R.I.P. Andrew Roach

AITE Edge article written by Hannah Cerasoli:
 
On Friday, the second of November, tragedy struck the small town of Darien when Andrew Roach, 19, took his life. Behind him, he left a family and a short-lived lifetime of youth and friendships. He graduated from AITE in June, unable to complete the last year of his life.

Andrew was born on August 6th, 1993. He was introduced to the concept of death at the age of 7, when his mother died, leaving him with his father and two sisters.

He grew up in Darien, and attended high school here at AITE. Andrew was a volunteer fireman at the Round Hill Fire Company in Greenwich, which he began working at on December 7th of last year. After graduating from AITE in June 2012, he also graduated from the Stamford Regional Fire School. His life seemed to be more or less on track.

Andrew was a boy with a life and with friends just like any other teen. A hobby of his was sailing, which he did at the Cedar Point Yacht Club, and at Camp Sloane. His inspiration for becoming a firefighter was the tragedy of 9/11, in which his father was involved. He looked up to his father ever since then, when he helped get victims of the attack out of the rubble via setting up an enormous tool stand. After that, he attended more than one memorial for the event, and was inspired to do good for people. The Daily Voice quoted him as being “optimistic about the future.”

Like other unlucky teenagers nationwide, Andrew Roach suffered from depression for years. His family noticed a lack of interest to do anything. It came with much grief and little surprise when they discovered his fate.

Andrew Roach was just another face in these hallways last year, and just another boy in the town of Darien. Yet to some people, he was a son, a grandson, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, and a best friend. They choose to remember how he lived, not how he died.

Rest in peace, Andrew Roach.

1 dead, 1 Injured in Greenwich Fire

 

Greenwich Time- An intentionally set fire killed a 42-year-old man and critically injured a 69-year-old handicapped woman Tuesday morning in their Old Greenwich home, police said.

Neighbors identified the victims as Dean Verboven and his mother, Barbara Verboven. Barbara Verboven remains in critical condition in the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital, after being initially transported to Greenwich Hospital.

The fire broke out at about 7 a.m. at 46 Havemeyer Lane, police and fire officials said.

Speaking at a news conference at the police station in the afternoon, Police Lt. Kraig Gray said a preliminary investigation determined that the fire was set, but stopped short of using the term arson. He said the fire is being investigated by a joint team of police and firefighters.

Gladys Pardo, who lives next door to Verbovens with her husband, John, said she was sitting at her computer at about 7 a.m. when she saw smoke and flames coming from the window next door.

She screamed to her husband that there was a fire and got out of their house, which is only a few feet away from their neighbors.

When firefighters arrived, Gladys Pardo said she directed them to the ground-floor bedroom of Barbara Verboven, who she said has been wheelchair-bound for about five years. The Pardos and another neighbor, Robert Meehan, directed firefighters to look for a second occupant, at which point they found Dean Verboven and brought him out of the house about five minutes later, Meehan said.

After hearing the firefighters arriving on scene, Meehan said, "I came out and saw the house fully engulfed in smoke."

Meehan said that Dean Verboven was placed in an ambulance, which sat for about five minutes before driving away.

Gray said he did not know if the man had been declared dead on the scene.

Greenwich Fire Chief Peter Siecienski said heavy fire gutted part of the first floor of the house where the two had their bedrooms, and smoke caused heavy damage to the second floor.

Assistant Fire Chief Bob Kick said the state fire marshal's office brought a dog to the scene. The dogs are typically used to search for accelerants, Kick said.

The last fire-related fatality in Greenwich occurred in 2006, according to Kick, who commended firefighters on their work at the Havemeyer Lane scene.

"They did a good job," he said Tuesday night. "They got in there quickly."

A Greenwich police crime scene investigation truck arrived on scene shortly after 9 a.m., and a large section of Havemeyer Lane around MacArthur Drive was closed for several hours while numerous police and firefighters conducted their investigation.

Gray said that the house was "cluttered" and its condition had an effect on the ability of firefighters to get in and pull the residents outside. Both victims were brought out of the rear of the house, neighbors said.

Sixty firefighters from Sound Beach, Cos Cob, North Street and Glenville responded to the 7:10 a.m. call, Siecienski said.

The Pardos said they had been neighbors of the Verbovens for more than 30 years.

"They were a very nice family... This is heartbreaking," said Gladys Pardo.

"It is so hard for me to believe he is dead. He was 8 years old when we moved in," said John Pardo.

Gladys Pardo said that she saw Dean Verboven two days ago, but it has been two years since she saw Barbara Verboven.

Up until recent times, "They were a very outgoing family," Gladys said about the Verbovens.

James Holmes Continues Streak of Odd Behavior

Time.com- The accused Aurora gunman reportedly spat at jail officers so often that he was forced to wear a spit guard at one point.



Holmes’ bizarre habit is just one of several that he has displayed since his arrest for the shooting rampage during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in a Colorado movie theater that killed 12 and wounded 58 last Friday.



In the hours after his arrest Friday for the massacre at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater, Holmes stared at the wall in the Arapahoe Police Headquarters with his eyebrows twitching.

Then, Holmes allegedly told police he was Batman’s villain the Joker. When cops put evidence bags over his hands to preserve traces of gunpowder residue, he pretended the bags were puppets, law enforcement sources told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver.

The public got its first glimpse into his behavior during his court appearance Monday, where he looked alternately dazed and bug-eyed while occasionally nodding with his eyes appearing to close. Holmes is unmissable, currently sporting a head of bright-orange dyed hair — which he reportedly told authorities he dyed to look like the Joker villain in Batman films, even though the Joker’s hair is typically green.

And now, Arapahoe County Jail officers told ABC News that Holmes spits at them so much that they have to use a spit guard on Holmes while moving him. These antics are just the latest in findings that contradict the initial profile of him as an unassuming former graduate student.

Marissa Randazzo, former chief research psychologist for the U.S. Secret Service and an expert in mass shootings, told Good Morning America today that there are several possible explanations for Holmes’ recent behaviors. “One is that he is in the middle of a psychotic episode which is quite possible. We see him distracted at multiple points, an almost sort of ‘coming to’ and trying to figure out where he is and process what’s going on,” she said.

“The other thing that we’re seeing — and we’ve seen some of this behavior in the past couple months — might suggest mania. Meaning hyperactivity, hyper energy, been possibly up and not sleeping for days. What we might be seeing here is the post effects.” Randazzo said a third possibility is that Holmes, a former neuroscience student, is faking mental symptoms he likely learned during his studies.

UPDATE: Looks like Holmes’ actions are just as mysterious as the man himself. ABC’s Denver affiliate now disputes the spitting reports and states that Holmes has maintained his low-key demeanor since incarceration.



“[C]ontrary to what some media organizations have reported, our sources say in the past 48-hours Holmes has been calm and docile in jail, just like he was in court,” CALL7 Investigator John Ferrugia says. “There have been no outbursts at all as he is in isolation.”

Colorado Shooting: Was James Holmes's Notebook 'A Cry For Validation'?

CS Monitor- News that James Holmes may have tried to communicate his intentions to a professor raises as many questions as it answers.




Details about the package sent to the professor (who is also a psychiatrist in the school where Mr. Holmes had been a doctoral candidate) are sketchy. And so far, there is no firm indication of his motivation in allegedly killing 12 people and wounding 58 others gathered to watch the midnight premiére of the latest Batman movie.




Yet it may have been a last-ditch effort for recognition by one whose isolation had led family members to express concern.



The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement authorities in Colorado refuse to talk about anything Holmes might have sent to the university campus, and after several days of press briefings, they have followed a judge’s order in refusing all comment – no doubt out of concern that either prosecution or defense interests could be harmed.




But according to several news sources, beginning with Fox News, the notebook that Holmes reportedly sent included stick drawings of some individuals shooting others. What legal advocates on both sides of the criminal case make of that remains to be seen.



"Is it a manifesto or an apology? If it includes drawings that are sufficiently deranged as to be from someone who appears mentally ill, it could assist defense in a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense,” legal analyst Scott Robinson told The Denver Post. “If it appears to be the work of someone who knew exactly what they are doing, and they knew it was wrong, that could help the prosecution."



In retrospect, experts and close associates of those who go on a shooting rampage often recall signs of confused thinking and aberrant behavior that might have provided clues to mass violence. In some cases, that involves a pattern of bullying in school, evidence of “going postal” at work, or unusual mood swings observed by family members or close friends.



According to Holmes family friends who spoke to The Washington Post, Holmes’s mother had confided deep concerns about her son’s isolation over the years and sought counseling for him.



But seldom in the history of such killings has the perpetrator explicitly communicated his or her intent to target a particular group.



“It may very well have been a last-ditch cry for help or recognition ... a cry for validation,” says Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.



“If the timeline [as reported] is correct,” Mr. Levin says, “he might have wanted to attract attention for merely contemplating an attack rather than doing it.”



In any case, cautions Levin, “What we know now is just a sliver compared with what we don’t know.”



Still, he speculates that the package sent to a professor is probably a sign of social and psychological isolation, depression, and some kind of personal setback – perhaps Holmes's failure to complete his doctoral program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.



After his capture, Holmes is reported to have told authorities about the package he mailed, which led to the evacuation of a university building and a search involving bomb-sniffing dogs. As he was being apprehended after the shooting last Friday morning, Holmes also is reported to have told police about his booby-trapped apartment.




Why he apparently tipped off authorities in these instances also remains unclear, although it may reveal something about his overall motivation.



So far, there is no indication that Holmes’s communication prior to the attack included any kind of political or antisocial manifesto, as was the case with Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber” who killed three people and injured another 23 in a series of mail bombings over nearly 20 years. When The New York Times and The Washington Post published Mr. Kaczynski’s 35,000-word essay, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” his brother David Kaczynski recognized the ideas and writing style, which led to Ted Kaczynski’s capture.



More recently, between two separate attacks in which he shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself in 2007, Seung-Hui Cho sent NBC News a package with a manifesto, photos, and videos of himself.



Initial reports said Holmes’s mailing to the university sat in the mailroom for some days before being found, but school officials denied that in a statement:



"Officials at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus can confirm that the suspicious package discovered at the Facilities Services building on Monday, July 23, 2012, was delivered to the campus by the United States Postal Service that same day, immediately investigated and turned over to authorities within hours of delivery.”



Holmes is due to hear the charges against him at a court hearing scheduled for next Monday.

R.I.P. Aurora Shooting Victims

R.I.P. all the victims of the Aurora, Colorado shooting. 

I know it's late in the game to be posting now about this but I have been away on vacation when it had happened... It seems every time I'm away something news worthy happens.  I was on a work-related ski trip a few months back when Whitney Houston passed away, and last year at Lake George news broke about Amy Winehouse dying.

I will follow the court trial an hope that they put this douche bag out of his misery.

I just feel so heartbroken thinking of the six year old who died, and how her mother tried to shield her and now she's drifting in and out of consciousness asking for her... It kills me.

Greenwich Murderer's Release Troubles Family

Greenwich Time- A man who murdered a former friend's father because he believed the father and son were conspiring against him is back in prison after recently spending 10 days in a halfway house in Bridgeport.

In one of the most shocking killings in town history, former backcountry resident Andrew D. Wilson, now 51, gunned down John Peters on Aug. 5, 1993, while Peters was swimming laps in the pool behind his Ridgeview Avenue home. The 62-year-old Peters was the president of one of the world's largest advertising firms.


Wilson's release to a halfway house in Bridgeport on June 12 alarmed Peters' relatives, who said they were not aware of Wilson's release until after it occurred.
"We were shocked, we were shocked and concerned," a family spokesman said. "We were really relieved that they put him back in prison."
The family member spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for the family's safety.

It is unclear what events led Wilson, who is scheduled to be released from prison in 2014, to be sent to a halfway house, a facility intended to allow convicts to begin the process of reintegrating into society.


In an emailed family statement, relatives expressed their fear of what Wilson, who pleaded guilty to the crime in 1999, might do.

"We are very concerned that Wilson may continue to pose a threat to us and possibly others," the email read. "Before and during the trial, we heard Wilson openly state his intent to kill other members of our family. Wilson was diagnosed as suffering from delusional paranoid schizophrenia, an illness that doesn't just simply go away. We want to know who is going to make the judgment that he is no longer a threat to us or others."


The spokesman said the family was told by experts before the murder that Wilson would not act on his beliefs. They want to ensure another mistake isn't made, the statement said.


Andrius Banevicius, a state Department of Correction spokesman, said Wilson was released to the halfway house on June 12, but was returned to the Bridgeport Correctional Center on June 22. Four days later, he was returned to the Enfield Correctional Institution, where he is serving a 30-year sentence.


"He was returned without prejudice, so he didn't do anything wrong," Banevicius said. "Apparently there had been additional paperwork that had not been properly routed that needed to be reviewed."


Banevicius said he could not identify the paperwork in question.


Attempts to reach the Wilson family were unsuccessful.

After fatal shooting John Peters in 1993, Wilson immediately drove to Greenwich police headquarters and confessed to the killing, of which police were not yet aware.


Wilson, a former friend of Peters' son, Dirk, who served as an usher at the son's wedding, claimed Dirk had brainwashed him and blamed the family for his problems.


His mental condition so alarmed his sister, Julia, that she faxed a 14-page letter to the police departments in Madison, where Wilson was living at the time, and Greenwich on July 19, 1993.

In the letter, Julia Wilson wrote that her brother was dangerous to himself and others and that he had made specific, violent threats against Dirk and John Peters.


In 1995, two years after the killing, Wilson was convicted of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison. A jury rejected his defense of not guilty by reason of insanity.


Two years later, the state's Supreme Court reversed Wilson's conviction and ordered a retrial because a judge improperly instructed jurors on the definition of insanity.
In October 1999, shortly before he was to go to trial a second time, Wilson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Even though he has a 30-year sentence, Wilson will be released no later than March 2014.


Banevicius said under guidelines in place in 1993, prisoners were credited for good behavior.

Wilson could possibly be released even earlier, he said.


On March 16, 2004, the Town of Greenwich agreed to pay $4.5 million to Peters' widow Katrina Peters to settle her claim against the town for negligence in her husband's death.


The agreement came just hours before jurors were to begin deliberating in her lawsuit, which had gone to trial the month before.

Fire-Fighting Arsonist Sentenced to 10 Years

PYRO

FAIRFIELD - A former volunteer firefighter got 10 years in prison today for a string of arsons.


Christopher Message had been accused of setting fires in Fairfield, Monroe and Easton.



Message told the court he suffered from mental and emotional issues that were worsened by substance abuse.

Accused Wilton Murderer Found Competent for Trial

WILTON - A judge ruled that the Wilton man accused of killing his own father is competent to stand trial.


Detectives say Aaron Ramsey claims he heard voices in his head when he beat and stabbed Edward Ramsey in their home last month.



His lawyer says Ramsey understands the charges against them and is able to help with his defense.



He is due back in court next month.

This Day In History

Jun 2 1996
Ray Combs, host of television's Family Feud, hangs himself with his bedsheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital. Combs was on a 72 hour suicide watch.

This Day In History

May 9 1950
L. Ron Hubbard publishes the first edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. This follows on the heels of a feature article in the pulp sci-fi magazine Astounding Science Fiction. A book review in the The New Republic describes the work as "a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology." The subsequent movement goes on to become one of the scariest, most powerful pseudo-religious cults in modern history.

May 9 1979
Northwestern University graduate student John Harris opens a cigar box left sitting on a table in the Technological Institute. The resulting blast only manages to inflict minor lacerations and burns. It is later determined to be the second explosive device fabricated by the Unabomber.

May 9 1980
35 people are killed in Tampa, Florida when the Liberian cargo ship Summit Venture smashes into a supporting pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Seven vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, topple into the water 150 feet below.

New Study Regarding Spring Babies... Very Interesting!

Season of Birth May Affect the Rest of Your Life
Yahoo News- The season in which you are born may affect everything from your eyesight to your eating habits and overall health later in life, according to a blossoming field of research. The latest study shows that spring babies are more likely to suffer from anorexia nervosa as adults.

"We found an excess of anorexia births in the spring months compared to the general population," said study researcher Lahiru Handunnetthi, of the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics. "The idea is that there is some sort of risk factor that varies seasonally with anorexia."

The researchers found that eight out of every 100 people born between March and June had anorexia compared with 7 percent of those without anorexia. This is a 15 percent increase in risk for those born during these spring months.

Previous studies have found similar links between spring births and various disorders, including schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and even Type 1 diabetes. It's possible these diseases are linked to some environmental influence during gestation or the first few months of life, though researchers aren't sure what that could be.

The leading candidates including vitamin D levels, infections that come and go seasonally, changes in nutrition, and even possibly weather fluctuations, Handunnetthi told LiveScience.

These changing environmental factors seem to influence a wide array of conditions:

A study from 2003 published in the Journal of Nutrition showed that African-American babies born in the summer and fall were smaller than those born at other times. Also, babies of African-American and Puerto Rican decent gained less weight in their first four months if they were born in the fall.

Babies born in the fall have a 9.5 percent risk of having food allergies, up from 5 percent for babies born in June and July. Those babies born in November or December were also three times more likely to suffer from eczema and wheezing. That study was published in 2010 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Moderate and severe nearsightedness, or the inability to see well at long distances, is highest for babies born in the summer months, suggests research published in April 2008 in the journal Ophthalmology.

Birth month might even affect your biological clock, a mouse study published in 2010 in the journal Nature Neuroscience showed. Mice born in the winter were less able to adapt to a summer light cycle, which could be related to the increased risk of mental health disorders in humans born in the winter, the researchers speculated.

Leukemia has also been linked to being born in the spring, with a peak in April.

Birth month has even been linked to longevity, which could be because of these other adverse health effects. Studies in Austria and Denmark have found that those born in the fall live longer than people born in the spring.

"When we look at diseases we need to identify the risk factor that led to them," Handunnetthi said. "In general, risk factors could be environmental or genetic. Genetic risk factors you are born with and can't really change. If you identify environmental factors you can mediate them to carry out prevention studies."

These environmental causes are still unclear, though some of these birth-month effects may be related. "Perhaps a risk factor is playing a part that is common to all these conditions but we don't know that yet," Handunnetthi said.

Cold Spring Road Murder-Suicide

[click picture or here for article published online *top right corner*]

December 25th, 1960: Lawrence Moser of 244 Cold Spring Road kills his two daughters, throws acid in his wife and her friends's faces, runs out of the house and kills himself.

Victim Slams '40-Year-Old Virgin' Actor Who Repeatedly Stabbed Her

(CNN) -- A California woman stabbed repeatedly by her then-boyfriend, a comedic Hollywood actor, on Friday described his courtroom antics explaining his violence as "very surreal and bizarre" -- and, above all, insincere.

"In his testimony, he stated that it was the knife that did it, and he stated this repeatedly," Kendra Beebe told HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell. "In fact it wasn't the knife that stabbed me 23 times. It was Shelley Malil."

One day earlier, San Diego, California, County Superior Court Judge Harry Elias sentenced Malil to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Five years ago, the actor was cracking up audiences as an electronics store clerk in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." But in August 2008, he was arrested in North County, California and charged with stabbing Beebe.

Earlier this fall, a California jury found him guilty of premeditated attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. He was found not guilty of burglary.

Malil received near the maximum sentence for his convictions. But his former girlfriend said that, while she was pleased with the jury's verdict, she still doesn't think the punishment was severe enough.


"I feel like I did get justice in our system. But is the system fair and just? I don't think so," Beebe said.

Beebe survived the attack, despite having her chin severely cut, two collapsed lungs and losing about half the blood in her body, her attorney Gloria Allred told HLN on Friday.

In September, she testified that she'd initially thought that Malil was going to hug her when he approached her in her home, as her young children slept upstairs, that summer night. But instead, he began cutting her repeatedly with a knife -- a fact that Malil did not deny.

"I saw this flashing silver, and he goes bang, bang, bang," Beebe said in court.

The Indian-born actor -- who, according to the Internet Movie Database, has appeared in at least 54 movies and television projects, from Budweiser commercials, to guest appearances on "Scrubs" and "Reba," to his break-out performance as Steve Carell's co-worker Haziz in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" -- testified that he stabbed his girlfriend by mistake, thinking he was defending her.

On Thursday, he apologized in court.

"For what I did to Kendra, I don't even have the words to express my remorse or my feeling sorry. Kendra Beebe did not deserve anything that happened to her," Malil said.

Malil's 19-year-old niece, Anjali Varghese, testified at the sentencing hearing that her uncle's "crime was not a result of any kind of ingrained malice, because that's not his nature."

Yet Beebe said that the actor's testimony left her unconvinced, feeling "so frustrated and angry."

"It was horrible," she said. "He sure lied and lied and lied on the stand."

Jury Deliberating Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping Case

Salt Lake Tribune- In the face of damning evidence that he kidnapped, raped and degraded Elizabeth Smart, Brian David Mitchell’s attorney had difficulty saying anything positive about the 57-year-old, self-proclaimed prophet.

“He is not a good person,” Robert Steele told a federal court jury Thursday during closing arguments at Mitchell’s trial.

Instead, Steele claimed that Mitchell was mentally ill and suffering from the delusion that he was commanded by God when he abducted then-14-year-old Smart at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City home in June 2002.

“I don’t think he has the free will to say, ‘God, I’m not going to do it.’ ” Steele said in asking the jury to find Mitchell not guilty by reason of insanity.

Twelve jurors began deliberating at 5:35 p.m. Thursday, but they went home for the night three hours later. They will resume deliberations Friday morning.

Mitchell is charged with interstate kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor to engage in sexual activity for allegedly holding Smart captive for nine months, including near-daily rapes and a trip to California and back.

During their closing arguments, prosecutors argued against the notion that Mitchell was insane when he committed the crimes.

U.S. District Attorney Diana Hagen told jurors that, according to trial testimony, Mitchell disobeyed revelations from God “all the time.”

Bloody Photos Show Scene of Actor's Sword Slay

=-Graphic Photos here-=

NY Post- Tragic mom Yannick Brea fought for her life as her sword-wielding son chased her through their blood-soaked Brooklyn apartment, a look inside the crime scene shows.

The inside of the front door and the front hallway leading to the rear bedrooms are splattered with blood, suggesting she’d tried to fall out the front door but could not.

Bedding and furniture in three of the apartment’s four bedrooms are blood-soaked, indicating that the 55-year-old victim was running for her life from room to room with her son Michael Brea in pursuit during the rampage.

Pools of blood covered the bathroom floor, where cops found her body in a kneeling position.

Family and friends said money woes and a stalled showbiz career likely pushed the stressed-out bit actor over the edge in the days before he hacked his mother to death during the bloody rampage in their Brooklyn home.

"Michael had many money problems and couldn’t pay his bills," his longtime friend and barber Sylvan Benoit said Wednesday. "I think this happened because of stress over money."

Brea, 31, had small roles in "Ugly Betty" and the movie "Step Up 3D" but was not working while living at home with his mother and twin brother Marcel.

He owned a Subway franchise on Broadway in Brooklyn in 2008, but the franchise was taken away by the parent company last year over performance and management problems. Subway had placed liens for unpaid rent of almost $20,000 on the restaurant.

Brea also owed American Express more than $13,000, and New York State was after him for about $2,500 in taxes, court records show.

Neighbor Clinton Clare said Michael Brea rarely worked after losing the Subway franchise, and had no car.

"His mother was supporting him, and he had to use his father’s car to get around," said Clare, one of the first to hear Yannick Brea’s bone-chilling screams about 1 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Dumond said the family believes Michael suffered a "mental breakdown." She said he went to bed early Monday night , refusing his mother’s offer of dinner, after complaining of "a terrible headache."

Hours later, he awoke neighbors in the four-story Prospect Heights apartment building by screaming Biblical passages and demanding that his terrified mother "Repent! Repent! Repent!" before slashing her repeatedly with the three-foot sword as she cried for help.

Cops eventually broke in, Tasered Brea and found his mother’s blood-soaked body kneeling in the bathroom.

Brea has been charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He remains under psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue Hospital.

S.I. Suspect Eric Bellucci Told Friend He Was With Mossad Before Slayings of His Parents

They got him! Good!
NY Daily News- A mentally ill Staten Island man's behavior grew increasingly bizarre in the weeks leading up to the bloody slaying of his parents, a friend and police sources said.

Eric Bellucci, 30, called an old friend from Stuyvesant High School in the month before his parents' bodies were found on Wednesday night and said he was working with Israeli intelligence.

"He seemed a little paranoid," the friend told the Daily News. "He told me that he was working with the Mossad."

The friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said his former football teammate was worried about terrorism and cited the attempted Times Square bombing.

Scores of mourners paid their respects to Arthur Bellucci, 61, and Marian Bellucci, 56, at their wake yesterday, surrounded by bright flowers and collages of family photos.

"There's a lot of rage right now - it's the way he killed them," one mourner said.

Harry Ritt, 64, of Staten Island, said he had been friends with "Artie" since they worked together at a Wall Street brokerage firm in 1981.


"He was a great guy - very well liked," he said.

A law enforcement source said Bellucci's dad was killed in bed and suffered wounds that led cops to believe he raised his arms in defense.

His mother was stabbed in the throat and tried to make a run for the telephone, leaving blood spatters down the steps, the source said.

Cops believe Bellucci showered, changed clothes and wrapped up any cuts he suffered in the bloodbath, the source said.

Cops said Bellucci ditched his SUV near Newark Airport and caught a flight to Israel.

He was in Israel trying to buy a ticket to China when he was nabbed on Friday. The NYPD was expecting him to be extradited this morning.

A law enforcement source said that after his capture, Bellucci bizarrely told authorities that he was there to avenge his parents and find the Mossad agent who killed them.

Less than a week before the killing, Bellucci sent an email to an ex-girlfriend offering her $500 for the name of each person who caused their breakup, a police source said.

His sister, Vanessa Bellucci, 25, told cops her brother was furious because she and her parents were trying to get him help, a police source said.

She went to the home on Wednesday because her mom and dad weren't answering the phone. She opened the door, saw blood and ran out to call 911.

Since then, former classmates from high school and Williams College, his alma mater, have been calling the NYPD to report his troubling behavior, police sources said.tmoore@nydailynews.com

Blythewood Sanitarium, Inc.

I never even heard of Blythewood until my grandmother mentioned it.
My maternal grandmother's father was a Greenwich milkman in his day (1920s/30s), and would tell my grandmother all about what a strange place it was. He even brought home a cat he took from there, apparently they weren't wanting to keep it. As sharp as Mama is being in her 70s, she doesn't remember details, but told me that her father would speak strange deaths and hushed-up experiments. I decided to research this Sanitarium, find out where it was, and just what went on there.

One article certainly captured my attention and began all the feverish research:

FIND MEMPHIS WOMAN IN GREENWICH LAKE; Her Body Weighted With Stones Leads Officials to Believe Mrs. Biggs a Suicide.
September 08, 1921
"GREENWICH, Conn., Sept. 7.--Within a few hours after she had wandered away from Blythewood Sanitarium on the Stanwich Road here, the body of Mrs. Albert Biggs, a prominent resident of Memphis, Tenn., wss found in a lake on the Maurice Wertheim estate in Cos Cob, formerly the Ernest Thompson Seton property."

This lake is a five minute walk from my house.

I wasn't sure it was this actual pond-it was called a lake then, and additionally the only body of water on Wertheim estate.

At first I couldn't find where the Sanitarium was located. I searched my butt off on Google and web articles, looking for anything with an address on it. Unfortunately, when Blythewood existed, it refrained from using a formal address, apparently for privacy reasons... I was told this by an employee at Greenwich Library that I had working on the case. I was eventually let known that the property existed where Greenwich Baptist Church is today, on Indian Rock Lane (off of Stanwich Road, across from Central Middle School).

The article states that the lake that Mrs. Albert Biggs drowned herself in was 1/4 mile from the Sanitarium, so I pinpointed it as the one by my house.

What raised suspicions to me concerning the article is this...

"In her clothing were found stones with which she had evidently weighted herself down. There was also a note stating that her body would be found in the lake on the Wertheim estate."

Isn't it a bit redundant to drown yourself in a lake, all while having a note stating where you'll be found?
I'm not sure if I'm hinting more towards foul play with that one, but it seems to be fishy to me.

________________________________________

Now, not that I'm a tightwad, but pay articles through New York Times (or any other publication) on the internet are not cheap. I discovered a few more interesting and shady articles involving disappearances and more drownings..

I can't buy every article, so I just gathered all the information I could by the short descriptions, etc.

Here are a few:

Local Youth Gone From Sanitarium
June 29, 1935
"Arthur M. Collens, Jr., 22. of this city, son of Arthur M. Collens, president of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, disappeared from the Blythewood Sanitarium in Greenwich shortly before 5 p. m. Thursday. His disappearance was made known Friday when he failed..."


BODY FOUND IN POOL.; Inmate of Sanitarium Believed to Have Drowned Himself.
June 30, 1935 (14 years after Mrs. Biggs)
"...few miles from the spot where the body of Joseph Goodglass, apparently the victim of gangsters, was found, an attendant of Blythewood Sanitarium, here, ..."


ANOTHER pool death:
Ends life on Wertheim Estate
Aug 22, 1941
COS COB, Conn., Aug. 21 Offline body of Miss Rena Seeley, 45year-old nurse of 3366 Bronx Boulevard, New York City, was found floating in a swimming pool on ...


MRS. A. ALEXANDER LEAPS UNDER TRAIN; Lawyer's Wife, a Sanitarium Patient, Eludes Nurse at Greenwich and Is Killed.
Nov 16, 1935
"..Mrs. Susan Tilton Alexander, 27 years old, of Bernardsville, N.J., whose marriage to Archibald Stevens Alexander, a lawyer, was one of the events of the New York social season of 1929, killed herself here today by jumping in front of a train.."

BODY OF O.W. JAQUISH, ARTIST HERE, IS FOUND; Authority on Design Had Been a Patient in Greenwich Sanitarium.
Sep 9, 1931
"..body of Orrin William Jaquish, who has been missing since Aug. 27 from Blythewood Sanitarium on Stanwich Road, Greenwich, where he was a patient, ..."
(Court case against Blythewood involving liability of his disappearance and death)


WALTER LEWISOHN HELD IN SANITARIUM; Has Been Detained at Greenwich, Conn., Since May 22, Court Action Brings Out.
Sep 14, 1923
"..Walter Lewisohn, member of the firm of Lewisohn Brothers, bankers of 11 Broadway, has been an inmate of the Blythewood Sanitarium for the insane at Greenwich, Conn., since May 22, it was disclosed yesterday. He has written many letters to friends and to his attorney begging them to obtain his release..."

Walter Lewisohn Victim Of Fumigation Poison
Aug 2, 1938
"...Former Banker, Friend Of Elwell Of Murder Mystery Case, Dies At Greenwich Sanatorium Greenwich, Conn., Aug. 1 ..."

Trio Cleared In Gas Death At Sanitarium
Aug 28, 1938
Bridgeport, Aug. 27.--(AP.)--On the basic of his speculation that escaping gas probably caused the three persons who were supposed to be guarding the door of Sunset Cottage at Blythewood Sanitarium Greenwich, to fall asleep on their posts. Coroner Theodore E. Steiber...

Sanitarium Operator To Face Charge
Jun 17, 1953

GREENWICH, June 16 (AP)-- William H. Wiley, 37, operator of Blythewood Sanitarium here is under arrest on a charge of operating a mental institution without a license.

DR. WILLIAM WILEY DIES IN GREENWICH; He Founded the Blythewood Psychiatric Sanitarium With Wife in 1906. UNUSUAL METHODS' USED
November 08, 1936

Negro Maid Held For Theft of Ring

Feb 27, 1927
Eliznbotn Kennedy 17 viu arrested today charged with of a ring valued At 1000 As chambermaid at Blythewood Sanitarium la Greenwich she 18 ...


WOMAN DIES, MAN HELD.; Police Are Told That Car Struck Victim on Cos Cob Road.
May 9, 1932
Mrs. Mary Marley, an attendant at Blythewood Sanitarium, died at the Greenwich Hospital early this morning: from injuries received late Friday night. ...


WATSON F. BLAIR, CAPITALIST, DEAD; Chicagoan, Who Retired 37 Years Ago, Victim of Pneumonia in Greenwich, Conn.
"Watson Franklin Blair, retired Chicago capitalist and grain commission merchant, died yesterday of pneumonia in the Blythewood Sanitarium, Greenwich, Conn., where he had long been a patient. He was 74 years old. Funeral services will be held tomorrow at his home, 720 Rush Street, Chicago."

ALEXANDER F. ULLMAN; at Former Betting Commissioner Saratoga Dies at 84
Sep 4, 1943

Ullman, onetime betting commissioner at Saratoga and other York tracks, died on Thursday at the Blythewood Sanitarium, Greenwich, Conn., at tile age of 84. ...

BLYTHEWOOD HALL BURNED; Fire Destroys Gymnasium of Sanitariu..
Dec 22, 1939

"... The large gymnasium and recreation building on the Blythewood Sanitarium grounds, on Stanwieh Road, was burned early this-morning at--a--loss estimated ..."

WARREN DIES AT 47, A VICTIM OF STRAIN AS HEAD OF POLICE
Aug 14, 1929
"Joseph A. Warren, former Police Commissioner, died of general paralysis yesterday morning in the Blythewood Sanitarium at Greenwich, after a gradual decline ..."

___________________________________________

In all my research, I've come to find that the most well known patient from Blythewood seems to be Mrs. Marty Mann, a pioneer in the understanding of female alcoholism.
Her name outnumbers Blythewood articles, but in digging into her articles I was able to find more information on the Sanitarium itself:

"Perhaps fortunately for Marty's remaining shreds of pride, charity patients were never identified at Blythewood. As she rode through the big iron gate of the sanitarium, the contrast with Bellevue was "like going from Hell to Heaven.

Blythewood Sanitarium, once a private estate belonging to the notorious Boss Tweed, had opened in 1905 under the direction of Mrs. Anna C. Wiley, a nurse who had proved exceptionally successful with mentally disturbed patients.

Situated on fifty acres of rustic, wooded land bisected by a meandering stream, Blythewood at it's peak had eight main buildings, eight cottages, a chapel, a building for occupational therapy, and even a little golf course. Handsome naturalistic landscaping and shrubbery graced the grounds."

Most of the buildings are gone today, it was hard to figure out what building was what, but on my visit up to the present-day Church, I saw that the Chapel is still there.

Four separate buildings housed the seventy-five patients. Marty checked in at the main house next to the gate. This gracious mansion with white columns was the estate's original house. Blythewood's administrative center, it contained the doctors' offices as well as the "graduate house" for patients soon to be discharged...

..After being admitted, patients were sent to the "lockup house." There they would be held a few hours or days for observation. Farthest from the road was what was called the "violent house." Many of the patients in this building arrived by ambulance. The violent house contained a padded cell. Marty could hear occasional screams when she was walking back from pottery class. Patients in the violent house were often restrained, with their hands tied. Closer to the road was the "middle house". It had two floors, a finished attic, common rooms, and a small central dining room."

.......

"Though the sanitarium had been established as primarily a psychatric facility, its location in Greenwich was ironic regarding services to alcoholics. The town, a moneyed, educated, urbane bedroom community of New York City, had a reputation for widespread inebriety. As late as 1979, the problem of alcoholism was so pronounced that national study, reported in the Greenwich Time of July 30, 1979, called Greenwich the alcoholic capital of America, second only perhaps to the San Fernando Valley of California."

-read more here-

-blythewood sanitarium, inc. in pictures-

-records of other Greenwich and Fairfield County, Connnecticut Sanitariums (Crestview, Ardendale)-

Greenwich map, 1938:

Acid Attack Hoax Shocks Friends, Family; Businesses Work to Return Donations

People like this dumb b*tch make horrible things like this up, deforming themselves, while there are real victims of acid attacks out there! It's mind blowing.


ABC News- The revelation that Bethany Storro splashed acid in her own face has left her friends and family shocked, particularly those who rushed to her defense in the days following her maiming.

Pamela Storro, Storro's former mother-in-law, told ABC News earlier this week that rumors that the acid attack was a hoax were "insane" and that there was "no way" her former daughter in law would do this to herself.

When reached today by ABC News, Pamela Storro declined to speak, other than to say she is in disbelief over Storro's admission that she did, in fact, fake the attack.

"I'm shocked," was all that Pamela Storro would say of her former daughter-in-law's alleged confession.

John Pax, the gym owner who held a fundraising to help offset Storro's medical expenses following the attack, said that he too is in "disbelief."

"We put aside our business because we found someone in need, one of our own members," he said. "We felt for her."

Vancouver Police announced Thursday that 28-year-old Storro had fabricated the Aug. 30 attack that left her severely burned and garnered media attention worldwide -- including an invitation to appear on Oprah Winfrey's talk show.

Storro had originally told authorities a stranger had splashed acid in her face while she walked through a popular park Vancouver, Wash.

But police said that soon after they began investigating the claims -- which included releasing a sketch of a suspect Storro claimed was responsible for the attack -- facts weren't adding up.



-Rest of attention-loving-wh*re's article here-

Gunman (Idiot) Was Enraged Over Breakfast, Kills 5 People Then Self

MSNBC.com- JACKSON, Ky. — For months, Stanley Neace had shown increasing hostility to his neighbors in rural eastern Kentucky, to the point his landlord started eviction proceedings.

Then he snapped over how his wife cooked his eggs, and killed her and four others with a shotgun before shooting himself.

Neighbors in the roadside mobile home park said Neace stormed across several lawns in his pajamas on Saturday and fired dozens of shots from a 12-gauge pump shotgun. When the rampage ended, Neace and his wife lay dead, along with the gunman's stepdaughter and three neighbors.

Trooper Jody Sims of the Kentucky State Police said Neace, 47, killed the five people in two mobile homes, then went to his home and turned the gun on himself. Investigators were still working Sunday to piece together exactly what happened during the rampage, Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons said.

The state medical examiner's office in Frankfort was expected to perform autopsies on all six who died.

Neighbor Steve Smith saw the shootings from the window of his mobile home. When he walked outside, Smith said Neace took a shot at him but missed.

"He chased his wife around that Jeep shooting at her," Smith said, pointing to a SUV parked outside his mobile home. "I heard her screaming and running."

Sims said that when state police arrived about an hour after the gunfire began, they heard a single gunshot and found Neace's body on the porch in the unincorporated community of Mount Carmel in Breathitt County, which is home to about 16,000 people.

Sherri Anne Robinson, a relative of two of the victims, said witnesses to the shootings told her that Neace became enraged when his wife did not cook his breakfast to his liking.

"She tried to run to tell my family and he shot them too because they found out about it," she said.

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..The victims were identified as the gunman's wife, Sandra Neace, 54; her daughter Sandra R. Strong, 28; and neighbors Dennis Turner, 31; Teresa Fugate, 30; and Tammy Kilborn, 40.

The names of the victims were provided by Kentucky State Police, while Robinson described their relationships. Fugate is Robinson's sister, Turner is her cousin and Kilborn was a witness who happened to step onto the porch of another mobile home when she heard the commotion.

Robinson said Fugate was shot in front of her 7-year-old daughter.

"Her daughter said, 'Please, please don't shoot me,' and he said, 'All right, you can leave,' and she ran out," said Robinson, who spoke to her niece after the shootings. "She went and told her neighbors, and the neighbors called the law."

Robinson said Neace had never appeared threatening to her, but that he was known to have a violent history. Sims could not confirm that Neace had a criminal record.

County prosecutor Brendon Miller said his dealings with Neace came on nonviolent issues involving child support and he was in Miller's office a month ago regarding a traffic ticket.

Sims said when police arrived at the mobile home park about 90 miles southeast of Lexington, they heard a single gunshot, then found Neace's body on his porch. They found victims in two other mobile homes.

"Over eggs?" Robinson said. "I thought that was crazy. Really. I mean just because his eggs weren't hot?"

Landlord Ray Rastegar said Neace received monthly disability checks from the Social Security Administration, though he didn't know what his disability was. Rastegar said he had begun the process of evicting Neace, who had lived in the trailer park for about seven years, because he had become more hostile toward neighbors in recent months.

"He was unpredictable," Rastegar said. "Little things would set him off."

Neighbor Robert Collins, 50, said it wasn't the first time he's heard gunshots in the area. Neace often walked down to a nearby river to take practice shots, he said.

Smith said Neace ended up mumbling to himself on the porch of his trailer, pointed the shotgun at his head and pulled the trigger.

"He's been trouble ever since he's been here," Smith said. "He's always been trouble."

Talbott reported from Nashville, Tenn. AP writer Janet Blake in Louisville, Ky., contributed to this report.

Trend Investigated After 7 Kids Die in Latest Attack on Chinese Kindergarten

Fox News- It's a parent's worst nightmare. And it's becoming a nightmare for China.

An attacker with a cleaver hacked to death seven children and two adults at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, the latest in a string of savage assaults on the country's schools. Eleven other children were wounded.

This latest incident at a kindergarten in northwest China was the fifth major attack on children in a couple of months.

Each assault involved a lone male.

Wednesday's killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, returned home after the attack on the outskirts of the city of Hanzhong and committed suicide, the local government reported.

Sociologists suggest it could be caused by a lack of help for the mentally ill in the country and also in part caused by therising stress levels caused by inequalities in Chinese society as some prosper and many struggle.

For someone who has visited China frequently over the past 20 years I have seen dramatic changes but it's nothing to what the people there must have felt.

Going from Maoist uniforms and bicycles to Gucci hand bags and Mercedes in a few short years would be a shock to anyone.

And it's probably an even bigger shock to the Chinese in comparison to other societies as its people have come out of a life that always prided itself during the Maoist years on equality and lack of materialism.

Of course as you travel in China it's easy to see the difference now between the upwardly mobile and those fighting to survive.

Amongst the glittering skyscrapers of Beijing or Shanghai there is sometimes a glimpse of the struggles many are facing.

Once I saw workers, all men, fighting their way to the front of a crowd to get a ticket off a foreman to get work for the day, perhaps at a building site.

There are also unbelievable pressures on Chinese men to be successful now.

China's one child policy has created a disproportionate number of males to females as Chinese families traditionally favor boys.

At a basic level the chinese male is now competing with a lot more males to be successful, get a bride and have a family.

It doesn't, of course, explain these series of attacks on children.

But it's not something that is unique to China.

Japan has had similar cases in the past.

The Chinese authorities seem to be trying to downplay the incidents in the media.

Their defense being that they don't want to start a wave of panic, and some experts in China say coverage could also inspire copycat attacks.