Free Republic

Maurice ‘Isaiah’ Torres died of septic shock in an Arkansas hospital after his father violated him with a stick for eating a piece of cake. Mauricio Alejandro Torres was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2016, but it was overturned due to a technicality. State law dictates that capital murder offences that carry the death penalty must be tried in the same state as where they are being prosecuted. And while Isaiah died in his home state of Arkansas, the assault that killed him happened in Missouri. The disturbing details of his short life and protracted death...

Activists gathered at the risibly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. last night, protesting the death penalty for Alfred Bourgeois. Because of course liberals and race-baiters would take the side of a man who sexually tortured and then brutally murdered his own two-year-old child. Bourgeois, 55 at the time of his execution this week, was convicted in 2004 for physically and emotionally torturing, sexually molesting, and beating his daughter to death. ACTIVISTS LAMENT THE DEATH OF A PEDOPHILE MURDERER. CBS reminds us of his grisly actions: …Bourgeois whipped the girl with an electrical cord, burned her feet with...

"It's not over," John Lucio said of his fight to free his mother.Melissa Lucio was first sentenced to death in 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez. After nearly 15 years on death row in Texas, Lucio was granted a stay of her scheduled April 27 execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday. Calls for a court to review her case and save Lucio's life grew this week, garnering bipartisan support and inspiring rallies across the country. Rep. Jeff Leach, chair of the Texas House Criminal Justice Reform, Interim Study Committee, was one of...

How far down does the slippery slope go? A newly proposed bill in the California State Legislature could expand the ghastly practice of abortion to include infanticide – the killing of a newborn child – for several weeks, months, or even years after a child is born.

PEARL RIVER -Less than who served nearly 40 years for killing a Pearl River girl is back behind bars. Richard LaBarbera allegedly violated the conditions of his parole and is being held at the Erie County Jail. LaBarbera was released from Sing Sing Prison on July 8., and as a condition of his parole, he was sent to Erie County. His release sparked outrage from Pearl River residents who launched an effort to keep the convicted killer behind bars for life. LaBarbera and Robert McCain were both convicted back in the 1980s of brutally murdering 16-year-old Paula Bohovesky as she...

An inmate who was convicted in the 1997 cold case murder of an 8-year-old girl — whose body was never found — was strangled in his Oklahoma prison cell last month, officials said. Anthony Palma, 59, died from “ligature strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head” on Jan. 11 while he was in his cell at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, KFOR reported.

In the early 1990's, Argentine authorities opened its archives to reveal that several Nazi war criminals found safe haven in South America, including Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as Auschwitz’s Angel of Death. Mengele is infamous for his horrific experiments on inmates at the concentration camp. According to The New York Times in 1992, Mengele entered Argentina using a Red Cross-issued passport in 1949 and “practiced medicine in Buenos Aires for several years in the 1950s,” specializing in illegal abortions. According to the report, a young woman died after a botched abortion at the hands of Mengele. For that crime...

BRUSSELS — For 20 years, the Dutch police investigated the rape and murder of an 11-year-old schoolboy, and the Dutch news media chronicled the case’s many twists and turns . Now, after an investigation in which 17,500 Dutchmen voluntarily took part in DNA profiling, a suspect has been arrested in Spain. The boy, Nicky Verstappen, had attended a summer camp at a nature reserve in the southern Netherlands in 1998. On a night that August, he left his tent and never returned. His body, pajama-clad and barefoot, was discovered the next day, hidden in a dense pine forest about a...

Beverley Allitt , now 49, was convicted of killing four children while working as a nurse at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincs, in 1991. She is being held at Rampton high-security hospital and is said to be receiving 24 hour care after falling ill on Sunday. A source told The Sun: ‘There are genuine concerns as to whether she’ll pull through.’ Allitt took her first victim, eight-week old Liam Taylor, in February 23, 1991 after she injected the child with a fatal amount of insulin. The ex-paediatric nurse went on to kill three more and critically injured nine others during...

(CNN)—An 11-year-old boy has been charged after being accused of using his father's gun to shoot and kill a 3-year-old boy in Detroit. While the 11-year-old, who isn't being identified because of his age, was visiting his father's house on Monday at around 1:40 p.m. on Detroit's east side, he allegedly took a handgun from a bedroom closet. The juvenile proceeded to throw the handgun out of the window into his father's backyard, the Wayne County Prosecutors Office said. The boy retrieved the gun and jumped into a vehicle parked in the backyard. A short time later, the 3-year-old entered...

The hunt for a perfect contraceptive has gone on for millennia. A new candidate is now on the horizon: a wireless implant that can be turned on and off with a remote control and that is designed to last up to 16 years. If it passes safety and efficacy tests, the device would be more convenient for many women because, unlike existing contraceptive implants, it can be deactivated without a trip to the clinic and an outpatient procedure, and it would last nearly half their reproductive life. Developed by MicroCHIPS of Lexington, Massachusetts, the device will begin pre-clinical testing next...

Legendary singer Willie Nelson will be featured at a high-dollar fundraiser for Democratic governor nominee Wendy Davis. The event will be held April 27 in the Houston backyard of plaintiff’s lawyer Steve and Amber Mostyn, featuring barbecue, Nelson and — for those who stay overnight at the Hotel ZaZa — a campaign briefing on Monday morning.

MECCA - Authorities arrested 34-year-old Esmeralda Gonzalez Martinez from Thermal for voluntary manslaughter and willful harm to a child. She was identified as the mother of the deceased newborn found at Mecca Community Park on Coahuilla Street. Detectives from the Thermal Station and the Riverside Sheriff's Central Homicide Unit responded to the scene Monday around 7:25 a.m. where they found a lifeless baby boy on the playground, next to the community center and Mecca Elementary School. They believe the boy was born and died at the location. Authorities also found Gonzalez Martinez at the scene, and she was transported to...

Gary Flakes, a man convicted in the murders of two teenagers, formally announced Wednesday that he's running for Colorado Springs City Council. ... In 1997, Flakes was convicted of accessory to murder and negligent homicide in the killings of 13-year-old Andy Westbay and 15-year-old Scott Hawrysiak. The boys were gunned down as they were walking in the Cheyenne Meadows area on Valentine's Day. Flakes and his friend Jeron Grant accused each other of pulling the trigger of the shotgun, and neither was convicted of murder, sparking outrage. After spending 12 years in prison, Flakes was released in 2011. ... Scott...

The San Quentin inmate who murdered another prisoner to avenge a Novato girl's death read a statement of condolence Wednesday to the girl's family. "The innocence of a child will be defended at all costs," said Frank Souza, referring to 9-year-old Melody Osheroff, who was killed by a drunken motorcyclist in 2009. The motorcyclist, Edward Schaefer, was convicted of murder, manslaughter and other charges in 2010 and sent to San Quentin State Prison. Less than two weeks later, Souza ambushed him in a prison yard and gouged him repeatedly with a makeshift metal spear. Souza, 33, eventually pleaded guilty to...

The Rev. Katherine Ragsdale will soon become the first female president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Openly lesbian, the outgoing chief of a liberal think tank that monitored the Religious Right, and best known for her abortion rights advocacy through the Washington-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Ragsdale maybe the perfect icon for untrammeled liberal Episcopalianism. But a rather vigorous two-year-old abortion sermon by Ragsdale, assertive even by her standards, has overshadowed her recent appointment. "Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done!" she repeatedly exclaimed at a rally in defense of an abortion clinic...

  She was a Brownie troop leader, a room mother, a Sunday school teacher and almost the definition of an Orange County soccer mom -- until she shot her two small daughters to death in 1991 while they slept in their home in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Kristine Cushing, then 39, said she was the victim of anti-depression medication, a debilitating heart condition and worry over the impending dissolution of her 17-year marriage to former Marine Corps fighter pilot John Cushing Jr. when she shot her daughters, ages 4 and 8, and then attempted to kill herself. She was found not...

Reno police say the four people initially suspected in a weekend killing are now charged with murder. Luis Sanchez, Jacob Sanchez, Aurora Rodriguez-Perez initially were arraigned on robbery charges Thursday morning at Washoe District Court. Then hours later, authorities charged the three along with 13-year-old Jose Cruz with the murder of 27-year-old Steve Gale who was killed during an attempted robbery on California Avenue just after midnight Sunday morning.

We know that Sarah Palin hunts animals on reality TV and cheers her daughter on ‘‘Dancing With the Stars’’ — but do we know that both conservative and liberal scholars rate Nancy Pelosi as one of the most successful speakers of the House in United States history? We know that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gave the Tea Party’s State of the Union response, believes that the founding fathers abolished slavery and urged her Minnesota constituents to be ‘‘armed and dangerous’’ — but do we know that Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California is calling for the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan? We...

During an afternoon news conference today, Houston Police investigators said Mona Yvette Nelson, the woman charged with capital murder in the death of 12-year-old Jonathan Foster, may be a child serial killer. Officers said they are investigating whether Nelson may be involved in the deaths of other children. HPD Homicide Detective Michael Miller described the 44-year-old Nelson as “soulless,” and said the woman had shown an “absolute lack of remorse” for the killing. “I was one of the detectives to interview Mona Nelson, and I can tell you that she is a cold, soulless murderer who showed an absolute lack...