Blogs

Melissa Brannen

by Michael Thomas Barry

On December 3, 1989, five-year-old Melissa Brannen disappears without a trace from a Christmas party in Fairfax, Virginia. After interviewing everyone who had been at the party, investigators determined that Caleb Hughes had left the party at roughly the same time that Brannen was discovered missing. When detectives visited Hughes' home at 1 a.m., they found him washing his clothes, shoes, and belt.

Associated Press

Associated Press

Police in Curacao said Saturday that they have several leads following a brazen heist in which gunmen pretending to be police stole 70 gold bars worth an estimated $11.5 million from a fishing boat.

Authorities have the license plate number of one of three cars used in Friday's getaway, and they have been asking for the public's help in tracking the suspects, police spokesman Reggie Huggins told The Associated Press.

"There is information coming in," he said. "We are getting reactions from the public, but we still have to sort it out."

Police have said that at least six men were involved, but no one has been arrested in a case that surprised authorities in the Dutch Caribbean island.

Kansas City Star

A day after Kasandra Perkins died of multiple gunshot wounds and the boyfriend who killed her then killed himself, friends and neighbors are beginning to describe the young, new mother.

She would take walks with her baby daughter, Zoey, outside their home in the 5400 block of Crysler Avenue in Kansas City, took pride in decorating the home she and Chiefs player Jovan Belcher moved into more than a year ago and hoped to one day be a teacher.

Though most of her family was in Texas, friends say her outgoing personality and kindness helped her build a large group of close friends here in the Kansas City area. There were friends she met at Blue River Community College, girlfriends and wives of other Chiefs’ players and a tight, small group of girlfriends she would grab good food and margaritas with at a favorite local Mexican restaurant.

William Kennedy Smith

by Michael Thomas Barry

On December 2, 1991, opening testimony begins in the highly publicized rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Smith, then a 30-year-old medical student at Georgetown University, was accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old Florida woman in the early hours of March 30, 1991, at the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach compound.

Caril Ann Fugate & Charlie Starkweather

by Michael Thomas Barry

In the early morning hours of December 1, 1957, teenage spree killer, Charlie Starkweather and his girl friend, Caril Ann Fugate, murder gas station attendant Robert Colvert for refusing to sell him a stuffed animal on credit. Starkweather returned several times during the night to purchase small items, then finally, brandishing a shotgun, forced Colvert to hand over $100, then drove Colvert to a remote area. After Colvert was injured during a struggle over the gun, Starkweather killed him with a shot to the head.

by Eponymous Rox

Face it, you don’t have to live very long to discover that people with the courage to follow their convictions are a pretty uncommon breed.

You don’t have to look very far either to see that other important species are also becoming equally rare these days, thanks to the unwavering industrialization of the planet and, as a consequence, the steady deterioration of Earth’s vulnerable ecosystems.

Famed fugitive from justice and wildlife researcher, Rebecca J. Rubin, was barely in her twenties when she decided to bravely act on her belief that world corporations and their “puppet” governments were wantonly exploiting global resources and inflicting widespread environmental devastation in their wake.

These are the true eco-terrorists in her opinion, not herself or the Earth Liberation Front, an elusive group of skilled arsonists of which she is a card-carrying member.

Sought for over a decade by the FBI for her and ELF’s anti-corporate misdeeds and methods, Rubin finally surrendered to authorities yesterday at the Canadian border, thus ending her role in a campaign of economic sabotage that is estimated to have inflicted over $40,000,000 worth of losses on the enemy.

A drop in the bucket really, when compared to the billions of dollars of damages derived from just one oil spill, or those wrought this year alone by super-storms, droughts, floods and wildfires, the legacy of environmental plundering and degradation that began in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution.