Female Teacher Was Choked To Death, Buried In Shallow Grave In Drug-Fueled RANDOM ABDUCTION

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(Daily Mail) – The Montana math teacher allegedly choked to death and then buried in a shallow grave in North Dakota was the victim of a crack-fueled, seemingly random abduction, an affidavit filed in the case has revealed.

It offers the first details of what police believe happened to 43-year-old Sherry Arnold after she went missing during a morning run on January 7.

The affidavit is based on the alleged confession of Michael Spell, 22, a suspect in the case along with Lester Waters, 47, both from Colorado.

Spell told the FBI he felt guilty when he saw missing posters after helping bury Arnold’s body on a farmstead 45 miles from where she was snatched.

The alleged kidnapping took place just blocks from Arnold’s house in Sidney, where investigators later found one of her running shoes.

Police arrested the men a week later after Spell’s girlfriend said he had confided in her about the kidnapping, AP reported the affidavit as saying.

Spell and Waters had left Colorado days before the crime claiming they wanted work in eastern Montana and western North Dakota’s oil fields.

After smoking crack cocaine over the entire trip, Waters allegedly told Spell the drug ‘brought the devil out in him’ and began talking about kidnapping and killing a female, AP reports.

After they spotted Arnold, Spell claims that Waters told him to ‘grab the lady’ and pull her into their Ford Explorer as she jogged by.

‘Spell said Waters got into the back seat with the female and “choked her out”,’ the affidavit states.

After dropping Arnold’s body in a rural area of North Dakota later that night, Waters bought a shovel at a nearby Walmart. They buried the body in a two- to three-feet-deep hole on an old farmstead.

Waters returned the shovel to Walmart three days later, the affidavit says.

When he was arrested a week later, Waters was carrying a receipt that showed he had purchased bread, bologna and a shovel the same night Arnold went missing, according to the affidavit.

Spell was arrested on January 13 in Rapid City, South Dakota. He told police he had hitchhiked there after fearing Waters would kill him.

Police have still not found a boyd. They have asked property owners in rural eastern Montana and western North Dakota to look for disturbed soil in agricultural areas.

Williams County Sheriff Scott Busching said on Friday that numerous leads have come in as a result, but so far none have panned out.

‘We’ve checked a lot of spots but we haven’t found anything yet,’ Busching said.

Arnold, who would have turned 44 Monday, grew up on a ranch outside town and taught math for the past 18 years at Sidney High School.

She she was known for being a caring and competent teacher. Her husband, Gary, still works for the school system. Together they raised five children from previous marriages.

Aggravated kidnapping carries a potential death penalty in Montana unless the victim is released unharmed. The minimum sentence is two years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.

Waters has a lengthy criminal background in Florida, where he lived until after his most recent release from prison in August 2010.

Charges against him included possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, sale of cocaine, petty theft, burglary, failure to pay child support, contempt of court, resisting an officer and multiple counts of driving with a suspended license.

Spell has prior arrests in Colorado on charges of drug possession, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual contact without consent, careless driving and driving without a license.

Charges filed against Spell in a pair of 2007 arrests were later dropped, although it was unclear on what grounds.

The most recent charges came in 2009 after Colorado authorities said Spell asked a middle-school student to text other students and ask them if they wanted to buy marijuana.

He was scheduled to be arraigned in that case in January. But Spell was given permission by a judge to leave Colorado just days before Arnold disappeared, after claiming his brother had been in a car accident in Texas.

Mother Leaves Newborn Baby In Bathtub TO DROWN – Hated Son ‘Since The Day He Was Born’

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(Daily Mail) – A mother who says she hated her baby son from the day he was born left him to drown in the bath, investigators say.

Neha Patel of Lakeland, Florida, allegedly slapped one-year-old Ishan, then purposefully left him alone in a hall-full bathtub.

Returning 10 minutes later to find the infant unconscious, she refused to do CPR even though she knew what to do, the sheriffs office said.

Patel, 32, was arrested yesterday at the parking lot at Tampa International Airport.

She said she  intended to kill herself by jumping off the garage roof, but stopped during two approaches as there were too many people were around.

The young mother has now been charged with first-degree murder.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the cause of death was blunt force trauma at the hands of his mother, the New York Daily News reported.

Patel may have been suffering from post-natal depression, investigators say.

She told deputies she ‘hated’ her son since the day he was born and felt he was responsible for her ‘state of mind.’

Post-natal depression, caused by a chemical, hormonal imbalance,  affects 10 to 15 percent of women.

The pharmacist was home alone with her son on Thursday when the alleged murder took place. 

When he started to crawl toward her she smacked him because she hated to be near him and wanted to discourage him from coming close to her, the sheriff’s office said.

After getting him up from a nap she put him in the bath, which at the time was half full of water, and left him on his own , investigators said.

When she returned and found the infant unconscious she allegedly did not attempt CPR or call 911 but instead dressed the child and took a bizarre drive around the area. With the child’s body in the car she went to nearby supermarket, then home, then to Ocala, then to Tampa International Airport, the sheriff’s office said.

Patel knew her son was dead because he had turned ‘blue’ and was ‘cold to the touch.’

Patels’s husband, Rasesh Patel, had last seen his son alive at 7.20 am Thursday when he left to take the couple’s four-year-old daughter to preschool and go to work.

He attempted to phone home between 10.30 am and 12.30 pm before returning home at 1.30 pm to find them gone, deputies said.

That evening he called police to report his wife and son missing, saying Neha was depressed and he was worried as she hadn’t been taking her medication, Eleazer said.

Around 2am Friday morning she returned home and put the baby boy in his crib, telling her husband she drowned him, investigators say.

But when she heard him on the telephone to relatives she took off again for the airport telling her husband she would rather die than go to prison.

‘I will be dead by tomorrow,’ she told her husband, the Miami Herald reported.

The mother-of two had been acting strangely all week.

She resigned from her job as a CVS pharmacist on February 12, and talked about suicide. She said she would like to die in the Smoky Mountains, her husband told authorities.

Man, 73, Murders Ex-High School Classmate After Holding SIXTY YEAR GRUDGE

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(Daily Mail) – The lawyer for an elderly man accused of fatally shooting a long-ago classmate in a grudge he apparently gripped for decades has entered a not guilty plea and requested a jury trial.

Carl Ericsson, 73, of Watertown, South Dakota, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 31 killing of retired Madison High School teacher and track coach Norman Johnson.

Defense attorney Scott Bratland entered the plea on Ericsson’s behalf during a court hearing today. 

Ericsson’s trial is slated to begin on July 9.

Mr Johnson, 72, was shot twice in the face after answering the door at his house in Madison. 

Shortly after the shooting, Johnson’s wife, Barbara, found him lying on the floor and saw a man walking to a dark sedan parked outside.

Investigators say that soon after Mr Johnson was shot, a man matching the suspect’s description was spotted trying to enter the home of another retired Madison High School teacher and coach, Orlyn Larson.

Officers collected two flashlights and photographed tire and shoe impressions outside of the house. 

A resident then reported seeing a man a quarter-mile away outside the home of Dick Ericsson, Carl Ericsson’s brother, who said his older sibling is depressed and an alcoholic.

Dick Ericsson said in an affidavit that Ericsson was a sports manager at Madison High years ago and there was an incident in which Johnson did something to him.

‘Since that time, over 50 years ago, Carl has held a grudge against Norm Johnson,’ the affidavit said. 

‘Dick said that he brought up the name of Norm Johnson some time back and Carl was still upset about the situation and called Norm Johnson a son of a bitch.’

Earlier this month, a judge denied a request to have Ericsson’s bond set at $100,000, saying he was a potential flight or suicide risk.

Carl Ericsson was arrested after police reported seeing items that piqued their interest – including two flashlights similar to those seized outside of Larson’s house – and a Glock hangun. 

With Ericsson’s permission, officers looked at his Ford Taurus and noted that the tire treads appeared consistent with tracks left at two of the Madison homes.

During an interview at the Watertown Police station, Ericsson acknowledged being in Madison on on the night of the murder and having the handgun with him, but denied remembering Mr Johnson or going to his house, according to the affidavit.

Mr Johnson’s murder is the first in Madison since 1906.

Woman Murdered Expectant Mother – RIPPED BABY From Dead Mother-To-Be’s Womb

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(Daily Mail) – A Kentucky woman has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing an expectant mother and ripping her baby from her body’s womb last year.

Kathy Coy of Morgantown entered the plea on murder, capital kidnapping and kidnapping on Friday morning while family and friends of the victim, 21-year-old Jamie Stice, looked on, wearing pink ribbons. 

Ms Stice’s baby boy named Isaiah survived the attack although he was born prematurely in a violent attack on his mother. He’s now learning to walk, beginning to talk and bears a bittersweet resemblance to the slain woman.

Friday was a sad but important date for the boy’s family: His mother’s killer pleaded guilty but mentally ill to cutting him from the womb and leaving the woman dead beside a rural road.

Prosecutors say Miss Stice was shocked with a stun gun before having her wrists and throat cut last April. Coy of Morgantown faces life in prison without parole at her sentencing March 1.

Before Friday’s hearing, the boy’s grandmother proudly showed off a photo of her chubby, smiling grandson atop his father’s shoulders. Isaiah Allen Stice Reynolds lives with his father and is said to be thriving despite being born about five weeks early.

His grandmother, Jeannie Stice, said that Isaiah visits them every other weekend. He’s crawling, trying to walk, and says ‘mama’ and ‘dada.’

‘He looks a whole lot like Jamie when she was a baby,’ Stice said.

Coy, who had shown little emotion in previous hearings, cried and shook her head Friday as a prosecutor read the evidence against her. Her slight, high-pitched voice shook with emotion as she entered her plea to murder, capital kidnapping and kidnapping. She wore an orange jail jumpsuit and leg irons.

‘The brutality of it is like nothing any of us have ever seen,’ Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron said afterward.

Cohron said he would have sought the death penalty if Coy had been convicted at trial.

Police had said Coy and Stice were Facebook friends. Stice’s mutilated body was found off a dirt road in southern Kentucky on April 14, a day after she had been seen leaving her home with Coy. Police arrested Coy at a local hospital after she arrived with the infant but showed no signs of having given birth.

Psychologist Eric Drogin testified briefly before the plea was entered. Drogin said he met with the 33-year-old Coy as recently as this week and that she suffers from a mental illness.

During a hearing in April, Kentucky State Police detective Chad Winn testified that Coy had lured Stice out of her home by telling her they were going shopping for baby supplies.

After killing Stice and stealing the baby boy, Coy drove to the home of a friend and said she had given birth to the baby, Winn said.

The friend told troopers that Coy was in a car, wearing no pants and sitting on the placenta while holding the baby, who had grass on him.

The friend called for an ambulance after helping to clean the baby and taking a picture of the newborn. At the hospital on April 13, Coy brought in a uterus, ovaries and placenta with umbilical cord still attached, along with the baby, Winn said.

Coy initially insisted she gave birth to the boy, then told police she bought the baby for $550, Winn said.

Police searched Coy’s home and computer, finding links to two pregnant women on her Facebook page. Investigators found one of the women unharmed, but couldn’t find Stice.

Police would later find a stun gun and two knives believed to be used in the attack.

‘I then asked Ms. Coy if that baby was Jamie Stice’s,’ Winn testified. ‘She answered `I don’t know.’ I was alarmed by this.’

Coy eventually led detectives to a wooded area off a dirt road, where Stice’s remains were located.

Jamie Stice’s body was found face down on the ground, disembowelled with her hands tied behind her back the next day.

Her family ran from the courtroom when this part of the detective’s testimony was read out last April.

Winn told reporters Friday that Coy had faked pregnancies and was obsessed with the thought of having a baby.

Coy has two children of her own but they didn’t live with her, Winn said.

In further testimony heard last spring, the detective said that Coy had asked her teenage son to help her commit murder but when he refused she said she was just joking.

She had told people she was pregnant and had been hatching a plan for months, it was alleged. 

She even stole a sonogram photo to help back her claim.

‘She was desperate to prove to everybody that she was pregnant, and I guess nobody believed her,’ said Miss Stice’s friend, Ashley Reeder.

‘So I think she did this to show everybody that she was going to have the baby when it really wasn’t her baby,’ she told NBC.

Her neighbours in Bowling Green were all taken in by Coy’s baby scam.

‘She has been telling everyone that she was pregnant and we had no reason not to believe otherwise,’ said Darla Mueller.

‘The miracle in the whole thing is that the baby made it,’ Winn said of Jamie Stice’s baby.

Jamie Stice’s 29-year-old brother Eric marvels at how his nephew has overcome his violent entry into the world.

‘He’s a miracle,’ he said after the hearing. ‘He’s never had a doctor visit where he weighed in too light.’

Family members sing the same songs his mother sang him while he was in the womb. At home, Jeannie Stice memorializes her daughter with a wall of photos that recount happy times. There are photos of her pregnant daughter and ultrasound pictures of Isaiah.

Jeannie and Eric Stice were among 35 relatives and friends of Jamie Stice who came to Warren County Circuit Court to witness Coy’s plea. They wore pink ribbons.

‘There’s no justice that can be served,’ Eric Stice said afterward, calling his sister’s killer a monster. ‘The worst possible thing that they could do to her would not suffice the actions she committed. She took a beautiful, innocent young lady from a world of people who loved her, including an infant son.’

Stice’s brother, Eric, said his nephew will grow up knowing about his mother and her hopes for him. She wrote letters to her son during her pregnancy that he’ll be given.

Relatives visit her grave regularly, sometimes taking Isaiah along.

‘I’d say it will probably be a tradition to fill him in how much his mom loved him and how much she wanted to be there,’ he said.

Former $40 Million Lottery Winner STARVED EIGHT HORSES To Death

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(Daily Mail) – Eight starving horses have been found on the California ranch of a man who won $40 million in a lottery 11 years ago.

Fresno County sheriff’s deputies arrested 47-year-old Jose Francisco Romo on Wednesday and he was booked for investigation of felony animal cruelty.

Bail is set at $40,000.

The Fresno Bee reports Romo signed over ownership of 11 horses on the 40-acre San Joaquin Valley ranch to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The last three horses are being removed from the Sanger ranch on Thursday.

Neighbor Melanie Skadden called the SPCA about the emaciated horses.

Romo and his wife Trudy moved to the ranch shortly after winning the California SuperLotto jackpot in 2001.

According to Trudy’s mother the couple has separated and she was unaware, when he Fresno Bee called, that Jose had been arrested.

The neighbor, Skadden, told the local paper that there had been 12 horses on the ranch and that skeletal remains of one was found by a canal.