Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Dr. Phil to interview Casey Anthony's parents: 1st on-air chat with George and Cindy to air Sept. 12
George and Cindy Anthony have stayed away from the public spotlight since their daughter Casey's acquittal on murder charges on July 7.
LOS ANGELES — The parents of Casey Anthony, who was acquitted in July of charges that she killed her young daughter, will sit with Dr. Phil for their first interview since the trial, the program announced on Tuesday.
Anthony's trial in the death of her two-year-old daughter Caylee became a media sensation when it aired on television, and since it ended, the 25-year-old mother and her parents George and Cindy have stayed away from the public spotlight."I looked them straight in the eye and asked them some very tough questions," Dr. Phil McGraw said in a statement. The interview will air on September 12, when the program returns for a 10th season.
"Despite living under a 'media microscope' for years, their story has never really been told and there's so much more to it than we've heard in the media," McGraw said, adding that "nothing is off limits during this interview."
The case of Casey and Caylee Anthony took many twists and turns after the two-year-old's skeletal remains were found in a plastic bag near the Anthony's Florida home in December, 2008.
Casey Anthony never reported her daughter missing and, in fact, it was Cindy Anthony who first told police. Casey Anthony initially gave false statements about her and her daughter's whereabouts, and she eventually was charged for the murder.
The trial began in May 2011, and included the prosecution's contention that Casey Anthony wanted only to party and avoid parenting, so she researched the use of chloroform and used the chemical to put her daughter to sleep then suffocate her.
The defense claimed that Caylee had drowned in the family's pool and was found by George Anthony, who then covered up the death. The defense also claimed that George Anthony had sexually abused Casey since the time she was a young girl.
On the witness stand, George Anthony denied he had ever abused Casey, and Cindy Anthony claimed it was she, not Casey, who researched the use of chloroform.
Eventually, a jury found Casey not guilty of murder, but agreed with prosecutors that she had lied to police. Anthony is currently out of jail and in seclusion at an unknown location.
"We appreciate the way in which Dr. Phil has helped others, and we trust him enough to completely open our hearts in telling our story," George Anthony said in a statement.
TODAY Television
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
#Police capture 'Dougherty Gang' in #Colorado
From left to right: Ryan Edward Dougherty, Lee Grace Dougherty and Dylan Dougherty Stanley
Three siblings wanted for bank robbery and the attempted murder of a police officer have been arrested in Colorado, ending a nationwide manhunt.
State police said the two brothers and sister, dubbed the Dougherty Gang, were captured after a 100mph (160 km/h) car chase that ended with a crash.
Last week they allegedly shot at police in Florida and robbed a Georgia bank.
The three had been on the run for more than a week when they were spotted at a campsite in Colorado.
Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, her brother Ryan, 21, and half-brother Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, fired shots at Colorado authorities during the chase on Wednesday, state officials told CNN.
'Redneck and proud'
During the shootout that led to her arrest, Lee Grace was shot in the leg near the town of Walsenburg, in southern Colorado, authorities said.
"There's a time for all of us to die" Text reportedly sent by siblings to their mother
One of the brothers fled on foot but was captured at a nearby hotel, they said.
The Colorado State Patrol public affairs office tweeted: "Short pursuit with 3 sibling fugitives from Florida ends in crash, three in custody."
Trooper Richard Krantz said the trio, from Florida, had been arrested driving a car described a day earlier in a sighting of them outside a Colorado camping store.
They had been on the run since 2 August, when they fired at least 20 shots at a police officer who tried to pull them over for speeding in Florida, authorities say.
Several hours later, three people wearing masks and armed with an assault rifle and a pistol robbed a bank in Valdosta, Georgia, some 200 miles north.
The siblings' mother, Barbara Bell, had pleaded through the media over the past week for the trio to give themselves up.
"You've made some bad mistakes, but so far no-one has been physically harmed," she said.
"The only safe thing, the only right thing, the only good possible thing to do is for you to turn yourselves in."
She told ABC News on Tuesday that she hoped Dylan Stanley, the sibling with the shortest police record, would convince his brother and sister to surrender.
But while on the run the three had texted their mother, "there's a time for all of us to die", according to US media.
Ryan Dougherty has been arrested 14 times on felony charges and has also been accused of sending explicit text messages to an 11-year-old girl on the social networking website MySpace.
Lee Grace, who had been working part-time as a stripper in Florida, had previously been arrested five times for hit-and-run accidents and misdemeanours.
She had written about herself on her profile on photo sharing website Flickr.com: "I love to farm and shoot guys and wreck cars. I'm a redneck and proud of it".
BBC News
Monday, August 8, 2011
Outkast rapper Big Boi faces drug charges
AP - This image provided by the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department shows Antwan Patton, also known as Big Boi, after his arrest on Sunday.
ecstasy and other drugs that the performer's lawyer later characterized as "contraband."
Media reports cited the Miami-Dade County Corrections Department's website as listing the rapper, whose real name is Antwan Patton, as having been arrested for having ecstasy, MDMA powder and Viagra, for which he had no prescription.
The Miami Herald reported that Big Boi faces a fourth count of possession of drug paraphernalia. Celebrity website TMZ.com said he was arrested by customs officials exiting a cruise ship, and that he'd been booked into jail in the afternoon but was released after posting a bond.
On the singer's official Twitter account, Big Boi initially tweeted "Fresh Out Baby!" and later, "...they said it was the Love Boat..." But details of the arrest could not be confirmed on Sunday evening.
An attorney for the rapper issued a statement saying he expects Big Boi will beat the charges.
"While Big Boi was traveling with his group and friends, a small amount of contraband was found in the collective luggage," attorney Daniel Kane said in a statement.
"I am confident when the entire facts are aired Big Boi will be completely exonerated."
{Outkast was formed by Andre' Benjamin (who later became known as Andre 3000) and Patton (Big Boi) in the 1990s with a distinct brand of southern-influenced hip hop music...}
Friday, August 5, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Space shuttle Atlantis makes final landing
Click to play
Space shuttle Atlantis makes its final landing
Space shuttle Atlantis has landed back on Earth, bringing to a close America's 30-year orbiter programme.
The vehicle swept into the Kennedy Space Center, its wheels touching the runway just before local sunrise.Nasa's shuttles were instrumental in building the space station, and were used to launch the Hubble telescope.
"The space shuttle changed the way we view the world and it changed the way we view the Universe," said commander Chris Ferguson on landing.
"There's a lot of emotion today but one thing's indisputable: America's not going to stop exploring," he radioed to mission control.
Retirement of Nasa's iconic shuttle fleet was ordered by the US government, in part due to the high cost of maintaining the ships.
The decision leaves the country with no means of putting astronauts in orbit.
The US space agency's intention is to invite the private sector to provide it with space transport services, and a number of commercial ventures already have crew ships in development.
These are unlikely to be ready to fly for at least three or four years, however.
In the interim, Nasa will rely on the Russians to ferry its people to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
Despite the dark skies over Florida's Space Coast, large crowds came out to try to glimpse Atlantis as it made its historic return from orbit. Even in Texas, where mission control is sited, people mingled outside the gates of the Johnson Space Center.
The de-orbit track brought Atlantis across central Florida and the Titusville-Mims area before a hard bank to the left put the vehicle on a line to Runway 15 at Kennedy.
Analysis: A huge cheer went up across the Kennedy Space Centre as the space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time just before dawn.
Many here believe this is the end of an era and the end, for now, of America's dominance in space.
It is a bitter-sweet moment. Nasa plans to celebrate the shuttle programme's countless milestones over the next few days but on Friday thousands of workers will lose their jobs.
For now, though, this is a chance for everyone involved in the 30-year programme to reflect on what the world's first re-usable spacecraft has achieved.
Over the decades, the orbiters deployed almost 200 satellites, carried out important scientific research and built the International Space Station.
A chapter in human space exploration has now closed for good, but the space shuttles' place in history is assured.
Many here believe this is the end of an era and the end, for now, of America's dominance in space.
It is a bitter-sweet moment. Nasa plans to celebrate the shuttle programme's countless milestones over the next few days but on Friday thousands of workers will lose their jobs.
For now, though, this is a chance for everyone involved in the 30-year programme to reflect on what the world's first re-usable spacecraft has achieved.
Over the decades, the orbiters deployed almost 200 satellites, carried out important scientific research and built the International Space Station.
A chapter in human space exploration has now closed for good, but the space shuttles' place in history is assured.
Commander Ferguson, a veteran of two previous shuttle missions was at the controls, with his pilot Doug Hurley alongside him. Mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim were sitting directly behind on the flightdeck.
Their ship's rear wheels touched the ground at 0556 local time (0956 GMT; 1056 BST), and the vehicle was stationary under a minute later.
It concluded a 13-day re-supply mission to the ISS.
The return of Atlantis marked a moment of high emotion for the Space Coast - not least because it will trigger a big lay-off of contractor staff. More than 3,000 people involved in shuttle operations will lose their jobs.
The orbiter programme itself does not officially end for a month, but even then it is likely to take a couple of years to close all activities, such as the archiving of decades of shuttle engineering data.
For Atlantis, its retirement will be spent as a static display at the Kennedy visitor complex.
The Discovery and Endeavour shuttles, which made their final flights earlier this year, will go to the Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia and the California Science Center in Los Angeles, respectively.
Nasa hopes to invest money saved from shuttle operations in a new spaceship and rocket that can take humans beyond the ISS to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars.
The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development. The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity.
The US Congress has told the agency what its minimum capabilities should be. However, the agency is currently struggling to put those specifications into a concept it says can be built to the timeline and budget specified by the politicians.
It promises to detail the rocket's baseline design before the summer is out.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
#CaseyAnthony is a #FREE Woman
(Source: Pool) Casey Anthony walks out of the Orlando jail, accompanied by one of her attorneys, about 8 minutes past Midnight Sunday
ORLANDO (CBS4/AP)- Casey Anthony completed her last day in jail Saturday and was released just after midnight Sunday. Accompanied by one of her att0rneys, Anthony was escorted out of the jail at about 8 minutes after Midnight. She said nothing to waiting reporters, and was whisked away from the jail in an SUV, followed by helicopters.
A protester holds up a sign outside the Orange County jail.
Protesters angry at Anthony's release
- Casey Anthony, front right, walks out of the Orange County Jail with her attorney
- Casey Anthony, left, walks to a SUV with her lawyer Jose Baez after she was released
“A baby killer was just set free!” Bree Thornton, 39, shouted at the passing SUV.
Anthony had a handful of supporters in the crowd, including one man who carried a “Casey, will you marry me” sign.
But her backers — at the jail and across the country — appeared to be vastly outnumbered by her critics.
Anthony’s legal team said on Friday it had received an emailed death threat with a manipulated photo showing their 25-year-old client with a bullet hole in her forehead.
Since her acquittal on murder charges, Anthony had been finishing her four-year sentence for telling investigators several lies, including an early claim that Caylee was kidnapped by a nonexistent nanny. With credit for the nearly three years she’d spent in jail since August 2008 and good behavior, she had only days remaining when she was sentenced July 7.
Early Sunday, news helicopters followed the SUV to a covered parking garage at an Orlando office building where one of her attorneys, Cheney Mason, has offices. The SUV didn’t re-emerge, and it could not been seen in the darkness if Anthony was in any of the cars that appeared in the area.
A short time later, amid the crush of media attention, there was police activity as two vehicles pulled up to a twin-engine private jet at Orlando Executive Airport but no one saw Anthony get out and onto the plane. That plane took off shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday for Ohio, the home state of Anthony’s parents. But an official there said that aircraft was only carrying golfers back from a Florida vacation.
Anthony, it seemed, had vanished into the night.
Baez and jail officials declined to say where Anthony would go next.
After three years behind bars, Anthony was given $537.68 in cash from her jail account to begin her new life.
For nearly two months, the murder trial of Casey Anthony was a living entity. It breathed daily across the nation’s television airwaves, then was reinforced nightly on cable TV programs that dissected every word uttered in the courtroom and fueled speculation on her fate.
Baez, in a brief statement to reporters, signaled a new chapter was opening in the Casey Anthony case.
“It is my hope that Casey Anthony can receive the counseling and treatment she needs to move forward with the rest of her life,” Baez said in the statement.
Certainly, she still faces anger and ire around the nation that brought tight security for Sunday’s release.
“This release had an unusual amount of security so, therefore, in that sense, it would not be a normal release,” Orange County Jail spokesman Allen Moore said. “We have made every effort to not provide any special treatment for her. She’s been treated like every other inmate.”
Moore said there were no known threats received at the jail. Yet officials had a number of contingency plans in place, including plans in case shots were fired as she was being released.
The crowd included about a half-dozen, sign-carrying protesters who had gathered despite a drenching thunderstorm Saturday night. Before Anthony’s release, the evening took on a feel of New Year’s Eve as spectators checked their watches regularly and announced how many minutes until midnight. Onlookers had varied reactions to her release.
Lamar Jordan said he felt a pit in his stomach when he saw Anthony walking free.
“The fact that she is being let out, the fact that it is her child and she didn’t say what happened, made me sick,” Jordan said.
Not all of those who gathered condemned the 25-year-old.
“I’m for Casey,” said Kizzy Smith, of Orlando. “She was proven innocent. At the end of the day, Caylee is at peace. We’re the ones who are in an uproar.”
Outraged lawmakers in several states responded by proposing so-called Caylee’s laws that would allow authorities to prosecute parents who don’t quickly report missing children.
And many still speculate about what really happened to Caylee, whose remains were found in December 2008 near the home Casey Anthony shared with her parents: Was she suffocated with duct tape by her mother, as prosecutors argued? Or did she drown in an accident that snowballed out of control, as defense attorneys contended?
Now that she is free, it’s not clear where Anthony will stay or what she will do next.
George Anthony has adamantly denied covering up his granddaughter’s death or molesting Casey Anthony when she was a child.
CBS Miami
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Casey Anthony Created a World of Made-Up People
Casey Anthony, with her attorney Jose Baez, reacts to being found not guilty of murder charges. (Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel)
Casey Anthony's imaginary life had more drama and made-up people than a soap opera.
The nearly dozen people whom she created with her ornate lies changed addresses, contracted cancer, got married. One even died in a car crash.
Much of her make-believe life was built around a job as an event planner she claimed she had at Universal Studios. Anthony stuck to that story until police investigating the disappearance of daughter Caylee insisted she take them to her office.
Casey Anthony confidently led police through the gates of Universal Studios, through a lot, into a building and down a corridor until she finally stopped, turned and conceded, "I don't work here."
Many of Anthony's lies were told to her mother, Cindy Anthony, who tearfully recounted how she discovered that each of these people were fictional characters.
The biggest whopper was the babysitter, Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez. She was, according to Casey Anthony, a beautiful woman who once dated Casey's ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Hopkins.
"Zanny the nanny" was from New York City, had moved to Florida for college and had stayed in the area. She had a mom named Gloria, and moved three times while living in the Orlando area.
Casey Anthony's World of Make Believe:
Casey Anthony gave her mother a detailed description of Zanny's newest address. She also told her mom when Zanny got her long hair cut short, and mentioned that Zenaida drove a Ford Focus.
Casey Anthony Verdict: Drama Inside the Courtroom
Zanny also had a roommate named Raquel Ferrell, she told her mother.
Jeff Hopkins, according to Casey Anthony, was once her boyfriend and he had a son named Zachary who was the same age as Caylee's. The kids often played together. During Caylee's disappearance, Casey Anthony claimed that she was visiting Hopkins in Jacksonville, Fla., and was trying to rekindle her romance with him.
Hopkins supposedly was wealthy, worked at Nickelodeon, had moved to North Carolina and then back to Florida. Cindy Anthony, Casey's mother, testified in court that she found a picture of a man and a boy on her daughter's cellphone identified as Hopkins and filed under "boyfriend."
Casey Anthony, 25, also told her mother about Hopkins' mom, a woman supposedly named Jules who had cancer. Cindy Anthony even baked a cake for a Christmas season meeting with Hopkins and his mother, but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute.
When Casey Anthony was being pressured by her mother to produce Caylee, Casey Anthony claimed they were staying in Jacksonville, Fla., for Jules Hopkins' surprise wedding.
There was a real Jeff Hopkins but, he told the court, he only attended middle school with Casey Anthony and had run into her in a bar once.
Eric Baker was another person in Casey Anthony's murky life story. She claimed to her mother that Baker was Caylee's father, although no one in the Anthony family ever met him.
Cindy Anthony told the court that her daughter claimed that Baker was married and had another child, meaning Caylee had a half-brother.
Cindy Anthony also told the court how she received a distraught phone call from her daughter one day, sobbing that Eric Baker had been killed in a car crash. Casey Anthony claimed to have an obit on Baker, but lost it.
Investigators never tracked down an Eric Baker who was associated with Casey Anthony and it has never been confirmed whether someone named Eric Baker is the father of Caylee. Caylee's father is still unknown.
While supposedly working at Universal Studios, Casey Anthony had to contend with a boss named Thomas Manly, and had become close friends with a colleague named Juliette Lewis. Lewis had a daughter named Annabelle.
None of them actually existed, but Cindy Anthony heard a fleshed out version of Juliette Lewis. Lewis, she said, was involved in volunteer work.
Casey and her mother, Cindy, went to help Lewis with a fundraiser, but after waiting for about 90 minutes, Lewis didn't show up, Cindy Anthony testified. Lewis, Casey Anthony told her mother, later moved back to New York.
ABC News
Casey Anthony verdict shocks Central Florida
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