West Coast Best Coast, but this really sucks.
Long Beach, home to 500,000 people, is about 25 miles south of Los Angeles.
David Mcnew / Getty Images
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Thursday, July 30, 2015
SoulCycle IPO: Over 300,000 Riders, And "The Experience Is Tribal"
The high-end fitness chain pulled in $112 million in revenue last year by providing an “inspirational, meditative fitness experience.”
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
The company had only 12 studios open at the end of 2012 and 36 at the end of last year.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Mother Of Aurora Theater Shooter Says "Schizophrenia Chose Him"
Robert and Arlene Holmes, parents of Aurora theater shooter James Holmes, walk from the courtroom at the Arapahoe County Justice Center on July 22, 2014.
Rj Sangosti / AP
Robert and Arlene Holmes felt lucky to have a son like they did — from an early age, Jimmy did well in school and always kept out of trouble.
As he grew older, they worried a bit about his social awkwardness. Still, he made a few friends, played sports, and kept getting good grades. Everyone in their family tended to be introverted, Arlene Holmes said, so while she wished her son might be more joyful, she didn't have any serious concerns.
"He was the most responsible person I knew, my own son," she testified on Wednesday in a hearing to determine whether the 27-year-old will spend life in prison or be sentenced to death. "He managed his finances, looked after himself completely, went to school every single day without complaint, did all his chores without being told. You tell him once what he needs to do, and he did it. He never harmed anyone ever, ever, until July 20, 2012."
On July 20, 2012, James Holmes fatally shot 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater and attempted to kill 70 others. The conviction was a rejection of arguments by his defense team that he was so caught up in a psychotic episode that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.
The same jury must now determine whether Holmes should be sentenced to life in prison or death.
Prosecutors have successfully argued that Holmes showed so little regard for human life that the death penalty should be on the table. This week, defense attorneys have brought forward former neighbors, friends, and finally his family to tell the story of Holmes' life before he stepped into Theater 9 armed and clad in body armor.
"I still love my son because I understand he has a serious mental illness, that he didn’t ask for that," Arlene Holmes said. "Schizophrenia chose him, he didn’t choose it."
Colorado Judicial Department via AP
Before the shooting, neither of his parents knew he was mentally ill, they said. For hours, they described an idyllic childhood — digging mud holes with his little sister, neighborhood Easter egg hunts, family camping trips, the dogs they had raised. Photographs and home movies showed an extended family that doted on Holmes, the first grandchild on either side.
Around puberty, his mother said she noticed he had become more subdued, had difficulty making friends, and would spend less time outside. They went to family counseling.
"I felt guilty that he wasn’t happier," she admitted. "I know happiness is up to the person, but I'm his mom. So I felt like there was something more I could do."
There weren't any red flags that their son might be having serious issues, Robert Holmes said.
"I was kind of the same way," said the elder Holmes, a statistician who worked for years in the financial services industry. "In some ways, his path was very similar to mine."
Never talkative, Holmes' emails began to get shorter, and his parents said they had difficulty catching him on the phone. Around June 2012, they worried he might become depressed. He had dropped out of his neuroscience graduate program — a goal of his since he was 14 — and broken up with his girlfriend.
His psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, had also called his parents to ask about him, but didn't relay fears that their son was becoming psychotic and had expressed a desire to kill.
"We wouldn’t be sitting here if she had told me that," Arlene Holmes said on the witness stand. "I would have been crawling on all fours to get to him. He's never said that he wanted to kill people. She didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me."
They spoke on the phone with their son on the Fourth of July, and made plans to visit. But by this time, Holmes was in the final stages of planning his attack and accumulating an arsenal.
"He was talking quite a bit, and he didn’t seem depressed," his father said. "He did seem to be making sense and everything."
Rj Sangosti / AP
The next time they saw him was after his arrest. With bulging, darting eyes, dyed red hair, and a jail jumpsuit, he looked different from the son they knew. He spoke with difficulty, answering in syllables where he would once speak complete sentences.
Arlene Holmes thought back to a previous phone call on Mother's Day just two months before. He had admitted to having difficulty in school, and like any mother, she had tried to encourage him.
"I didn’t realize that his loudest cry for help was his silence," she said through tears.
LINK: Victims Describe Horror During Aurora Movie Theater Shooting
LINK: Sister Of Aurora Theater Shooter Describes Their Happy Childhood
LINK: James Holmes Found Guilty Of Murder In Colorado Movie Theater Massacre
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
This Prosecutor Took Cincinnati's Black Community By Surprise After Charging A Police Officer With Murder
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters after speaking to reporters Wednesday.
John Minchillo / AP
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters was scathing in his assessment of a University of Cincinnati police officer charged Wednesday in the death of an unarmed black man. "This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make,” Deters said, excoriating officer Ray Tensing for the "totally unwarranted" fatal shooting of Samuel Dubose during a traffic stop on July 19. "He should have never been a police officer.”
After a year of high-profile cases involving police relations with the black community around the nation, news of the indictment – and Deters's harsh words – quickly made headlines. But in Cincinnati itself, the news was greeted with relief, and surprise, by black community leaders.
"Deters has historically been at odds with the black community," Aaron Roco, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, told BuzzFeed News. "We're no fans of Joseph Deters. We're happy with what he's done today, but that may be the only thing."
Deters, a Republican, has represented Hamilton County as prosecuting attorney since 2004. He also previously held the position from 1992 to 1999, before serving as Ohio's treasurer. His office did not respond to a request for an interview with BuzzFeed News for this article.
During his tenure, Deters's opponents have criticized him for having a brash manner – and accused him of using his office to pursue political vendettas and saying inflammatory things about black defendants in the press.
"The relationship between the black community and Joseph Deters is strained, at best," Janaya Trotter-Bratton, criminal justice chair for the Greater Cincinnati Chapter National Action Network, told BuzzFeed News. "The press conference he gave today is usually the press conference he gives on day one with a black defendant."
Earlier this month, a group of black people allegedly beat up a white man in a Cincinnati public square. Although Deters said there was no evidence the attack was a hate crime, the prosecutor's fiery rhetoric was again on display when he announced the grand jury charged the three defendants.
"They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma,” he said, calling the defendants soulless and unsalvageable. “The root cause of this is there’s no discipline in the homes, they don’t go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it’s disgusting.”
In an editorial, the Cincinnati Enquirer slammed Deters for the remarks. "This is a disturbing set of worn stereotypes for an enforcer of law and order to utter," the editorial board wrote. "He should take care not to use his bully pulpit to feed racial discord in our community."
A protester outside Deters's office on July 23.
John Minchillo / AP
Franki Kidd started a blog called Citizens Against Joe Deters after her son received a 20-year sentence for bank robbery in 2007. "Deters did a press conference and convicted my son in the court of public opinion before he went to trial," she told BuzzFeed News. "He has a history here of doing that in cases with black defendants and people from certain zip codes – letting tapes get out, letting facts leak," she claimed.
However, Kidd said she had stopped updating her blog earlier this year out of respect for Deters's family, after the prosecutor's 23-year-old son was beaten by five black men in an alleged racially-motivated attack in May 2014.
"I don't care if it's white on black or black on white," Deters said of his son's attack. "When the motivation to commit crime is race, it's just disgusting."
Four days after the attack on Deters's son, media were broadcasting footage of the beating. One of the men who was charged pled guilty in January and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Before Wednesday, Deters's office had refused to release footage from the body camera Officer Tensing wore during his fatal encounter with Dubose out of a fear of prejudicing the grand jury investigation. That decision had infuriated many black activists, who feared that officials were attempting to cover up the incident.
David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Police Center, told BuzzFeed News Deters acted prudently by withholding the Officer Tensing's video while the grand jury was meeting. Singleton, a black attorney who has worked in Cincinnati since 2001, said he hopes Deters uses his "good handling" of the Dubose indictment to build a more constructive relationship with the black community.
"You could see on Deters's face how impacted he was by this shooting," Singleton said of Wednesday's press conference. "I hope that people will take that as genuine and be able to look beyond what you don't like in him and see the possibility of someone who can do the right thing – and did so here."
Trotter-Bratton, with the local National Action Network chapter, said she, too, was impressed by the quick indictment, but remains wary of Deters.
"There's a level of distrust, but overall I think that justice was served. So I won't take that away from him," she said. "An indictment against a police officer is nothing to sneeze at."
John Minchillo / AP
LINK: What We Know About Indicted University Of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing
LINK: Officer Fatally Shoots Man During Cincinnati Traffic Stop
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
People Think A Plane Wing That Washed Up On An Island In The Indian Ocean May Belong To MH370
A fragment of a plane's wing was discovered Wednesday on the island of Réunion, French media reported, with speculation the debris may belong to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014.
According to Réunion 1ère, the wing was discovered by public workers cleaning up the coastline near the town of Saint-André on the French island, which sits in the Indian Ocean near the island of Madagascar.
Google Maps
L'Info.re reported authorities arrived on scene shortly after the discovery was made, taking it to a local airport for examination.
The piece of the wing is reportedly 6.5 feet long and 3.2 feet wide.
The disappearance of MH370 on March 8 last year captivated the world. The plane, scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, vanished from radar screens.
Stringer India / Reuters
Analysis of satellite communications eventually determined the plane had flown far off course, heading into the southern Indian Ocean. Aviation experts suspect the flight eventually ran out of fuel before crashing into the sea.
Reuters
The airline says there were no survivors and Australian officials spent months scanning the ocean floor in search of wreckage from the Boeing 777, finding nothing.
Morag MacKinnon / REUTERS
On his blog, French aviation expert Xavier Tytelman writes that those who have reviewed pictures of the wing believe it probably belongs to an airliner.
After comparing designs of the Boeing 777 wing with the Réunion debris, Tytelman writes "the similarity is incredible."
However, another aviation expert told L'Info.re he is certain the wing did not belong to MH370. Tytelman himself cautions that the debris does not appear to be very degraded.
Additionally, a code said to be found on the wreckage, BB670, does not correspond to any airline registration or device serial number, Tytelman writes.
"In a few days, we will have a definitive answer," he writes.
In a statement to Agence France-Presse, Boeing said it remained "committed to supporting the MH370 investigation and the search for the airplane."
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Malaysia Airlines for comment.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
This Stolen Pup Jumped From A Moving Truck To Be Reunited With His Owners
But now the injured doggy needs surgery for the injuries he suffered in making the brave leap.
This is Jax, a 3-month-old blue pitbull puppy.
He lives with his owners, Jordan Quick and Jaimie Higuera, outside of Austin, Texas.
But on Sunday morning a thief broke into the couple's apartment and snatched the pup, driving away with him in the back of a pickup truck.
"I started panicking and shouting for my dog, hoping that he had just gotten out and ran away."
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Ce python capturé dans un parc américain va vous donner des cauchemars
Nooooooooooooooon.
Le parc national des Everglades en Floride est l'un des plus beaux écosystème sauvage du monde.
Everglades National Park / Via Facebook: EvergladesNationalPark
Il abrite des centaines d'espèces, dont certaines sont uniques. Le parc est à lui seul l'un des symboles de la beauté de Mère Nature.
Everglades National Park / Via Facebook: EvergladesNationalPark
MAIS ON TROUVE AUSSI DES CHOSES HORRIBLES DEDANS.
USGS
«Le parc connaît depuis quelques années une invasion de serpents qui se reproduisent rapidement et massacrent les animaux indigènes», explique le biologiste américain, le Dr. Bryan Falk à BuzzFeedNews.
Sur la photo précédente, Bryan Falk tient la queue du serpent, qu'il décrit comme la deuxième partie la plus dangereuse de l'animal à cause du «risque encouru s'il défèque.» ??
Ce monstre a été attrapé par deux chercheurs qui l'ont repéré sur un côté d'une route, une nuit, selon le biologiste. Il a été «humainement euthanasié» selon le National Park Service.
«Nous avons effectué une autopsie. Les résultats ont confirmé que c'était une femelle, elle ne s'est pas reproduite cette saison, et son ventre était vide», explique Linda Friar du National Park Service à BuzzFeed News.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
This Cat Was Rescued After An Hour Underwater In A Sunken Boat
Brandon Messick / Today's News-Herald via AP
A cat survived an hour underwater in a sunken boat before it was pulled from Lake Havasu, Arizona, over the weekend.
Six people were on board the Commander power boat Saturday afternoon when large waves overtook it. The Mojave County Sheriff's Office responded to the boat passengers, and Dive Time Recovery was called in to bring up the craft from the 15-foot-deep waters.
Jon Zuccala
No one knew there was an animal stowaway, said Jon Zuccala of Dive Time Recovery. He and his son raised the boat, then pumped some of the water from its engine. Then they dropped it off at a mechanic and returned the following day to a surprising discovery.
"In the morning, the mechanic found the cat," Zuccala told BuzzFeed. "It scared him."
He said he's seen fish or crawdads inside recovered boats during his 15 years in business, but this is the first live mammal. But its survival — though miraculous — wasn't impossible, he added. With its engine in the back, the boat would have tipped upward as it sank, pushing the cat into an air bubble in the ski locker.
Jon Zuccala
What remains a mystery is who the cat belongs to, Zuccala said. The boat owner, who is from Orange County, California, said he doesn't recognize the cat and isn't sure when or how it got into the boat.
Zuccala guessed that since the boat is stored outside, the cat climbed in to escape the heat. It then seems to have survived the 300-mile drive to Lake Havasu, time on the water, an hour underwater, as well as a night in the mechanic's shop.
"That's quite an ordeal," Zuccala said.
If no owner comes forward, the cat will be put up for adoption in several days. For now, humane society workers have named her River.
"It's a cute cat," Zuccala said.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
This Teen Died After A 911 Dispatcher Hung Up On A Caller Who Swore At Him
A teenager shot in a drive-by shooting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, died last month after the 911 dispatcher hung up on the boy's panicked friend after she swore during the call.
Jaydon Chavez-Silver, 17, was shot while attending a house party on June 26 when a car drove by the home and a gunman opened fire. Albuquerque police told BuzzFeed News they are still investigating the case and no arrests have been made.
But in audio of the 911 call obtained by local station KRQE on Monday, firefighter Matthew Sanchez can be heard hanging up on the distraught caller as she tries to perform CPR on her friend.
"Is he breathing?" Sanchez can be heard asking the woman.
“He’s barely breathing," the caller says. "How many times do I have to fucking tell you?”
“OK, you know what, ma’am? You can deal with it yourself. I’m not gonna deal with this, OK?” Sanchez responds.
"No, my friend is dying!" the woman says as Sanchez disconnects the call.
Chavez-Silver later died from his injuries.
The Albuquerque fire department did not immediately return calls from BuzzFeed News, but Chief David Downey released a statement to KRQE on Monday, announcing Sanchez had been placed on "administrative assignment:"
“After learning of the alleged misconduct, driver Matthew Sanchez was immediately removed from the dispatch center and placed on administrative assignment. An internal investigation has been initiated. As the chief of the department, I am taking the allegation very seriously.”
On a Facebook memorial page set up for the slain teenager, Chavez-Silver's family wrote "this is truly the hardest thing we have ever had to live through."
A spokesman for the family, Dan Sparago, told KRQE they were heartbroken by the dispatcher's behavior on the call.
“They’re beyond belief about what happened,” he said. “But at the same time they want to focus on [catching] the people who did this.”
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Twitter Revenue Tops $500 Million In Second Quarter, Shares Shoot Up
The company is searching for a new CEO and still struggling to grow its user base as fast as competitors. But its latest results have impressed investors.
JUSTIN TALLIS / Getty Images
It was a steep jump, but the company's revenue growth rate is declining. In the first quarter, revenue grew 74%.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
This Terrifyingly Large Python Was Caught In The Everglades
Nooooooooooooooope.
The Everglades in Florida are among the most famous — and beautiful — wetlands in America.
Everglades National Park / Via Facebook: EvergladesNationalPark
Home to hundreds of species, many of them unique, the Everglades are a testament to the beauty of nature...
Everglades National Park / Via Facebook: EvergladesNationalPark
BUT ALSO TO JUST HOW HORRIBLE NATURE IS.
USGS
The invasive snake species has plagued the national park in recent decades, breeding rapidly and massacring native animals, U.S. Geological Survey biologist Dr. Bryan Falk told BuzzFeed News. In the picture above, Falk is pictured holding the tail of the snake, which he described as the second most dangerous part of the animal because of "the potential to be defecated on." ??
This monster was caught by two python researchers who spotted it by the side of the road one night, Falk said. It was later "humanely euthanized," according to the National Parks Service.
"We did conduct a necropsy. The results confirmed that this was a female, it had not reproduced this season, and the stomach was empty," Linda Friar, the NPS acting public affairs officer, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
There May Be A Lion On The Loose In Milwaukee
Grainy footage shows a large, cat-like creature skulking through a resident’s backyard.
For more than a week, people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have been fretting about a possible lion on the loose after a number of people reported seeing a large, cat-like creature prowling through the city.
WISN 12 News / Via youtube.com
After the animal was filmed walking through a residential backyard last week, there have been dozens more sightings.
WISN 12 News / Via youtube.com
Armed police have been deployed in the search for the creature, which has been front page news.
Journal Sentinel / Via Twitter: @journalsentinel
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Reports: Injuries After Shooting Near Barcelona's Famed La Rambla
Someone reportedly opened fire at a hotel near the iconic Spanish street, which is popular with tourists and locals.
La Vanguardia reported the shooting took place at the Hotel Silken, near the intersection of La Rambla and Pinto Fortuny street.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Un couple s'est marié au milieu des ruines d'une église de Homs
Fadi et Rana étaient rayonnants.
Voici Homs en Syrie, ville rebelle qui a passé trois ans sous les bombes à affronter le régime de Bachar al-Assad. La voici en 2011.
Anwar Amro / AFP / Getty Images
Et voici la ville en février 2014, après le départ des rebelles.
BASSEL TAWIL/AFP / Getty Images
Le pilonnage intense et les bombardements aériens ont précipité le départ de nombreux habitants.
Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images
Parmi ceux qui sont partis, Fadi, un pharmacien de 28 ans. Il a déclaré plus tôt dans l'année à l'Agence des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (UNHCR) qu'il a «fui pour sauver sa vie et a tout laissé derrière lui.»
UNHCR / Q.Alazroni / Via unhcr.org
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Amplifying Data and Expansion of Email Interaction Tip #3 - ContactDB
Amplifying Data and Expansion of Email Interaction Tip #3 - ContactDB:
SOURCE: ContactDb
Formulate the type of email to a targeted one. take a look.
https://goo.gl/AkH4v6 #contact #list #database #contactlist
#business #marketing #emaillistprovider
SOURCE: ContactDb
Monday, July 27, 2015
Sister Of Aurora Theater Shooter Describes Their Happy Childhood
Colorado Judicial Department via Associated Press
The younger sister of James Holmes — convicted in the 2012 shooting massacre at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater — told a jury on Monday that she still loved her brother as she described happy childhood memories.
Defense attorneys showed family photos depicting vacations in Hawaii and Big Bear Lake, visits with extended family, as well as Holmes and his sister as young children. Chris Holmes, 22, described a photo of of her brother, who is five years older than her, hugging her as a toddler.
"It makes me happy," she said. "It makes me sad at the same time."
His sister took the stand as part of the trial's sentencing phase. The same jury has already determined he is eligible for the death penalty, and defense attorneys are now bringing forward former classmates, neighbors, as well as his sister, to argue that Holmes should instead get life in prison.
Their parents were always involved in their lives: Helping with homework, attending school concerts, watching them play sports. Family dinner was at 5:30 p.m. each night, Chris Holmes said, and family trips continued even as they grew into teenagers.
"I think they wanted a very strong family unit, and I think it was important to them that they knew what was going on in our lives," she said.
While her brother tended to be introverted, she never doubted that he loved her, she added. He read to her as a baby, and usually let her play with him and his friends as they grew up in Salinas, California. By the time he entered middle school, and the family moved to San Diego, she said they began to grow distant.
"After he went into college, it got better," she said.
Andy Cross / AP
Since her brother's arrest, Chris Holmes said she had visited him once in jail with her parents. He seemed happy to see them, she said, but his eyes bulged and he was uncharacteristically uncomfortable.
"It was a lot of one word answers instead of what would normally be a complete sentence," she said.
She hadn't written her brother while he was behind bars, but she attended two of the court hearings — it was nice to just be in the same room, Chris Holmes said.
"He smiled," she said, emotion in her voice.
"Did you share that smile with him?" defense attorney Rebekka Higgs asked.
"I did."
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Woman Recalls Deadly Struggle With Possible Serial Killer
Police say the man Heather killed in her West Virginia home during an attack may be tied to the deaths of at least 10 women in three states.
CBS News / Via wtvr.com
The West Virginia woman who killed her attacker inside her home after grabbing his gun recalled the harrowing struggle for life in an interview with CBS News.
Authorities say man — identified by authorities as 45-year-old Neal Falls of Springfield, Oregon — may be a serial killer linked to the deaths of at least 10 women in three states, CBS News reported.
The woman, identified only as Heather, told CBS News that she let Falls — who was responding to a online ad for an escort — into her home on July 18. But after she opened the door, Falls, who was armed with a gun, started to choke her.
During the ensuing struggle, Heather said she managed to grab a rake to defend herself. As Falls tried to take the rake from her, he set down his gun.
"I just grabbed it and shot behind me," she told CBS News.
The shot killed Falls and Heather ran to a neighbor, who called 911. Heather can be heard on dispatch audio crying, adding that her attacker told her to "live or die."
Charleston Police Department
When police arrived, they found knives, hatchets, a shovel, bleach, and a bulletproof vest in Falls' SUV, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
"What comes to mind when you look at those items is a serial killer kit," Charleston police detective Lt. Steve Cooper told WTVR.
Police are now working with the FBI to try to link Falls' DNA to other crimes in other states. Falls previously spent time in Ohio, Nevada, and Illinois around the times when at least 10 women who had worked in prostitution went missing, authorities said.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
These Young Killers Are Getting Out Of Prison But Advocates Call Their Lockup “A Failure Of Justice”
"Before you know it, the kids were taken away. The youngest convicted murderer in U.S. history got very little media, if any. Now he’s getting out and everyone wants to talk about it." — Tony Hernandez, Attorney
On the night of Jan. 6, 1999, Sonya Speights sat down to do a jigsaw puzzle. As the 29-year-old teacher’s aide worked in the dining room of the Port St. John, Florida home she shared with her boyfriend and his two children, she was shot four times with a 9 mm semiautomatic gun
The gun belonged to her boyfriend. The shots were fired by his children.
“When you went to the crime scene you could see bullet holes everywhere,” attorney Tony Hernandez III, who was briefly assigned to represent 12-year-old Curtis Fairchild Jones and 13-year-old Catherine Nicole Jones, told BuzzFeed News. “You know how they say you don’t take the dog for a walk, it walks you? Well, it was if the gun was shooting the kid. There were bullet holes everywhere.”
The children dragged Speights’ body through the house to a bathtub, making a crude effort to clean up the trail of blood in the carpet using some bleach. They then ran to a friend’s house to claim they had shot Speights by accident, before eventually fleeing into nearby woodland where police found them the next morning.
In jail for the murder since 1999, Curtis is set to be released Tuesday. His sister will walk free on Saturday. The pair, who were at the time the youngest murderers convicted as adults in the United States, will spend the rest of their lives on probation.
But following reports that the children were being horrifically sexually and physically abused, the entire official narrative behind the killing has been thrown into question — and raised doubts about whether an injustice occurred.
“This is easily a failure of justice,” Dr. Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst with the Sentencing Project advocacy group, told BuzzFeed News. “It seems as though even a cursory review of their lives would have shown that these kids were really in a very troubled situation.”
During interviews with police, the children were said to have quickly confessed to plotting to kill Speights because they were jealous that she was consuming their father’s attention.
“It wasn’t like we did a grueling, nine-hour interview,” Brevard County Sheriff Major Tod Goodyear, who investigated the case as part of the homicide squad, told BuzzFeed News. “What they told us during the interviews was they were jealous of the attention their father was giving this woman. He was not spending time with them as he used to. They were pretty matter of fact they wanted to get rid of her.”
“The girl, she was very intelligent, a very smart girl for her age,” Goodyear said. “She wasn’t really emotional. She lacked empathy. She was very matter of fact. She was the one who came up with the plan and they carried it out very matter-of-factly.”
Over the protests of relatives of both the children and the victim, the two juveniles were funneled into the adult criminal justice system. A grand jury indicted the children on first-degree murder charges weeks later.
“These are not kids without a clue,” then-State Attorney Norm Wolfinger told reporters of what authorities said was a calculated, premeditated plot. “They knew right from wrong. They committed a murder.”
Without a full trial ever occurring, without evidence ever being presented, without witnesses ever testifying, the children accepted a deal and pled guilty to second-degree murder. They were sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Catherine and Curtis Jones, pictured in their 1990s school pictures and recent prison photos.
Florida Today/Florida Department of Corrections
Before leaving court, Curtis reportedly asked his lawyer if he could take his Nintendo with him to jail.
“It was pushed through fast,” Hernandez said. “Before you know it, the kids were taken away. The youngest convicted murderer in U.S. history got very little media, if any. Now he’s getting out and everyone wants to talk about it.”
Although their original incarceration largely went unnoticed on the national stage, the freedom of the young convicted killers has been marked by headlines around the country. The sudden media interest has also focused attention on exactly what lead up to the killing.
Ten years after the children were locked up, records reviewed by Florida Today in 2009 revealed that Curtis and Catherine had endured a tortured home life marked by several incidents of physical and sexual violence. Indeed, just months before the killing, child welfare officers found signs the children were being sexually abused by a relative of their father who was staying with the family at the time of the killings.
Around 1994, Curtis, who had to share a bed with the man, had complained during a visit to his mother in Kansas that the family member was fondling him. According to the records reviewed by Florida Today, investigators with the sheriff’s department closed their report after Curtis later changed his story and said that he had lied. Two years later, in 1996, officials opened an investigation into a bruised and swollen eye injury Curtis had suffered.
"Before you know it, the kids were taken away. The youngest convicted murderer in U.S. history got very little media, if any. Now he’s getting out and everyone wants to talk about it." — Tony Hernandez, Attorney
A third investigation began in September 1998, just months before the murder, after Catherine ran away from home and a teacher at her school raised concerns she was being sexually assaulted, Florida Today reported. Records reviewed by the newspaper showed child welfare investigators found “some indicators” that Catherine was being sexually abused.
"He did everything but penetration," she told Florida Today in 2009, some 10 years after the shooting. "It wasn't rape, but it was touching and fondling and oral sex. He would make me perform oral sex to the point where I would throw up."
She said she tried to tell her father of the abuse, but "he didn't believe me at that time, and it felt like he was taking sides, like he chose his [relative] over me," she told Florida Today. "I expected him to be at the point where he would want to kill him."
Catherine told the newspaper her father intimidated her into lying to officials and denying the abuse had occurred. As they closed the case report, investigators reportedly warned the children’s father that his relative should not be living with the family—because he was a convicted pedophile. As Florida Today reported, in addition to having spent six years in prison for robbery, the children’s alleged abuser had been convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old girl in 1993.
A few days after welfare officers closed their investigation, Catherine was showering when she said the family member entered the bathroom, pulled back the curtain, and began masturbating. She huddled in the corner and sobbed.
There was one person who believed her, though: Curtis. He told Catherine he had been abused by the same man.
Catherine later revealed she and her brother had concocted a desperate plot to kill their alleged abuser and end their torment. Angry that their cries for help were going unheeded, the children decided that that their father and Speights needed to also be killed for, how kids perceived it, allowing the abuse to occur.
After their father briefly left the house on Jan. 6, 1999, and with their alleged abuser due home later that evening, the children put their plan into action. But after Curtis fired the shots that killed Speights, Catherine said the plan went awry.
“He had an emotional breakdown because once again this is reality now. This isn’t some idea that’s in our head any more. This is reality,” Catherine told Florida Today. “And he freaked out. He had an emotional breakdown and I tried to calm him down and we ended up leaving the house.”
After their capture, both police and the children’s attorneys told BuzzFeed News Curtis and Catherine did not inform them of the abuse the pair had suffered. Major Goodyear said that although authorities were aware of the previous welfare investigations that had occurred, they noted that the reports were closed without any definitive evidence.
Curtis’ lawyer, Alan Landman, said he was shocked when he first laid eyes on his client. “He looked like a baby!” he wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. Landman said Curtis “never really communicated with [him] to any substantive degree throughout [his] entire representation” and definitely did not disclose the abuse, which Landman said he only learned of in recent years in media reports.
“Every time I read an article I wondered why neither he, nor to my knowledge his sister, ever disclosed any of this to their attorneys,” Landman said. “It's almost like they had a ‘pact of silence’ and for some reason they thought that would help them.”
The lawyer who represented Catherine, Kepler Funk, did not return a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
Landman said that had he been aware of the abuse he would have explored it as an avenue for a possible defense or mitigating factor in sentencing. “It is somewhat haunting to me that there was world of horrors that this child was growing up in that was never explored,” he said.
Major Goodyear told BuzzFeed News that even if the children were abused it was no excuse for killing Speights. “There are a lot of people who have been abused and didn’t do something like this,” he said. “At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.”
"There are a lot of people who have been abused and didn’t do something like this. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.” - Major Tod Goodyear
Indeed, in her 2009 interview with Florida Today, Catherine expressed regret for killing Speights, saying that if the children had thought more they would have focused their plot solely on their alleged abuser. However, she said she had been desperate and was even relieved to find herself in prison . “At one point I was just so happy to be away," she told Florida Today. "I know that sounds, like, really messed up, but there was a point where I was just away from all that, and I was by myself and I was safe."
BuzzFeed News contacted Speights’ two daughters, Inez and Jessica Coleman, but they did not respond to a request for comment for this story. However, in an interview with Florida Today last week, the pair said their mother showed Curtis and Catherine nothing but love.
"I'm not saying that they weren't abused, and if they were I'm sorry they had to go through that, but my mother was not the abuser, so why kill her?" Inez asked.
Jessica, who graduated college last month, told the newspaper she has forgiven her mother’s killers.
“Even though they have never reached out to me or my sister to apologize, even though they act as if they have no remorse, even though they might not care how I feel, I still forgive them,” she said.
Major Goodyear said it was appropriate for the children to be charged as adults because of the nature of their crime, which he said deserved a longer sentence than the juvenile system would permit. “It was a very adult crime,” he said. “A lot of planning went into it. They fully expected to get away with it.”
But Dr. Nellis, with the Sentencing Project, said the children should have been kept out of the adult system. She said if their past abuse was investigated more thoroughly it could have been used as a mitigating factor. “It doesn’t excuse what happened,” she said, “but it certainly helps to explain it.”
Tony Hernandez, who briefly represented the children before they were reassigned to Funk and Landman, was also critical of what he said was the “draconian decision” to treat the juveniles as adults and “incarcerate them and throw away the key.”
“Where was the compassion for the children?” Hernandez said. “Here we are now. The experiment’s over. Are the kids any better now?”
BuzzFeed News contacted Catherine and Curtis’ current attorney, Florida State University law professor Dr. Paolo Annino, but he turned down an interview request at the behest of his clients.
Curtis’ sentence was extended by 318 days after he escaped from his juvenile detention facility in 2004 when a hurricane knocked down an outer fence. He was caught the next day. He now leaves prison as an ordained minister with two tattoos. He has never spoken with the press.
After her interview with Florida Today in 2009, Catherine received a letter from a Navy officer who read her story. The two became pen pals, falling in love, and marrying in the chapel at Catherine’s prison in 2013.
She hasn’t been able to write to her brother in years, because of rules barring co-defendants from contacting one another. She told the newspaper in a 2014 letter that she was fearful of being released into a “foreign society.”
"Of course there are fears, mainly because there's so much I must learn to function like a normal person: how to drive; fill out job applications; text; dress for a job interview; build my credit; obtain life, dental, medical insurance. I'm completely clueless,” she wrote.
“The idea of being 30 and completely dependent on others to teach me how to do these basic things isn't appealing. I'll leave prison just as clueless as I was at 13."
Dr. Nellis said she hoped Curtis and Catherine would get by on the outside world and not fall into the pattern of recidivism that plagues other juvenile offenders who have spent years behind bars.
“These two characters are very resilient,” she said.” They’ve been through hell and are probably very strong. If they can endure what they’ve already endured, the child abuse and 18 years in prison, I think they’re going to be OK.”
But, she said, the current concern over their futures is tragically ironic. “The time to be concerned for their welfare was 18 years ago,” she said.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
A Syrian Couple Got Married In The Ruins Of Their Bombed Out Church
Love finds a way.
This is the Syrian city of Homs, which spent years under siege as part of the civil war between Syrian rebels and government forces. Here it is pictured in 2011.
Anwar Amro / AFP / Getty Images
And here's what Homs looked like in February 2014 after the rebels eventually withdrew.
BASSEL TAWIL/AFP / Getty Images
Heavy shelling and aerial bombardments had taken a heavy toll in the city, with many residents having fled.
Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images
Among those who had to flee was 28-year-old Fadi, who once worked as a pharmacist. He told the U.N. Refugee Agency earlier this year that he had to "run for [his] life and leave everything behind" once the fighting reached his home.
UNHCR / Q.Alazroni / Via unhcr.org
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Cyber Vandals Claim To Take Down "New York Magazine" Website After It Published Cosby Article
The Twitter account claiming to be behind the cyber vandalism appears to be connected to another account that claimed to be behind attacks on state government websites earlier this year.
But the magazine's website went offline hours later and was still inaccessible late on Monday morning.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Celebrities React After Death Of Bobbi Kristina Brown
The only daughter of Whitney Houston died Sunday at age 22 following months in a coma.
Bobbi Kristina Brown, the daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, died Sunday at age 22 following months in a coma, her family said.
Jordan Strauss / AP
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Boat Of Missing 14-Year-Olds Found Capsized Off Of Florida Coast
Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos were last seen Friday afternoon, and on Sunday, their boat was found 65 miles east of Daytona Beach, Florida.
The boat of two missing 14-year-old boys was found Sunday about 65 miles off the Florida coast, police said.
The families of Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos reported the teens missing around 5 p.m. Friday, officials said. The pair had gone fishing in a 19-foot, single-engine boat, which had been seen leaving a marina around 1:30 p.m. ET after the teens bought $110 worth of fuel.
Both boys were experienced boaters, their families told Good Morning America.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
This Little Girl Really Wasn't Into Meeting Kate Middleton
Not. Impressed.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Wills and Kate) were in the English city of Portsmouth on Sunday to meet with sailors competing in the America's Cup World Series.
Luke Macgregor / AFP / Getty Images
As part of her royal duties, Kate met with some of the usual dignitories...
Luke Macgregor / AFP / Getty Images
...but also made some time to introduce herself to some little commoners.
Leon Neal / AFP / Getty Images
But one little girl was having none of it.
Leon Neal / AFP / Getty Images
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)