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Philly Home Had Hundreds of Dead Animals

John Fiore — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:38:50 +0000

Investigators say some kind of religious ritual may be behind the discovery of the remains of 400 to 500 dead animals at a Philadelphia house. Officer George Bengal, director of law enforcement at the Pennsylvania SPCA, says investigators spent hours combing through the home in the city’s Feltonville neighborhood Wednesday.

He says the animals were apparently used in some kind of religious ritual. The remains include deer, turtles and other animals. Authorities are trying to find the people who lived in the rented home. Bengal says that there is no law against sacrificing animals for religious purposes as long as it is done humanely.

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Massachusetts Fire Deaths Ruled Homicides

John Fiore — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:58:37 +0000

The deaths of two men in one of a string of fires last weekend have been ruled homicides by the Massachusetts Medical Examiner’s office. Dr. Andrew Sexton on Wednesday “presumptively” identified the victims in the Sunday fire in Northampton, Mass., as 81-year-old Paul Yeskie Sr. and his son, 39-year-old Paul Yeskie Jr. Family members had already publicly identified the Yeskies as the victims.

Additional dental tests are needed to positively identify the victims. Authorities say they died of asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation and “thermal injuries.” The men died in one of a string of nine suspected arson fires that struck the city last Sunday. There have been no arrests.

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UPS Driver Charged for Crash that Killed Sun Editor

John Fiore — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:00:12 +0000

Police for Baltimore County reported that a UPS truck driver is being charged with running a red light and other violations that resulted in a crash that killed an editor for the Baltimore Sun. Police say 28-year-old Kevin P. Callahan of Owings Mills, Md., was charged last week with negligent driving, failure to stop at a red light and failure to obey a traffic device.

Sun business editor Tim Wheatley was making a left turn Oct. 5 about two miles from his home when the truck struck the driver’s side of his car. The 48-year-old Wheatley died at the scene. His 9-year-old daughter, who was in the front passenger seat, was seriously injured.

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Four Slain in Utah Apartment

John Fiore — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:09:44 +0000

Police say that four members of a Utah family were killed in what could be a murder-suicide case. West Jordan Police Sgt. Drew Sanders says the bodies of two adults and two children were found dead around 8:45 p.m. Thursday in a unit at the Willow Cove Apartment complex.

Sanders says police received a call regarding trouble and discovered the bodies after entering the home to check on the family. Neighbors say they called police after hearing gunshots, but there was no official word on how the four died.

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Authorities Conclude Probe into Kentucky Census Worker’s Death

John Fiore — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:57:38 +0000

Authorities are expected to release investigation information regarding the death of the Kentucky census worker who was found hanging from a tree with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest. It is not clear what the word was written in or with. State Police Lieutenant David Jude has said a news conference is set in the agency’s crime lab in Frankfurt.

Investigators on both the federal and state level have been working on the case since September, and have not yet announced whether they concluded if Bill Sparksman’s death is ruled a homicide, suicide, or accident. Sparksman’s body was found naked, hanging from a tree near a heavily wooded area in a Kentucky cemetery. The fifty-one-year-old’s body was bound with duct tape, gagged, and had an identification badge taped to his neck.

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Woman Struck by Bullet Through Wall Dies

John Fiore — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:29:19 +0000

Police say that a woman lying on her bed was struck by a bullet that was fired through her wall. Kathy Ann Stewart of Chester, a suburb near Philadelphia, died on Tuesday morning. Investigators recovered about a dozen shell casings from the site of an apparent gun battle outside. Police said that Stewart, a forty-nine-year-old mother of three, was talking on the phone with her fiance. Her fiance called the house when Stewart suddenly stopped talking, and a family member later found Stewart unconscious.

Police are attempting to identify two men seen on surveillance cameras.

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Three College Students Found Dead in Sunken Jeep

John Fiore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:06:14 +0000

Autopsies have been planned for three North Dakota college students found dead inside a Jeep discovered in a rural pond. The bodies were found on Tuesday, and investigators held a news Wednesday morning. Investigators currently believe the Dickinson State University students were out on a stargazing trip when their friends received a distress call. One of the friends said their Jeep was near a lake before the call went dead.

The players were identified as twenty-two-year-old Kyrstin Gemar, twenty-year-old Afton Williamson, and twenty-one-year-old Ashley Neufield. Police do not suspect foul play.

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The Man Who Changed America

Allen P Wilkinson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:53:59 +0000

June 4, 1968 was a great day for me. I had spent the day at the local “Robert F. Kennedy for President” headquarters, waiting word about whether or not our beloved Bobby would win the State of California in his quest to follow in his brother John’s footsteps and become President of the United States. I was only 13 years old, and had moved to the States with my parents and four brothers three years earlier from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

I loved America, I loved the political process, and had dreams of one day becoming a Congressman or even a Senator. Since I had been born outside of the United States, I was barred by the Constitution from becoming President. The mood of campaign headquarters was delirious. It was a tight race between Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, Linden Johnson having pulled out of the race several months earlier..

Four hours after the polls closed, Bobby Kennedy claimed victory in the packed Embassy Room of the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Bobby was supposed to walk through the throng of well-wishers on his way to another gathering of supporters in another room of the Hotel. However, bowing to news reporters facing tight deadlines, a campaign aide convinced Bobby to skip the second speech and instead go through the kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom to get to the press area. After he finished talking, Bobby started to exit the room when one of his two security guards took him through the kitchen. A gunshot rang out and Bobby fell to the ground, blood gushing from his head where a .22 bullet had penetrated. It was shortly after midnight, June 5, 1968 that he was mortally wounded.

The mood at the local campaign headquarters I was at immediately turned from one of ebullient joy to one of utter despair. “How could this happen?” we asked each other. Was Bobby dead? Did they catch the assassin?

Kennedy was rushed to Los Angeles’ Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead the following morning. And with his death went many of the dreams of those of us who loved and supported him, who saw good things happening in the next eight years (for we were sure he would be elected President and reelected for a second term).

Who killed Bobby Kennedy? There was speculation that it was a mob-ordered hit because of how hard Bobby had come down on the mafia during his term as Attorney General under his brother John and then under President Johnson. But as hard as the conspiracy-buffs tried to make this into the result of a vast conspiracy, the fact is Robert F. Kennedy was the victim of a single gunshot by a lone gunman, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Christian Palestinian-American who felt betrayed by Bobby’s support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War a year earlier.

By his murderous act, Sirhan Sirhan changed the course of American history even more than Lee Harvey Oswald did when he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on that November day in Dallas in 1963. If Sirhan had not been successful, Bobby most likely would have been elected President and the nation would be proud once again. Instead we had to live through the Nixon years, the Watergate scandal, wars in the middle East, and hundreds—no, thousands—of tragedies that never should have occurred. One can only dream of the State of the Union had Bobby Kennedy been President for eight years.

What brings up this Commentary on Sirhan Sirhan is that prison authorities want to move him from the state prison in Corcoran, which houses high-risk prisoners such as Charles Manson, to Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga. Sirhan had been housed for years in the protective unit at Corcoran, one of the most isolated units in the state prison system. Sirhan’s attorney initially opposed the move of Sirhan from Corcoran state prison on the basis that Pleasant Valley State Prison would not be able to guarantee Sirhan’s safety, but a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Sirhan had requested the transfer and wants to go to Pleasant Valley.

I am not generally a vengeful person, but the news of Sirhan’s move brought back some deep-seated feelings I felt the night of June 4^th and 5^thof 1968 If Sirhan is at risk for his safety at Pleasant Valley State Prison, so be it. I have no sympathy for the man. He stole my hopes and dreams for a better America when he killed Bobby Kennedy in cold blood. He stole my innocence and I can never forgive him for that.

But I will always remember Bobby Kennedy’s words: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

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Breast Implant Lawsuit Lawyer Dies

John Fiore — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:01:10 +0000

John O’Quinn, the lawyer who won billions of dollars in verdicts against makers of breast implants and tobacco products, died at sixty-eight on Thursday. He and his passenger were killed in a car accident when their sport-utility vehicle crashed near downtown Houston. O’Quinn’s law firm said that his personal assistant, fifty-six-year-old Johnny Cutliff of Houston, was riding in the passenger seat.

O’Quinn was one of the five lawyers who shared in a $3.3 billion fee for assisting the state of Texas settle its lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

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Kids’ Swine Flu Deaths at 114

John Fiore — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:23:17 +0000

Health officials say that swine flu has now caused the deaths of at least nineteen more children – the largest increase in one week since the pandemic began. At least one hundred fourteen have died from swine flu and related complications since April. The number stood last week at ninety-five. These statistics were released by the Center for Disease Control on Friday.

The CDC reported that swine flu is now widespread in all but two states. Health officials have estimated that several million Americans have been infected, although most of those infected suffer a very mild illness.

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