My Top 8 Stories of 2010

by Robin Sax


Eight cases, why not? Everyone else can do a Top 10 list -- here are my Top 8 from 2010:

8. Casey Anthony going to trial 

In the case of Casey Anthony,  the mother who allegedly murdered her child Caylee, the jury will want to know how a mom, an attractive, normal woman, could do such a thing to her own daughter. The most damning evidence against Casey Anthony -- the reason, the answer to why she might murder her own daughter, the smoking motive: she didn't want to be a mother anymore.  Anthony wanted to party and be free, and so researched a murder method (chloroform) and went ahead and got rid of her daughter one mile from their home. Sounds like an awful scenario. But it may very well be true. That Casey Anthony is a party girl who killed little Caylee in favor of a liberating, carefree life is not a new theory. But the jailhouse letters and inmate interviews support the idea that she was too young to have a kid and could not hang with being a mom, that she wanted freedom from everything, and that she was willing to do absolutely anything to get that freedom - including murdering her 2-year-old baby. This case may top the list for next year when it goes to trial.

7. Bruce Beresford Redman's wife's murder

Beresford Redman, former Survivor producer, went on vacation to Cancun with his wife, who was found strangled to death adjacent from the Moon Palace Resort. Factors that tend to show that he is guilty: the 3 different life insurance policies he took out on his wife's life within 3 months, including the accidental death and dismemberment policy; witnesses that will attest to fighting the night before her mysterious death; a weak, if not lame, excuse that she went shopping but whoops didn’t bring a cell phone and left at 8:30 am (who does that in Cancun while on vacation?); scratch marks on his neck; inconsistencies in his accounts and the accounts of witnesses; need I go on?  Face it people, we live in a judgmental society. We size people and situations up all the time. We draw conclusions over cocktails, in lunchrooms, and in op-ed pieces, like this one.  I say Bruce (and Richard) it’s time to think of a new PR strategy because this one isn't working! We'll see what happens.

6. Mitrice Richardson murder -- any closer?

This 24-year-old Cal State Fullerton graduate mysteriously vanished after walking out of the Lost Hills Sheriff's station nearly three months ago. According to the Los Angeles Times, authorities believe that Mitrice had gone without sleep for as many as five nights before she was arrested for not paying her bill at a Malibu restaurant. They think she may have had a major mental breakdown, including possibly suffering from bipolar disorder. This begs the question, why didn't anyone at the Lost Hills sheriff's station notice anything strange about Mitrice's mood and behavior? Tragically, the body of Mitrice was found this year (she went missing in September of 2009). Richardson's body was found naked, and her bra and jeans were found apart from her body. The search is still in motion for her killer. 

5. Mel Gibson and Oksana domestic violence blow-up/out

After the details of the January 2010 domestic abuse incident surfaced against Mel Gibson, and the taped rant and tirade were released, the incident chills down the spines of even the most hardened people. No one thought Mel would survive the abuse against Oksana Grigorieva, his girlfriend and mother of one of his children. It seemed clear to all he was going down this time, at least in PR if not as a criminal. To make sure I was not missing something, I called a few of my detective buddies at Lost Hills Sheriff's station back in January and found that they concluded as similarly as I -- that Mel Gibson committed a crime against Oksana and if it were any other person, he or she would have been arrested on the spot. The evidence, when compared to that of a typical domestic violence case, was overwhelming. A report from Oksana, taped calls corroborating Oksana’s words, a suspect clearly afflicted with anger among other issues, medical records and statements consistent with the injuries, and another victim who says similar crimes have happened to her. But the tides shifted to disbelief of Oksana and the case virtually died out. It's unlikely that we'll see much justice in this case.

4. John Gardner confession to killing Chelsea King & Amber Dubois 

How could a man who admittedly molested a 13-year-old girl in 2000 serve only five years in jail when he could have served 30? How could he wind up living yards away from an elementary school? In this case, there are lots of questions but only one answer: It should have never happened. There is no excuse, justification or mitigation that can comfort the King or Dubois family for the murder and rape of their beloved daughters. These are deaths that simply could have been avoided. I participated in a press conference and rally this year to help shed light on the horrible parol system in California that could allow this kind of monster out on the streets. Where is the public outcry on this parole supervision crisis? Where is the accountability? Why are these parolees not being properly supervised and monitored by parole agents? Where is the governor of the State of California on this? Why do these parole administrators continue to have their jobs? Shouldn't they be held accountable for these resulting disasters? How many more innocent people have to be murdered for the department to make changes? How many more innocent victims have to suffer at the hands of roaming parolees?

3. Lindsay Lohan saga

Lindsay Lohan has an appetite for destruction. What can we learn from the recent media blitz on Lindsay Lohan besides just a baffling dose of "why" when watching all of her legal debacles? You may expect me to come up with some hidden message or special lesson here but sometimes the obvious is the hardest to digest. The lesson from LiLo's case: don't drink & drive.  I would like to use my platform and big mouth to rant a little about the issue of driving under the influence. Most of you reading this probably have driven home buzzed at some point in your life. Don't do it again. It's not worth it. Just call a cab or a friend if you have had too many drinks. Not only because you don't want to go to jail like our Ms. Lindsay, but because you want to prevent tragedies. Life is too short. We see that Lindsay did get some celebrity justice but, sadly, there doesn't seem to be enough of time on these celebrity news shows to discuss the dangers of getting a DUI and how rampant, and deadly, the practice of drinking and driving is.

2. Human Trafficking on Craigslist and other sites

Websites like Craigslist, MySpace and MyRedBook have facilitated and spurred new growth in child/human trafficking and prostitution within the United States. The Internet has made it possible for pimps and traffickers to sell and solicit children from thousands of miles away. Savvy online criminals can easily pick up at-risk children and runaways through social networking sites. Craigslist seems to be at the forefront of the online solicitation of children in America, and indeed came under fire in 2010 for this practice. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said any ad on Craigslist that enables human trafficking and child exploitation is completely unacceptable and that his company works tirelessly with law enforcement to help stop the attackers on their site ... really? Well, I think we will be hearing a lot more about the Craigslist site in 2011. Tragically, human trafficking of children for the sex industry is a rapidly growing domestic crisis. Yes, here right in America!

1. Ronni Chasen's murder mystery

The police are convinced that the shooting of Ronni Chasen, a wealthy and respected Beverly Hills publicist, was not a professional hit and that 43-year-old Harold Martin Smith acted on his own with the motive being a robbery, albeit a botched robbery. But there have been a ton of rumors and speculation. It is possible that all the premature speculation generated too many unanswered questions to what really happened to Chasen on November 16. Some questions, that are harder than others, contradict Beverly Hills Police Department statements that 43 year old ex-con Harold Smith rode his favorite bike to commit an armed robbery with Chasen the random victim. BHPD will hopefully come forth very soon with convincing information to legitimize their theory that this was not a merciless contract murder that took the life of this vital member of the entertainment industry. Until then, the questions remain. Rest in peace, Ronni Chasen. We will continue to press on as we know you would have. 

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Did Ronni Chasen's Fiery Temper Anger the Cyclist Who Shot and Killed Her?

by Dr. Lillian Glass

The day after Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was killed, her friends and colleagues sang her praises. They said she was the sweetest woman, who was loved by all. But as we read between the lines, their comments reveal a different story.

Their comments may give us more insight into her personality and perhaps why  Harold Smith, the person of interest, wanted her dead.  Smith ended up  committing suicide after police confronted him. Initially, police said he had  nothing to do with her murder. But now it has been discovered that he was indeed the murderer.

The Beverly Hills Police now say that Harold Smith killed her, while riding his bike, as Ronni was on Sunset Boulevard, turning left onto Whittier Drive. Apparently, Smith bragged to people that he killed Ronni and that is why they sought him out as a person of interest.

While police have said it looked to be a botched robbery, was she actually a victim of road rage? Did she cut cyclist Smith off or honk at him or yell at him? Was he so enraged by this that he pulled a gun and simply shot her?  He didn’t just shoot her once; he shot her five times. This meant he was furious with her and wanted her dead.

Ronni’s brother, Larry Cohen, even thought it was road rage. When he found out this happened, he remarked that his sister had a fiery temper and speculated that she may have angered the wrong person on the road while driving. He would certainly know his sister’s personality best.

Adjectives commonly used to describe Ronni by family and friends and colleagues were:  persistent, doggedly determined, fiercely protective, pushy, and very aggressive.

One colleague remarked that Ronni was known for her "fast-talking, old school, New York aggressiveness on behalf of her clients and was not a person one quickly forgot after meeting.”

Songwriter Diane Warren painted a picture of a publicist who was determined to get whatever she wanted no matter what. She described a situation when Ronni wanted a photo taken of Diane with some other celebrities in the photograph. Diane reported, “(Chasen) goes, ‘I don’t care what I have to do--I’m getting that picture,’ That was Ronni. She had something she wanted to do and she got that picture. She’d tell you what to do, and people listened to her.”

At Ronni’s funeral service, her relentless, turbocharged drive was mentioned by many. Those giving the eulogy each described Chasen’s forceful personality. Ronni’s close friend Vivian Mayer-Siskind’s comment about Ronni spoke volumes about Ronni when she stated, “Ronni came to me last night and was pissed as hell. ‘Now you get me a free Armani suit.’”

Perhaps the most compelling insight into Chasen’s personality came from producer Irwin Winkler of Rocky fame. He told the Los Angeles Times that when his 2004 film De-Lovely was not nominated for a Golden Globe, Chasen “was furious. She screamed and yelled at (members of) the Hollywood Foreign Press,” the group that puts on the annual awards show.

While Ronni may have been nice to her friends, colleagues, studio executives, and A-list celebrity clients who paid her large amounts of money, how did she treat others? When someone yells and screams at others, like producer Irwin Winkler reported Ronni did because her client didn’t get nominated for an award, it makes you wonder.

Did that aggressive, yelling, and relentless behavior transfer over on to the road? Did she scream and yell at the wrong person on the road who ended up shooting her? Obviously, there was someone in the last moments of her life who was angry. Harold Smith was so angry that he shot her five times in the chest.

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Where is the Outrage?

by Pat Brown

I doubt we can find very many people who feel bad for Ingmar Guandique, the man convicted of killing Chandra Levy. My own heart is not bleeding for him. On the other hand, my brain is about to explode. Why am I hearing no outcry about this frightening guilty verdict that the jury arrived at after an incredibly short trial with pitiful evidence? It is hard to see how any prosecutor would have even wanted to try this case with what he had to work with. It is horrifying that a jury would convict on emotion rather than solid facts. As much as I have never been totally enamored with the Innocence Project's overuse of DNA to disqualify all other solid evidence, they and I agree that this miracle conviction is a stomach-turning travesty. While Guandique is hardly innocent, as far as criminal matters go, he did attack two women and has a history of other criminal activities. Past criminal activities of an individual do not prove a similar criminal activity is that individual's doing unless evidence proves it so.

There, my fellow citizens, is the problem. Guandique was a good scapegoat; no, a great scapegoat. No one cares if Guandique stays in prison for decades. In fact, even I prefer he remains incarcerated forever. I don't really give a fig about Guandique's suffering because he is clearly a predator and hardened criminal who needs to be behind bars. But, I do care that our justice system is convicting people without credible evidence.

First, let's take a look at what evidence got Guandique a life sentence for the murder of Chandra Levy:

• He attacked two other women within the same park, though he did not succeed in either raping or killing them. He was, in fact, trying to rob them.
  
• An inmate who knew Guandique in prison said Guandique confessed to him.

No witnesses put Guandique on the trail at the time Levy was theoretically murdered. No evidence was found in Guandique's home linking him to the murder. Guandique, a known thief, did not steal Levy's ring or her Walkman. The only DNA evidence from the crime scene came from Levy's leggings, and, although it was from a male, it did not match Guandique. There was no videotaped confession with details only the killer would know. In fact, the details of the supposed confession Guandique made to his prison mate were not very convincing. Guandique passed the polygraph.

Recap: DNA from the crime scene does not match Guandique and nothing else links him to Levy's murder.

Why are we not all raising hell over this? Guandique could have committed the crime, but so could Condit or one of his buddies, and so could I, for that matter. We really don't know if Guandique is guilty (and neither does that jury), and we don't know if Chandra Levy's murderer is still at large. This is not justice.

Now, let's take a look at other cases that haven't gotten near a courtroom for lack of enough evidence for the prosecutor to feel comfortable presenting the case.

The case I wrote about in my book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths, is a good example. My suspect in the case, Walt Williams, is still free in spite of:

• He confessed to being on the path near the location of the murder at the time of the murder.
• The night of the murder, he threw away all the clothing he had worn (including his shoes) after being on the path where the homicide occurred.
• He wrote a story about killing people in the park just weeks before the victim was found murdered in a park.
• He said the following day to the girlfriend who had ended their relationship hours before the murder in response to her question if he was going to do something stupid (like suicide), "You don't know what I have already done."
• He covered his body in long pants and long sleeves the day after the murder in spite of the fact the temperature was in the high eighties
• He failed the polygraph and gave a phony alibi.
• There is no DNA left from the crime that does not match him.

Walt Williams remains free because there is not enough conclusive evidence to convict him. He could have been a nut job who was coincidentally near the area of a crime and because he is a bizarre person, he said and did strange things that made him look like he should be the killer. I tend to think this is not the case, but I agree with the prosecutor that even though the evidence is strong enough to make him the number one person of interest, it is not absolute proof that he committed the crime.

What about the man who said he murdered Ronni Chasen, the Hollywood publicist, for $10,000? By the time I got on "The Early Show" and gave commentary on this crime, the story went like this: The police had been doing surveillance on a man named Harold in connection with the shooting of Chasen. Ronni Chasen was shot in her car as she drove home from a film premiere through the quiet streets of Beverly Hills. Chasen had been shot five times in the chest and shoulder through her passenger window as she waited at a light.

Some pundits claimed it was a hit because the killer used a 9mm pistol with cop-killer ammunition (hollow-point bullets) and made a tight pattern of his shots. So, the theory was a professional hit man had killed Ronni on behalf of either someone in her will or someone who was angry with her. When the police moved in on Harold, a middle-aged ex-felon with weapons and drug charges on his record, at his crummy Hollywood hotel, he pulled his weapon and blew his brains out. He had told someone he would never allow himself to be taken back to prison.

I was asked, "Could Harold be the killer of Ronni Chasen?" I said it was possible. I did not believe the shooting to be all that professional because I also own a 9mm with that ammo, and I could shoot a pretty tight pattern if my target was only a few feet away. I surmised that if the police had followed information from Chasen's life to Harold, and Harold blew his brains out as soon as the police showed up, maybe he was linked to the crime, knew why the police were there and he offed himself. He could be a good suspect, because, although he wasn't a professional hit man (and, as I said above, I didn't think the murder had to be a professional hit), he was a thug who needed money, and I wouldn't doubt he would be willing to kill to get some.

Bombshell tonight: Harold is no longer a good suspect. Turns out, Harold was a bit off his rocker. He was going around telling all kinds of crazy stories, including one that he killed Chasen and another that he wanted to go out in a big blaze. Someone called America's Most Wanted with that tip and they turned the tip into police. There was nothing linking good ol' Harold to Chasen except his own big mouth, plus the gun he used to kill himself was not used to kill Chasen.

Oh, but, there is the point. Let's say someone wants to put the Ronni Chasen's murder to bed, close it out, considered it solved. All that has to be done is for a story to go out that another ex-felon heard that Harold sold a 9mm after Chasen's murder to someone whose name he can't remember. If Harold had survived the shot to his head, he could have been hauled into court and the ex-felon could testify to Harold selling off the murder weapon (or one like the murder weapon. "One like" is terminology commonly used to convict people without actually having the solid evidence).

Remember, you heard it here if the case is closed with the deceased Harold as the guilty party.

So, how does this happen in our criminal justice system and our courts, this use of scapegoats to close cases? And why?

The why part is the most important. For the prosecution to move forward with a case that lacks conclusive evidence, or for the police department to close a case without solid proof of the suspect being dead and guilty, there has to be a reason. The most likely scenario involves a case that is really dogging the police department. Either the press is making their lives miserable or the family and community just won't let it rest. It gets to the point where closing out the case would stop the negative publicity in its tracks. The Chandra Levy trial came on the heels of a major police trashing by a series of articles written in The Washington Post.

The Martha Moxley murder case got Michael Skakel convicted on little-to-no evidence after former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman published his book, Murder in Greenwich, condemning the police of incompetence. The 2003 Florence Jean Hall murder in Covington, Tennessee, was closed with the conviction of an ex-felon employee on a questionable confession and zero physical evidence, in my opinion, because the fairly wealthy family had some pull in town. Otherwise, the family of this woman would have come under more serious scrutiny and James David Johnson would never have been convicted (or they would have been convicted with him). Politics and expedience are the motivators behind taking a weak case to court.

So, this leaves the question, if the prosecutors were so successful with these weak cases, why aren't more people railroaded? The answer is the proper ingredients have to be in the mix and it has to be worth it. The important ingredients are an emotional case the community wants resolved, a very sympathetic victim with devastated family members in the courtroom, a darned good political and economic reason to take the risk, and a really good fall guy that the jury is all too happy to convict.

Guandique? Total low-life criminal. Michael Skakel? A smug Kennedy with a big mouth who says stupid things. James David Johnson? A dangerous ex-con who is no loss to the community.

So why isn't Walt Williams on the list? First of all, Williams has no criminal record. Most scapegoats are ex-convicts or felons that look the part (Michael Skakel was an anomaly in the scapegoat world). The case is twenty years old, the family of Anne Kelley has never made waves, the community hardly remembers the crime and the media never has given the murder more than a short paragraph right after it happened. Maybe if my book makes enough of a stir or it gets made into a movie depicting the police and prosecutor in the worst way, then Walt Williams will be brought in and a jury will convict him in spite of that pesky reasonable doubt issue. Or, maybe, to prove me wrong, they will simply claim that newly found DNA matches a deceased sex murderer in prison and close the case down without showing us the actual DNA match. Or, worst of all, maybe they will find a rapist who just happened to be in the area at the time and railroad him.

Maybe they will say it was Ingmar Guandique because, after all, Anne Kelley was murdered in a park, too! I am sure they can convince a jury that this would have been the first crime for the then ten-year-old illegal immigrant, a violent product of the El Salvadorian Civil War and the Mara Salvatrucha aka MS -13 gang, big for his age and already a violent predator. Ingmar Guandique raped and murdered Anne Kelley as an initiation to the gang which operates in the area of her murder (and it is actually true the MS-13 gangs exist within a half mile of the homicide location; the path passes through their territory).

Before you start labeling this theory ridiculous and not worthy to be presented in a court of law, go back and look over the evidence that got Guandique convicted of Chandra Levy's murder. There isn't any.

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