Tag: Murder

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MPD Officer Charged With Kidnapping and Murder

A Memphis Police Department officer has been arrested and charged with First Degree Murder following the kidnapping and murder of a Memphis resident. Former MPD officer Patric Ferguson made an initial court appearance by video Monday where he was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree murder in perpetration of aggravated kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, and fabricating and tampering with evidence. He has been employed by the MPD since 2018.

The saga began last week when Memphian Robert Howard, 30, was reported missing by his girlfriend, who has not been named by the Memphis Police Department. Howard had been missing for 24 hours before his girlfriend attempted to find him using an app to trace his cellphone location. Upon finding his phone but not him, she filed a missing person’s report to the MPD.

MPD investigators concluded that the victim was taken from his home by Ferguson while on duty, then forced into the back of a squad car. He then drove Howard to the area of Frayser Boulevard and Denver Street before killing him.

Joshua Rogers, 28, was also found to have helped Ferguson dispose of the body following the murder of Howard. He has been charged with Accessory After the Fact, Abuse of a Corpse, and Fabricating and Tampering with Evidence. His bond has been set at $25,000, while Ferguson has yet to have a bond set.

MPD Director Michael Rallings was disappointed at the discovery and vowed that Ferguson’s actions are not reflective of the organization as a whole.

“No one is above the law. Knowing that a Memphis Police Officer, someone who took an oath to protect and serve, made the decision to commit this horrific crime is devastating. His actions were not that of a law enforcement officer and should not reflect on his fellow officers.”

The Howard family has set up a gofundme page to help cover the funeral expenses.

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News News Blog

Parents Indicted After Accidental Shooting

The office of Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich announced today that Latria Johnson, 28, and her boyfriend Lindsey Williams, 27, have been indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment following the accidental shooting death of 9-year-old Xavier Jackson by his 13-year-old cousin, the son of the couple. 

District Attorney Amy Weirich

The shooting occurred in March at the Canterbury Woods Apartments near Cordova while the couple were out shopping.

Inside the apartment, the unnamed 13-year-old picked up his father’s loaded handgun from the master bedroom. The gun discharged accidentally striking Jackson in the face and killing him. The gun had been left unattended and unsecured.

The case is being handled by Stacy McEndree of the District Attorney’s Vertical Team 6, which prosecutes cases in General Sessions Division 15 and in Criminal Court Division 10.

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News News Blog

Two From Shelby County Proposed for Execution

CREDIT: Murderpedia, Tennessee Department of Corrections

Murderpedia, Tennessee Department of Corrections

From left to right from top left: Oscar Franklin Smith, Harold Wayne Nichols, Pervis Tyrone Payne, Gary Wayne Sutton, Donald Middlebrooks, Byron Black, Farris Genner Morris, Pervis Tyrone Payne, Henry Eugene Hodges

Two of the nine men who could soon be executed by the state were convicted in Shelby County.

Late Tuesday, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery quietly requested execution dates for the nine men from the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Executions began again in Tennessee last year. The last before 2018 was in 2009. The state has executed five men since August 9th, 2018. The latest, Stephen West, was executed by lethal injection on August 15th, 2019.

The Tennessee Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to set execution dates for the nine men Slatery proposed for execution this week. All of them are now on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Of them, two were convicted of murder in Shelby County, one occurring in Memphis and the other in Millington. Another man was convicted of murder in nearby Madison County. All of these comprise the total of West Tennessee prisoners now considered for execution.

Caruthers

Tony Von Caruthers was convicted in Memphis for a 1994 triple homicide of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker.  WREG reported that the murders began as a drug deal with Marcellos Anderson. Delois Anderson was his mother and Tucker was a teenage friend. The station said that the mother and friend were beaten, tortured, and buried under a grave dug for someone else.

Caruthers and another man were tried and convicted in the same trial. The other man was set free in 2016 after winning an appeal in the case. In February, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied a final appeal for Caruthers in the case.

 

Payne

Pervis Tyrone Payne was convicted in 1988 of the 1987 stabbing murder of Charisse Christopher and her two-year-old daughter, Lacie Jo, in Millington.

Payne’s execution was set for 2007 but was put on hold when Gov. Phil Bredesen put a moratorium on executions to review Tennessee’ lethal injection protocols.

In 2016, Payne was denied a hearing to determine whether or not he was eligible for execution because he is intellectually disabled.

Morris

Hodges

Farris Genner Morris was convicted of shooting and stabbing a man and his niece to death in Madison County in 1994.

Henry Eugene Hodges was convicted of the 1990 robbery and murder of a man in Smyrna. Hodges, 24 at the time, and his girlfriend, 15 at the time, robbed and ransacked a man’s house, stole his bank PIN, and

Middlebrooks

 murdered him.

Donald Middlebrooks murdered a 14-year-old with a knife in 1987. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989. 

Nichols

Serial rapist Harold Wayne Nichols (aka “Red Headed Stranger”) was convicted of the

Smith

 1988 murder of a woman in Chattanooga by hitting her on the head with a board.

Oscar Franklin Smith stabbed to death his estranged wife and 

Sutton

her two teenaged sons in Davidson county in 1988.

Gary Wayne Sutton murdered a man and his sister

Black

 in Blount County in 1992.

In Davidson County, Byron Lewis Black murdered his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6, in 1988. 
 

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News News Blog

Lawyer Popped for Harboring Son After Murder

A Shelby County attorney was censured by state officials Tuesday for harboring her son after he murdered a man during a drug deal in 2016.

According to WMC, 17-year-old Sebastian Vaughn was indicted on a first-degree murder charge in 2017 for killing Marlo Williams at a Memphis IHOP in June 2016. Vaughn, who attended Bartlett High School, told investigators he shot Williams, 35, with a sawed-off shotgun in the front seat of the victim’s car during a dispute during a drug deal at the Sycamore View Road IHOP.

WMC reported also that Vaughn took a photo of the victim at the time and sent it in a message friends with the caption, “I just killed a Mfer 10 minutes ago.”

Vaughn to pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in February and will be required to serve at least 45 percent of a 15-year prison sentence, according to WMC.
[pullquote-1] Vaughn’s mother and Memphis attorney, Summer Rhoden, did not contact law enforcement officials when her son came to her home the afternoon of the murder. She didn’t facilitate his surrender until the next morning. For this, she was charged as an accessory after the fact. In March, she pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of criminal attempt. 

On Tuesday, Rhoden was given a public censure by the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility, the board that oversees attorneys in the state. Her actions after the murder violated state conduct laws for attorneys, according to the board.

A censure is a public rebuke and warning to an attorney here but does not affect the attorney’s ability to practice law.

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INFOGRAPHIC: Memphis Crime Rate (Slightly) Down

Airport March
Infogram

INFOGRAPHIC: Memphis Crime Rate (Slightly) Down

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Man Receives 22-Year Sentence for Murdering Ridgeway High School Basketball Coach

Dwayne Moore

  • Dwayne Moore

The stepson of slain Ridgeway High School assistant basketball coach Jimmy McClain has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for McClain’s murder.

Dwayne Moore, 21, the son of McClain’s estranged wife, reportedly shot his 49-year-old stepfather multiple times with a .40 caliber pistol. On February 22nd, 2013, McClain’s body was discovered by Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies in his home at 7667 Cordova Club.

Moore was convicted in June of murdering McClain. This week, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison without parole for the murder, according to the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office.

Prior to being discovered by law enforcement, McClain had been reportedly missing for two days. Aside from being a coach, he was a pastor and former University of Central Arkansas basketball star.

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Bartlett Man Sentenced 52 Years In Prison For Murder, Attempted Murders

Carlos Gonzalez

  • Carlos Gonzalez

A 25-year-old Bartlett man has been sentenced to 52 years in prison for a 2011 shooting in southeast Memphis that left a teenager dead.

Carlos Gonzalez, a member of Playboy Sureños 13, a predominantly Hispanic street gang, was convicted in July in Criminal Court of second-degree murder for fatally shooting 17-year-old Miguel Villa, according to the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office.

The shooting took place in the parking lot of San Francisco’s Bar and Grill near Ridgeway and Winchester around 11:45 p.m. on August 13th, 2011. Villa’s brother informed jurors that a group of men attacked him and several friends with a bat and a pipe. Gonzalez subsequently stepped out of a vehicle and began shooting, striking Villa. After hearing the shots, Villa’s peers frantically ran for their lives.

Eleven spent shell casings were recovered from the scene by investigators.

Gonzalez presumed the victims were members of a rival gang known as the Pelones, according to a testimony in the trial. Prosecutors, however, said Villa was not a gang member.

Earlier this week, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison with no parole for second-degree murder, 20 years in prison for three counts of attempted second-degree murder, and 12 years in prison for three counts of employing a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Katie Nesling | Dreamstime.com

Katie Nesling | Dreamstime.com

Okay, so maybe I spent one too many Saturday nights riding around in a van airbrushed with a pot leaf motif to understand all this, but why do I keep seeing disturbing headlines about the FIFA World Cup. To tell you the truth, the real, honest truth, I wasn’t even sure what this was, so, yes, I did a quick Google search and learned that

FIFA stands for “Fédération Internationale de Football Association.” And all this time in the back of my mind, I thought this was a soccer championship. So is it football or soccer? Or is football in other countries what we consider to be soccer in the United States, further separating us from the rest of civilization?

Actually, it really doesn’t matter to me if it’s football or soccer. I don’t keep up with either. I used to watch New York Yankees baseball games sometimes but now that Derek Jeter is retiring, why bother? I also used to be a huge Grizzlies fan until they traded Shane Battier. Oh, I still love them and root for them and all that stuff but I’m still bitter. Very, very bitter about that trade. Plus, I have a really difficult time in FedExForum.

I have, oh, four or five hundred different neuroses when it comes to height and motion. I have nightmares about heights almost every single night. It usually involves being in a glass elevator that begins to horribly malfunction on its descent from the top floor to the lobby. It becomes detached from its main cable and swirls around the high-rise hotel in a circular motion while plummeting to the ground. Sometimes my nightmares involve driving. I don’t drive on the interstate — or anywhere else for that matter — more than 45 miles per hour. I have some kind of physical reaction to it that renders me almost to a state of vertigo. Bridges: Uh, no. No driving over even small bridges. When I go to Harbor Town, I have to drive all the way around Mud Island down Second Street into that weird sort of inner-city rural area and back around down the street along the river until I get to the entrance where the leasing office is, and then I get completely lost trying to find wherever I am going. It’s a beautiful place to be lost but it still throws off my equilibrium. But back to FedExForum and all that commotion that goes on in there. For me, there is way too much going on at one time, with all of the music and noise and lights and speakers and such. I used to do fairly well at The Pyramid but FedExForum, even with seats near the court, is sensory overload for me. And, yes, I know most people love it, as they should, and it’s just me. I went to see Elton John there a year or so ago and was in one of those private suites, but I still had to hold onto something while trying to get up to it. And, once seated, if I looked up at the very top seats in the arena, my legs turned to ice from the kneecaps down. I also recently went to a Memphis Redbirds game. A foul ball slammed into the section where I was sitting (yes, in a suite again, watching it through the glass), and I felt like a cat with one life less than the nine I was given. But it was fun. Other than almost being killed or living the rest of my life in a home for the sports-injured.

But I digress. I digress a lot. It doesn’t take a lot to make my attention span scatter all over the place. So back to the World Cup and God and murders. I keep seeing stories about places in the Middle East, where huge groups of people watching the World Cup are being attacked and killed by terrorists. I even saw one story about an Italian man who murdered his wife and two kids just before leaving to go watch the World Cup at a bar with his friends. There are tanks at the Rio de Janeiro main airport, in anticipation of angry scenes after airport workers announced a 24-hour wildcat strike. There are angry protests in Sao Paulo. And then, there is this news report from Iraq: “Shocking footage has emerged showing Sunni insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) beheading a police officer. In the clip, the militants knock on the door of the police officer’s home at night. After he answers, they blindfold him, cuff him, and behead him with a knife. After the decapitation, the militants took a picture of the officer’s head and posted it on Twitter with the comment: “This is our ball. It’s made of skin. #WorldCup.” The brutal act has sparked outrage on Twitter. 

And this is about soccer? Or is it about using soccer as an excuse to just be evil? I’m going back to ignorance is bliss on this one. Same with Twitter.

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News The Fly-By

Defense Theory

During the 1994 trials of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. — collectively known as the West Memphis Three — there was a mystery that neither the prosecution nor the defense could explain.

Though the penis of Christopher Byers, one of three 8-year-old boys found hog-tied and murdered in a West Memphis ditch in 1993, was removed, there was no blood found at the scene.

In a 500-plus page document filed with the court October 29th, Echols’ defense team attempts to explain the lack of blood. It also reports DNA results of hair and other material found at the crime scene.

“People look at this terrible genital injury and say, where’s all the blood?” said Dennis Riordan, a San Francisco-based attorney who took Echols’ case in May 2004. “But if [Byers] drowned before he was subjected to this wound, it wouldn’t bleed.”

The document suggests that the boys were drowned in a creek, and then an animal, perhaps a dog or raccoon, removed Byers’ penis.

“Have you ever been at the scene where a dog has killed a person? There’s no blood because, for the animal, that’s the whole point,” Riordan says.

Forensic pathology studies show that other wounds on the boys are consistent with those caused by animal claws and teeth.

During the trials, the prosecution suggested the murders of Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore were part of a Satanic ritual led by Echols. He was given the death penalty. Baldwin and Misskelley were both sentenced for life.

In July, news broke that DNA tests had linked hair in a shoelace used to hog-tie the boys to Terry Hobbs, Branch’s stepfather. Another hair found on a nearby tree stump was linked to Hobbs’ friend, David Jacoby.

In 2003, Echols’ lawyers began DNA tests on existing evidence. Arkansas did not allow DNA testing on closed cases until 2001.

According to Gabe Holstrom, spokesperson for Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, it could take months for the state to study the report.

“While the state will look at the new allegations and evidence objectively, it stands behind the conviction of Echols and that of his co-defendants,” Holstrom said.

Since the papers were filed in Echols’ case, a new trial for Echols would not necessarily mean a new trial for Baldwin or Misskelley.

“But,” Riordan says, “it would have a tremendous effect on what the state decides to do with the other two.”

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News The Fly-By

Campus Upd8

CREDIT: Franc Podgorsek | dreamstime.com

About six hours after University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford was shot outside the Carpenter Complex on Poplar Ave. September 30th, approximately 4,500 students received a mysterious text message.

It didn’t say there had been a murder, just that classes would be canceled the following day and advised students to watch the news. It also listed a hotline number that students could call for more information.

“I woke up with my phone beeping at 4 a.m.,” says U of M student Chris Hayden. “They sent out another one later in the morning. I think it was effective because I would have had no other way of knowing classes were cancelled.”

But some students think the update from tigerText, the school’s subscription text-messaging alert system, was sent too late. The student government passed a resolution earlier this month condemning the university for failing to send information immediately after the shooting.

Students also have complained that due to spam filters used by certain cell phone service providers, some tigerText subscribers didn’t get the message at all.

“I understand their frustration,” says Derek Myers, University Police deputy director. “I think in the future, we’ll send out a breaking-news alert over the tigerText system just saying something like, ‘we’re investigating a shooting at Zach Curlin and Central.'”

Myers says the school has created an advisory committee for student input on how future situations should be handled. He says they’re also working on how to overcome spam filters.

“We’re working with the vendor, and they’re talking to various cell phone companies to make sure there’s no more problems with spam filters,” Myers says. “I got my message in five seconds, but others did not get the message at all.”

The day after the homicide, university officials passed out flyers urging students to sign up for tigerText at tigerText.memphis.edu. Since October 1st, more than 2,000 additional students have signed up for the service, bringing the total number of subscribers to almost 7,000.

Originally tigerText was intended for alerting students of class cancellations due to inclement weather, but the Bradford murder was the first situation in which the system was used.

“It seems that young people all have cell phones with them 24 hours a day, and they’re texting like crazy,” says Curt Guenther, U of M’s director of communications. “Colleges are realizing they need to change with the times. E-mail is almost passé.”

Besides evaluating the school’s alert system, Myers says the university is adding more security cameras and emergency phones following last month’s homicide.

“We’re actually down about 18 percent in our overall crime numbers, but the perception is that crime is up,” Myers says.

U of M student Matt Tubinis says he feels pretty safe on campus.

“The Carpenter Complex doesn’t really feel like it’s on-campus,” Tubinis says. “It’s not like somebody got shot by the fountain [in the middle of campus].”