Deranged Dad Carves Pentagram In Son's Back

Texas man accused of carving pentagram into son

Published - Dec 12 2012 07:05PM CST

ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press

RICHLAND HILLS, Texas (AP) — A North Texas man carved a large pentagram into his 6-year-old son's back Wednesday, telling a 911 dispatcher that he did it because "it's a holy day," police said.

In a matter-of-fact tone, Brent Troy Bartel told a dispatcher, "I shed some innocent blood," according to a copy of the recording of his early Wednesday morning 911 call released by Richland Hills police. After the dispatcher said, "I'm sorry?" he repeated those words, then said he inscribed a pentagram on his son. When the dispatcher asked why, Bartel said, "because it's a holy day" before hanging up.

At the family's modest one-story home in the Fort Worth suburb, some neighbors said they were shocked that Bartel was accused of injuring his son but that they didn't know the private family well. Smeared blood could be seen on the front door frame, put there by Bartel, Richland Hills police said.

It's unclear what Bartel meant about the day or why he used a pentagram, a five-sided star that's a symbol for many pagan groups.

Wednesday's date is 12-12-12, a once-in-a-century event. The Mayan calendar's end is Dec. 21, 2012, or 12-21-12, said to portend the end of the world, but some have interpreted that as 12-12-12. Also, Catholics celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.

Bartel, 39, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and was jailed in lieu of $500,000 bond. He did not yet have an attorney, police Sgt. Nathan Stringer said.

Richland Hills officers found the child with his back almost entirely covered with a large pentagram. The wounds bled a lot but were not deep enough to require stitches, Stringer said. The boy was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

Police also recovered a box cutter they believe was used to cut the boy, he said.

Police plan to order a mental evaluation for Bartel, which will not affect the charges against him but will determine if he should be placed in a mental health unit in jail.

His mother, Lori Ponce, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that her son does not have a history of mental illness but has recently been under a lot of stress.

"Brent is not a demon. ... He loves that boy," Ponce said. "Something happened. Don't paint him as some crazy man. No, that's not him."

His stepfather told the newspaper that Bartel was "deep into the Old Testament" and may have convoluted some biblical references about Passover, a weeklong Jewish commemoration of the deliverance of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt that occurs in March or April.

"If you know about the Old Testament, there's the Passover marks on the door frame (that) were done with a sacrificial lamb, definitely not sacrificial children," John Ponce said.

As officers were headed to the scene after Bartel's chilling call, a neighbor also called 911, saying a woman was outside her door and telling her something was going on at her house. The child's mother could be heard on the recording saying, "He's trying to hurt my 6-year-old" and "Please hurry! Oh, God!"

When the dispatcher talked to the boy's mother directly and asked whether her husband had weapons, she said she had taken one knife but there were a lot of knives in the house.

Richland Hills police have responded to a few domestic calls involving verbal arguments at the home in the past four or five years, Stringer said.

A New Noah?

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Published - Dec 10 2012  UP

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Johan Huibers poses with a stuffed tiger in front of the full scale replica of Noah’s Ark after being asked by a photographer to go outside with the animal in Dordrecht, Netherlands, Monday Dec. 10, 2012. The Ark has opened its doors in the Netherlands after receiving permission to receive up to 3,000 visitors per day. For those who don’t know or remember the Biblical story, God ordered Noah to build a boat massive enough to save animals and humanity while God destroyed the rest of the earth in an enormous flood. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Since Huibers finished the project there has been no rain anywhere near where the arc is currently berthed.  Critics of Huibers and his arc have pointed out that it is not large enough to hold two examples of every species on earth.  A Central American group has pressured Huibers not to include mosquitos.  Others oppose the inclusion of the common roach.  There also is the issue of endangered species and the ethnicity and race of Huibers and other members of his party.

Stressed-out Monkey in Toronto IKEA Store

Published - Dec 10 2012 11:45AM CST

Associated Press

TORONTO (AP) — Shoppers at an Ikea store in Toronto weren't monkeying around when they reported a primate on the loose.

Customers spotted a monkey — clad in a pint-sized shearling coat — wandering around the store's parking lot Sunday afternoon. The baby monkey, named Darwin, made its way through rows of parked cars and ended up outside a set of store doors.

Ikea staff lured the primate into a corner before calling police, who contacted the city's Animal Services department, said Staff Sgt. Ed Dzingala.

"It was just outside the store, just in a corner area where the monkey had nowhere to go, but it was pretty scared," Dzingala said. He said the monkey had escaped its crate in a parked car.

The monkey, which reportedly wore a diaper as well, never made it inside the store and was picked up by Animal Services officers within half an hour. The animal's owner later contacted police and was reunited with the pet, Dzingala said.

Word of the incident sparked a flurry of comments and photos on Twitter, as well as two parody Twitter accounts which took on the persona of the wandering monkey.

Mary Lou Leiher from Toronto Animal Services said the monkey's owners have been fined $240 for breaking the city's prohibited-animal bylaw. She said Darwin was being fed and cared for while officials tried to find an animal sanctuary for it.

Leiher said there's a chance the monkey is carrying Herpes B and that having it live in a city puts both the animal and human beings at risk.

She said the monkey was very quiet and lacked signs of personality during a brief visit, adding that can be a sign of stress.

STRANGE LAWS

In Bozeman, Montana it is illegal to have sex in front of your home naked.  At the very least you must wear socks.

Weird serial killer boasts about killings

 Dec 07 2012 

MARK THIESSEN, Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Investigators who spent hours interviewing an Alaska serial killer say he may have murdered close to a dozen people, and that he killed for pleasure and was only conflicted about how his notoriety would affect his loved ones.
Israel Keyes confessed to killing eight people across the country before he committed suicide last weekend in an Anchorage jail, but FBI and Anchorage police investigators said Friday they think he may have had up to three additional victims.

"Based on some of the things he told us, and some of the conversations we had with him, we believe the number is less than 12," FBI Special Agent Jolene Goeden said. "We don't know for sure. He's the only who could have ultimately answered that."
Keyes slit his wrist and strangled himself with bedding Sunday at the Anchorage Correctional Facility. He was facing federal murder charges in the kidnapping and death of an 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand Feb. 1.
Goeden and Anchorage Police officer Jeff Bell conducted up to 40 hours of interviews with Keyes after his March arrest in Texas. During that time, Keyes confessed to killing Koenig, along with Bill and Lorraine Currier in Vermont, and five other people — although details for those victims were scarce.
The interviews also revealed Keyes' motivation, which was simple, Goeden and Bell told The Associated Press.
"He enjoyed it. He liked what he was doing," Goeden said. "He talked about getting a rush out of it, the adrenalin, the excitement out of it."
Keyes also liked seeing coverage of his crimes in the media, and he appeared to get a thrill out of talking about some of them with investigators, Goeden and Bell said.
His crimes started small with burglaries and thefts — until the urge escalated to murder.
Bell said Keyes told investigators the first violent crime he committed was a sexual assault in Oregon, in which he let the victim go.
"He planned on killing her but didn't," Bell said.
Keyes said the rape occurred sometime between 1996 and 1998 along the Deshutes River near Maupin, Ore., after he got the girl away from her friends. The girl was between the ages of 14 and 18, and would be in her late 20s or 30s now. No police reports were filed, and the FBI is seeking more information on the crime.
Of the five other murders Keyes confessed to, four were in Washington state and one occurred on the East Coast, with the body disposed of in New York.
In the case of the Curriers, authorities say Keyes flew from Alaska to Chicago on June 2, 2011, rented a car and drove almost 1,000 miles to Essex, Vt.
There, he carried out a "blitz" style attack on the Curriers' home, bound the couple and took them to an abandoned house. Bill Currier was shot, and his wife was sexually assaulted and strangled.
Keyes immediately returned to Alaska, and followed the case on his computer by monitoring Vermont media. The couple's bodies were never found after the house was demolished and taken to a landfill.
Leaving the area shortly after a murder was a familiar tactic for Keyes. After he abducted Koenig, he took her to a shed at his Anchorage home, sexually assaulted her and strangled her.
Keyes then left the next day for a two-week cruise, storing Koenig's body in the shed. Upon his return, he dismembered the body and disposed of it in a lake north of Anchorage. He was later arrested in Texas after using Koenig's debit card.
Koenig was his only known victim in Alaska. Goeden and Bell said he never explained why his broke his own rule of never killing anyone in the town where he lived because it's easier to be connected to such a killing.
The only mistake Keyes said he made was letting his rental car be photographed by an ATM when withdrawing money in Texas.
Unlike his earlier killings, the deaths of the Curriers and Koenig received a lot of news coverage.
"He was feeding off the media attention in the end," Bell said.
That wasn't the only change. His time between murders was growing shorter.
"He talked about that time period in between crimes, that over the last few years, that became quicker," Goeden said.
During their interviews, Keyes was willing to talk about the Koenig and Currier killings since he knew authorities had evidence against him.
"It was chilling to listen to him. He was clearly reliving it to a degree, and I think he enjoyed talking about it," Bell said of the Koenig and Currier deaths. But in the other cases, Keyes wasn't as forthcoming because he knew investigators had little on them.
Keyes, a construction contractor, told investigators that they knew him better than anyone, and that this was the first time he'd ever spoken about what he called his double life.
"A couple of times, he would kind of chuckle, tell us how weird it was to be talking about this," Bell said.
Even though he was talking to investigators, Keyes didn't want his name made public in any of the other investigations, especially the Curriers, because of the fallout of publicity. He threatened to withhold information if his name got out
"If there was nobody else that he was concerned about, I think he wanted his story out there. He wanted people to know what he did," Goeden said. "What he was worried about is the impact that was going to have on the people that cared about him and were close to him."

Keyes will be buried Sunday in Washington state. His mother and four of his nine siblings were traveling to the funeral, his mother's pastor, Jacob Gardner, told the Anchorage Daily News.

Pre-frozen death weapon

Gun Found in Grocery Store Meat (00:33)

Dec. 7 

A worker unwrapping frozen meat at an Albertsons store in Roswell, NM found a handgun and ammunition packed with it. The semi-automatic Rock Island Armory .38 Super along with seven rounds of ammo found with it is now with police. Police speculated the gun may have been "hot" and its owner sought to cool it off.

Sex Slavery in Rural Missouri

Published - Dec 06 2012 

BILL DRAPER, Associated Press

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In this photo provided Sept. 10, 2010, by the LaClede County, Mo., sheriff's office is Edward Bagley Sr., 43, of Lebanon, Mo. Bagley is one of five Missouri men accused of taking part in the sexual torture of a young woman allegedly kept as a sex slave by one of the men. (AP Photo/LaClede County Sheriff' Office)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A woman accused with her husband of forcing a teenage girl to be a sex slave for years in their mobile home pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge in a deal contingent on her being sentenced to probation.

Marilyn Bagley, 47, admitted that she helped groom the girl to be her husband's sex slave after the teen moved into the couple's trailer in February 2003 in southwest Missouri. She began living there intermittently the year before.

Bagley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in exchange for prosecutors dropping all other charges against her and recommending that she serve only probation. If the judge rejects the recommendation, she can plead not guilty again and go to trial. There was no indication of when the judge might rule on the matter.

Prosecutors said the girl was a mentally deficient runaway who was recruited at the age of 16. Bagley said the girl moved in when she was 17 and never had sex with her husband until after she turned 18.

Thursday's hearing was not announced beforehand and came as a surprise to the attorney for Bagley's husband, Ed Bagley, who is scheduled to stand trial in February. Susan Dill said she was disappointed that nobody told her about the hearing and questioned why it was kept so hushed.

"I really question why this was done in secret, and I wasn't given notice as I would be normally," said Dill, who declined to speculate about how the Marilyn Bagley's plea deal might affect her husband's case.

Three men — James Noel, Michael Stokes and Dennis Henry — have pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and are awaiting sentencing. A fourth man, Bradley Cook, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and is expected to be sentenced to 20 years as part of his deal with prosecutors.

In their plea agreements, all four admitted going to the Bagley home to watch or take part in the sexual torture of the girl in exchange for money, cigarettes and other items.

Ed Bagley, 45, is charged with 11 federal counts, including conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and forced labor trafficking. If convicted of the most serious charges, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors declined to comment about the plea because Ed Bagley's case is still pending. Don Ledford, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, declined to say why Thursday's hearing was kept quiet.

"It's unusual for a plea hearing to be held that hasn't been previously announced on the court docket, but it does happen," he said. "I wouldn't go so far as to say it's rare."

Marilyn Bagley's attorney, P.J. O'Connor, also declined to comment about the plea deal, in which prosecutors agreed to drop charges of sex trafficking, forced labor trafficking, document servitude and use of an interstate facility to facilitate unlawful activity against his client.

Prosecutors said the couple promised the girl, who grew up in foster care homes, "a great life" in which they would help her become a model and dancer and make her "dreams come true."

Federal authorities began investigating the couple in February 2009 after the victim was taken to a hospital in cardiac arrest, which prosecutors said happened while she was being suffocated and electrocuted during a torture session.

Marilyn Bagley told The Associated Press last year that the victim collapsed while getting ready for work, not while being tortured. The couple had claimed the sex acts, including some the government characterized as torture, were consensual as part of their bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism lifestyle, in which they said the young woman was a voluntary participant.