April 25 TEXAS: Deaths haunt Pear Ridge 2 killing sprees in 7 years have not discouraged residents of the Pear Ridge neighborhood who still feel their section of Port Arthur is a good place to live. "It is quiet," said Floyd Doise, 58, who is retired and lives on Sixth Street. "For the last 7 years, it has been quiet since the Elroy Chester episode, which was just 2 blocks up on Seventh Avenue." Before police arrested Gary Sinegal, 40, of Port Arthur on Thursday in connection with a burglary that afternoon and named him as a suspect in killings of 3 elderly women last week, Doise said the neighborhood was on edge and memories of Chester are still fresh. Chester pleaded guilty in 1998 to killing Port Arthur firefighter Willie Ryman III, who was trying to stop Chester from raping his 2 teenage nieces. A jury took 12 minutes before sentencing him to death. Chester also admitted to killing John Henry Sepeda, 78; Etta Mae Stallings, 87; Cheryl DeLeon, 40; and Albert Bolden Jr., 35, who was his brother-in-law. The killings, all in the Pear Ridge neighborhood, took place during a home burglary spree from 1997 to 1998. "I've got good neighbors," said Joe Escobedo Jr., 69, who has lived on Lansing Avenue for 33 years. "We're just going to have to band together and do something about it." Investigators described Sinegal as a suspect in the deaths of Dorothy Barrett, 82, Louise Tamplin, 81, and Margie Gafford, 86. Barrett's body was found Monday in her home on Sixth Street. Gafford, who lived on Tyler Avenue, and Tamplin, who lived on Eunice Avenue, were discovered dead two hours apart on Thursday. Sinegal was in the Jefferson County Jail Saturday on a $10,000 bond charged with burglary and a parole violation. "They need to be patrolling these streets a little more," Escobedo said. "It's a shame an old lady can't sit out in her yard without something like that happening." Doise said Chester's attacks in Pear Ridge prompted the formation of Concerned Citizens of Pear Ridge, a citizens watch group. "We're the eyes and ears of the police department," Doise said. "When that happened (Chester's attacks) we had 186 people in our patrol group. At our last meeting, we had 15 active members. I wouldn't be surprised to see that go back up." Both Escobedo and Doise said that on Thursday they kept loaded guns in their homes for the 1st time in many years. "A lot of people went to sleep with weapons," Escobedo said. "I had a big ol' .38 hollow point ready for him. But it's a shame you have to live like that." Once they learned Sinegal had been arrested, both men said they unloaded their guns but kept them handy. Saturday afternoon, Pear Ridge residents went about their business, but every group of children playing in their yards or riding their bikes in the street had an adult keeping a wary eye out. "It's hard to bounce back from that one," said Sonya Banks, 29, of the recent murders. "It caught us completely off guard." Banks, who has lived across 39th Street in the Broadmore Addition for 2 years, said the last week has been particularly tough on her 3 children. "At first it made me mad because my little brother and sister were scared," said Banks' 11-year-old son, Donavan. "Then I got scared." Banks said she is happy living where she does, but life in the area has changed. "You lock your doors now and don't leave them open," said Banks, who is a student. "You think twice about everything." Donna Pogue, 34, who has lived on Eighth Avenue for about 6 years, remembers seeing Sinegal on her street several times. "You never know who you're living by," Pogue said as she watched her children. "The man used to always be riding up and down the street, but he never bothered anybody." Despite the 8 murders in their neighborhood, none of the residents said they plan to move. "It's still a nice place to live," Escobedo said. "It's too late for me. I'm too old to move. But if I had children going to school, I wouldn't hesitate." (source: The Beaumont Enterprise) ************************* Prosecutors work through deep abuse docket ---- Child cases sometimes take years to go to trial The flow of child abuse cases filed at the Nueces County District Clerk's office is constant. Yvonne Garcia, a supervisor at the office, says her curiosity overwhelms her when Child Protective Services caseworkers drop off their thick files. "A child has to die for us to hear about it on the news," she said. "There are just so many of them, and what their parents do to them, it's horrible." Ricardo Jimenez is an investigator at the Nueces County Children's Advocacy Center, where children with the most severe cases of sexual and child abuse are interviewed. He said it can take years for some cases to go to trial. Jimenez said one of the most frustrating parts of his job is to hear child after child use the same name of an alleged offender when he knows that person is out on the streets. "There are supposed to be checks and balances," he said. There were 271 district court child-abuse cases pending in January 2005, according to district clerk reports. District Attorney Carlos Valdez said the length of time it takes for a child abuse case to go to trial varies from a couple of days to a couple of years, depending on evidence and witnesses. But Valdez said changes are coming. Sandra Alaniz and Robert Wegmann, 2 special prosecutors appointed in January 2005 to clear the backlog of child abuse cases and to streamline the investigation of crimes against children, have already started. "Let me put it this way," Valdez said. "Our office is doing everything we can to address the very serious crime of child abuse." Still, some who work in investigating child abuse say the system simply isn't fast enough. The first case Alaniz worked on after being appointed was the 2003 capital murder case of Dominic Carbaugh, the 10-year-old boy who was brutally beaten to death along with his father. Alaniz said her next case will be the 2004 capital murder case of Kimberly Castillo, accused of killing her 18-month-old son Jerry Galindo, who suffered 14 bites, a broken rib, swelling of the brain and bruises. Alaniz said that case is scheduled for trial next month. Prosecuting child abusers is difficult for a myriad of reasons, Alaniz said. She said child victims are usually scared to testify against defendants because there are no records of the crimes they are alleged to be doing in secret and no witnesses. And even when all of this is overcome, she said, juries give at least half of the convicted offenders probation. "The punishment doesn't fit the crime," she said. "A lot of the time it's out of our hands. The community, the jury, sets the punishment." Iris Davila, a supervisor at the Nueces County Community Supervision and Corrections Department, who oversees the sex offender stabilization unit, said she agrees with Alaniz. Of 210 sex offenders who are on probation, she said at least 80 percent had offenses against children. The stabilization unit exists, she said, to try to stabilize an offender's behavior. "There is no way we can rehabilitate a sex offender," Davila said. (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) FLORIDA: Internet is newest place to plead case A few days after Will County authorities accused Kevin Fox of murdering his daughter, family members presented a different story to a worldwide audience. They created a Web site carrying Fox's claim of innocence and a collection of family snapshots. They later added a copy of Fox's wrongful-arrest lawsuit, selected news articles and an e-mail link for tips to catch "the real murderer." Fox's brother, Chad, said that almost 200,000 hits later, "I've seen such a shift in public perception, really due to the Web site. We've been able to post our side of the story to combat all the negative publicity that has been put out there against our family." Defendants in high-profile criminal and civil cases are increasingly using the Internet in an attempt to influence the public, the media and even potential jurors. From simple discussion groups to ultra-slick multimedia shows, the sites are giving unprecedented message control to those who stand to lose their fortune or freedom. "Is it a trend? Absolutely," said Richard Levick, a Washington-based litigation consultant who has designed Web strategies for his clients. "We're going to see a lot more of this into the future. Defendants are going to demand it." An Illinois capital case spawned one of the first sites 10 years ago. Lawyers for Girvies Davis, who said he did not commit the 1978 murder that put him on death row, built a home page in 1994 to publicize his plea for mercy. It attracted enormous attention. Media outlets from ABC News to People magazine ran stories on Davis, and Brian Murphy, one of the defense attorneys, said Web surfers sent a deluge of e-mails to then-Gov. Jim Edgar. "I don't have any idea whether it had any effect at all, but we didn't get the outcome we were looking for. Girvies was executed on May 17, 1995," said David Schwartz, who also represented Davis. These days, people in trouble don't even wait for a trial to put their spin online. Martha Stewart mounted a site within a day of her 2003 indictment for stock fraud, updating it frequently with terse statements from her lawyers and flowery notes from her fans. "I can't believe that you have to go through this trial, which to me seems pointless," a typical posting read. "However, I honestly believe that the government wants to incriminate you for senseless reasons just because you have a lot of money." Though Stewart's page was meant to shape publicity, others are designed to attract it. Eleven Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo Bay as unlawful combatants in the war on terrorism have a Web site that uses sophisticated programming tricks to lure browsers. Levick's firm, which represents the Kuwaitis, hired Canadian advertising agency Nekouda Creative to "optimize" the site. Every day, the agency looks for news that could tie into the detention, trying to figure out what Internet search terms the public might be using. It then makes "pay per click" deals with the search engine Google, so that when someone enters a phrase or name such as "Alberto Gonzales"--the U.S. attorney general who faced questions about Guantanamo during his confirmation hearing--the Kuwaitis' page appears near the top of the list of sponsored links. Such a service can cost $6,000 or more per month, but Levick said it has paid off handsomely. "Now half of the largest newspapers in the country are editorializing on behalf of their position," he said. Other sites are far more modest--portals created by supporters who sometimes have little connection to the accused. Barbara Andrews, a homemaker in Holland, Mich., knew nothing about Christopher Pittman before she saw his murder trial on Court TV earlier this year. The South Carolina boy claimed he was in the brain-scrambling grip of antidepressants when he killed his grandparents at age 12. Andrews was so outraged by Pittman's conviction and 30-year prison sentence that she taught herself Web design and soon put up a site with an online petition seeking the boy's pardon. She paid $105 to get the Web site for a year and has collected more than 1,700 names so far on the petition. "I receive many, many e-mails all the time, every day," she said. "People are very thankful they have someplace to go and express their opinions." Though she built the site without consulting Pittman's lawyers, attorney Andy Vickery welcomed it. He said a flood of electronic signatures could support his legal argument that, by current societal standards, Pittman's sentence was too harsh. Some prosecutors say they're unruffled by pro-defendant Web pages. "The thing that matters is the evidence. [A site] is something they do to make themselves feel better," said Will County prosecutor Phil Mock, who is handling the Kevin Fox case. Appellate prosecutor Ed Parkinson is handling the retrial of Julie Rea Harper, a Downstate woman whose conviction for murdering her son was set aside last year. He has seen her Web site, which says she was falsely accused, and wonders if potential jurors have too. "They could be influenced because obviously it has been written by her supporters," he said. "It could be persuasive to readers. We certainly intend to ask people whether they've come across it." But some say the sites' main benefit is to counter media reports they see as biased or incomplete. A portal dedicated to Michael Cardamone, the Aurora gymnastics coach convicted last month of sexually abusing seven girls, carries his lengthy assertion of innocence, including points that his sister said reporters have ignored. "I begged the papers to talk. Nobody listened to us, nobody talked to us," said Alysha Millard. The site "changes the story very drastically from what the people were told by the media: Coach molests kids. This is bringing awareness to the other side." Chad Fox said his brother's page has received hits from as far as Sweden and Germany. The site offers bumper stickers proclaiming Kevin Fox's innocence, and Chad Fox said he has sent out almost 2,500. "It's a sense of marketing for my brother and getting the truth out there," said Chad Fox. "I'm confident that he'll win the case, but ... eventually he'll have to go out into public, and without combating that negative press, it'll be awfully hard for him to live in a community." (source: SouthFlorida.com) VIRGINIA: A 2nd chance at life The headline in The Times-Dispatch posed the question 10 years ago: "CAN VIRGINIA 'LIFER' WRITE HIS WAY OUT OF PRISON?" Indeed, writing would be the salvation of Evans D. Hopkins, who was paroled in 1997 after serving 16 years of a life sentence for armed robbery. The story of this Danville native, known back home as Derrell, was released by Simon & Schuster this month in a powerful autobiography, "Life After Life: A Story of Rage and Redemption." Life after life - or at least after his book release - has been increasingly hectic for Hopkins. On Friday, he had just completed an interview for National Public Radio. A promotional tour in New York, Philadelphia and Washington lies ahead. "I'm 50 years old now," Hopkins says between forkfuls of a vegetarian omelet at a Shockoe Bottom caf. "I'm on a low-stress regimen. My body tends to interpret excitement as stress. So I'm just trying to stay low-key." Perhaps he's just worn out from a life anything but tranquil. Hopkins, the son of loving parents, grew up in Jim Crow-era Danville. As an idealistic teen, he moved to Winston-Salem, N.C., and joined the Black Panther Party, eventually moving to Panther headquarters in Oakland, Calif., and honing his writing chops for the party newspaper. But the party's spiral into violent excess telegraphed Hopkins' own descent into lawlessness and incarceration. Asserting the humanity of inmates written off as inhuman, Hopkins became a voice for the voiceless as he pounded out essays from his cell just above the electric chair in the old Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. His essay "Who's Afraid of Virginia's Chair?" - on the state's 1st execution since its reinstitution of the death penalty in 1976 - was published in the Outlook section of The Washington Post. More pieces in more publications followed. Along the way, he gained many friends and patrons from the journalism industry, including the late Carole Kass, The Times-Dispatch's movie critic who gave a prison workshop on film. "She was like my best friend on the outside," Hopkins recalls. "She helped change my attitude about white people." Tall, slender, bespectacled and soft-spoken, Hopkins appears miscast as the personification of black rage. He looks more the part of the author he has become, or an aging version of the tennis pro he might have been. His face isn't lined with the pain he has caused or absorbed. But it's all there in his book, in black and white. Hopkins describes his transgressions succinctly in an epiphany late in the book. Danville Commonwealth's Attorney William Fuller, his prosecutor-turned-advocate for parole, points out that the 19-year-old attendant at the filling station Hopkins had robbed at gunpoint had needed counseling. Hopkins wrote: It hit me then. My feeling of injustice had kept me from feeling empathy for the victim of my crime. But my writer's brain now embraced his pain, imagining the country boy's sessions with a psychologist, then wondering about the other victims of my crimes: the old night watchman suddenly assaulted during a routine night at the junior high, and the people in the bank who had been confronted with the big-bore shotgun in their faces. Hopkins' personal pain is also detailed throughout: the death of his 12-year-old son, who was born with a heart defect; the apparent suicide of his best friend in prison; the death of a woman and her child in a crash on their way to visit him at Nottoway Correctional Center; and the decline of his father (Alzheimer's) and his now-deceased mother (Parkinson's). The book took more than 2 years to write. He says the process was "gut-wrenching." By the last page, he has cast off his anger - at white people, at the criminal-justice system, at the Black Panther Party, at himself - and learned to forgive. He hopes the book will help others to learn forgiveness. "The roots of rage run deep," he says. "And a lot of it is still going on with our youth, because they're very angry." While in prison, he wrote: I can sense an inarticulate rage - gone to hatred, even - among many young men, distrust of anything classified as "white." It has become but justification for nihilism and a terrible moral relativism to them . . . . I tell the young bloods, when I have occasion to talk to them, "You start out hating white folks, thinking it's all right to rob them, kill them if necessary, next thing you know you think it's all right to kill your brother, if you feel he has wronged you . . . ." He sought to create a work of literature that would stand the test of time. But he also envisions "a young man searching a prison library, searching the shelves as I once did, looking for hope and inspiration - something to let him know his life matters." The lives of the incarcerated still matter to Hopkins, who vows never to forget those he left behind - particularly the innocents. Or as he says in his book, "There's no need in having freedom, if you're afraid to use it." (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)
