Category Archives: Legal News

Blog, Criminal, Legal News, Organized Crime

With A Little Help From My Friends: Former Kansas City Crime Lord Whitey Cox Aided K.C. Mob Figure John Mandacina’s Bid For Freedom

January 7, 2023 — One-time Kansas City Black mob boss Eddie (Whitey) Cox gets an assist in the freeing of K.C. mafia soldier John Mandacina this week. Cox, who is the only Caucasian to ever lead an African-American criminal organization and known as an expert amateur jurist, helped attorneys for Manadcina draft legal briefs that earned him a sentence commutation and sprung him from a life sentence he was serving for a Civella crime family murder that occurred back in 1990.

The 88-year old Cox got himself a compassionate release for medical reasons in the summer of 2021. He pointed Mandacina in the same direction. U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs let Mandacina, 76. out of the Big House Friday because he is battling lung cancer. While Mandacina did 30 years as a guest of the government, Whitey Cox did almost 32 before seeing freedom 18 months ago.

Cox co-founded the Kansas City’s Black Mafia on the city’s eastside in 1968 along with James (Doc) Dearborn and Eugene (Jimmy the Seal) Richardson, overseeing a vast empire of gambling, drugs, loan sharking, extortion and prostitution. Known for his sharp mind, gangland political savvy and innovative crimes, Cox was Dearborn’s main adviser and a diplomat in the area’s crime scene. Dearborn was killed mob-style in 1985, gunned down in a motel by the airport.

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Blog, Criminal, Legal News

Prosecutor Quits in Middle of Trial for Former Border Patrol Agent Accused of Being a Serial Killer

A Texas prosecutor quit his job several days into the trial of a former Border Patrol agent accused of being a serial killer. Joshua Davila was an assistant district attorney working on the case against Juan David Ortiz, 39.

“I have officially left the Webb County District Attorney’s Office,” he said in a Facebook post, according to KSAT. “That is the most unprofessional and toxic workplace I’ve ever had to deal with. I do not recommend it. I’m sorry to anyone I let down.”

The office confirmed his resignation but did not address his criticism.

“The Webb County District Attorney’s Office can confirm that ADA Josh Davila resigned this morning,” the office told Law&Crime in a statement. “This does not affect the prosecution of this case.”

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Supreme Court

Cadaver dogs scour suspected serial killer’s former Westfield property in renewed push to find remains

Cadaver dogs found several areas Sunday where investigators will check further for human remains. Those areas are marked with red flags.

WESTFIELD, Ind. — Police renewed an effort Sunday to find human remains at Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, where the decomposed and charred remains of at least two dozen people were found 26 years ago. 

For the first time, cadaver dogs on Sunday searched the property that once belonged to suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister. They did it because many of Baumeister’s victims have never been identified. 

Investigators believe Baumeister targeted gay men, killing at least 25 people in the 1990s. In 1996, police found 10,000 bone fragments in the woods surrounding his home. 

To date, eight victims have been identified. But, over the past 15 years, the current owner of Fox Hollow Farm has found more bones and bone fragments.

“We don’t go looking for them, but they do turn up and I take them to the University of Indianapolis,” said Robert Graves, who has lived on the property for the last 15 years. 

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News

Alleged serial killer charged in deaths of more Indigenous women as police release image of jacket to try to identify victim

Police alleged Thursday that a Canadian man previously charged with murdering an Indigenous woman also killed three other women — two also confirmed to be Indigenous and one believed to be.

Jeremy Skibicki was charged May 18 and kept in custody after the partial remains of Rebecca Contois, 24, were found in a garbage bin near an apartment building. Contois lived in Winnipeg but was a member of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, also known as Crane River.

Police at the time said they were not ruling out more victims. On Thursday, they said Skibicki is now charged with first-degree murder in three other deaths in the same short period in the spring.

Police said Morgan Beatrice Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, were killed in the first week of May. Both women lived in Winnipeg and were members of Long Plain First Nation.

Police said a fourth woman, unidentified but believed to be Indigenous, is thought to have been killed on or about last March 15. They released a photo of a jacket similar to one she had been wearing.

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Luigi Ronsisvalle was the Forrest Gump of the mafia—in the middle of everything

During his two decades as Brooklyn’s top mob-busting homicide prosecutor, Michael Vecchione dealt with all manner of wiseguys, but none was less impressive than Luigi the Zip.

Short, overweight, disheveled and speaking in broken English, Sicilian import Luigi Ronsisvalle — dubbed “the human bowling ball” by Vecchione for being as wide as he was tall — embodied his Zip moniker, a slur American gangsters used for their overseas brethren, whom they regarded as backwater yokels. No one, it seemed, took Luigi seriously.

“He was just a schlub,” says Vecchione of the focus of his new book, “Homicide Is My Business” (Camino Books), out now.

“He was never sharp in the way he dressed. He was never able to carry on conversations. He was just a guy who knew how to do what they wanted him to do, which was kill people.”

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