Sandra Cantu: Closure, But Many Unanswered Questions

by Stacy Dittrich

Sandra Cantu (left) died a horrific, slow, agonizing death, according to San Joaquin County Coroner Dr. Bennet Omalu. Melissa Huckaby’s shocking guilty plea on May 10th, and her sentencing on June 14th, finally ended the battle over a gag order that had been in place for more than a year. I felt somewhat relieved; I could resume writing my book on the case, tentatively titled Searching for Sandra. Actually, I've been on a brief hiatus from Women in Crime Ink, working furiously on this book. Immediately after Huckaby’s sentencing, the excruciating details of Sandra Cantu's death, which would nauseate any human being with a soul, were revealed in the almost 2,000-page grand jury transcripts.

On March 27, 2009, Sandra Cantu, eight years old, was last seen on surveillance video, skipping toward her home in Tracy, California. For the next 10 days, an exhaustive search ensued; national media captured every minute of it. On April 6, 2009, Sandra's body was found inside an Eddie Bauer suitcase in an irrigation pond just two miles from her home. On April 10, 2009, police arrested Santu's 28-year-old neighbor, Melissa Huckaby. Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault with a foreign object. News analysts worldwide were mystified. Huckaby was a statistical anomaly.

Much of the argument in favor of the gag order was essentially that the gruesome details of the crime are unnecessary for public consumption. I agree with that—to an extent--and I'll refrain from writing about them here. However, I warn you, there are many aspects of this case that raised my eyebrows more than once, and some of it needs to be discussed. Therefore, continue reading at your own discretion, with warning of some graphic content.

I am simply going to break it down into key points and let you, the readers, formulate your own conclusions. I expect to take a significant amount of criticism for my points, but I'm writing what was factual testimony. Period. Let me stress, no matter how families conduct themselves, there is no parent on this earth who should have to endure the emotional trauma of losing a child. What I touch on below is sure to be controversial, but it needs to be addressed:

*Melissa Huckaby asked Sandra’s sister, 11-year-old Miranda, to babysit Huckaby's five-year-old daughter Madison while Huckaby took some items to the Clover Road Baptist Church. So Miranda actually stood by and unknowingly watched Huckaby load the suitcase containing Sandra into her SUV.

*On the night of Sandra’s disappearance, as police were searching, Huckaby sent Maria Chavez (Sandra's mother) a text message, asking her to tell police that Huckaby's suitcase had been stolen. Huckaby had already reported this to the park manager as she drove away from her trailer with Sandra. Maria Chavez had never received a text from Huckaby before and found it odd.

*The day after Sandra’s disappearance, Huckaby handed investigators a note that read: “Cantu locked in stolin (sic) suitcase. Thrown in water on Whitehall and Bachchetti. (signed) Witness.”

*Twenty-four hours after Sandra’s disappearance, Huckaby sent Maria another text, asking if Miranda could spend the night with her. Maria allowed this. During her testimony, Maria testified that Miranda had stayed at Huckaby’s trailer before, so she didn’t find the offer unusual. But when Miranda testified, she said she had never once spent the night at Huckaby’s, and found the request odd. Miranda testified that Huckaby asked if the police had any “evidence or leads.” Huckaby (right) left that night and was not seen until the next afternoon; she claimed she had stomach pains and went to the hospital. It would clearly appear that Maria gave false testimony during grand jury testimony. Why?

*During the autopsy, Dr. Bennet Omalu said that it was likely that Sandra Cantu may have endured prior sexual abuse (Grand Jury Testimony_Page 363.) Family members claimed they were unaware of this.

*Sandra had been suffocated, strangled and sexually assaulted with a rolling pin. One end of the rolling pin held Sandra’s DNA, the other end mixed. Just assume Huckaby didn’t hold the rolling pin in her hands while she was holding Sandra down—that’s my opinion. (I added this so that if you haven’t by now, you can clearly see Huckaby as the sick and evil entity that she is.) Sandra had bruising on her back, indicative of being hit in the back—or held down.

*Dr. Omalu also testified that two puncture wounds on the left side of her head could have either been due to blunt force (her head hitting something) or, possibly, a kitchen fork police found. He couldn’t confirm this. Needless to say, one true fact he could confirm was that Sandra was alive when all these injuries occurred. We can only hope that the generic Valium (a benzodiazepine) in her system, or the rubbing alcohol that had been placed over her mouth, rendered her semi-conscious while she was enduring this horror. Mercifully, Sandra Cantu was not conscious, and most likely not alive, when she was placed in the water.

Now, on to the police investigation…

On January 17, 2009, a mother reported that Huckaby had taken her seven-year old without permission. After the child began acting “drunk,” she was taken to the hospital, where toxicology testing found a benzodiazepine (anti-anxiety medication) in her system.

According to San Joaquin County Prosecutor Tom Testa, “…mother is really upset and wants something done. But the police don't do anything because the mother is into drugs and she's from the wrong side of the tracks and Melissa speaks really well, Sunday school teacher, so on, so forth. And the officer, the detective who was investigating it, decides not to do anything about it, which still burns up the mother to this day. She is still upset that they didn't do anything about it. Well, the detective said, 'Well, we can't prove it,' so it never went anywhere, no one was ever arrested. The mother just made sure her daughter never hung out with Melissa again or Melissa's children."

On March 2, 2009, Huckaby provides her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Plowman, with “vitamin water.” He is conscious of the fact that it tastes like aspirin. Known to all as a non-drinker and non-drug user, the next thing Plowman recalls is waking up in jail for DUI after passing out at a fast food drive-through. All he can utter is, “I was with Melissa Huckaby.” He tested positive for benzodiazepines. Same as the case in January, same as Sandra Cantu.

On March 27, 2009, Sandra Cantu disappears. Huckaby sends Maria Chavez a text about the missing suitcase. Surveillance shows Sandra headed towards the trailer of Huckaby, who has been accused twice in police reports of drugging people—including a child--within the last three months.

The next day, Huckaby hands officials a “note” she claimed she found (on a very, very windy day) that said Sandra Cantu was in a suitcase in a pond off Bachetti and Whitehall Roads. Investigators looked at the pond, but dive teams never searched it. Media rumors said police wrote her off as “an attention seeker.”

I am going to stop here, because it gets much worse. Needless to say, Huckaby’s criminal record and activities were blatantly thrown into investigators' faces from Day One. Though investigators deny it, they never looked at her. They claim they began considering her as a suspect when she "found" the note. Documents prove their claim, but still, they made no arrest until the day a local reporter posted an online article about an interview with Huckaby. The article said that during the interview, Huckaby admitted the suitcase containing Sandra's body was hers. Power of the press -- or coincidence?

I interviewed this reporter, former Tracy Press journalist Jennifer Wadsworth—for hours, and she offered her take:

Jennifer spoke with Melissa Huckaby for upwards of an hour, then quickly wrote an article about the conversation and posted it online. It was breaking news, and other media outlets had the story within hours. Tracy police held twice-daily news conferences, morning and afternoon. On the afternoon of April 10, investigators had wrapped up their search warrants and cleared the area. As Jennifer arrived at the mobile home park for the 3 p.m. press conference, crime-scene trucks and law enforcement personnel came rushing back into the park and to the church, putting crime-scene tape back up and blocking off the area.

Jennifer’s article had only been online for two hours. This led her to believe police saw it and realized they’d erred. Until then, rumor was that investigators were looking into Huckaby’s grandfather, Lane Lawless. No one had mentioned Huckaby’s name until Wadsworth’s article appeared. Law enforcement had, in fact, focused on Huckaby for days. It could be that her admission that she owned the suitcase was the break they'd been waiting for.

There is a spectrum of reasons police might commit such an oversight. I will stop short of shouting out any wrongdoings. Why? I have spoken to them, and they put their heart and souls into this case. Not to mention the Tracy Police Department is rather large. It wouldn’t be uncommon for lines of communication to cross. I stand firm in my opinion that Huckaby should have been criminally charged in the January case, but hindsight is 20/20. Monday morning quarter-backing will do absolutely no good. The men and women in this department took this case home every night—and it ate them whole. They are parents too.

As for Maria Chavez’s testimony, she was probably scared—understandably. Seated before a table of strangers, a prosecutor, and others can be intimidating. She let her other daughter spend the night at the home of the woman responsible for her youngest daughter’s murder. She couldn’t have possibly known, and most likely was embarrassed by her decision. Her inconsistencies should be ignored. I have spoken to the Chavez family (and those close to them), and can assure you, their lives will never be the same. They aren’t doing well at all. I implore you to keep this family in your prayers.

I planted the earlier question in your minds only so I could give you a solution. I am confident other news media will raise these questions, if only to create controversy. I wanted to beat them to the punch and offer the answers most so desperately seek. The only person to blame here is the modern-day daughter of Satan himself—Melissa Huckaby. I can only hope that her time in prison is as horrific as the final moments of Sandra Cantu’s life. Based on my law enforcement experience, I don’t think she will last that long…

But I could be wrong. The murdering mother of two, Susan Smith, happily married her cell mate and is reportedly enjoying her incarceration. I just don’t see the same for Huckaby; she’s weak and unstable. If you think I was contradictory in adding some of the content in this post, believe me, this was light compared to what is actually in the transcripts.

There’s so much in the case of Sandra Cantu it will make your head spin. I couldn’t possibly include it in a blog, but I also have decided not to include graphic, irrelevant details in my book. I want Sandra’s life to be remembered with dignity, and those of the community of Tracy, California, who searched so tirelessly for her. Yes, many, many, questions remain, and I am seeking the answers. Searching for Sandra is currently slated for an early 2011 debut.

I acknowledge one thing: We may never get the answers in this case, especially to the question of why? Regardless, the citizens of San Joaquin County can rest easy now, knowing another monster is off their streets.

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Update: Parole Denied

by Kathryn Casey

A while back, I posted on WCI asking everyone to send e-mails and letters to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) recommending that parole be denied for James Edward Bergstrom, the sexual predator/ psychopath in my first book, The Rapist's Wife, reissued in 2008 under a new title: Evil Beside Her. I'd like to extend my appreciation for all those who followed through.

I went to my post office box today and found a letter from TDCJ dated June 11. It informed me that Bergstrom, who is serving four 99-year sentences for sexual assault, was denied parole. For at least the next three years, we're all safe from Bergstrom, who was obsessed with the urge to stalk and assault women. His career as a sexual predator began as a teenager, when he molested a young girl, and continued on in Washington State, while he was in the navy. It was there that he committed his first rape. During his two years in Houston, Bergstrom, by his own estimation, attacked 35 women. He carried a gun and a knife, tied his victims down, and threatened to kill his last victim, a high school student.

While his parole denial is good news, it's not the end of our need for vigilance. Bergstrom will be eligible again much too soon, in June 2013. So in three more years, I'll ask for your help again, to keep this monster behind bars. But for now, let's all feel good about our success. And again, to all of you who wrote or emailed: Thank you, more than I can say!

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Speak up, Speak up - You Say You Want to Remain Silent?

by Katherine Scardino

On June 1, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court watered down a legacy of constitutional rights afforded to all of us.

Who hasn't heard of Miranda rights? My guess is that nearly every U.S. citizen knows about Miranda. It's not uncommon for those I represent to say to me, “Hey, man, that cop didn't read me my rights.” They know that suspects in a criminal investigation have the right to be informed that everything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law. They have to be told that they have the right to a lawyer and the right to refuse to answer questions.

Let's take a look at Miranda v. Arizona. In 1966, Mr. Ernesto Miranda (photo right), a day laborer who'd been convicted and sentenced to 20 to 30 years for rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery, got a second bite at the apple after a history-making Supreme Court decision. The justices ruled that Miranda needed to have been informed of his rights before being interrogated. Afterward Miranda was retried and again found guilty. Ironically, he was sentenced to the identical number of years. Yet while Ernesto Miranda's fate remained unchanged, the "Miranda rights" birthed by his successful appeal had a major impact on American justice.

Based on this landmark decision, it was clear that if a citizen was arrested, he had to be informed of his rights before being questioned. To assure that happened, suspects were asked to initial next to each right as it was read to them. That didn't mean that they couldn't talk to police. If after being told their rights they wanted to make a statement, that was allowed, but only after they signed a waiver in front of a witness. In a very real sense, as U.S. citizens, Miranda was our security blanket. The ruling became so integral a part of our justice system that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once said: “the warnings have become part of our national culture” (Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000). Like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the right to be informed of our constitutional rights by law enforcement appeared inalienable.

That's not to say that there haven't been challenges. Over the years, there have been many assaults on our Miranda rights. For instance, in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), the Supreme Court halted a controversial practice by police, who withheld Miranda warnings until after they obtained confessions. Despite these frequent official transgressions, however, we've always managed to maintain at least the ruling's spirit.

That is until now. Again, remember that to give a statement without counsel, one that could later be used against him in a trial, the accused had to sign a witnessed document specifically waiving his rights. That was before Berghuis v. Thompkins. You want to invoke your right to remain silent? Great. But post-Berghuis refusing to sign the waiver and remaining silent isn't enough. Now, you'd better speak up and spell out your intentions!

In the Berghuis case, the Supreme Court held that suspects must specifically inform police officers that they are invoking their rights, both to remain silent and that they want a lawyer. In practice, this means that police can keep interrogating a suspect who refuses to talk as long as they want in hopes that the person will crack and start talking. According to his appeal, Thompkins did just that. He refused to sign the waiver and remained silent for three hours, while police bombarded him with questions, before he finally implicated himself in a Michigan murder. Based on his "confession," Thompkins was convicted. He appealed, insisting that the questioning should never have taken place, because by refusing to sign the waiver and remaining silent for hours, he had invoked his Miranda rights. The court decided against him.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a strong dissent, stating her fellow justices' decision “turns Miranda upside down.” She wrote: “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent - which counterintuitively requires them to speak.... At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.”

In the Berghuis case, Thompkins was questioned for three hours without making a statement. Then police asked him if he prayed for forgiveness for “shooting that boy down,” and the suspect said one word: “Yes.” Justice Sotomayor said that to believe that a suspect waived his right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to police is “a substantial retreat from the protection against compelled self-incrimination that Miranda v. Arizona has long provided during custodial interrogation.”

Many people applaud this expansion of the rights of police. However, think of it this way: You or one of your children is arrested for a DWI. How fast do you call a lawyer? How fast do you want to know your rights and to be sure that these rights are protected and exercised? No one wants a culture where it is acceptable for police to coerce confessions, using either psychological or physical means, or to interrogate citizens for hours and hours at a time without stopping, hoping the suspect will crack. But the Berghuis case holds that you and I can no longer invoke our rights by remaining silent. You must speak up.

What do you think?

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"Claiming Bloody Innocence"

by Susan Murphy Milano

On June 14, 2007, exactly three years ago this past Monday, Kimberly Ellen Vaughn, 34; Abigayle Elizabeth Vaughn, 12; Cassandra Ellen Vaughn, 11; and Blake Phillip Vaughn, 9, were found shot to death in a red SUV parked among a grove of trees in Will County, Illinois.

The only survivor of this gruesome tragedy is Kimberly's husband, Christopher Vaughn, who had minor gunshot wounds to his thigh and wrist. A former private investigator, Vaughn claims the family was headed to a water park when he pulled the SUV over because his wife “suddenly became ill.” What happened next is the crux of this case. Vaughn admits that he'd brought along a 9mm handgun on the family outing. Yet he claims that he didn't pull the trigger. In Vaughn's version, his dead wife suffered from severe depression and abused prescription drugs. She was suicidal, and he was simply another victim. The shooter that day, according to Vaughn, was Kimberly, who shot him and murdered the children before turning the gun on herself.

On this, the Vaughns' 13th wedding anniversary, Kimberly died of a single bullet to the chin, while each of her children suffered two gunshot wounds to their bodies. At least one piece of forensic evidence calls Vaughn's account into question; Kimberly had no gun reside on her hands.

It appears that authorities believe what I do, that the gunshot wounds Vaughn suffered were self inflicted, and that Kimberly wasn't the one pulling the trigger. Just hours before she and the children were to be buried, nine days after the murders, investigators arrived at the funeral home to take this low-life piece of human garbage into custody, charging him with eight counts of first-degree murder.

We'll never know if Vaughn had GSR, gunshot residue, on his hands; he wasn't tested at the scene. Since the day of the murders, he has claimed that he has no memory of the events, suffering from some bizarre form of amnesia. It seems absurd in the face of his actions that day, especially flagging down a vehicle for help and then conversing normally with the driver who called 911.

The trial date isn't set yet, but in the courtroom, the prosecution will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Vaughn planned and carried out the murders. For motive, they'll point to a $1 million dollar insurance policy Vaughn took out on Kimberly’s life. For the time being, the accused murderer hasn't been able to collect. Under the “Illinois slayer statue” unless Vaughan is acquitted he won’t see a dime. However, there are more problems with the way the case was handled than that Vaughn's hands weren't tested for gunshot residue at the scene. Another crucial piece of evidence, a towel, was rendered useless when it was mistakenly washed at the Will County morgue.

The defense will no doubt use investigators' mistakes to their advantage, along with pointing at prescription drugs Kimberly took for migraines as evidence of her "depression." Sprinkle in a parade of neighbors the defense will undoubtedly call to show what a loving, wonderful father their client is, and you can predict the prosecutions' problems. I expect the defense team to play a full symphony complete with violins casting doubt before the case finally goes before a jury.

Why hasn't this case received more publicity? Soon after the murders the case was sealed by a judge. In that way, the Vaughn case is different than that of former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson, who will be tried next month in the same county for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. The result is that in the Vaughn murders, the prosecution and the defense have the opportunity to try their case in a court of law minus the Peterson case's media circus.

Although I try to be mindful that a person is always innocent until proven guilty, I have a difficult time believing any other result than that Christopher Vaughn should receive the death penalty.

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The Facebook Fugitives

by Donna Pendergast

Craig "Lazie" Lynch was incarcerated on an aggravated burglary charge at Hollesley Bay Prison in southern England. Last September he escaped the minimum security facility by walking away; he began a life on the run. But rather than seek anonymity, the effusive escapee began to taunt police with profanity-laced insults on his Facebook  page, bragging of steak dinners, girlfriends and the free life.

One picture (left), posted around Christmas time, shows him shirtless with a cooked turkey in one hand, middle finger raised on the other, and a strand of tinsel garland around his neck. The caption in his Facebook information box said: "life is what you make it, live fast die young." His arrogant updates included "Craig Lazie Lynch is thinkin' which lucky girl will be my first of 2010" and "I've got a fantastic video, me watching the London firework display, surrounded by thousands of incompetent pigs."

Lynch's Facebook page was shut down after authorities contacted Facebook looking for information as to his whereabouts. Lynch responded with a new Facebook page named Maximus Justice, where he began an even bolder string of taunts. By the time he was recaptured in January, he'd become a web celebrity with nearly 40,000 Facebook fans. He was even the subject of a song written by American country singer Kent Crawford titled, naturally, "Crazy Craig Lazy Lynch."

If you think this sounds familiar, you are right. In March, I posted a blog on Colton Harris-Moore, the one-man crime wave from Seattle who walked away from a halfway house. He's achieved mythic status for his daredevil crimes and open mockery of the police. His exploits have earned him a large Facebook following and attracted national media attention. Like Lynch, he has also inspired a song, called "The Ballad of Barefoot Harris." Harris-Moore remains on the lam despite the offer of $50,000 to turn himself in. The offer expired last Tuesday at 3:00 p.m., and the money, which had been placed in a trust account by a Washington lawyer, is being returned to its anonymous donor.

While Lynch openly courted fame, Harris-Moore's fame has grown due to his uncanny ability to pull off crimes that seem straight out of the movies while continuing to evade arrest. Nonetheless, both fugitives acquired a large fan base on Facebook and cult-hero status for escaping from custody and making a mockery of the police. Lynch has been called a "Digital Dillinger," and Harris-Moore has been compared to Jesse James (without the murders) and D.B. Cooper.

So why, as a culture, do we romanticize criminals who defy the system? Is it because many of us like to challenge authority -- vicariously? From Robin Hood to Jesse James, people rally around the defender of the common people, pitted against the oppression or corruption of the established power structure. But Robin Hood at least took from the rich to feed the poor.

Lynch and Harris-Moore benefit no one other than themselves. They feed nothing but their own egos with their escapades, and by publicly taunting police and any efforts to rein in their criminal, self-serving behavior. Yet their numerous Facebook followers suggest people admire their exploits rather than condemn their anti-social behavior.

In these days of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, heroes can be created and immortalized almost overnight. The glorification of criminals on social networking sites is the latest twist on a recurring theme that suggests a complex dynamic where normally upstanding citizens harbor a strange affinity for certain criminal behavior.

The perception of crime as glamorous is all too commonplace in the impoverished inner-city. Youths with little future fear police while looking up to the power and status of easy money from drug-dealing and brutal displays of violence meant to keep people in line and ensure loyalty. One can only hope that the public interest in Facebook criminals is more fascination than true admiration.

Statements made in this post are my own and do not reflect the views, opinion or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

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An Unwritten Law

by Laura James

Love triangles turned deadly have been around longer than David and Bathsheba and Uriah, and you know the ending of that story (unless you skipped your true crime lessons from Sunday School). In Michigan in the mid-1950s, the last chapter of a classic love triangle was written in a courthouse, as they so often are these days.

But this case was so sensational that the story achieved national prominence; thousands of articles delved into the details of the tawdry affair; the press of the crowd seeking admittance at the trial shattered two glass doors to the courtroom; and the verdict was a shock only to those who believe in strictly codifying human behavior.

The matter aroused so much interest because the participants were all very beautiful and very wealthy but had the habits and bad taste of the lowest sorts. So many people were touched by this not-all-that-long-ago love disaster that it seems appropriate to change the names. There’s no other mention of the case on the internet.

So meet “Madame Bovary.” Let’s call her Emma. The press will call her “an oval-faced brunette.” In 1944, she was caught in a whirlwind romance in Ann Arbor, falling in love with Kevin, a dental school student, on the eve of his graduation from the University of Michigan. He was six feet tall, dark-haired, and very handsome. They married soon thereafter, and he joined the Navy. She became a loyal military wife and they had three sons together.

After his military service honorably ended, Kevin settled his family in Detroit near Emma’s parents, who loved them both and lavished them with thousands of dollars, setting up Kevin’s dental practice and buying them a mansion. They had servants and a nurse to care for the boys. Imagine Emma as Mrs. Cleaver, in dress, heels, and pearls, but without the vacuum cleaner.

It was then that Emma grew restless and dissatisfied with her husband. She would later describe the eighth and ninth year of their marriage as a “clash of ideologies.” She wanted Kevin to be a “bigger man,” but his main interests seemed to lie only in his home, his family, and his work. “It isn’t anything tangible and it’s hard to explain,” she would say about her curious abstractions. “Kevin never gave me credit for decisions and we had a lot of arguments. I never cared for money as money. I felt it was to be used for the things one wanted. For instance, if I wanted a stick of bubble gum and it made me happy, it should make him happy too.”

Then Emma’s father died, and she inherited a large amount of money. She took to vacationing without her husband and hanging out with divorcees, and sooner rather than later she met Jack, a wealthy industrialist and New York playboy who hung out at the “21 Club” when he was in town and jet-setted across the country. Emma was introduced to him in Florida, and they had three unforgettable dates. On the night she returned to Detroit, Emma told Kevin she wanted a divorce.

The news transformed Kevin in an instant. He turned to drink for the first time in his life and became alternately abusive and pathetic. He hit her once. He threatened suicide. There were scenes featuring a brandished pistol. He pleaded with her. “Even a dog is entitled to another chance,” he told her. But she locked him out of the bedroom. Kevin threatened to knock it down. She called the police from the bedroom phone.

A few days later, she left for New York to be with Jack. When her husband begged for their marriage, she told him to see a psychiatrist. “He told me I should see one,” she said, “that it was I who was all mixed up.” Meanwhile, Kevin moved to a hotel and immersed himself in self-help books like Wake Up And Live.

After Emma filed for divorce, she had a rendezvous with Jack several hours from Detroit in a summer house in Douglas, Michigan. It was no cottage -- there were servants and gardeners and a stunning view of Lake Michigan sunsets. But Emma began to miss her children, or so she said. She phoned home. Kevin happened to answer. An argument followed – “I thought you were in Chicago!” was in the earful Kevin gave her.

The next thing she knew – as she sat on a couch in the summer home, reading a magazine, the lake’s swells singing in the background -- she heard her husband’s voice at the front door, followed by pistol shots. Kevin had tracked them down and promptly shot Jack twice in the chest.

Kevin was imprisoned in the Allegan County jail and put on trial two months later. The case was an exercise in histrionics. Emma bolted from the room several times while others were testifying. Kevin’s father collapsed and had to be carried out. The judge had to hand out tickets in advance after the crowd smashed the glass doors. Journalists came from hundreds of miles around for this one, and each witness was a spectacle.

Kevin’s money bought a good defense – he argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Three psychiatrists testified that he was “definitely insane,” in a “post-psychotic stage,’ at the time he killed Jack. The murder was the result of extraordinary events, one expert said; “it’s like striking a match – once you strike it, you don’t strike it again.”

Kevin himself was on the witness stand for less than ten minutes. “I can’t say what I did. I can’t say what I did. I don’t know.”

When the jury retired to deliberate, Kevin spent the night in his jail cell, praying with his cell mate, rereading the many letters sent to him, the only lights he had in the nightmare. Then in the wee hours of Saturday came word that the verdict had been reached. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

At once, the flash bulbs started popping off, and the expression they caught on Kevin’s face is pure relief. His last words in the courthouse: “I never knew people could be so nice.”

Kevin spent three months at Michigan’s Hospital for the Criminally Insane before the pretense was dropped and he was released. Emma divorced him – he didn’t contest it – and their real names are now quite forgotten.

The legal lesson remains -- statutory prohibitions on murder are sometimes trumped by an older, unwritten law.

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Will Joran Get Away with Murder Again?

by Diane Fanning

Many feel Joran van der Sloot should be behind bars for the murder of Natalee Holloway.  Instead, he's been traipsing around the world.  Now, it may be time for him to pay--unfortunately, another young woman had to die to make that possible.

When 18-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared while on vacation in Aruba in late May 2005, her parents zeroed in on 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot. He was the last person seen with Natalee and he kept changing his story.

Dutch authorities obviously shared their suspicion, arresting Joran twice—but never charging him with her murder. Hope for closure in the case died from a combination of investigative error, an island desire to minimize the crime for the sake of tourism and the hostility generated by Natalee’s parents who made inadvertent missteps as they were caught up in an alien justice system. It appeared that, short of the miraculous discovery of a body, with compelling, intact forensic evidence, there would never be any justice for Natalee Holloway.

For five years, he’s tormented Natalee’s parents through titillating interviews with bloggers and members of the media. Most recently, he accepted a $25,000 down payment in two installments toward the $250,000 he requested from Beth Holloway. In return, he said he’d argued with Natalee and threw her on the ground. Her head hit a rock and she died. He also said that his father—who conveniently died in February—helped him to bury her body in the foundation of a house. A week later, he sent an email saying that he lied.

Along with many others, I believed that it was only a matter of time before Joran was accused of another act of violence against a woman. His obvious narcissism and clear disdain for Natalee’s grieving family made that a foregone conclusion. We could only hope that, this time, it would not be fatal.

Stephany Flores Ramirez (below right) encountered Joran in a casino where they were both gambling. She won a $10,000 pot using some money fronted by Joran. They went to his room to divide up the winnings. According to Joran, she was on his laptop and accessed an article about Natalee Holloway. He said that was a gross and intolerable invasion of his privacy.  "I didn't want to do it," he said.  "The girl intruded in my life."

A civilized person, feeling such an affront, would ask the other person to leave the room. Instead, Joran elbowed her in the face hard enough to knock her unconscious and slammed her into the wall with sufficient force to cause a brain hemorrhage and then strangled her to death with her shirt. Some reports indicate that also he stabbed his victim repeatedly.  Stephany died on May 30, 2010—exactly five years to the day of Natalee’s demise. 

Joran confessed to this murder but his defense attorneys are now saying the confession was coerced and not admissible in a court of law. I imagine Joran is now entertaining fantasies of getting away with this homicide, too.

However, he is facing an entirely differently situation this time. When he ended Natalee’s life, he was on his home island of Aruba. Natalee was just another foreign woman vacationing there. Now, Joran is the foreigner and Stephanie is the native of Peru. I think that factor in this murder will count heavily against Joran’s evasion of justice in this case.

The court of public opinion in Peru seems outraged by Joran’s crime. According to The Associated Press, even holy men gathered outside the courthouse to condemn him. “Outside, seven Indian shamans in brightly colored ponchos repeatedly stabbed a cloth doll representing van der Sloot in a "spiritual punishment" ritual. ‘We're punishing him so that all the forces of evil are purged,’ one shouted.”

However, I am still troubled by the puny sentence. The maximum he could receive for murder in Peru is 35 years. Even if he served the entire sentence behind bars, I think Joran van der Sloot will still be a danger to women when he is 57 years old. To make matters worse, Peru traditionally gives a shorter sentence to those who confess to their crime.

It’s hard to know what to hope happens. Do you want Joran’s confession to be heard in the courtroom, thus nearly guaranteeing that he would receive a sentence shorter than thirty-five years? Or do you hope his lawyers succeed in having the confession thrown out and look to the prosecutors to present a strong enough case for conviction?

I tend to think that either way, the courts will not be very forgiving of the foreigner who killed a native citizen, of a man who is believed to have killed another woman in a fit of rage.

We have to count on Peru to take care of business—to finish the job that Aruba could not. If they, too, fail and Joran gets away with another murder, I have no doubt that he will kill again.

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