Crime

A man and his son were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on sexual abuse charges after Polaroid photos from the 1980s and ’90s of children being sexually exploited were found in the walls at a home near Sacramento where the two had lived for over 40 years, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office said on Tuesday.

The father, Theodore Smith, 90, was sentenced last month to 100 years in prison after he pleaded no contest in Sacramento County Superior Court to 11 counts of committing forcible lewd acts on a child and three counts of lewd acts on a child, the district attorney’s office said in its statement. His son, James Smith, 66, pleaded no contest to two counts of committing lewd acts upon a child and was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.

The authorities were led to the Smiths in 2021, when a new homeowner was renovating an outbuilding on the property where the Smiths had lived in Orangevale, Calif. Polaroid photos and video tapes fell out of the building’s walls during the renovation, the district attorney’s office said. Hundreds of images, taken from 1985 to 1995, showed anonymous children under the age of 14 being sexually abused by adults, according to the authorities.

Law enforcement officers were able to identify the children — now adults — from the photos, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Facebook in 2021. Eventually, investigators connected the images to Theodore and James Smith.

The father and son had lived in the Orangevale home for more than four decades but had recently moved to Alto, Texas, a rural area in the eastern part of the state about 55 miles outside Tyler, the sheriff’s office said. Once the Smiths were identified as people of interest, their new home in Alto was searched, the sheriff’s office said. Although the statute of limitations prevented charges from being brought against them for materials before 1988, there was enough from after that year to bring criminal charges. The two were arrested in October 2021, the sheriff’s office said.

“The victims were under 5 years old when the abuse began, and it continued for the majority of their first decade in life,” the district attorney’s office said. “The victims never told anyone about the abuse other than their spouses.” It was not immediately clear how many children were in the images. How the Smiths knew the victims was also not immediately clear.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — An appeals court in Romania ruled Thursday that the human trafficking case against influencer Andrew Tate, his brother and two Romanian women cannot go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities on the part of the prosecutors.

The ruling comes two years after Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristian Tate, 36, were arrested, along with the two women. The four are accused of human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, and Andrew also faces an additional rape charge.

The decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal is a huge setback for Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, but it does not mean the Tates and the two women walk free — the case has not been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.

A 17-year-old teen was knifed to death during a caught-on-camera clash with an older man outside an East Harlem Korean restaurant, police and witnesses said Saturday.

Victim Carlos Rivas and a 22-year-old friend had just made an order at K-Street Food near the corner of E. 108th St. and Second Ave. at 6:15 p.m. Friday when they came to blows with 62-year-old suspect Saul Sanchez, who was also a customer at the restaurant, cops said.

“It’s a fight for I guess nothing,” said Moon Shin, an employee of K-Street Food. “So sad. They maybe fight outside first. I don’t see.”

Shin, 66, was working the counter when all three men were in the small storefront eatery.

“[The older man] makes an order and pay and [he] walked out, but two young guys [were] pushing everywhere,” she recalled. “Then they [went] outside fighting.”

The horrific stabbing is hauntingly similar to the murder of on-duty postal worker Ray Hodges, who was knifed to death in a Harlem deli a day earlier during an argument over his spot on a sandwich line, cops said.

Harrowing video obtained by the Daily News shows Rivas and his friend wrestling with a man as they scramble out of the Korean restaurant.

Once they hit the sidewalk, the man grabs Rivas by the collar and stabs him in the chest and stomach before both fall to the ground.

“It was straight stabs,” recalled the co-owner of the Your Highness smoke shop next door to the Korean restaurant, who saw the fight on his surveillance camera. “[The man] was holding [Rivas]. He was holding him by his collar.”

(AFP) — French authorities on Sunday held three Algerians suspected of inciting violence in TikTok videos, with at least two of them facing terror-related charges.

The arrests come amid growing political tensions between Paris and its former North African colony.

A video blogger known as “Imad Tintin” was arrested Friday outside Grenoble after publishing a video urging followers to “burn alive, kill and rape on French territory”.

The post was taken down after receiving 800,000 views but hardline right-wing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau published a video grab on his social media accounts, condemning the publication as “vile”.

A judge on Sunday placed the 31-year-old blogger under judicial supervision, Grenoble prosecutors said.

He was due to appear Monday in a fast-track trial on charges of “direct incitement of an act of terrorism”, the state prosecution service said.

“Imad Tintin” entered France in December 2021 and applied for a residence permit in August 2023 after his marriage to a French woman. But his application was refused and he is also subject to an expulsion order.

– Terror incitement charge –

In a second case, a 25-year-old Algerian identified as Youcef A. but known on social media as Zazou Youssef was remanded in custody Friday in the western city of Brest, prosecutor Camille Miansoni said in a statement.

He will stand trial there on February 24 on a charge of “publicly advocating an act of terrorism” in posts to his hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers, she said.

He faces up to seven years in jail and a 100,000-euro ($103,000) fine if convicted, the statement added.

Zazou Youssef appeared in a video posted on TikTok on December 31, calling for attacks in France and violence in Algeria.

He was living in France on a temporary residency permit.

Sara Sharif's killer father had his throat slashed open by a notorious double murderer, it has been reported.

Steven Sansom - who killed Sarah Mayhew, 38, last year and cut her body up with power tools - allegedly attacked Urfan Sharif on New Year's Day with a tuna can lid.

The 46-year-old, who also murdered a taxi driver when he was 19, is said to have cornered Sharif in his cell with the help of another inmate, sources told The Sun.

It is alleged the prisoners at HMP Belmarsh were sickened by the horrific murder of Sharif's 10-year-old daughter Sara at the family home in Woking, Surrey, last year.

The schoolgirl was hooded, bitten, burned and eventually beaten to death before her body was found with at least 71 injuries after the family fled to Pakistan.

A prison insider has now claimed: 'Everyone is talking about how it was Sansom who got to Sharif.

'He and another inmate apparently pounced on him as he walked back to the wing after a shower, forced him into a cell and slashed him.

'The other bloke, who is also a murderer, held the door shut.'

Sansom is facing a life sentence for the murder of Ms Mayhew whose legs, arms and head were found in a field in Croydon last April.

Her torso was later discovered in Mitcham - some nine miles away from where the rest of her body was found.

Sansom, who was known to Ms Mayhew, pleaded guilty to the horrific crime in September and is due to be sentenced this month.

He was previously convicted in 1999 for the murder of cab driver Terrence Boyle, 59, who was stabbed in the throat and back.

Sansom had called Mr Boyle's firm, Kendal Cars in Station Road, Croydon for a lift from East Croydon station to his home in New Addington.

But he knifed him as the car pulled up and escaped with just £25.

Following Sansom's alleged attack on New Year's Day, it is now believed that Sharif has a 'target on his back' — and he will be 'always be looking over his shoulder'.

Horrifying new details of how three members of a family attending a Christmas party were killed by a poisoned cake have been revealed for the first time.

Zeli Silva Dos Anjos, 61, who baked the traditional Brazilian festive treat, was among seven people who attended a pre Christmas annual party on December 23 - but only four survived.

Now MailOnline can reveal that there were two cakes baked for the party - and the family could have been spared if they had chosen to cut the second, safe cake instead of the one that turned out to be poisoned with arsenic.

Other revelations, revealed by a member of the tragic family who spoke for the first time included how:

The family believe the killer cake could have been poisoned by an outsider who had a deadly grudge The poison took effect so quickly that guests began writhing in agony within minutes of tasting the cake Mrs Anjos is now 'horrified by guilt' as she remains in critical condition in hospital - and the family fear for her recovery Previously unconfirmed suggestions that a member of the wider family had died last year from eating poisoned bananas are true

The disturbing new details were revealed by close relative Isabel Moraes who described in detail for the first time the circumstances surrounding the tragedy at Torres near Porto Alegre in southern Brazil as she spoke to MailOnline this morning.

Ms Moraes told how, within hours of tucking in, her sister in law Maida Bernice Flores da Silva, 58, Neuza Denize Silva Dos Anjos, 65, and Neuza's daughter Tatiana Silvia Dos Santos, 43, were all dead - and authorities later revealed traces of deadly arsenic were found in their bodies.

Zeli and her 10-year-old great nephew Mateus, Tatiana's son, were also taken ill and rushed to hospital.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Maida's sister-in-law Isabel said: 'Zeli is horrified by what's happened. She is overcome with guilt because it was her cake that caused the tragedy, but we keep telling her not to worry and that it was an accident.

'We said she shouldn't blame herself, but she is getting so anxious it's not doing her recovery any good. She is getting worse instead of getting better. She is on a ventilator to help her breathe and we don't know when she will be discharged.'

Revealing for the first time the sequence of events leading up to the tragedy, Isabel, 54, a psychologist, said: 'Every year Zeli baked the cake and every year everyone meets up for a family get together to celebrate Christmas and be with each other, we are all extremely close.

'That day two cakes were made. One by Zeli and one by Maida, but it was only Zeli's which was eaten. If they had eaten the other one then perhaps this wouldn't have happened.

'Both were on the table and Jefferson said it was decided to leave Maida's cake and have Zeli's because she was the one who made it every year but as soon as they started to eat it, they felt ill.

'Jefferson told me that within a few minutes they were all saying it had a bitter sour taste and by this time Zeli had eaten two slices but as soon as everyone started to complain she said 'Stop, no one eat any more.'

However, a short while later everyone who had eaten the cake was doubled up in agony vomiting and ambulances raced to Maida and Jefferson's apartment in Torres to take the group to hospital.

The only guest not to suffer any ill effects was Neuza's husband Joao who doesn't eat cake, while Jefferson was discharged by doctors after a few hours.

Maida was the first to die on Christmas Eve, while Neuza lost her life a few hours later and her daughter Tatiana was the last to pass away with their funeral services held on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

...

'We have a cousin who is a chemist, and he said that there is no way such a large amount of arsenic could have been produced by out-of-date ingredients, so it makes us wonder if someone tampered with it.'

Isabel added: 'It's strange that just our family is involved though. Even the policeman said he'd never seen a case like this.

'You have to wonder if it is something deliberate from someone, but it won't be Zeli. I think if this is a deliberate action, it will be someone with a grudge against the family, but I have no idea who that could be - or what their motive is.'

...

Isabel also confirmed what other relatives had told MailOnline, that Zeli's husband Paulo died in September from food poisoning after eating bananas suspected to have been contaminated by chemicals following the flood.

...

She said: 'Zeli told me what happened at Paulo's funeral a few months ago. They work up as usual and Paulo went to make coffee while she mashed up some bananas for their breakfast.

'They ate them with a little bread and drank the coffee and then went for a walk but after a few minutes he said he didn't feel well and then started to vomit and a few minutes later she started to vomit as well.

'A neighbour saw them being sick and called an ambulance and they went to hospital. Zeli recovered quickly but Paulo just got worse and eventually died. We all said at the time the bananas must have been contaminated by the flood waters.'

A former primary school headteacher who described a pupil as a 'fat slug' and branded another 'f***ing ugly' has escaped a ban from the classroom.

Nicola Brogan, who worked at Woodland Community Primary School, in Heywood, Lancashire, also nicknamed a teacher 'Captain Camp' in reference to his sexuality and called a parent who was Scottish a 'f***ing jock,' a teaching misconduct panel found.

The experienced headteacher, who led the school between September 2011 and December 2019, created an 'uncomfortable and negative working environment' that left some staff in fear, they said.

Although the panel found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and bringing the profession into disrepute, they did not recommend Mrs Brogan be banned from teaching altogether.

They said she deserved 'considerable credit' for helping steer the 470-pupil school out of special measures and to achieve a 'good' rating with Ofsted. She had also made a 'significant contribution to the teaching profession,' had 'expressed regret' about her behaviour and had an unblemished record, working for 22 years without any complaints, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found.

A three-day hearing, in Coventry last month, was told that Mrs Brogan was appointed to turn around the struggling school in September 2011.

Less than four years later, in June 2015, Mrs Brogan told local paper, the Heywood Advertiser, that securing the 'good' rating from Ofsted had taken four years of 'hard work...dedication and blood, sweat and tears.'

But she was subsequently referred to the TRA in November 2019, following two anonymous complaints about her behaviour.

Mrs Brogan, who gave evidence in person to the hearing, admitted making abusive and inappropriate comments about pupils, teachers and parents in a group WhatsApp chat set up for senior leaders at the school.

Other comments included calling a teaching assistant a 'fat cow' and claiming another member of staff, who was late for a meeting, wouldn't need an inhaler if she 'wasn't so fat.' She also described one pupil as a 'wimp' and said another 'annoys the f*** out of me, he has no personality.'

The panel also found she inappropriately joked with a teacher about whether they would have sex with an Ofsted inspector in return for an outstanding rating. She was also inconsistent and moody in her dealings with staff and shouted at them inappropriately in her office on at least two occasions.

Less than two hours into the new year, Mesquite police say a suspected drunken driver killed four people and injured three others in a crash along Interstate 20.

At about 1:45 a.m. on New Year's Day, Mesquite police were called to a crash along Interstate 20 near Farm-to-Market Road 740. According to a preliminary investigation, several people were changing a flat tire on the outside shoulder of the interstate when a suspected drunken driver hit them.

The names of the four people killed have not been released, and the conditions of the three others reportedly injured are unknown.

The driver, who has not yet been identified publicly, was taken into custody and is being charged with four counts of intoxication manslaughter, police said. Additional charges could be added later.

Eastbound Interstate 20 was closed while the crash was investigated, and traffic was diverted to FM 740, police said in a post on Facebook. After about nine hours, shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, the eastbound lanes of I-20 were reopened to traffic.

Farhan and Tanvir Towhid, who slaughtered family, left behind bizarre suicide note with ‘The Office’ rant

The two Texas brothers accused of slaughtering four family members before killing themselves said they easily got weapons because gun control is “a joke” — and were sent off the rails partly from watching TV’s “The Office.”

In a rambling 12-page note initially linked to his Instagram page, Farhan Towhid, 19, said that he and his 21-year-old brother, Tanvir Towhid, were united in manic depression and all-day TV watching sessions.

“The first and most important show we watched was ‘The Office’,” Farhan wrote in the note that started, “Hey everyone, I killed myself and my family.”

The Steve Carrell comedy was one of “four very important issues I encountered throughout my life,” Farhan claimed in the online note police confirmed to CBS DFW is linked to the gruesome bloodbath.

He then ranted at length about how the show “should’ve ended when [Carell’s character] Michael left” because ‘eventually it went s–t” — complaining about plot- and character-developments that enraged him.

“People say the finale makes up for it, which is a complete lie. Sure it was cute, but it doesn’t justify the last few s—y seasons we had to deal with,” he wrote, saying he had “a lot more I want to say but hey, life is short.”

“We kept watching until February 21, 2021. That’s the day my older brother came into my room with a proposition: if we can’t fix everything in a year, we’ll kill ourselves and our family,” he wrote of the show.

They soon changed that to just a month, with Farhan saying, “We eventually realized we were just biding our time. Waiting a year was way too long. Why not wait a month?” he said.

“The plan was simple. We get two guns. I take one and shoot my sister and grandma, while my brother kills our parents with the other. Then we take ourselves out,” he wrote.

Police believe the Bangladeshi brothers did just that on Saturday at the family’s home in Allen, Texas.

New York Post

The lengthy note from Farhan Towhid, a 19-year-old Texan, went up on Instagram over the weekend, beginning with an alarming claim: “Hey everyone. I killed myself and my family.”

When a family friend saw the 11-page letter, they quickly called police to request a wellness check, warning that Towhid was suicidal.

On early Monday, police forced their way into the red brick house in Allen, Tex. Inside, they found six people dead: Farhan Towhid; his brother, Tanvir Towhid, 21; his father, Towhidul Islam, 54; his mother, Iren Islam, 56; his grandmother Altafun Nessa, 77; and his 19-year-old twin sister, Farbin Towhid.

They had all been shot to death, police told The Washington Post, by Farhan and Tanvir Towhid as part of a suicide pact the pair had planned out for over a month. “It looks like the two … sons entered into an agreement that they were going to [die by] suicide and that they were going to take their family members with them,” Allen Police Department Sgt. Jon Felty told KRLD.

Police have not confirmed when the deaths took place but said it is likely the brothers killed their family members on Saturday night.

The mass killing of the family, which moved to the United States from Bangladesh about 15 years ago, left friends and neighbors in shock.

“We just can’t believe it happened to this family,” family friend Sied Chowdhury, 60, told The Post. “They are a very loving family. We didn’t see anything wrong with the family, any problems.”

The Towhid family first settled in New York before moving to Allen, a northern suburb of Dallas, Chowdhury said. Towhidul, the father, worked in information technology while his wife, Iren, took care of the house and their children. A neighbor told the Dallas Morning News that Altafun, the grandmother, was visiting from Bangladesh and was scheduled to return home last week, but her flight got postponed because of the pandemic.

Farbin, Farhan’s twin sister, had recently accepted a full scholarship to attend New York University, KDFW reported. According to Farhan’s note on Instagram, he and his brother Tanvir had struggled with mental illness for years. Farhan wrote that he had suffered from depression since the ninth grade and had repeatedly harmed himself. His family had tried to help him, but he said that his mental health issues had recently worsened. He had been studying computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, he wrote, but was expelled from his dorm in the winter after telling a roommate that he planned to kill his family.

A university spokesperson told The Post that Farhan, who had been a sophomore in the College of Natural Sciences, “voluntarily withdrew from school in January 2021 and canceled his housing contract, checking out of his residence hall on January 31.”

“The University of Texas Police Department has no police reports filed on Farhan and there were no concerns reported to our behavior concerns advice line,” Eliska S. Padilla, the university spokesperson, said in an email. Farhan moved home, where Tanvir, whom he described as “depressed and socially anxious,” was staying.

Eventually, the pair decided to kill their family and then themselves, he wrote. “Instead of having to deal with the aftermath of my suicide, I could just do them a favor and take them with me,” the note reads.

The pair bought guns, he wrote, adding that “gun control in the U.S. is a joke” because the pair lied when asked if they were suffering from mental illness. Police did not confirm how many guns were used in the shooting, adding that Tanvir was able to legally purchase a gun “recently,” KXAS reported.

It is unclear when exactly Farhan allegedly posted the note to Instagram, but police said officers arrived at the home around 1 a.m. on Monday.

“We have never had an incident like this in the 21 years that I’ve been here,” Felty told KXAS. “It’s just a tragedy. There’s no other way to describe it.”

Felty said none of the neighbors reported hearing gunshots and police received no reports of gunfire in the area. The family had never reported any issues to the police, he added.

Chowdhury said the Bangladeshi community in the area is still grappling with the news. The loss of the family, which was active in the Bangladesh Association of North Texas, leaves a void in the tightknit community.

The association’s general secretary, Nahida Ali, called the news “horrific” and “shocking” in a Facebook post on Monday. The University of Texas at Austin also mourned the death of the brothers, whom the university described as former students.

From: WaPo via archive.is

A teenage cheerleader in Texas is facing felony charges after allegedly using pesticide to poison and kill a rival’s competitive show goat at their high school in an ugly display of “jealousy,” according to an arrest affidavit and the goat’s owner.

Aubrey Vanlandingham, a 17-year-old senior who participated in competitive livestock shows with her own goat, reportedly confessed to deliberately poisoning the goat, Willy, on Oct. 23, according to the affidavit obtained by CBS Austin.

Security footage obtained by police showed a female student at the Vista Ridge High School’s barn facility using a drench gun to force-feed Willy a toxic pesticide. The 6-month-old goat didn’t go easy and tried to escape, but was ultimately trapped and forced to drink the pesticide, according to the footage.

cross-posted from: https://hilariouschaos.com/post/900940

Almost two thirds of transgender women in prisons who are still legally recognised as men have been convicted of sex offences, official figures show.

This rate – 62 per cent – is far higher than that of the male prison population as a whole.

Some 151 of the 245 legally male trans women in jail at the end of March 2024 were sex offenders, according to data revealed in response to a written parliamentary question.

In comparison, 17 per cent of men in prison in England and Wales are sex offenders.

A rule change in 2023 meant trans women with male genitalia, or those convicted of violent or sexual offences, were no longer allowed to be held in women’s jails.

Exemptions can still be considered by ministers in ‘exceptional circumstances’. The rule change followed high profile cases including that of Isla Bryson, who began identifying as a trans woman while awaiting trial for two rapes.

In February 2023, Bryson was convicted of two rapes and jailed for eight years.

She was first sent to the all-female Cornton Vale prison in Scotland before being transferred to a male prison after the case sparked public outrage.

NEW YORK (AP) — Newly released video of a fatal New York prison beating shows correctional officers repeatedly pummeling a handcuffed man, striking him in the chest with a shoe, and lifting him by the neck and dropping him.

Body camera footage of the Dec. 9 assault on Robert Brooks was made public Friday by the state’s attorney general, who is investigating the officers’ use of force.

Brooks, 43, was pronounced dead at a hospital the morning after the assault at the Marcy Correctional Facility, a state prison where was incarcerated in Oneida County.

Thirteen correctional officers and a nurse implicated in the attack will face termination, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said she was “outraged and horrified” by videos of the “senseless killing.”

The footage made public Friday shows correctional officers repeatedly punching Brooks in the face and groin as he sits handcuffed on a medical examination table.

As one of the officers uses a shoe to strike Brooks in the stomach, another yanks him up by his neck and drops him back on the table. The officers then remove the man’s shirt and pants as he lies motionless and bloodied on his back.

A gay Georgia couple convicted of sickening sexually abuse of their two adopted sons will spend the rest of the lives behind bars.

William and Zachary Zulock, 34 and 36, were each sentenced last week to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole, the Walton County District Attorney’s office announced.

“These two Defendants truly created a house of horrors and put their extremely dark desires above everything and everyone else,” said District Attorney Randy McGinley, according to WSB-TV.

“However, the depth of the Defendants’ depravity, which is as deep as it gets, is not greater than the resolve of those that fought for justice and the strength of the victims in this case. The resolve I have seen from these two young victims over the last two years is truly inspiring,” he added.

The boys — two brothers who are now 12 and 10 years-old — were adopted from a Christian special-needs agency by the Zulocks.

The couple raised them under the guise of a happy home in an affluent Atlanta suburb.

But their supposedly picture-perfect life — Zachary worked in banking and William was a government employee — held a dark secret.

The couple were regularly forcing the boys to have sex with them, and would film the abuse to make pedophilic pornography.

The disgraced Tennessee teacher who gave birth to the child of one of her multiple minor victims after raping him has been sentenced to 25 years in prison following a plea deal.

Alissa McCommon, 39, pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of Rape of a Child, two counts of Statutory Rape by an Authority Figure, three counts of Aggravated Statutory Rape, three counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor by Electronic Means, two counts of Solicitation of a Minor: Aggravated Statutory Rape, and one count of the Child Protection Act, WREG reported.

The former Tipton County elementary school teacher was arrested in September 2023 and may have as many as 21 victims, according to Fox 13 Memphis.

Shortly after posting bond, McCommon was rearrested on separate charges of coercion of a witness, aggravated stalking, and harassment for messaging one of her 12-year-old victims to say he would “regret doing this,” police said.