"She got raped at 14. She decided to keep her baby. And now she has to hand her baby over for a visit with her rapist?" the victim’s mother told the station.
The man, who the victim knew from church and who was the boyfriend of her friend’s older sister, pleaded guilty to statutory rape in Norfolk Superior Court last year. Prosecutor sought a 3-to-5-year sentence, but the judge in the case gave the man 16 years’ probation with the condition he acknowledges that he is the father of the baby and submits to family court orders, reports MyFoxBoston.com.
Witnesses: Mo. man threatened wife who disappeared
JIM SALTER, Associated Press
Updated 4:42 p.m., Wednesday, July 25, 2012
JACKSON, Mo. (AP) — A southeast Missouri man charged in the murder of his estranged wife threatened to kill her several times in the months before she disappeared, two of his acquaintances testified Wednesday.
The testimony came during the preliminary hearing for Clay Waller, of Jackson, Mo., who is charged with first-degree murder even though is wife's body has never been found. Jacque Waller was 39 when she disappeared on June 1, 2011, shortly after she and her husband met with a divorce lawyer. Their triplets, now 6 years-old, are living with Jacque Waller's sister.
Cape Girardeau County Associate Circuit Judge Gary Kamp will decide if the case should move forward after hearing from nearly 20 witnesses during the seven-hour preliminary hearing. It's not clear when will issue that decision.
Prosecutor Morley Swingle outlined a case built largely around circumstantial evidence: potential motives of both jealousy and greed; blood splatter found at Clay Waller's house; apparent efforts to hide a blood-stained carpet in a crawl space; and Waller's history of anger and resentment toward his wife.
Matt Marshall, a heavy equipment operator who worked briefly for a business Waller operated, recalled Waller coming to his home one night with the triplets and expressing anger that she was seeing another man. Marshall said Waller sent the children outside and told him, "I'll definitely kill her before my kids will call another man 'daddy.'"
Marshall admitted under cross-examination that he never went to police about the threat.
Another man who once worked with Waller, Edwin Rhodes, recalled that about two months before Jacque Waller's disappearance, Clay Waller told him, "I ought to just kill her."
Waller, appearing underweight with his thinning hair cut short, sat attentively during the hearing, often leaning forward to hear the witnesses, sometimes writing comments on a notepad and sharing them with defense attorney Christopher Davis. He wore shackles on his wrists and ankles.
Testimony also focused on the day Jacque Waller was last seen.
Jacque Waller was supposed to pick up one of the triplets, the lone boy of the three, after the meeting with the divorce attorney, her sister, Cheryl Brenneke. The family was aware that Jacque was scared of Clay, Brenneke said, so when they hadn't heard from her by evening, panic set in.
Clay Waller was living at a small guest house on property owned by Scott Gibbs, a doctor who had become friends with Waller while taking helicopter flying lessons together. Waller was on the verge of bankruptcy and Gibbs said he offered use of the home rent-free.
Gibbs that after Jacque Waller's family contacted him, he found Clay Waller on the porch of the guest house, out of breath. Gibbs testified that Waller told him he had just completed a bike ride, even though it was nearly 10 p.m.
Swingle tried to present evidence that Waller's bike ride was part of his cover-up. Testimony from several police officers indicated Clay Waller drove his wife's car and abandoned it along Interstate 55, then rode a bike nearly four miles home. Officers said Waller speculated that his wife had been picked up by a trucker.
Other testimony surrounded hallway carpet that FBI agent Brian Ritter said was found cut up in a crawl space beneath the guest home. Testing showed several spots of blood on the carpet, and DNA matched that of Jacque Waller.
Ritter said Clay Waller claimed he accidentally bumped his wife's nose, causing it to bleed on the carpet. He said she also tripped as she ran, causing even more blood.
Several witnesses testified that Clay Waller had serious financial problems and believed his wife was taking too much of the money in their split.
One woman, Casaundra Stringer, said she and Waller had a three-year affair that ended in 2010. She said that after Jacque's disappearance, Clay Waller tried to convince her to blame the killing on Stringer's ex-husband. Instead, she said she told police about the scheme.
Clay Waller is already serving a five-year term at a federal prison in Louisiana for threatening Brenneke over the Internet.
LIMA, Ohio (AP) — Deputies in northwestern Ohio say a man gunned down his estranged wife and their 20-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself.
The Lima News (http://bit.ly/QjR0y8) reports said Randy Glenn showed up at the home of his estranged wife, 46-year-old Carlin Glenn, before dawn Thursday. He walked in and shot their 20-year-old daughter Andrea, before chasing down his wife outside and killing her, too.
Allen County Sheriff Sam Crish said Randy Glenn then returned to the home in the quiet neighborhood and killed himself.
The couple's 17-year-old son was not injured. It is not clear where he was when the shootings occurred.
Deputies had been at the house hours earlier because Carlin Glenn reported that she'd gotten threatening text messages from her husband.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A Columbia man tried to pin the killing of his wife on his partner in an illegal gambling business by shooting his colleague to death in their expensive suburban Columbia home and then claiming he was defending himself from a robbery, authorities said.
Richland County deputies charged 42-year-old Brett Parker with two counts of murder Friday after a more than three-month investigation, Sheriff Leon Lott said.
Parker knew his partner in the gambling business was coming over to collect a $20,000 payment on April 13 and tried to stage a robbery, according to arrest warrants.
Parker's 44-year-old wife, Tammy, was shot first, then Parker picked up another gun to kill 46-year-old Brian Capnerhurst, Lott said.
The sheriff said Parker told investigators the day of the shooting that Capnerhurst was trying to rob him and killed his wife, so he shot him four times and hasn't changed his story since.
But forensic testing, cellphone records, surveillance video and other evidence doesn't back Parker's story, according to arrest warrants.
"His story was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. It did not fit," said Lott, who refused to give details about the evidence. The sheriff declined to talk about why Parker would have wanted to kill his wife.
Parker's lawyer, David Fedor, didn't respond to a phone message Friday, but in interviews after the shooting said Capnerhurst came to Parker's home to get paid his part of the gambling proceeds, but his friend then shot his wife for some unknown reason. Parker was able to get a gun from on top of a safe and shoot Capnerhurst, his lawyer has said.
Parker and his wife lived in a home in a suburb northwest of Columbia that is on the market for $749,000. There were rumors that the shooting might be part of a love triangle, but Lott said while Tammy Parker knew about her husband's gambling business, Capnerhurst was only an acquaintance.
The couple had two children who were in school when the shooting happened.
The usually media-savvy Lott never spoke to reporters at length about the case until Friday. Lott said he had nothing to say until all the evidence came in and he and his investigators could come to a conclusion on how the events unfolded.
"I think people get used to us solving murder cases in hours," Lott said. "This one just took longer."
The Secret Service is continuing to investigate the gambling business, but no arrests have been made, Lott said.
Parker is being held in the Richland County jail. A bond hearing has not been set.
(CBS/AP) RIVER FALLS, Wis. - Aaron Schaffhausen, a Wisconsin father, is in jail while River Falls police are investigating the circumstances behind the death of three girls believed to be his daughters, ages 5 to 11, CBS Minnesota reports.
Police won't comment how Amara, Sophie and Ceab Schaffhausen died on Thursday, but said their 34-year-old father is the suspect. The mother, Jessica Schaffhausen, helped police with the investigation.
Jessica wasn't home at the time of the girls' deaths. She called police and told them that her ex-husband was saying things that made her fear for her daughters' safety. River Falls Police Chief Roger Legue said there was a strong smell of gas when officers arrived the home at around 3:30 p.m. It is uncertain whether the gas had anything to do with the deaths.
Police said they found three bodies in the house. CBS Minnesota reports that the bodies haven't been positively identified, but they appear to match the descriptions of the girls who lived there. When officer's found the bodies of the girls, no one was in the house. Aaron turned himself in to authorities not long after the bodies were found, Legue said.
J.T. Ready had 13 encounters with Gilbert police since 2008, and corresponding police reports depict an armed vigilante with a short temper, racially charged motives and a history of domestic-violence accusations.
Long before his deadly rampage on May 2 that left five dead, including himself, Ready had multiple run-ins with police as a victim, witness and suspect, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic.
Ready, 39, killed Lisa Mederos, 47; her daughter Amber Mederos, 23; Amber's 15-month-old daughter, Lilly; and Amber's fiance, Jim Hiott, 24, before killing himself. Relatives believe he flew into a rage when Lisa Mederos and other family members told him to move out of the house in Gilbert that Lisa Mederos owned. Ready and Lisa Mederos had been living together for about a year.
A self-styled border vigilante with neo-Nazi ties, Ready twice tried to choke Lisa Mederos in 2011, according to a police report based on her efforts in February to have him arrested on domestic-violence charges. Police told her there was insufficient evidence to arrest him, particularly since both alleged choking incidents had occurred months earlier.
The other police reports involving Ready detail a history of erratic behavior. They include the following incidents:
June 9, 2009: Ready told police he suspected two men of writing gang-related graffiti on a picnic table at his apartment complex in Gilbert. Ready judged one of the men, who was Hispanic, to be a gang member "just from his look" and said he was throwing gang signs at passing vehicles. No arrests were made.
June 21, 2009: Ready reported receiving obscene messages from a man he had recently met at a rally in Phoenix for Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Ready said the messages included pornographic images depicting bestiality, genitalia and sexual acts. Police were unable to find the suspect.
June 22, 2009: Ready was arrested on suspicion of driving with a suspended license. An officer had stopped Ready's vehicle due to windows that were too heavily tinted. Ready advised the officer he had guns in the vehicle, including one in the passenger seat and another on his ankle. The officer asked if Ready had a concealed-weapons permit, and he said it was expired. Ready was arrested, and the vehicle was impounded.
Aug. 8, 2009: Ready's then-girlfriend, Angela Ferguson, told police Ready assaulted her while in a vehicle. Police observed Ferguson had blood trailing down both of her legs, a bloodied lip and red marks around her neck. Ready, however, told police Ferguson had leapt from the vehicle after become angry and hitting him. The officer determined Ready had not choked Ferguson but rather had grabbed her to prevent her leaping from the car. No charges were filed.
May 3, 2010: Ready visited Gilbert police headquarters to promote the National Socialist Movement's "Report an Illegal Day."
May 6, 2010: Police responded to a report of disorderly conduct at AutoZone, near Cooper and Warner roads in Gilbert, where Ready worked. Ready was involved in a heated confrontation with a customer and was shouting obscenities. The manager told police Ready had been fired for his behavior.
Aug. 22, 2011: Ready called police to report "suspicious behavior" after seeing a man peering into a neighboring home. Further investigation revealed the man was paid by a bank to check whether the foreclosed home was occupied. Ready confronted the man, leading to a heated verbal exchange.
Nov. 1, 2011: A police officer reported following Ready's Chevrolet Impala, which had a bumper sticker that said, "Stay back 100 meters or you will be shot" and appeared to repeat the phrase in Arabic. The officer ran the license plates and followed him for 2 miles but found no reason to stop the vehicle.
by JADE MINGUS / KVUE NEWS and photojouranlist ERIN COKER
kvue.com
Posted on April 25, 2012 at 5:48 PM
AUSTIN -- The family of a missing Austin mother is fighting for custody of her daughter. Wednesday morning a court hearing grew tense and emotional during the custody battle for four-year-old Layla, the daughter of Julie Ann Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, 21, vanished around March 26, 2010, from South Austin. Her daughter Layla was just two years old at the time. Layla has since been living with Gonzalez's estranged husband, George De La Cruz.
De La Cruz is a person of interest in Gonzalez's missing persons case. Austin police detectives have questioned him, but he has not been charged. The family of Julie Ann Gonzalez believe De La Cruz has information about her disappearance.
"This really scares me because I don't know what this man is capable of," said Layla's grandmother Sandra Soto. "We still have zero answers. We know nothing."
The judge granted Soto visits twice a month with her granddaughter Layla.
The judge warned Soto to remove Facebook posts that the judge said were accusatory toward De La Cruz. The judge said they caused tension between the families and ultimately hurt Layla.
"This is a very young child, and this child needs to be protected from any type of behavior," said De La Cruz's attorney Bret Doyal. "He takes care of his child. I've witnessed him. It's a very loving relationship between father and daughter."
Austin Police Department detectives say this remains an open investigation. No one has been arrested in Gonzalez's disappearance.
The man mediating a custody battle between a New Zealand woman and her
Algerian husband over their three children hopes to have the whole family back
in New Zealand within a fortnight.
Following a seven-month dispute over the children, he said both parents
wanted a resolution and they were "considering leaving Algeria with the
children and returning to New Zealand or Australia".
"I'm hoping to get Mihi and Mohamed and the kids home, hopefully
in a week to a fortnight," said the London-based mediator and family
spokesman, who did not wish to be named.
However, he said he needed more support from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in order to be able to carry out the negotiation, "but to date it
hasn't been forthcoming".
Before they travelled to Algeria last August, Northland woman Mihi
Puriri, 33, and her husband Mohamed Azzaoui, a former boxing champion, had a
"perfect marriage".
It was Ms Puriri's seventh trip to her husband's home country "and
that's why she was so comfortable going this time", he said.
However, this time was different.
"She loves for life, she took those marriage vows seriously. She
wears her heart on her sleeve. We're talking a very, very smart young woman
here. The only thing we could accuse her of is being over-trusting."
The couple and their three children travelled to Mr Azzaoui's native
Algeria because she thought his father was gravely ill.
She alleges that soon after they arrived Mr Azzaoui took the family passports
and then held their daughters Iman, 5, Assiya, 2, and son Zakaria, 11 months,
captive in the family home in Mostaganem.
"Upon arrival Mihi realised that the paternal grandfather was not
ill.
"It does appear that Mohamed did have this planned for some time,
it certainly wasn't a spur of the moment thing. I would say that my knowledge
of it is that he had this planned for some weeks ..."
The family shared the two-bedroom apartment with up to 14 Azzaoui
family members, showered once a week at most and there was little entertainment
for the children, said the spokesman.
Ms Puriri has not seen or spoken to her children since she managed to
escape to Algiers on February 27 following a tense stand-off between a New
Zealand diplomat and dozens of police, soldiers and Algerian locals.
"It was felt it was too tenuous a position to leave Mihi there any
longer, and she thought it was better for everyone including the children if
she left at the moment."
Mohamed Azzaoui, 36, has accused the New Zealand diplomat involved of
lying about who she was.
He spoke to BBC correspondent Chloe Arnold, who told National Radio
today (Tue) that she spoke to a "very belligerent" Mr Azzaoui last
week.
"He said this is a matter only for him and his wife, and he was
very angry that the media was getting involved. On the telephone he said this
was absolutely nothing to do with anyone but him and his wife," she told
Radio New Zealand.
The retired boxer said he didn't believe New Zealand Consul Barbara
Welton, who had travelled from Cairo to the apartment with a full gendarme
escort to carry out a welfare visit, was who she said she was.
"... he said this was just a New Zealander who had stolen this
woman's business card and pretended to be the consul and come to his home and
tried to steal the children".
Ms Welton was reportedly involved in a tense stand-off over the three
children, and sat on the floor refusing to leave the property "without my
citizens".
Legal experts say that because Algeria is not a signatory to the Hague
Convention, she is at the mercy of the Algerian legal system in the fight for
her children.
The family spokesman agreed, saying Ms Puriri's only options were
through the Algerian courts or through mediation with her husband.
The spokesman was in contact with her daily, and said while the
situation had been very distressing for her and her New Zealand family, she was
staying strong for her children.
She was particularly upset she would miss the first birthday of her
son, who she had been breastfeeding, when he had his birthday later this week.
The three children spoke English, Arabic and French, were
"wonderful", "highly intelligent" and a credit to both
parents, said the spokesman.
After 46 years of marriage, Bellevue's James W. Schumacher, 71, apparently reached a breaking point last week - murdering his longtime wife with a hatchet Wednesday morning while she was in bed, locking the door to the room, waiting two days, then walking into Bellevue police headquarters Friday afternoon and turning himself in for committing the grisly crime. Schumacher told authorities he was tired of his wife's verbal abuse.
Soon after the confession, police found Jean Schumacher, also 71, dead in the couple's home, located in the 100 block of 159th Avenue Southeast in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue. Police say James Schumacher - who worked 17 years at Boeing and 17 years at U.S. Steel - struck his wife repeatedly in the head with a hatchet Wednesday morning, though it wasn't immediately clear whether she was asleep at the time of the attack.
The Schumachers had been married for going on five decades, but local media outlets paint a (varying) picture of long-term abuse.
In 2010 Jean Schumacher, who suffered from severe arthritis, filed for and received a protection order against her husband. The protection order was dropped last May, at Jean Schumacher's request, about the time Jim Schumacher moved back in to the couple's home after an eight-month estrangement. These facts make every account of the story.
The rest we're left to piece together.
A neighbor tells The Times the couple had relationship problems for decades and that Jean Schumacher told him about a year ago, "If I end up dead, he did it." The Times spoke with neighbor Brad Dutson who was quoted as saying:
"She's mentioned that he's hit her and he's thrown her down the stairs."
Dutson also tells The Times that the Schumachers' son told him at some point that his father had a drinking problem and a long history of violence toward his mother.
Q13 Fox cites court documents related to the 2010 protection order. According to those documents, Jean Schumacher feared for her life because her husband had threatened to kill her.
Q13 also talks to Mary Farrell, described as a neighbor and friend of the Schumachers, who's quoted as saying:
"He wasn`t very nice to her a lot of the times. I talked to her. She told me a few things that made their marriage very difficult."
And ...
"He knocked her down a few times. ... The last he pushed her and she fell with her arthritis. She ended up in the hospital for a few days."
Strangely, KOMO News quotes presumably the same Mary Farrell, writing:
Neighbor Mary Farrell said the couple had been living apart for the past six to eight months, and the husband only recently moved back to the home.
She said the couple had a troubled marriage, but nothing that would have suggested this kind of violence.
"I just can't believe he killed her, though," Farrell said. "I just didn't think he was that violent."
Turns out he was.
On Saturday a King County judge found probable cause to hold James Schumacher in lieu of $1 million bail for investigation of first-degree homicide.
A five-year-old girl at the centre of a parental tug-of-war can leave Northern Ireland to live with her scientist mother in Australia, a High Court judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Weir ruled in favour of the woman taking her daughter, identified only as K, with her in a relocation based on her struggle to find work in Northern Ireland.
He also criticised the girl's father for the "mean" act of giving his ex-partner a dozen eggs a week and some firewood in response to her financial predicament.
The judge said: "I have no confidence that they would mend their ways in this or any other respect if K continued to live in Northern Ireland with her mother."
The child's Australian mother holds a doctorate in a specialist scientific area.
She came to Northern Ireland to take up a university post, later beginning a relationship with the girl's father.
After the child was born they lived together on a farm close to the man's parents, the court heard.
But the woman then lost her job and has since been unable to obtain any further full-time employment in Northern Ireland.
Eventually she moved out of the home and began to explore the option of returning to Australia with her daughter.
With her ex-partner opposed to the child being taken, a series of court battles ensued.
In her evidence, the woman told the court she had relied on income support, child benefit and some making of children's clothes and handbags from which she earned around £2,000 a year.
Conflicting messages
The eggs and firewood from the farm are the only form of material help she receives from the father or his parents, she said.
In November 2011 she had received a job offer with an Australian company with a starting date of last month.
She was prepared to ensure her daughter maintained contact with her father, according to her evidence.
The girl's father acknowledged the advantage of his ex-partner going to work in Australia but claimed it would not benefit his daughter.
He accepted that the mother had facilitated contact for him and his family and did not dispute that her track record backed the view that she would maintain contact.
If the applications to relocate were accepted he said he would have to use the online Skype service to communicate with his daughter.
In a judgment delivered last month but only now published, Mr Justice Weir said he could see no prospect of improved relations between the two sides if the child remains in Northern Ireland.
"I have no doubt that the mother's desire to relocate to Australia is motivated by two principal factors, namely a desire to obtain employment at the level for which she is eminently qualified and to put an end to the depressing series of court cases that have rained incessantly about her head and that of K," he said.
"The sad reality of all relocation cases is that there will always be a parent who regards him or herself as having 'lost' since the child cannot live in two countries at once so that that outcome is inevitable.
"However, if the child were to relocate I am satisfied that both by way of visits by the mother with K to Northern Ireland and by the father to Australia and regular intervening Skype contact the effect of the separation would be mitigated though not of course avoided."
The judge stressed that the child deserved a happy, carefree life without conflicting messages and on-going family battles.
"Of that I consider there is no prospect if she continues to live in Northern Ireland," he said.
"On the other hand, in Australia she would have the benefit of a materially comfortable existence with a mother who feels fulfilled in her work and enlivened by the lack of on-going disputes and would have the compensatory benefit of contact with her maternal grandmother and wider family."
