The Crime Ledger: October 9, 2026

Ensenada: Three Men Convicted of Murdering Robinson Brothers and Carter Rhoad

A judge in Ensenada on Friday found three Mexican men guilty of murdering Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Carter Rhoad, who were robbed and shot on a surfing trip along the Baja California coast in April 2024. Judge Raúl Hernández Arellano ruled alone, with no jury, and an aide translated the verdict for the brothers’ parents as he read it, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The defendants are identified in court only by their first names: Jesús Gerardo, known as “El Kekas,” Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús. Their surnames have been withheld for legal reasons, ABC News (Australia) and The Guardian report. All three were convicted of aggravated homicide, aggravated robbery, violent robbery and violent vehicle theft, according to the Herald. The Guardian reports the judge found that they acted with premeditation. They stood in orange prison jumpsuits while the ruling was read and showed no visible reaction.

The killings happened at a remote surf camp. The three friends vanished in late April 2024 while camping beside the ocean in a part of Baja California also hit by drug trafficking and violent crime. Their bodies, along with that of a local farmer, were found days later at the bottom of a well, the Herald reports. They had been shot. The Guardian describes the hiding place as a clifftop shaft and reports gunshot wounds to their heads.

Prosecutors framed the case as a robbery that went wrong. The defence argued there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it, but the judge found that several witnesses had given credible and consistent accounts, ABC News reports. The most damaging came from Jesús Gerardo’s former girlfriend, who had already been jailed for instigating the robbery. The Guardian reports she was sentenced to two decades in prison in November 2025 after admitting her role. On the stand, she said he had described to her how he killed the men and joked about how they cried, according to ABC News. He told her the victims had handed over their car keys and wallets and “begged not to be killed.” The trial also heard evidence that he was a hit man with a list of targets, ABC News reports.

Martin and Debra Robinson flew from Western Australia and sat through every day of the five-week trial within touching distance of the accused. When the verdict came, Debra Robinson cried and embraced Australian Ambassador Crispin Conroy, who had travelled to Ensenada for the ruling, the Herald reports. “I think parents love their children that much that they would find the strength,” she said when asked how they had managed it.

“While no verdict can ever bring back our boys or ease the heartbreak of losing them, we hope this outcome represents an important step towards justice and accountability,” Martin Robinson said outside court. “Callum and Jake had their whole lives ahead of them, filled with dreams, love and promise.”

Testifying on the trial’s final day, Debra Robinson said what hurt most was that “in their final hours, they were treated with such cruelty,” according to The Guardian. Rhoad’s family followed Friday’s hearing by video link from the United States.

Jake was a doctor due to start work at a hospital in Geelong once he got home. Callum had played lacrosse professionally in the United States and was living in San Diego. Both grew up in Perth. Their parents have set up the Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation in their names.

The judge told the couple he was ashamed the murders had happened in his country, and that he could only do what Mexican law allowed, ABC News reports. Prosecutors asked for 210 years for each man, though the maximum sentence in Baja California is 60 years, The Guardian reports. Sentencing is set for Oct. 16, according to ABC News. Fewer than 10 percent of homicides in Mexico end in a conviction, the Herald notes, citing Human Rights Watch.

Berngau: Two Gun Inspectors Shot Dead, Hunter Arrested

Two district office employees sent to check how a hunter stored his guns were shot dead at his home in Berngau, a village in Bavaria’s Upper Palatinate, on Thursday afternoon. The suspect, a 60-year-old German man, barricaded himself inside for about 12 hours before special forces blasted their way in and arrested him at about 2:20 a.m. Friday, police said.

The dead are a 54-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man who worked for the Landratsamt, the district administration, in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz. Their names have not been released. They had come for a routine inspection, part of which was to check that the man was storing his weapons properly, police told the German news agency dpa. According to dpa’s reporting in Der Tagesspiegel, he legally owned ten guns.

Several emergency calls came in to police and paramedics at about 2 p.m., with witnesses reporting the sound of shots. Officers who reached the property found the 45-year-old lying lifeless on the ground in front of a white house. His colleague was found later inside the building. “We assume that she died immediately in the course of the shots,” a police spokesman said, as reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung, adding that the position she was found in pointed to that.

The suspect then did something unusual. He phoned the police control room himself. “The suspect contacted the control room by telephone. In the conversations that followed he stated that he was in his home and in possession of firearms,” a police spokeswoman said overnight. He admitted firing and said he would not give up without resistance, according to police.

A major operation followed and ran deep into the night. Officers surrounded the house, a special operations unit (SEK) moved in with an armoured vehicle and a police helicopter circled overhead, while residents were told to stay indoors. Negotiators kept up phone contact for hours. “We always try to bring about a peaceful solution, and that basically happens through communication,” a police spokesman said, according to the Kronen Zeitung, citing BR24. “The alternative is clear to everyone.”

He held out. “In the end there was an entry, using explosives as well,” a police spokesman said of the arrest. Officers shot the man during the raid. Police first described a light wound to the leg, then said the gunshots had left him seriously injured, dpa reported. He was taken to hospital under guard.

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect was a hunter and sport shooter who had not previously been known to police, and that there were no signs of any extremist views, according to dpa. Police said they could not yet say anything about a motive.

The inspections themselves are routine in Germany. Hunters, sport shooters and collectors usually hold a weapons ownership card, and to get one they have to prove reliability, expertise, personal suitability and a genuine need, dpa explains. Checks can be announced or unannounced. Inspectors may only enter the rooms where guns are kept, and in Bavaria they are staff of the district or city weapons authority. They are not armed. Police can be called in to support them in individual cases.

Once he has been treated, the man is to be questioned by the criminal police in Regensburg in close coordination with the Nuremberg-Fürth public prosecutor’s office, which now leads the investigation. He is then due to be brought before an investigating judge, who will decide on pretrial detention or placement in a psychiatric clinic, dpa reports. He has not yet been charged, and he is presumed innocent.

Wailuku: Kaneholani Convicted of Murdering Officer Suzanne O

A Maui jury on Thursday convicted Clembert Kaneholani, 39, of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Maui Police Department Officer Suzanne O, who was hit under her arm, in a gap in her bulletproof vest, while answering a call at the old Pāʻia Sugar Mill in August 2025. The verdict in 2nd Circuit Court in Wailuku came after a two-week trial and roughly two days of deliberation. First-degree murder in Hawaii carries life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kaneholani, also known as “Aliʻi,” faced six counts. Along with murder, the jury found him guilty of reckless endangering and four firearms charges, Hawaii News Now reports. According to state officials quoted by the station, it was the first time a defendant charged under Hawaii’s first-degree murder statute covering the killing of police officers, judges and prosecutors had gone to trial in Maui County.

The night began with a 911 call. At 8:26 p.m. on Aug. 15, 2025, police were sent to an “in-progress terroristic threatening” report at the sugar mill property off Baldwin Avenue, Maui Now reports. A caller said an unknown person had trespassed on the property and fired a weapon at them. When officers arrived, the armed man fired, striking one of them.

A fellow officer told jurors he was moving cautiously through the property when he heard a gunshot, KITV reports. O was wearing a bulletproof vest, but the bullet struck an exposed area under her arm. Officers returned fire and hit the suspect in the lower body, according to Maui Now. They later found Kaneholani hiding behind a concrete block and arrested him, KITV reports. He was treated for his wounds. Officers tried to save O, but she died of her injuries.

Prosecutor Andrew Martin told the jury that some of the strongest evidence came from Kaneholani’s own mouth. In recorded jail calls, he said things like “I got me one doe” and “If you’re in blue, I ain’t a friend to you,” Hawaii News Now reports. His lawyer, Zachary Raidmae, argued the shooting was an accident and blamed officers for not following protocol. After the verdict Raidmae declined to comment, saying his client was “digesting the verdict.”

Jurors began deliberating at 3:20 p.m. Tuesday and returned a unanimous verdict Thursday afternoon. In the gallery, O’s relatives, fellow officers and supporters hugged and cried. Her family told Hawaii News Now they had mixed emotions: grateful for the verdict, but aware it does not bring her back.

“While no amount of time in a prison cell can replace the loss of Officer O or heal the pain her family and loved ones carry every day, today’s sentence ensures this dangerous individual will never again threaten our community,” acting Police Chief Wade Maeda said in a statement released shortly after 9 p.m. He tied the outcome to the “Suzanne O bill” heading into the next legislative session.

That measure, Senate Bill 2575, would make it a Class C felony, rather than a misdemeanor, for a person under a restraining order to possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition, Maui Now reports. It would also make carrying a gun while under the influence of a controlled substance, including methamphetamine, a Class B felony. “If you are already breaking the law, or under a court order, you should not be allowed to carry a firearm in Hawaiʻi,” Chief John Pelletier said in written testimony supporting the bill. Pelletier is on paid administrative leave while the Maui Police Commission investigates his oversight of the department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, Maui Now reports.

When O died, Pelletier called her “one of our finest.” A sentencing date was not reported.

Marbella: Swedish 18-Year-Old Held in Surgeon Alexander Aslani’s Killing

Spain’s National Police have arrested an 18-year-old Swedish man as the suspected gunman in the killing of Alexander Aslani, a 57-year-old German plastic surgeon who was shot several times in the head inside his own clinic in Marbella on Wednesday evening. Officers from the homicide group in Marbella detained him on Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the attack, El País and La Vanguardia report. The case is under judicial secrecy, and investigators suspect he did not act alone.

The attack took only moments. Shortly before 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 7, a man dressed in black, his face covered by a helmet and a hood, arrived by motorcycle at Cirumed Clinic, the cosmetic and reconstructive surgery centre Aslani founded in the Río Real area on the edge of the city, La Vanguardia reports. He walked in, went straight to the surgeon’s office and fired several times at his head. El Mundo reports that up to three shots were heard outside, and that the clinic sits on the ground floor of the Panorama building on a service road beside the N-340, about 500 metres from the entrance to Marbella.

It was a surgery day, and the clinic was busy. Staff, several patients and Aslani’s wife, who also works at the centre, were inside, according to El Mundo. The gunman fled, first on foot and then on the motorcycle, El País reports. Witnesses called the 112 emergency line. Paramedics found Aslani still breathing and tried to resuscitate him, but he died minutes later from his head wounds. His body was taken to the Institute of Legal Medicine in Málaga for an autopsy.

Detectives first weighed a settling of scores of the kind Marbella sees from time to time, El País reports, but the organised crime theory was set aside once they studied how the killer worked and who the victim was. The homicide group took over. El País reports that the surgeon had recently received threats. Police have not publicly confirmed a motive, and no link between any reported dispute and the arrested man has been established, La Vanguardia reports.

What police are now trying to learn is who sent him. Investigators suspect he acted on someone else’s orders, La Vanguardia reports. He did not live in the Málaga area and was due to leave Spain soon. Sources close to the case told El Mundo that he is a second-generation Swede, born and raised in Sweden to foreign-born parents, that he had been brought to the Costa del Sol to carry out the killing, and that he had been given housing, transport and the gun. According to those sources, he “made a small mistake” that let detectives find him quickly. Had he not been caught within the first 72 hours, they told El Mundo, the investigation would have become far harder because he would have left Spain. Further arrests are not ruled out.

Aslani was one of the best-known cosmetic surgeons on the coast, with an international clientele and more than 200,000 Instagram followers, El País reports. Between 2008 and 2018 he headed the plastic surgery departments at the Quirón hospitals in Málaga and Marbella, both El País and La Vanguardia report. La Vanguardia says he had more than 30 years in plastic surgery and about 14,000 operations, and that he founded Cirumed with his wife. The clinic’s website says he was named Spain’s best plastic surgeon in 2016.

The Málaga College of Physicians condemned “the tragic death of a plastic surgeon” and rejected “any act of violence.” The suspect has not been publicly named. He is presumed innocent, and the investigation remains secret.

Boston: Farwell Trial Opens in Death of Sandra Birchmore

The federal murder trial of former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell began Friday in Boston with two sharply different accounts of how Sandra Birchmore died. Prosecutors told jurors Farwell groomed her from the time she was a police Explorer, abused her for years, then killed her and her unborn child in February 2021 and staged the scene as a suicide. His lawyer told the same jury that Birchmore took her own life after he ended the relationship. Farwell has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent.

Birchmore, 23, was found dead in her apartment in Canton, Massachusetts, in 2021. She was pregnant with what she believed was Farwell’s child, and her death was first ruled a suicide. Farwell is charged with one federal count of killing a witness or victim, which carries a mandatory life sentence on conviction, and with causing the death of an unborn child, CBS News reports.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Torey Cummings opened for the government. She told jurors Farwell was 27 when he began having sex with Birchmore, who was 15. “That’s a crime,” she said, a line she repeated as she described the next eight years, which prosecutors say included sex while he was on duty, the Boston Herald reports. Birchmore had joined the Stoughton Police Explorer program, a youth scheme her mother hoped would give her positive role models. “Farwell’s sexual activities involved dominating Sandra. Hurting Sandra,” Cummings said. CBS News reports she told jurors there are more than 40,000 messages between the two, including some that discussed strangling and choking her.

The motive, as the prosecution tells it, was silence. In 2020 Birchmore learned that Farwell’s wife was pregnant with their third child and threatened to expose him unless he gave her a baby too, Cummings said. Birchmore learned she was pregnant on Dec. 8, 2020. On Jan. 20, 2021, one of her friends allegedly called the Stoughton Police Department and told a dispatcher what Farwell had been doing. Cummings said that “enraged” him before he did “a complete 180” and made her feel safe. “Twelve days after the defendant sent those messages, Sandra was dead,” she said, according to CBS News. “She could end his life with the information she had, so he was going to end hers first.”

On Feb. 1, 2021, Farwell asked to visit and went up to her apartment. CBS News reports the government alleges he strangled her with a duffel bag strap. The Herald reports Cummings told jurors he hung her from a closet door. Cummings also attacked the original investigation, saying the state police assigned to the Norfolk district attorney’s office “did very little to actually investigate the death.” She said the medical examiner did not know about the history of abuse when ruling it a suicide, and changed the ruling to undetermined after federal investigators took over, the Herald reports.

Defense lawyer Kimberly Stevens gave a much shorter opening. “Matthew Farwell is a man who had an affair,” she said, an arm around his shoulder. “He’s human. Matthew Farwell did not kill Sandra Birchmore.” She said Birchmore searched “what color is the suicide ribbon?” on the day she died, had less than $3 in her bank account and had spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone. “There was no evidence of a struggle,” Stevens said, adding that Farwell met voluntarily with investigators and let them search his phone. She quoted him as telling them, “I went there to break up with her. I told her that’s not my baby.”

Outside, Birchmore’s cousin Barbara Wright said, “She was thrilled to be pregnant.” Family friend Jean Falletti said that the day before Birchmore died she was in her store looking at car seats and onesies.

Sixteen jurors, ten men and six women, were seated Friday morning. Judge Denise Casper expects the trial to last about five weeks, and testimony starts Tuesday at the Moakley Courthouse, CBS News reports. This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 6, 2026.

Clarksville: Ex-Paramedic Convicted in Deaths of Wife and Father-in-Law

A Montgomery County jury on Thursday convicted former Nashville paramedic Matthew Konen, 36, of first-degree murder in the beating death of his father-in-law, David Rodgers, and of criminally negligent homicide in the shooting death of his wife, Rachel Konen, in their Clarksville home in January 2021. Jurors deliberated for nearly five hours after nine days of testimony, Clarksville Now reports. Sentencing is set for Jan. 13 at the Montgomery County Courts Center.

The case had already died once. Konen was first indicted on two counts of first-degree murder in 2021. In 2023 the state dropped the charges, entering a nolle prosequi, and District Attorney General Robert Nash said then that they could come back through a grand jury if further investigation produced proof, WSMV reports. A new indictment followed in May 2025.

The deaths happened on the evening of Jan. 20, 2021, at the couple’s house on Westwood Drive. Konen called 911 at about 6:42 p.m., Clarksville Now reports. Responders found Rachel, 30, shot through the heart. Rodgers, 62, had been beaten to death. The couple’s four small children were in the house, the defence said.

Konen’s own account was that his father-in-law fired the shot. His lawyer, Kyle Mothershead, told jurors that Rodgers shot Rachel, turned the gun on Konen and pulled the trigger, but it clicked. Konen then tackled him, took the gun and beat him “to incapacitate him,” Mothershead said. On the 911 call, the defence said, Konen admitted “pistol-whipping” Rodgers until he was unconscious, started CPR on Rachel, then went back and found Rodgers up on his knees. “He saw Rodgers as a threat,” Mothershead said. “So he kicked him until he was down.” The defence also argued that gunshot residue on Rodgers’ clothes and on Konen’s skin proved nothing, that Konen’s fingerprints were not on the gun’s trigger or grip, and that the DNA on the weapon was inconclusive.

Prosecutors described a different man and a different scene. Assistant District Attorney Chris West said Rachel was shot once in the centre of her back and through her heart, in the dark, which he said pointed to a skilled marksman. Nash showed jurors photographs of Rodgers’ injuries. “He beat him with this gun on all sides of his head and face,” Nash said. “(Rodgers’) whole face … was broken and sunken in. That’s intent.” Nash reminded jurors that Konen had told police his father-in-law was “extremely passive.”

The state laid out a motive built on money and a failing marriage. The couple had filed for divorce in November 2020 but still lived together. West said Rachel told Konen “it was time to go,” that he was looking for a roommate, and that he was the beneficiary of her $700,000 life insurance policy. Text messages from the weeks before showed Konen telling friends he might need antidepressants and that his family had “turned their backs” on him. On Jan. 18, 2021, he wrote to his then girlfriend, now wife: “You know my character flaws are a … quick temper and big time impatience.” Minutes before the 911 call, Rachel received a photo from the man she was dating; it was still marked unread.

A former partner at Nashville Fire testified that while teaching her to handle a gun, Konen told her: “If you pull the trigger, make sure everybody’s dead because nobody’s there to talk but you.” West showed jurors home security video of Rodgers playing with his grandchildren hours before he died. “On that day, David Rodgers didn’t die by suicide,” West said. “David Rodgers died by beating.”

At the time of trial, Konen worked for Sumner County Emergency Medical Services, Clarksville Now reports, citing WKRN.

Brownsville: Martinez Guilty of Capital Murder in Lt. Resendez Killing

A Cameron County jury has found Rogelio Martinez, 21, guilty of capital murder of a peace officer in the shooting death of San Benito police Lt. Milton Resendez, a 27-year veteran who was hit during a car chase on Oct. 17, 2023. Jurors took three hours and 15 minutes to reach the verdict after a four-day trial in Brownsville, MyRGV reports. The same jury returns on Oct. 19 to decide between the death penalty and life in prison without parole, KRGV reports. Prosecutors are asking for death.

The chase that night ran from South Padre Island through Brownsville and into San Benito, according to MyRGV. Martinez rode as the passenger. The driver was Rodrigo Axel Espinosa Valdez, 26, a Mexican national who has already pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of murder and will be sentenced by a jury, facing five to 99 years or life, District Attorney Luis V. Saenz told jurors.

Jurors were shown the bullet-damaged door of Resendez’s patrol unit and heard how fellow officers rushed to him after he radioed that he had been hit, KRGV reports. His last words, Saenz said in closing, were “I’m hit.”

The forensic case was built piece by piece. Prosecutors said six 9mm casings found on Sam Houston Boulevard, where Resendez was shot, matched the handgun recovered from the passenger side of the vehicle, MyRGV reports. Forensic pathologist Elizabeth Miller recovered the bullet from the lieutenant’s body, and it matched the same gun. Officers’ testimony, dash camera video and aerial footage shot by a Texas Department of Public Safety pilot during a second chase showed Martinez was in the passenger seat, prosecutors said. Texas Ranger Patrick O’Connor testified that the driver’s window on that vehicle could not physically be lowered, so if the driver had fired, the glass would have bullet holes.

Then there were Martinez’s own words. Jurors watched his recorded interview with investigators, in which he admitted firing at police during the chase, KRGV reports. Prosecutors told the jury that he made a conscious choice to pull the trigger as the vehicle passed 10 to 12 feet from Resendez. “This man has had a hatred of police officers for years,” prosecutor Greg Davis said. Saenz went further, over defence objections: “He is cartel,” he told jurors, adding that the only reason Martinez stopped shooting was that he ran out of ammunition.

The defence focused on the gun. “DNA does not lie,” attorney Rigo Flores said, pointing out that Martinez’s DNA was not found on the weapon, while the driver’s was, and that the gun was found in a pouch belonging to the driver, who had a warrant for gun smuggling into Mexico. Flores noted the state had cut a deal with Espinosa Valdez but never called him to testify. “We still do not know what was happening in that Expedition when the shots were fired,” he said. Co-counsel Ed Cyganiewicz argued that even if his client fired, he did it to make police back off. “He should not have shot. It was a horrible mistake,” he said, urging the jury to consider murder or manslaughter instead.

Martinez showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Resendez’s wife, Melissa G. Resendez, was embraced by San Benito officers in the courtroom. “Justice was served today and a strong message was sent,” Police Chief Mario Perea said, tears on his face. “Violence against law enforcement in this county won’t be tolerated.” He told KRGV the verdict gave the family “a little bit of closure,” but called the loss “a wound that will never heal.”

Cyganiewicz declined further comment, saying a whole other phase of the trial remained. Saenz also declined, citing ongoing litigation.

Ghent: De Kock Pleads Guilty to Murdering Dean, Denies Abduction

Dave De Kock has pleaded guilty to the murder of four-year-old Dean Verberckmoes, but not to kidnapping him, his lawyer told the East Flanders assize court in Ghent on Thursday. “You can answer ‘yes’ to the question on the murder, and that question will also determine the sentence,” lawyer Nick Heinen told the jurors, according to RTBF and RTL Info. RTBF notes the murder count carries up to 30 years in prison.

It was the first time in nearly five years that De Kock had accepted responsibility for the boy’s death in a courtroom. Heinen said jurors could also answer “yes” to the counts concerning images of sexual violence against a minor. “But we are going to contest the abduction,” he said, promising to explain why later in the week. He insisted the defence would not try to play down what happened. “Let one thing be clear. What he did is unforgivable.”

De Kock himself said it was “possible” he had hurt the boy, but that he did not remember, RTBF reports. The advocate general offered a theory: “He may have lost his composure in the car. In that scenario, everything goes black and he no longer knows what is happening.”

Dean’s death has haunted Belgium since January 2022. The boy had been staying with De Kock and his then partner at their flat in Sint-Gillis-Waas, and was due to go home to his mother, VRT NWS reported as the trial opened this week. On the evening of Friday, Jan. 14, 2022, De Kock drove off alone with him and crossed into the Netherlands. Dean’s body was found wrapped in a fleece blanket between the boulders of Neeltje Jans, a work island in Zeeland, on Jan. 17, 2022. Forensic doctors found signs of severe violence to his head and abdomen, injuries they say do not fit a fall down the stairs, VRT reports.

Co-defendant Romy W., De Kock’s former partner, denies hurting Dean and says she saw him leave alive and unhurt with De Kock. Jef Vermassen, the lawyer for Dean’s mother, told the court he wants to show that both accused are guilty of murder, and argued that “someone who does nothing can be an accomplice.” The court’s president reminded the room that Romy W. is not on trial for complicity in the murder itself, RTBF reports. She is charged with kidnapping resulting in death and has denied wrongdoing.

De Kock’s other lawyer, Justine De Poorter, asked jurors to judge the man in the dock and not “the story you have heard hundreds of times.” “In front of you is a man who must answer for extremely serious charges, but he remains a human being,” she said.

The same day, the court heard from the psychiatrists who examined both accused. They found De Kock criminally responsible, with no psychiatric disorder that would excuse him, RTL Info reports. They described marked antisocial personality traits, a lack of empathy, a high opinion of himself and “serious behavioural difficulties, associated with a very problematic personal development.” He has used drugs since his teens, and at the time of the killing was taking cannabis, ecstasy, speed and MDMA, the experts said. They judged his risk of reoffending to be high, “certainly in combination with drug use.”

Romy W. was also found criminally responsible. The experts said alcohol had become “the red thread of her life,” and put her risk of reoffending at medium, with no signs of antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy, according to RTL Info.

De Kock already served a 10-year sentence for the fatal abuse of a two-year-old boy in 2008, VRT reports, and was released in 2018 without supervision. The trial continues. This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 8, 2026.

Hawick: Lee Inglis Admits Murdering Stacey Hogg

Lee Inglis, 39, pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh on Friday to murdering his former partner, Stacey Hogg, 35, a mother of three who was stabbed to death in her home in Hawick in June, a day after he learned she had started a new relationship. He will be sentenced at the same court on Nov. 5.

The killing was planned around a curfew. BBC Scotland News reports that Inglis was serving a night-time home curfew and an unpaid work order for earlier attacks on her when he killed her. He waited until the curfew lifted at 7 a.m., then made the three-minute journey from his parents’ house to hers. The court heard he slipped in through the back door and attacked her as she came down the stairs. She suffered “catastrophic wounds” to her neck and head. Police found her in a pool of blood on the floor of a downstairs bathroom.

Officers had been called to the house on McLagan Drive on the morning of Thursday, June 25, after a report of a woman’s death, Police Scotland said, according to the Border Telegraph. She was pronounced dead at the scene. When he was arrested, Inglis told police: “I intended to cut off her head.” Then: “If I couldn’t have her, nobody would,” the court heard.

He had hurt her before, and twice stayed out of prison for it. In 2022 he was given 150 hours of unpaid work for assaulting Stacey and threatening to kill her with a kitchen knife, BBC Scotland reports. Court records show he admitted putting his hands around her neck so that she fell and struck her head. Last year he was convicted of holding a knife to her throat and cutting her face. He again avoided custody, receiving 200 hours of unpaid work, two years of supervision and the night-time curfew he was still under when he killed her. The Border Telegraph reported at the time that Sheriff Peter Paterson said that offence met the threshold for custody, but took into account a “complex family dynamic” and the fact that the victim opposed a non-harassment order.

Her death brought anger and grief to the Borders town. Her funeral had to be moved to Hawick Town Hall to fit the mourners, and an online fundraiser for her children raised more than £45,000, the BBC reports. Her family described her as “a cherished daughter, an amazing sister and a loyal friend who touched the lives of so many,” adding: “Her kindness, strength and love will never be forgotten.”

“Inglis is a violent and dangerous individual who will now face the consequences of his despicable actions,” Detective Inspector Ross Duthie of Police Scotland said after the plea. “Nothing can make up for their loss, but I hope this outcome brings them some form of comfort.” He urged anyone being abused not to suffer in silence.

The case lands in the middle of a national reckoning. In July, Stacy Hunter, 35, was murdered at her home near Houston in Renfrewshire by her estranged husband, Jim Mair, three weeks after he appeared in court accused of strangling her and was released on bail; his body was found nearby, the BBC reports. The same month Vicki Solomon, 44, died after being found badly hurt in a house in Edinburgh’s East Craigs; her former partner, charged with her murder, was found dead in HMP Edinburgh days later. Police Scotland’s chief constable, Jo Farrell, said this week that 45 serving officers are suspended over allegations of violence against women and girls. First Minister John Swinney has called that violence a “national emergency” and confirmed a GPS tracking pilot for people on bail, including those accused of domestic abuse, from next year.

Horbury: Husband Jailed for Life Over Wife’s Body in Freezer

David Barraclough, 46, was jailed for life at Leeds Crown Court on Friday for murdering his wife, Carolann Barraclough, with a hammer at their home in Horbury, near Wakefield, then hiding her body in a chest freezer for about two weeks while telling her children, family and friends she was in hospital. He must serve at least 22 years and one month before he can be considered for parole. He refused to come into court to hear the sentence.

Carolann, a mother of three known to her family as Caz, was 37, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports. CCTV outside the family home on Ken Churchill Drive showed her alive for the last time shortly after 1 p.m. on Feb. 19, and the court heard she was killed sometime between Feb. 19 and Feb. 21. When police found her, she had fatal head injuries consistent with five blows from a hammer, the Evening Post reports. The attack happened in the bedroom while children were in the house.

Barraclough tied up her body and put it in a freezer in the utility room, the BBC reports. Then he kept the house running around it. Prosecutors said he told her children, relatives, friends and neighbours she was recovering from an illness in hospital and that only he could visit. He sent messages from her phone suggesting she’d be home soon, and kept the children out of the room where the freezer stood. One message to a friend claimed she was unwell and needed help; the friend was suspicious from the start, the Evening Post reports. He later factory-reset her phone and deleted their conversations from his own.

The Crown Prosecution Service said he carried on with daily life, visiting pubs, withdrawing large sums of cash from a joint account and downloading Tinder two days after she died. The Evening Post reports he searched for sex workers and used her bank card until only a few pence were left.

On March 5 he walked into Normanton Police Station and told a receptionist, “I’ve killed my wife,” the BBC reports. Officers went to the house and found her body in the freezer. He told police he had “finally snapped” and fought back. He claimed he had acted in self-defence after being hit with a hammer, calling himself “heartbroken,” “in a haze” and “confused.” Prosecutors said CCTV showed no visible injuries on him, and prosecutor Andrew Haslam KC called his account “self-serving lies,” according to the Evening Post.

The court heard a different history. Carolann had confided in friends that he controlled her money and what she wore, and that he turned nasty when drinking, the Evening Post reports. There were earlier allegations of sexual assault on her. Judge Andrew Stubbs KC found the killing was planned and that Barraclough “used sustained and excessive violence.” “He showed a callous disregard for his wife, her children, his children and her friends,” the judge said. “He spun a web of lies and deceit to explain his wife’s disappearance.”

He had denied murder, then pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial before a jury was sworn. His barrister, Sean Larkin KC, said he accepted the seriousness of the crime.

Jill May, senior crown prosecutor for CPS Yorkshire and Humberside, praised Carolann’s eldest daughter for her “incredible bravery” in giving evidence. Her family called her “the bright light of our family” whose “joy was infectious.” “The world is a much darker place without her,” they said. A statement for her three children, all of whom are autistic and depended on routine, said: “For two weeks they were told their mum was in hospital, but their mum was in their own home.” They had lost, it said, “their world, their security and the future they were supposed to have with their mum.”

Louth: Triple Killing Accused Told Gardaí He Meant to Spare His Mother

A 32-year-old man on trial for killing his mother, father and younger brother at their home in Co Louth told gardaí he only meant to kill his father and brother, not his mother, the Central Criminal Court in Dublin heard on Thursday. Robert O’Connor, of Drumgowna, Louth Village, Dundalk, pleaded not guilty to the murders of Louise O’Connor, Mark O’Connor, 54, and Evan O’Connor, 27, by reason of insanity, or guilty of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. The killings happened at the family home between Sept. 28 and Sept. 29, 2025.

Opening for the Director of Public Prosecutions, barrister Roisin Lacey said O’Connor accepts that he caused all three deaths, The Irish Times reports. The question for the jury of six men and six women is his state of mind.

Evan, the youngest, had very significant special needs, Lacey said. He was severely autistic, had learning difficulties and was supported by a charity that provided learning and living help, TheJournal.ie reports. That is how the bodies came to be found. A carer arrived at Drumgowna at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 29. As she was about to reverse in, she saw something inside the gate that she thought looked like a Halloween decoration, Lacey said. When Evan didn’t come out, she walked back to the gate and saw Mark O’Connor’s heavily bloodstained body. Looking across to the house, she saw Evan’s body lying across the step of the patio door, blood on his legs. She drove to a neighbour’s house and called 999 at 9:38 a.m.

Gardaí and the Armed Support Unit arrived later that morning. Beside Mark’s body lay a beer bottle, an orange kitchen knife and a butter knife, the prosecutor said. Inside, gardaí found Louise “equally heavily bloodstained” on the kitchen floor.

The prosecution says the post-mortem findings were extreme. Mark O’Connor had 44 stab wounds, nine of them to his head. Louise O’Connor had 20, eight to her trunk. Evan had 75, including 25 to his head and neck, the court heard.

A neighbour is expected to testify that on the night of Sept. 28 he recognised the accused’s voice from the house shouting: “I’ll end you, I’ll f**king end you.” That morning gardaí spotted O’Connor on foot, walking toward Tallanstown. He was highly aggressive and agitated, Lacey said, and shouted at them, “I’m looking for ye.” Asked to show his hands, he refused and shouted, “Shoot me, shoot me.” His hands were bloodstained.

On arrest he told gardaí: “I killed them; I killed my mother, father and my brother.” He said: “I slashed my mother, she gave me a look and I could see a reflection of my dad in her face.” Asked why, he described a row over drugs and said he had “lost my head,” and that he had stabbed his brother like a “blood bag,” according to the prosecution. In the back of a Garda car, he said he was “not sorry for his father or brother” but was sorry for stabbing his mother to death.

O’Connor told detectives he had been using cocaine lately and had bought “Wildcat,” which Lacey said was slang for mephedrone. His parents had wanted to talk to him about his drug use, he said, and he had told them he did not want to stop.

Lacey said the exact times of the deaths were not entirely clear. She was due to continue her opening on Friday before Judge Mícheál P O’Higgins. The trial is expected to run until Oct. 30, and O’Connor is presumed innocent of murder unless the jury decides otherwise.

Decatur: Five Inmates Charged in David Addo-Wright’s Jail Cell Death

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has charged five DeKalb County Jail inmates in the death of David Kojo Addo-Wright, a 24-year-old from Covington who was found dying in his cell on Sept. 23, the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday. He died from a “sharp force injury” to his chest, Decaturish reports, citing the news release.

The five are Amir Andrews, Dajuhn Bryant, Treonte Brintley, Messiah Hinson and Jayden King. Each faces charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of items prohibited for inmates and tampering with evidence, WSB-TV and CBS News Atlanta report. They are presumed innocent. Their ages and the specific acts each is accused of have not been released.

According to the GBI, deputies found Addo-Wright unresponsive in a cell with several wounds. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. The DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy, and the sheriff’s office asked the state investigators to take the case, WSB-TV reports. When it is complete, it goes to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office for review.

“We appreciate the GBI for its work on this case,” Sheriff Melody M. Maddox said. “Our thoughts and condolences are with Mr. Addo-Wright’s family. We will continue to cooperate fully with the GBI as the investigation and prosecution move forward.” Officials gave few details about what led to the charges and said the investigation is still open.

His family’s account of the attack is harsher, and it has not been confirmed by the GBI or the sheriff. Addo-Wright had been booked into the jail only days earlier. Relatives told reporters he had posted bond and that they expected him home. His father, Darren Wright, said GBI agents came to the family’s house to tell them he had been killed inside the jail, WSB-TV reports.

At a news conference on Oct. 2, more than a dozen relatives, mentors and friends gathered at the Davis Bozeman Law Firm in south DeKalb, which represents the family, Decaturish reports. Attorney Mawuli Davis said the firm’s own inquiry found that six men had entered Addo-Wright’s cell and attacked him, that his calls for help went unanswered, and that when jail staff finally checked on him he was “cold to the touch.” He also alleged that locks on the cell were broken and that staff had skipped routine checks, and said the family believed it took more than 45 minutes, possibly close to an hour, for anyone to respond and give aid, according to WSB-TV.

The family also said they had received calls from people they believed were gang members inside the jail, demanding money, and that they suspected those calls might be connected to the attack. At the time, neither the sheriff’s office nor the GBI commented on the allegations or named suspects.

Davis stressed that Addo-Wright had not been convicted of anything. “He had merely been charged … and a charge should not have resulted in his death,” he said. According to the family, he had been in the jail for less than 48 hours. “This should not have happened in a place where safety is supposed to be paramount.” The family says it wants transparency from investigators and an end to what it calls a systemic problem of violent inmates preying on others in the jail.

The GBI asks anyone with information to call its Atlanta Regional Investigative Office in Conyers at 770-388-5019 or the GBI tip line at 1-800-597-8477.

Reading: Murder Warrant Issued for Son in Mother’s Shooting Death

A murder warrant was issued Friday afternoon for Ryan Hanafin, 22, in the shooting death of his mother, Andria Hanafin, 49, at the family’s home on Center Avenue in Reading, Massachusetts, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Reading Police Chief David J. Clark said. Earlier in the day he appeared by video from a Vermont jail and agreed to be sent back to face the charges. He is presumed innocent.

“Is it your voluntary choice to waive extradition and return to Massachusetts?” the judge asked. “Yes, that is what I would like to do,” Hanafin replied, WCVB reports. He will be arraigned in Woburn District Court at a later date and will stay in custody in Vermont until Massachusetts authorities collect him. He also faces felony charges in Vermont.

The killing was discovered just after midnight. At 12:38 a.m. Thursday, Reading police took a 911 call from Matthew Hanafin, 48, who said he had come home and found his wife dead. CBS News Boston reports she was in the kitchen. The couple’s 13-year-old son was in the house and unharmed. The district attorney laid out the timeline: Matthew Hanafin had been at work from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Their younger son last saw his mother around 5 p.m., when he left to go around town with friends, and when he came back at 9 p.m. he went straight to his room and did not see her. Andria Hanafin died of a gunshot wound.

Ryan Hanafin was not home when police arrived, and his car was gone, CBS reports. Massachusetts State Police alerted Vermont that he was believed to be in the state. Troopers from the Berlin barracks searched the Warren area he was known to frequent, and about two hours later, with help from the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, stopped him on Route 100 south near the Sugarbush Access Road at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Vermont State Police said. He was taken without incident and held without bail as a fugitive from justice.

Court documents describe a family dispute over cats. According to the documents, reported by WCVB, Matthew Hanafin told investigators he last spoke with his wife around 6:50 p.m., after returning several missed calls. They discussed an argument involving Ryan over cats she had been rescuing; he said Ryan had recently been involved in several disputes over the animals, and that during the call his wife said she wanted Ryan to move out. Police say Ryan Hanafin later sent a Snapchat message about something he had told his cousin that night: “Told him I blew madre to pieces and he believed me.”

Guns run through the case. Police found 19 firearms in the home, and 10 were registered to Ryan Hanafin, who held a Massachusetts license to carry until it was suspended on Thursday, WCVB reports. He faces more than a dozen firearms charges, including 15 counts of storing a large-capacity firearm where a minor could gain access and one count of receiving an untraceable firearm. “It is a moment of reflection about the presence of guns in a home during an alleged dispute,” the district attorney said Thursday, describing an alleged domestic violence case, “although not the traditional domestic violence situation that we think of.”

The family also has a daughter, who was away at school. “We have two children now that have lost their mother,” the district attorney said. Friends described Andria Hanafin as endlessly generous. “She’s a really good human being,” Elizabeth Coppla told WBZ-TV. Family friend Heather Gagliardi, who has set up a fund for the family, said mother and son “were really close,” and that she knew nothing of any arguments over the cats. Another friend, Laurie Ward, said he had recently studied criminal justice and she’d thought he might become a police officer.

Baltimore: Hightower Gets 40 Years for Plot That Killed the Wrong Woman

Ten years after Latrina Ashburne was shot dead getting into her car outside her Baltimore home, the man who set the killing in motion was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher sentenced Matthew Hightower, 44, for the May 27, 2016, murder of Ashburne, a 41-year-old teacher’s aide who was never the target. The gunmen he hired had meant to kill her next-door neighbour, a federal witness, and shot Ashburne instead.

According to court documents cited by CBS News Baltimore, Hightower wanted a woman dead who had given investigators information about his role in a healthcare fraud scheme and in the killing of a man named David Wutoh. Ashburne lived next door to her and was similar in age and appearance. At the time, Hightower was in custody awaiting trial on federal charges in both cases. Prosecutors say he used jail calls and letters to arrange the hit, to punish the witness for talking and to stop her from testifying.

The fraud was a scam to overcharge Medicaid for adult diapers, The Baltimore Banner reports, and Wutoh was a man who owed him money. Hightower was charged in those cases in 2015. On the day Ashburne was killed, a search of his prison cell turned up a sheet of paper listing names and phone numbers. One belonged to Davon Carter.

Carter, now 46, was identified as the shooter and Clifton Mosley, 49, as his accomplice, both of Baltimore, CBS reports. Both are serving federal life sentences. It took years longer to bring the case against Hightower, who pleaded guilty last year, the Banner reports.

He was already in prison. A federal jury convicted him on Sept. 22, 2016, after a seven-day trial, and he received 380 months, more than 31 years, plus five years of supervised release, for the healthcare fraud and the extortion-related murder of Wutoh, according to CBS. The new 40-year term runs concurrently with that sentence.

The two sides were far apart. Prosecutors wanted 60 years on top of the sentence he was already serving, the Banner reports. His lawyers, Daniel Goldman and Teresa Whalen, asked for 30. “This Court is not asked to forgive what happened to Latrina Ashburne, or to pretend that any sentence could restore what her family has lost,” they wrote in a sentencing memo. “It is asked only to impose a sentence that leaves open the possibility, not the promise, that Mr. Hightower will live some portion of his final years as a free man rather than dying in federal custody.”

Prosecutors described him as “a businessman, a hustler, a successful drug dealer” who “knew exactly what he was doing” when he hired the killers.

“Witness intimidation strikes at the heart of our justice system,” Maryland U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes said in a statement. “Today’s sentence demonstrates our unwavering commitment to pursuing anyone who threatens or attempts to harm witnesses.”

Before sentencing, a member of Ashburne’s family wrote to the judge that the drawn-out case had been hard to bear, but that the sentence would bring some measure of closure, the Banner reports. Ashburne, a woman who worked with children, died outside her own home for a reason that had nothing to do with her.

Montreal: Farrah Guilty in Killing of Jade Racette Beaulieu and Her Grandmother

A Montreal jury on Thursday found Mahad Farrah, 26, guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of Jade Racette Beaulieu, 22, and of manslaughter in the death of her grandmother, Huguette Maranda Racette, 73. Prosecutors said Farrah, whom the young woman had reported to police as her pimp, ordered her killing to silence her. The first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no parole for 25 years, La Presse reports. Sentencing hearings are set for later this month.

The verdict came with an unusual moment. Seeing two jurors in tears, Justice Daniel Royer asked each of the 12 to confirm the verdict aloud, one by one, Radio-Canada reports. “Yes,” each said in turn.

The women were shot on Dec. 15, 2022, at the family home in southwest Montreal. That day, Jade Racette Beaulieu got text messages from an unknown number urging her to come outside because the sender wanted to talk, the Crown told the jury. The sender refused to say who he was. “It wasn’t a discussion that awaited her, but an ambush,” the prosecution said in its opening.

The shooter, who is not Farrah, fired three times at her outside, according to the Crown. She ran back into the house, where her grandmother and minors were inside. He chased her in. She took refuge in the bedroom where her grandmother was sleeping, and he shot them both there. Radio-Canada reports that the grandmother was hit five times while still lying in bed, and that the young woman was shot three times in the back at close range.

The motive was the complaint. Jade Racette Beaulieu had gone to police and named Farrah as her pimp, both outlets report. She had told an Ontario investigator about her life in the sex trade: she had grown tired of working alone and had asked Farrah to manage her clients. “It wasn’t very complicated [to convince me]. If anything, I was the one who wanted it,” she told the officer, according to La Presse. She later realised he cared mostly about money, and reported him.

Farrah testified in his own defence. He told jurors he never wanted the two women to die and blamed an uncle living in Africa. He said he had asked the uncle to pay her $60,000 to withdraw her complaint, and was “shocked” to learn the uncle had strayed from that plan. “That’s not what I asked my uncle,” he told the jury, La Presse reports. The jury did not accept it, finding that he had ordered the young woman’s murder. Its manslaughter verdict for the grandmother reflects a lesser responsibility in her death, La Presse notes.

Chantal Racette, Jade’s mother and Huguette’s daughter, wept after the verdict. “They can rest in peace,” she said. “But whether the sentence is 5, 10, 15 or 50 years, it won’t bring them back to me.” She said she felt “happy and freed.” Then she spoke to young women drawn by money into prostitution. “Run!” she urged them. “Now we’re going to move forward.”

The trial opened on Sept. 9. Crown prosecutors Claude Berlinguette-Auger and Simon Lapierre presented the case; Josée Goulet and Laurence Juillet St-Jean defended Farrah.

Sudbury: Pusey Found Guilty of Murdering Andrew Mackey

A Sudbury jury on Thursday found David Pusey, 30, guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Andrew Mackey, 24, who was shot in the chest on Louis Street just before 7 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2023, after a night of drinking. The seven men and five women deliberated for about three hours, The Sudbury Star reports, and also convicted Pusey of possessing a prohibited weapon. Second-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence in Canada. What remains for Superior Court Justice Susan Stothart to decide is when he can apply for parole, somewhere between 10 and 25 years.

The verdict drew a loud gasp in the courtroom, the Star reports. Mackey’s mother, sitting at the back, broke down. When the jurors left to consider their parole recommendation, she hugged assistant Crown attorney Stephanie Baker and said “thank you” twice through tears. Pusey showed no reaction in the prisoner’s box.

The two men knew each other. They and others had left a downtown bar and gone on to an after-party at Rosalind Peltier’s residence on Louis Street. At 6:44 a.m., outside, Mackey was shot. He was later pronounced dead at Health Sciences North, CTV News reports.

The Crown’s case rested on a man who was standing right next to him. Declan Eldridge testified that Pusey shot Mackey in the chest after a heated argument. Baker recounted Eldridge’s evidence in her closing: Mackey asked Pusey, “What are you going to do? Are you going to poke me? Are you going to stab me? Are you going to shoot me?” And, Baker told jurors, “Declan Eldridge said David Pusey said ‘yes.’” “It was not a struggle,” she said. “It was not a defence.”

Eldridge also gave a 911 caller a detailed description of the shooter, Baker said: a Black man in a distinctive denim jacket with the word Levi’s running from the wrists to the shoulders, blue jeans and a black hat, with a black sock over the gun. A police officer saw the black sock when Pusey was arrested, she said. Surveillance video showed two Black men leaving the scene, one of them in denim on denim, “a Canadian tuxedo,” as Baker called it. Another witness testified that he and Pusey were the two men in the videos.

The physical evidence closed the loop. When Greater Sudbury Police officers arrested Pusey shortly after the shooting, he had a gun on him, the Star reports. An expert from the Centre of Forensic Sciences testified that it was the gun used to shoot Mackey.

Defence lawyer Denis Michel argued that the investigation was flawed, that the shooter was never properly identified, and that the key witnesses were so drunk their testimony couldn’t be trusted. Baker conceded that everyone at the party had been drinking heavily, but said Eldridge’s drinking “did not impact his ability to recall exactly what happened.” The Crown called about a dozen witnesses, including people from the after-party, CTV reports.

No pre-sentence report was ordered; Michel told the judge it would be of no value. He has asked instead for a Morris report, a specialised assessment that lets a sentencing judge weigh the effects of systemic anti-Black racism and a Black offender’s social history. The case returns to Superior Court assignment court on Oct. 27, when a sentencing date may be set. Neither lawyer commented to reporters after the verdict.

Saint-Brieuc: Thierry Meunier Gets 25 Years for Wife’s 2010 Murder

Sixteen years to the day after fishermen found Véronique Duchesne’s body washed up below the Pointe de Minard in Plouézec, a Breton court on Friday convicted her husband, Thierry Meunier, of her murder and sentenced him to 25 years of criminal imprisonment. The Côtes-d’Armor assize court in Saint-Brieuc reached its verdict after nearly six hours of deliberation, ending a three-week trial, ICI (France Bleu) reports. Meunier, a 62-year-old retiree, has ten days to appeal.

The court added ten years of socio-judicial supervision and banned him from contacting the civil parties, France 3 Bretagne reports. The advocate general had asked for 30 years on Thursday. The defence sought an acquittal.

Véronique Duchesne, 47, disappeared in October 2010 on the Île de la Comtesse, a small tidal island off Saint-Quay-Portrieux. Three days later, on Oct. 9, 2010, her body was found on the shore at Plouézec, France 3 reports. Meunier’s story never changed in 16 years: she had wanted to kill herself that day. The autopsy said otherwise. It found she had not drowned. She had been strangled.

“No weapon, no witness” was how the civil parties’ lawyer, Jean-Guillaume Le Mintier, summed up the difficulty before the trial opened. “No weapons, no direct witnesses, but enough serious or corroborating evidence to obtain a guilty verdict against Thierry Meunier,” he said.

The case against him was built from his own words. Over the trial, contradictions piled up, France 3 reports. Had he been on the Île de la Comtesse that day, as he maintained throughout the investigation, or had he never set foot there, as he swore at the bar? His descriptions of his wife’s mood when she vanished shifted from “sad” to “smiling” to “tired.” Questioned on Oct. 7 by the presiding judge for about seven and a half hours, he offered: “No doubt she had an unfortunate encounter.” On Sept. 24 the court travelled to the island itself to try to see what the last witness had seen, ICI reported during the trial.

The jury also heard from a former partner, Véronique Charles. She told the court about two episodes in which he tried to strangle her in Senegal, a few months after his wife’s death, according to ICI’s trial coverage.

His own lawyers didn’t flatter him. They described their client as “a poor guy, an enormous fabulist and a con man,” but argued he did “not have the profile to beat and strangle someone,” France 3 reports. The court did not follow them.

Throughout the trial he stayed impassive, presenting himself as a husband who had lost his wife and showing no bitterness or anger. His last words before the court retired were the same as his first. “I want to tell you one last time what I have been saying for 16 years, that I am innocent because I did not kill my wife Véronique,” he said. He heard the verdict standing in the dock, head bowed, and did not move.

On the civil parties’ bench there were tears of relief. Patricia Duchesne, the victim’s sister, had said that morning that she hoped for “a liberation, a liberation from this nightmare.” France 3 called it a femicide, judged at last after 16 years.

San Francisco, Córdoba: Life for Mother, Stepfather and Friend in Aralí Vivas Murder

A court with a popular jury in San Francisco, in Argentina’s Córdoba Province, on Thursday sentenced the mother, the stepfather and a family friend of Aralí Vivas to life in prison for the sexual abuse and murder of the 8-year-old, who was found dead in a burned bedroom in the town of Brinkmann on Nov. 1, 2024. The sentence matched what prosecutor Consuelo Aliaga Díaz had asked for, La Nación reports.

The stepfather, Matías Ezequiel Simeone, and the friend, Cristian Hernán Varela, were found unanimously to be co-authors of aggravated sexual abuse with carnal access and triply aggravated homicide, Clarín reports. The girl’s mother was convicted as a necessary participant, by a majority of the jury rather than unanimously. Three judges, Guillermo Rabino, Alejandro Acuña and Claudio Requena, sat with eight citizen jurors.

The afternoon Aralí died, Simeone, who was on parole and already had a conviction for gender violence along with other records, left the house with two of her brothers, saying he was taking them to the plaza to play, La Nación reports. He came back when neighbours began shouting that there was a fire. Firefighters found the girl dead in the burned room, face down and hugging a pillow.

They were suspicious at once. Only that one room had burned. The doors weren’t locked, and there was no sign the child had tried to escape the flames. Forensic examinations confirmed she had been sexually abused and had died of manual asphyxia, La Nación reports. Prosecutors said the men set the fire to hide the earlier crimes.

One of her brothers gave evidence during the investigation in a Gesell chamber, a room built for child witnesses. When Simeone took them to the plaza, the boy said, he went up to look for his little sister. “She was asleep, I covered her and came back down,” he said. Aralí was already dead.

The defence asked for acquittals. The mother’s lawyers, Luis Alberto Licera and Marcos Arnold, said she had no part in the crime and “didn’t know and had no knowledge of what was going to happen”; she had gone to nearby Morteros with her baby, they said, and had not been in Brinkmann since the day before. Varela’s lawyers pointed to a DNA test that found no trace of him on the girl’s genital area, “unlike the stepfather,” they said. Simeone’s defence challenged the evidence as void.

When the verdict was read, the mother broke down. Before she was led out, she turned on Aralí’s biological father, Ricardo Vivas, and then on Simeone: “You forgot you have children with me,” she shouted, according to Clarín.

Outside the courthouse, relatives gathered asking for justice. Betiana Heredia, a cousin of the mother who now has custody of two of Aralí’s brothers, said both are still in psychological treatment. “They know perfectly well everything that happened,” she said. She told La Nación that she and the children’s grandmother had filed complaints because the mother was using alcohol and drugs, and they feared for the children.

The case also put Córdoba’s child protection agency, Senaf, under scrutiny. The agency had removed the children, ordered the couple into addiction treatment with the Red de Adicciones Córdoba, and returned the children once it considered the treatment finished, La Nación reports. At the time Aralí was living with her father. Investigating prosecutor Oscar Gieco later described the family setting as “an environment of extreme violence, a situation not fit for children.”

Quilleco: Accused Held in Shotgun Killing of Carabinero Jaime Urrea

A court in Los Ángeles, in Chile’s Biobío Region, on Thursday ordered Mauricio Humberto Cerda Albornoz held in pretrial detention, charged with killing Carabineros police officer Jaime Ariel Urrea Burgos, 40, who was shot in the chest with a shotgun while answering a domestic violence call in Quilleco on the night of Sunday, Oct. 4. Prosecutors formally charged him with the homicide of an on-duty carabinero, with the aggravating circumstance of alevosía, or treachery, La Tercera and BioBioChile report. He is presumed innocent. This case continues from The Crime Ledger: October 6, 2026.

Judge Claudia Aguilera of the Los Ángeles guarantee court granted the request from the public prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Security, which has joined the case as a complainant, that he be held because his release would endanger society. She set four months for the investigation. By court order, the accused’s face may not be shown, BioBioChile reports.

Prosecutors laid out the night. At about 11:10 p.m., carabineros went to a home in Quilleco after a call reporting psychological violence in a family violence episode. In court, prosecutors played audio of a second call, made by one of the accused’s children. “My sister was here, my sister left because of the same thing, and he started more fights, more fights, more fights,” the caller said, according to La Tercera. “Yes, I’d honestly like you to take him away, because he keeps threatening that his life is over, that his life is over.”

Inside, officers spoke with Cerda Albornoz, who had shut himself in a bedroom. Then, prosecutors say, he suddenly opened the door, stepped out and fired a shotgun at Sergeant Urrea. The blast caused a penetrating chest wound, and Urrea died moments later despite medical care.

The judge explained why she accepted detention. She gave particular weight to the victim’s status as a police officer and to the fact that the shooting happened during a domestic violence response. While the accused had a clean prior record, she said, he “was not affected in any way by an altered state of consciousness,” meaning he was not under the influence of alcohol. He had also, she said, voiced his contempt for any police presence at his home and told his own family he might act against carabineros if they came, BioBioChile reports.

Another deciding factor came after the shot. According to the judge, he tried to attack the officers again, “trying to reload the shotgun with which he allegedly killed him, to harm the other police officers in some way and possibly a family member.”

Urrea had 18 years of service. He belonged to the Retén Canteras, a small post under the First Police Station of Los Ángeles. He was a second sergeant at the time of his death and has been posthumously promoted to suboficial mayor, BioBioChile reports. His killing, the outlet noted, put Carabineros in mourning once again.

During the four-month investigation, prosecutors are expected to carry out further steps to establish exactly what happened inside the house that night. The accused remains in custody.

Bainskloof Pass: Great-Grandmother Gets 20 Years for Murdering Three Children

A 71-year-old great-grandmother who drove three small children off Bainskloof Pass in the Western Cape in November 2021 has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for their premeditated murders. The Worcester Regional Court imposed 20 years for each child, to run concurrently, so Susana “Sarie” De Villiers will serve 20 years in total, the Paarl Post reports. She was also declared unfit to own a firearm.

Caleb, 8, Gradwell, 5, and Joshua Booysen, 2, died of multiple blunt force injuries on Nov. 20, 2021, IOL reports. De Villiers, wearing a seatbelt, survived. The children were not buckled in.

The children’s lives had already been upended. Evidence led by the state showed they had been removed from their parents because of neglect and substance abuse, IOL reports. They lived with De Villiers and her husband for about three months before being placed with a maternal relative. About a week before the crash, their mother and her partner were arrested on charges relating to child neglect.

That Saturday, De Villiers collected the children for the day while their caregiver attended a wedding. They swam and played at her home in Wellington, the court heard. In the afternoon she put them in her car, ostensibly to take them back. They cried and begged to stay with her. She told them to say goodbye to their great-grandfather and assured them that no one would ever hurt them again.

Instead of driving home, prosecutor Cornelius Prinsloo told the court, she went in the opposite direction, about 23 kilometres to Bainskloof Pass, passing several traffic control points. Roadworks were under way with stop-and-go points, and eyewitnesses saw her refuse to stop and speed through a closed boom gate, the Paarl Post reports. Traffic officers halted other traffic to prevent a head-on collision, and a patrol vehicle went looking when her car didn’t reach the next point.

At the summit, the court heard, she thought about stopping and calling her husband, or driving on to Ceres. She drove through a gap in the barriers instead. The car plunged down the mountainside and came to rest in a riverbed. The state proved she was sober, the car was mechanically sound and visibility was good, backing its case with post-mortem reports, an accident reconstruction and a mechanical analysis of the vehicle.

De Villiers pleaded guilty, but the prosecutor rejected the part of her plea explanation that claimed diminished responsibility, so the court entered a not guilty plea and accepted the rest as formal admissions, IOL reports. In those admissions she said she wanted to spare herself and the children further suffering. Testifying in November 2025, she said she “did not feel like herself” and that “something switched off.” After 30 days of observation at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital, a panel found her mentally fit and able to understand that what she did was wrong, with no evidence of psychosis. It called her conduct “goal-directed but impulsive.” She did not contest it.

In mitigation she described a hard upbringing, poverty and three suicide attempts as a teenager. In January 2020 she had been in a crash with her stepdaughter, who later died of burn injuries, and she said she suffered from depression afterwards with little treatment. Prinsloo said none of that could outweigh the deliberate killing of three young children entrusted to her care.

Scottsville: Grandfather Charged in Fentanyl Death of Revelin Meador, 7

Nearly six years after 7-year-old Revelin Meador died of a fentanyl overdose in rural Allen County, Kentucky, her grandfather and primary caregiver has been arrested and charged with first-degree manslaughter. Bobby Meador, 70, was taken into custody Thursday by the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and is being held in the Warren County jail pending transfer to Allen County, the Allen County-Scottsville Crime Task Force said, according to WSMV and WNKY. He is presumed innocent.

Revelin couldn’t have done it to herself. The task force says she was “medically fragile, required around-the-clock care, and was unable to care for herself.” The medical examiner found she died of acute fentanyl intoxication, and investigators confirmed she was “physically incapable of independently obtaining or administering fentanyl.” She was found dead on Celsor Road in Allen County on Aug. 1, 2020, WNKY reports.

“I don’t know how a medically fragile child that can’t move her arms, can’t move her legs, and can’t feed herself dies of a fentanyl overdose,” task force Detective Ryan Dillon told WNKY. Investigators say exactly how the fentanyl got into her system has not been conclusively established.

According to Dillon, Bobby Meador was the person responsible for her day-to-day care. “He received money from the state to care for her,” Dillon said. “He told us himself that he was responsible for the feedings and the medication that was administered.”

For years her death sat unresolved. The task force reopened the investigation in September, WSMV reports, and announced on Tuesday that the death had been reclassified as a homicide based on new information and evidence. “Following an extensive investigation, First-Degree Manslaughter was determined to be the appropriate charge based on the evidence and applicable Kentucky law,” the task force said.

Dillon expects more. “He was charged with manslaughter today, but I’m quite confident in saying that there’s gonna be additional charges coming his way,” he said. Investigators are still examining what happened inside the home.

The reopened inquiry has already led somewhere else. A day before the grandfather’s arrest, the task force arrested Revelin’s father, Farren Meador, 31, on first-degree rape and incest charges involving multiple other victims and dating back to 2019, WSMV and WNKY report. The task force says those charges are not connected to his daughter’s death. Detectives say the reopening of Revelin’s case is what led them to the information behind that arrest, WSMV reports. He is also presumed innocent.

The task force itself is new. It was announced in August under Allen County Sheriff Brandon Ford and Scottsville Police Chief Danny Wilson to bring experience, resources and renewed attention to serious crimes, “including cases that may have previously gone unresolved.” It thanked the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and the South Central Kentucky Drug Task Force for help with the arrest, and gave special recognition to Allen County Coroner Darren Davis “for his persistence and dedication to seeking answers for this child.”

“No victim should be forgotten, and the pursuit of justice should never be determined by how much time has passed,” the task force said. Tips can be sent to r.smith@scottsvillepolice.org.

The Hague: ICC Rules Duterte Fit to Stand Trial for Drug War Killings

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is fit to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity over the killings of his “war on drugs,” judges at the International Criminal Court have ruled. Trial Chamber III made its decision public on Thursday, Oct. 8, though it is dated Sept. 28, the court said. The trial is set to open on Nov. 30. Duterte, who is 81 according to The Diplomat, is presumed innocent.

He faces three counts of crimes against humanity. In April, Pre-Trial Chamber I unanimously confirmed all the charges and committed him for trial, finding “substantial grounds to believe that Mr. Duterte is responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder,” committed “as part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population on the territory of the Republic of the Philippines,” The Diplomat reports. The charges cover the murders of at least 76 people and the attempted murders of two others. Nineteen of the alleged murders were carried out between 2013 and 2016, when he was mayor of Davao City. The rest came during the anti-drug campaign he launched on becoming president in 2016.

That campaign killed at least 6,000 people by the Philippine police’s own official estimate, The Diplomat notes. Independent estimates run as high as 30,000.

The question of his mind has dogged the case. His lawyers argued last year that his health was frail and deteriorating in the ICC detention unit, and in June asked for interim release on “compelling humanitarian grounds,” citing illness and “advanced age.” In January, judges ruled he was fit to take part in the pre-trial proceedings. The decision released this week answers a separate petition, filed in September 2025, claiming he could not stand trial because of “cognitive impairment in multiple domains,” according to The Diplomat.

The judges relied on an independent panel of experts, along with submissions from the parties. The panel found unanimously that Duterte can understand the charges, understand the purpose and consequences of the proceedings, follow them, including the nature and implications of entering a plea, understand the evidence and instruct his lawyers, the ICC said. The chamber said it was satisfied that he can effectively exercise his fair trial rights.

It also set conditions around his health. Sitting hours will be decided case by case, depending on the circumstances of witnesses and the accused. The court’s registry must make sure the medical officer of the ICC detention centre continuously monitors his health, and any change in his condition must be passed to the judges immediately.

At an in-person appearance last month he looked thin and haggard, The Diplomat reports. Presiding Judge Joanna Korner said at a status conference that the chamber was “very anxious” for the prosecution case to finish “as swiftly as possible in the circumstances,” a concern the outlet linked to the volume of evidence and to the hope that Duterte lives to see a verdict.

The court has set out the timeline. The arrest warrant was issued in secret on March 7, 2025, and made public on March 11, the court says. He was surrendered to The Hague on March 12, 2025, after his arrest in the Philippines, and first appeared before judges on March 14. The confirmation hearing ran from Feb. 23 to 27, 2026. Trial Chamber III was formed on April 24 and fixed the opening date on May 27. The court says details on how to attend or watch the proceedings will be released closer to the date.

Várzea Grande: Missing Teacher Found Dead, Metalworker Arrested

The body of Breno Antônio Humberto, a 25-year-old schoolteacher missing for 12 days, was found on Thursday in a marsh in Várzea Grande, in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. The same day, Civil Police arrested a 26-year-old metalworker, Elias Samuel Delgado da Silva, known as “Bigode,” on suspicion of involvement in the case, G1 and Primeira Página report. He denies any crime and is presumed innocent.

According to G1, the suspect lived on the corner near where the body was found, and led officers to the spot. Police described it as a deep, muddy marsh. The body was badly decomposed, which has so far kept investigators from establishing how the teacher died. That should come from the forensic examination. Officers from the homicide division, the DHPP, recovered it, and tattoos indicated it was Breno, Primeira Página reports; formal identification falls to Politec, the state forensic agency.

Breno left home in Várzea Grande on Saturday, Sept. 26, and never came back. His twin brother, Bruno Humberto, told G1 that the family began receiving messages from Breno’s phone but didn’t trust the way they were written. They asked for a photo to prove he was all right. The picture raised more questions: the tattoos on his arm didn’t appear, and the T-shirt wasn’t the one he had been wearing when he left. Breno wasn’t the kind to go off without telling anyone, his brother said. Whoever was using the phone kept writing until about 11:30 p.m. At midnight, the phone’s tracker was switched off.

His brother told Primeira Página that in the early hours between Sept. 25 and 26, Breno had tried to book several rides through an app without success. He said Breno knew the suspect and that it was the suspect who had sought him out.

The arrest came at a farm in the Lago do Manso area of Chapada dos Guimarães, where Delgado da Silva was working, according to his defence. Police had been treating the disappearance as a possible homicide. One of the investigating delegados, Bruno Abreu, described the suspect as “very cold,” G1 reports.

His lawyer, Ronaldo Meirelles, says his client cooperated from the start. He had already gone to the police station voluntarily on Friday, Oct. 2, to give a statement, handed over his phone and its password, and his vehicle had been seized for forensic examination before he was arrested, Primeira Página reports. The defence says he knew Breno because his son studies at the school where Breno taught.

Much remains unanswered. Police have not released a motive; the delegado in charge called the subject delicate and said the information would stay confidential for now, G1 reports. Investigators believe other people may have taken part. A motorcyclist has been identified and is being investigated for possible involvement, though his role, and that of anyone else, has yet to be established.

For those 12 days, relatives and friends searched for him and spread appeals on social media, Primeira Página reports. Delgado da Silva works in metalwork in Várzea Grande, in the same area where the teacher’s family lives. The Civil Police investigation continues.

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