Lost In Lima Ohio - A true crime blog

This SATURDAY , June 20, 2009, AMERICA’S MOST WANTED will be airing the following cases. Harlem, New York … CARLOS THOMPSON… New York cops say rapper Carlos Thompson handed a .38-caliber revolver to a 13-year-old boy and ordered him to murder another teen. Now, more than a year later, Thompson is in custody. http://www.amw.com/fugitives/ brief.cfm?id=55482 Stone Mountain, Georgia … DERRICK YANCEY… Newly-released surveillance video shows Derrick Yancey, a former sheriff's deputy accused of killing his wife and another man, in his first hours on the run. Investigators say Yancey is seen buying a Greyhound bus ticket to California, but his whereabouts are now unknown. http://www.amw.com/fugitives/ brief.cfm?id=64701 Whitewater, Wisconsin … RICKY HOWARD… Cops in Whitewater, Wisc. say Ricky Howard is a perpetual danger to society. Throughout his life, Howard's been in and out of jail, but cops say in December of 1999, he reached a new low when he violently raped a 12-year-...

A WIFE AND MOTHER DISAPPEARS, LEAVING BEHIND A MYSTERY THAT WOULD HAUNT FRIENDS AND FAMILY FOR 30 YEARS "48 HOURS MYSTERY" ON SATURDAY, JUNE 20 As the wife of promising engineer Eugene Zapata and mother to three children, Jean Zapata was not your typical stay-at-home mom. Strong and independent, she was a trailblazer, one of the few female flight instructors of her day. But in 1976 she vanished from her Madison, Wis. home leaving behind friends, family and a mystery that would take 30 years to resolve. After just three weeks, the initial investigation into her disappearance went cold. The Zapatas’ youngest daughter Linda, who was 11 years old at the time, grew up thinking her mother had abandoned them. Linda remained haunted until she received a visit from local authorities 28 years later. Thanks to the persistence of Jean’s lifelong friend Peggy Weekley, the case had been reopened. And with the help of Madison detective Marianne Flynn Statz, these women were unit...

Guest blogger: Angela Dove, author of No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Berkley/Penguin 2009). I was on the phone when the world dropped out from under my feet. Twice. The first time was when my father called me in 1988 to say my stepmother was dead. He didn’t use the word murder ; he talked around it. Someone had killed Debi, and it was not an accident. During the next few hours, I learned that I had been the last to see Debi alive; she had been killed in our Modesto, California home, with one of our knives, only a couple of hours after I left for spring break. My 3-year-old sister slept through the attack only a few feet away. And that person I had heard breathing in the back bedroom was not my father after all. Fast forward twenty years. Debi’s mother had asked me to write her story, and I was honored. Jacqueline “Jacque” MacDonald had channeled her grief over Debi’s death into a one-woman crusade to find Debi’s killer. I...

“THERE WASN’T A DAY WHEN I DIDN’T THINK HE WAS JUST GONNA KILL ME. [SOMETIMES] IT SEEMED I WAS BETTER OFF DEAD THAN LIVING THROUGH THAT.” KIDNAP VICTIM SHAWN HORNBECK REVEALS THE DETAILS ABOUT HIS INCREDIBLE STORY OF SURVIVAL IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CBS NEWS “48 HOURS MYSTERY” –TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2009 In October 2002, at the age of 11, Shawn Hornbeck, was kidnapped. Over the course of the next 4 ½ years, Hornbeck suffered horrific abuses at the hands of his abductor, Michael Devlin, until he was rescued by FBI agents in January 2007. In an exclusive interview with 48 HOURS MYSTERY correspondent Tory Roberts, Hornbeck speaks about what happened during the time he was missing. “Nobody knows the real story except for me,” Hornbeck tells Roberts in the revealing interview. “There wasn’t a day when I didn’t think he was just gonna kill me…[sometimes] it seemed I was better off dead than living through that.” Hornbeck describes what he endured during the years th...

HIGH TECH vs CHILD PORN FOX-TV’s “ America’s Most Wanted ” Highlights Florida’s First-in-the-Nation Statewide CyberCrime Sweep Using Groundbreaking Technology to Fight Online Predators The Internet may have revolutionized communications, but it’s also provided a dark cover for some of the most twisted predators: perverts who make and distribute child pornography. State- of-the-art technology is now revolutionizing the way law enforcement fights back. This week on AMERICA’S MOST WANTED (Saturday, June 13 th 9:00 PM ET/PT on FOX), host John Walsh will show viewers how authorities in Florida are using sophisticated technology – and how it’s yielded big results. Governor Charlie Crist created Florida’s CyberCrime Unit in 2005, while serving as the state’s Attorney General, with a mission to protect children from computer-facilitated sexual exploitation. Under Florida’s current Attorney General, Bill McCollum, the CyberCrime Unit has expanded to include a staff of more than ...

While I normally shy from all things Craigslist, and while Craigslist rapes aren't a new thing- I could not help but be horrified by this one. Police say a NC man used Craigslist to enlist another man in the rape of his wife. His wife called police early Sunday morning and said a man with a knife raped her in the bedroom of their home in Kannapolis, about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, authorities said. Her husband was in the room, police said. Their two young children were also home, but were unaware of what was happening, authorities said. The husband sought someone in the ads to come to his home and have sex with his wife using "scare tactics," police said. It was without her knowledge or consent, police said. Authorities are still investigating the identity of the man who attacked the woman and it wasn't known if the husband paid him to do it. The woman was not seriously injured, but was treated at a hospital and released. SOURCE Sometimes, I wonder j...

When neighbors of an 11 year old rape victim spotted Jose Carrasquillo, whose photo had been released by police as a "person of interest" in the brutal rape, they could have stopped and called police. Instead, the angered crowd beat him- with wooden sticks, their fists and their feet. The attack on Carrasquillo was caught on tape by a nearby camera. Jose Carrasquillo, 26, is currently in stable condition after the videotaped beating by about a dozen West Kensington residents, according to police. The mob pummeled Carrasquillo for several minutes with wooden sticks, their fists and their feet, authorities said. Click here to watch the video. He suffered head injuries and was taken to Temple University Hospital. Police said Wednesday that he has been upgraded from critical to stable condition. The 11 year old rape victim had been on her way to school when her attacker approached her, began walking with her and then claiming to have a gun dragged her into a nearby backya...