Juan Martinez: A Prosecutor's Success

by Women In Crime Ink

As the jury determines in the next few days whether convicted killer Jodi Arias should serve life in prison or get the death penalty, we thought we'd take a look back at this sensational case and voice our opinions on what went right.

If you've followed the case, you know that after a four-month trial, 32-year-old Arias was convicted of killing ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in his Phoenix townhouse. It was a particularly grizzly murder, with Arias stabbing Alexander 29 times, most of which were in the back, slitting his throat, and shooting him once in the head. Alexander, 30, didn't stand a chance.

While the final phase of the trial -- the sentencing -- winds down, this seems like the perfect time to take a look back and ask this question:

During the trial, what did Deputy District Attorney Juan Martinez do best to win a guilty verdict?

Here's what some of our WCI bloggers had to say:

Donna Pendergast: The facts in the Jodi Arias case speak for themselves. In terms of a prosecution case, it doesn't get much better than this. Her story of self defense was negated by the physical evidence, her false statements and her manipulative testimony, which came across as very calculated.

Jurors are not stupid and they don't like to be played like they are. Although we have seen a few high-profile cases in the news where the verdict seemingly was inconsistent with the evidence, in most circumstances jurors try to do the right thing. They saw right through Jodi Arias and delivered a verdict consistent with the overwhelming evidence. As a prosecutor, I think that Juan Martinez overdid the histrionics, but I can't quarrel with success.

Gina Simmons: Jurors had a chance to witness Jodi Arias lie frequently and with incredible detail over a long period of time. Psychopaths can create detailed pictures with their lies. These self-serving pictures can appear so convincing that jurors might find it hard to believe that they were completely created from imagination. Jurors got a close-up view of a pathological liar. Psychologically, this close-up view might make it difficult for some jurors to give her the death penalty. 

Robin Sax: If this case shows anything at all it's that the public (even post-OJ) has an insatiable appetite for a good crime story. This had it all: Sex, lies, photos, and a frighteningly smart narcissistic defendant. While Juan Martinez was certainly passionate, he did not make the same mistakes many high-profile prosecutors have made in the past, and that is he didn't drink his own Kool Aid. He spent the time proving each element, painting a picture, and presenting a strong case. Of course, Jodi helped with unbelievable lies, horrific evidence and narcissism that spoke volumes.

Katherine Scardino: As a defense attorney, I agree that this was a dream case for the prosecution. I would have handled her defense in a much more realistic manner. First of all, she would never have spent a minute on the stand much less 19 days. Bad lawyering for her. But seems like Guilty verdict is the right one.

Cathy Scott: The interesting thing in this case was how Martinez brought the pieces of the puzzle together for the jury in his closing. Some things he brought out didn't make sense during the trial, at least to me, until he laid it all out in the end. It was brilliant, and it worked.

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Book Excerpt: UK Writer Ruth Jacobs Pens Debut Novel, 'Soul Destruction'

Ruth Jacobs writes a series of novels which expose the dark world and harsh reality of life as a call girl.

Below is an excerpt of Jacob's debut novel Soul Destruction: Unforgivable (released April 29 by Caffeine Nights), which takes readers into the bleak existence of a call girl haunted by the atrocities of her childhood.

In the spring of 1997, Shelley Hansard is a drug addict with a heroin habit and crack psychosis. Her desirability as a top London call girl is waning. During this tumultuous time, she is presented with an opportunity to take revenge on a client who raped her and her friends. But in her unbalanced state of mind, can she stop a serial rapist?

Excerpt from Chapter One - The Dead John

“There’s only one kind of dead, the not moving and the not breathing kind, and that’s the kind of dead he is.” Despite her hysteria, Shelley Hansard tried to whisper on the phone from The Lanesborough.

“Not necessarily.” Marianne’s voice squeaked down the line. “Just because things seem a certain way, it doesn’t mean they are.”

“Sometimes it does. Sometimes things are exactly as they seem – and right now, this is one of those fucking times.” Shelley sat rocking on the edge of the bed in the Regency-styled suite. “I’m telling you, he fucking died on me.”

“You’re not a doctor. You can’t go around pronouncing people dead.”

“If you don’t believe me, get off the line and I’ll call someone else.”

“Don’t you dare. You don’t tell anyone. Do you understand? You come straight here.”

Marianne grunted. “Have you got the money?”

“What the fuck does that matter now?” A hot tear landed on Shelley’s thigh.

“Get a grip, Kiki. Start acting like a professional.”

Fighting the urge to look at the motionless body spread-eagled next to her, Shelley pushed herself up from the bed. Her neatly folded suit lay by her feet. She stood, staring down, burrowing her toes into the plush carpet. She knew she should get dressed, but clean clothes didn’t belong on skin that felt unclean.

Taking a step towards the bathroom, she felt unbalanced. Her legs shuddered and her backside hit the floor. Reunited with her brown, pinstripe suit, she reached for her skirt. With trembling hands, she dragged it towards her. Shuffling on her back, she shimmied into it. Her fingers grappled with the hook and eye. Making a hasty exit was important, but making an exception to her rule was impossible. She couldn’t do it.

She managed to stand but, stepping out of her skirt, she collapsed again. Pressing down on the carpet with her palms, she tried to lever herself back up. Her jolting arms gave way. The last limbs to surrender to the convulsionary rhythm that had overtaken the rest of her. 

She didn’t have control over her body. Instead, she had a helpless feeling of being completely powerless. The rush to leave the hotel and the corpse was over. As a periodic convulsionist, she knew the beat could monopolise her for hours. She just had to wait. She knew what to expect. Soon she’d be gone.

***

On regaining consciousness, her shaking had reduced. She staggered to the walnut bureau where earlier she’d left her handbag, took out her mobile and checked the time: nearly midnight. Two hours lost to another world.

Slipping the mobile back inside her cream handbag, she shut her eyes, realizing what she’d done. She’d called Marianne from the phone in the hotel suite. Under the circumstances, that wasn’t the phone she should have used.

After a shower, with hair wet, she dripped a track back to the bed. She dressed, trying not to look to her right but as she buttoned her jacket, she couldn’t help it. She breathed in deeply, as if inhalation through her nose would draw the tears back through her ducts from whence they’d sprung.

Quietly, she said aloud, “God bless you.”

What was his name? She tried to remember. She couldn’t. She didn’t know him, not in a real sense, only biblically. The last few hours they’d spent fornicating, high on a combination of crack and GHB. In the midst of proceedings, he’d complained of a chest pain. So, when he asked her to make him another pipe, she refused. On gently reminding her who was paying for the evening, and whose desires were to be met, he took the crack pipe from her hands and on the ash-covered foil, prepared himself a rock. The rock that would emerge to be the last ever smoked by the late, greying-blond john.

“Come to me, you... you... you nymph,” he said, beckoning to her as he exhaled his final pipe. “Come over here and pleasure me— my penis. I mean, pleasure my penis. Would you, with your mouth, please?” The client reclined on the bed, unaware that his last words had just been spent on a bungled request for fellation. And from a young woman whose name he didn’t know – at least, not her real name.

Some time in, Shelley became aware that the penis in her mouth was lifeless. She stopped to look up and saw the fixed expression on his face. It wasn’t changing. He wasn’t moving. He looked like a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.

“What are you doing?” she asked, prodding his chest. “Stop fucking around,” she shouted through the hairs in his ear.

After a vigorous shaking failed to extract even the slightest reaction, she put her fingers under his nostrils. He wasn’t breathing. That was when she called Marianne.

About the Author

Jacobs, who lives in a small village in Hertfordshire, England, studied prostitution in the late 1990s, which sparked her interest in prostitution. For the series, she draws on her research and the women she interviewed for inspiration. She also has firsthand experience of many of the topics she writes about, including post-traumatic stress disorder, rape, and drug and alcohol addiction. In addition to her fiction writing, Jacobs is involved in non-fiction for charity and human rights campaign work in the areas of anti-sexual exploitation and anti-human trafficking. She profiles writers in an online column “In the Booth With Ruth.”

Soul Destruction: Unforgivable is in stores now and available from Amazon and Amazon UK.

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Bodyguard for Murdered Rap Artist Tupac Shakur Has Died

Courtesy of TruthAboutTupac.com

by Cathy Scott

Frank Alexander, a bodyguard for the late rapper Tupac Shakur, has passed away.

Alexander was in a car directly behind Tupac and his record producer, Suge Knight, in September 1996 near the Las Vegas Strip when Tupac was shot. A passenger in a white Cadillac pulled next to Suge and Tupac’s BMW, opened fire, hitting Tupac and grazing Knight.

Six days later, Tupac died from a chest wound. Suge, who was admitted to the hospital for treatment, was released the morning after the shooting. Frank two years later co-wrote the book Got Your Back, about his time on tour with Pac.

I got to know Frank over the years and spent time with him during the taping of the documentary Before I Wake and Tupac: Assassination, which Frank executive produced.

One of the coolest gigs Frank and I had together was on August 18, 2002, when we both appeared on comedian Kevin Nealon’s show “The Conspiracy Zone,” where Nealon, according to the show’s site, hosted “expert panelists discussing popular conspiracy theories.” The topic in this case was Tupac’s murder. On the show with us were comedians Kathy Griffin and Christopher Reid.

The oddest thing that evening was during the taping, which was in Burbank with a studio audience, when another guest, who'd also written a book about the Tupac case, publicly called me “a hack.” In writing vernacular, it was meant as an insult. It came out of nowhere, and I’d never met this guy before, so everybody but the name-caller cracked up laughing, including Frank.

On camera, Kevin Nealon turned to me and said, “I couldn’t tell, Cathy. Was he kidding?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered, and Kevin laughed along with us.

Kathy Griffin cracked a joke about it as well, and then the show continued. It was a lively discussion, and the episode was well received.

Afterward, we all went into the Green Room to eat the spread that Kraft Services had set up for us. Frank, with a group of friends, stayed, as did I. Christopher Reid (formerly known as Kid) was fun to talk with; he had mad respect for Tupac.

The irritated author, in the meantime, practically ran out the studio and through the Green Room, stopping only to ask where his driver was, before heading through a back door to the parking lot. We all laughed again, because it seemed so odd.

Frank was in a good mood that night, as were the rest of us – except for the out-of-sorts author (who will remain unnamed). I thought of Frank at the time as on top of his game. His book, co-written with author and journalist Heidi Coder, had been released in June 1998. And it was re-released in paperback a couple years later. In recent years, he’d worked on indie documentaries while working as a security guard.

I interviewed Frank in 1997 for the first edition of my book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur, and again for the second edition in 2002. About Tupac's murder, Frank told me, "I want to see the shooter brought to justice.” That never happened, despite the wide belief and law enforcement intelligence that points to Southside Crips as responsible for the rapper's death.

Frank Alexander passed away the afternoon of April 28 in his Southern California home. According to the Murrieta Police Department, investigators determined that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The police investigation determined, per incident report No. 1304M-6390 and interviews and evidence at the scene, it was death by suicide. A formal autopsy was scheduled. But a police source close to the investigation told me, “The autopsy is just a formality in our determination. It was a suicide.”

An administrator with TruthAboutTupac.com site, says the loss is a personal one: “Big Frank was my friend and brother. We ate together, prayed together, told jokes and kicked it. He used to say, ‘It’s not how long you know a person that counts but how well you connect during the experiences you share that really matters.’

"The last conversation we had was very deep, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around our loss. I never in a million years thought I wouldn’t see him again.”

TruthAboutTupac.com summed up the loss for all of us: “Rest in Paradise, Big Frank. ONE LOVE.”

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'Teach Your Sons Not To Rape'

by Pat Brown

There have been many very angry women expressing this sentiment following the Steubenville, Ohio conviction of the two high school football players who sexually assaulted a very drunk and near comatose young lady and then proceeded to threaten and humiliate her via social media. There is ample evidence in this case against these young men and that these two creeps were found guilty makes me very happy, Often, in these date or acquaintance type rape crimes, it is a he said-she said situation and it is very difficult to prove a rape or sexual assault actually occurred, that the alleged victim didn't  participate consensually in the act. A Montana college student and  football player was recently found not guilty because there simply wasn't ample proof the girl didn't want sex with him. I thought that verdict was correct.

But in the wake of these cases, I see a lot of furious women mad as hell about anyone recommending that they should educate their daughters on how to keep themselves from getting attacked. These angry women say, "Why do we have to keep teaching our daughters this stuff? Why can't YOU teach your sons not to rape?"

Umm, ladies, you can't teach your sons not to rape. You can't have a birds and a bees discussion and say, "By the way, don't rape girls; it's not nice."

If your son doesn't know that "no means no," and that having sex with unconscious girls is sick and criminal, you have a little psychopath on your hands and he doesn't give a crap about what you say. You lost him years ago when he was a little boy.

What we all SHOULD be are good parents, ones who teach both sons and daughters to be decent people, - kind and respectful, empathetic and law-abiding. When these children get to be teens and adults, they don't commit crimes. I did not have a talk with my sons about not raping girls; they would have been appalled that I would even have considered it necessary to tell them that. I didn't have a talk with my daughter about not tricking a guy into getting her pregnant and to not stalk and kill her boyfriend like Jodi Arias; she would have said, "Just what kind of girl do you think I am, Mom?"

I started giving lessons in morality and ethics when my children were very young, teaching them not to hit, not to be poor sports, to be polite, to not be bullies, to not take what isn't theirs, to not be greedy, to be willing to share, and so on. I started when they were at the breast ("don't bite Mommy") and then kept them from thinking it was okay to pull the cat's tail when they learned to crawl and grab. I kept up the lessons in how to be a decent human being all through their childhood and into their teens. But,  I never had to tell them not to shoplift, steal cars, burglarize the neighbors' homes, set fires, or sell drugs. And I didn't have to tell my boys not to rape. Why? Because I hadn't raised psychopaths or criminals. If you really think you need to have a "rape" conversation with your son, you dropped the ball long, long ago.

And since there are enough young men out in the world who are past the point of moral return and the justice system cannot catch them all and keep them locked up, I will continue to encourage parents to teach their daughters how to keep from getting raped and sexually assaulted. Just because young men should never do bad things, doesn't mean some aren't going to. Being angry about it isn't going to keep your daughter from becoming a victim. So, in spite of a number of angry bloggers who attacked my book, How to Save Your Daughter's Life, for educating parents on how to keep their daughters safe, I am going to keep on educating young women and their parents because I know sex predators are out there - in the high schools, in the colleges, in the neighborhood, and in the home. As a female, I, too, am frustrated at having so many sexual crimes perpetrated against women and I am all for coming down harder on these sex offenders with a much tougher criminal justice system, but, right now, the reality is such that we women have to do what we can to not end up a victims of horrible crimes that will ruin our lives.

Just because some parents need to do a better job raising their sons doesn't mean we should stop doing the job of raising our daughters.They need our help keeping them safe.

               

How to Save your Daughter's Life by Pat Brown at Amazon or Barnes and Noble and bookstores near you.

Included in this book, a ton of information about

The Early Years

Partying, Drinking, Drugging, Casual Sex (Hooking Up), and Gangs

Date Rape

The Dangers of Social Networking and the Internet

Risky Relationships

Stalkers

Child Predators, Serial Rapists, and Serial Killers

The Sex Trade and Sex Trafficking

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Armed and Dangerous: Search Widens for Suspect in Fatal Shooting on Las Vegas Strip

Ammar Harris mug shot

by Cathy Scott

The dramatic shooting involving luxury cars on the Las Vegas Strip, which ended in three deaths, including a rapper, can't help but be compared to the shooting just two blocks from where hip-hop star Tupac Shakur was mortally wounded.

The similarities are eery. car-to-car shooting at a busy intersection on the Strip with the gunman fleeing into the darkness; the victim, trying to get away from the gunfire while mortally wounded, ran a red light and ended up in an intersection two blocks from where Tupac was shot.

It was not unlike when Suge Knight, Tupac's record producer who was driving and was struck by shrapnel at the base of his neck, with Tupac, shot multiple times in the passenger seat, took off in his BMW, trying to flee the gunfire. The driver of the Cadillac from which the shooter fired sped away into the night, just as the Range Rover used in the Las Vegas Strip shooting got away.

In this recent case, however, unlike in the Shakur murder investigation, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police are determined to catch the killer. They've already located the Range Rover used in the shooting, and there's been a manhunt for the suspect since it went down just before dawn on February 21. The search has been expanded to include southeast states, where the suspect once lived.

The suspect has been identified as Ammar Harris, 26, who's also known as Ammar Asim Faruq Harris. As of this writing, he was still at large, although the black Range Rover that police said was used in the shooting has been located and impounded. If the motive is known, police have not released it.

Harris is considered armed and dangerous, and, police say, if he is seen, he should not be approached. He has several tattoos, including a small heart below his right eye and an owl that covers his neck and a portion of his chest. Harris, who is a convicted felon, has been arrested in the past for kidnapping, soliciting clients for a prostitute, and sexual assault, according to a news release.

The shooting occurred after an argument at in the valet area of a nearby hotel.

Kenneth Cherry, 27, an aspiring rapper known by the stage name Kenny Clutch, drove his Maserati from the valet area around 4:20 a.m. on February 21 when a suspect in the Range Rover shot at his car as it headed north on Las Vegas Boulevard. Cherry, who was shot in the chest and arm, later died at a local hospital.

Cherry, to escape the gunfire, drove the Maserati into the intersection on the Strip at Flamingo Road, against a red traffic light, and crashed into a taxi, which caught fire, killing cab driver Michael Boldon and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, of Maple Valley, Washington. The Clark County Coroner's Office has ruled all three deaths as homicides.

When I wrote the book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur, it was done in part to help solve the crime that police seemed reticent to investigate in-depth. Today, it's a different story. Had there been videotape at the parking garage set back from the street where Tupac was shot, police perhaps could have better pursued the killer.

There was videotape in the parking garage at the TI (previously known as Treasure Island hotel and casino), where Crips gang member Orlando Anderson stayed with fellow Crips gang members. Anderson is widely believed to be the shooter in the Shakur case.

Why Las Vegas police did not get images from surveillance video in the TI parking garage, to see if a white Cadillac had left the garage that evening, is still unknown.

In the meantime, the killing of Tupac Shakur remains unsolved, at least officially. But the Kenny Clutch investigation appears to be well on its way to the suspect's arrest so justice can be served this time around.

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The Murder of Cleopatra

Excerpt from The Murder of Cleopatra

by Pat Brown
Publication date: February 19, 2013 by Prometheus Books

Prologue: The Myth of Cleopatra's Death

"When the sun rose over the city of Alexandria on the morning of August 12, 30 BCE, it did not shine down on the great Alexandria of Egypt, but the new Alexandria of the Roman Empire. The air was heavy with resignation and solemn respect for the passing of the queen, and the transfer of Alexandria into the hands of the Roman general Octavian. Cleopatra had provided a dignified conclusion to the great dynasty with her brave, if surprising, exit from the world.

"The story was simple, yet awe-inspiring. Octavian had been in the palace, and Cleopatra in her tomb with her two favorite handmaidens. Somehow, a cobra had been smuggled into the mausoleum hidden in a basket of figs. A soldier delivered a letter to Octavian in which Cleopatra explained that she was about to take her life with a request that her body be buried next to her beloved husband and Roman general, Mark Antony, who had already committed suicide a few days earlier, dying in the arms of his wife.  Octavian immediately dispatched his men to the mausoleum to intervene and stop the queen from this rash course of action. However, by the time the soldiers arrived, Cleopatra was dead. Word was sent back to Octavian, “We were too late.”

Unwilling to believe Cleopatra was truly dead, Octavian hurried to the mausoleum. He was stunned and angered by the sight of the motionless queen. This determined woman who had refused to yield at any time in her life, this enchantress who lured married Roman men into unfaithfulness and turned them against their countries, this queen who had refused to recognize his superiority in life, preferred death over submission to his sovereignty. He would now be unable to bring her back to Rome in shackles and parade her though the streets in his grand triumph—his final coup de grace. Queen Cleopatra, the greatest prize in the entire world, had slipped out of his grasp.

"Hoping she was perhaps in a coma, the sleep that mimics death, Octavian desperately sent for the physician and for specialists in snake venom who might still find a way to save her. But the snake venom experts had no remedies and the doctor pronounced her dead. All of this was witnessed by the soldiers, and after they left, Octavian met with his advisors.

"The story of Cleopatra’s death did not take long to spread beyond the compound and soon the city was in mourning. Later that week, a wealthy friend of Cleopatra's came to Octavian and gave him a large sum of money to maintain statues of the queen. Wishing to prove he was a moral leader who respected the sentiments of his new subjects, Octavian agreed.

"This is the account of Cleopatra’s death, a tale that has been dutifully retold for two thousand years. But the real story of how Octavian got away with the most perfect crime in history, the murder of Cleopatra, has never been uncovered until now."

 

In 2004, I hosted the Discovery Channel documentary, The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra, and debunked the “death by snake theory.” I also stated that I believed Cleopatra was murdered. But I wasn't able to go into my reasoning on the show that was just an hour long. I decided only a book would allow me to present my research and an in-depth analysis, to present a solid profile of history and to reconstruct the events of Cleopatra's life and death.

During the work on the documentary and throughout the next eight years, I spent time in Egypt, Rome, and England working with Egyptologists, poison experts, archeologists, and historians of the ancient world and I began to piece together another, more credible story behind the death of Cleopatra.

• I believed Cleopatra was tortured.

• I believed Cleopatra was strangled.

• I believed Anthony was murdered.

• I believed Cleopatra did not hide in her tomb with her treasure.
• I believed Cleopatra did not bargain with Octavian.

• I believed Cleopatra planned a brilliant military maneuver at Alexandria, her Actium Two, which this time would not have been an escape strategy from a failed naval battle, but a faux naval battle to permit a successful escape from a dire military position that offered little hope of survival.

• I believed Cleopatra never loved Antony.

• I believed Cleopatra never loved Julius Caesar.

• I believed Cleopatra did not have Caesar’s son.

• I believed Cleopatra may have been one of the most brilliant, cold-blooded, iron-willed rulers in history and the truth about what really happened was hidden behind a veil of propaganda and lies set in motion by her murderer, Octavian, and the agenda of the Roman Empire.

And now The Murder of Cleopatra brings this new view of history to you with my full analysis of the world's greatest cold case.           

           

The Murder of Cleopatra is in stores February 19 and available for order now at Amazon, Amazon Canada) and Barnes & Noble. Kindle  format is also available in the US and UK and Canada.

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Infamous 'Person of Interest' in Unsolved Murder Case Spotted in Las Vegas

By Cathy Scott

New York real estate baron Robert Durst, who has long been a person of interest in the 2000 murder of Mob daughter Susan Berman and in the 1982 disappearance of his wife first Kathleen Durst, has been seen in Las Vegas on three occasions.

Sin City is where Durst's one-time best friend, Susan Berman, grew up Mob royalty as the spoiled daughter of Jewish mobster Davie Berman.

Durst was spotted by a patron just before Christmas at a Chinese restaurant on Paradise Road near the Las Vegas Strip, at a supermarket on the east side of the valley by a fellow shopper, and at another restaurant in the same vicinity, according to the restaurant's host.

He's tough to miss. Images of Durst wearing wire-rimmed glasses, with salt-and-pepper hair, have been broadcast on TruTV, Nancy Grace, Jane Velez Mitchell, CNN, and on all the national networks.

In 2000, as New York police reopened their investigation into the disappearance of Kathleen Durst, investigators had scheduled an interview with Susan Berman. Durst had reportedly fled New York for Galveston, where he lived in disguise as a mute woman.

Before Berman's police interview was to take place, she was found in her Beverly Hills bungalow, dead from a gunshot wound to the back of her head. Her murder remains unsolved, but police have publicly said Durst, who had been visiting San Francisco where he owns a house, was in California at the time of Berman's murder. LAPD homicide-robbery division publicly said Durst was a person of interest in Berman's case.

Back in Texas, Durst was wanted for questioning when the remains of Durst's next-door neighbor, senior citizen Morris Black, were discovered by a fisherman and his young son floating in Galveston Bay -- except for poor Morris Black's head, which never surfaced. Durst was eventually arrested and charged with Black's murder. In court, he admitted to accidentally fatally shooting Black, and then chopping up the body, bagging the remains and dumping them in Galveston Bay.

Durst hired the best of the best when it came to his defense. Dick DeGuerin, who was named one of the top 100 criminal attorneys in the nation, used a self-defense strategy in court. Jurors bought it; they acquitted Durst of murder in 2003. He pleaded guilty the following year to jumping bond and evidence tampering. In a plea agreement, he received a sentence of five years in prison. With credit for time service, Durst was paroled in 2005.

He bought a high-end, five-family townhouse in Harlem, New York, in 2006. News reports indicated that nearby residents were unhappy with having Durst as a neighbor, especially after a real estate agent told a newspaper that Durst had mentioned renting out part of the property and moving himself into one of the family units.

So far, records at the Clark County Assessors' Office don't indicate that Durst has purchased property in the Las Vegas Valley -- which begs the question: What is Robert Durst doing in Las Vegas?

A second edition of Scott's book, Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman, is scheduled for re-release in May 2013.

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'Twas The Day After Thanksgiving

by Donna Pendergast

'Twas the day after Thanksgiving and all through the land

The shoppers were awake, the agenda was planned

The coffee was brewing, the tennies were laced

The stores would soon open, around the house they all raced

The stores were all decked out with flash holiday flair

with hope that the shoppers would soon buy their fare

And Mom with her coupons and dad with his cash

had compiled a list for the mad morning dash

When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter

Mall doors were now open, 'twas all that would matter

The crowd surged ahead in a frenzy quite crazy

Not a place for the weak and worse for the lazy.

Holiday lights in the window of a once simple store

gave the luster of magic to something quite plain before

When what to my wondering eyes should appear

But a runaway mob propelled from the rear.

Push forward, move faster, don't worry where you tread

Don't look back, don't falter, think bargains ahead

From outside the front door, for the length of the mall

Now dash away, dash away, dash away all.

Like leaves in the middle of a wild tornado fly

run for the shops, many presents to buy

Super special sale and bargains galore

but you need to move quickly and get through the door

Then in a twinkling, a voice on the mike

Door buster special, something you'll like

You need to get this deal, you need to buy more

But you better move fast, only five units per store."

So off to that aisle, shoppers flew in a flash

I'm going to get me one and save tons of cash

But I only can do it by fighting off the crowd

I need to be brazen, I musn't be cowed.

As boxes fly  into carts full of loot

get out of the way or I'll give you a boot

I need to get this deal, my kid needs this toy

And I'm on a mission to search and destroy
.

Don't you know it's Black Friday, only one thing to say?

Survival of the fittest is the order of the day

I'm going for the deals, I want only the best

I can't stop or falter, I can't take a rest.

Up and down the corridors, until plum out of steam

I got all my bargains, my haul is a dream

I'm done hitting stores from morning to night

Merry Christmas to all, you put up a good fight.

Black Friday is one of the most anticipated shopping days of the year for bargain-hunting shoppers. It's a time to hit the stores and officially launch the holiday shopping season. But criminals look forward to the shopping season for a very different reason. Based on experience I can tell you that they are hoping to take advantage and prey on shoppers. Be a smart shopper and heed these safety tips:

1. Avoid the ATM. Early Friday morning is no time to be hitting the money machine for a dose of cash. If you absolutely need to visit the ATM, be safe about it. Use a well-lit ATM inside an open establishment. Be especially mindful of anyone who appears to be watching you near an ATM. Also be aware of anything that seems unusual about the ATM machine itself. Criminals have become adept at rigging ATM machines to trap your card which they will extract from the rigged machine after you walk away. They can later use it by entering your pin number which they have learned by either watching you punch it in up close or watching from afar with binoculars.

2. Be Alert. Pay attention to surroundings and keep an eye out for any unusual activity. Park under lights and shop with a buddy. If you have to exit your car in a dark parking lot, wait for a crowd that is heading toward the store or mall as well.

3. Keep your purse close to your body and tightly shut. I have personally been the victim of a pickpocket who was so adroit that he was able to lift my wallet out of my purse while it was on my shoulder. I never felt a thing. Keep a tight leash on your purse and be alert in crowds and aware of persons bumping up against you. A neat tip for your purse if you are putting it in a shopping cart. Put it in the child seat area and lace the seatbelt straps through the purse handle and lock them. This prevents a thief from running by and grabbing it on the run.

4. Don't fight. Black Friday can bring out the worst in shoppers. A good deal is not worth a physical altercation.

Be safe out there tomorrow. Happy shopping, and remember, people. it's only stuff!  Today, think of what's really important and be thankful for what you already have.

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