “Rosewood” on lack of support from Warner Bros. He fought with producer Scott Rudin during the making of “Shaft” and was furious when Rudin brought in Richard Price to revise the script. He had planned to direct a biopic about Shakur, but quit after clashing with Morgan Creek Productions. In 2014, he chastised the industry for “refusing to let African-Americans direct black-themed films,” but Singleton was pleased in recent years by the emergence of Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and others.
“There are these stacks of (films by non-black filmmakers) where black people have had to say, ‘OK, at least they tried,‘” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, adding that now blacks were making the films themselves. “What’s interesting when you see ‘Black Panther’ is you realize it couldn’t have been directed by anybody else but Ryan Coogler. It’s a great adventure movie and it works on all those different levels as entertainment, but it has this kind of cultural through-line that is so specific that it makes it universal.”
Nicki Minaj is breathing rarefied air reserved for the best artists the music business has to offer. Her latest single entitled "Anaconda" enters the charts at No. 19, giving her a whopping 51 Billboard Hot 100 appearances.
The feat pushed her past the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and ties her with Rod Stewart for the most Hot 100 hits in history.
It should be noted that only 20 of Nicki's Hot 100 songs were as a lead or co-lead artist. The rest came from feature appearances..
Jackson was the lead or co-lead on all of his 50 hits.
ARLINGTON, Texas -- Fighting on the star, Manny Pacquiao showed once again why he is such a star.
With the biggest fight crowd in the U.S. in 17 years cheering him on at Cowboys Stadium, Pacquiao dominated a strangely passive Joshua Clottey from the opening bell Saturday night to retain his welterweight title and cement his status as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
The fight wasn't close, and it was never in doubt. It was so one-sided that even those in the cheap seats among the crowd of 50,994 could tell without looking at the giant video screens over the ring that Pacquiao was in total command.
One ringside judge gave Pacquiao every round, while the two others gave him all but one. The Associated Press scored it a shutout for the Filipino sensation.
It wasn't as flashy as his knockout of Ricky Hatton or as savage as the beating he gave Oscar De La Hoya, but there was no doubt Pacquiao was in command the entire way against a fighter who kept his gloves up high in front of his face and chose to engage him only in spurts. Clottey's strategy worked to keep him upright, but he was never competitive in the biggest fight of his career.
"He's a very tough opponent," Pacquiao said. "He was looking for a big shot."
Pacquiao was supposed to have been fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. instead of Clottey, but the megafight fell apart over a dispute over blood testing. He took out any frustrations over losing the biggest fight of his career by beating up Clottey on the biggest stage of his career.
"I want that fight, the world wants that fight, but it's up to him," Pacquiao said. "I'm ready to fight any time."
That time won't come soon. Mayweather is fighting Shane Mosley on May 1, and the earliest the two could get together would be in the fall and only if Mayweather backs off his demands for blood testing.
The fight this night was more of an event than a real competition, bringing in the biggest crowd in the U.S. for a fight since Julio Cesar Chavez fought Pernell Whitaker at the Alamodome in 1993. It paid off handsomely for Pacquiao, though, who earned at least $12 million and built on the reputation he has gained as one of the greatest fighters of his time.
Promoters not only sold out the 45,000 seats available for the bout, but added thousands more standing room only "party passes" for fans who could get a glimpse of the action and see every drop of sweat on the huge overhead screens.
"It's one of the most incredible stories not just in boxing but anywhere," promoter Bob Arum said. "Fourteen years ago he was sleeping in a cardboard shack in the Philippines and tonight he puts 51,000 people in this palace in Dallas."
The tone of the fight was set early, with Pacquiao advancing against his taller opponent and throwing punches with both hands from all angles. It was the same style that gave him spectacular wins in his last three fights and, though Clottey was clearly the bigger fighter, he fought back only sparingly.
"Everything's working now," trainer Freddie Roach told Pacquiao after the third round. "It's easy."
It was easy, too, much to the delight of the crowd and much to the delight of an entire country back in Pacquiao's homeland. There, traffic came to a halt and huge numbers of Filipinos, including army troops and allied American soldiers, jammed theatres in shopping malls and military camps nationwide to root for Pacquiao. In what has now become a familiar scene, Filipinos repeatedly yelled his name and threw punches in the air after the country's boxing hero was declared the winner.
Unlike most of Pacquiao's fights, this one lacked suspense from the opening seconds of the fight, when Clottey assumed the peek-a-boo position he would remain in except for brief spurts the entire bout.
"He has speed, I lost the fight," Clottey said. "He's fast, that's why I was taking my time."
Arum said he wasn't disappointed in the effort put out by Clottey, who was guaranteed to make at least $1.25 million.
"What was he supposed to do? If he played offense he'd get knocked out," Arum said. "I can't blame the kid for trying to wear him down."
Clottey seemed content to hold his hands high in a peek-a-boo style through much of the early rounds, trying to pick off Pacquiao's punches and perhaps rally late. But he gave away round after round, despite landing some clean punches on the rare occasions when he would throw a combination.
"You gotta take a chance," Clottey's trainer, Lenny DeJesus, implored him after the sixth round. "You're in a fight and you gotta start taking chances."
Clottey didn't, though, and his prize was that he was the first fighter in Pacquiao's last six fights to make it to the final bell. The only suspense when it came time to announce the decision was whether the three ringside judges would give Clottey any of the rounds.
Pacquiao threw three times as many punches as Clottey, an average of 100 a round, and landed as many power shots as Clottey threw. Final punch stats showed Pacquiao landing 246 of 1,231 punches to 108 of 399 for Clottey.
Clottey had gotten the fight off a good performance in his last bout against Miguel Cotto, but he was clearly more concerned with surviving the all-out assault that Pacquiao is noted for than winning the fight.
"Joshua Clottey had the power to knock him out but was reluctant to punch," DeJesus said. "We clearly got beat. I don't think he won a round."
Roach agreed, saying he saw nothing in Clottey to win.
"He had a good defense, but defense isn't enough to win a fight," Roach said.
}