WebProNews

Tag: body found

  • Casey Anthony Reaches Settlement with Texas EquuSearch

    Casey Anthony reached a settlement with search and rescue organization, Texas EquuSearch last Friday. The organization said it spent over $100, 000 in an attempt to find her missing daughter.

    Anthony is the Florida mother acquitted in 2011 of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie. The nationally televised court trial leading up to her acquittal, engrossed Americans for nearly three years. Anthony lied to investigators in 2008 when she told them that Caylee was kidnapped, when, in fact, Caylee had drowned at home in the family pool. Though Anthony was set free, jurors found her guilty of a lesser charge of giving false information to law enforcement.

    File:CMA Memorial (1 of 1).jpg

    Caylee’s body was found six months after her death. She was duct-taped and discarded in a wooded area near by her mother’s home.

    When Caylee went missing in 2008, Texas EquuSearch put together a huge rescue operation to find her. They claimed to have spent about $100, 000 in the search, which resulted in their using up much of their financial resources. All the while, Anthony, knew the truth.

    On Monday Marc Wites, Texas EquuSearch lawyer, said his client decided not to go to trial with the case. Instead, Anthony reached a settlement allowing Texas EquuSearch to be named as a creditor to an unsecured sum of $75,000. The 26-year-old Anthony, has declared bankruptcy, claiming to have nearly $800, 000 in debt while only having about $1000 in assets.

    Anthony’s most valuable asset right now may be the rights to her life story. Bankruptcy trustee Stephen Meininger, wanted to secure some of her potential earnings for Anthony’s creditors but, her lawyers retaliated, saying that such measures were a violation of her constitutional rights.

    “Texas EquuSearch’s mission and purpose is to help families and individuals to find their missing loved ones,” said Wites. “That’s the reason they helped the Anthony family in the first place. While they were searching for Caylee, they got calls from other families for help and had to turn them away.” 

    Wites believes that due to Anthony declaring bankruptcy, it is unlikely that his client will receive any money.

    Anthony’s court problems are not over. She still has to deal with a defamation of character lawsuit by a woman named Zenaida Gonzalez. Gonzales was the woman who happened to find Caylee’s body while working as a meter reader. Anthony mislead law enforcement when she pretended that a woman who matched Gonzalez’s description kidnapped her daughter.

    What do you think about Casey Anthony’s situation?

    Was she just a young mother that made a terrible mistake and deserves a break?

    Or does she deserve the problems she continues to face?

    Images via Wikimedia Commons

  • Body, Castaic Lake Discovery May Be Missing Man

    A body found Wednesday near Castaic Lake in California may be 19-year-old missing man, Bryce Laspisa. Authorities have yet to confirm the identity of the body however and Lt. Wes Sutton reported, “At this point, there is no way I can connect the two because we don’t have a positive identification on the body.”

    The body was found close to an area where searches have been conducted for the man. Firefighters found the burning body when called to a brush fire just after 6am (PT) that a cyclist reported. Fire crews fought toward the blaze for 18 minutes, says Los Angeles County fire supervisor Bernard Peters. The location is about three miles north of Lake Hughes Road off the “Grapevine,” a section of California’s state-long I-5 highway.

    Authorities have been searching for Laspisa since Friday. He was involved in an accident, authorities infer; his 2003 Toyota Highlander was found on its side around 5:30am Friday on Main Ramp Road near Castaic Lake. The man was southbound, en route to his parents’ house in Orange County. He called his parents from Buttonwillow in Kern County, just north of the Grapevine, several hours before his vehicle was found. Under normal conditions, the drive between Buttonwillow and the location Laspisa’s SUV was found would take about an hour and a half.

    Laspisa makes his home in Roseville, Placer County. Authorities described him as a white male with red hair and blue eyes, 5’11” and weighing about 170 lbs. He was last seen in white cargo shorts, a blue-and-white checkered shirt and white-and-red Nike’s. On his left shoulder, Laspisa has a tattoo of a bull’s head with a Roman numeral.

    Deputies, search dogs and helicopters were employed Tuesday to search San Francisquito Canyon and surrounding areas while rescue divers searched the Lake, with no apparent results.

    Anyone with information about the body or Bryce Laspisa is asked to call Det. Chris Carns at (323) 890-5500.

    [Image via YouTube.]

  • Hoarder Hides Wife’s Dead Body For 30 Years

    A New York man who died last year at the age of 82 was keeping more than just junk in his home; the so-called hoarder was also hiding his wife’s dead body behind a false wall in the basement.

    James Nichols claimed over 30 years ago that his wife, JoAnn, left her car in the parking lot of a mall and left him a typed note before she disappeared, never to be seen again. She was initially reported missing by a friend after she failed to show up for an appointment at a local salon. Nichols told police that he spoke to her briefly on the phone three days later, and that was the last he’d heard from her.

    However, neighbors and friends of JoAnn’s thought there was foul play afoot and could never prove it.

    “Ultimately, we all said he did it,” neighbor Delores Casella told the Poughkeepsie Journal. “We automatically all said that, ‘He did something with her.’ He just had a creepy feeling about him.”

    Nichols was a compulsive hoarder who kept several dumpsters full of junk in his backyard and was rumored to drive around town with a dummy sitting in the front seat. Could it have been an attempt at making people think his wife had come back to him? Unfortunately, answers aren’t forthcoming. The body was only found because the house, which had been condemned since Nichols’ death in December, is about to go up for sale. A contractor made the discovery.

    An autopsy is underway on the body.

  • Missing Student: Body Found In Providence River

    The body of a young man that was pulled out of Providence River in Rhode Island on Tuesday could be that of missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi, who went missing on March 16th.

    Tripathi’s family says he was acting normally during the days leading up to his disappearance, but hinted that he was going through a tough time, although just what that is hasn’t been reported. The 22-year old was falsely accused of being a suspect in the Boston bombings last week, shocking and enraging those who knew him.

    “Someone will tweet, then retweet, and completely unsubstantiated things can proliferate so rapidly and destructively,” his sister, Sangeeta Tripathi, said. “Those night hours were horrible.”

    The mystery of what happened to Tripathi will likely haunt his family if the body does indeed turn out to be his. They say he left his wallet and phone at his apartment, taking with him only a key and his glasses. After several text conversations with family members on a Friday night–in which he seemed normal–he didn’t respond to messages the next morning. What happened in the intervening hours is crucial, but if the body in the river turns out to be his, it’s likely it will not yield any answers. Officials say it appears to have been in the water for several days, if not weeks. An autopsy has yet to definitively reveal an identity.

    Image: WPRI