mystery cases files

Mysteries are life made complete

2011-10-31T22:34:00.000-07:00

Willaim Murdoch creator to speak at Grimsby museum

The box labelled “blasphemy” immediately caught Maureen Jenning’s attention.

She was searching through Ontario criminal case files from the late 1800s as research for a murder mystery series she was working on when she stumbled across one with the unusual label. Unable to contain her curiosity, she dug into the file and was shocked at its contents.

“Inside was a card, the kind they hand out to children in Sunday school with a picture of Jesus, and around the edges of the card, a girl had written obscenities, so shocking even to my 21st century eyes,” said Jennings, who penned the William Murdoch books which are the basis for the Murdoch Mystery series. “I thought well, first of all, how did she know these word, they were not in common use, and why write them on a Sunday school card? She was 12 years old and sentenced to three months in an industrial school.”

While Jennings will never know what possessed the young girl to write words that would make the head’s of even today’s youth turn, she made it right with her pen. Jennings used the case file in Night’s Child, the fifth novel in the Murdoch series. “You can get revenge by writing a mystery,” said Jennings, who will always wonder what possessed such a young girl to write such obscene words. “And there is a powerful revenge in that story,” she said, suggesting the girl was crying for help. “I don’t know whatever happened to her ... and I never will.”

Jennings will share this story and others as part of a Grimsby Museum fundraiser planned for Nov. 5. Jennings is the guest speaker at the annual fundraising dinner, which also features a live and silent auction. She will give a talk entitled “Getting the dead body from book to screen.” She laughs at the title but said she would be speaking on the whole process of taking her books from page to screen and the adaptations and funny things that happen along the way.

It was a long road from the idea behind the William Murdoch series to finishing the first novel, said Jennings. She spent at least three years researching turn-of-the-century Toronto and its historical buildings and landmarks. She would visit old houses and imagine what it was like living in them in the late 1800s. She spent a lot of time reading the street directory, an exercise she described as fun, to have a detailed understanding of Murdoch’s division. And of course, she spent hours and hours digging through old case files, which is where she got the inspiration for most of Murdoch’s mysteries.
“Are they based on true crime? Yes and no,” said Jennings. “Not specific crimes, but they are based on some incident or some detail from that time.”

The plot for book number three, Poor Tom is Cold, is based on the case of a policeman found shot in a laneway. Everything was there in the file, the inquest, the witness reports, everything. But Jennings refused to believe the conclusion.

“I could not believe he committed suicide, that’s what the verdict was,” she said. “So I took all that and put it into a book. We’ll never know the truth, it’s a very very cold case now, but in my story, I am able to change what I don’t like.”

What Jennings most enjoys about a mystery is that it is a complete package. While in real life cold case files collect dust on a shelf, in a mystery novel, everything is wrapped up by the last page.

“Life is so incomplete,” she said. “For instance with that constable so long ago, I’ll never truly know what happened but with a book, you always know what happens.”

Jennings fell in love with the genre at an early age. Growing up in England, she became a fan of Sherlock Holmes at age 13.

“I read tonnes and tonnes of Sherlock Holmes,” she said. “When I was finally ready to commit myself to writing, I knew mystery is what I wanted to write. I couldn’t do anything else.”

She described Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective books as an escape. They were stories she could get lost in and she wanted to provide the same for readers of her own novels. And so she created William Murdoch.

“I wanted him to be someone I would honestly like to meet, I wanted him to be a certain way,” she said, calling herself selfish. “I am sure Sherlock Holmes is in their somewhere. Perhaps Watson too. And maybe my husband.”

The series, said Jennings, has renewed a lot of interest in the seven-book mystery series.

“The series is very different,” said Jennings, who acts as a consultant for the show and wrote the script for an episode. “The series is very much more funny than my books.”

The museum gala takes place Nov. 5 starting at 6 p.m. Tickets are $90 per person, tax receipts will be issued for a portion of the ticket. Seating is limited and tickets will be available until Friday, Oct. 28. Items included in the silent auction are a Bobby Orr jersey with certificate of authenticity, a gourmet dinner at a private historic home, a signed Harry Howell hockey stick and a wine fridge stocked with Niagara wines. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call the museum at 905-945-5292 or e-mail museum@town.grimsby.on.ca. Tickets can also be picked up at the museum, located at 6 Murray St.

Source http://www.niagarathisweek.com/community/article/1233476--mysteries-are-life-made-completeMysteries are life made complete

Evidence missing in jail death case

2011-03-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

Evidence is supposed to be presented to a grand jury in secret.

It is not supposed to disappear.

Yet the Douglas County District Court is unable to find at least three exhibits that were presented to a grand jury after the September 2007 jail death of Alexander Simoens. That includes a key item: the original jail video of Simoens dying in his cell.

Also missing: a large poster-board diagram of the former Omaha City Jail, the place where Simoens spent his last moments, and the jail's book of standard operating procedures.

Court officials say they are searching for the missing evidence — last known to have been reviewed by Judge Peter Bataillon — as prosecutors prepare to try two jailers on misdemeanor charges in Simoens' death.

The disappearing act is the latest twist in what Simoens' family calls a “never-ending saga.”

At worst, prosecutors say, they should be able to replace the missing evidence, including the video, with copies in time for the late April trials of two jailers accused of failing to render aid to Simoens.

Judge Bataillon will decide whether jailers Joachim Dankiw and Mark Haefele are guilty of official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

But the location of the original exhibits remains a mystery. Prosecutors have looked to the judge, a court reporter and the court clerk's office to find them.

No one can say for certain when the exhibits last were viewed.

Simoens died in September 2007, after writhing in his cell for hours. His death prompted city officials to speed up the closing of the city jail.

The grand jury convened in December 2007 — and handed up indictments against two jail employees and two supervisors for failing to get Simoens help.

In 2008, attorneys for the jail employees asked Bataillon to throw out the indictments. Bataillon took the matter under advisement.

In March 2009, Bataillon dismissed the indictments against supervisors Jeanele Moore and Andrew Freeman. But he left them in place against Haefele and Dankiw.

“In making a determination in this matter, the Court reviewed the entire transcript of the grand jury and all of the exhibits,” Bataillon wrote at the time.

The case has been delayed since then while the Douglas County Attorney's Office waited for federal prosecutors to decide whether to file additional charges against the jailers. Federal prosecutors declined to do so.

Bataillon said Tuesday that he could recall reviewing the video but not the poster board diagram.

Where is the material now?

“I don't know,” the judge said. “We're working to get it figured out.”

The court reporter from the grand jury proceeding said the court clerk's office collected the exhibits, although she couldn't recall whether that was before or after Bataillon had possession of them.

Douglas County District Court Clerk John Friend — whose office stores grand jury records and exhibits — said his office has no record of having received the Simoens exhibits.

“We don't have them,” Friend said. “Never got 'em.”

Friend, a former Omaha police officer, said he instituted a tracking procedure for case files and exhibits — one he says is modeled after a police evidence room.

Prior to that, he said, exhibits could be scattered among the court reporters who collected them and the district court administrator's office.

Friend said court reporters bring the exhibits to his office. His office then makes a log — both written and on a computer — of every time exhibits are checked into and out of courthouse storage.

That system was in place at the time of this grand jury, Friend said.

Friend said his records indicate that nothing was checked in — except for the questionnaires that prospective grand jurors had filled out in the case.

Prosecutor Jeff Lux said Bataillon's staff was able to retrieve other Simoens grand jury exhibits from the judge's chambers.

The missing DVD, poster-sized diagram and book of operating procedures can be replaced.

But also missing, and harder to replace, is the master list of exhibits that were presented during the grand jury's weeklong investigation, Lux said.

Simoens' son, Shawn Simoens, was incredulous upon learning of the missing exhibits.

The family's federal lawsuit has been delayed until the resolution of the criminal cases against the jailers.

“Of course it's missing,” Shawn Simoens said. “Nothing surprises me with this case anymore. This is just absolutely insane. Every time we turn around, it's something new.”

Source http://www.omaha.com/article/20110330/NEWS97/703309905/0

Comcast starts new unsolved cases series in Beaver County

2011-03-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

It's been more than five years since 94-year-old Anna Rocknick was found brutally beaten in her Harmony Township home.

Around 2:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve 2005, someone broke into Rocknick's residence and ransacked it, assaulted her and fled. Rocknick died soon after from her injuries.

Since then, Harmony Township police, Beaver County detectives and state police have worked to unlock the mystery of who attacked the elderly woman and why, and her family has agonized over the events of that night.

Dorothy Pollock, Rocknick's sister, said her husband, Fred, went to the police station every Monday for four years to check on the progress of the investigation.

"You try to think of a lot of little things," she said. "We tried to think of every little thing we could. But whoever (the attacker) is, he's still roaming around somewhere, I guess."

Now law enforcement officials are hoping that a new partnership between the Beaver County district attorney's office and Comcast can help them get answers in the Rocknick case and other unsolved crimes.

The regional division of the cable television giant offered the county its services to film and broadcast short videos about local cold cases in the hope that they'll be viewed by people who can provide new information.

The Unsolved Crimes project is a first for Comcast, at least in this region, said spokesman Bob Grove. Comcast foots all the filming and production bills, and the district attorney's office rounds up current and former law enforcement personnel and the victims' family and friends for interviews.

The project grew out of a longstanding collaboration on another Comcast offering, Fugitive Files, in which law enforcement agencies can list descriptions of wanted suspects.

The Fugitive Files program started in March 2008 in Allegheny County, Grove said. It's since expanded to many counties, including Beaver.

"We've had great success with that program," Grove said. "We've had 91 arrests that we can credit, directly or indirectly, to tips from a Comcast viewer."

Grove said that at some point, the conversation between Comcast and the district attorney's office turned to unsolved cases.

"The Beaver County district attorney is really open to using whatever technology he can to get answers to crimes that have not been solved," he said.

District Attorney Anthony Berosh said he sees the Unsolved Crimes videos not only as law enforcement tools, but as a service to the victims' families.

"It lets the family know that we haven't forgotten," Berosh said. "It's a way of us saying we still care."

Beaver County's Fugitive Files and Unsolved Crimes videos are available to Comcast's digital cable customers via the "On Demand" menu, Grove said. They're broadcast across a region that includes parts of eastern Ohio and the West Virginia panhandle.

The first videos were filmed in summer 2010. So far five videos are available to viewers, but more are coming.

For Dorothy Pollock, the videos have a special resonance - and not only because one of them is about her sister.

Her husband, who was interviewed for the video, died in August, not long after filming was finished.

"Now, watching it, it's like ... I can hear my husband's voice now, since he's gone," she said.

Pollock hopes someone out there who knows something about her sister's death will see the video and call the police. But even if the murderer is brought to justice, it will be bittersweet without her husband.

"He wanted to be there so much when they did the arrest, to be in the courtroom," Pollock said. "It's sad that he's not going to be there."

Source http://www.timesonline.com/news/article_9e40d0a2-42f2-11e0-98fc-0017a4a78c22.html

mystery case files prime suspects

2009-02-21T23:53:00.000-08:00

Mystery Case Files - Prime Suspects

Tips and Tricks:
----------------
Submitted by: RM

You can click everywhere to find hidden objects. Just try not to be
too fast in order not to be penalized by time. You should try to set a
correct speed of your clicking to cheat the computer otherwise time
will be spent in vain.

When you are running out of time you just go look at your keyboard there
will be a printscreen button press it and quit the game then go to paint
and press edit then press paste then you have the same pic and the time
won be used then go find everything you need and then go back to the game
and press it easy rite?

Blue Star Solution:
-------------------
Place the first blue stone anywhere and slide it across the star. Then
place the 2nd blue stone in the opposite corner of where the first blue
stone was -placed, so it can slide into the place where the first blue
stone started. Then place the 3rd blue stone in the opposite corner of
where the 2nd blue stone started, so it can slide into place where the
2nd blue stone started. Then place the 4th blue stone in the opposite
corner of where the 3rd blue stone started.....and slide it into the
place where the 3rd blue stone started...and so on until all the blue
stones are placed and slid....then...the box is opened.

Final Puzzle Solution:
----------------------
Okay, here's what you need to do. First, I numbered the slots starting at
the top and working clockwise, 1-8. Follow this sequence. The first number
is where to place the jewel, the second is where to move it.
1 -> 6 8 -> 3 4 -> 1 7 -> 4 2 -> 7 5 -> 2 5 -> 8
Congratulations, Master Detective!

Source http://www.cheatchannel.de/files/mysterycasefilesprimesuspects.htm