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Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Police investigate questionable death in Robinson
Robinson police are investigating a questionable death tonight after a man was found dead in his home.
About 5:30 p.m. police got a 9-1-1 call about an injured man after his wife came home at 3108 Robinson Drive and found him, said Robinson Police Chief Rusty Smith. When rescue workers arrived at the home, they found the man was dead, Smith said.
Police called the Texas Department of Public Safety’s mobile crime lab to the scene to help in the investigation, Smith said.
Police did not release the man’s name.
Smith said the death was being investigated as questionable, though he would not say whether there was any obvious sign the man suffered trauma.
Smith would say nothing else about the case except to say it was a “serious situation” and investigators would be at the scene all night.
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Youth baseball coach indicted in sexual assault of teen player
A Bell County grand jury today indicted William Thomas Jacobsen - the former Little River-Academy youth baseball coach accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old player - on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child, Bell County First Assistant District Attorney Murff Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe said Jacobsen’s wife, Marilyn Wesson, 57, was indicted for hindering apprehension, Bledsoe said.
Jacobsen, 31, and Wesson left the Little River-Academy area in June and fled to Mexico following allegations that Jacobsen sexually abused a member of the team he coached. Jacobsen and Wesson were arrested in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in August after photos and videos of the pair shopping at a pawn shop surfaced in early July.
Both were released to U.S. authorities and transferred to the Bell County jail where they remain awaiting arraignment this afternoon, Bledsoe said.
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Verdict in: 32 years and a $3,000 fine for man who sent child porn images to Waco woman’s cell phone
A jury has sentenced a Utah man to 32 years and fined him $3,000 for sending child pornography to a Waco woman’s cell phone.
On Tuesday, a tearful Brandon Terry Welte, who sent images of child pornography on his cell phone to a Waco woman last year, apologized to jurors and others in the courtroom Tuesday for making them view what he termed “those horrendous, disgusting pictures.”
Welte, a 29-year-old former wholesale grocery warehouse worker from Utah, pleaded guilty Monday to four counts of possession or promotion of child pornography and faces up to 80 years in prison.
He has elected to have a 54th State District Court jury of nine men and three women assess his punishment.
Prosecutors Lytza Rojas and Charissa Sloan rested their case Tuesday after calling police investigators from Waco and Utah and the 34-year-old Waco woman Welte met on a cell phone Internet chat room.
The woman told jurors she and Welte spent 10 hours text-messaging each other and talking about their sexual fantasies.
She said after about four hours, they exchanged phone numbers, and Welte sent her five pictures showing young girls having sex with men.
She said she kept messaging him despite the shocking pictures because she wanted to find out where he lived so she could go to the police.
She said he told her to call him “Good Daddy” and told her that the photos were of him abusing his own three young daughters.
He also told her that his fantasy is to kill a girl and to have sex with her body, the woman said.
Welte, who cried throughout his testimony, said he could not explain why he pretended to abuse his children. He said he has no children and had been drinking heavily the day and night that he sent the images and disturbing text messages.
He told jurors it was the first and last time that he ever sent child pornography to another person.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The conversation kind of took its own course. I was drunk, but I don’t want to blame it on that or use that as an excuse.”
Defense attorney Guy Cox called Welte’s father, grandfather and a longtime friend Tuesday afternoon. All asked the jury to grant Welte’s request for probation and said this behavior is out of character for him.
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Local Hooters girl makes company calendar
Alas, we don’t have a photograph, merely an e-mailed press release from Hooters of America announcing that one of the Hooters Girls who works at the Waco restaurant is in the 2009 Hooters Swimsuit Calendar.
Janelle Carbrera made it through several photo sessions and photo selection processes to grace the calendar, the company announced in a statement. The press release also says the calendar is now in stores.
Below is more of the release:
“It’s very exciting for everyone at Hooters when the calendars hit the stores. We’re thrilled for Janelle and are proud to recognize her in this year’s edition as one of the best looking women in the world,” said Alexis Aleshire, public relations manager for Hooters of America.
This year will mark Hooters Calendar’s 23rd year, where distribution is estimated at a half=million worldwide, continuing their reputation as the best-selling calendar of its kind. Besides the famous Hooters Girls and jokes of the day, the Hooters calendar is unique because the months are out of order.
According to Doug Vollmer, head photographer and project director of the Hooters Calendar, “As far as the months being out of order, that was how they came back from the printer back in 1986, for proofing. We kind of liked the idea that, in order to find the right month, you had to search through the entire calendar again and that way, you would re-visit all of the girls and jokes again. So you’re not just seeing them for one month, you’re seeing them every month.”
For more information, visit Hooters of Waco or www.hooterscalendar.com.
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Rollercoaster Wall Street day ends down
The Dow industrials were down, up, down, up and finally down again today as a coordinated interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve and other central banks failed to entirely reassure investors.
The Dow ended the day down 189.01 to 9,258.10. It was as much as 252 points below and 180 points above yesterday’s close. Volume on the New York Stock Exchange was 1.8 billion shares.
Here’s the latest from the Associated Press.
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Trial update: Summations end in child porn case
Summations for the 54th State District Court jury hearing the case of a Utah man who sent child pornography images to a Waco woman via cell phone were completed about 12:20 p.m.
The trial recessed for lunch and will resume about 1:30 p.m.
Prosecutors said Brandon Terry Welte, 29, deserved prison time for sending the images.
Welte’s attorney, Guy Cox, asked the jury to give his client probation.
Welte could receive 80 years in prison on the four counts of possession or promotion of child pornography to which he pleaded guilty,
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Report: More Afghan civilians were killed in airstrike
The New York Times is reporting that an investigation by the military has concluded that U.S. airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed many more civilians than U.S. commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.
The military investigator’s report found that more than 30 civilians — not five to seven as the military has long insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.
The investigator, Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan of the Air Force, concluded that many more civilians, including women and children, had been buried in the rubble than the military had asserted, one of the military officials said.
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Russian forces making final pullback in Georgia
Russian forces pulled back today from positions outside South Ossetia, bulldozing a camp at a key checkpoint and withdrawing into the separatist region as European Union monitors and relieved Georgian residents looked on.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in France, said Russian forces would leave areas in Georgia around South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region, by midnight.
Dozens of armored personnel carriers, military trucks and transport vehicles rolled north through the Russian-established buffer zone and entered South Ossetia. Georgians, frightened by weeks of arson and looting blamed on Russia’s South Ossetian allies, lined the road to watch.
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Parents: Girls subjected to strip search at Michigan school
Three seventh-grade girls at a school in Monroe, Mich., were ordered to strip to their underwear while a teacher investigated the alleged theft of $42, their parents charge.
The principal of Trinity Lutheran School was placed on two-week leave and the investigation into the female teacher’s alleged actions was continuing, Senior Pastor Stanley AuBuchon said today.
Three parents contacted police following the Oct. 1 incident at the school, about 35 miles southwest of Detroit.
Police have interviewed the three girls who said they were ordered to disrobe. Investigators will turn over their information to the county prosecutor, possibly by the end of the week.
The school has 176 students from preschool through eighth grade.
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Dow numbers starting to slide
Off more than 200 points at the start, the Dow Jones industrial average made some gains, but lately has been trading about 130 points down from yesterday’s close.
Twenty-five of its 30 components are trading lower.
The biggest laggard among the blue chips proved to be aluminum giant Alcoa Inc., which fell 15.5 percent after kicking off the third-quarter earnings season with a gloomy assessment of its last three months. You may recall that Alcoa is shutting down its smelting operations at its Rockdale plant.
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Trial update: Sides rest in cell phone child-porn case
A Waco psychologist said a Utah man who admitted to sending child pornography images to a Waco woman is an appropriate candidate for probation.
Psychologist Lee Carter testified this morning in 54th State District Court in the trial of Brandon Terry Welte, 29, who pleaded guilty to four counts of possessing or promoting child pornography and is having his punishment assessed by the jury.
Both sides have rested their cases this morning. Final jury summations will begin about 11 a.m.
Welte admitted to sending five pictures of girls having sex with men to a Waco woman while they were sending text messages to each other talking about their sexual fantasies.
Defense attorney Guy Cox called Carter, who evaluated Welte at the McLennan County Jail, to the stand. Carter said he provided a risk assessment for general criminal, sexual or psychological conduct on Welte.
Carter said that on a scale of low, moderate to high, he assessed Welte to be a low risk for future misconduct.
The psychologist said he thought Welte would do well on probation and has “no major reservations” about saying that the Utah man is an appropriate candidate for probation.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Lytza Rojas, Carter agreed that trading and possessing child pornography is a relatively new field and there are no definitive studies on the correlation between possessing child pornography and molesting young children.
“Fantasy and behavior are two different things, and that’s what I think we’re dealing with here,” Carter said, explaining that while such behavior is perverse and unhealthy, assumptions can’t be made that an individual would act further on it.
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Voter-fraud case in Nevada enlists ‘Cowboys’
Did you hear the strange story out of Nevada about a group accused of submitting fraudulent voter-registration forms — including for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? You’d like to think someone at a polling site would get wise to a person claiming to be Tony Romo or Terrell Owens when they showed up to vote.
“Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4,” said Secretary of State Ross Miller, referring to the star players on the pro football team.
State authorities raided the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to register low-income people.
Miller said the raid was part of a monthslong investigation, and he contended the group had submitted registration forms that used false information or duplicated information on multiple forms. He did not estimate how many.
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Explain that again: He did it, but he’s pleading ‘not guilty’
I guess there’s some splitting of legal hairs in this, but an attorney for a former child actor has told a California court that his client did kill an Arizona couple, but he’s pleading “not guilty” to the crime
Uh, what?
Perhaps this is all part of the lawyer’s efforts to keep his 29-year-old client from receiving the death penalty.
Skylar Deleon is accused by prosecutors of tossing the couple off their yacht while bound to an anchor.
Read it all here.
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Half-ton man in Mexico dies after pleas for help on TV
A 990-pound bedridden man who had appealed on Mexican television for help tackling his weight problem died Tuesday of heart failure, his family said.
Jose Luis Garza, 47, tipped the scales at almost 1,000 pounds before his death.
Emergency officials had to knock down JGarza’s bedroom wall and load him onto the back of a friend’s pickup as he fought for his life. The 47-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in northern Mexico.
Garza followed in the footsteps of the world’s fattest man, fellow Mexican Manuel Uribe of Monterrey, by taking his weight problem public. Garza lived about an hour away from Uribe in the town of Juarez.
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1998 Arkansas school shooter pleads guilty to theft
One of two young men who killed four students and a teacher at a middle school a decade ago faces up to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and marijuana possession.
Mitchell Johnson, now 24, entered his plea Tuesday before a Benton County circuit judge. Sentencing was set for Nov. 14.
He was accused of taking a debit card left by a disabled man at the gas station where he worked. Police said that when Johnson was arrested Feb. 2, he was in possession of marijuana.
In March 1998, Johnson, then 13, and classmate Andrew Golden, 11, stole guns from Golden’s grandfather and opened fire at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro. It was one of a series of school shootings that shocked the nation in the late 1990s.
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YouTube checks out e-commerce avenues
Google is exploring ways to make money off the hugely popular YouTube. According to this story, starting today users watching a music video will be able to buy the song from Amazon or iTunes.
What do you think of that idea?
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Stocks showing gains after early plummet
Marketwatch.com reports: U.S. stock indexes pulled higher today, brushing aside opening losses after the Federal Reserve axed interest rates in a synchronized move with other central banks around the world in another effort to stem the panic freezing the credit markets.
The Fed cut its key lending rate by half a percentage point, bringing it down to 1.5 percent.
The European Central Bank trimmed its key refinancing rate to 3.75 percent from 4.25 percent while the Bank of England cut its rate to 4.5 percent from 5 percent. China’s central bank slashed its one-year benchmark lending and deposit interest rates, while the Bank of Japan sat out the moves, but issued a statement backing the actions, which also included rate cuts by the Bank of Canada, the Swiss National Bank and the Swedish Riksbank.
Off more than 200 points at the start, the Dow Jones industrial average was up about 42 points from Tuesday’s close.
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Pennsylvania widow sues U.S. over Iraq vet-husband’s suicide
The widow of an Iraq war veteran who committed suicide while in outpatient care for depression at a Veterans Administration hospital is suing the federal government for alleged negligence.
Tiera Woodward, 26, claims her late husband, Donald, sought treatment at a VA hospital in Lebanon, Pa., after three suicide attempts but wasn’t seen by a psychiatrist for more than two months.
She says doctors were slow to diagnose her husband with major depression, and that once the diagnosis was made, a psychiatrist failed to schedule a follow-up meeting with her husband after he informed the doctor he had gone off his medication.
Donald Woodward killed himself in March 2006 at age 23.
“I intend to make them make changes,” said his mother, Lori Woodward. “I have too many friends whose kids are in Iraq. I have a nephew now in Iraq, in the same unit, and I can’t have my family go through this again.”
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Nick Nolte escapes burning home in Malibu
Actor Nick Nolte jumped out a window and used a hose to fight a fire that broke out in his Malibu home Tuesday, authorities said.
The 67-year-old actor scraped his arm and inhaled some smoke but was not hospitalized, said Los Angeles County fire Inspector Sam Padilla.
“He is seeing his private physician” for the injuries, he said.
The fire was reported at 11:34 a.m. at Nolte’s secluded Bonsall Drive home. The electrical fire started in the living room, and Nolte smelled the smoke from an upstairs bedroom, said fire Inspector Frank Garrido.
The sheriff’s department said Nolte broke a window to escape.
Garrido said he then grabbed a garden hose and tried to extinguish the fire.
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Defense secretary asks allies to send troops to Afghanistan
Defense Secretary Robert Gates today urged Eastern European leaders to shift their military efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan, where their forces are more urgently needed.
Speaking at a meeting here of the Southeast European Defense Ministerial, Gates said that as the security situation in Iraq continues to improve, countries should considered filling the “urgent need” for trainers in Afghanistan.
“Your assistance will not only help Afghanistan better protect and care for its citizens, it will also reinforce your important role in insuring peace and stability around the globe,” Gates said during a press conference with the Macedonian minister of defense.
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Affidavits: 4 teens plotted to kill North Texas mom
This is a disturbing story out of Roanoke, which is north of Fort Worth. Four teenagers, including two siblings, planned for days to kill the siblings’ mother before stabbing her to death and attempting to flee to Canada, according to search warrant affidavits released yesterday, according to an Associated Press story.
Roanoke police found Susan Bailey dead in an upstairs hallway of her home on Sept. 28. Her mother had called police saying she had been unable to reach her.
The same day, Bailey’s 18-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and 14-year-old son were found in Yankton, S.D., along with Jennifer’s 16-year-old boyfriend. They were arrested for violating the town’s curfew and later held after authorities discovered that Susan Bailey was dead.
A Fort Worth Star-Telegram story reported that authorities have seized notebooks, binders, handwritten papers, computers and discs that police described as “pertaining to the preparation of murder.”
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Positively cool start to the day
My daughter made sure to grab a jacket as she headed out the door this morning and I’m thinking I should have gone with long sleeves. It’s 50 degrees out there officially right now, and with that 5 mph wind we have a wind chill of 48 degrees.
So yes, it feels like the upper 40s. That’s a sure sign of fall in Central Texas.
It’ll be a sunny day with a high near 83 and that north-northwest wind of around 5 mph.
Enjoy the day.
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Where’s Alden? Presidential debaters take question from Central Texan
Central Texans watching Tuesday’s debate between presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama probably pricked up their ears when they heard facilitator Tom Brokaw announce a question from someone in Hewitt.
It was a question submitted online, with only the first name given: Alden.
So if you’re out there Alden, please let us know what it was like to have your question aired before tens of millions on national TV. And, perhaps more importantly, what did you think of the answers you got? And is that the correct spelling of your name?
The question, from a CNN transcript, is as follows:
BROKAW: Sen. McCain, this question is for you from the Internet. It’s from Alden in Hewitt, Texas.
How can we apply pressure to Russia for humanitarian issues in an effective manner without starting another Cold War?
MCCAIN: First of all, as I say, I don’t think that — we’re not going to have another Cold War with Russia.
But have no doubt that Russia’s behavior is certainly outside the norms of behavior that we would expect for nations which are very wealthy, as Russia has become, because of their petro dollars.
Now, long ago, I warned about Vladimir Putin. I said I looked into his eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G and a B. He has surrounded himself with former KGB apparatchiks. He has gradually repressed most of the liberties that we would expect for nations to observe, and he has exhibited most aggressive behavior, obviously, in Georgia.
I said before, watch Ukraine. Ukraine, right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin, those that want to reassemble the old Soviet Union.
We’ve got to show moral support for Georgia.
We’ve got to show moral support for Ukraine. We’ve got to advocate for their membership in NATO.
We have to make the Russians understand that there are penalties for these this kind of behavior, this kind of naked aggression into Georgia, a tiny country and a tiny democracy.
And so, of course we want to bring international pressures to bear on Russia in hopes that that will modify and eventually change their behavior. Now, the G-8 is one of those, but there are many others.
But the Russians must understand that these kinds of actions and activities are not acceptable and hopefully we will use the leverage, economic, diplomatic and others united with our allies, with our allies and friends in Europe who are equally disturbed as we are about their recent behaviors.
BROKAW: Sen. Obama.
MCCAIN: It will not be a re-ignition of the Cold War, but Russia is a challenge.
BROKAW: Sen. Obama? We’re winding down, so if we can keep track of the time.
OBAMA: Well, the resurgence of Russia is one of the central issues that we’re going to have to deal with in the next presidency. And for the most part I agree with Sen. McCain on many of the steps that have to be taken.
But we can’t just provide moral support. We’ve got to provide moral support to the Poles and Estonia and Latvia and all of the nations that were former Soviet satellites. But we’ve also got to provide them with financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild their economies. Georgia in particular is now on the brink of enormous economic challenges. And some say that that’s what Putin intended in the first place.
The other thing we have to do, though, is we’ve got to see around the corners. We’ve got to anticipate some of these problems ahead of time. You know, back in April, I put out a statement saying that the situation in Georgia was unsustainable because you had Russian peacekeepers in these territories that were under dispute.
And you knew that if the Russians themselves were trying to obtain some of these territories or push back against Georgia, that that was not a stable situation. So part of the job of the next commander-in-chief, in keeping all of you safe, is making sure that we can see some of the 21st Century challenges and anticipate them before they happen.
We haven’t been doing enough of that. We tend to be reactive. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last eight years and that has actually made us more safe. That’s part of what happened in Afghanistan, where we rushed into Iraq and Sen. McCain and President Bush suggested that it wasn’t that important to catch bin Laden right now and that we could muddle through, and that has cost us dearly.
We’ve got to be much more strategic if we’re going to be able to deal with all of the challenges that we face out there.
And one last point I want to make about Russia. Energy is going to be key in dealing with Russia. If we can reduce our energy consumption, that reduces the amount of petro dollars that they have to make mischief around the world. That will strengthen us and weaken them when it comes to issues like Georgia.
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Fed, world banks cut interest rates
The Federal Reserve, acting in coordination with other global central banks, cut a key U.S. interest rate by half a percentage point today to steady a teetering global economy.
The Fed reduced its key rate from 2 percent to 1.5 percent. In Europe, which also has been hard hit by the financial crisis, the Bank of England cut its rate by half a point to 4.5 percent, while the European Central Bank sliced its rate to 3.75 percent.
Also taking part were the central banks of China, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland. Bank of Japan said it strongly supported the actions.
“The recent intensification of the financial crisis has augmented the downside risks to growth,” the Fed said in explaining the coordinated action.
It was the latest in a long series of actions, over the last several weeks, that the Fed has taken in coordination with other federal agencies, Congress and the White House to shore up a financial industry stung by bad loans, mounting losses and — in many cases — collapse. President George W. Bush signed a $700 billion financial bailout bill into law on Friday.
The Fed’s action reversed its current policy on interest rates, which had been to hold them steady out of concern that more cuts would fuel inflation. Since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the U.S. central bank put a stop to interest cuts in June, economic and financial conditions have deteriorated significantly.
“The pace of economic activity has slowed markedly in recent months,” the Fed said. “Moreover, the intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit.”
Although inflation has been high, the Fed believes the recent drop in energy prices and the weaker prospects for economic activity have reduced this threat to the economy.
In addition, the Fed reduced its emergency lending rate to banks by half a percentage point to 1.75 percent. Given the intense credit crisis, banks have been ramping up their borrowing from the Fed’s emergency “discount” window.
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