Murder

Jan. 10, 2011 Updated Oct. 3, 2011

Shrien and Anni Dewani on their wedding day. (Photo was handed out to the media.)

Both brilliant and beautiful, Anni Dewani was shot to death on her honeymoon outside Cape Town, South Africa during a carjacking that her millionaire husband, Shrien Dewani, survived.  The three men convicted of the murder say the young husband hired them to kill his wife.  London-based Dewani is fighting extradition. 

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

The names of the places sounded exotic: Gugulethu. Lingelethu. Khayelitsha. Chitwa Chitwa. They created images of beautiful people dancing to the beat of drums on a hot summer night.

To the cops in their dark blue uniforms, who stood around the white Volkswagen Sharan, abandoned in the place that bore the name Lingelethu, there was nothing exotic though about the young woman who lay sprawled across the vehicle’s rear seat. Two holes between her shoulders and another in her neck from which her blood had flowed freely so that most of the inside of the car was covered in blood, told them that the young woman was dead.

They knew her name: Anni Dewani.

They were wondering how they were going to tell her husband Shrien, who had in the first hour of that morning reported her missing and was anxiously waiting at a nearby luxury hotel, what they had found.

Oct. 28, 2010

Charles Manson

In 2004, Denise Noe wrote "The Manson Myth" for Crime Magazine, an article debunking the charismatic image of Charles Manson propagated by Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the best-selling true crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.  Noe wrote that the real life Charles Manson was not some messianic leader gone bad, but a pathetic figure from the beginning.  In 2008 she sent her article to Manson.  When he responded by calling her collect, an unusual relationship began.

by Denise Noe

I first read Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry when I was in high school. I was fascinated by its portrait of Charles Manson: a mesmerizing and charismatic criminal able to thoroughly dominate a band of fanatical followers. According to that book, Manson was able to convince his followers that a worldwide Armageddon between the black and white races was imminent. He believed that this race war had been prophesied in the Bible and in the Beatles’ White Album. Indeed, Manson supposedly thought the very title of the record was a reference to the coming black-white conflict. The helter-skelter theory was that blacks would kill off the white race – all except for Manson and his followers who would take refuge in a “Bottomless Pit” located in the desert.
 
According to the helter-skelter theory of which Manson had supposedly completely convinced his followers, Manson and his people would hide out until the race war was finished and blacks were the only ones above ground. Manson was a racist who believed that blacks would be unable to govern themselves and so would turn the reins of power over to him and the other Caucasians who would emerge from the Bottomless Pit. Thus, Charles Manson would become ruler of the world and his followers a class of aristocrats.

Dec. 18, 2009

Peter Rollack

Peter Rollack’s Sex, Money, Murder gang found its niche in running drugs from the projects of the Bronx to North Carolina in the early 1990s. By age 19, "Pistol Pete" was a millionaire and had thousands of "soldiers" in new chapters in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Patterson, Trenton and Philadelphia. He thought nothing of murdering slow payers or snitches, particularly snitches. Snitches would do him in at age 24.

by Randall Radic

Soundview is a low-income residential neighborhood located in the south central section of the borough of the Bronx in New York City. The low-income public housing development in Soundview is managed by the New York City Housing Authority. Soundview has a population of 80,000 people, primarily African-American and Hispanic. Most of these people live below the poverty line and receive public assistance, including AFDC, Home Relief, Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid.

In short, Soundview is hell on earth. Poverty, disease, drugs, and violence is a way of life. There’s no hope and only a few find a way out.

During the 1960s, youth gangs became part and parcel of the landscape. The first and most famous gang was The Black Spades, originating in the Bronxdale Houses. The Black Spades rapidly achieved renown and dominated the area, controlling every housing project in the neighborhood. Through sheer brutality, the Black Spades became the most feared gang in New York City.

Sex, Money, Murder (SMM) came on the scene in 1987. SMM was one of the sets (gangs) of the New York Gang Alliance. Because of an ongoing power struggle, where each gang wanted to be number one, SMM flipped. They left the NYG Alliance and became a sanctioned set of the Bloods. The various sets of the Bloods had decided it was in their interests to come together as the East Coast United Blood Nation (UBN). This was in 1993.

At this time, Peter Rollack was the unchallenged leader of Sex, Money, Murder. Because of his tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, Rollack was nicknamed Pistol Pete. And usually, Pistol Pete didn’t bother with the questions.

Dec. 1, 2009

Clarence Ray Allen

A coward and a megalomaniac, Ray Allen gave orders that resulted in the deaths of many people.  At age 76, he was the oldest person ever executed by the State of California.

 by Randy Radic

His name was Clarence Ray Allen.  Born in Blair, Oklahoma in 1930, he asserted he was part Choctaw, which meant he laid claim to being a member of the Muskhogean Indian tribe, which included the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes. 

The Allen family was dirt poor, so Ray grew up picking cotton.  But Ray was ambitious.  Later, he moved to Fresno, California, where he got married and started his own security company.  Charismatic and hardworking, Ray’s company flourished.  He went from renting a shack for $75 per month to owning a ranch where he raised fancy show horses – Thoroughbreds and Arabians – owned an airplane and had a swimming pool in his backyard. 

For some reason, success and wealth weren’t enough for Ray.  There was a discordant element inside Ray.  Maybe he was simply bored.  Some said he simply went insane.  Whatever the reason, his psyche became tainted.  Ray turned to crime, forming his own gang, which he baptized as the Ray Allen Gang.  Because of his outgoing personality, Ray attracted people like a magnet.  Some of those he attracted were young ne’er do wells, impressionable, impulsive and reckless men who sought an outlet for their dissatisfied lives.  

Ray recruited them and gave them direction.  He turned them into criminals.  The Ray Allen Gang’s most important rule was no snitching.  Ray told the gang that snitches would be killed.  To make his point, he pulled out a newspaper article about two people who had been found dead in Nevada, telling his gang that there was only one punishment for snitches.

Lizzie Borden

When Lizzie Borden axed her stepmother and father to death in 1892 it was unthinkable that a woman of such upbringing could commit such vicious crimes. The savagery of the murders set her free.

by Denise M. Clark

The New York Times headline for Aug. 5th, 1892 read: "BUTCHERED IN THEIR HOME: Mr. Borden and His Wife Killed in Broad Daylight." The first paragraph of the stunning article read:

FALL RIVER, Mass, Aug. 4 -- Andrew J. Borden and wife, two of the oldest, wealthiest, and most highly respected persons in the city, were brutally murdered with an ax at 11 o'clock this morning in their home on Second Street, within a few minutes' walk of the City Hall. The Borden family consisted of the father, mother, two daughters, and a servant. The older daughter has been in Fair Haven for some days. The rest of the family has been ill for three or four days, and Dr. Bowen, the attending physician, thought they had been poisoned.

The horrific axe murders of Andrew Borden and his third wife, Abby, would have been shocking in any age, but in the early 1890s they were unthinkable. Equally unthinkable was who wielded the axe that butchered them an hour or so apart in their own home. The idea that the murderer could possibly be Borden's 32-year-old daughter Lizzie took days to register with the police – despite overwhelming physical and circumstantial evidence that pointed only at her. Nine months later a jury, unable to fathom that a woman could commit such vicious crimes, would find a way to ignore the evidence and set Lizzie free.

By no means had Lizzie Borden committed the perfect crime. The police were quickly able to dispense with the possibility of an outside intruder carrying out the murders. Lizzie – her alibi fraught with inconsistencies – was the only suspect. She alone had both the motive and the opportunity. What would end up saving her was the remarkable violence of the murders: The murders were simply too grisly to have been committed by a woman of her upbringing.

The Borden mystery is captured within a web of falsified statements, suppositions, assumptions and public opinion, all of which revolve around a missing weapon that actually never was missing, a blood-stained dress that was never found, and a young woman's previously impeccable character.

Sharon Kinne

She was one of the most remarkable criminals in U.S. history. A housewife, she turned cold-blooded killer. In 1969 she escaped from a Mexican prison and disappeared without a trace.

by J. J. Maloney

In 1960 Sharon Kinne was an attractive 20-year-old Jackson County, Mo., housewife with two children, and was having an affair with John Boldizs, a friend from high-school.

She and her husband, James, 25, were having frequent arguments.  Sharon wanted a new Thunderbird, and she wanted a vacation trip.  She often lied about having paid bills.  The Kinnes were deeply in debt.

On March 19, 1960 -- a Saturday afternoon – James, who – his relatives say -- knew she was cheating on him, reportedly told Sharon he would file for divorce the following Monday.

So Sharon Kinne did the only sensible thing, for her: She shot James in the head while he was napping and said her 2-year-old daughter Danna did it while playing with daddy's gun -- a .22-caliber Hi-Standard pistol. When the Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the house just east of Independence, Mo., they found the gun lying on the bed beside James.

April 14, 2003

JonBenet Ramsey

by Ryan Ross

Copyright by Ryan Ross. 2003. All rights reserved.

Related Story: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey by JJ Maloney and J. Patrick O'Connor

Editor's Note:

On July 9, 2008, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy stated that DNA tests conducted by Bode Technology Group revealed that skin cells left behind on JonBenet Ramsey's long underwear point to a killer other than the girl's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, or her brother, Burke. Mrs. Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at age 49.

"To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry," Lacy wrote in an exoneration letter to John Ramsey, who now has remarried and lives in Michigan. "No innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion."

Early in the investigation into the 6-year-old pageant star's brutal murder on Christmas night in 1996, Lacy said that Boulder police discovered male DNA in a drop of blood on JonBenet's underwear that did not match any members of JonBenet's immediate family. The tests conducted by Bode Technology Group, Lacy said, revealed the same DNA that was found previously in the drop of blood was present in three places on JonBenet's long underwear.

Lacy stated that Boulder investigators now hope they'll eventually find a DNA match in the ever-expanding national DNA databank, a sentiment echoed by John Ramsey. "I think the people that are in charge of the investigation are focused on that, and that gives me a lot of comfort," Mr. Ramsey said in an interview with a Denver TV station. "Certainly we are grateful that they acknowledged that we, based on that, certainly could not have been involved."

Even if a DNA match is eventually made, it does not mean that the DNA from this contaminated crime scene will reveal it to be that of JonBenet's killer, although it possibly could. For now, all that is known, is that it is not the DNA of John, Burke, or the late Patsy Ramsey. In the meantime, the JonBenet case will continue unsolved and will remain one of the most botched crime investigations in the annals of U.S. law enforcement.

It's time for closure. More than six years have passed since JonBenet Ramsey was killed. Most all the evidence is in. The principals have had more than enough time to ponder, scrutinize, and digest. The grand jurors have long since heard, deliberated, and gone home without a peep. The new district attorney isn't up to the job. The media are desperate for a climax — any climax.

The public — misled by assorted media jackals clamoring for microwave justice — pines for a murder trial that will never happen, all but resigned to an O.J.-esque outcome in which there is no closure, and where doubts and suspicions linger as long as memory allows.

Some have moved on. Others will perpetuate the hand wringing about how the system failed.

No one will be satisfied. And the truth will remain buried.

But there is a way out of the morass. The mysterious 1996 killing of beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey of Boulder, Colo., doesn't have to be another O.J. There is still time. The police blunders were not fatal. The right laws are on the Colorado books. Secret statements by prosecutors suggest the evidence is strong. All that's needed now is a strong Colorado governor willing to intervene by appointing a special prosecutor to take over the case.

Even if Gov. Bill Owens does appoint a special prosecutor, getting to the bottom of the mystery is not going to be easy. The key players all bring ample flaws to the table. The process has more potholes than pavement. And given the track record of events since the night JonBenet was killed, more blunders by those responsible for ensuring justice are likely.

But it can happen nonetheless, and it won't take a miracle.

July 22, 2007 Updated Aug. 30, 2011

Ryan Ferguson

New Hearing in Ryan Ferguson Murder Conviction

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green has agreed to hold an evidentiary hearing on October 25, 2011 regarding recantations made by the only two witnesses against Ryan Ferguson at his murder trial in 2005.  The recantations are part of a habeas corpus petition submitted by Ferguson’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner. 

If Judge Green finds the recantations of merit, he could order a new trial for Ferguson.  Without the testimony of these two witnesses and with no forensic evidence linking Ferguson to the murder, the case against Ferguson – one of the most bizarre ever mounted – would collapse.

Based on the testimony of Chuck Erickson and Jerry Trump, Ferguson was convicted of the Halloween night 2001 murder of Kent Heitholt, the sports editor of the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.  None of the forensic evidence gathered at the crime scene – including fingerprints, hair clutched in Heitholt’s hand and bloody footprints – linked Ferguson or Erickson to the crime. 

Erickson, who like Ferguson was a high school junior at the time of Heitholt’s death, began telling friends two years after the murder that he was having “dreams” that he and his friend Ferguson had murdered Heitholt.  These comments quickly brought the police to Erickson’s door.

In his 2011 affidavit, Erickson averred, “Ryan Ferguson did not harm Kent Heitholt in any way,” stating that he alone had killed Heitholt although Ferguson was present at the scene.

Trump, a janitor at the newspaper who was on parole at the time for molesting a teenager, told police the day after the murder that he saw two men in the parking lot but could not see them clearly enough to identify.  He also said the same thing to his supervisor and several co-workers.

At Ferguson’s trial, Trump told the jury that while he was in prison for a parole violation, his wife sent him a newspaper article with photos of Erickson and Ferguson and from those he was able to positively identify both teenagers as Heitholt’s assailants.  He testified he then contacted Boone County D.A. Kevin Boone and became the prosecution’s second witness.   

In his affidavit, Trump said his testimony was a lie: it was Crane who met with him in December of 2004 after Trump had been released from prison and showed him the photos of the accused and told him it would be in his interest to identify Ferguson as one of the men in the parking lot the night Heitholt was murdered.  

Crane is now a Boone County circuit court judge and has been subpoenaed to appear at the evidentiary hearing before Judge Green.  

In a case rife with DNA and other physical evidence, not one shred of evidence linked 17-year-old Ryan Ferguson to the murder of Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune sports writer Kent Heitholt in 2001. Ferguson's conviction in 2005 proved only how far the police and prosecution would go to close Columbia's only unsolved murder. A Boone County (Mo.) Judge, at a three-day-evidentiary hearing in mid-July 2008, heard testimony of how the police and prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from Ferguson's trial attorneys and manipulated and threatened witnesses who dared not support their trumped-up case against Ferguson.

(Editor's Note: CBS's "48 Hours Mystery" broadcast a re-investigation of the case on March 26, 2011)

by Jane Alexander