BURN IN HELL

This story both infuriated me and scared the hell out of me when I first heard about it yesterday morning.

(On a side note, that makes [two] women in NYC to die in elevators in tragic/strange situations in one week.)

'Fiend confesses to elevator blaze that killed Brooklyn woman who fired him'

NY Post- A Brooklyn fiend repaid the kindness of an elderly woman who hired him for odd jobs by first stealing from her — and then burning her alive when she fired him, police said yesterday.

“I hope he burns in hell!” the victim’s stricken daughter, Sheila Gillespie Hillsman, 49, fumed to pals on Facebook.

Accused sadistic killer Jerome “Jerry’’ Isaac, 47, was reeking of gasoline when he turned himself in to cops more than eight hours after the horrific torching of tragic 73--year-old churchgoer Delores Gillespie.

Cops said Isaac was furious that the postal clerk had refused to pay him for some of the work he’d done at her Prospect Heights apartment after she discovered he’d swiped her kitchenware and DVD player.

Isaac allegedly ambushed the terrified woman at 4:10 p.m. Saturday, standing in the fifth-floor hallway of her building as the elevator doors opened and she started to step off, returning from a trip to Key Foods with bags hanging from her wrists.

Isaac sprayed her with a flammable liquid, used a barbecue lighter to set her ablaze, tossed a Molotov cocktail at her and then sprayed her again for extra measure even though she was already engulfed in flames, screaming in agony, police said.

The madman then fled — first to his nearby apartment at 315 Lincoln Place that he shared with his brother in the gentrifying neighborhood to also try to set it ablaze, police said. He managed to only damage the door frame.

The perp ran next to the rooftop of 571 Lincoln Place, where he hid, thinking he’d been burned — even though he wasn’t — and terrified that he would be easily identified if he was spotted on the street, police said.

He fell asleep on the roof, and when he woke up, Isaac went on the run again, wandering around before finally turning himself in at 12:30 a.m. at Transit District 32, about two miles away in Crown Heights, officials said.

Some of the items he had allegedly used to set ablaze Gillespie were recovered on the Lincoln Place rooftop, authorities said.

“I set the fire in the hallway, and I set the fire in the elevator,” the suspect sniveled to cops after surrendering — although he refused to admit he had also burned Gillespie, police told The Post.

He was charged with first-degree murder and arson.

The victim’s grief-stricken son, Maurice Gillespie, 37, said his trusting mother “just met [Isaac] one day and said he was an honest guy” and hired him.

Her nephew, Rick Causey, 52, who lived with the mother and son, added, “She trusted him” and even gave him a key to the apartment.

But the son said his mom realized that Isaac was a thief at some point earlier this year because she’d be on the street and found herself having to “[buy] her stuff back.”

“He was doing more stealing than cleaning,’’ Causey noted.

After learning of Isaac’s thievery, Gillespie refused to pay him for at least some of his work. A furious Isaac then left a note on the family’s door last summer with a list of chores for which he was demanding payment, relatives said.

Not getting any satisfaction, he began a campaign of terror against Gillespie, kin said.

He was harassing her, chasing her down the street and cursing at her,” Maurice said, adding he’d seen Isaac hanging around across the street from his mother’s apartment at 203 Underhill Ave. three days ago.

Neighbor Dorinda Thomas, 56, said Gillespie was “desperately afraid” of the suspect.

“She knew that something was going to happen to her in that building,” Thomas said. “Everyone knew this.”

Still, cops said Gillespie never filed an official complaint again Isaac, who claimed that she owed him $2,100 for work he’d supposedly done.

But Maurice’s girlfriend, Linda Moses, noted bitterly, “She was just trying to help [Isaac] out, and here we are, for being kind.”

Gillespie, who worked at the General Post Office in East New York, and Isaac were never romantically involved, relatives and cops said.

The suspect’s chilling attack on his victim was caught on video tape and showed him allegedly wearing gloves and a dust mask pulled up on top of his head when he pounced, police said.

His spraying of Gillespie was methodical, ensuring that the beloved Gillespie, known as a local activist who helped the homeless and spoke out passionately against crime in her neighborhood, was covered head to toe in the flammable liquid, police said.

“She’s cowering, trying to protect her face with her hands,’’ said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, describing footage of Gillespie’s final moments.

Isaac made statements incriminating himself when he was under questioning, sources said.

“He was giving some of this stuff up,” a source said

One police source called the scene as nothing less than “torture.’’

Neighbors said the accused maniac, who had no prior arrests, was known locally as a loner.

“He’s always out riding his bike. He collects empty cans and bottles Sometime, he’ll have a big bag of them . . . He was never friendly. I’ve never seen him talking to anyone,” said Isaac’s neighbor, Eric Charles, 42.

“When I came home I saw all the police. One told me what he did in the elevator and said he did something here too. It’s crazy.”

Causey, Gillespie’s nephew, blamed himself partly for the tragedy, saying he usually walked the victim to and from the street when she went shopping.

“I should have been there,” he said.

Causey said he was watching TV when he heard a commotion and looked into the hallway but that cops and firemen forced him back into the apartment.

He said cops questioned him at the 77th Precinct station house until 9 p.m. Saturday before letting him go.

Neighbors described Gillespie as a “wonderful” person who always looked out for her neighbors and community.

“Everybody in the neighborhood would tell you, anything she had in her house she’d give you,” said Thomas, 56, adding that Gillespie was her nephew’s godmother.

“She was a wonderful lady, you understand.”

Margie Grooms, 67, who lives on the block, said Gillespie was a “community activist.”

Another neighbor who would only say her name was Rose, said Gillespie “was a lady who looked out for everybody. Whoever did this had no heart.”

Additional reporting by Doug Auer, Jessica Simeone, Jamie Schram and Jennifer Bain

3 Tracy Torture Suspects Plead Guilty

STOCKTON, Calif. -- Three out of four people accused of torturing a teenage boy in Tracy pleaded guilty Friday morning, just days before their trial was scheduled to start.

Michael Schumacher, Kelly Lau and Caren Ramirez were sentenced to at least three decades in prison each.

A fourth defendant, Anthony Waiters, was not at a court hearing held Friday in Stockton. He is expected to face trial.

There's still a gag order in the case, but prosecutors explained why they think a plea deal was a good idea.

"There are three minors involved in this matter, two of whom don't have to testify against their parents, which is a huge consideration," Deputy District Attorney Angela Hayes said, alluding to Schumacher and Lau's children.

Police said Schumacher and Lau held the boy against his will for more than a year and, along with the teen's one-time guardian, Ramirez, beat him, denied him food and sometimes kept him chained to the fireplace or a heavy table inside a Tracy home.

Waiters lived near Schumacher and Lau on Tennis Lane. He has pleaded not guilty.

The boy escaped in 2008 and showed up at a local fitness center bruised, emaciated and wearing a shackle on his ankle.

Under terms of the plea deal, Schmacher faces 30 years in prison, Lau faces 33 years and Ramirez faces 34 years.

DA: Mother Forced Mentally Disabled Daughter Laura Cummings to Eat Feces and Die

BUFFALO, N.Y. (CBS/AP) Laura Cummings lived a short, tortured life filled with unspeakable abuse at the hands of her mother and half-brother, Eva Cummings and Luke Wright, according to a grand jury indictment returned Feb. 26.

Eva Cummings, 51, and her son face a total of 15 charges in the January 2010 suffocation death of 23-year-old Laura Cummings. The indictment reads like a macabre list of torture and abuse.

Police allege that over the last few months of Laura's life, Eva Cummings and her son Wright, 31, shackled Laura to a metal chair with a sack over her head, brutally sodomized her with a broomstick and at times shoved her face in her own feces.

"Starting in November, there’s a significant escalation of her debasement as a human being," Senior Trial Counsel Thomas M. Finnerty of the DA’s Office said. "It was happening on a daily or nightly basis."

Finnerty, who has prosecuted a number of heinous crimes in his 17 years in the DA’s office, called it "the worst case I’ve ever seen."

"It’s sadistic, and it’s allegedly sustained over a long period of time," he said.

The Cummings household, in North Collins, N.Y., and prior to that in Olean, both just outside of Buffalo, was well-known to Child Protective Services, Patricia Wright, 27, Laura's half sister, told the Buffalo News.

She said she reported abuse to Erie County Child Protective Services and Erie County Family Court more than a decade ago. Patricia Wright said she, herself, was physically abused for years, resulting in a broken ankle and cracked vertebrae in her back.

"Chaos. Almost like a living hell. No child should ever have to go through what we went through," Patricia Wright, told CBS affiliate WIBV when asked what the apartment was like.

Mother and son also are accused of unlawfully imprisoning Laura Cummings because of her mental disability — an elevated hate crime charge.

Eva Cummings could face a possible sentence of 83 years to life on five charges, while her son could face 142 years to life on 10 charges, prosecutors said.

Court Orders Ritual Disfigurement

Sick, sick world...
"A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them...


Sentence was passed on Monday under a rarely invoked Islamic law dating from the 1980s. In the past similar sentences have been revoked on appeal."
Read article...

This Day In History

Sep 10 1990
Liberian president Samuel Doe is stripped naked, beaten, and tortured to death. He had been taken hostage in Monrovia the previous day by rebels led by Prince Johnson. They capture the entire process on videotape, which soon becomes West Africa's most-watched snuff film. Most memorable moment: when they cut off one of Doe's ears and Johnson chews it up.

PHOENIX -- A grand jury has indicted a Phoenix woman accused of torturing, killing and dismembering a man whose body was found burning in a trash can earlier this month.

The body of Terry Neely, 46, was found on Aug. 5. Investigators arrested Angela Simpson in connection with the case less than two weeks later.

On Thursday, a grand jury indicted Simpson on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and abandonment or concealment of a dead body -- all felonies. In a jailhouse interview with 3TV's Marissa Wingate, Simpson, 33, admitted killing Neely, who was confined to a motorized wheelchair, because he was a "snitch."

"I beat him to death. ... I killed him and cut him up," Simpson said.

Since that interview, Simpson has refused to talk to the media again.

According to Phoenix police investigators, Neely had been stabbed 50 times and beaten. A nail had also be driven into his head.

Police also arrested Edward McFarland, believing he helped Simpson get rid of Neely's body. McFarland is charged with abandonment or concealment or dead body and hinder prosecution.

"The level of cruelty alleged in this case is severe, and we will aggressively prosecute this case," said Coutny Attorney Andrew Thomas in a news release. "Our office will determine in the near future whether to seek the death penalty for this defendant."

In a jailhouse interview with 3TV's Marissa Wingate, a Phoenix woman admitted killing a man confined to a motorized wheelchair after torturing him for days because he was a "snitch."

Angela Simpson, 33, told 3TV she promised Terry Neely sex and drugs in order to get him to come to her North Phoenix apartment.

Once there, Simpson said she beat Simpson with a tire iron, hammered a nail into his head, pulled his teeth and strangled him with a television cord.

"You made him watch it through a mirror?" Wingate asked.

"Yes, I did," Simpson replied calmly. "He needed to see what he deserved."

Wingate describe Simpson as articulate and straightforward. When Wingate asked her why she killed Neely, the answer, to Simpson, seemed simple.

"I don't want my children or the people I consider family to be in a place where there are snitches," she said.

Neely lived in an assisted-living home not far from Simpson's apartment and often rode around in his motorized wheelchair. Simpson admitted that she barely knew Neely, but she did consider him a snitch.

"He told on a righteous person years ago," she said. "He told me that."

"I beat him to death. ... I killed him and cut him up," she said.

Simpson told Wingate she dismembered Neely's body and stuffed it into a trash can, which she then torched. The burning trash bin was found outside a North Phoenix church on Aug. 5. Police arrested Simpson for the murder on Aug. 19.

Simpson, who was already in jail when police caught up with her, told Wingate this is not the first time she's killed.

"I believe informants and child molesters should be killed ... period," she said.

Simpson said she was "kind of relieved" that police arrested her. She also said she takes medication and might be considered mentally ill.

"I think something's wrong with the world that I live in, but, according to other people, yes, somethiing is wrong with me."

Wingate asked Simpson if she felt guilty about Neely's death.

"Guilty? For ridding the world of a snitch? No, I don't feel guilty," she answered.

Girl Grew Up Locked in Backyard Shed

(CNN) -- From the time she was an 11-year-old, blue-eyed, freckle-faced blonde until she was a 29-year-old woman with two children, Jaycee Dugard was kept locked away in a backyard compound of sheds and tarps by a couple police say abducted her.

She was more than 160 miles from home, and her family had no idea where she was.

Nobody else knew she was there except the couple that snatched her off the street in front of her house in South Lake Tahoe, California, in 1991, and took her straight to the soundproof shed, police said.

Dugard's pocket of Phillip and Nancy Garrido's backyard in Antioch, California, was so overgrown no one even knew it existed.

The details about Dugard's time in captivity emerged Thursday after one of Northern California's most enduring mysteries was solved and the Garridos were arrested and accused of her kidnapping.

Anyone who came across the couple's backyard, littered with garbage cans and a dishwasher, would assume that it ended at a six-foot fence.

"You could walk through the backyard and never know there was another set of living circumstances," said Fred Kollar, undersheriff of El Dorado County. "There was nothing that would cause you to question it. You can't see it from either adjoining property. It was presumably well arranged."

But tucked away beyond the tangle of bushes, high grass and trees was a blue tarp that concealed the only world Dugard had known since her abduction.

In it were sheds and tarps, a makeshift bathroom and shower, along with electricity supplied by an extension cord. Kollar compared the primitive conditions to camping.

Dugard lived for several years there by herself. The sheds were locked from the outside.

She grew up and had her captor's children there, and raised them there.

"None of them have ever been to school, they've never been to a doctor," Kollar said. "They were kept in complete isolation in this compound, if you will, at the rear of the house," he said. "They were born there."

The children, both girls, are now 15 and 11.

"They are all in good health," Kollar said in response to a question about how Dugard and her children are doing. "But living in a backyard for the last 18 years does take its toll."

This Makes Me F*cking SICK.

Woman Gets 5-Years for Toddler's Death

New Haven (WTNH) - A Hamden woman has been sentenced to five years in prison and five years probation in the dehydration death of a toddler. The baby's mother was so distraught during today's sentencing, she had to be removed from the courtroom.

Sharon Patterson plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death of 23 month old Amari Jackson. Prosecutors say Patterson didn't give the baby anything to drink for more than a week because he wet the bed.

Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, but News Channel's Annie Rourke says that when Patterson tried to apologize, Amari's mother began screaming and tried to lunge across the barrier before she was forcibly removed. By the time she walked out of the New Haven court, Sara Hicks had collected herself and did not want to speak to reporters.

Amari was just one month shy of his second birthday when he died in February 2008. Sara Hicks says she was so ill that she left her son at Patterson's Putnam Avenue apartment in Hamden. But Patterson denied the boy to drink any fluids for at least a week.

"Part of the deprivation was that Sharon Patterson laced drinking glasses throughout the house with some form of hot sauce so Amari wouldn't drink," said Capt. Ronald Smith, Hamden Police Department.

In court today, Patterson's defense attorney said his client is not a monster, rather she has diminished mental capacity. At her trial, her charge was reduced from manslaughter to negligent homicide. Experts testified that she has the decision-making ability of a six-year old.

But that didn't soften the blow for Amari's family as Sara Hicks sobbed throughout the proceedings, pleading with the judge to impose a strict sentence saying, "The dead cannot cry out for justice."

Dad who ate eyes found mentally incompetent

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- The man accused of biting out his 4-year-old son's eyes will not stand trial.

A Kern County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that Angelo Mendoza is not mentally competent for trial. County mental health officials will recommend whether Mendoza should go to a county or state mental health facility.

The 34-year-old man is accused of attacking his son, Angelo Mendoza Jr., in late April. The child, who was discovered by a neighbor lying naked in a bloody heap on the floor of an Ohio Drive apartment, told officers, "My daddy ate my eyes," and, "Daddy bit my eyes and hands," according to Bakersfield police reports.

Mendoza is in a wheelchair with a spinal cord injury, and police said he rolled away from his apartment after the alleged attack and started hacking away at his leg with an ax. Police reported that Mendoza was showing signs of being under the influence of the psychedelic drug best known as PCP or angel dust during the alleged abuse.

Criminal proceedings have been delayed multiple times because Mendoza was reportedly in poor medical condition and uncommunicative.

The first doctor to examine Mendoza for mental competency determined last month that he would be mentally competent to stand trial if he was on proper medication. Another psychiatrist was appointed after the July 23 hearing, leading to Tuesday's ruling.

Charges of mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting injury upon a child have been put on hold. A person in Mendoza's situation would typically be re-evaluated on a regular basis to determine if they're mentally sound enough to face charges, according to the public defender's office.

Mendoza is scheduled to return to court Sept. 22.

This Bitch Is CRAZY!!

PHOENIX -- In a jailhouse interview with 3TV's Marissa Wingate, a Phoenix woman admitted killing a man confined to a motorized wheelchair after torturing him for days because he was a "snitch."

Angela Simpson, 33, told 3TV she promised Terry Neely sex and drugs in order to get him to come to her North Phoenix apartment.

Once there, Simpson said she beat Simpson with a tire iron, hammered a nail into his head, pulled his teeth and strangled him with a television cord.

"You made him watch it through a mirror?" Wingate asked.

"Yes, I did," Simpson replied calmly. "He needed to see what he deserved."

Wingate describe Simpson as articulate and straightforward. When Wingate asked her why she killed Neely, the answer, to Simpson, seemed simple.

"I don't want my children or the people I consider family to be in a place where there are snitches," she said.

Neely lived in an assisted-living home not far from Simpson's apartment and often rode around in his motorized wheelchair. Simpson admitted that she barely knew Neely, but she did consider him a snitch.

"He told on a righteous person years ago," she said. "He told me that."

"I beat him to death. ... I killed him and cut him up," she said.

Simpson told Wingate she dismembered Neely's body and stuffed it into a trash can, which she then torched. The burning trash bin was found outside a North Phoenix church on Aug. 5. Police arrested Simpson for the murder on Aug. 19.

Simpson, who was already in jail when police caught up with her, told Wingate this is not the first time she's killed.

"I believe informants and child molesters should be killed ... period," she said.

Simpson said she was "kind of relieved" that police arrested her. She also said she takes medication and might be considered mentally ill.

"I think something's wrong with the world that I live in, but, according to other people, yes, somethiing is wrong with me."

Wingate asked Simpson if she felt guilty about Neely's death.

"Guilty? For ridding the world of a snitch? No, I don't feel guilty," she answered.



....."Once inside the apartment, police say Simpson began beating Neely with a tire iron and hammer. She also pulled out his teeth and strangled him with a television cable.


She said she tortured Neely for three days.


According to autopsy results, Neely sustained multiple blunt-force head injuries and a 3-inch nail had been driven or hammered into his brain. He was also stabbed approximately 50 times, his throat was sliced and he was dismembered.

Simpson admitted that she dismembered Neely and placed him in a trash can. She borrowed a car and drove to a church at Ninth and Peoria avenues and set the trash can on fire.

Simpson allegedly committed a robbery along with Edward McFarlan, better known as "Cracker" last week. He reportedly told his apartment complex manager about the gruesome murder but threatened to kill him if he told polilce. "

".....Phoenix police have released the name of the murdered man whose body was found in a burning trash can in the backyard of a Phoenix church earlier this week.

According to investigators, Terry Neely, 46, was living at an assisted-living facility. With the help of surveillance video, detectives have determined that the last time Neely was seen alive was when he left the facility in his motorized wheelchair on Aug. 2 at about 8 p.m.

Police have confirmed that Neely's body had been paritally dismembered when it was found stuffed in the trash can in the area of Ninth and Peoria avenues Wednesday morning. He was later identified through fingerprints.

Neely's motorized wheelchair was not found at the scene. At this point, police do not know where it is.

Phoenix Police investigators are asking for assistance in finding the motorized wheelchair (click here for a photo )-- and any information regarding his death. If anyone has any information about this incident or saw Mr. Neely with someone on Sunday evening they are encouraged to call the Phoenix Police Department, Violent Crimes Bureau at 602-262-6141 or Silent Witness at 480-WITNESS. For Spanish, call 480-TESTIGO.

Child Found Beaten, Starved in Closet; Mom Arrested

APPLE VALLEY -- A mother and her teenage roommate have been arrested after authorities say they found her 5-year-old son 'weak and emaciated' inside a closet.

Officers say the child was living at a house in the 21000 block of Pahute Road along with 9 other children, 3 adults and a teenage boy.

An anonymous tipster called a child abuse hot line this week and reported that a young child was being held hostage and denied food and water in a house.

Deputies say the child had bruises and lacerations all over his body and immediately asked arriving deputies for water.

The victim was transported by ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital and later to Loma Linda University Children's Hospital for treatment. He's being treated for burns, bruises, cuts and malnutrition.

Deputies say the child's mother, 31-year-old Desiree Gonzales, and the 16-year-old male roommate had been beating, burning and depriving the child of food and water.

The suspects were displaying symptoms of being under the influence of suspected methamphetamine and were also identified as having Los Angeles area gang affiliations, deputies said.

The other 9 children were removed from the home by Children and Family Services. The victim was the only child that belonged to Gonzales.

Gonzales was arrested and booked into the West Valley Detention Center on charges of Child Abuse/Torture.

The 16-year old was arrested and booked into Juvenile Hall on the same charges. It's believed he may be Gonzales' boyfriend.

The other two adults in the house were not charged.

The investigation is on-going.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact Detectives Bessinger or Goddard at (909) 387-3615.

Tortured Teen Testimony Released

A 16-year-old allegedly tortured for a year inside a Tracy home told a grand jury that he escaped because his captors talked about killing him and dumping his body in the Delta.

Afraid for his life, the boy — called Kyle in court papers — fled the Tennis Lane home on Dec. 1 by unlocking himself from the fireplace to which he was chained and using a trampoline to hop over the backyard wall. He then limped across an adjacent parking lot and into the lobby of a sports club, where employees called police for help.

After he heard his alleged captors talking on speakerphone about how they planned to cut off his fingers with a meat cleaver, Kyle said he knew then that he had to find a way out.

“I had to hurry up and leave or it was just going to be the end from there,” he said in a newly unsealed 928-page transcript of a grand jury hearing that led to a slew of indictments against the four adults accused of imprisoning Kyle.

Husband and wife Michael Schumacher and Kelly Lau were arrested in December along with next-door neighbor Anthony Waiters and a woman named Carén Ramirez who called herself Kyle’s mom. Police said they starved, drugged and beat the boy for as many as 18 months after he fled a Sacramento group home in spring 2007.

The four could spend life in prison if found guilty of the several charges of torture, kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault with caustic chemicals and other forms of abuse. All except Schumacher pleaded not guilty to all charges. He has yet to enter a plea. The four are due in court again on June 18.

Kyle told the grand jury that the abuse escalated from slapping and punching to slicing flesh and drawing blood for offenses as minor as forgetting to feed the dog or for taking food to slake his hunger.

Waiters once sliced Kyle’s arm with a steak knife, Kyle said. Ramirez held his arm down and Kyle screamed, the boy alleged. Kyle said that afterwards, the pair poured bleach on his cuts and doctored them with salt and butter before wrapping his arm in a paper towel.

Other times, Ramirez, Lau and Waiters would stick an aluminum baseball bat into the fireplace and brand Kyle’s back, the teen said.

“Carén and Kelly came up with the idea of, like, heating the bat up, and then I guess they started branding me with the bat,” Kyle said.

The boy said Schumacher would sometimes punch him in the face until he passed out. Kyle also said he was chained to the fireplace, where he was forced to sleep most nights.

Lau used a belt once to choke him until he lost consciousness, Kyle said. She allegedly strapped a belt around his neck and buckled it. He dropped to the fireplace hearth and his arm fell on the grate while the fire blazed, he said.

“When I first woke up, I didn’t know what happened or anything,” he said. “So then I immediately noticed my arm was, like, discolored and everything, and I was, like, really freaking out, and at first I didn’t feel anything.”

To treat the burn, Kyle said Ramirez would just pour bleach on it. His wounds scabbed over and became infected.

The boy said he never saw a physician and had been kept out of school since the eighth grade.

He said he hasn’t seen his mother, Susan Barnett, since he was about 8 years old, when Ramirez somehow obtained custody of him and his brother. Barnett has since died.

Kyle said Ramirez talked him into running away from a Sacramento foster home. He wound up living with her and a woman named Catherine Cockrell in Pleasanton. Cockrell introduced Ramirez to Lau and Schumacher, who opened up their home to the pair in July 2007.

From there, Kyle recounts horrific abuse. He said the family forced him to do all the chores and make him kneel for hours on the floor until his knees hurt. He said he was hit constantly and never got to shower. The family, he said, would rarely call him by his real name, and Ramirez, he added, would refer to him as “Iggit.”

Kyle was allegedly abused nearly every day until he bled, and that’s the only reason he ever got new clothes, he said.

Sometime in fall 2008, Lau poured him a cup of “Red Hot Damn,” a spicy cinnamon liquor, said Waiters’ niece, Chelsea Waiters, 16. She said Kyle drank it, got sick and vomited. Lau then screamed at him, Chelsea told grand jurors.

At other times, the adults would force him to chew marijuana and make him drink liquor, the boy said.

The four Schumacher children, ages 1 through 9, said they understood that what was happening to Kyle was “bad,” but they didn’t want to tell anyone. The oldest child said she actually liked that Kyle lived with her family because he would hang out with her and help her with homework.

Grand jurors also interviewed detectives, friends and family of both the victim and the suspects and neighbors.

Louisiana Teen Held in Infant's Killing, Police Say

Gut-wrenching details..
(CNN) -- A 17-year-old Louisiana man faces first-degree murder and aggravated rape charges in the beating death of his girlfriend's 8-month-old son, police said.

Authorities responding to a call of an unresponsive infant Saturday found the body of 8-month-old Da-Von Lonzo in an apartment near Gretna, Louisiana, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

The baby was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The medical examiner ruled the boy's death a homicide, noting that his body had multiple fractures consistent with being beaten. The child also had tears in his rectum, police said.

In an interview, the teen, Arnold T. Ross, initially told authorities Da-Von fell down the stairs and stopped breathing while he was baby-sitting him. But a neighbor reported hearing loud noises coming from the apartment, and investigators noted inconsistencies in Ross's statement, according to the sheriff's office.

Ross later admitted that Da-Von began to cry while he was watching him, police said, and "confessed to beating the infant repeatedly. According to Ross, the child began to defecate on himself. Ross claims he placed his fingers inside the infant's rectum in an attempt to clean up the child."

Under Louisiana law, a 17-year-old can be charged as an adult, according to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Sunday that people charged with first-degree murder cannot receive a bond.

Ross has a lengthy criminal history, police said, including arrests on drug possession charges; obscenity; battery on a correctional officer; three counts of battery on a school teacher; theft; weapons charges; and assault.

It was unclear Sunday if Ross had been convicted of any of those charges.

Heidi Pratt Hospitalized in Costa Rica

This SERIOUSLY gave me a huge case of the LOLS when I heard on the news she had suffered a gastric ulcer from stress on the show! Probably highly exaggerated so she could get some more publicity.

It might be cruel, lol but I never liked her.

E! Online: Whether by choice or by act of God, Speidi keeps getting out of I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

Heidi Pratt was hospitalized today in Costa Rica during her and Spencer's stay in "isolation" from the rest of the cast of the NBC reality series. Spencer accompanied his wife on the ambulance ride and remains by her bedside.

Various reports said she was suffering from a stomach infection, but there was no immediate comment from either NBC or Spedi's rep.

The news was broken by Spencer's sister, Stephanie Pratt, who tweeted that "[Heidi was] rushed to the hospital and has an IV in her arm after being locked in a dark room for 3 days w no food or water. Pls pray she will be ok…Her family is flying out to see her in the hospital."

The younger Pratt blames NBC for going "too far" in punishing the Hills couple after they tried to quit the bug-eating, jungle-surviving show after just one episode and then begged to return.

Last week, NBC exec Paul Telegdy said the "insincere, lazy, entitled" Pratts had to endure a stint in "isolation" before producers would decide the twosome's fate on Monday's show, vowing that the Pratts "really are going to bare their souls."

Torture A Hallmark of Drug Kidnappings

"Jaime Andrade was just stepping out of the shower when the men came to snatch him.

The kidnappers took him to a house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood and brutally tortured him for three days. Andrade's case is one of more than 1,000 kidnappings that police in Phoenix, Arizona, have investigated since 2006. The city has become the nation's kidnapping capital as Mexican drug violence seeps into the United States."

[CNN Article]

OOo, We Should Do This For Casey Anthony.

No, But Seriously. This isn't nice:
"The latest punishment for homosexuality in Baghdad, glue the anus shut and induce diarrhea, apparently fatal. Quaint Google-translate on Al Arabiya article:


'The [substance] called gum-Amiri, an Iranian lead to gum paste intercommunication so that the skin can not be opened only with a surgery, and post-closure rule is given to facilitating and get diarrhea, drink, and there is no outlet, and this may lead to death, these things were distributed in short clips on mobile phones in the Baghdad.' "