Free Republic

An Orange County woman was arrested by the FBI Thursday for allegedly stealing more than $400,000 from a nonprofit organization created to support a high school football team. The FBI raided the Aliso Viejo home of Julie Molina, 56, early Thursday morning. Authorities allege she stole the money while serving as treasurer for the Aliso Niguel High School football team. She’s expected to make her initial appearance and be arraigned later Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on four counts of wire fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. According to the indictment, from 2023...

A Massachusetts mother who allegedly killed her young son and daughter was seen sobbing and shaking in court after the judge denied her bail on Thursday morning. Janette MacAusland, 49, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder after police said she allegedly strangled her kids at their $1.5 million home in an affluent Boston suburb. Kai and Ella MacAusland, seven and six, died on April 24 after MacAusland strangled them at their Wellesley residence while she was going through a bitter divorce with their father, according to police. The accused mom was handcuffed for her hearing at Dedham District...

BROOKLYN, NY – Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, Zakia Kahn was sentenced by United States District Judge Natasha C. Merle to 76 months in prison in connection with her leadership role in carrying out a $64 million Medicaid fraud and illegal kickback scheme at her two social adult daycare centers and a home health care company. In August 2025, Khan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay health care kickbacks. As part of her sentence, Kahn was also ordered to pay over $56 million in restitution and...

A University of California, Irvine lecturer appeared to endorse violence against conservative activist Nick Shirley ahead of his scheduled appearance Wednesday before the Harvard Republicans. The remarks are drawing attention to campus political rhetoric surrounding Shirley, whose investigations and viral videos have made him a prominent conservative voice online. "In the comments of the Harvard Republican Club’s recent Instagram post announcing Nick Shirley’s visit to campus, UC Irvine and Chapman lecturer Matthew Goldman appears to endorse a potential act of violence against Shirley, just before the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination," *** In screenshots shared by Yard Report, Goldman...

I think that most people who read Hot Air are appalled by the subset of the population that has embraced Lindsay Clancy as a cultural hero. For most of us, the fact that Clancy clearly was having trouble with her mental health may help explain how she decided to kill her children, but for nobody I know does that excuse the fact that she chose to respond to her despair by killing her own children. I can understand, at some level, the feeling of empathy for Clancy's struggles; I cannot and will never understand turning her into a hero. There...

We have uncovered new information and accusations about the cargo airline operating the Amazon Prime Air plane that crashed in Miami on Sunday, killing five people in a van inside the airport perimeter and in a Toyota Corolla outside the perimeter. This cargo airline, called 21 Air, has a documented history of hiring foreigners who can’t follow instructions from air traffic controllers, as well as a reputation for hiring incompetent pilots who can’t pass basic training at other airlines, according to industry professionals who say they have first-hand knowledge of the company’s operations. We’re going to go through the evidence...

A Manhattan hooker from hell who killed three johns when she fed them fentanyl to rob them — leaving one victim dead with his pants at his knees — pleaded guilty Tuesday and now faces up to life behind bars. Tabitha Bundrick, 39, copped to the “calculated” killings of the three men, who she robbed of anything she could get her hands on before fleeing across Upper Manhattan. Bundrick will be sentenced to 27 years to life in prison after copping to three murder charges and a separate charge for drugging another person who survived the attack, according to Manhattan...

Four innocent children were deliberately drugged and murdered by their own mother and grandmother in a sickening murder-suicide plot allegedly driven by a bitter custody dispute, according to investigators. The children, Harper Harmon, 13; Hudson Harmon, 11; and 10-year-old twins Gavin and Gracelynn Harmon, were found dead alongside their mother, Sarah Myers, 44, and grandmother, Amy Steadman, 64, inside Steadman’s apartment in Mechanicville, New York, on June 23. Investigators believe the children were murdered on June 10, nearly two weeks before their decomposing bodies were discovered during a welfare check. Now, toxicology results have revealed that diphenhydramine, the active ingredient...

The crazed plane passenger who was duct-taped and zip-tied on a flight to New Jersey first flipped over a discussion about religion with his seatmate, a controversial Messianic rabbi who’s a best-selling author dubbed a “Doomsday prophet.” Author Jonathan Cahn said that now-fired Arizona realtor Arthur Layne Lundeen, 67, allegedly started hurling racist and homophobic slurs after first screaming at him that “Jesus is bulls–t.” “I was the unidentified passenger and I was actually attacked, 30,000 feet in the sky. I was attacked on that plane,” Cahn revealed in a YouTube video Monday. “I have never seen someone change in...

Four upstate New York children who were poisoned and killed by their mother and grandmother had an allergy medication that induces drowsiness and kratom in their systems, according to a new report. The disturbing details into the horrific June murder-suicide in Mechanicsville were revealed in a toxicology report, sources told NewsChannel 13. Harper Harmon, 13, and his three younger siblings — Hudson, 11; Gracelynn, 10; and Gavin, 10 — were all given kratom and diphenhydramine, the ingredient in Benadryl, before they died, according to the report. Kratom — also known as “gas station heroin” — is a psychoactive herbal extract...

Meet Spencer Garrard, a retired professor at Columbus State University and his wife, a woke reverend. Police were called after stolen campaign signs for Georgia House candidate Stephen Acorn traced back to their home via airtag. Watch the full police bodycam footage of them questioning him and recovering the signs from the trash. The officers were extremely patient and professional and he acted like a total a**hole. I’m surprised he didn’t get arrested. Why are the always teachers???

A conservative-leaning independent candidate in Columbus, Georgia, got tired of watching his campaign signs vanish. He hid Apple AirTags inside them. The trackers did not ping a dumpster or a random yard. They led straight to the home of a well-known local reverend and her husband, a retired Columbus State University educator. Stephen Acorn is running as an Independent write-in against longtime Democrat incumbent Debbie Buckner for Georgia House District 137. After signs kept disappearing near Matthews Elementary School and County Line Road, Acorn cut open replacements, slipped AirTags inside, and waited. “I feel like I outsmarted the perpetrator,” Acorn...

Growing up in rural Western New York, the Very Rev. Micah Cronin couldn’t have imagined his present role as dean of the Episcopal cathedral in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was raised in more conservative churches, and as a young adult, “I did not feel that I fit there,” he said, because they were not fully accepting of him as a transgender man. At the same time, Cronin’s faith was as central to his identity as his gender, and he told himself, “I don’t think it’s feasible to me to not be Christian.” Then at age 19, he began attending worship services...

Clancy copycat? As previously reported, a 2-year-old child was found unresponsive in the basement of a Frankfort, Illinois, home on Tuesday. The child was later pronounced dead at the hospital. The mother, Corie Walsh, 38, was charged with murder on Friday. A 17-year-old called 911, and when police arrived at the home, the child’s mother was attempting self-harm. It is unclear how the child died. The incident was being investigated as a homicide, and on Friday, police announced that Corie Walsh was charged with murder and is in custody being held for medical treatment. Walsh will be transferred to Will...

Police in Pembroke Pines are investigating a video that shows a man abusing and killing ducks, officials said. The video from Aug. 30 captured the incident that happened behind a building in the area of University Drive and Northwest 13th Street

A California college student is being hailed as a hero after he launched himself feet-first through an In-N-Out drive-thru window and confronted a woman allegedly threatening employees with a sharpened wooden stick. Twenty-year-old Luca Opperman was waiting for his burger at an In-N-Out in Lake Elsinore early Wednesday morning when he suddenly heard loud banging coming from inside the restaurant, the KTLA reported. Opperman looked through the window and reportedly saw a 53-year-old woman smashing a large, branch-like stick against the counter. The stick was broken at one end, leaving a jagged point that Opperman believed could seriously injure someone....

A serial squatter was sentenced to 20 years for fraud after she’d been evicted nearly three dozen times and racked up thousands in property damage under multiple aliases in Texas and Colorado for decades. Heather Ruybal was slapped with the maximum sentence in Dallas on Aug. 31, after she was found guilty July 27 of felony fraud for using a false name and writing a bad check to lease a house in 2023, Denver7 reported. “This is what she did for a living. Moved into individuals’ homes knowing that she wasn’t going to pay her rent, then exploit the eviction...

An intern at a Florida mental health and addiction center allegedly had sex with a patient during therapy sessions – and cooked up excuses allowing him to leave the facility to romp at her mom’s home and even a local hospital, according to court documents. Michelle Luchau-Rebora appeared in court Wednesday wearing a green anti-suicide smock to face a charge of sexual misconduct by a psychotherapist – a third-degree felony that could lead to five years in prison, according to WPLG. She turned herself in after the patient – an otherwise unidentified 42-year-old man – reported her when she called...

MIAMI — The Florida woman who shot and killed a drugged-up Army vet in a spat over a parking spot at a Walmart will not face charges after he threatened to ‘f— her s— up’, prosecutors revealed Thursday. Bart Diguglielmo, a 62-year-old retired staff sergeant, was fatally shot in front of the supercenter in North Lauderdale just before 12:30 p.m. on June 30. The shooter, identified as Melissa Payne, is immune from prosecution because she acted in self-defense due to the state’s “stand your ground” law, the Broward County state attorney’s office announced. One witness said she had heard Diguglielmo...