Free Republic

A former Green Beret has taken responsibility for what he claimed was a failed attack Sunday aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and that the socialist government said ended with eight dead. Jordan Goudreau’s comments in an interview with an exiled Venezuelan journalist capped a bizarre day that started with reports of a pre-dawn amphibious raid near the South American country’s heavily guarded capital. An AP investigation published Friday found that Goudreau had been working with a retired Venezuelan army general now facing U.S. narcotics charges to train dozens of deserting Venezuelan soldiers at secret camps inside neighboring Colombia....

The operation involved at least three boats, though only one was captured. One of its commanders sent audio recordings to Venezuelan military and police WhatsApp groups, calling for troops to rebel and take to the streets. Alemán, a Venezuelan lawmaker now living outside the country, said Sunday he had been involved in Alcalá’s operation in Colombia since last year. He said the group had to “make some adjustments” after a shipment of weapons destined for the camps was seized by Colombian authorities in March. Alemán said the plan was for the boats to land at La Guaira, home to Venezuela’s...

A retired Venezuelan army general indicted alongside Nicolás Maduro has surrendered in Colombia and is being taken by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to New York for arraignment, four people familiar with the situation said Friday. Cliver Alcalá has been an outspoken critic of Maduro for years. But he was charged Thursday with allegedly running with Maduro, socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello and another retired army general a narcoterrorist conspiracy that U.S. prosecutors say sent 250 metric tons of cocaine a year to the U.S. and turned the Venezuelan state into a platform for violent cartels and Colombia rebels. The Justice...

On Saturday Venezuelan General Cliver Alcala was in custody in New York City. General Alcalá is the first regime official to be detained by the US authorities. The socialist general will be presented before the federal court for being part of the criminal Venezuelan cartel.

Former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala, a longtime Republican, typically avoids politics on social media but broke that practice on Monday to denounce President Donald Trump, “for my own conscience,” she wrote on Facebook. Trump “is the worst president in the history of this country,” said her Facebook post. The president has an ideology of racism, the judge wrote, adding she couldn’t say anything positive that would absolve Trump of his “rotten core.” “I have been thinking about this for years and I hoped things would get better but they never did,” Alcala told Texas Lawyer. “I...

Cornered by high-tech forensics and low-tech sleuthing, serial sex killer Rodney Alcala took a surprise guilty plea in Manhattan yesterday, admitting he took the lives of two young woman in the 1970s. So-called “Dating Game killer” Alcala, 67, admitted he committed the 1971 murder of TWA flight attendant Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover. Both women were 23.

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A judge on Tuesday sentenced serial killer Rodney Alcala to death before hearing emotional testimony from the families of four women and a 12-year-old girl he strangled in the 1970s. The sentence was announced three weeks after a jury recomended death for the 66-year-old Alcala, who was convicted last month of five counts of first-degree murder after a bizarre and sometimes surreal trial. After the sentencing, Bruce Barcomb, the brother of victim Jill Barcomb, begged Alcala to admit to the murders to help family members heal. "There is murder and rape and then there is the...

Convicted serial killer Rodney James Alcala asked jurors to spare him the death penalty Tuesday, concluding his defense by playing a portion of “Alice’s Restaurant,” the rambling 18-minute Vietnam War protest song by folk singer Arlo Guthrie. By assigning the death penalty, “you become a wannabe killer in waiting,” Alcala told jurors before playing a section of the 1960s-era song in which a man being drafted for war tells a military psychiatrist:

Lance Starr says he and other immigration attorneys in Utah had heard complaints about The Alcala Law Firm but didn't have evidence until recently of any possible illegalities in how it handled cases. But then two former employees of the Glendale firm asked him last year to review their applications to legalize their presence in the United States, which had been prepared by principle attorney James Hector Alcala but rejected by the government. Starr spotted what appeared to be forged letters verifying that one of them had worked for Mexican employers. The American Fork attorney -- who had worked for...