Mother hangs self-her 4 children, 8 month old survives

HUDSON OAKS, Texas (AP) -- A young mother who may have been depressed apparently hanged three of her small daughters and herself in a closet using pieces of clothing and sashes, authorities said Tuesday.
A fourth child, an 8-month-old daughter, was also found dangling in the closet but was rescued from the family's mobile home.
"It's horrendous. That's all I can say," Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said. The woman was identified as Gilberta Estrada, 25. The infant, Evelyn Frayre, was in good condition at a hospital, Fowler said.
Authorities did not immediately identify the other children, but Fowler said they were apparently ages 5, 3 and 2.
Filly Echeverria, who said she was the children's godmother, identified the dead as Maria Teresa Estrada, Janet Frayre and Magaly Frayre.
After Estrada failed to show up for work, her sister, who lived nearby, forced her way into the locked residence in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth in this rural community of 1,600 people.
The sheriff said the sister rescued the infant when she realized the baby girl was still alive.
The sheriff said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the trailer's doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the woman had been depressed.
The young mother and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, he said.
The sheriff said Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in August against Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, who was believed to be the father of the infant and some of the other children, after an attack on Estrada.
The sheriff said the couple had stopped living together in February. Tuesday was the first emergency police call to Estrada's trailer, and authorities said there was no evidence that Frayre abused the girls.
A telephone listing for Frayre, 38, could not immediately be located.
"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her porch, and today it's sad, very sad," neighbor Joyce Harris said as other trailer park residents milled about on their porches, some crying and talking softly about the deaths.
Estrada's trailer was dilapidated, with paint peeling off the brown and white mobile home. Cactus plants and a rose bush decorated the front. Toys and a bicycle littered the back yard.
Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.
Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub.
Dena Schlosser killed her 10-month-old by severing the child's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

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This is unbelievable. I can't see why anybody would hang their children!! I'm speechless. I've never thought I'd hear of something this horrible in my lifetime. But yea what do you think??

Please comment.

Drugging dad locked boys in cage, police say

Two brothers were locked up in a dog cage when their father used drugs and when they were being punished, and one had to wear a shock collar, authorities said.
The parents appeared briefly in court Thursday on charges of child endangerment and making or selling drugs in front of the children, ages 10 and 5.
Jessica Botzko, 28, and John Westover, 37, were arrested a day earlier, after the boys ran away from home and were found on a neighbor's porch.
The boys told officers that they had been abused and locked in a dog cage at their home, said police Capt. Ray Carroll. They also said their father put them in the cage when he was using drugs, according to Carroll.
Court documents say the 10-year-old boy was repeatedly shocked at the family's home through a remote-controlled collar meant as a training device for animals.
Police searched the family's mobile home and found it filled with garbage, Carroll said.
The couple's hearings were continued because neither had a lawyer and the parents remained in jail.
Another Ohio couple, Michael and Sharen Gravelle of Norwalk, were convicted in February of child abuse and endangerment for keeping some of their 11 special-needs adopted children in wire and wood enclosures.

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OMG!!!! I'm sick of these kinds of parents. These kids having to grow up like this??? IT'S HORRIBLE!!! I don't think ANY child should have to go through this kind of ordeal. It's just wrong. Please post, and tell me what you think about this. (I've posted twice today I know that.)

$5M settlement OK'd in boy's boot camp death

A $5 million settlement for the family of a teenager who died after being roughed up by guards at a state-supervised boot camp won lawmaker approval Wednesday and was sent to the governor, who is expected to sign it.
Gov. Charlie Crist and black legislators had led the effort to compensate the family of Martin Lee Anderson, who died in January 2006 shortly after being kneed, struck and having ammonia tablets held to his nose at the military-style facility run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office in Panama City.
The state has already paid Anderson's parents $200,000, the most allowed by law without legislative approval. The bill would pay the remaining $4.8 million of the proposed settlement.
"While no dollar amount will return their son to his family, compensating them for this tragedy is the right thing to do," Crist said.
A message left for Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing Anderson's parents, was not immediately returned.
Although run by the sheriff's department, the camp was part of a state program under the Department of Juvenile Justice, which did not contest the settlement. The Legislature dismantled the military-style youth boot camps last year after Anderson's death.
The sheriff's office has separately settled with the Anderson family for $2.4 million. Seven guards and a nurse employed at the camp face manslaughter charges.
An initial autopsy report blamed the 14-year-old's death on complications from sickle cell trait. A second autopsy, though, found Anderson died from suffocation due to being forced to inhale the ammonia.
Anderson entered the camp for a probation violation for trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were charged with stealing their grandmother's car.

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This is rediculous. This kid was only 14 years old. He had a life to live, and different people to meet. Yea maybe he was a bad kid, maybe he wasn't, but that didn't give the guards the right to do what they did to him. These are the kinds of things that triggers my anger against the world. I'm glad his parents are getting money for it, but that's not going to buy your child back. A child is a part of you that you never want to let go. This really upsets me. 14 years old. Jeesh. Well comment this and tell me what you think about this.

Jury finds nurse Melanie McGuire guilty of husband's murder!

A jury convicted a well-respected fertility clinic nurse Monday of the 2004 murder of her husband, whose dismembered remains were stuffed in the couple's set of luggage and thrown in the Chesapeake Bay.
In addition to charges of first-degree murder and desecrating human remains, the panel found Melanie McGuire, 34, guilty of perjury for lying to a family court judge about her husband's whereabouts after he disappeared. They also convicted her of unlawful possession of a weapon.
McGuire was acquitted, however, of four charges related to anonymous letters mailed to authorities in an alleged attempt to throw suspicion onto others.
She faces 30 years to life in prison on the murder charge alone when she is sentenced July 13. Her bond was immediately revoked after the verdict.
The verdict came after more than 13 hours of deliberation by the nine-woman, three-man panel. The jurors had listened to 76 witnesses and reviewed over 1,200 exhibits during the course of the seven-week trial.
McGuire, who entered the courtroom visibly upset, burst into tears and clutched her attorney immediately after the jury foreman pronounced the word "guilty" on the first count. One female juror dabbed at tears with a tissue as the verdict was read.
In the courtroom gallery, William McGuire's relatives smiled and held hands as the remainder of the eight-count verdict was announced.
At a post-verdict press conference, William McGuire's sister, Cindy Ligosh, said the verdict was bittersweet for her family, especially her brother's two children.
"Today is a very happy day for us," said Ligosh, who noted that Sunday would be the three-year anniversary of her brother's death. "At the same time, it's a very sad day because Melanie has left two children without a father or a mother."
Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso echoed Ligosh's sentiments, while expressing relief with the verdict.
Prosecutors alleged McGuire killed the victim, her husband of five years, because she feared a divorce would be expensive and her husband would battle her for custody of the children.
William McGuire, 39, a computer analyst, was last seen alive April 28, 2004, when he and the defendant closed on their first home. In her closing argument, a prosecutor theorized that Melanie McGuire served her husband a celebratory glass of wine laced with sedatives that night and then shot him to death the next day after taking her children to preschool.
McGuire had been carrying on an affair with her married boss at the fertility clinic, Dr. Bradley Miller, for two years.
Miller testified that they eventually planned to leave their spouses and marry each other.
But lawyers for McGuire dismissed the state's case as circumstantial at best and argued that there was nothing connecting their client to her husband's death.
In a press conference, McGuire's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said he was "very disappointed" with the verdict, and that he was looking forward to a "resolution" in the case.
"Sentencing will not be the resolution of this case," he said.

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YES!! I'm SOOOOOOOOO happy she got proved guilty! I've been reading about this case for a long while now. My mouth just dropped after reading this. I feel really bad for her corpse husband's family. Who would do that!?! She had no right to do that aka cut him to shreads... but still, she could've just talked to her husband about the divorce and who's getting the kids or whatever. But that was really mean what she did to him, as in she's been having and affair for 2 years! jeesh! yea well tell me what you think about this.

Teenager accused of stabbing her newborn baby 135 times

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A 17-year-old girl stabbed her newborn baby 135 times in a "panic state" and then tossed her body in a garbage can outside her home, authorities said Thursday.The high school senior told police she gave birth on the floor of the laundry room in her home early Monday, according to court documents. Nicole Marie Beecroft said she saw the baby's finger move and then stabbed the child in a "panic state," the complaint said.
An autopsy determined the infant was born alive, but suffered numerous puncture wounds in the chest area and bled to death from 135 sharp-force injuries, the complaint said.
"She kills the baby and now her life will be changed forever," said Washington County Attorney Doug Johnson.
Beecroft was charged with first-degree murder and was being held in a juvenile detention facility. She was scheduled to make her first court appearance Friday.
The girl's mother told police she didn't know her overweight daughter was pregnant. The Beecroft family does not have a listed phone number.
Authorities were tipped off Tuesday when an anonymous caller told police that a cashier at a Cub Foods grocery store in St. Paul had given birth to a stillborn baby and threw it in the garbage at her home.
The investigation led to Beecroft's home, where they found the baby's body inside a trash bag outside on Tuesday. Inside the trash bag, investigators also found a black-handled knife and some towels, according to the complaint.

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*Oh my goodness, this girl is crazy. She had no right to stab the baby... if she was in such shock, she should've called one of her friends or a counsiler or something. This is horrible... I know she was in shock, but that don't mean you stab you new born 135 times!!! What's wrong with this world these day?!?!?! Well tell me what you think of this. I think this is HORRIBLE!*

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Please Comment.

Meth Addict who Made Documentary Dies at Age 35

A former trucker whose documentary chronicled an agonizing descent as methamphetamine ravaged his body has died, optimistic to the end that his story would keep others from the highly addictive stimulant.
"He was extremely satisfied, wanting to do more in getting the word out and showing kids what meth harm does. We didn't get to that point," his father, Jack Bridges, said shortly after the 35-year-old died Monday at a hospital in Cape Girardeau.
"He didn't want anyone to go through what he did," his father said.
Shawn Bridges drew global attention last year for "No More Sunsets," a 29-minute film shot by a former southern Illinois television videographer at Bridges' request.
By his family's account, Bridges already had died at least twice, his heart so damaged by years of using meth -- a concoction that can include toxic chemicals such as battery acid, drain cleaner and fertilizer -- that it stopped and had to be shocked back into beating.
The documentary shows Bridges mostly bedridden, his constant companions a catheter and feeding tube.
"I'd say he's got a 34-year-old body on the outside with a 70- to 80-year-old man on the inside," his father told The Associated Press last May.
Roughly 28,000 people sought treatment for meth addiction across the country in 1993, accounting for nearly 2 percent of admissions for drug-abuse care, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Just a decade later, the meth-related admissions numbered nearly 136,000 -- more than 7 percent of the national total for drug-abuse treatment.
Family members have said Bridges had been haunted by the dreary day in 1976 when his younger brother Jason, barely a year old, died in a car wreck. Bridges was 4 and nowhere near the accident but still blamed himself, wanting to trade places with his dead sibling, his father said.
A lenient upbringing set Bridges on the road to becoming "a little monster," his father said. "By 16, the kid was a high school dropout and partier."
At 26, Bridges had a heart attack that his father blamed on meth's ability to damage a chronic user's heart and other internal organs. Bridges learned he had congestive heart failure. Twice, he tried to kill himself, according to family members.
During his final months in a hospital bed, Bridges' words slurred to guttural sounds when he tried to talk. At times, he spit up blood, and his weight fell dangerously when he couldn't keep food down. His father said Monday that Bridges developed a urinary tract infection shortly before he died.
"I don't think people will forget what got him to this point," said Chip Rossetti, who filmed the documentary. "But what he did with his condition is really the amazing thing."
Rossetti said 500 to 600 copies of the documentary have been sold, some going as far as Australia. Bridges was also profiled on German television. Rossetti said Monday he plans a sequel, chronicling Bridge's final year and testimonials by people touched by his awareness effort.
"We wanted to keep him with us a lot longer, but we appreciate God's good grace," Jack Bridges said after his son's death. "We'll still be trying to drive home the point that these drugs are poison, and that people using them are heading the same place Shawn has gone."

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Okay, this guy DID have a point to make a documentary. He's telling us kids (and adults) what meth can do to you. I think the schools should be able to get a copy and teach kids what it can do to you. Please Comment.

Mom gets life for murder of boy left in closet





BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) -- A woman was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for killing her 3-year-old developmentally disabled foster son by binding him in blankets and tape and leaving him inside a closet for a weekend.
A day earlier, jurors convicted Liz Carroll, 30, of murder and other charges.
Under the life sentence for murder, she has no possibility for parole for 15 years. Some of the other sentences must be served consecutively.
Prosecutor Don White said Carroll is expected to spend at least 54 years in prison.
Jurors decided she caused foster son Marcus Fiesel's death, though unintentionally, by leaving him alone, bound in a blanket and packing tape, while she went to a family reunion in Kentucky.
Carroll, who did not testify during trial, said Thursday she was not responsible.
"I didn't do this to Marcus," she said. "I did not and would not ever hurt a child."
Judge Robert Ringland told Carroll that no matter how much she blamed other people, she had to accept responsibility. He also said she hadn't seemed sorry for the boy's death.
"There has never been a sincere concern for Marcus Fiesel," Ringland told her. "Even to this day, the only remorse is that you are being found guilty and not the death of this child."
Carroll's husband, David Carroll Jr., 29, is to be tried separately in March on the same charges as his wife, along with gross abuse of a corpse. Prosecutors allege that after the boy's death, he burned the body and dumped the remains in the Ohio River.
The Carrolls told authorities the boy wandered off or had been snatched from a park in suburban Cincinnati, sparking a search by thousands of volunteers that lasted several days. When authorities began to suspect the story was a ruse, the Carrolls' live-in companion, Amy Baker, told them how the boy died, prosecutors said.
The case led to calls for reform of Ohio's foster care system. An investigation by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said the Carrolls were unqualified to care for Fiesel and cited failure to check references and inadequate home study and follow-up visits.
The state report recommended increased training, thorough background checks, drug testing and more data-sharing among agencies, courts and law enforcement as solutions. Legislators expect to work on reform measures this year.




Oh my, this is horrible. I can't see why she would do that. That little boy had a disorder, she shouldn't have done that she probably knew that something was going to happen... she just didn't pay attention. But I personally think that she should get the death penalty, not only because she left her son with no one to watch him, but because she left him there, and he died.. slowly. What do you guys think about this? please comment!

Frozen toddler's father also faces sex charge:



A man angry his toddler daughter wouldn't go to bed knocked her unconscious and left her to die outside in single-digit temperatures, police said.
The frozen body of Nyia Miangel Page, who was about to turn 2, was found Sunday at an abandoned playground about a 10-minute walk from the family's home.
Tiny footprints in the snow suggest she had gotten up and wandered around before she died, police said.
Her father, William Lorenzo Page, 23, of Braddock, was arrested Wednesday on charges of criminal homicide, kidnapping, false reports and simple assault.
He has been in custody since Sunday, when he was charged with sexually abusing another child shortly before Nyia died.
Page, who did not have an attorney at his arraignment Thursday morning, was jailed without bond.
Page told police he woke up early Saturday and found the girl awake and playing near a mirror in the hallway, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday night. He said he got angry when the girl wouldn't go back to bed and he hit her so hard she lost consciousness, the complaint said.
Police said Page told them he took the girl outside wrapped in a blanket and left her, still breathing, beside railroad tracks near a bridge.
Police said a T-shirt, a pair of women's underwear and a Pittsburgh Steelers "Terrible Towel," all found in Page's basement, appeared to have bloodstains.
An autopsy determined Nyia died of hypothermia, but the Allegheny County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide because investigators said it was unreasonable to assume the child had made it alone to the playground, which is on a wooded knoll.
The toddler would need to have climbed 17 snowy steps to get there.
Authorities could only guess how long Nyia, wearing only a sweater and a diaper, could have survived in temperatures that hovered around 2 degrees Saturday morning.
"Given her size, she would have been rendered incapacitated very quickly," Allegheny County Medical Examiner Karl E. Williams said Thursday. "She'd been out so long, when we found her she was frozen."
A witness saw Page enter his house Saturday morning from the direction where his daughter was found, police said.
He was back out on the street about an hour later, saying he was looking for the girl and telling the witness, "Somebody took my daughter," according to a criminal complaint.
Nyia's mother told police she last saw the girl after Nyia tried to crawl into bed with her parents about 12:30 a.m. Saturday. The mother told police she put the youngster back into her own bed in an upstairs room.
Police, emergency crews and bloodhounds searched in 20-degree temperatures for most of two days before finding the little girl's body.
The sexual abuse charge against Page came as police investigated Nyia's disappearance.
Police said another child in the house told investigators that sometime overnight Friday, Page entered a bedroom, covered the child's mouth with one hand and touched the child's genitals with the other. The child said Page then left the room, followed by Nyia, police said.








OMG! This is horrible!!! I really dont know what to say about this. It's really shocking though, I'm speechless. What do you think about this? Please comment

Prosecutor says religious parents punished their 8-year-old son to death!
http://www.courttv.com/trials/smith/020707_ctv.html?cnn=yes<<<

An 8-year-old boy is dead because of the "horrible abuse" inflicted on him by his parents, strict disciplinarians who followed severe religious doctrine, a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.
Sonya and Joseph Smith were watching an online church service offered by the Remnant Fellowship Church on Oct. 8, 2003, but their 8-year-old son, Josef, was misbehaving, according to prosecutor Eleanor Dixon.
Josef wasn't being obedient and wasn't praying.
The Nashville, Tennessee-based church encourages parents to physically discipline their children and maintain strict dietary control.
Dixon said Josef's then-13-year-old brother told police that his parents decided to punish Josef by putting him in a small wicker box with the lid closed, then tying electrical cords around it to prevent him from escaping. After the church service was over and the Smiths undid the cords, they noticed "Josef wasn't exactly breathing," Dixon said.
Doctors determined he was brain dead, and he died a day later at the hospital, Dixon told jurors.
The couple has been charged with four counts of murder, five counts of first-degree cruelty to children, three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of false imprisonment.
Josef had threatened his family and carved the words "hate you" and "kill" into the walls of their Georgia home, Dixon said, but the Smiths never sought professional help for him.
"The evidence will be there was no trip to the doctor and no trip to the counselor," Dixon said. "There was beating after beating after beating and then he died."
The prosecutor said Josef's brother will testify that his parents regularly beat the boy, using everything from a 12-inch glue stick used inside a glue gun to coat hangers to a wooden board they called "the butt-buster."
She said the couple also used a cord that connected washing machines to the wall to abuse the 8-year-old.
Dixon said the doctors who treated Josef and performed the autopsy will testify that the boy had both fresh and old scars on his body that show that he was abused over a period of months. This evidence resulted in the multiple charges of assault and cruelty to children.
The prosecutor said Josef's older brother told police that his parents locked Josef in a closet for hours and monitored him via a video camera the couple placed inside.
"This was not a time-out. This was isolation," Dixon said.
The Smiths' attorney, Manubir "Manny" Arora, told jurors that, although pictures of the 8-year-old's injuries "are so bad it may make you sick to your stomach," the boy did not die of those injuries.
Arora told the jury the medical examiners performed a "deficient autopsy" in which they failed "to independently verify what they were saying."
"As bad as the bruises on the body look, they did not cause his death," Arora said, noting that he plans to call experts who did further analysis.
The defense attorney claims Josef's brother changed his story about the night of the incident over time. Initially, the teen never mentioned the wicker box, but instead told police he had been chasing Josef a few days before the boy's death when Josef fell and hit his head on a banister. The wicker box story came two years after the incident, Arora said.
When approached about the wicker box, Sonya Smith voluntarily told police that her mother possessed it, Arora said. A full police analysis of the box revealed nothing linking it to Josef's death, the attorney claimed.



I think this is just plain horrible. There shouldn't be a church that says you should punish your children like that...I think they deserve life in prison, even though they could have punished their child their own way as in setting him in the corner, or grounding him, putting him in his room for a while.. I don't know, just whatever, but I think that people shouldn't treat their kids like that. I hear about so many kids dying at an early age, and I think that's terrible... these peoople need some sense knocked into them. What do you think???