Defrosting Cold Cases

Immigrants have a constitutional right to be told by their lawyers whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead to their deportation, the Supreme Court said Wednesday. The high court’s ruling extends the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantee of ”effective assistance of counsel” in criminal cases to immigration advice, especially in cases that involve deportation. ”The [...]

A state audit released Tuesday reveals that the drug unit in San Francisco’s scandal-plagued crime lab was overworked and understaffed. The audit by the state Department of Justice and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office said that lab staff was overwhelmed trying to meet 48-hour deadlines analyzing drug evidence so prosecutors can quickly charge suspects. [...]

Preliminary Crime Scene Approach & Investigation Orange County Sheriff’s Office Detective Donald Frye was on duty in the Crime against Persons Section. After investigating the crime scene, he concluded that these four people did not die at the same time. With that, Vidocq agrees. According to Frye, Mays had been shot and beaten a quarter [...]

The Special File Room…It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States. It is [...]

The Bodies Mr. Charlie Mays was savagely beaten, his face disfigured with blood coming through his skull, and he had been shot twice in the abdomen (once from the front and once from the back). Judging from the blood splatters, Mays had been beaten to death where he was found. The killer had most likely [...]

On March 12, 1976, Robert Eagan, then state attorney, wrote to Mayor Marvin Peele, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and the Orange County Court House, that he is very concerned about the way the evidence in the Zeigler case is being handled. The entire letter is here:     To be continued…

It is great outside and Vidocq enjoys the sun while reading a great book: Crippen by John Boyne. On 18 October, 1910, almost 100 years ago, the murder trial of Dr Hawley Crippen started at the Old Bailey. It gripped the public, as had his flight with his mistress who was dressed as a boy and [...]

William R. Hagy Jr., convicted of first-degree murder for strangling a Roanoke woman in 1984, pleaded no contest today to the 1985 murder of another woman in her Old Southwest home and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Hagy, 49, was sentenced to two concurrent life terms by Roanoke Circuit Judge William Broadhurst. Under a plea [...]

The Houston Chronicle has an interesting article related to the Skinner case. It discusses that the United States Supreme Court (USSC) will have to consider whether inmates’ requests for DNA testing can be considered as civil rights claims — a question that has split the nation’s top federal courts. The USSC on Thursday stayed Skinner’s [...]

UPDATE: two life sentences for Vanvlerah and 37 years for Kyle. ——————————————————————————- Police were first alerted to Kenneth M. Kyle, a professor at California State-East Bay, when he sent 100 child porn photos to an undercover FBI agent through a file sharing service… Police subsequently searched his San Francisco home on March 10. They seized computers after [...]