True Crime Stories

My recent television kick is watching old episodes of 48 Hours and Dateline . As is customary for me I often do a search on the case while I am watching the show. Most of these that I have watched recently are ones that I have seen in the past and some were already on my list, while others made their way to that ever growing list of cases to look over. I had seen this particular case more than once in the past but when I looked if there were any updates I was pleasantly surprised that there had been and some were rather recent. On the night of October 5, 2005 twenty-seven year old Christie Wilson disappeared after leaving a casino in Lincoln California. She was seen on surveillance video leaving the casino next to another man. Police were able to go back to the casino and were able to identify the man as fifty-three year old Mario Garcia. The video footage had shown Christie and Mario walking out of the building towards the parking lot. At one point Garcia attempted to put h...

  This case has me a bit perplexed on some things. Everyone that has been or continues to be held on death row in Indiana can be found on a particular website. The site is full of information about a case, but more particularly about the person. If they have already been executed it will add things such as what they had for their last meal or their last statement. One of the more interesting things that it often shows is the mitigating and aggravating circumstances of the case. It was here that I found one of the confusing things. The second thing revolved around issues with the jury in the sentencing phase. I will get into these issues as I tell the story but I will let you know that while Daniel Ray Wilkes was sentenced to death in December of 2007, after several appeals upholding this sentence, in 2011 he was subsequently re-sentenced to life without parole. Daniel Ray Wilkes met Donna Claspell when they were both residents at a rehabilitation center in Evansville Indi...

  I generally decide on the title of a blog as I am putting it together. When it is a crime where there are multiple arrests and perpetrators you will generally see the title reflect the name of the victims, other times the title is generally the name of the perpetrator. I knew going into this one that Richard Gagnon was convicted, and later exonerated for the murders of Charles and Diane Parker. I also knew that another person would later also be convicted of the murders, long before Gagnon would be exonerated. But, in all fairness I should point out that while website after website have called Gagnon's release and the dismissal of charges an exoneration, in a legal sense that may not be completely true. Do not confuse this with the idea that I believe Gagnon to be guilty, I am just stating how things played out in this case. It is not necessarily uncommon for someone who has been convicted to have their convictions overturned and a new trial ordered. It is not an every ...

Part of me already feels bad for how this blog is going to go. I believe that people and their memory should be remembered. Now, do not confuse that with believing that I go with the “code” of not speaking bad about the dead. I believe in remembering people for who they really were, good or bad. I also feel that a majority of murder victims should especially be remembered since their lives were cut short by someone in violence. So often murder victims and their memories are “lost” when it comes to trials and appeals and all that comes with the media sensations. In this case the victim, Patrick Cunningham, will continually get lost in the chaos and I already know that I will contribute to that here. But, in order to tell the story of what happened to Patrick you also must talk about his killer, Doyle Lee Hamm. And, when you talk about Doyle Hamm you have to talk about what has happened to him since he murdered Patrick Cunningham. There can be no argument that what happened to...

I am going to start out by telling you that I am completely confused with this case but that is not going to stop me from telling the story. I am confused on the relationship of the victim and the perpetrators as well as a motive for the crime. I found nothing that showed or stated that the perpetrators went to trial and due to the timing of their sentencing I am led to believe that they accepted plea deals or entered a plea of guilty. That all being said, the murder of Nancy Jane Harvill was not only vicious and gruesome, but sadistic as well as the perpetrators led people to believe that she was alive for more than fifteen months after her death. On January 8, 2013 the body of Nancy Jane Harvill was found wrapped in plastic and buried. There were some indications that she was buried in the “backyard” while others say she was buried under a dirt floor in a shed in Fordyce Arkansas. The home apparently belonged to, or at least was occupied by a woman named Sherri Bowen. Sherri ...

  You have heard me often say that I am neither a huge advocate for or against the death penalty. I think there should be clear and absolute proof that the defendant is guilty before they are sentenced to death. But, I also think when that is proven and it is an exceptionally gruesome crime then the death penalty is warranted. This case falls into the latter category to the point that I am almost appalled that the jury did not recommend death. This case took place in Florida and most states, as does Florida, require that the jury be unanimous in their recommendation for death. Adam Matos was charged with four murders. For three of them the jury were 10-2 for death and for the forth they were 11-1. If a jury recommends death a judge can instead give life with or without parole, but if they do not recommend death a judge cannot override that and sentence the defendant to death. When he was sentenced to four counts of life without the possibility of parole the judge made sure...

  This case, like the last, involves an individual who was sentenced to death in Indiana. However, this case is very different from the previous one in many ways. I also found a lot of misinformation and confusion with this case when doing my research that I had to figure out. I find this case interesting in part because it is a case in which the defendant pleaded guilty, apparently without any sort of plea deal offered by the state. Now, doing is not unusual if the defendant is adamant, as some are, that they are guilty and either feel they deserve the death penalty or they claim they would rather be executed than spend the rest of their life in prison. Neither seems to be the case here with Trueblood although he claims that at least with the first guilty plea (he did this twice at separate times) he did so on the advice of his attorney saying that he would avoid the death penalty. Now, prosecutors will quite often offer plea deals to defendants to avoid a trial. In my o...