Before, during and after the horrific murders, the Capital Gazette shooter left behind a series of clues about his motivation and his mental state, the prosecution’s psychiatric expert testified Friday.
The man who killed Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters harbored a grudge against the news organization for years before planning the attack and choosing a time, Dr. Gregory Saathoff said.
OLATHE, Kan. — Decades later the family of a murdered Johnson County teen has hope her case may soon be solved.
On Tuesday, Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, announced they cracked a nearly 40-year-old cold case. Now, Tawnya Knight’s family is hoping hers is next.
“I love her and miss her. We’re not giving up,” her mother Lori Knight said.
Her daughter, 15-year-old Tawnya Knight was killed after leaving a friend’s house in 1996. The Spring Hill girl’s remains were found in a field next to a graveyard six months later. A metro major case squad was activated, and they ran down more than 100 leads, with no arrests.
“It was like the case just went and sat on a shelf,” Lori Knight said. “Sometimes it seems like I’m ready to give up hope. But then I remind myself, I can’t do that. You know, Tawnya needs justice. And, and this family needs closure, and it’s been a long, hard road.”
The dead are more alive than ever. Thanks to social media and inherited ‘intellectual property rights,’ stars of the past enjoy digital immortality. Icons including Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and John Lennon remain active on blue-checkmarked social media accounts that are often controlled by for-profit corporations, which don’t require a family tie to the deceased.
Marilyn Monroe passed away more than 60 years ago but, with more than 1.7 million followers on Instagram, she’s also one of the top social media influencers today.
This is strange but dead celebrity influencers are not uncommon. They are prominently visible on social media, sporting blue checkmarks as if they never passed away.
In some cases, these accounts are controlled by direct family members who work hard to keep the spirit of their loved ones alive. However, others are controlled by corporations that have nothing to do with the person they represent.
In Southern Italy, a herculean effort is underway to bring down a crime syndicate that’s less famous, but more powerful than the Cosa Nostra. Seth Doane reports for 60 Minutes+, now streaming on Paramount+.
It may not look like “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas,” but Southern Italy is in the grips of a crime syndicate much bigger than the Cosa Nostra, the inspiration for those movies. It’s called the ‘Ndrangheta and its members keep a much lower profile while controlling an estimated 50% to 80% of Europe’s cocaine trade.
That more modest lifestyle was on display when 60 Minutes+ went with law enforcement into the forest in Calabria, a region the ‘Ndrangheta has in a stranglehold. Members of an elite hybrid military-police force called the Cacciatori – which in Italian translates to, “the hunters”- showed Seth Doane a small hideout covered in earth that blended into the side of a mountain. An ‘Ndrangheta member on the run had been captured there while making his morning coffee.
Anna Bettozzi was found with €300,000 in cash when her Rolls-Royce was pulled over in 2019
Dozens of people have been arrested, including an oil heiress and singer who was found with €300,000 (£260,000) in cash when her Rolls-Royce was pulled over in 2019, as Italian police disrupted a massive fuel fraud by mafia groups.
Police also seized nearly €1bn in assets linked to mafia money laundering and tax fraud through oil products in a series of scams known as “Operation PetrolMafias”.
Allegedly carried out by different clans within the Naples’ Camorra and Calabrian ’Ndrangheta syndicates, the various schemes underscored the “nefarious synergy between mafias and white-collar criminals”, prosecutors said in a statement.
