True Crime Stories

  This is one of those cases that have me on the fence. Deep down I do believe that the right person was charged, convicted and sentenced for murder, but I question whether I feel there was truly enough evidence to prove it. I suppose that I am part of the problem when it comes to the “new age” of crime. I have heard prosecutors time and time again talk about how everyone wants DNA and 100% proof in trials today and have given up on the “beyond a reasonable doubt” concept. Now, I do not believe that I am that bad. In fact, I cringe every time I hear someone say that someone was convicted on “nothing more than circumstantial evidence.” I have spoken about this before quite often here in my blogs. Reality is that nearly every case is based on circumstantial evidence and they always have been. I also do not believe that DNA is necessarily helpful, nor is it necessary, in every case. This case involves several issues that separately they would not necessarily cause an ...

  I came across this story when watching the television show American Monster. It was one of those that I was surprised that I had never heard about; it was also one of those that had me angry at investigators by the time it was done. Dateline has also done an episode on this case titled 11 Minutes . I attempted to find it on a streaming service to watch but was not successful. I point out the title to their episode however because “11 Minutes” kind of says it all. These were eleven crucial minutes that in my opinion makes the case regardless of what investigators may say. I will say that at this point and time it appears as if while the investigators may still have a grudge to hold the prosecutor in the case eventually made a reasonable decision. It is just sad that a) it took so long to happen and b) that investigators had already convinced people they had the guilty party to the point that they cannot accept that the prosecutor was correct in their decision. Jesse ...

Just like my last blog, this is a case that I learned about on the show Accused: Guilty or Innocent. Also, just like the last case, this one also involved a video, although the one in this case is much longer, that helped collaborate the defendants story. In the last case that I blogged about the defendant took his case to trial and was acquitted on the charges that he faced. I believe that if Lawson would have taken his case to trial, rather than accept a plea deal, he likely would have been acquitted at least on the most serious charge he faced, first degree murder. He also faced the charge of reckless endangerment that I am unsure he could have been able to beat, but that charge is nothing compared to first degree murder. That being said, I am also unsure that if Steven Lawson would have been a women he would have faced any charges at all, let alone murder charges. On January 27, 2017 Steven Lawson called 911 from his home in Rogersville Tennessee. He reported that he had...

Today I watched several episodes of a new show I had never seen before, Accused: Guilty or Innocent from A&E. There is only part of the one season available but it was enough to get me hooked. When I am researching cases I generally have the television on and adding to my list of cases. Those cases generally go to the end of my list but several of the cases I heard today are next in line to be researched, including this one. This case is not a murder case, which is a rarity for me but it is still an interesting case nonetheless. This was an assault case in which a man was severely injured. The question was whether the “perpetrator,” Brandon Joyner had struck the victim, David Turner, in self defense, or in the defense of another. The twenty year old, Joyner, was looking at the possibility of spending twenty years behind bars. On the night of March 24, 2017 Brandon Joyner was outside his Spartenburg South Carolina home with some friends when he heard an argument acro...

  Once again I have a blog to put together on a case I first heard about on the television show Fear Thy Neighbor. A lot of these types of cases, as is the case with a lot of murders, seem so senseless, and often preventable but for me I think this one is particularly senseless, if not preventable. But, the other strange thing about this case is that while there had been trouble between the neighbors years prior, it appears that there had not been a lot of issues in the two years leading up to the murders. Terrance Hough Jr. was a firefighter in the city of Cleveland Ohio. Due to a policy for city workers he was required to live within the city limits. This was mentioned several times in my research as if this was an issue for Hough, although he had obviously complied. He moved onto a street where other city workers, including at least one police officer lived. Terrance, his wife, Regina, and their children, at least one an infant when they moved, moved into a home next t...

Once again this is a case that I saw on the show Fear Thy Neighbor. While I mentioned in my previous post how the show can be quite bias, and that is true, I also believe that at least in this case they gave more factual information about things than a jury would later see. I say this because much of what they showed in the episode were video and audio recordings of things that occurred prior to the murder of Sheila Bonge. On December 27, 2017 the family of fifty-nine year old Sheila Bonge contacted authorities in Nunica Michigan, some twenty-five miles west of Grand Rapids. They were unable to get a hold of Sheila and that was unusual. For the next two days a search was made for Sheila. Her body would be found on the 28 th , naked, down a hill behind the home of her neighbor, Wendell Popejoy Jr. Police were familiar with the area, particularly Sheila and several of her neighbors. Between 2014 and 2017 they had been called to the area more than fifty times on cal...