Prostitution ring suspect Antonio Rivera was in police custody Monday
NYDailyNews Reports
Three Long Island bar bosses were charged Monday with forcing dozens of illegal aliens as young as 17 into prostitution at seedy taverns.
A brother-and-sister team and a manager are accused of luring the women, most of whom are Central American, to work in their bars, then ordering them to perform sex acts on customers.
"They lured innocent young women with promises of legitimate jobs and the American Dream," said John Morton, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. "Once the victims arrived, their dreams turned to nightmares."
Antonio Rivera, 34, of Patchogue, and his sister Jasmin Rivera, 31, of Medford, were arrested along with bar manager John Whaley, 29, of Bellport.
They were charged in federal court with sex trafficking and forced labor and could face life in prison. The three were held without bail.
The three bar bosses run La Hija Del Mariachi in Farmingville and Sonidos de la Frontera in Ronkonkoma. Both cater to Mexican and Central American workers.
Rivera, his sister Jasmin, and John Whaley were arrested and charged in federal court with sex trafficking and forced labor.
The women were recruited in their home countries and told they would be working as waitresses or "cantina girls."
Once they got to Long Island and started work, they were told to perform stripteases and lap dances for clients. They also allegedly had to turn tricks - and hand over half the profits to the bar owners.
Women who objected were beaten or raped, the complaint said, and were also threatened with deportation.
Miriam Velazquez, who emigrated from El Salvador many years ago and now owns Velazquez Deli in the same shopping center as La Hija Del Mariachi, said she felt bad for the women.
"They work and live in fear and they have no one to help them," said Velazquez, 40.
Kathy Perrino, 55, who works at the neighboring Family Dollar, said the nearby businesses are happy to see the bars closed.
"I hope they are gone for good," she said. "There were bottles everywhere and drunk men lingering every morning."
Sonidos de la Frontera raised suspicions with drawings of two sexy women emblazoned on the entrance.
"They were up to no good," said Ann Nguy, 37, who works at a nail salon next door.
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They call their home Silicone City – and for good reason. Chantal Marshall and four of her daughters have had NINE boob jobs between them.
That makes them the British family to have had the most breast surgery – bra, er, bar none.
While most mums and their daughters enjoy shopping trips together, Chantal, 50, and her daughters have spent nearly £40,000 on visits to cosmetic surgeons to have their breasts enlarged.
Ripley, 18, Tara, 22, Terri, 25, Emma, 28, and mum-of-nine Chantal, of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Notts, now boast chest sizes ranging from 34DD to 32GG.
On one occasion, Emma and Ripley even ended up having breast enhancement surgery on the same day and at the same clinic as their mum.
Tara had booked her consultation aged 17 so she could have the op as soon as she reached the age of 18.
The sisters – all with matching blonde hair just like their mum – say that like most siblings they have always copied each other.
But they insist that when it comes their chest sizes, they aren’t at all competitive.
They reckon their desire for bigger boobs was inspired by Chantal – who is often mistaken by strangers for their sister.
Here they share their stories...
Mum Chantal
Age: 50; No of ops: 3; Spent: £13,500
CARER and mum-of-nine Chantal is a petite Size 10 and was 34B before her first op. She is now a 34DD.
She says: “Having nine children left my boobs looking like milk bottles. In 1996, after I had my seventh child, I had my first set of implants but I ended up even more unhappy.
“They looked like balls in socks rather than the pert, round breasts I had imagined. I was quite traumatised. So when Emma said she was going to have a boob job I was terrified. But when I saw how great they looked it made me brave enough to consider having mine done again and in February 2004 I had them enlarged to 34DD.
“Two years down the line I wanted to perk them up. So when Emma and my second youngest daughter Ripley said they were going to get theirs done I suggested we all went together.
“My daughters say I inspired them to have boob jobs but I’ve got them to thank for encouraging me to get mine done again. There’s no mistaking the family resemblance – but now we’ve got the boobs to match too!”
EMMA
Age: 28; No of ops: 2; Spent: £9,500
Emma is a beauty therapist and is a Size 12. Before her first enlargement she was a 34B. She is now a 34F.
She says: “We all laugh it’s Silicone City round our house. It’s amazing we’re the family with the most boob jobs in Britain – and we’re all really happy with the results.
“I first got my boobs done 10 years ago when I was just 18. I had a good figure but longed for more curves.
“I’d look at Baywatch on TV and think ‘they look stunning’. Then I’d look in the mirror and imagine myself with a bigger pair.
“I knew it would give me more confidence. So I got a loan and got my 34B cup enlarged to a D cup. I felt so much happier as they suited my curvy frame.
“I didn’t have any problems but they say you should have implants replaced after 10 years, which is why I went under the knife again.
I went for my second op with my mum and sister Ripley. “One of the first things we said when we came round from the anaesthetic was, ‘Let’s have a look at yours!’”
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RIPLEY
Age: 18; No of ops: 1; Spent: £4,500
Ripley, 18, fashion and design student and trained nail technician. She is a Size 8. Before surgery in March she was a 34C. She went up to a 34DD.
She says: “I’m the youngest in our family to have a boob job. Some sisters are competitive – but I’m as delighted by my sisters’ and mum’s boob jobs as I am my own.
“It’s brought us closer together – I couldn’t wait to get mine done.
“Although I’m a Size 8 I don’t like the ironing board figure like Keira Knightley’s. I prefer the womanly curves of J-Lo. I’d buy bigger bras and then pad them out with chicken fillets and padding.
“After seeing my sisters and the way they felt about having theirs done, I wanted to do the same.
“I managed to save up half the money I needed and then got a loan.
“Emma and I investigated on the internet and found surgeon Dr Hicham Mouallem at The Wimpole Clinic in London. He was brilliant.”
TERRI
Age: 25; No of ops: 1; Spent: £4,500
Terri, 25, is a dancer and lives in Papplewick, Notts. She is a Size 10. Before her boob job she was a 32DD. She is now a 32GG.
She says: “I once had a jokey argument with my sister Emma about who had the biggest boobs. But it was all friendly – there’s never been sibling rivalry as we’re very close.
“I had my boob job after my sister Emma. When I saw hers I knew I had to go and get mine done. They looked amazing and I was so jealous.
“I’ve always had quite big boobs but I wanted to go bigger. So I booked myself in with the same surgeon just one month later.
“Some people might think I’m crazy but it’s what I wanted. I saved up and luckily my boyfriend Paul helped towards the cost.
“I had no trepidations about going – I’d rather get my boobs done than go to the dentist. I’d hate to be flat-chested. Put it this way, if I was, I’d be putting 10 chicken fillets in my boobs and be wearing a jelly-bra.”
TARA
Age: 22; No of ops: 2; Spent: £8,000
Tara, a receptionist, is a Size 10. Before her first boob job she was a 34A. She is now a 34E.
She says: “Looks-wise my sisters and I share nearly everything. We’ve all got similar hair and facial features but when it came to boobs I was no way near as blessed.
“I never got any bigger than an A-cup and my boobs looked like two little eggs. Everyone said I looked fine but I felt I looked pear-shaped.
“I knew bigger boobs would make me happy but rather than getting upset about it, I decided that as soon as I was old enough I’d save up and have breast implants.
“I managed to save up the money I needed and as soon as I was 17 I booked a consultation.
“I had the op when I turned 18 and I was so excited that I almost fell off the hospital bed beforehand.
“After I had my daughter in 2005 I decided to have them done again. I love the fake look so I decided to go for a 34E. I feel amazing.”
Source : TheMirror.Co.UKRead more…
It's finally done! Took almost "2" months to complete, but it's finally here! Credit to Seth Macfarlane, G-unit, and Fully Focused. Hope you all like it. Enjoy.... -Tha-Illist Entertainment
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New York Times Reports
Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results
Some of baseball’s most cherished storylines of the past decade have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs, including the accomplishments of record-setting home run hitters and dominating pitchers. Now, players with Boston’s championship teams of 2004 and 2007 have also been linked to doping.
Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.
Five others have been tied to positive tests from that year: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Grimsley and David Segui. Bonds, baseball’s career home runs leader, was not on the original list, although federal agents seized his 2003 sample and had it retested. Those results showed the presence of steroids, according to court documents.
The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information is under seal by a court order. The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected.
Unlike Ramirez, who recently served a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy, Ortiz had not previously been linked to performance-enhancing substances.
Scott Boras, the agent for Ramirez, would not comment Thursday.
Asked about the 2003 drug test on Thursday in Boston, Ortiz shrugged. “I’m not talking about that anymore,” he said. “I have no comment.”
The union has argued that the government illegally seized the 2003 test results, and judges at various levels of the federal court system have weighed whether the government can keep them. The government hopes to question every player on the list to determine where the drugs came from. An appeals court is deliberating the matter, and the losing side is likely to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, which seized the tests, declined to comment on Thursday. Michael Weiner, the general counsel for the players union, also declined to comment.
One by one, the names of elite players tied to performance-enhancing drugs have surfaced this year. In February, it was Rodriguez and Bonds. In May, it was Ramirez — for the first time. In June, it was Sosa.
Rodriguez had been viewed by some as a clean player who could eventually overtake the career home run record established by Bonds, who had been linked to possible drug use through the federal investigation. Rodriguez subsequently admitted that he used a performance-enhancing substance from 2001 to 2003.
The Times reported in June that Sosa was among those who tested positive in 2003, the first time he had been publicly tied to performance-enhancing drugs. Sosa became a national figure with the Chicago Cubs in 1998, when he and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals engaged in a celebrated race to overtake Roger Maris’s single-season home run record of 61. McGwire’s image suffered tremendously when, at a Congressional hearing in 2005, he refused to answer questions about steroid use.
By 2003, Ramirez had long since established himself as one of baseball’s best hitters. Ortiz, however, was less known. In 2002, the Minnesota Twins effectively cut him after failing to trade him. He signed a bargain contract with the Red Sox and began the 2003 season as a backup.
Ortiz quickly blossomed, setting personal highs in home runs (31) and runs batted in (101). He surpassed those numbers in each of the next four seasons.
Ramirez, with his dreadlocks and quirky behavior, and Ortiz, with his gregarious personality and portly build, formed a dynamic tandem on and off the field. They seemed to feed off each other — not to mention demoralize opponents — by hitting back-to-back in the heart of the lineup.
In 2004, they helped the Red Sox overcome a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. The Red Sox then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series to end decades of heartbreak in Boston. Ortiz had a game-winning home run and a game-winning hit against the Yankees and was named the most valuable player of that series. Ramirez was named the World Series M.V.P. after going 7 for 17 at the plate with a home run.
Three years after winning that first title, Ramirez and Ortiz returned Boston to another World Series, where they defeated the Colorado Rockies.
The pairing was split last season when the Red Sox traded Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers after team officials grew concerned that he was not playing hard in response to a contract dispute. In Los Angeles, Ramirez took off again, becoming popular among the fans and leading the Dodgers to the playoffs.
But Ramirez’s hero status in Los Angeles took a hit in May when he was suspended after baseball officials learned that he had been prescribed a fertility drug often used by bodybuilders after they stopped using steroids. When Ramirez was suspended, he issued a statement that appeared to maneuver around his 2003 test results.
“I do want to say one other thing,” Ramirez said. “I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”
That five-year period extended back to 2004, which excludes the 2003 test.
Since returning from his suspension, Ramirez has been widely accepted by the home fans. In 48 games this season, he has compiled a .327 average and has hit 11 home runs.
Ortiz, meanwhile, has been in a sharp decline. He had an operation on his wrist last year and missed nearly a third of the season. He started this year in a slump and did not hit his first home run until a month and a half into the season. Since June 1, however, he has hit 12 more home runs.
In 2007, Ortiz said that he used to buy a protein shake in the Dominican Republic when he was younger and did not know if it contained a performance-enhancing drug.
“I don’t do that anymore because they don’t have the approval for that here, so I know that, so I’m off buying things at the GNC back in the Dominican Republic,” Ortiz told The Boston Herald. He added: “I don’t know if I drank something in my youth, not knowing it.”
In February, he said that players who tested positive for steroids should be suspended for an entire season — about 100 games more than the current policy requires for a first offense.
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New York Daily News Reports
The complaint was filed more than a week ago in the Second Judicial District Court in Nevada, County of Washoe. The plaintiff is a woman named Andrea McNulty and the Case No. is CV0902222 and her complaint includes a lot of names, but the one that matters is the one in the headlines, and that is Ben Roethlisberger. He is a big guy and one of the biggest stars in sports right now because he has won two Super Bowls for the Pittsburgh Steelers and won the last one with one of the most famous throws and endings in Super Bowl history.
Ms. McNulty, a former casino hotel hostess at the Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, charges in a civil complaint that Roethlisberger sexually assaulted her in his hotel room last July while in Lake Tahoe to play in a celebrity golf tournament. Roethlisberger has vigorously denied this. The police aren't investigating because McNulty has only filed a civil complaint against Roethlisberger and not a criminal complaint.
Andrea McNulty
But we are back in a hotel room with a famous athlete and a young woman. Just because McNulty has made this charge against Roethlisberger doesn't mean he laid a hand on her. And just because Roethlisberger is a star championship quarterback for an iconic football team doesn't mean he is innocent.
People have a right to wonder why McNulty waited a year to come forward, the same way people wondered why a New York City woman once waited a year to accuse three New York Mets of raping her in Florida during spring training. They have a right to wonder why when she did come forward, she went straight to a civil suit, asking for financial damages from Roethlisberger and the hotel from which she is now on paid leave.
But these stories are never neat and simple. Sometimes they never get past the original headlines and that is what might happen here. Of course Roethlisberger's story is simple and direct: She made it up, he didn't do it, he's never done anything like this in his life.
McNulty's story? It is in the 36 pages of Case No. CV0902222 and you at least ought to read it before you decide if she made the whole thing up, before you decide it can't possibly be true because she waited so long to file it, that she is nothing more than a troubled woman looking to make a big score off Big Ben, football hero.
What McNulty alleges:
That on Friday night, July 11, 2008, she was at her post on the 17th floor of the Penthouse floor at Harrah's. That Roethlisberger returned to his room with another young woman, who left 20 minutes later. That Roethlisberger, after walking the first woman to the elevator, mentioned to McNulty that the sound system on his TV set wasn't working.
Roethlisberger called back, said the set still wasn't working. McNulty called her boss, couldn't reach her, couldn't reach anybody in engineering. Roethlisberger called again. McNulty, mindful of Roethlisberger being a friend of Harrah's Northern Nevada president John Koster, went to Roethlisberger's suite, got shown that the set was in the bedroom, said she found no problem with the television set.
Her version of what happened next:
Roethlisberger wouldn't let her leave, grabbed her and started to kiss her, pushed her onto the bed. She said, "You don't want to do this" and "Please don't" and "I'm not on any type of birth control." And then forced sex on her. McNulty alleges that Roethlisberger asked if there were cameras on the room, told her to just say she had fixed the television and left.
In her telling, the story doesn't get much better from there. McNulty said that the next morning when she told a man named Guy Hyder, the chief of security at the hotel and someone also named in her complaint, Hyder told her she was "overreacting" and that most "girls" would feel lucky to have sex with someone like Roethlisberger.
The rest of it is about McNulty being treated several times for anxiety and depression, at Reno Renown Hospital, at West Hills, another facility, finally a care facility in Napa Valley while on a family medical leave. She says that much later, when she asked Hyder if he remembered their conversation the morning after the alleged incident, Hyder said he just assumed it was a "date rape thing."
McNulty kept going to her employers instead of the police and when she finally feared "reprisal" and "termination," she filed her complaint against Roethlisberger and Koster and Hyder and others.
So McNulty is a troubled woman looking for money, one who will have a world of trouble convincing a judge and jury that she is telling the truth, even though she never went to the cops. Or she is a woman who was sexually assaulted by a star athlete and then abused in a different way by her employers. She is lying or Roethlisberger is lying. Whether it is Harrah's in Tahoe or the Canterbury in Indianapolis with Mike Tyson or Kobe Bryant in Colorado, we always end up in the exact same place: One hotel room, two people who know what really happened.
But before anybody automatically assumes that Roethlisberger is the victim here, they ought to at least read her side of things, her version of what happened that night on the 17th floor.
And what she says happened after that.
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AllHipHop Reports
With rumors swirling about his possible “music retirement,” Mike Jones is setting the record straight about his future plans.
In an in-depth interview with the Houston Press, Mike Jonesdefended himself against accusations from former friends and associates that he squandered his career and took advantage of them.
"People hate on Mike Jones and what he done, but I sold 2 million. People hated on Mike Jones back then, but I still sold all my CDs. So I don't trip. Because you could hate, but at the end of the day the numbers prove that Mike Jones is still relevant and supposed to be here...You know what I'm saying?"
The 2 million sales Jones references is the breakout success of his 2005 debut, Who Is Mike Jones?
Power by a unique promotional campaign that included the rapper’s own personal phone number and the chart-topping success of “Still Tippin’,” Jones became an overnight superstar.
Unfortunately, the Houston native could not capitalize on the success, and others speculate it was due to the rapper’s work ethic becoming erratic.
It’s alleged that Jones alienated promoters but reneging on shows agreements, and DJ s began to refuse to play his records after breaking commitments with them as well.
Additionally, label issues stalled the rapper’s sophomore album The Voice for over 3 years.
Undeterred, Jones explained his plans to drop another LP entitled Expect the Unexpected later this year, and will focus on building himself back up through endorsement deals with Subway - he claims to have shed 100 pounds - and Cricket Wireless.
"It's just my fan appeal lost a little bit," Jones admitted to the Houston Press. "The buzz, the momentum, lost a little bit. I was on Unsolved Mysteries. They don't know what happened to Mike Jones. He ain't dead. I'm in that glass six feet under trying to get y'all attention. Y'all walking right over me. I'm these dominoes right here. And I seen all y'all faces as y'all spit on me, and walked past me, and laughed, and said f**k me. Somehow I got out of that motherf**king coffin, though.”
Mike Jones last album The Voice was released earlier this year, and charted in Billboard’s Top 20.
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Wendy Sewell, Therese Ziemann and Michelle Belliveau face up to six years in prison for their glue revenge ambush.
NYDailyNews Reports
A married man who planned to rendezvous with one of his handful of lovers at an eastern Wisconsin motel instead found himself bound, blindfolded and assaulted by a group of women out for revenge, according to court documents.
Four women, including his wife, eventually showed up to humiliate the man, who ended up with his penis glued to his stomach in a bizarre plot to punish him for a lover's quadrangle gone bad, according to the documents filed in Calumet County.
Now it's the women who face punishment, perhaps six years in prison, and at least one said Monday the story has gotten twisted and she's embarrassed. "I am disturbed.
I am upset. I am having a hard time handling life; an emotional wreck," Wendy Sewell, 43, of Kaukauna, said in a telephone interview from her home.
"I am ashamed." Sewell, Therese Ziemann, 48, of Menasha, Michelle Belliveau, 43, of Neenah, and the man's wife are charged with being party to false imprisonment, a felony.
Ziemann also is charged with fourth-degree sexual assault. The women are free on $200 cash bails. Investigators say all the women but Belliveau were romantically involved with the man.
Online court records didn't list defense attorneys for any of the women Monday. The Associated Press is not naming the man's wife to protect his identity as an alleged victim of sexual assault.
The women's plot for revenge unfolded last Thursday at the Lakeview Motel about 30 miles southwest of Green Bay in the tiny village of Stockbridge near the scenic shores of Lake Winnebago.
Criminal complaints filed Friday allege the man agreed to be bound with "sheer sheets" and blindfolded with a pillowcase for a "rub down" by Ziemann.
She instead cut off his underwear with a scissors and summoned the others to the room with a text message.
Ziemann struck the man in the face, and used Krazy Glue to attach his penis to his stomach when the other women arrived, according to the complaints.
The man told investigators he also was threatened with a gun.
Ziemann told investigators she didn't have a gun but may have told the victim, "Do you know how much I want to shoot you?"
He started screaming and the women rushed off fearful that he could get loose and hurt them but allegedly took his wallet, vehicle and cell phone.
Ziemann told investigators she met the man online through Craigslist, fell in love and paid for his use of a room at the motel for the past two months.
She said she gave him about $3,000.
Then last Wednesday, she learned from the man's wife that he was married, had other girlfriends and was "using them for money." She expected the money to be repaid, according to the documents.
During Thursday's confrontation with the man, Ziemann told investigators Sewell asked him, "Which one do you love more?" and the man's wife made a derisive remark about him being scared.
The man got free from the bed by chewing through one of his bindings, went outside and borrowed a telephone from the motel owner to call police.
Ziemann and Belliveau are sisters and Belliveau didn't do anything wrong, Sewell said Monday.
"She was just there for moral support. She wasn't even dating the guy. She stood at the door the whole time and didn't participate or nothing."
Ziemann's husband answered the telephone at their home and declined comment. There was no telephone listing for Belliveau. The man had no telephone listing in Fond du Lac.
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Newsweek Reports
Reporter, cop, killer: the eternal triangle of tabloid journalism, pulp fiction, and film noir. Turn them loose in Los Angeles, cue up the Coltrane, watch their taillights disappear down Sunset. The cop is LAPD homicide detective Dennis Kilcoyne, at 54 still rangy and vital, but burdened by decades of sifting the muck of human depravity in search of prosecutable felonies. In a dark suit and black sunglasses, at the wheel of his silver Lincoln, he could pass for a Hollywood player on the make, but in the bleary fluorescent glare of his office, his eyes—the weary, puffy eyes of someone not about to spend six grand on an eyelid tuck—give him away. The reporter, Christine Pelisek of LA Weekly, is "late 30ish or maybe a little past," as she puts it, a slender, stylishly dressed blonde, blue eyes still wide with amazement at the tragicomic panoply of folly and greed she is lucky enough to witness. As for the killer, we don't know. The last description of him dates from 1988, when he shot a woman in his car and dumped her on the street. Sometime soon the paths of these three will intersect, and here is how we see it ending: with the killer in jail, facing multiple counts of rape, assault, and murder; with Pelisek's reporting triumphantly vindicated and rewarded with a big book deal; and Kilcoyne cleaning out his desk at police headquarters, thinking about retirement.
The setting is a rundown neighborhood whose very name, South Central, was such a byword for social dysfunction that in 2003 the city council redesignated it South Los Angeles. It was here, in the mid-1980s, that the bodies of young women, most of them drug users and occasional prostitutes, began turning up on the streets. At one time some 50 unsolved murders were attributed to a spectral "Southside Slayer." In the late 1990s, the LAPD took another look at the old cases and, armed with improved DNA technology, began turning up the names of suspects. Eventually cops concluded that at least five separate serial killers had been working those crack-riddled streets in the 1980s, and that they had caught and convicted four of them. The one still at large was linked, by an intersecting web of DNA and ballistics evidence, to the killings of seven women (and one man, who has been described in newspaper accounts as a pimp) between 1985 and 1988, and the 1988 attack on the woman who was shot and dumped from a car but somehow survived. All the victims were black, as was the suspect. The killer was prone to particularly brutal beatings and sexual assaults—either before the women were dead, or after—and left his victims in degrading circumstances, wrapped in filthy rugs or under piles of junk or in garbage bins in squalid alleyways.
And then he, or at least his DNA signature, vanished. Murder victims still turned up in South Central, but after the botched killing in 1988, there were none linked to him for more than 13 years—until March 2002, when the naked body of a 14-year-old runaway named Princess Berthomieux was found behind a garage in the neighboring city of Inglewood. A year later 35-year-old Valerie McCorvey was found dead in an alley. DNA linked both of them to the earlier slayings; wherever he had been in the interim, he wasn't dead.
The gap is puzzling; serial killers don't often stop of their own accord. The simplest explanation is that the perpetrator was in prison in the 1990s. The other possibility is that he changed his pattern to escape detection. All the earlier victims were shot with the same .25-caliber handgun, but Berthomieux and McCorvey were strangled. Police admit that one or more victims could have slipped through the cracks, if for some reason DNA evidence wasn't present, or properly collected and preserved.
It was Pelisek—a former waitress whose only previous newspaper job was covering minor-league hockey in a suburb of her native Ottawa—who first brought the case to public attention in an article in 2006, linking the two new murders to the string of earlier ones. Then the killer struck again, on or just before New Year's Day 2007, when a homeless man looking for deposit cans discovered the body of Janecia Peters, 25, in a plastic garbage bag. Shortly afterward, LAPD Chief William Bratton created a task force for the murders and put Kilcoyne, a 33-year veteran of the LAPD, in charge.
There will always be cops, but the outlook for journalists is not so certain; Pelisek is one of two full-time reporters still working at the Weekly—a free paper modeled on New York's Village Voice—down from a much larger staff in 1999, when she talked her way into a job as a researcher. So there is something to learn from the cordial, if complicated, relationship Pelisek has with Kilcoyne. It goes to one of the oldest debates in criminology: how much information should the police disclose about an ongoing investigation, especially one involving a killer who may kill again?
To Pelisek, it is self-evident that the public must be told, in the largest typeface available, about a "monstrous phoenix" come back to bloodthirsty life. This is less out of an abstract commitment to the First Amendment—Pelisek, self-taught as a reporter, must be one of the few in America who has never seen or even heard of All the President's Men—than a specific concern for the people of South Los Angeles. "I thought it was really important that family members should know their daughters had been killed by a serial killer," she says, "and for safety reasons, when there's a serial killer in your area, people should know about it." To Kilcoyne, this was a prescription for making his job more difficult. He urged Bratton not to publicize the task force, arguing: "Let's not chase the guy away before we even know what we're looking at." Law-enforcement experts come down on both sides of the question. "They're right," says Clinton Van Zandt, a retired FBI supervisor and consultant, of the LAPD's handling of the case. "They'd like to saturate that area with undercover officers, with decoys, and grab him while he has no idea that they're actively looking for him." But Jack Levin, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University and author of Serial Killers and Sadistic Murderers, calls the reflexive secrecy of the LAPD "a simple-minded response," adding that many such crimes are solved by tips from the public, who can help only if they are alerted in the first place. When the killer is found, the circumstances of his arrest—caught in the act by cops, identified by a DNA match, or fingered by a tip from the public—will tell us who was right. As will the timing: before or after he kills again.
The existence of the task force stayed a secret until last summer, when Pelisek scored another big scoop by disclosing it in a long, front-page story. Unlike the 2006 story, which sparked just a one-day follow-up in the Los Angeles Times, this one created a sensation. Pelisek took the side of the overlooked family members, some of whom, she says, had heard almost nothing from the police during the decades the cases lay dormant. "For 20-odd years they had no idea what had happened to their daughters," she says. "They want people to know that their daughters"—even if they were drug addicts, even if they sold themselves for money to buy crack—"weren't worth nothing." That approach ensured that the case would become caught up in the city's notoriously acrimonious racial politics. Margaret Prescod, a radio personality and activist who speaks for some of the family members, recently issued a series of demands on their behalf, including investigations by Congress and the Department of Justice and "compensation for the victims and their families." Kilcoyne is troubled by the anger some of the families feel toward the police. "I have thought deeply about dealing with the families," he says. "They're all black?.?.?.?I'm trying to satisfy them and they're upset and they want answers. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make them comfortable that we're doing everything we can and that in the 1980s, detectives did everything they could."
For her part, Pelisek regarded it as a civic disgrace that "local journalists haven't even awarded [the killer] a creepy nickname," so she and her editor, Jill Stewart, took it upon themselves. In view of his long disappearance, they considered "Ripper Van Winkle, except for the detail that he didn't use a knife. So they settled on "The Grim Sleeper." This is a phrase that has never crossed the lips of Kilcoyne, who has the cop's usual flair for the undramatic. "I guess we're stuck with it," he says with a shrug. "I just think it's a little goofy, is all?.?.?.?When the task force was set up, our bureau chief, Gary Brennan, kept asking me, 'What are you going to name the task force, Dennis?' Finally, I told him, 'Chief, it's gonna be the 800 Task Force,' and he said, 'Well, why are we calling it that?' And I said, 'Because that's the number on our door.' "
Kilcoyne is unimpressed by Pelisek's concern for the well-being of the prostitutes, runaways, and drug users who still hang out on the South L.A. streets—not because they are undeserving of police protection, but because he considers them impervious to warnings. If they were paying attention to their safety, he reasons, they wouldn't be on the street in the first place. Van Zandt agrees. The police issue warnings, he says, "and the prostitutes will say, 'Gee, I understand, but this is my living and I can only stay in so long.' " "If [the suspect] was crawling into kitchen windows in the middle of the night, it would be different," Kilcoyne says. "But the people that are being victimized don't read the L.A. Times, they don't watch the news. So what are we accomplishing here? Are we gonna help the case or are we gonna hurt the case and chase our guy to another city?"
So Kilcoyne was not happy to get a phone call from Pelisek last year saying she knew about his task force and intended to do a story. Big-city cops generally think reporters are fine in their place, which is at a press conference writing down what they are told. Still, they recognize that hero cops are made, not born, and it's reporters who make them, so they have incentives to cooperate. Kilcoyne agreed to meet Pelisek for an interview at a Starbucks near his office, and acceded to her request not to call a press conference that would preempt her scoop. She was grateful, perhaps because she didn't realize he was following orders. "Once she made the department aware that she was going with the story," he explains, "we chose to be cooperative rather than adversarial, and I was instructed to have a chat with her." They still talk every few weeks, circumspectly sharing information and tips. Their efforts sometimes conflict, but often complement each other. Kilcoyne has a team of seven detectives working full time on the case and can call on resources from all over the state; one project involves identifying state prison inmates locked up during the two long gaps in the killer's career, an effort that has yielded between 10,000 and 15,000 names. ("It's a lot of -data to sort through," he says laconically.) Pelisek, for her part, has better sources in the community. Many tips come to her instead of to the police, although it's the city, not the newspaper, that has posted a $500,000 reward for information. Once, a woman walked into the LA Weekly with a fork in a plastic bag, explaining that it had been used by her male friend, who she thought had the makings of a serial killer. Pelisek turned it over to the task force, which found no trace of the killer's DNA on it—which was just as well because the woman left the office without giving her name. Kilcoyne evinces a grudging respect for Pelisek's persistence. "She's very dogged at what she does and she's good at it," he says. "I wish she was working for me."
"Dogged" is high praise from Kilcoyne, but "obsessed" might be more accurate. From an early age, growing up in a sleepy suburb of Ottawa, Pelisek was fascinated by horror films, mystery novels, and true-crime stories, the more lurid, the better; at the Weekly, she can't believe her colleagues would rather cover politics or the arts than a good murder. Single, childless, with few pastimes besides travel, she works long hours, gunning her jalopy up and down freeway ramps in blithe disregard for the one car at a time signs and parceling out her time for interviews by a -NEWSWEEK reporter in 10-minute segments.
She was originally tipped to the possibility of a serial killer in 2006 by a source in the coroner's office who had noticed an unusual cluster of "body dumps" since 2002. She hounded him for details until he came up with a list of 38 cases, almost all of which turned out to be unrelated to the earlier killings or to each other. But she worked her way down the list methodically until coming to Princess Berthomieux, the 14-year-old killed in 2002. A detective had discovered that the DNA found on her body matched that recovered from the cases in the 1980s and was seeking a warrant to test a prisoner he suspected (wrongly) of being the killer. This formed the basis of Pelisek's first story. Of the 38 names she'd been given by her source, Berthomieux was No. 37.
In her obsession, she dreams about the Grim Sleeper; in one nightmare she chased him up and down the glass-walled elevators of a downtown hotel. She fantasizes about him contacting her, the way David Berkowitz wrote to Jimmy Breslin. "God, that would be amazing," she says. "I would really like to find out who—I mean, I would like this guy to get caught." Still, she admits to occasional doubts he will be found. She is even philosophical about the possibility that her own story last year scared him away. "At least another woman won't die," she says.
Kilcoyne has no dreams of the killer, who might not even be the worst person he has had to deal with in his career. The Grim Sleeper would be in a close race with the two elderly women Kilcoyne nabbed in 2006, whose modus operandi involved "taking out millions of dollars in life insurance on homeless guys and running them over." He was one of about 20 detectives assigned to O.J. (mention Mark Fuhrman to him at your peril). Kilcoyne—born in Massachusetts but raised in L.A.—is the great-grandson of a Boston police sergeant and was drawn to the cop novels of Joseph Wambaugh, but claims he fell into police work because "I needed a job. I was young, married, with a house, and I needed to pay the rent." His work, he says, "can be frustrating," but "you're out meeting different people every day." That's true even if with some of the ones you meet, you have to wonder what God was thinking when he made them.
Kilcoyne is certain the killer will be caught someday—a leap of faith, since the LAPD managed to avoid catching him 20 years ago, when the clues were fresh. Police were tipped to the killing of one 1987 victim, Barbara Ware, by a caller who said he'd seen someone dump a woman's body from a blue van; he gave a precise street address and the van's complete plate number. Police found the van soon afterward in the parking lot of the storefront church to which it was registered, but somehow that rather large clue failed to lead to a suspect. Now Kilcoyne's detectives are pain-staking-ly trying to track down members of the now shuttered church and residents of the buildings that overlook the alley where Ware was found. Kilcoyne is protective of his department, but even so, it baffles him that detectives never interviewed a pastor at the church back then. By the time Kilcoyne began looking for him, the man was dead, but he had the body exhumed for DNA testing. "He's not our guy," says Kilcoyne, but he still thinks he could have shed light on the case. "No one ever talked to him, which is one of the flaws of the 1987 investigation."
Then there was the survivor of the 1988 attack, who was shot by the same handgun used in the earlier killings. Her name is Enietra, a brassy, rawboned woman, now 50, who was minding her own business on the street one evening when a man drove by in a car and offered her a ride. She remembers the car, an orange Pinto, "pimped out" with white leather seats and fancy hubcaps. She remembers how he looked, "nerdy, clean-cut, polo shirt, khaki pants?.?.?.?in the 'hood, you're coming from work if you're dressed like that." She recalls the house he stopped at along the way, and the conversation they had when he shot her in the chest, which began when he called her by the name of another woman in the neighborhood, a prostitute who strongly resembled Enietra. "I turned around and said, 'What did you say?' and as soon as I turned to face him, that's when he shot me?.?.?.?I said, 'Why did you shoot me?' He said, 'You dogged [insulted] me.' I told him, 'You don't know me. You've got the wrong person.' " She passed out but revived hours later on the street, and recovered in the hospital. In summary, the police had a description of the killer himself, the street name of a prostitute with whom he had quarreled, a house where he either lived or knew someone, and a description of his distinctive Pinto. All of these leads, Kilcoyne avers, were dutifully tracked down by detectives at the time. And they couldn't find him.
But back then, there was no DNA database of known criminals. Now, all it will take is for his suspect to stick up a gas station, and the computers will go to work and Kilcoyne will get the call with the magic phrase: "We've got a match." The Grim Sleeper is a throwback, a relic of the crack epidemic of the 1980s, which drove thousands of men and women to the streets to hustle for their next hit. We think of serial killing as a crime of compulsion, but it is also one of opportunity. Desperate, reckless, and naive—many of the women were from good families with little experience of living on the street—they were easy prey for psychopaths. But serial killers tend to leave their DNA at the scene; the very point of the crime is often a rape, or the violent intimacy of a strangulation. "Cases like this will become a thing of the past," Kilcoyne predicts, "because science won't allow this 20-year series of multiple murders to go unsolved." So Pelisek listens to the psychics and crackpots and the busybodies carrying a 20-year-old grudge, and Kilcoyne sifts through decades-old phone books and car registrations. And the killer (we assume) drives up and down Western Avenue in the dark, watching the women in the spill of light from the store windows. When he is caught, says Kilcoyne, "we'll have all the answers and what-ifs. We'll know."
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The Boss Don Biggavel teams up with that new nigga now French Montana for another banger.
Max is facing a tough bid but he might get out on appeal
Hold yo head Max !!!!!!
Free Wavy Crocket !!!!!!!!
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LiveSteez Reports
LiveSteez research shows that Black churches, in aggregate, have collected more than $420 billion in tithes and donations since 1980. With a Senate investigation into the finances of several mega churches underway, the “Prosperity Movement” has been the target of mounting criticism from inside and outside the Black Church. Specifically, the affluent ministries of The Reverend Creflo Dollar, Bishop Eddie Long and others have drawn the attention – and ire – of some clergy and laypeople alike.
Researcher Henry E. Felder’s study of Blacks’ donation habits demonstrated per capita spending of $508 per year in 2009 dollars. Another source, Tyler Media Services, estimated that Black Church revenue approached $17 billion in 2006.
One church, the Reverend Dollar’s World Changers, reported $69 million in 2006 income, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Mainstream politicians and Black community leaders are demanding a better accounting of the “return on investment” offered by churches to the communities that fund them. Meanwhile, legions of faithful churchgoers defend their pastors and accuse their detractors of applying a double standard that ignores the largesse of wealthy, white televangelists, while underplaying the economic development and social service functions provided by the Black Church.
“The church has gotten caught up in materialism and greed, a lifestyle. Many ministers today want to live like celebrities and they want to be treated like celebrities. In other words, instead of the church standing with the community, the church has become self-serving. It has strayed away from its mission” according to Dr.Love Henry Whelchel, professor of church history at The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
Few people – not even the ongoing Congressional investigation by Senator Chuck Grassley accuse the mega church pastors of outright larceny, and congregants generally approve of their pastors’ luxurious lifestyles. However, in a blatant recent example, a father-son pastor team, 76-year-old Richard Cunningham of Moreno Valley and his son, 52-year-old Philip Cunningham of Laurinburg, N.C., pleaded guilty to felony grand theft and fraud charges. The younger Cunningham also pleaded guilty to forgery. Over five years, prosecutors say, the Cunninghams stole from Calvary Baptist Yorba Linda Church and School bank accounts and used the money to buy time shares in Hawaii and Palm Springs, golf club memberships and a Cadillac. Prosecutors say the men have paid $3.1 million in restitution to the church.
LiveSteez’s investigative series will take a forensic editorial approach to quantifying the return to Black America for the $350 billion in tax-favored donations it has given to the Black Church, examining the arguments on both sides of the pulpit. In this series we will seek answers and advisory to the following questions:
How often and how much do church leaders take advantage of the faith of poor black people?
We will investigate and indentify the churches they are showing a strong return on investment that goes beyond inspiration.
What does the black community have to show for the $350 billion in tax free dollars?
Expert analysis on what could potentially be done with such a huge amount of money and how it could improve the state of our communities.
Why do some church leaders refuse to participate in the Grassley congressional Investigation, which requested the financial records of several mega-churches.
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The 4th of July box office of 2009 saw a tie between alien robots and prehistoric creatures, as the "Transformers" sequel and the new "Ice Age" film were dead even according to estimates on Sunday (July 5).
While final numbers on Monday will show which actually came in first, initial numbers indicate that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" pulled in $42.5 million a piece over the weekend for a tie.
According to box office experts, it's rare that box-office rankings are so close, particularly in summer, when movies typically have huge opening weekends then trail off to make way for the next blockbuster.
After debuting at #1 last week with $201.2 million, "Revenge of the Fallen" held up well during its second weekend, while animated sequel "Ice Age" packed in family crowds. After 12 days "Transformers" has earned $293.5 million at the box office, making it the year's highest-grossing movie. It's the sequel to the first film, reuniting human stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox with shape-shifting robots in a war against evil machines.
The other wide release this weekend was Universal's crime saga "Public Enemies," starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. It debuted a solid #3 with $26.2 million.
At #4 is Sandra Bullock's "The Proposal" with $12.7 million; "The Hangover" grabbed #5 with $10.4 million taking its total over $200 million; #6 was "Up" with $6.5 million; #7 is "My Sister's Keeper" with $5.2 million; #8 was "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" with $2.5 million; and the last top 10 spots are held by "Night At the Museum" and "Year One" with $2.1 million a piece.
Next weekend, the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy "Bruno" hits theaters, as well as "I Love You Beth Cooper" starring Hayden Panettiere of the hit TV series "Heroes".
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