Chicago, Illinois, police arrested a man Monday in connection with the killing of three relatives of singer-actress Jennifer Hudson, a police spokesman said. William Balfour, 27, was first detained for questioning on October 24, the day Hudson's mother and brother were found shot to death. Authorities said at the time that they were holding Balfour for an unspecified parole violation.
Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were found shot to death in their South Side Chicago home. The body of her nephew, 7-year-old Julian King, was found three days later in an abandoned SUV on Chicago's West Side. Police later found a handgun near the vehicle.
Detectives served arrest warrants on Balfour on Monday afternoon, said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond. Balfour was transferred from the Statesville Correctional Center to the custody of detectives in the case, she said, and he is awaiting formal charges on three counts of murder.
Balfour is the estranged husband of the singer's sister, Julia Hudson, and the stepfather of Julian King.
According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, Balfour spent nearly seven years in prison for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking and possessing a stolen vehicle. He was free on parole at the time of the shootings.
Hudson won a best supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of Effie in the film version of the Broadway musical "Dreamgirls." She competed on the third season of the singing competition "American Idol" in 2004, becoming one of the top seven contestants before being eliminated from the contest.
Michele Davis-Balfour, Balfour's mother, had defended her son publicly before the arrest, saying her son had nothing to do with the slayings. "If William did do this, right, in no means am I going to sugarcoat him and say my son didn't do it," she said. "I know my son didn't do this."
Pressed about her son's whereabouts around the time of the slayings, Davis-Balfour said, "My son's alibi was one of his girlfriends, one of the girls he is dating."
She said that after her son got out of prison, he was trying to improve his life by working at a sandwich shop. She also said he obtained his GED in prison by studying horticulture.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The parents of an Arkansas television anchorwoman who was beaten to death say there's forensic evidence their daughter was sexually assaulted as well, and she broke her hand fighting off her attacker.
Guy and Patti Cannady talked with the Today show's Matt Lauer on Monday, five days after suspect Curtis Lavelle Vance was arrested in the Oct. 20 beating death of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly. They said while the police were investigating the case as a homicide, there's a lot of evidence that there was more to it than that.
"This monster stole my daughter's innocence," Patti Cannady told NBC's "Today" show. "He took her life. He took her identity. He took our lives. Our lives have radically changed as a result of what's happened to Anne."
Patti Cannady said her daughter suffered a broken left hand in the attack. "She fought for her life, she fought her attacker," she said.
Patti Cannady went to her daughter's Little Rock home after she didn't answer a wake-up call and found the 26-year-old had been beaten beyond recognition. Every bone in her face had been broken, Cannady said. "Her jaw pulverized so badly that the bone had come out of it," she said. "I actually thought that her throat, it possibly been cut, but that was possibly the first knockout punch. Her entire skull had numerous fractures from which she suffered a massive stroke."
Pressly died in the hospital five days later without regaining consciousness.
Guy Cannady said the family still has many questions about the murder. He said the police theory is that Pressly interrupted a random robbery, but he isn't convinced of that. "Well, it's just unbelievable that a random robbery like this would involve the brutal slaying of Anne in this way. There just seems to be a lot more to the whole story than just a robbery gone bad," he said. "I think he could have been a stalker."
Guy Cannady said they had mixed feelings about the arrest of the suspect, whom police have said was linked to the slaying via DNA evidence. "Obviously, good news for us, but bittersweet in the sense that now that exits from the first chapter of this, her attack, and now into the next chapter, which is the capture of the suspect and into now the trial phase."
Vance is being held without bond at the Pulaski County jail. He is also accused of raping an east Arkansas school teacher in April.
#4
I was in Arkansas when the first new conference was announced to be at 10:00 at night -- they had the guy's name and released it. As it turned out, within 45 minutes, they had him in custody.
This story has been a personal one for Arkansas -- she was a popular anchorwoman -- and Arkansas is not large in population.
I watched my sister's tears during the press conference, and during the next day's lengthy report by her TV station about her.
There is a dead man walking in Arkansas -- the police kept everything about this extremely quiet, so they must have hard evidence against him.
#6
I wonder how many lifetimes of effort and how many millions of dollars will be flushed down the drain convicting this scum of the obvious. AFAIAC, just make sure the DNA tests were done right then give hime the option of suicide or being dropped in the ocean somewhere.
#7
Unfortunately the same people that sanction the suctioning out the brain of a live baby in a late term abortion will be the first in line to protest this scums execution.
#8
Little late now, but she should have had a gun - and used it.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/01/2008 21:57 Comments ||
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#9
That news conference, they showed video of the crime scene folks dusting the windows for fingerprints..... police never released that -- they got him with DNA and they got him with fingerprints on site......
A boy reported missing by his father in Saudi Arabia was in fact 'mortgaged' off to a family friend in another city because the father needed money to repay his debts, a Saudi newspaper reported on Sunday.
The father reported his missing son in the Tabouk governorate setting off an intensive three day police search that turned up nothing, according to the Saudi daily Okaz. The police reportedly grew suspicious after the father did not follow up with them after he filed the report.
Upon questioning his wife said that the boy disappeared after a friend of her husband's from Jeddah came for a visit. "He remained as a guest at our house for two days before he left back home," she told the police.
The police investigation eventually showed that the father had 'mortgaged' his son to his friend in return for SR20,000 ($5,300), which he needed to repay debts that had come due. "Investigation and questioning showed that the father lied about his son. He had given his son to his friend at the airport in return for the money," Maj. Gen. Obeid al-Daarmy, Tabouk police chief, was quoted by the Saudi daily.
There was no information about whether the father or his friend would be charged with a crime.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/01/2008 00:00 ||
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#4
Government bonds are "mortgages" on your children.
Wage slave is not the same as possible sex toy, Bright Pebbles. Anyway, our parents mortgaged us for their comfortable retirement, which we're not even going to get out of the current deal. There is a big difference between a bad idea, even a destructive one, and deliberate evil.
MINNEAPOLIS - While police say a high-profile indecent conduct case in the Minneapolis Metrodome Saturday is closed, a Carroll woman involved in it told the Daily Times Herald she believes she was a victim of foul play rather than a willing collaborator. Alleged participant actually a victim according to alleged participant. Check.
Lois K. "MILF" Feldman, 38, of Carroll, and Ross M. Walsh, 26, of Linden, were ticketed for indecent conduct after they were reportedly caught engaging in sexual activity in a Metrodome men's restroom handicapped stall during the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers game with the Iowa Hawkeyes. More than a dozen people in the restroom were cheering Feldman and Walsh by the time authorities arrived, a University of Minnesota Police report says. Women's fingernails scratching grooves along the outside upper edge of a public restroom stall door. Check.
Feldman acknowledged drinking heavily before the game and says she doesn't remember being in the bathroom. Drinking heavily. Check.
"I would never ever do that," Feldman said. "My kids are my life. I go to church every Sunday." Goes to church every Sunday. Hung over. And walking funny for reasons she cannot remember. Check. I'll bet next week's sermon is going to be chock full of side-glances and pregnant pauses. Ahem.
Information obtained in police reports and during an interview with University of Minnesota Police Chief Greg Hestness revealed no suggestion or evidence that the incident was anything but consensual on the part of both Walsh and Feldman.
But Feldman tells the Daily Times Herald she may have been drugged or otherwise victimized. Sounds like she left out ". . . and maybe not."
"Everybody thinks something got put in my drink," Feldman said. By the hot-dog guy, perhaps?
She offers no further details as to how that might have happened or who may have been involved. Not quite blaming the guy who was molesting her. Check.
"Right, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it what my attorney and I are working on," Feldman said.
Contacted this morning and asked if Feldman was planning to file a complaint or seek a reopening of the investigation in Minneapolis, Jeff Minnich of Carroll, Feldman's attorney, said he had no comment. [Personally, I think she's just going to try to "get it in her behind her".]
The Daily Times Herald sought to contact Walsh, but there is no phone listing with the address he gave police. An Avalon Security officer, Craig Andrashko, who was listed in the police report as the first witness to the incident, did not return a phone call. Check the local frat parties.
But in the police report, Andrashko described what he observed as "sexual intercourse." Perhaps the lock jammed and he was just helping her over the stall door?
Hestness said the case is closed by citation. When asked to respond to Feldman's suggestion that she is a victim of a crime, Hestness said: "All I can say is the actions went on for some period of time with many witnesses on hand and no one reported either party was objecting." Just wait a couple of weeks for the cell-phone video to show up on youtube and then decide what to do with them.
Hestness said Feldman made no allegations to the officers at the scene about the incident being non-consensual. Musta forgot that, too.
"If the implication is lack of consent due to intoxication, I guess that could be true for either party, however, they declined the officer's request to submit to an (alcohol test) so the extent of intoxication cannot be demonstrated," Hestness said. I'm guessing it was over 0.08%.
Hestness largely talked about the incident in the context of the binge-drinking atmosphere at many college football venues. "We will be attending our annual Big 10 chiefs conference next month (in Iowa)," Hestness said. "I suspect this case and the flood of last summer will be big topics."
The University of Minnesota has been without an on-campus stadium since 1980 when Memorial Stadium closed and the Gophers began sharing the Metrodome. The team will move into TCF Bank Stadium next fall with the opening game against Air Force. "The absence of public alcohol sales at our stadium per Big 10 standards will be a welcome change," Hestness said. So I guess it'll be a BYOB affair until further notice.
Gunfire has broken out in downtown Harare when rampaging, unpaid soldiers attacked money changers and clashed with police.
Associated Press reporters have seen running skirmishes between unarmed soldiers and police wielding guns and riot sticks.
Monday's violence is the second time in a week that soldiers have attacked money changers and stolen their cash in frustration after they have been unable to get their wages at banks.
Hundreds of people are gathering. Some are lobbing stones and others are cheering on the police.
People can only draw small amounts of money from banks every day because of a cash shortage. Often this is not enough buy a loaf of bread.
Islamic sources close to jihad organizations have disclosed that Hamad Z. (Abu Musaab) has admitted that Kuwaiti fugitives Mohsen Al-Fadhli and Mohammad Al-Dousari, who are wanted by the US on charges of terrorism left Kuwait for Iran last October via the sea using forged passports provided by him on their way to Afghanistan, reports Al-Rai daily. Abu Musaab who was attempting to leave for Damascus was arrested on Nov 14, 2008 at the Kuwait International Airport.
#4
Watched the video (no sound chip on my computer) and it is unclear what transpired. It looks like the vet apparently taunted them. He was admittedly drunk and they went after him. But the three of them either couldn't subdue or cuff him or chose to rough him up before doing so. With sound it might be more informative.
I've found it doesn't usually pay to let the cops know what you really think. Sometimes it's better to save those thoughts for the comments section at a blog.
For months, Sacramento's top FBI agent kept a Muslim prayer rug in his office. It was for Imam Mohamed Abdul Azeez, religious leader of the SALAM Islamic Center in Sacramento, who attended a citizens' academy with Drew Parenti at the FBI office.
Parenti hasn't converted to Islam. He's been trying to convert Muslim leaders who might be suspicious of his agency after 9/11 and the Lodi terrorism case. And, after years of distrust, Azeez and other local Muslims believe they have found a friend in Parenti. The local FBI chief has visited several of the area's 14 mosques, ready to answer tough questions. He also has recruited an Egyptian Muslim agent who is known to the community and worships regularly at SALAM (Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims) and other local mosques.
Local FBI agents and Muslim American leaders now come together "through friendship and partnership, not eavesdropping," Azeez said. "It's not us against them, and by working together, it's having a profound effect on preventing another 9/11. Prevention's not about phone- tapping and visiting people at 3 a.m., it's about being friends with the community.
"He's the guy with the gun," Azeez said. "If he puts a smile on his face and approaches you humbly, you're going to open up right away." Now, the imam and the FBI agent plan to travel around California and the nation, to show other communities how to build similar partnerships.
Azeez believes the Lodi investigation which ended in 2006 with the conviction of one man of supporting terrorism would play out much differently today. The new partnership between the FBI and area Muslims could prevent attempts to radicalize Muslim youths, Azeez said. "Someone familiar with law enforcement told me if we'd had an Arab or Muslim agent on the force, this whole Lodi thing would not have happened," Azeez said.
Farouk Fakira, a leader at south Sacramento's Masjid Annur which invited Parenti to the mosque's open house Nov. 22 agrees. Parenti "is very approachable, very decent," Fakira said. "If Drew was around, the Lodi thing wouldn't have happened because Drew would have known better."
Parenti, who inherited the Lodi case, "makes no apologies whatsoever for the case in terms of the way it was conducted or prosecuted." But he did say relationships now in place might prevent the "petri dish" of radical Islam from spawning hatred.
Parenti, 48, became Sacramento Special Agent In Charge on June 19, 2005 11 days after two Pakistani American Muslims from Lodi, Umer Hayat and his son Hamid, were arrested on suspicion of terrorism.
In 2006, Hamid Hayat was convicted of providing material support to terrorists by undergoing firearms training in Pakistan and returning to America prepared for jihad. Hayat, a 25-year-old cherry picker with a seventh-grade education, was convicted based on confessions he made during a 10-hour FBI interrogation without a lawyer present.
Hayat had been befriended by Naseem Khan, a Pakistani American Muslim from Oregon working undercover for the FBI. In phone conversations disclosed during trial, Khan goaded Hayat into attending a terrorist training camp and encouraged his interest in violent Islamic fundamentalism. Hayat sentenced to 24 years admitted relishing the murder of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl. No evidence placed Hayat at a terrorist camp other than his conflicting statements to the FBI.
Parenti, a graduate of California State University, San Diego, with a degree in Spanish, is a 24-year FBI veteran. He once supervised the anti-drug trafficking program in Mexico City.
Two months after he arrived in Sacramento, Parenti recalled, he was intrigued by a newspaper headline, "New-Wave Imams," featuring Azeez, who had just become imam at SALAM. "I realized I did not know much about Islam," he said. He reached out to Azeez, an Egyptian American Muslim who wrote his University of Chicago master's thesis on the roots of suicide bombers
#1
I believe one of the reasons Sami al Arian got off easy the first time was that a Muslim FBI agent refused to wear a wire to get evidence against a brother Muslim.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
12/01/2008 13:32 Comments ||
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#2
Pretty sure Sacramento's Masjid Annur is where Ali Mohammed (who was convicted for his role in the US Embassy bombings) took #2 Al Qaeda Ayman Zawahiri circa 1995, so I wouldn't assume it's totally a law enforcement friendly setting...think Taqiyya.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Chicago, Illinois, police arrested a man Monday in connection with the killing of three relatives of singer-actress Jennifer Hudson, a police spokesman said. William Balfour, 27, was first detained for questioning on October 24, the day Hudson's mother and brother were found shot to death. Authorities said at the time that they were holding Balfour for an unspecified parole violation.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The parents of an Arkansas television anchorwoman who was beaten to death say there's forensic evidence their daughter was sexually assaulted as well, and she broke her hand fighting off her attacker.
