First and foremost, my condolences go out to the friends and family of Ms. Flores.  Apparently, Flores was beginning to put one and one together while looking at information on van der Sloot’s laptop and was linking van der Sloot to the disappearance (and likely the death) of Natalee Holloway, who disappeared in Aruba.  As of today’s date (June 8th), van der Sloot has confessed to killing Flores.   I can only imagine what the family and friends of Holloway are going through hearing this latest development.  How much more can they take not knowing what happened to their daughter?  I believe it is only a matter of time until van der Sloot confesses to either the murder or at least the kidnapping of Holloway.  Perhaps the Holloway family, through this additional tragedy and loss of another woman’s life, will have the closure they deserve.  What do the readers think?  My students are on summer break right now, but I know there’s a handful of you out there reading my posts since you send me quick comments every now and again.  What do you think is going on here?  Do you think van der Sloot is guilty of kidnapping and/or the murder of Natalee Holloway?  If so, what should happen to him if found guilty?  I’m interested to hear your opinions….thanks for your continued support!  ~K. Schnurbush

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Victim in Peru found link between van der Sloot, Holloway, source says

Peruvian officials say Joran van der Sloot has confessed to the slaying of Stephany Flores Ramirez. What will this development mean for the Natalee Holloway case? Watch “Nancy Grace,” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday on HLN.

Lima, Peru (CNN) — The Peruvian woman who died in Joran van der Sloot’s hotel room was killed after she discovered information on his laptop linking him to the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway, a source with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

Van der Sloot, the longtime suspect in the Holloway case, confessed Monday night to the killing of Stephany Flores Ramirez, 21, whose body was found in a hotel room last week, Peruvian authorities said.

He could be formally charged as early as Wednesday, the authorities said.

Van der Sloot was interrogated for seven hours Monday, the source with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

The Dutch citizen told investigators that he left the hotel room to buy bread and coffee at a gas station next to the hotel, the source said.

Upon his return, he found Flores going through his laptop, where she found something linking him to the disappearance of Holloway, the source said.

At that point, Flores wanted to leave, and the pair started arguing, according to the source.

Flores slapped van der Sloot, and he hit her back, and then grabbed her neck, the source said.

Van der Sloot told investigators he was intoxicated on marijuana when all this happened, the source said.

Although Flores’ body was found half-dressed, there was no evidence that she had sexual intercourse that night, the source said.

Van der Sloot had access to a public defender, but it was unclear whether he had used his services. Attempts by CNN to reach the public defenders’ office were unsuccessful.

Van der Sloot, 22, was arrested twice in connection with Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba but was released for lack of evidence. He has denied any involvement and has not been charged.

He was originally slated to show authorities Tuesday a re-enactment of the crime at the Hotel Tac, where he was staying. Because of security reasons, however, the re-enactment has been delayed, authorities said Tuesday.

Peru National Police Col. Abel Gamarra said the re-enactment could happen as early as Wednesday.

Flores’ body was found in the room registered to van der Sloot. Video from hotel security cameras shows van der Sloot and Flores entering his room at 5:33 a.m. on May 30. He emerged alone and left the hotel more than three hours later, the video shows.

He was arrested in Chile on Thursday and returned to Peru on Friday.

At van der Sloot’s first court appearance, the judge may set a hearing date and order additional investigations.

The Peruvian justice system often issues a lighter sentence in cases in which the suspect confesses.

Van der Sloot could get up to 35 years in prison. There is no death penalty or life sentence in Peru.

A Peruvian police report leaked Monday said Flores’ body was found on van der Sloot’s hotel room floor, half-dressed. The report also provides new details about the hours before the body was found.

According to the document, the Hotel Tac received a call from someone looking for van der Sloot about 11 p.m. June 1. The receptionist forwarded the call, but no one answered. The hotel worker assumed that van der Sloot was asleep because the room key was with him and not at the front desk.

About an hour later, according to the police report, the receptionist noticed that van der Sloot owed money for two nights and went up to his room, where her knocks went unanswered. The television was blaring, so the hotel employee figured he was resting, the report says.

Afterward, the hotel supervisor told the employee to go back to van der Sloot’s room and enter using a spare key. When the employee went in, she found Flores’ body on the floor, dressed in a black T-shirt and red panties, half-covered with a piece of white clothing, the police report said.

Flores had bled from her nose, the report said.

The hotel employee became frightened and went to alert her supervisor and the police, turning off the television and lights on her way out of the room, the report said.

The developments in the van der Sloot case came as the Natalee Holloway Resource Center opened Tuesday in Washington. The nonprofit center is located at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, attended the opening.

She urged supporters to keep the Flores family “in our hearts and in our prayers.”

The center says it will provide families of missing persons help with managing their crises and give students advice on traveling safely.

CNN’s Rafael Romo and Mayra Cuevas contributed to this report

By Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer  (St. Pete Times)

Published Friday, April 9, 2010

Kane first hid behind the dining room table. Then he said he wanted to leave, but the teen with the sawed-off told him it was too late. So he stood in the corner, shaking, and looked out the window and heard the begging of the people and the boom of the shotgun blast.

The 19-year-old got the death penalty, the 17-year-old got life in prison with the possibility of parole after 50 years, and Kane, not done growing yet, got life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25.

Now, nearly two decades later, legislators in Tallahassee are considering a bill called the Second Chance for Children in Prison Act. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether life in prison for juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment. And a group of people stretching from Sarasota to Tennessee is pushing for Kane to be freed. Now that he’s a man, they believe, it’s time to remember that he was a boy.

“I got what I deserved. I did wrong things,” Kane said not long ago at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Bushnell. “But I like to think, I like to hope, that someone can change.”

He’s 32. “I’m not that 14-year-old boy anymore,” he said.

Kane’s dad was a trucker and an odd-jobber. His mom was waiting tables at Red Lobster and taking classes for nursing. After they divorced, in 1990, he had little structure and supervision. The kid with the high IQ of 137 started to let his grades slip, and also started spending time with tougher kids — including Bobby Garner, the 17-year-old, who hung out with Alvin Morton, the 19-year-old.

Morton liked to drill holes in the shells of turtles and was a fire-starter and a bed-wetter, and Garner was a chunky, lazy dropout of barely average intelligence.

That weekend, Kane slept over at Garner’s house, which had become the norm, which to him meant mostly junk food and video games.

He was arrested at Morton’s house early the morning after the murders and soon was charged as an adult, not as a juvenile. There was no debate. “Not even a thought,” prosecutor Mike Halkitis said.

Florida around the time of the crime had developed an international reputation as the kid-crime capital of America.

In 1993, teens killed two German tourists in Miami, and another bunch killed a British tourist in the Panhandle. A rattled public pressed politicians to pass laws that made it easier for courts to treat kids like adults. The emphasis in juvenile justice shifted from prevention and rehabilitation to prosecution and punishment. From 1991 to 1995, the state’s juvenile justice budget tripled, and Florida started putting more kids in prison, and for longer, than any other state in the country.

Meanwhile, in the two-plus years he spent waiting for his trial, Kane went through puberty in the Pasco County Jail. He grew from 5-foot-8 and 120 pounds to 6-foot-1 and 170.

During depositions before Kane’s trial, friends of the group described him as “a scrawny little kid,” saying they didn’t know him as well as the others.

“Timmy was always the quiet one,” Alvin Morton’s sister told attorneys.

“He was so much nicer,” Morton’s sister’s best friend said. “He was always sweet.”

Morton crowed about the killings, but Kane was “freaked out,” friends said, “shaken up,” and “pale as your shirt.” When he wanted to go home, Morton, who had bullied Kane before by cutting him with a knife, stapling his skin and blowing pepper up his nose, said no. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

In his trial, Kane took the stand, hoping jurors might sympathize with him. He said that he thought the house was empty, that he saw the shotgun but didn’t think it was loaded, that he heard Morton talking about murder but didn’t think he was serious, and that he didn’t cut the phone wire even though Morton and Garner said he did. He said he thought they were going to commit a burglary.

“Both these people were killed during the course of the burglary you had just committed?” Robert Attridge, the other prosecutor on the case, asked Kane.

“Yes, sir,” Kane said.

Right there, legally speaking, he was guilty as charged. If you’re part of a group that commits a felony, like a burglary, and somebody dies during the crime, you’re on the hook for first-degree murder no matter the extent of your role.

“A 14-year-old is on trial,” Kane’s court-appointed attorney, Bob Focht, said in his closing argument, telling jurors his age was something they had to “consider at all times in reviewing the evidence.”

Attridge countered: “Does that make these victims any less dead because he was 14 years of age?”

The jury took an hour and 15 minutes to convict Kane of the first-degree murders of John Bowers, 55, and Madeline Weisser, 75.

Before his sentencing, in a holding cell off to the side of the courtroom, Focht told Kane that because of his age, and because of his lesser role in the crime, and if he didn’t get in any trouble in prison, he eventually might be a candidate for clemency.

Kane started to cry.

• • •

His first few years in prison, because of his age, he got milk and a piece of fruit with lunch. He’s worked for a prison chaplain. He’s worked for the last 12 years making 55 cents an hour stamping logos on state letterhead. He’s passed the GED test. He’s been to his mother’s funeral in handcuffs and shackles.

He’s never gotten a disciplinary report.

Over the years new research on brain science has offered a more concrete explanation of what parents already know: Teen­agers don’t always make good decisions. The part of the brain that helps people make decisions based on logic, not emotion, the researchers found, isn’t fully developed until the early or even mid 20s. Teenagers, in contrast to adults, they say, are more susceptible to impulsivity and peer pressure and less able to consider consequences.

In 2005, based in part on this science, the Supreme Court decided juveniles can’t be sentenced to death. They’re less than fully developed so they’re also less than fully culpable.

Two years after that, a group of Florida State University law students filed Kane’s initial application for clemency, led by professor Paolo Annino of the school’s Public Interest Law Center.

A church in Sarasota wants to help Kane in his transition out of prison if he gets out. The congregants signed a petition saying so and sent it to the governor.

Ron Miller, who lives in Nashville, saw Kane on Dateline in 1998 and has led a group called Friends of Tim Kane ever since. He’s organizing a letter writing campaign to the governor.

The Second Chance for Children in Prison Act, spearheaded by Annino, favors inmates who “acted under the domination of another.” It made it through House and Senate committees last year before being blocked by Rep. Will Snyder, R-Stuart, the chairman of the Criminal and Civil Justice Policy Council. The same thing could happen this year.

The governor’s clemency aide says the governor is aware of the Kane case and is getting the letters written on his behalf. But no hearing has been set.

“Tim Kane is one of the best cases we’ve had,” Annino said. “He was a kid, 14 years old, and he didn’t kill anyone. There’s no dispute. He wasn’t part of the violence.”

“Tim had to be punished, no two ways about it,” said Lois Van Dyke, his grandmother. “But the punishment was way too severe.”

Said Focht, his attorney from 18 years ago, who’s now retired and living in Land O’Lakes: “Let him out.”

Those three advocates for Kane aren’t so surprising.

Here, though, are three more that might be:

“I’m a cop,” said William Lawless, the lead investigator from 1992. “If he meant to harm those people, if he did harm those people, you lock him up and you throw away the key. But he didn’t. I think 18 years is more than adequate.”

The prosecutor who during his closing argument told jurors that Kane’s age didn’t matter?

“His age was something that always set him a little bit apart from the others,” says Attridge, now an attorney in private practice. “He had a choice, he made a choice, and it was a bad choice. But I think he deserves a second chance.”

And then there’s the appellate judge who upheld the conviction in 1997.

“It’s a case that’s never really left my mind,” John Blue said last week. Blue has visited Kane in prison, considers him to be “an amazing young man,” and wrote a letter to the governor that ended like this: “True justice must be tempered with mercy …”

Not everybody agrees.

“Obviously, he was the least of the worst of the defendants,” said Halkitis, the other prosecutor, “but he’s still guilty under the law. He had his choice when he went into the house.”

Also, the family members of the murdered: “They don’t exist to me,” Susan Pimental, sister of John Bowers, daughter of Madeline Weisser, said from her home in Massachusetts about the three defendants. “They’re not human.”

• • •

Kane’s never driven a car. He’s never had a bank account. He’s never used a cell phone. He’s never sent an e-mail. He’s never even seen the Internet. He’s never had a relationship with a woman.

When he gets a letter from a woman, he can tell from its scent, he says. Prison smells like disinfectant and men.

Every Christmas, he gets a card from his aunt with pictures of her kids, and he keeps the cards in order because he likes to see how his cousins have grown.

In the mornings, before breakfast at 6, he drinks his instant coffee and reads from his Bible. Proverbs. Chapter 1.

My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path. For their feet run to evil and make haste to shed blood.

“I read that all the time,” he said earlier this month.

“Am I really worthy of a second chance?” he asked. “Two people lost their lives. They don’t get a second chance. I don’t think I deserve anything. But I really want to have a chance to have a second chance.”

Inside Sumter Correctional, the way from the main building back to where the chapel and the print shop sit is an asphalt path, and on both sides are straight yellow lines. Inmates have to stay on the right side of those lines.

Kane had to go back to his job. He thanked his visitors and got up. He walked carefully on the right side of the straight line on that long path, head up, his eyes on the blue sky past the watch towers and the razor wire.

Times researchers Caryn Baird and Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

Newark, New Jersey (CNN) – If he hadn’t been an obedient son, and if his father hadn’t been looking out for him, police say, another teen probably would have disappeared with his friends in Newark the night of August 20, 1978.

Roderick Royster had joined other teenagers in the back of a pickup truck that evening, but when his father told him to get out, he did.

The five who left in the truck have never been seen again.

It’s a mystery that has persisted for 32 years. But this week, police and prosecutors announced the arrests of Lee Anthony Evans, 56, and his cousin, Philander Hampton, 53, who have been charged with five counts of murder, as well as arson. Both have pleaded not guilty.

They are accused of killing Melvin Pittman, 17, Ernest Taylor, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, Randy Johnson, 16, all of Newark, and Michael McDowell, 16, of East Orange.

Royster, who was 16 at the time, said he had already hopped onto Evans’ pickup truck when his father ordered him and his brother to go home.

“He says, ‘Get off that truck,’” he recalled in a brief phone interview. Royster, whose recollection was that his brother was on the truck with him, said they both obeyed and got out of the truck. (Investigators have referred to Roderick Royster as “number six” in the case, but never have mentioned his brother.)

“I was happy they finally got [Evans],” Royster said. He said he “always knew” who was responsible. “It’s been 32 years and it’s about time. It’s time to get some closure.”

Evans’ attorney, Michael A. Robbins, says his client is innocent, pointing out that Evans cooperated with police in 1978 and passed a polygraph test.

“In a case such as this, where the evidence has been lost, great care must be taken to prevent outrage, anger and emotion acting as a substitute in court for competent testimony, evidence and proof,” Robbins said in a statement.

According to authorities, the defendants led the teens into an abandoned house, killed them and set the building on fire. No trace of them was ever found.

At the time, Newark was full of abandoned buildings. So many caught fire — 2,600 of them in 1978 — that firefighters would let the vacant ones burn, said Lt. Louis Carrega, of the Essex County Prosecutor’s office.

“From what I understand, they were not going to vacant buildings,” Carrega said. “They would not send firefighters into vacant buildings.”

For 32 years, the case of the “Clinton Avenue Five,” as it came to be known, haunted the boys’ families and police. None of the teens were likely runaways. None had police records.

A break in the case came about 18 months ago when a witness came to detectives with information that the arson of one abandoned building in 1978 was connected to the case.

Although it took detectives three decades, Royster and relatives of the victims said they never doubted that Evans was responsible.

“We were right, we were right all along, said Michael McDowell’s sister, Terry Lawson. “In all these 30 years, we knew it was him.”

Back then, Evans, a hulking 25-year-old, was known by another name in the neighborhood. “They called him Big Man,” said Jack Eutsey, a former Newark police detective who investigated the case for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

“He was big and he was tall. He had a reputation for being dangerous,” Eutsey added.

Floria McDonald recalls Evans was “kind of smart and nasty” when she confronted him about her missing son, Alvin Turner.

A neighbor told her she’d seen Alvin get into Evans’ truck. McDonald says she confronted him about it the week her son vanished.

“I told him that the children were seen on the back of his truck that night, and he told me he don’t give a damn what nobody says,” she recalled.

Eutsey, the retired detective, described Evans as a contractor who occasionally hired neighborhood teens for odd jobs. In return, he gave them food, money, and drugs, he said.

Shortly before the boys disappeared, some teenagers broke into Evans’ apartment and stole more than a pound of marijuana, investigators said.

“They crossed him,” Eutsey said, “and they couldn’t get away from that.”

Read more about arrests in the “Clinton Avenue Five” case

On the last night they were seen, the boys played basketball and then returned home. A short time later, Evans drove by and picked up them up, one by one. They thought they were going to help him move boxes, police said.

Lawson, who was 11 at the time, recalled Evans was wearing blue jeans, construction boots and a blue T-shirt when he arrived to pick up her brother, Michael.

“When Michael came out, I found it strange that he didn’t get in from the passenger side,” Lawson recalled. “Evans got out and Michael went in from the driver’s side and he sat in the middle seat.”

“When they drove off I clearly remember the back of his head and you see Michael and Evans’ head right next to him. I watched that truck drive down Main Street. That’s the last time I saw him.”

Evans blended into the background as memories faded for some.

“For the past 32 years he has led an unremarkable life of hard work and taking care of his family,” said Robbins, Evans’ lawyer, “and has had no contact with the criminal justice system.”

But for the boys’ families, the pain remained.

“This devastated my family,” said Lawson. “My mother was completely devastated. Every day she would sit in that window and wait for Michael to come home. She would sit there for hours at night and no one could answer the phone because she was expecting a call from Michael.”

Michael’s mother died of leukemia the year after he disappeared.

Some time during the mid-1980s, Lawson said, she was in the supermarket when her sister pointed out Evans and said, “That’s that guy that took Michael.”

“I looked at him and I just had chills.”

(CNN) — Nine Massachusetts teenagers have been charged with involvement in a months-long campaign of bullying that led to the suicide in January of a 15-year-old girl, a prosecutor said Monday.

Phoebe Prince’s body was found hanging in the stairway leading to her family’s second-floor apartment in South Hadley, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel told reporters in the western Massachusetts town of Northampton.

“It appears that Phoebe’s death on January 14 followed a torturous day for her when she was subjected to verbal harassment and physical abuse,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Prince had been harassed as she studied in the library at South Hadley High School, apparently in the presence of a faculty member and several students, none of whom reported it until after the death, Scheibel said.

Prince, who had recently moved to the area with her family from Ireland, was also harassed as she walked through the halls of the school that day and as she walked on the street toward her home, Scheibel said.

The harassment that day, by one male and two females, “appears to have been motivated by the group’s displeasure with Phoebe’s brief dating relationship with a male student that had ended six weeks earlier,” she said.

But that day’s events were not isolated; they “were the culmination of a nearly three-month campaign of verbally abusive, assaultive behavior and threats of physical harm toward Phoebe on school grounds by several South Hadley students,” Scheibel added.

“Their conduct far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels. The investigation revealed relentless activity directed toward Phoebe designed to humiliate her and to make it impossible for her to remain at school.”

In the indictments, returned Friday but not made public until Monday, the Hampshire County grand jury charged 17-year-old Sean Mulveyhill of South Hadley with statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.

The indictments charged 18-year-old Austin Renaud of Springfield with statutory rape.

Kayla Narey, 17, of South Hadley, was charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.

CNN was not able to reach any of the three, none of whom has been taken into custody, according to Scheibel. She did not elaborate on the statutory rape charges.

Charges against another three girls included violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting; two were also charged with stalking.

Three other girls from South Hadley were named in four delinquency complaints from Hampshire Franklin Juvenile Court. Their charges included violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly, violation of civil rights, criminal harassment and assault by means of a dangerous weapon. One of the juveniles was charged in a separate complaint involving a second victim, Scheibel said.

Though initial news reports blamed Prince’s suicide on cyberbullying, Scheibel said the students’ actions were “primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session.” She said any use of electronic social networks was secondary to “commonly understood bullying methods.”

The bullying of Prince was common knowledge to most of the student body and to certain faculty, staff and administrators, Scheibel said. At least four students and two faculty members had intervened during the harassment, but the school’s code of conduct was inconsistently enforced, she said.

Though the faculty, staff and administrators’ behavior was not deemed criminal, “the actions, or inactions, of some adults at the school are troublesome,” she said.

Scheibel said the Prince family had asked “that the public refrain from vigilantism in favor of allowing the judicial system an opportunity to provide a measure of justice for Phoebe.” CNN was not able to reach the Prince family.

Scheibel said the investigation was continuing and that a 10th person may be charged.

Arraignments will occur “in the near future,” she said.

Several of the students remain in the school. In a statement, South Hadley Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Christine Sweklo said school officials would meet with the district attorney to review any new evidence.

“Once we are able to obtain this information, we will be able to make a more comprehensive statement and possibly take further action against the students still attending South Hadley High School,” she said.

The statutory rape charges could result in penalties of up to life in prison, said Elizabeth Farris, a lawyer in the prosecutor’s office. A conviction on a violation-of-civil-rights charge could result in 10 years in prison; a conviction for criminal harassment up to 2 1/2 years; a conviction for disturbance of school assembly up to one month, she said.

Those 17 and older will be tried as adults in Hampshire County Superior Court. The juveniles will be tried in juvenile court. A juvenile court judge may choose to institute an adult penalty, a combination of adult and juvenile penalties or a juvenile penalty alone, Farris said.

Authorities seek help identifying people in serial killer’s photos

(CNN) — Hoping to solve numerous cold cases, authorities on Thursday released more than a hundred photos of unidentified women and children found in a storage unit that belonged to a serial killer who appeared on “The Dating Game.”

Investigators are trying to determine if some of the people in the pictures were victims of Rodney Alcala, 66, who was convicted in February of murdering a child and four women between November 1977 and June 1979.

A jury this week recommended a death sentence for Alcala, who appeared on the popular dating show in 1978 as Bachelor No. 1.

“We balanced the privacy concerns of those depicted in the decision to release these pictures,” Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. “Although we hope that the people depicted are not victims, we believe the release may help solve some cold cases and bring closure to victims’ families.”

See all the photos

A few pictures of men were also found among the portrait-style photos that were discovered in a storage unit that Alcala kept in Seattle, Washington, said Susan Kang Schroeder, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. The locker also contained earrings that belonged to 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, who Alcala abducted and killed in 1979, Schroeder said.

The discovery of the earring in the locker has raised speculation that there may be other victims or that the photographs were trophies to Alcala, she said.

“The idea is to figure out if these are other victims that belong to other cold cases and if they are we can hopefully bring some closure to these victims’ families,” she said. “We know that Mr. Alcala used his photography as a ruse to get close to his victims.”

Authorities already believe that Alcala may be responsible for deaths in New York, Schroeder said.

“It’s very possible,” Schroeder said. “Mr. Alcala is a predatory monster and we believe that he destroyed many lives everywhere he went.”

According to the Orange County District Attorney, Alcala was convicted in 1972 of kidnapping and molesting a child in Los Angeles County in 1968. After serving a 34-month sentence, he was released.

In November 1977, Alcala raped, sodomized and murdered Jill Barcomb, an 18-year-old New Yorker who had recently moved to California, the district attorney said.

“The defendant used a large rock to smash in the victim’s face, causing blunt force trauma, and strangled her to death by tying her belt and pant leg around her neck. He then left the victim’s body in a mountainous area in the foothills near Hollywood.”

The body was discovered soon after, and biological evidence was collected, but DNA technology was not yet available to find her killer.

The following month, Alcala raped, sodomized and murdered 27-year-old nurse Georgia Wixted, according to the district attorney. “The defendant used the claw end of a hammer to beat the victim and smash in her head. He strangled her to death using a nylon stocking and left her body in her Malibu apartment,” according to the district attorney’s Web site.

Again the body was discovered and biological evidence was collected, but no link was made to Alcala.

All this occurred before Alcala charmed “Dating Game” contestant Cheryl Bradshaw in 1988. Though Bradshaw chose Alcala as her date, she reportedly refused to go out with him.

Alcala may have appeared likable to viewers at home, but Bachelor No. 2, Jed Mills, said he was the complete opposite when they sat together in the green room before the show.

Mills said he had an almost immediate aversion to Alcala.

“Something about him, I could not be near him,” Mills recalled. “He was very obnoxious and creepy — he became very unlikable and rude and imposing as though he was trying to intimidate. I wound up not only not liking this guy … not wanting to be near him … he got creepier and more negative. He was a standout creepy guy in my life.”

Mills said he still has a difficult time discussing Alcala.

“Just talking about it, I get a tightness in my stomach,” he said, “It kind of sinks in slowly. What this guy did, it’s hard to express. He kind of haunts me a bit.”

Two more slayings followed the year after Alcala appeared on the show. In June 1979, he raped and killed 21-year-old Jill Parenteau in her Burbank apartment, the district attorney said.

“The defendant strangled the victim to death using a cord or nylon. Alcala’s blood was collected from the scene after he cut himself crawling through a window. Based on a semi-rare blood match, Alcala was linked to the murder,” the district attorney’s Web site said.

Though he was charged with killing Parenteau, the case was dismissed after his first conviction in the Samsoe case.

In that case, Alcala approached a 12-year-old at the beach in Huntington Beach and asked her to pose for pictures, after which she rode off on her bicycle toward a dance class, the district attorney said.

She did not make it. “The defendant kidnapped and murdered Samsoe and dumped her body near Sierra Madre in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains,” the district attorney’s Web site said.

Alcala was convicted for Samsoe’s murder in 1980 and sentenced to receive the death penalty, but the conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court.

A second trial in 1986 resulted in a death sentence, but it was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

As he awaited a third trial, Alcala’s DNA was linked to the murder scenes of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb. He was charged with the four Los Angeles murders, including Parenteau’s.

Anyone with information regarding the identities of the women and children in the photographs found in Alcala’s storage locker is asked to contact Huntington Beach Police at 714-375-5066 or the Orange County District Attorney’s Office at 714-347-8492.

Larry Langford sentenced to 15 years in prison

Posted: Mar 05, 2010 12:21 PM EST Updated: Mar 05, 2010 12:56 PM EST

See an investigation into the potential health dangers of tasers on tonight’s “Campbell Brown” on CNN tonight, 8 p.m. ET

Watsonville, California (CNN) — Sitting at the kitchen table in his small house, Steven Butler has trouble even with a very simple question. He cannot tell you the day of the week or the month, and he has to have the help of a calendar to tell you the year.

“Once a moment is gone, it’s gone,” said his brother and caregiver, David Butler says in an interview to air on tonight’s “Campbell Brown”. “He can’t remember any good times, birthday parties, Christmas, any event.”

On October 7, 2006, Steven Butler, by his own admission, was drunk and disorderly. He refused an order from a police officer in his hometown to get off a city bus. The officer used his Taser ECD (officially, an “Electronic Control Device”) three times.

According to doctors, Butler suffered immediate cardiac arrest. He was revived by emergency medical technicians who happened to be close by, but his attorneys say his brain was deprived of oxygen for as long as 18 minutes. He is now permanently disabled.

Butler and his family have filed a lawsuit — not against the police, but against the maker of the weapon, Taser International.

John Burton, a lawyer based in Pasadena, California, says he can prove that when the weapons are fired directly over the chest, they can cause and have caused cardiac arrest. In addition, Burton says he can prove Taser knew about that danger.

“Well, we can prove that by early 2006,” said Burton, “but we suspect they had all the necessary data since 2005, since they were funding the study.”

The study Burton mentions was published in early 2006 by the American College of Cardiology Foundation. Funded by Taser, it focused on pigs struck by Tasers, with the conclusions, according to the study, “generalized to humans.”

The authors wrote that being hit by a Taser is unlikely to cause cardiac arrest, but nevertheless recommended Taser darts not be fired near the heart to “greatly reduce any concern for induction of ventricular arrhythmias.”

Dr. Douglas Zipes, a cardiologist based outside Indianapolis, Indiana, plans to testify against Taser in any lawsuit regarding what happened to Butler. In plain English, he says, that recommendation is a clear warning.

“I think Taser has been disingenuous and certainly up to 2006 — the case we are talking about — Taser said in their educational materials that there was no cardiac risk whatsoever,” Zipes said. “That Taser could not produce a heart problem, that there was no long lasting effect from Taser.”

Medical experts say that if a person is hit by a Taser dart near the chest, one result is a dramatic increase in the subject’s heartbeat — from a resting 72 beats a minute to as many as 220 beats a minute for a short period of time. In its court filings, the company says the “peak-loaded” voltage from a Taser at impact ranges up to 40,000 volts but it’s a 600-volt average for the duration of the firing.

In an e-mail, a spokesman for Taser said the company would not comment on any ongoing litigation. But in a court filing seeking to dismiss the Butler lawsuit, it said Taser devices “are repeatedly proven safe through testing, in human volunteers, in controlled, medically approved studies.” There’s no evidence, the company says, that being hit with a Taser causes cardiac arrest in humans.

But the company has significantly changed its recommendations for how Tasers should be used. Officers, it said, should no longer aim for the chest when using the device, instead targeting the arms, legs, buttocks.

Why the change?

A company document said “the answer has less to do with safety and more to do with effective risk management for law enforcement agencies.”

In other words, say lawyers who have sued Taser, it means police are less likely to be sued if they avoid hitting subjects in the chest. In court papers, Taser says the risk of cardiac arrest is “extremely rare and would be rounded to near zero,” but it adds: “However, law enforcement is left defending a lawsuit and disproving a negative, which is difficult to do.”

“Out of one side of their mouth, they publish this warning, saying, ‘Don’t hit people in the chest if you can avoid it,’” said Dana Scruggs, an attorney representing Steven Butler. “And on the other side, in the lawsuit and in their public statements, they deny that their device can affect the human heart.”

Nearly every big-city police department in the United States uses a Taser device. According to the company, more than 14,000 law enforcement agencies worldwide employ Tasers and more than 1.8 million people have had the weapon used on them since it was introduced into general law enforcement use in the 1990s. The human rights organization Amnesty International estimates more than 400 people have died as a result of Taser strikes.

Officially, it’s not a gun. As an electronic control device, Tasers are not classified as a firearm. The devices are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“There’s one thing that’s undeniable — that if I use my firearm, the chances are that you will suffer extreme injuries or death,” said George Gascon, the newly installed police chief in San Francisco, California. “The chances are much greater of reducing injuries with a Taser.”

San Francisco is one of three big-city police departments in the United States that don’t use Tasers (The others are Detroit, Michigan, and Memphis, Tennessee). Gascon wants to change that. He supports use of the device but says to call it “nonlethal” is inaccurate.

“We have referred to the Tasers for many years as a less-lethal weapon,” he said. “In the San Francisco experience, which we have to concentrate on, I have not said once that this is a nonlethal device because I believe it can be a contributing factor in causing death.”

Read: Chief’s Taser proposal rejected in San Francisco

Taser International is growing. Its latest earnings report says the firm made more than $100 million in profits last year by selling Tasers to both law enforcement and to individual consumers. And the company says even more police and sheriff’s departments are lining up to purchase the weapon every day.

The company argues in Steven Butler’s case that simply being in a stressful situation with police can bring on heart problems, and there’s no link between being being hit with a Taser and the cardiac arrest.

For Steven Butler, greeting the mailman now is a highlight of his day. He doesn’t dispute that he was drunk and disorderly when the officer tried to get him off the bus, but he and his family blame Taser for what happened to him. He says he’s not frustrated or angry, just resigned to spending the rest of his life trying to remember what happened.

After CNN first reported this story, Taser International, which had previously declined all comment, sent us what it called a “fact sheet” about the Steven Butler case.

The company said the 2006 Taser study CNN quoted produced no cardiac arrests in animals.

While the company says cardiac arrests in people are rare, Taser insists it does not claim a “zero” possibility of cardiac arrest.

Taser also claimed Steven Butler had a pre-existing heart condition and that his blood alcohol level made him vulnerable to cardiac arrest. Butler’s medical and legal teams told CNN he had no documented heart problems., and alcohol levels played no role in his cardiac arrest.

(CNN) — Carrie McGonigle doesn’t want to believe that her missing daughter could be connected to a registered sex offender accused of killing a California teen.

“That would mean that she’s dead, and I don’t want to think that,” said McGonigle, whose 14-year-old daughter, Amber DuBois, was last seen walking alone to school on February 13, 2009.

But authorities say they are looking into whether John Albert Gardner III, who pleaded not guilty Wednesday to raping and murdering Chelsea King, was involved in Amber’s disappearance.

“We have been working closely with San Diego Sheriff’s Office, and our investigators are working with theirs in case there is a connection,” Lt. Robert Benton with the Escondido, California, Police Department said. “We are involved in the daily briefings on the King investigation.”

Amber’s father, Moe DuBois, attended Gardner’s arraignment Wednesday.

“Just the similarities in our case, you know, if there is any connection to Mr. Gardner and our case, I want to be there for his prosecution and soon to be execution I would hope,” DuBois told HLN’s Nancy Grace.

Amber’s family lives in the San Diego, California, suburb of Escondido, less than 10 miles from Poway High School, where King was last seen alive.

The shy, bookish teen was walking to Escondido High when she disappeared. She had a check in her backpack to buy a lamb for a Future Farmers of America project, according to her mother. But she never made it, and since then, investigators have been stymied by a lack of viable leads.

McGonigle says Gardner came up on her radar shortly after Amber disappeared, when she began looking up registered sex offenders in the area.

“One of the first things we did when we couldn’t find her was look at the sex offenders in the area because we know that they have a history of repeated offenses,” McGonigle said. “I didn’t personally visit his home but one of our volunteers did, and we didn’t find anything that raised suspicions.”

Gardner is on California’s sex offender registry for a conviction of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14, according to online records. He was also charged Wednesday with assault with intent to commit rape in connection with an attack on a jogger in December 2009.

A call to Gardner’s public defender, Michael Popkins, was not immediately returned.

In addition to keeping the search going for her daughter, McGonigle has also become involved in educating parents and children on how to prevent abductions. She also spends time reaching out to parents of other missing children.

As soon as she learned of Chelsea’s disappearance, McGonigle says she contacted Chelsea’s parents and assisted in search efforts. Chelsea’s car, with her cell phone inside, was found at the Rancho Bernardo Community Park, where she was known to go for runs.

“Ever since Amber went missing I’ve reached out to all the parents I possibly can because once it happens to you, it’s going to be with you the rest of your life,” she said. “It becomes your life. Supporting families, that’s what it’s all about. Even when we find Amber, I’ll continue because I wouldn’t want any other family to go through this.”

Searchers found a body Tuesday that they believe to be King’s, San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said at a news conference Tuesday. He said he expected a positive identification of the body to come this week.

To some in Amber’s family, Chelsea’s disappearance has other stinging implications.

“It’s heartbreaking in another way because now we know of everything that was available to search for Amber but wasn’t used,” Sheila Welch said. “There weren’t helicopters used with heat sensitivities, there weren’t any dogs brought out for Amber, and now to know that’s available, it’s heartbreaking to think it wasn’t used.”

But Benton said investigators used all the resources available to them.

“We asked for and received the resources we needed at the time,” he said. “As far as law enforcement is concerned, we had outstanding cooperation from local agencies, the FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and we had a significant amount of resources at our disposal.”

Amber’s mother has her doubts as to whether Gardner could actually be involved.

“I think the guy is too sloppy and that we would’ve found some evidence if he had taken Amber,” she said. “But he never should have been out in public. If he were incarcerated, like he should have been, maybe Chelsea would be alive right now.”

Pentagon shooter had history of mental health problems

Arlington, Virginia (CNN) — The man who authorities say shot and wounded two police officers outside the Pentagon Thursday before he was fatally shot had a history of mental health problems and a penchant for spouting anti-government conspiracy theories.

John Patrick Bedell repeatedly tangled with police in recent months, while his relationship with his parents — whom he lived with in a gated community in Northern California — grew increasingly contentious.

“There’s a history of mental health problems with him that the family’s been dealing with for a number of years,” San Benito County, California, Sheriff Curtis Hill said Friday.

Bedell, 36, suffered from bipolar disorder, according to court records from a 2006 California arrest for a man by the same name. That man’s birth date matches the one authorities gave for the Pentagon shooter.

Bedell had been committed to mental institutions at least three or four times, according to Hill.

His ties to family had grown strained since late last year. Two months ago, Bedell’s parents filed a missing person report about him, although he returned and the report was canceled two weeks later, Hill said.

Bedell’s mother had also come across “some information — either from an e-mail received from a company, or an online posting on a bank account or something — where on the 10th of January he had made a $600 purchase at a shooting range in the Sacramento area in California,” Hill said. Bedell would not tell her what he bought, he said.

On Friday the FBI said they believe that Bedell drove to Washington, D.C., and parked his car in a garage near the Pentagon.

Bedell “was very well dressed in a suit” and showed “no distress in his appearance” as he approached a screening area to enter Pentagon grounds about 6:40 p.m. Thursday evening, Pentagon Police Chief Richard S. Keevill said.

“He walked very directly to the officers and engaged,” Keevill said. “He was very well armed. I will tell you that he had two 9 mm semiautomatic weapons and many magazines.”

On Friday, a picture emerged of Bedell as a troubled man with an intense interest in science.

On the social networking Web site LinkedIn, a profile page for a J. Patrick Bedell in the San Francisco Bay Area — where Bedell’s family lives — described him as an “MSEE student,” short for Master of Science in Electrical Engineering.

The page said he graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1994.

The LinkedIn page said that Bedell attended San Jose State University from 1995 to 1996, but that he did not get a degree there.

In the missing person report filed in January, Bedell’s father said he worked in the San Jose area but that he did not know where.

Hill, the San Benito County sheriff, said the Bedell family filed the missing person report on January 4, a day after Bedell was stopped in Texas for speeding as he traveled west. The Texas Highway patrolman used Bedell’s cell phone to call Bedell’s family, Hill said.

“The highway patrolman wanted to know a little more information about him because when he stopped him for speeding, when he came up to the car, the interior of the vehicle was in ‘disarray,’” Hill said. The patrolman spoke with Bedell’s mother, then gave him a warning and sent him on his way, Hill said. The sheriff said the stop prompted the family to file the missing person report, Hill said.

In filing the report, Bedell’s father said John had been staying at an unknown address in San Jose after getting into a fight with his brother three weeks earlier.

It wasn’t Bedell’s first blowout with his brother. In July 2006, Bedell got into an altercation with Matthew Bedell and signed a citizen’s arrest to have him taken to jail and booked, Hill said.

A week after Bedell’s father filed the missing report in January, the parents called the police to say their son had shown up. Authorities went to the family’s home, where the parents said Bedell “appeared to be impaired, delusional, and agitated,” according to Hill.

“The agitation … was due to his mother asking him questions [such as], ‘Where have you been? What have you been doing?’” Hill said. She also asked him about the $600 purchase at the shooting range, he said.

“When she asked him to give her some details about what that purchase was, that’s when he became agitated and left the residence,” Hill said.

Authorities arrived after he had left, and although they gave out information on him to law enforcement agencies, they were not able to find him, Hill said. The family told authorities that he had a “history of mental illness.”

On January 18, Bedell’s father told authorities his son had returned home and that the missing person report should be canceled, Hill said. According to the police report, Bedell was staying at an unknown address after stopping at home.

A couple weeks later, on February 1, Bedell was picked up by police in Reno, Nevada, and charged with marijuana possession. His court date was Tuesday, but Bedell failed to show up.

Court records from California show that investigators arrested a John Patrick Bedell in June 2006 on charges of cultivating marijuana and resisting arrest.

Bedell pleaded guilty. “I sincerely request the court not find the offense to reflect a propensity for violence on my part,” he said in a signed statement in the case. “I was experiencing an episode of mental illness (bipolar disorder) during the event in question.”

Court documents from the 2006 case also include a statement from Bedell’s psychiatrist confirming Bedell suffered from bipolar disorder and describing him as “relatively symptom-free when under medication.”

In an Internet posting, JPatrickBedell referred to being arrested in 2006 on marijuana charges.

“Given my belief that cannabis prohibition is the least defensible and most unjust aspect of the prohibitionist regime existing throughout the world today, I decided in March 2006 to cultivate cannabis in full view of the world,” the person said in a 2006 podcast.

Bedell appears to have been the same man who had railed against the government repeatedly on the Internet. Through podcasts and a Wikipedia page, a man identified online as JPatrickBedell cast the government as a criminal force destroying personal liberties.

“This seizure of the United States government by an international criminal conspiracy is a long-established reality,” the man said in a podcast in November 2006, which also was published as text online.

Such an organization, the man said, “would use its powers to convert military, intelligence, and law enforcement bureacracies (sic) into instruments for political control and the domination and subjection of society, while discrediting, destroying, and murdering honest individuals within those services that work to root out corruption and faithfully serve their fellow citizens.”

In a video posted on YouTube in October 2006, a man identified as jpbedell talked about his idea for “information currency,” which he said would “create a financial market for information.” The man in the video is the same man shown in a photograph of the shooter released Friday by the FBI. The man’s voice in the YouTube video also sounds similar to the voice in the podcasts.

A person using the screen name JPatrickBedell wrote about the same idea on a Wikipedia page that was taken down early Friday.

The San Benito County sheriff read a statement from the family on Friday, saying that they were “devastated” by Thursday’s news.

“To the outside world, this tragedy is the first and only thing they will know of Patrick; to us he was a beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew and cousin,” the family said, according to Hill. “We may never know why he made this terrible decision. One thing is certain, though, his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character.”

They expressed hope for a quick recovery of the two wounded officers, and asked that the family’s privacy be respected.

“This is a well-respected longtime local family,” Hill told CNN on Friday. “They’re a middle — upper-middle class folks who are well known in the community. They’re a good solid family.”

Hill said that Bedell’s father is a financial advisor and that his mother works at the local branch of the California-based Gavilan College.

At a news conference Friday morning, Keevill, the Pentagon police chief, said Pentagon and Metro cameras of the area show the gunman in the time leading up to the shooting.

He showed “no real emotion in his face” as he approached the officers, Keevill said. He approached the officers Thursday evening and, when asked for identification, pulled a gun out of his pocket and began shooting, authorities said.

Officers Jeffrey Amos and Marvin Carraway returned fire with semiautomatic weapons, said Pentagon spokesman Terry Sutherland.

The two wounded officers had superficial injuries and were released from a hospital, officials said.

When officers located Bedell’s vehicle at a nearby parking garage, they found more ammunition inside, Keevill said.

Authorities do not know what the man’s motive may have been, he said.

Several versions of a 2004 scientific proposal to the Department of Defense, attributed to J. Patrick Bedell, exist in multiple locations on the Internet. A 28-page version of the proposal, “Aluminum Anodization for DNA Integrated Circuits,” lists Bedell as the sole employee for the project and estimates he would work 1,000 hours at $30 an hour for a total of $30,000.

The proposal was a response to an April 2004 call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which provides research grants for projects related to defense. It was not clear if Bedell ever submitted the proposal.

A DARPA spokesperson would not confirm whether the proposal was received, saying the agency could legally comment only on proposals it funded.

“Investigators are searching the car, conducting interviews and reviewing a video of the shooting in an effort to piece together a timeline of Bedell’s activities leading up the incident,” the FBI said in a news release.

CNN’s Dan Simon and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.