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Archives > Volume 7 Issue 69 - November 20, 2009 Kidnapping, murder, infant burial alleged in Missouri abuse case...Graphic details of bestiality, child rape and sodomy emerged in court documents filed Thursday in the case of a Missouri family accused of horrific crimes against their relatives. CNN News story here 
Three alleged victims of years-ago child sex abuse within a Missouri family told authorities they were forced by one of the accused to kill a man after he was kidnapped, according to new court documents filed in the case. More CNN news here
In addition, another alleged victim told police that she was held captive in the basement of a home and abused by five of the suspects, and that the suspects buried her baby in the basement after she became pregnant the first of two times, the documents say. Six family members are in custody on various charges related to the abuse allegations. The alleged victims - all now adults - came to police with stories of sexual performances, mock weddings, rape with various objects and a forced abortion during their childhoods, according to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate KSHB in Kansas City. CNN does not identify alleged sexual assault victims. The newest documents - affidavits seeking search warrants - were obtained by CNN affiliate WDAF in Kansas City. In them, authorities say several alleged victims told them that they were in a car with suspect Burrell E. Mohler Jr., now 53, when he followed a man home from an Independence, Missouri, shopping center in April 1988. Once there, Mohler told the children to get out of the car and tell the man that Mohler was having a heart attack and needed help. They did, and when the man leaned in to look at him, Mohler wrapped his arm around the man's neck and "subdued him very quickly," the court documents say. He told them to get back in the car, the victims alleged, and drove them and the man to a farm belonging to his father, Burrell Mohler Sr., now 77, another suspect in the case, according to the documents. He then told the children to kill the man, giving them knives to stab him with and telling the children that the man would kill them unless they killed him first. Then, he forced the children to dig a grave and bury the man, the documents say. A search warrant has been executed on the property, which Mohler no longer owns. The documents say that glass fragments, an unknown kind of bone, a credit card, eyeglasses, the sole of a shoe and a broken glass jar were found. The alleged victims told police they "had observed several murders," the documents say. The second search warrant affidavit says that after media coverage of the arrests, a woman said she was held on the elder Mohler's property in a basement and abused by five of the suspects. Some of the other alleged victims, the document says, have also told police about a girl "who lived in the basement," the documents said. "She recalls becoming pregnant twice while in captivity," the documents said. "Following her delivery of the first baby, she recounts that Burrell E. Mohler Sr. and Burrell E. Mohler Jr. buried the infant in the basement, which at that time had a dirt floor. The infant was in a box. Within days of this event, the basement floor was covered with a layer of concrete." On November 11, police used ground-penetrating radar to examine the floor, with the consent of the current owner, the affidavit said. An "anomaly ... consistent with the shape of a box" could be seen, the documents said. 15-year-old Olten murder suspect says hobby was killing people... On an Internet site, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." It may have sounded like a teenage exaggeration, but authorities say she fulfilled her words. AP News story here 
Even as new details emerge about the teenager charged with killing 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, many facts about the crime continued to be kept secret Thursday - and may never be released by authorities unless Bustamante goes to trial for murder.
Bustamante, who had been in juvenile custody since leading police to Elizabeth's body Oct. 23, was certified Wednesday as an adult and indicted on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. She is accused of strangling Elizabeth, cutting her throat and stabbing her. Online court records showed Thursday that a public defender assigned to represent Bustamante filed a motion seeking to have her placed in a state hospital for immediate mental health treatment. On a YouTube profile viewed by The Associated Press, which has since been taken down, Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." A year ago, Bustamante posted a video to the site in which she appears to intentionally shock herself on an electric fence near her home, then goads her two younger brothers into doing the same. For more information on depression, see eGuide/depression. A police officer testified that Bustamante confessed to digging two holes to be used as a grave, then killing Elizabeth five days later without provocation because she wanted to know what it felt like. But repeated objections by Bustamante's juvenile justice attorney prevented the police officer from explaining why two holes were dug. Cole County prosecutor Mark Richardson also has declined to elaborate. "I know that, but I cannot go into those details right now," Richardson said. Asked if he could say whether Elizabeth's body was found in only one of those holes, Richardson paused for several seconds and again replied: "No, I can't tell you that right now." In other news... 
Authorities said Thursday that Shaniya Davis was sexually assaulted and asphyxiated before her body was dumped off a rural road. AP News story here Mario McNeill is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape of a child, Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine told reporters at a news conference. Earlier in the week, authorities said McNeill admitted taking the girl, but Bergamine did not say whether McNeill admitted to the child's death. A search warrant says McNeill picked the girl up in front of her home and drove her more than 30 miles to a hotel in Sanford, where she was last seen alive. Surveillance video captured McNeil carrying the girl in the building. "It is our sincere hope that the Davis family may now begin to put this horrific event behind them and begin the healing process," Bergamine said at the news conference. McNeill's lawyer, Allen Rogers, did not immediately respond to a message left at his office after hours. The girl's mother, Antoinette Davis, is charged with trafficking her daughter and child abuse involving prostitution. Bergamine said Thursday night that no new charges have been filed against Davis. Police issued the warrant containing the new charges against McNeill after they collected hair and fibers, clothes, and a straw from his 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. The case puts a spotlight on child trafficking issues within the United States. CNN News story here For more on this story, see vol7_iss67 and vol7_iss68.
Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season likely won't get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers. CBS News story here The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks. Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide. People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas. The letter program is a revered holiday tradition in North Pole, where light posts are curved and striped like candy canes and streets have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Santa Claus Lane. Volunteers in the letter program even sign the response letters as Santa's elves and helpers. North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed that caution is necessary to protect children. But he's outraged North Pole program should be affected by a sex offender's actions on the East Coast - and he thinks it's wrong that locals just found out about the change in recent days. Santa's "elves" at the North Pole have been given their walking papers - but they're not going quietly. AP News story here Alaska's congressional delegation has stepped in to find a solution. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and Republican Rep. Don Young have sent letters to Postmaster General John Potter expressing their concerns over the changes.
The Arkansas Court of Appeals has ruled that state child welfare officials properly seized children from the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries after a police raid. AP News story here The appeals court issued three opinions Wednesday dealing with the children taken by welfare officials after a September 2008 raid at Alamo's compound. In one ruling, Judge Robert J. Gladwin wrote that testimony at closed hearings about the seizures showed "a clear picture of danger to the children in the ministry compound at Fouke." Gladwin added that judges had "no hesitation" in affirming a lower court's decision to allow the seizures. Alamo was sentenced to 175 years in federal prison last week after being convicted of taking young girls across state lines for sex. For more on this story, see vol6_iss73, vol6_iss78 and vol7_iss67.
Catholic bishops gathered for their semi-annual meeting also heard a preliminary report on the "causes and contexts" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal that resulted in some 14,000 abuse claims and cost the church $2.6 billion since 1950. USA Today story here Researchers from New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the nearly 300 members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that homosexual orientation should not be linked to the sexual abuse, even as some church leaders have sought to make a link between gay priests and sexual abuse. "What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse," said Margaret Smith of John Jay College. "At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now." Since the abuse scandal erupted in the USA in 2002, the Vatican has barred seminarians with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," and conducted an investigation of seminaries that concluded that "difficulties" related to "homosexual behavior" had been largely "overcome." For more information on past reports to the bishops, see eGuide/clergy abuse.
A 37-year-old father irate over hearing his 15-year-old son had sexual contact with a 3-year-old girl made the teen strip at gunpoint, marched him to a vacant lot and shot him to death despite pleas from the boy and his mother, a relative said. FoxDetroit news story here Michigan authorities filed a first-degree murder charge against Jamar Pinkney Sr. in the shooting death of Jamar Pinkney Jr. in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park. Defense attorney Corbett O'Meara said prosecutors should consider evidence of the father's state of mind over the sex abuse report. "If something were to happen that would cause a reasonable person to lose control of himself, that is something the prosecution would have to take into account," O'Meara said outside Highland Park District Court. Tensions were high in the courtroom Wednesday as the handcuffed suspect was led into the room for the arraignment, which lasted less than a minute. This all apparently started when the father's girlfriend accused Jamar Junior of acting inappropriately with her three-year-old child. FoxDetroit news story here
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