Woman Condemned

We talked about Jessica McCarty a while back . She admitted to the murder of her three small children. She took a life sentence to keep from having a trial and more than likely a death sentence. Police say that Lacey McCarty, seven, was drowned in a bathtub, and that Phillip McCarty, six, and Christopher Swist, five months, were strangled. She'd had a lengthy history of drug abuse but it was her mental illnesses that the defense blamed for the murders. ‘Jessica was failed by the mental health profession, where she desperately sought help, but it was never given,’ Patricia Null, McCarty's mother, said. ‘Now we are all paying the price for that.’ McCarty’s treatment was a complete failure of the mental health system.  McCarty sought mental help just days before she killed her children. The two fathers of McCartys children.

This twin’s trouble returned on the double. Alexandria Duval, 38, was  arrested Friday  in Albany, New York, on a murder charge for the death of her twin sister, Anastasia, earlier this year. The Duval sisters were in  a fatal car crash in May , when their SUV plummeted off a 200-foot cliff in Maui, Hawaii. Alexandria was behind the wheel. Anastasia died at the scene. There was no evidence of braking, and witnesses claim the sisters had been arguing prior to the crash and that Alexandria had deliberately steered the car off the cliff. Alexandria was arrested for second-degree murder, but at a preliminary hearing, a judge ruled there was  no probable cause  and dropped the charges. However, in October, a Hawaii grand jury  indicted Alexandria  for second-degree murder, according to The Associated Press. Maui police issued a warrant, and authorities tracked down Alexandria at an Albany home. She’s now awaiting extradition to Hawai...

A San Jose transgender woman is accused in the brutal killings of an Oakland woman and her wife and son after the trio were found in their home early Friday morning. Dana Rivers, 61, who's in custody in Santa Rita Jail, has been charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of Patricia A. Wright, Charlotte Kuulei Reed, and Benny Wright. People who knew Patricia Wright described her as peaceful and said they couldn't imagine why anyone would harm the family. Authorities haven't discussed a motive. According to Oakland police, at 12:21 a.m. November 11, officers were dispatched to the 9400 block of Dunbar Drive to investigate reported gunshots. There, they found Benny Wright in front of a home. He appeared to have been stabbed. Two women were inside the home with apparent gunshot and stab wounds. The fire department came and tried to render aid, but the victims died. A probable cause document says, "As officers were [providing] aid to the victim, the offic...

It was exactly this time last year that Lisa Carpenter Graham was handed a death sentence for hiring a hit man to kill her daughter, Stephanie Shae Graham.  Graham was convicted of coaxing longtime family acquaintance, Kenneth Walton, to kill her 20-year-old daughter who went by Shea. Walton said Graham met him at the Columbus Public Library on the evening of July 7, 2007, and loaned him her gun, a pistol for the job. Later, he caught up with Shea at a gas station, where she left her car with friends and rode off with him in his truck. He took her on a long, night drive down Alabama Highway 165 then pulled off on Bowden Road so they could pee. When Shae got out to squat beside the truck’s open passenger door, and Walton pulled out the gun and shot her in the head from the driver’s seat. He then got out, walked around the truck and shot her over and over again. He left her half-nude, bullet-riddled corpse where it lay, and drove away, running over her arm in the process. ...

On July 7th, 2016, Jenny Shi, a successful business woman, investor and acupuncturist, was found stabbed to death in her bedroom by her sister. She had been stabbed 41 times. She had missed a 10 am appointment, very unlike her, so her bookkeeper went to her home to check on her. She arrived with two other people at the same time as her sister. Upon entering the house, they found Shi in a large puddle of blood on her bed. None of the pricey items in the home were taken. A chair had been pushed to an outside window and the screen cut. The window was removed and placed in a nearby bathtub.  Jingyan Jin, 41, is Shi's sister-in-law. She has a long history of violence with her husband and his siter Shi. Neighbors report many loud fights when Jin and her two children lived in the home with Shi. Jin had also been arrested in China for violent behavior.  Police discovered Jin's DNA on the window removed from the bedroom as well as around the window edges. She was arrested near he...

When people learn what I do, they are either confused or curious. The reaction is immediate. They either want to know why in the name of Hell I would be doing such crazy shit or they want to know everything I know and start throwing names of notorious criminals at me like I was the school principal in the homecoming dunking booth.  One thing everyone wants to know is what it's like to get to know these people, develop relationships, sit in the same room, talk on the phone. It's hard to imagine these monsters doing mundane tasks like the rest of us. We imagine they spend their time in jail plotting evil and reliving their horrendous deeds over and over. Some do, but even they must learn to live life locked away. For me,  it has always been about recognizing their humanity. Not for them, or some great humanitarian reason, but because it makes them more real to me. I can see them for who they are easier if I recognize they are only human and not some evil entity from a horr...