Snatched in the Dead of Night

February 28, 2008

Early on the morning of January 20, 2008, 19-year-old Brianna Denison, a sophomore at Santa Barbara City College, was literally kidnapped from an apartment in Reno, Nevada, where she slept, while home on winter break. Nearly a month later, following intensive search efforts, Brianna’s body was found in a brushy field not far from a business park. An autopsy determined that she had been strangled, and the police believe that she was the victim of a serial rapist who had now escalated his crimes to that of murder. A pair of black thong-style "Pink Panther" panties was found with the body, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. However, DNA testing concluded that the panties were not Brianna’s. Instead, the DNA found on the panties belonged to an unknown woman, and also contained male DNA that matches that of the suspected serial rapist. Police believe that the killer is responsible for rape attacks against at least two other women, and everyone concerned fears that he will strike again.

According to a statement by Reno Deputy Police Chief Jim Johns to the Associated Press, Brianna’s body had been in the field where it was found for more than a week. The location is approximately 8 miles from where Brianna was last seen, near the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR).

"I would say this is a serial rapist," Johns told reporters at a news conference. "We have two, probably three cases linked through DNA."

Johns said that he was concerned that the man committing the sexually-motivated crimes would strike again, and urged anyone with information about the cases to contact the police.

Brianna, according to People magazine, had always been mindful about her safety and security. On the night in question, January 19, 2008, she had made plans with friends to attend a number of parties and had provided her mother with a list of the locations where she would be that night. Following the parties, Brianna went home with a female friend and crashed on the friend’s couch at 4:30 a.m. When her friend awoke some four and a half hours later, Brianna was gone. A bloodstain was discovered on the pillow she used that morning, and the front door was found unlocked...

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The Continuing Story of Foxy Knoxy: Honor Student to Violent Sex Killer?

February 20, 2008

Many people are still wondering how an attractive honor student, studying abroad for a year and dubbed "Foxy Knoxy," could have become involved in the grisly throat-slashing and rape of her equally attractive female roommate who was found dead in her room after she had attended a Halloween party the previous Wednesday evening where, according to MSNBC, she had been accompanied by a person wearing a mask made famous in the "Scream" movies. Nonetheless, Italian police are alleging that 20-year-old Amanda Knox was involved in the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, whose bloody, half-naked body was found on Friday morning, November 2, 2007 in the apartment that she shared with Amanda and two other young women.

For friends and relatives of the Seattle-area native and University of Washington honor student, Amanda’s alleged involvement in Meredith Kercher’s murder just could not have happened and must be some sort of mistake, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. But to the police in the central Italian city of Perugia located 105 miles north of Rome and well-known for its chocolate, Amanda, along with her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, and another man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, 37, a Congolese musician who owned the Perugia bar where Amanda worked, there is little, if any, doubt of Amanda’s alleged complicity in the brutal murder that made headline news all across Europe.

"The motive appears sexual, but Meredith was morally innocent," Perugia Police Chief Arturo de Felice told The Daily Telegraph of London. "She was the victim, not a participant."

The police chief said that Meredith had died while trying to fight off a sexual attack. When Meredith’s body was discovered in her room, her bloodied shirt was found bunched up around her slashed and stabbed neck. According to the coroner’s report, Meredith had died a "slow, agonizing death." According to the police chief, Knox and her boyfriend, the son of an Italian doctor, told investigators that they had found Meredith dead when they returned to the apartment and discovered that it had been ransacked by burglars.

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Shocking. Positively Shocking.

February 11, 2008

Yes, the title words are those spoken by Sean Connery as James Bond in the movie Goldfinger (1964) after he narrowly escaped death by horribly executing one of his celluloid foes by electrocution.

But for this brief article those words could also easily express the thoughts and feelings of residents throughout Central Pennsylvania when they learned that Windsor Township resident Kirsten Taylor, 29, had died during a night of kinky sex in which her husband, Toby Taylor, 37, had shocked her repeatedly with electricity to sexually stimulate both of them. However, that wasn’t how it was initially reported.

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