Today's Isolated Kids: Tomorrow's Killers?

by Diane DimondEvery human being needs to feel connected – attached – to other human beings around them. It’s an innate craving we all have and cannot fight. The hunger for attachment begins with infants who bond with their mother’s soothing voices, tender caresses and nurturing care. It’s through this kind of attention the child comes to know the feelings of being safe and protected. The quality of the early bonds children form with adults in their...

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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Katherine ScardinoAt times during my legal career, I have faced really tough decisions -- and most of them have been similar to the one that is nagging me now. I am representing a 20-year-old Hispanic man who is accused of capital murder. He was 18 when he killed another human being. We have a trial date, and the State is hoping a jury will convict him of capital murder. If the jury does, there will be no punishment hearing, because the prosecution...

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Black-Eyed Borgia

by Deborah BlumMary Frances Creighton, Fanny to her friends, was a rather appealing 24-year-old in the summer of 1923. She had curling dark hair, pale skin, “deep, luminous eyes,” according to The New York Evening Post, and lush, “petulant lips,” according to The New York American. The New York Times more sedately described her as a “comely brunette,” or as “a young mother.” She had a three-year-old daughter, Ruth, and a newly born son, John Jr....

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Smoke and Mirrors: The Truth About Las Vegas

by Cathy ScottWatching Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman’s indignation over recent advice by President Barack Obama to a New Hampshire audience to not waste cash in Las Vegas was reminiscent of a similarly indignant Goodman a decade earlier. Goodman, a former criminal defense attorney and self-described “mouthpiece for the mob,” spent 35 years defending the nation’s most notorious underworld figures. His clients included mobsters Meyer Lansky, Anthony...

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An Investigative Journalist Who Has a Heart and a Soul: A Review of The Last Day of My Life

by Robin SaxI am not really a crier. I did bawl my eyes out in the movie Precious, but generally – as a veteran sex crimes prosecutor – it takes a lot to get my tears flowing.  Especially with books!  But Jim Moret’s The Last Day of My Life did make me cry.  Why did it resonate with me so much? At first I didn’t know why – I was truly surprised at my reaction.  I looked inward to try and understand why this book touched me so...

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Risky Business - Partying in Underwear Is Not Cool

by Cassie NelsonIn 1983's Risky Business, Tom Cruise made a high school boy partying in private in his underwear the stuff of Hollywood legend. Twenty-seven years later, a junior and a senior at Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School thought it would be fun to throw a "lingerie party," which amounted to a night of extensive promiscuity as teens partied in their panties. And, in 2010, there was nothing private about it.The Valentine's Day weekend...

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Fall from Grace?

by Donna Pendergast September 7th, 2006, was a memorable date for me: it was my birthday (not saying which one). The date was less festive for 21-year-old Melinda Duckett, mother of a missing two-year-old toddler. Duckett later became a prime suspect in the child's disappearance. On September 7th, Duckett was questioned by the queen of tabloid talk, Nancy Grace, during what has been widely called an ambush interview. Within 24 hours, Duckett had...

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Love Letters, Flowers and Bullets

by Diane FanningJulie Abbott loved rock music, great novels and her bright red convertible.  It seemed as if everyone loved the 47-year-old physician with an uncommon intensity: the patients as well as the other doctors and staff in her internal medicine practice, the parishioners at Community Bible Church and, most of all, her husband Ben Abbott.  Julie and Ben fell in love decades ago, while making angels in the snow on the campus...

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What Should We Do with Mothers Who Kill?

by Laura James   When a mother cruelly murders her children, the public is often deeply shocked by the crime. Though it's rare, fortunately, a look at the historical record in the United States shows murder of children by their mothers seems all too common.The colonists in the New World kept records of those who were hanged. One of the most common reasons women went to the scaffold was for the murders of their own offspring. In many...

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