The Child Protection eNewsletter

Evidence released in Caylee Anthony case… 

Statements and interview transcripts were released in the case of missing 3-year-old toddler Caylee Anthony on Monday.  Fox Orlando story here

Among the revelations contained in 400 pages of evidence:

--In the Pontiac Sunfire Casey Anthony had driven, investigators found Caylee's unclothed baby doll, a Dora the Explorer backpack, a child's toothbrush, a washed dinnerware knife, a black leather bag and a dark colored belt.  They also noted that there were scratches on the trunk of the car.

--Casey's mother, Cindy, first told a 911 operator that the car smelled like there had been a dead body inside.  She later said the smell was simply old pizza.

--The manager of the wrecker yard who towed the car told investigators that the smell coming from the Sunfire reminded him of the same odor he smelled in a car in which a man committed suicide.  He said in that case, the body had been in the car for five days.  In his statement, he said when he told Casey's father, George Anthony, that the smell was rotten, George did not reply.

--A man identified as an ex-fiancee of Casey’s told investigators that he noticed that Casey had deleted hundreds of photos of her and Caylee from her social networking Web sites.

--Casey's mother told one of her friends that Casey was a sociopath.

--On July 17, the day the sheriff's office arrested Casey Anthony, a man named Mark Hopkins, who said he was a Marine in California, called investigators.  He said he and Casey had been talking daily by phone and on the Internet and Casey had told him she was planning a trip to California to tell him something.  She said she told her mom and brother, but she didn't know how he'd react.  He told investigators he still didn’t know what she wanted to tell him.

See also  Video new evidence released part 1  and  Video bounty hunter interview.

Meanwhile, Casey Anthony tried to give her missing 3-year-old daughter up for adoption before she was born, but her mother wouldn't let her, according to legal documents that paint the 22-year-old Florida woman as a perplexed, scheming and unbalanced person who repeatedly defended obvious lies in police reports.  Fox Orlando story here

Texas couple offered sex with 5-year-old for used car…  

A San Antonio couple is accused of trying to trying to trade sex with the woman's 5-year-old daughter for an apartment, a used car and child care for her 10-month old daughter.  See ABC News story here

Jennifer Richards, 25, and her married boyfriend, Sean Michael Block, 40, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Stein Nowak.  Richards is charged with using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor.  Block is charged with distributing child pornography.

Nowak ordered Block held.  Richards' detention hearing was delayed until Tuesday, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.

According to an affidavit unsealed last Tuesday, the investigation began when an informant told the FBI about a text message allegedly sent by Block reading:  "Nice piece 5 yrs old belongs to my gf and she wants to sell it."

Richards and Block crafted a deal that, in addition to the apartment and used car, included child care for Richards' 10-month-old daughter, whose sexual service the couple intended to sell later, Rex Miller, the FBI's lead agent on the case, testified.

The couple had also hoped to blackmail the informant, Miller said.

After reviewing computers the couple used and listening to taped conversations, Miller determined Block and Richards were making further plans to abduct, rape and "carve up" a teenage runaway.

In other news…  

Both sides rested their case Tuesday in the death sentencing hearing of Joseph Edward Duncan III, who has been convicted of torturing, abusing and murdering a 9-year-old boy in Montana in 2005.  Fox News story here  A federal jury could begin deliberating as early as Wednesday whether Duncan lives or dies.  Last week, jurors cringed, cried and some desperately looked away as they were shown a series of deeply disturbing and graphic videos taken by a convicted child killer as he tortured, sexually abused and nearly killed a 9-year-old boy.  Daily Herald story here  Federal prosecutors showed the video as part of their efforts to persuade the jury to recommend the death penalty for Joseph Edward Duncan III.  He kidnapped the boy, Dylan Groene, and his sister, Shasta, in May 2005 after murdering their older brother, their mother and her fiance.  The two young children were taken deep into the Lolo National Forest, where they endured weeks of horrendous abuse at the hands of Duncan.  Duncan ultimately shot the boy point-blank in the head while his sister, then 8, watched.  He was arrested after returning to Coeur d'Alene, where a waitress recognized Shasta as the two ate at a Denny's restaurant.  See  vol3_iss42  and  vol6_iss53.

Aussie police have urged victims of an alleged pedophile ring at an exclusive Catholic boys' school in New South Wales to come forward. Read news.com.au story here  Allegations have surfaced about years of sex abuse at St Stanislaus' College in Bathurst from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. At least 13 victims have come forward since police were alerted last year by men who said they were abused while they were students at the private school in the state's central west.  A 65-year-old former priest faces 33 child sex charges following the allegations that a pedophile ring of priests and teachers had operated at the school.

A convicted sex offender was sentenced to life in prison Friday for strangling a 13-year-old girl and dumping her body in a pond. AP story here  Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty for David Lee Onstott, who was originally charged with first-degree murder in the death of Sarah Lunde, but backed off after a judge threw out his confession.  No physical evidence linked him to the crime.  A jury convicted him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder.  Prosecutors and Lunde's mother asked Circuit Judge Ronald Ficarrotta to give him the maximum sentence for that charge, which was life.  Sarah disappeared from her home in Ruskin, south of Tampa, in April 2005.  Prosecutors said Onstott strangled her after going to the trailer one night looking for her mother, whom he had dated.  Her partially clothed body was found a week later in an abandoned fish pond.  See  vol3_iss26.

Dozens of New Mexico sex offenders can no longer escape the watchful eyes not only of probation and parole officers but the satellite in earth orbit tracking their every move.  KRQE News story here  If any of more than 50 convicted offenders goes into a prohibited area officers are placed on alert.  The new real-time tracking law affects sex offenders released from prison on probation or parole since July 2007.

An ex-U.S. diplomat who admitted taping his sexual encounters with teenage girls while stationed in Brazil and the Congo was sentenced to 20 years, the maximum possible prison term.  ABC News story here  Gons G. Nachman, 42, had sought leniency, claiming among other things that cultural differences in those countries made sex with teenage girls more acceptable.  But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee took the unusual step of imposing consecutive 10-year terms for the two counts on which Nachman was convicted.  "I reject out of hand completely the idea that I should take into account cultural differences," Lee said.  He said even if such differences exist, Nachman was answerable to U.S. standards and U.S. law while working as a diplomat on embassy grounds.

A Pennsylvania medical student told a classmate he was trying to recruit a New Zealand woman and her 4-year-old daughter to be his sex slaves, and a search by federal agents found that he possessed child pornography, authorities said.  MSNBC News story here  Jeremy Noyes claimed he wanted to use the woman and her daughter to start a "society" of sex slaves that would live on a farm or an island, the classmate told the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Nebraska's new "safe-haven" law allowing parents to abandon unwanted children at hospitals with no questions asked is unique in a significant way:  It goes beyond babies and potentially permits the abandonment of anyone under 19.  AP story here  While lawmakers may not have intended it, the month-old law raises the possibility that frustrated parents could drop off misbehaving teens or even severely disabled older children with impunity.  The measure, which took effect July 18, does not absolve people of possible criminal charges–for example, if a child had been beaten.  And since the law does not specify, it technically allows anyone, not just a parent, to legally surrender custody.  Most other states narrowly define the role of the person surrendering the child.

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