A Flower Mound man who admitted to trying to buy a 9-year-old girl for sex was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Kevin Moake, 50, was also ordered to register as a sex offender and serve a lifetime of supervised release after he had pleaded guilty to a federal child porn charge in January, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. According to authorities, Moake admitted to driving to a Burger King restaurant on Mockingbird Lane near Love Field in an attempt to buy a girl for sex. He met a “seller” and said he would pay $2,000 but did not have the full amount. Instead, he gave the “seller,” who was an undercover officer, $100 as a down payment and suggested a “rent-to-own” plan.
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By ED TIMMS and TANYA EISERER / The Dallas Morning News
/ The Dallas Morning News
Julian Resendiz contributed to this report.
When Gerardo Rendon called 911, he had a simple explanation for what happened to his wallet: A man he believed was a police impersonator took it, along with his car keys.
Kevin Schoch, an off-duty Dallas County Precinct 2 deputy constable, gave police a more complicated account: He’d called 911 about an hour earlier to report that he had a suspected drunk in custody – Rendon – at the parking lot of a 24-hour service station, convenience store and fast food restaurant in the Love Field area. But before Dallas officers showed up, he took Rendon’s car keys and left because he had to be at another job.
Returning several hours later to leave the keys in Rendon’s car, he told police that he saw the wallet on top of the car and took it home until he could turn it in to his unit’s property room.
Law enforcement experts and civil rights advocates say the incident suggests serious lapses in accepted police procedures and judgment – including the decision to approach a suspect while off duty and driving a personal vehicle, leaving before on-duty police arrived, and – depending on the account – either taking the wallet, or finding it, and not placing it into a property room promptly.
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PITTSBURGH - A 24-year-old Pittsburgh man has been convicted of kidnapping and killing a 17-year-old girl and her boyfriend, and the same jury must now decide if he deserves the death penalty.
The Allegheny County jury convicted 24-year-old Lester Johnson on Monday of first-degree murder for killing Shawnte Betts, of Pittsburgh, and her boyfriend, 26-year-old James Jones, of Wilkinsburg, in July 2004.
Jones’ wife says she received a ransom call demanding $80,000 the night her husband disappeared.
Johnson’s co-defendant, 25-year-old Jaurvon Hopkins, of Pittsburgh, is jailed awaiting a separate trial.
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A 26-year-old man has been charged with kidnapping after an incident involving a 14-year-old girl in Ipswich.
Suffolk Police said Hector Seaman, of no fixed abode, was arrested after the incident, which happened in Bucklesham Road.
He was also charged with failing to provide a breath test, a police spokeswoman said.
Mr Seaman was due to appear before Ipswich Magistrates Court on Wednesday to face the charges.
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Court records show that a Baltimore man charged in a kidnapping and fatal shooting has been arrested and charged at least 37 times previously.
Thirty-two-year-old Sherman Anderson is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and more than a dozen other offenses in the death of 24-year-old Qonta Waddell.
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Two 17-year-old Dallas men have been arrested in the burning of two dogs on April 4, Dallas Police said Thursday.
Lefferido Sudds and Jucorey Davis are facing animal cruelty charges, said Senior Cpl. Janice Crowther, police spokeswoman.
The men are accused of torturing the two dogs on April 4 by setting them on fire, Crowther said. Neighborhood residents saw the burning dogs running nearby and tried to extinguish the flames.
Both dogs were burned badly and had to be euthanized, Crowther said.
She said that seven other dogs were seized from Sudds’ back yard and that a veterinarian said some of those dogs had injuries consistent with dog fighting.
Those dogs’ injuries were so severe that they, too, were euthanized, Crowther said.
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A 53-year-old Houston man is innocent and should be released from prison after serving 22 years for a rape and robbery, his lawyer said Friday, because faulty forensics and false testimony from the Houston crime lab secured his conviction.
A jury convicted Gary Alvin Richard in a 1987 attack on a nursing student in a trial based largely on blood-typing evidence from the Houston Police Department crime lab. But, prosecutors and the defense attorney agree, new tests completed Friday show that an HPD analyst misled jurors at Richard’s trial and failed to report evidence that may have helped him.
Based on the new tests, both sides will ask a judge next week to release Richard on bond while they sort out what happened in his case.
“This is a new chapter, among many, of mistakes that were made, of sloppy work at the crime lab,” said Bob Wicoff, Richard’s lawyer. “Most troubling are the results that were not passed on to people who needed them.”
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The defense hammered away at a Crime Scene Unit detective in court today, questioning why he did not voucher blue jeans and a bag that were found in the bedroom of an Oakwood Fire marshal allegedly murdered in his home by his wife.
Detective Charles Reiss testified he did not believe the jeans or bag, which contained several items — possibly a towel and sock — were of “forensic significance” to the probe into the slaying of Supervising Fire Marshal Douglas Mercereau.
Mercereau was found shot to death in bed in his Tarring Street home on Dec. 2, 2007.
His wife, Janet Redmond-Mercereau, 40, is on trial in state Supreme Court, St. George, for his murder.
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A Los Angeles County judge today rejected defense efforts to remove the district attorney’s office from the case of a Beverly Hills fashion designer who was convicted last year of rape and sexual assault.
Lawyers for Anand Jon Alexander accused prosecutors of attempting to sabotage their investigation of a juror who allegedly contacted the designer’s sister during and after the trial.
District attorney’s investigators intercepted the juror and interviewed him on Jan. 7 just before he arrived for a meeting with the defendant’s sister, who was wearing a hidden recording device fitted by a defense investigator. Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley said he disagreed with the district attorney’s actions but did not find that they merited removing the entire office or the two prosecutors who tried the case.
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by Laura Gunderson, The Oregonian
Tuesday April 07, 2009, 5:58 PM
The FBI has accused a Roseburg-based fishing boat manufacturer of fraudulently swelling its inventory figures in an attempt to squeeze millions out of a Wells Fargo credit line.
According to an FBI affidavit and search warrant, North River Boats Inc. and its affiliated retail outlets have been accused of wire fraud.
Brian Brush, the company’s president and owner who bought the company in 1997, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Taraneh Foster, a North River spokeswoman, said that though the two companies are owned by Brush and share a headquarters, they are separate entities. She said the manufacturing arm, North River Boats Inc., “had no ties to Wells Fargo” and is operating normally.
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