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Teen Girls Not Evil, Says Dept of Justice

Posted Jul 11th 2008 2:30PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Children, Feminism

You know how you always hear about how teen girls today are more violent and slutty than ever?

Well, we've always been suspicious of these claims, as they are the same things people have been saying about girls since forever, and they're entirely anecdotal.

But two can play at anecdotes: the teen girls we know are hard-working, savvy and responsible when it comes to their bodies and relationships. (Maybe that's because we're just an awesome godmother, but we suspect it's because girls today have more freedom and more information than ever and those are good things.)

Now there's a new study backing us up: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has published "Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context." The first in a series of publications from OJJDP's Girls Study Group, the bulletin assesses trends of juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes.

Lori Drew Is Indicted!

Posted May 19th 2008 12:03PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Social Media, Children

Remember how back in December, we were all talking about how sad the Megan Meier case was, and how it was awful that there was no way to prosecute her middle-aged harasser, Lori Drew?

[If you need a refresher here's the AP summary. Basically, this insecure girl Megan Meier, 13, met a 16-year-old "boy" on MySpace who turned cruel and pelted her with vicious messages, including one that said the world would be better off without her. Distraught, Megan hanged herself in her closet while her mother was downstairs. It was later revealed that this boy Megan had a crush on was in fact a fiction created online by a classmate's vindictive mother, Lori Drew.]

Well, it looks like there is justice after all.

Man Discovers Wife of 23 Years Is Fugitive

Posted May 14th 2008 6:31PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Bizarre

KNBC has a fascinating report on an escaped convict caught by police after three decades on the lam. Susan Lefevre got into drugs as a teenager and was caught participating in a $200 drug deal (there she is looking pretty cracked out in her mug shot). She received a sentence common at the time, but which seems unduly harsh now: 10 to 20 years in prison.

Thinking she wouldn't be out of jail before she was too old to have a family, and that it was impossible to appeal, she let her grandfather bust her out of prison.

Then she changed her name to Marie Day, got a job, and became a wife and mother of three. Now she's been caught and put back into jail more than 30 years later.

Austrian Incest Cellar: House of Horrors

Posted Apr 29th 2008 2:57PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Sex, Children

Have you heard this terrible story yet? This 73-year-old monster in Austria locked his 18-year-old daughter in the basement and kept her there for 24 years. During that time, he repeatedly raped her and fathered seven children by her, one of whom died.

The daughter and her kids (now aged five to 19) lived in the windowless cellar until recently. Three of them never saw sunlight. The mother was upstairs the whole time, but didn't know about the soundproof rooms below the house.

The only reason they found the kids at all was that the eldest child was found unconscious and sick in the building and taken to a hospital and the secret room was discovered.

How Bad Is Breastfeeding in a Moving Car?

Posted Apr 29th 2008 11:26AM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Parenting, Controversy

Vicki Glembocki just wrote a piece for Babble called "Bad Parent: Driven To It. I breastfed in a moving car." In it, she describes being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a screaming baby in the back seat. While her mother drives in stop-and-go traffic, Vicki takes the baby from the car seat and nurses her, all the while convinced that she's going to jail.

When it's all over, she does some research and discovers:

If a cop pulls us over, I probably won't get arrested, just slapped with a $100 fine. Though the punishment in each state varies, this is the max for the offense here in Pennsylvania. (Of course, there was that Ohio women who was sentenced in 2003 to three months of house arrest and a $300 fine when a trucker saw her breastfeeding in her car. But she was driving.) If we get in an accident and, God forbid, the baby dies, I could be charged with involuntary manslaughter (if a prosecutor doesn't think that losing a child is punishment enough) for "the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner . . . [that] causes the death of another person," which, in Pennsylvania, could mean up to ten years in prison.

Polygamist Cult Practices Coming To Light

Posted Apr 9th 2008 4:06PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Religion, Crime, Children

More than four hundred children on the Yearning for Zion compound in Texas were removed by police after a sixteen-year-old girl called a family services hotline and complained of being beaten and raped.

Here's the AP description of the tipster's call: Her husband sexually assaulted her, and when he was angry, he would beat her while other women held her infant, she told a family violence shelter in a series of secret calls that triggered an investigation of the polygamist sect here.

Craigslist Hoaxers Caught; Looters Sought

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 12:38PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Bizarre


An ad on Craigslist said that everything in an Oregon home was free for the taking. People descended on the house like locusts and cleaned it out. The only problem? The ad was a hoax. The owner, Robert Salisbury, was robbed blind by strangers who, based on an online post, thought they had the right to take all his stuff.

Boy, 12, Kills Mother's Attacker

Posted Apr 2nd 2008 11:42AM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Children

The Washington Post has a chilling story about a 12-year-old Maryland boy who killed a 64-year-old man who was attacking his mother, a widow, in the kitchen of their boarding house.

The man was a friend and roommate, but apparently went crazy one night and tried to choke the woman to death. When her son came upon the scene, he grabbed a knife and cut the man's throat.

According to the article: The 12-year-old boy said yesterday that he was not happy about what he had done but that he knew that it was the right thing.

Eliot Spitzer's "Victimless Crime"

Posted Mar 11th 2008 2:43AM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Breaking News, Scandal, Crime, Sex

According to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking on Anderson Cooper's CNN show Monday night, Eliot Spitzer should not resign nor should he be prosecuted because prostitution is a "victimless crime."

Dershowitz gave us the usual nonsense about how Europeans would regard all this as no big deal, but what does this prove other than the fact that many Europeans have reached the nadir of moral debauchery? Yes, we all know that in France the discovery that a politician has a mistress or even patronizes prostitutes can raise their poll ratings. Is this really an area in which we wish to emulate French degeneracy?

I'm more interested in Dershowitz's claim that Spitzer is guilty of a crime that doesn't have any victims. Is this really true? Let's make a list of all of Spitzer's victims.

His wife: Spitzer's wife of 20 years not only has to cope with the public knowledge that her high-profile husband frequents prostitutes, but she also has to stand alongside him while Spitzer makes a press statement on his sexual and legal offenses. Converting your wife into a political prop--what could be more humiliating?

His daughters: For years the girls could think of their dad as a champion of legal and moral rectitude, fighting Wall Street crooks, shutting down prostitution dens, and so on. Now these innocent children must endure the knowledge that their father is far from what he portrayed himself to be. Spitzer has made shipwreck of his family and disgraced his children in public. What are his daughters going to say when they next see their friends?

New York citizens: Isn't there something outrageous when a high public official, and in this case a former attorney general, somehow gets the idea that he is above the law? That he can break the law with impunity? Why should other New Yorkers be held accountable to the law but not Spitzer? Spitzer of all people has worked to emphasize the idea that no one is above the law. So if Spitzer gets away with this, he will have screwed more than the $4000 hooker.

Alan Dershowitz: There is something about Democratic malfeasance (Barney Frank's relationship with a male prostitute, Clinton sex scandals, the latest Spitzer prostitution scandal) that causes liberal Harvard professors who agree with the politics of the culprits to lose their normal good sense. Whether Dershowitz thinks the law in question is a good one or a bad one is irrelevant here. Laws are made to be followed, and it's odd when law professors think that this doesn't apply to laws about sex. Clearly Alan Dershowitz's legal and moral intelligence has become the latest victim.

Dead Mother's Ashes Stolen In Burglary

Posted Feb 28th 2008 1:16PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Bizarre

According to this Star Tribune article, a Minneapolis woman's home was robbed and among the valuables taken were her dead mother's ashes.

Assisted by the funeral home and the police, Michele Siedow has begun a campaign to get the ashes returned, no questions asked.

The story quotes Siedow as saying, "I would like to have them back so I can dispose of them properly. It just bothers me that they might be lying in a garbage can somewhere."

So if a Midwestern meth addict tries to sell you some ashes marked "Mattson Funeral Home," call the Forest Lake Police Department (651-464-5877) or the funeral home (651-464-3556) immediately.

Immigrants Commit Less Crime

Posted Feb 27th 2008 2:45PM by Cenk Uygur
Filed under: Young Turks, Crime, Video

Conservatives are always yelling and screaming about how the illegals are bringing in a wave of crime. Of course, it turns out they are exactly wrong. American born citizens commit crime at a much higher rate than immigrants do in California. Get the details here:




Watch More TYT Clips Here or Watch The Whole Show Here

Gunman Opens Fire at Illinois College

Posted Feb 14th 2008 6:30PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Breaking News, Crime

There's been another school shooting, this one at Northern Illinois University, where a man opened fire this afternoon in a lecture hall, shooting approximately fifteen people, some in the head. According to the report:

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."


There have now been four school shootings within a week, six total already this month in six different states. Just what is going on?

Empire State Building Daredevil Has Some Nerve

Posted Jan 16th 2008 11:26AM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Bizarre

In April 2006, a BASE jumper named Jeb Corliss showed up at the top of the Empire State building wearing a fat suit. Underneath was hidden his jump gear. When he stripped down to his jumpsuit and parachute and climbed over the ledge, guards seized him, at which point he started shouting, in an incredibly condescending tone, "Let me go or I'll die."

The New York Post just put up the video, which shows just how much chaos the potential jumper caused. The ESB sued him for $12 million, and rightly so. Even if such a parachute jump off the ESB wouldn't have injured people below, this is no time to be running around on national landmarks in ninja costumes.

But now - get this - Corliss is suing the Empire State Building for $30 million, claiming that the guards endangered his life by handcuffing him to the fence. (Apparently, if the chute had opened it could have torn his torso from his limbs.)

Uh, maybe he should have thought about that before he tried to throw himself without warning off the Empire State Building onto a busy street in this age of terror alerts? It's a miracle he didn't get shot.

'Most Eligible Bachelor' Accused of Rape

Posted Jan 8th 2008 11:10AM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Celebrity, Crime

Gary Zerola, a lawyer who made People magazine's list of America's "Most Eligible Bachelors" in 2001, is standing trial for rape in two states.

AOL News reports: He awaits back-to-back trials beginning Tuesday in Boston on charges he attacked two 19-year-olds in 2004 and 2006. He also faces charges in Florida, where authorities say he force-fed drugs to an 18-year-old woman, then raped her in a Miami Beach hotel in October while free on bail in the Massachusetts assaults. Prosecutors say Zerola met all three women in bars, charmed them, then attacked them when they refused to have sex.

The details of the cases are grim and reportedly include assault. Compounding the irony: In 2000, Zerola opened his own law practice as a criminal defense attorney. His clients included drug dealers and rape defendants. You can read his legal advice on his website, which mentions that he's no longer practicing law.

Dead Woman Accuses Her Husband of Murder

Posted Jan 2nd 2008 4:32PM by Ada Calhoun
Filed under: Crime, Bizarre, Legal System

Julie Jensen died in 1998 and shortly before she did, she told police, a neighbor and her son's teacher that she thought her husband was trying to poison her so he could be with his girlfriend (now his wife). She even gave the neighbor a letter saying her husband should be the first suspect if she died, and it's now being reported on AOL News that this letter will be used in his trial for the murder.

This kind of evidence hasn't been allowed in the past, but a new U.S. Supreme Court decision made it possible to admit the letter, which reads: "I pray I'm wrong + nothing happens ... but I am suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors + fear for my demise."

The neighbor's preliminary testimony makes the Jensens' home life sound awfully creepy in the weeks leading up to Mrs. Jensen's death:

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