True Crime Stories

We have seen cases where a spouse is murdered, or sometimes just disappears and when investigators dig into the surviving spouses background they find this may have not been their first crime.  A second crime can often open up a once closed case to have another look.  This is just such a case. On February 27, 2012 police in Cameron Park California, a suburb of Sacramento responded to a call at the home of Todd and Rachel Winkler.  They would find the body of Rachel in a bedroom in the home.  It seems that Todd Winkler, her husband, openly admitted from the beginning that he had committed the crime, stabbing his wife repeatedly with scissors, at least once fatally in the neck.  He would claim that they were arguing over the fact that Rachel had recently filled out papers to file for divorce and that she had come after him with the scissors and that he had responded in self defense.  Todd Winkler would be arrested and charged with the murder of his wife lat...

One of the first things I came across in my research on one of the perpetrators of this crime was an appeal from 2014.  I love working with actual appeal papers. They condense down the events that occurred during the acting out of the crime as well as during any trial that took place and they deal solely with the legal aspects of things.  This appeal was different in many ways however. First, there had been no trial against Randal Crosley nor his accomplice, Jordan Buskirk so the fact that there was an appeal was quite unusual. Both Crosley and Buskirk had agreed to plea deals with the prosecutors and in general that prevents an appeal taking place.  However, in this case Crosley had filed an appeal based on the sentence that he had received.... an eighty-one year "aggravated" sentence.  This was a term that I had never heard before and to be honest even after a search to define the terms I was unsuccessful.  What seems a bit more confusing is that the pr...

While in my last post I was grateful that an execution had not taken place in a fast manner as things in the era of that crime were, in this case I am simply grateful that an execution was not ordered.  You may have noticed that several of my blogs late have been related to exonerations, and also that many of them have come out of the state of Florida.  Well, that is going to happen as I work down my list of names.  There are going to be clusters of cases sometimes in which there are similarities.  Sometimes the names made it to my list from another list of some kind.  Today it is exonerations, tomorrow it may be executions or some other similarity.  That is just the way that it goes it seems. William Dillon spent twenty seven years in prison for a crime that he had always claimed he had not committed.  It is true that a vast majority of people who have been accused of crimes deny their guilty and it is understandable that those people are often not ...

Two of the hardest types of cases for me to research are those from other countries with different "justice" rules and even phrases, and cases that are multiple decades old.  This case has both.  It began in Canada in 1959. Cases in that era were generally open and shut with quick justice.  This happened in a time in which I believe there were likely many people who were innocent of their crime were executed.  We have people today who have been on death row in their state for decades, and yet with the advancement of DNA testing some are spending that much time and being found to be innocent.  So, I have no doubts that in a time in which the time between a crime, an arrest, a trial, a conviction and an execution are carried out within months that there were not innocent people executed.  The only thing that I believe that saved Steven Truscott was his age.  On June 9, 1959 twelve year old Cheryl "Lynne" Harper went out to the local playground after ...

On April 20, 2000 police in Dundalk Maryland, near Baltimore responded to a call.  They would find Stephen Cooke Jr. in the middle of his front room floor holding the bloody body of his girlfriend, Heidi Bernadzikowski.  He would say that he had come home to find her there with her throat slashed.   Police were almost immediately suspicious of Stephen and everyone knew it. Some believe they were simply suspicious because he was the closest person to Heidi and everyone knows those are the ones who are first looked at.  Others say the suspicion came from several other things such as their was no forced entry into the home and nothing appeared to have been stolen.  But, the most suspicious thing of all was the fact that investigators learned that just one month before her murder a life insurance policy for $700,000 had been obtained on the twenty-four year old and Stephen was the beneficiary. But, investigators had no evidence to prove Stephen was guilty. ...

The case of Seth Penalver has brought to mind many issues I have with not just the justice system, but also the injustices of the system, not just to those like Seth, who are later found to be innocent but just to the former inmate in general.  As a society we complain about how criminals so often end up back in jail because they have reoffended but we do not talk about why they often do so.   I have seen first hand someone who spent over a decade in prison for a crime they committed be simply released out into the world, with nothing.  In fact, the person I know that this occurred with was supposed to remain under supervision upon his release from prison.  His sentenced had required that his first three years would be served on house arrest, as well as a term of probation for ten years.  No family member was in a position to take this man in so he was to go to a half way house. A prison official took him there.  Except, no one apparently checked with the...

I have often said that I am neither an advocate for or against the death penalty. I do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent for anyone. I have also said however, there are some crimes that are so heinous and vicious, and that have proven 100% who the perpetrator is, that deserve the death penalty.  That being said I also know that a capital case is much more expensive for a state. There are extra funds associated with those who ask for a public defender, which is a large percentage of cases.  Then, if the prosecution succeeds there are automatic appeals that last years, sometimes decades and again, the state is paying.  I understand all of this.  What I do not understand is why the state of Kansas continues to prosecute cases asking for the death penalty when they have not executed anyone since 1965.   We all know that the federal government abolished the death penalty in the early 1970's as unconstitutional.  Since about the mid-1970s many s...