Defrosting Cold Cases

Looking back it is always easier to point out how many mistakes police made during an investigation. I try to remain objective. Working with many serving men and women, I partly know the pressure they are under. But some goof-ups need to be exposed especially since it could have prevented an even bigger one. This [...]

Tags: Actual Innocence, Autopsy, Child Abuse, Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Cruelty, DNA, DNA Database, Evidence, Forensics, Identification, Illinois, Investigations Division, Miscarriage of Justice, Police, Prisons, Rape kits, Riley Fox, Unsolved Homicide, Victim

The Fox family of Illinois finally has some closure after an imprisoned sex offender was charged with the 2004 murder of 3-year-old Riley Fox, a crime that Riley’s father originally confessed to committing. It’s been a terrible ordeal for the family because even with DNA clearing Kevin in 2005, many people persisted in the belief [...]

Tags: Autopsy, Child Abuse, Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Cruelty, DNA, Evidence, False Confessions, Forensics, Identification, Illinois, Investigations Division, Police, Rape kits, Recording Interrogations, Riley Fox, Unsolved Homicide, Victim

An appeals court Wednesday agreed with a federal jury’s 2007 finding that Will County Police framed Kevin Fox for the rape and murder of his 3-year-old daughter Riley, but reduced the damages awarded to Fox and his wife from $12.2 million to $8 million. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals chastised the investigators on the [...]

Tags: Actual Innocence, Autopsy, Child Abuse, Crime Scene, Cruelty, DNA, Evidence, Expert Testimony, False Confessions, FBI, Forensics, Illinois, Investigations Division, Miscarriage of Justice, Police, Rape kits, Victim, Videotaping Murder Suspect's Interrogations, Wrongful Convictions

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 they found photos showing young children being abused by adults. But [...]

Tags: Child Abuse, Child Pornography, Cruelty, Evidence, FBI, Investigations Division, Police, Statutory Rape, Statutory Sodomy, Victim

This article by the Associated Press left me speechless with a huge lump in my throat. 100-year-old N.Y. child molester back in jail BUFFALO, N.Y. – A 100-year-old pedophile is been jailed again after failing to comply with terms of his parole, a newspaper reported Tuesday. It’s the second time that Theodore A. Sypnier, who [...]

Tags: Child Abuse, NY, Pedophile, Police, Registered Sex Offenders, Victim

Jane Nartare (9), Arnna Kathleen (7), and Grant Ellis (4), known as the Beaumont Children, disappeared from Glenelg Beach, near Adelaide, South Australia, on January 26, 1966. Their disappearance is to this day Australia’s best know cold case. The Beaumonts lived on 109 Harding Street, Somerton Park, which is a suburb of Adelaide. Five minutes [...]

Tags: Adelaide, Australia, Autopsy, Beaumont Children, Bevan Spencer von Einem, Child Abuse, Cruelty, DNA, Evidence, Forensics, Mandrax, Missing Persons, Police, Port Augusta Prison, Prisons, Victim, Witnesses

The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury This book combines Vidocq’s passion for historical mysteries, cold cases, and forensics! My interest was peaked after watching the movie “the Scarlet Pimpernel” with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour. The book by Baroness Emmuska Orczy was tedious and less amusing than the movie. Vidocq’s attraction to “the Scarlet Pimpernel” is easily [...]

Tags: Anastasia Romanov, Anthony Andrews, Austria, Book Reviews, Burial, Child Abuse, Cruelty, Deborah Cadbury, DNA, Execution, Forensics, France, Guillotine, Habsburg, Heart, Historical Mystery, Imposters, King, Louis-Charles, Marie-Therese, Maternal Line, Mitochondrial DNA, Monarchy, Neglect, Prince, Princess, Public Execution, Queen, Restoration, Revolution, Robespierre, Royalist, Saint-Denis, Scarlet Pimpernel, Sink Me, the Dauphin, the Tower, Vidocq