1984 murder suspect's widow files claim

12-18-2014 California:

Complaint contends police wrongly accused SDPD criminalist in Torrey Pines Beach slaying

SAN DIEGO — The widow of a retired San Diego police criminalist suspected in the 1984 mutilation murder of a teenager has filed a claim against the city, accusing detectives of investigative misconduct that she says eventually pushed her husband to suicide.

Kevin Brown, a 20-year veteran of the crime lab, became a suspect in the cold-case slaying of 14-year-old Claire Hough late last year, after a retesting of evidence in the case detected a small amount of his semen on a vaginal swab, police said. Investigators spent months trying to build their case against Brown, including searching his home, questioning him and administering a lie-detector test. Police said they were close to arresting him when he hanged himself from a tree in October.

At a news conference Thursday, Rebecca Brown said the police investigation wrongly focused on her husband and completely disregarded the logical explanation of cross-contamination as a reason why his DNA was found on the evidence.

“He was not a rapist and a killer. He was a quiet, good man who devoted his life to … helping people out by putting away bad guys doing his job,” Brown said. “… My husband didn’t do these things.”

A mother's love for a lost son — the sex offender found dead Saturday

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Medical Examiner: Delaware fugitive hanged himself

1-7-2015 Virginia:

UPDATE 1/8/14: On Thursday the medical examiner determined the cause and manner of death to be suicide by hanging.

NEWPORT NEWS—The fugitive at the center of a daylong standoff with a police tactical team at a motel has died, a police spokesman confirmed.

Shortly before 5 p.m., members of a SWAT team carried Jawan Colson out of a room at the Midtown Motel along Jefferson Avenue and helped paramedics put him into an ambulance.

He was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to police.

The standoff began around noon Wednesday when the U.S. Marshals Service discovered a fugitive from Delaware barricaded inside a room at the motel.

The Marshal's office in Delaware says Colson was wanted for Failure to Register as a sex offender and 1st Degree Rape.

The 30-year-old as also wanted on three counts of rape, one count of strangulation, and unlawful imprisonment among other charges, according to the Newport News Police Department.

Police: man raped girl, committed suicide

12-19-2014 Maine:

BENTON, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- The Waterville man who killed himself in the Benton Elementary parking lot Wednesday had kidnapped and raped a teenage girl the day before, said police.

The Morning Sentinel reports that Anthony Harding, 41, had planned the kidnapping and the rape. Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey said that Harding took the girl to a storage unit with a hidden makeshift room with enough food to last three or four days, along with some furniture.

Police confirmed that Harding and the girl knew each other prior to the abduction. Harding allegedly told the girl after taking her that he had been contemplating suicide for some time. Police said he told the girl he didn't think he had the courage to do it, but if he committed a heinous crime, he would be able to kill himself.

Police said they received a call Wednesday afternoon from a woman who said she was taking a girl to the emergency room because the girl told her she had been raped. Police went to the hospital and talked to the girl who identified Harding as her abductor and rapist. She said Harding had taken her from her home and then to a storage unit, said Massey. While there, he allegedly pulled out a handgun and told her he was he was going to rape her and if she told her mother or police, he would kill her.

Accused rapist dies while in custody

1-7-2015 California:

A San Marcos man jailed on suspicion of rape died of an apparent suicide while in custody, authorities said Wednesday.

Jason Edward Stey, 27, died at 10:10 p.m. Tuesday, according to San Diego County sheriff’s Lt. John Maryon.

Earlier in the day, the sheriff’s department said Stey — who allegedly beat, choked and raped a North County smoke-shop clerk at her workplace last weekend — was hospitalized after trying to kill himself in his jail cell.

A guard found Stey injured at Vista Detention Center Tuesday afternoon, according to sheriff’s public affairs. He was admitted to a trauma unit at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla.

Officials declined to disclose the nature of Stey’s injuries.

Shortly before 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Stey allegedly attacked a worker at Dab Central Smoke Shop in the 900 block of West San Marcos Boulevard.

Sex offender’s Griffith Park hanging appears to be suicide

1-5-2015 California:

The weekend death in Griffith Park of a 24-year-old man sentenced last year for attempting to meet minors for sex was an apparent suicide, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office said Monday.

Passersby found Levi Moscowitz hanging from a tree in Griffith Park near the 2600 block of Commonwealth Canyon Avenue on Saturday, said coroner’s Lt. Fred Corral. Paramedics pronounced him dead at 8:20 a.m. An autopsy was pending.

Moscowitz pleaded no contest in late October to charges that resulted from a sting operation run by a Los Angeles Police Department detective who posed as a father with a 13-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, according to the Jewish Journal.

The detective answered Moscowitz’s ad in Craigslist “seeking to participate in a sexual encounter with a family interested in incest,” according to the Journal.

Moscowitz was arrested in February when he went to Long Beach for the expected sexual encounter and instead encountered police, the Journal reported.

After pleading no contest in October to one felony count of meeting a minor for lewd purposes, Moscowitz was sentenced to one day in jail, a year of counseling and five years of probation, the Journal reported. ..Source.. by Debbie L. Sklar

Rape charge may have triggered domestic homicide

Posted in Related Deaths

4-22-2014 Indiana:

GRIFFITH | Police continue to look for what triggered a murder-suicide Monday outside St. Mary's School where a Gary man killed his estranged wife

He later turned the gun on himself when confronted by police outside his garage.

"We are still trying to find the specific cause of the event," Griffith Police Chief Greg Mance said. "At this time, everything still points toward a domestic situation that turned violent."

The violence took place 10 days before the killer, Remanard Castro, would face a judge and the possibility of a 20- to 50-year sentence on charges he had raped his victim, Nina Castro, in November.

Laura Berry, executive director of the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Indianapolis, suggested Tuesday the upcoming court hearing may have been the trigger.

She said if the rape took place last fall and the charges were only recently filed, Remanard may have deluded himself "into thinking he got away with it, and once he knew he had an initial hearing coming up, all of a sudden he is facing incarceration."

LAPD detective commits suicide after molestation allegations, authorities say

12-5-2014 California:

A detective for the Los Angeles Police Department who once investigated sexual assault cases killed himself Thanksgiving morning after two relatives accused him of sexually abusing them, authorities said Friday.

The body of Dennis Derr, 52, a 17-year LAPD veteran, was found in his car in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Palmdale, law enforcement officials said. Derr died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to Los Angeles County coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter.

Brian Hudson, a sergeant in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Special Victims Bureau, confirmed two adults made sexual abuse allegations against Derr shortly before he committed suicide. Hudson declined to provide any other details about the investigation into Derr, but other sheriff’s and LAPD sources with knowledge of the case said the two accusers were relatives of Derr.

Although he said the investigation was in its early stages, Hudson said that at this time there have been no other molestation allegations made against Derr.

Suit: Montgomery County prison allowed suspected sex offender’s suicide

12-29-2014 Pennsylvania:

The wife of an accused sex offender who committed suicide after the denial of his bail reduction request blames the medical staff at the prison for not properly monitoring her husband’s psychiatric condition, according to a wrongful death suit filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Pamela Minnich, of Media, Pa., seeks damages in excess of $175,000 on five counts against the Montgomery County government and Prime Care Medical, a third-party health care company contracted to provide medical care to detainees and inmates at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.

According to the complaint, Minnich’s husband, David, was arrested on Oct. 16, 2012, on multiple counts of corruption of a minor, indecent sexual assault of persons under the age of 13 and under the age of 16 and aggravated indecent assault of a child. Unable to pay the $500,000 bail, Minnich was taken to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility as a pretrial detainee.

Having never been incarcerated before, Minnich began to display signs of extreme anxiety, the complaint says. According to the claim, Minnich came under the care of medical staff employed by Prime Care Medical and was placed on a schedule for a psychiatrist.

The complaint accuses the defendants of deliberately delaying the psychiatric appointment and ignored Minnich’s increased warnings that his mental state was deteriorating. He was finally seen on Dec. 3, 2012, but the suit says the psychiatrist deliberately ignored the signs of depression and suicide and refused to place Minnich under any medication or treatment.

Rikers Island inmate who hanged himself was supposed to be on suicide watch, officials say

1-2-2015 New York:

A mentally ill inmate who hanged himself on New Year's Day in a Rikers Island jail cell was supposed to be placed on suicide watch, but it wasn't implemented, two city officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

A jail psychiatrist who saw Fabian Cruz on Wednesday at a clinic ordered that Cruz be transferred to a special observation unit in a different Rikers facility where he'd be placed under constant watch, but Cruz told a guard at the clinic he didn't want to go and was transferred back to his jail cell, the officials said.

Letting Cruz go back to his cell was a violation of Department of Correction protocol because inmates don't get to decide where they're housed, said one of the officials, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation into what happened.

The guard also was supposed to contact a supervising captain after the suicide watch was ordered but didn't, the official said.

Cruz, 35, was discovered Thursday evening and was pronounced dead by a jail doctor. The correction officer at the clinic has been placed on modified duty.