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Tag: parole

  • ‘That man is a monster,’ California serial child molester granted parole. Victims are outraged

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    A Sacramento man once described by a judge as “the monster parents fear the most” seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation in 1999.

    Instead he is now set to go free after being granted elderly parole — much to the anger and horror of some of his victims, as well as the prosecutor who oversaw his case.

    “He shouldn’t be breathing the same air that we’re breathing at all,” one victim, who was kidnapped and assaulted when she was just 4 years old, told The Times in an interview. “I disagree with him getting paroled out because he’s a horrible person. That man is a monster.”

    David Allen Funston approached children playing outside their homes in the Sacramento suburbs and used candy and toys to lure them into his vehicle in 1995 and 1996, prosecutors said.

    Following his conviction, he was sentenced to 20 years and 8 months in prison, as well as three consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. Now 64, he is incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.

    Under California’s elderly parole program, inmates are generally eligible for a parole suitability hearing if they are over 50 years old and have been incarcerated for at least 20 continuous years. The individual can then be released if the parole board determines they do not pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.

    Funston was initially denied elderly parole in a May 2022 hearing, according to records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. However, he was granted parole at a board hearing in September, and that decision was recently upheld in a review Wednesday by the full board, CDCR records show.

    CDCR did not respond to a request for comment Friday on Funston’s estimated release date or on the Board of Parole Hearings’ rationale for deeming him suitable for elderly parole.

    But those involved in Funston’s case struggle to understand how the program’s criteria could apply to him.

    “A lot of people get out of prison and I don’t scream about it, but this is one I’m screaming about,” said former Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, who prosecuted the case against Funston while serving as a deputy district attorney.

    Funston used a Barbie doll to lure the victim who spoke with The Times into his vehicle in Foothill Farms in 1995. He then took her to a house, bathed with her, put her on a bed, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she told her family, prosecutors said. He performed multiple sex acts on her, causing her to bleed.

    “He’s one sick individual,” the victim said. “What if he gets out and and tries to find his old victims and wants to kill us?”

    The Times generally does not name victims of sexual assault.

    Schubert used DNA evidence found on one of the victims to help prove that Funston had kidnapped and abused her. Schubert later rose to prominence for her role in the case against Joseph James DeAngelo — also known as the Golden State Killer — where she pioneered the use of DNA evidence in securing cold case convictions.

    Although the DeAngelo case attracted national attention, Funston’s always loomed large in her mind.

    “It was the worst child sexual predator [case] I’ve ever prosecuted, hands down,” she said.

    Eight children — seven girls and one boy, all of whom were under the age of 7 when they were victimized — testified in the case against Funston, according to reporting from the Sacramento Bee. Before these offenses, he had also been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Colorado.

    In one incident in 1995, prosecutors said Funston used candy to lure a 5-year-old girl into his car in Highland Hills, took her up into the hills and assaulted her.

    “He beat her. He took her underwear and shoved it down her throat because she was screaming. He then raped her to the point that she has vaginal trauma,” Schubert said.

    Afterward, Schubert said, he dumped the girl on the side of Highway 50, where she was found crying and walking barefoot.

    In November 1995, Funston took a 5-year-old boy into some bushes pulled down his pants, and orally copulated him, prosecutors said. Four days later, he kidnapped two sisters, ages 4 and 5, from outside their grandmother’s apartment by offering them candy and a ride home. A woman witnessed the girls getting in his car and called the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.

    “He dropped us off after driving us a few hundred feet and we got out of the car, went home and there was already a sheriff questioning my mom,” one of the sisters told The Times. “We were the lucky ones. There were other victims who were not so lucky.”

    That victim said she believes granting Funston elderly parole is “a huge disservice to all Californians,” saying that his sexual attraction to young children is “an illness that doesn’t go away.”

    Schubert sent a letter to CDCR on Friday asking that Funston be referred for screening as a sexually violent predator. Under California’s sexually violent predator program, offenders who are eligible to be released from state prison can be civilly committed to a state hospital and prevented from being released into the public.

    “The pattern of behavior demonstrates predatory intent, multiple victims, use of force, threats of lethal violence, and sexual offenses against prepubescent children,” she wrote, “precisely the category of offender for whom the SVP Act was enacted.”

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    Clara Harter

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  • Colorado to pay $245,000 to Muslim man forced to shave beard in prison

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    Colorado will pay $245,000 to a Muslim man who was forced to shave his beard in prison in violation of his religious beliefs, court records show.

    Tajuddin Ashaheed brought the lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections nearly a decade ago, after he was forced to shave his beard as he entered prison for a parole violation in July 2016.

    A correctional officer forced Ashaheed to shave during the intake process, even though Ashaheed told the officer he was a Muslim and that shaving his beard would violate a core tenet of his faith, according to the lawsuit.

    The officer told Ashaheed that if he did not shave his beard, he would be disciplined and placed in solitary confinement, according to the lawsuit. Ashaheed shaved when faced with that threat.

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  • Crews rescue dog from frozen creek in Maryland

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    I’M KATE AMARA WBAL TV 11 NEWS. THANK YOU. A CHOCOLATE LAB IS RECOVERING AFTER A BITTER COLD BRUSH WITH DANGER EARLY THIS MORNING. THIS LAB NAMED GIZMO GOT STUCK ON A FROZEN CREEK FOR ABOUT AN HOUR AFTER HE SLID DOWN A HILL WHILE GOING FOR HIS MORNING POTTY BREAK. FIRST RESPONDERS WERE ABLE TO GET GIZMO BACK ON LAND BY USING A SPECIALIZED BASKET. THEY SAY HE WAS HYPOTHERMIC, BUT WAS ABLE TO EAT AND GOT TREATED IN THE AMBULANCE. GIZMO WA

    Crews were called to a frozen creek in Maryland to help rescue a dog that was trapped on the ice. According to the Anne Arundel County Fire Department, Monday morning, crews from their department, along with the Annapolis Fire Department, were called to Luce Creek for a reported chocolate lab stuck on the ice in Parole, Maryland, which is outside Annapolis and is around 27 miles from Baltimore.Crews arrived at the area and were able to locate the dog. They carefully went on the ice and used a Stokes basket in order to rescue the dog. Officials remind the public that the ice on area waterways is dangerously thin. Stay off the ice and if a person or pet falls through the ice, do not attempt a rescue on their own.

    Crews were called to a frozen creek in Maryland to help rescue a dog that was trapped on the ice.

    According to the Anne Arundel County Fire Department, Monday morning, crews from their department, along with the Annapolis Fire Department, were called to Luce Creek for a reported chocolate lab stuck on the ice in Parole, Maryland, which is outside Annapolis and is around 27 miles from Baltimore.

    Crews arrived at the area and were able to locate the dog. They carefully went on the ice and used a Stokes basket in order to rescue the dog. Officials remind the public that the ice on area waterways is dangerously thin. Stay off the ice and if a person or pet falls through the ice, do not attempt a rescue on their own.

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  • Gov. Jared Polis stops releasing prisoners who’ve spent decades behind bars for youthful crime

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    Gov. Jared Polis unilaterally stalled a specialized prison program aimed at rehabilitating and releasing people who have served decades behind bars for crimes they committed as juveniles and young adults, The Denver Post found.

    Polis has not approved any of the program’s graduates for early release since 2023 — an about-face from the prior three years, during which the governor approved releases for all 17 such prisoners, according to records kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections.

    The governor’s inaction has created a backlog of 11 prisoners who have completed the three-year program and have gone before the Colorado State Parole Board but are nevertheless still incarcerated, waiting for Polis to sign off on their freedom.

    “The uncertainty of the situation is one of the scariest things I have ever gone through, because it pertains to the emotion of hope,” said prisoner Rory Atkins, 55, who was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for a murder he committed in 1988, when he was 18. “Many of us with long sentences in prison kind of accept that hope is painful. You learn to be fearful of having high hopes.”

    Colorado lawmakers created the Juveniles and Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program, or JYACAP, in 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court found that children are constitutionally different from adults and should not be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lawmakers that year also changed Colorado law to prohibit such punishment.

    Initially limited to juveniles, the program was expanded in 2021 to include prisoners who committed a crime when they were 20 or younger and who have served at least 20 years of their sentence. The prisoners must also meet a variety of other conditions to enter the three-year program, which focuses on building life skills and preparing for life outside of prison.

    After prisoners finish the program, the governor — after receiving a recommendation from the parole board — must give the final approval for them to be released on early parole.

    “For whatever reason, there was this dollop of mercy that was required (in the law),” said Ann Roan, a retired attorney who represented a program participant. “And for years it has worked well. … So to have the brakes put on it so suddenly, with no explanation whatsoever, has really upended everyone’s justified expectations.”

    Shelby Wieman, a spokeswoman for Polis, said in a statement that the prisoners’ applications are still under review, that the governor “takes these decisions very seriously” and that the serious nature of prisoners’ crimes requires “careful deliberation.”

    “The governor’s office has also previously expressed discomfort with the governor’s role in the process, and proposed legislative changes to this program in the past, which the legislature declined to address,” Wieman said, apparently referring to a failed 2024 bill that would have cut the governor out of the process and shifted full authority for early releases to the parole board.

    “We look forward to continuing to explore potential improvements with legislators and stakeholders,” Wieman said.

    She did not answer questions about what changed from the program’s first few years, when Polis routinely approved graduates’ releases.

    ‘Like we are being just dropped’

    The governor’s inaction comes as he considers whether to commute the sentence for Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk serving a nine-year prison sentence for crimes related to unauthorized access to state voting machines, and as he did not issue end-of-year pardons and sentence commutations for the first time in his tenure.

    The state’s prisons are also nearly at capacity and are projected to run out of beds in the coming months.

    “We feel like we are being just dropped,” said Rose Martinez, who is waiting for the release of her cousin, Daniel Reyes, 56. He is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for a 1987 homicide he committed during a robbery when he was 18.

    Martinez has, over the last decade, watched her cousin yearn for release as his 2027 parole eligibility date has drawn closer.

    “I’ll never forget the day he told me, ‘I can’t wait until I can be outside of these walls and I can actually lean up against a tree,’” she said. “That was probably five years ago.”

    Reyes has been waiting for the governor’s sign-off since April, he said. Atkins’ wait began in July, when the parole board recommended his release, he said. Others in the program, like Raymond Gone, who killed a Denver police officer in 1995 when he was 16, have been waiting on the governor for more than a year, he said.

    “What would I say to the critics who say the crime I was convicted of was so serious that I should finish my entire sentence? Honestly, I would agree with them, if all I knew was that I was convicted of such a horrible crime,” said Gone, now 47. “…I know I am responsible, I am the cause, for an unfathomable amount of trauma in so many people’s lives. There isn’t any amount of time I could spend in this place to make up for what I did.

    “But the opportunity I have been given through JYACAP was only made available to me because of a Supreme Court ruling… someone way above me decided that my life was worth saving and should be given a second chance.”

    Since 2017, 112 prisoners have applied to participate in the JYACAP program; 44 were accepted, according to the Department of Corrections. Prisoners were denied for poor behavior in prison, the nature of the crimes they committed, and for not meeting the program’s basic eligibility requirements.

    Last year, 40-year-old Raul Gomez-Garcia, who killed a Denver police officer in 2005 when he was 19, was denied entry to the program after his application stirred outrage within the slain officer’s family and the police department.

    None of the 17 people released after completing the program have had their parole revoked, said Alondra Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections. One participant had “subsequent involvement with the criminal justice system,” she said, but it did not prompt parole revocation. She did not answer follow-up questions about that participant.

    “Nobody reoffends, because they’ve grown up,” said Roan, who previously represented Gone. “…Every one of us at some point has been 16, and a lot of us who have children have watched what it is to be 16 from that perspective, and I don’t think anyone would say that is who you are for the rest of your life.”

    ‘A program that he signed into law’

    Phillip “Mike” Montoya went into the JYACAP program after he’d spent 26 years behind bars. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison after he participated in a 1993 gang shooting as a 16-year-old, although he did not actually fire the fatal shot.

    He found the program to be too basic at times, with tedious instruction on very basic tasks like how to brush your teeth or how to use a spatula. The curriculum wasn’t tailored to each individual, he noted.

    “If you go inside the prison at 16 years old and maybe you never done anything in your life prior, like cook for yourself, do your own laundry, go to a grocery store and buy your own food, then maybe you are going to need a lot more assistance,” he said. “But for someone like me, I pretty much had to raise myself. I had to raise my brother and sisters. So going into prison, even though I went in at such a young age, I had a lot of knowledge of the world.”

    Still, he is quick to praise the program’s pathway to release and the second chance it gives people who have been imprisoned since they were teenagers. Montoya has been working as a barber since he got out in August 2023, about three years before his parole eligibility date. He ultimately served 30 years and two days.

    He’s tried to advocate for the program’s other participants, he said, seeking out meetings with officials and stakeholders.

    “The response has always been the same, that (Polis) doesn’t want to deal with it for political reasons,” he said. “…We’re talking about a program that he signed into law that he doesn’t believe in now.”

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  • Trump administration ends family-reunification parole program for Cubans and Haitians

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    Residents of El Cobre, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, ride in a horse-pulled cart past downed power lines following the passage of Hurricane Melissa, on October 29, 2025. Hurricane Melissa was moving towards Bermuda on Thursday after ripping a path of destruction through the Caribbean that left at least 20 people dead in Haiti, and parts of Jamaica and Cuba in ruins. (

    Residents of El Cobre, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, ride in a horse-pulled cart past downed power lines following the passage of Hurricane Melissa, on October 29, 2025. Hurricane Melissa was moving towards Bermuda on Thursday after ripping a path of destruction through the Caribbean that left at least 20 people dead in Haiti, and parts of Jamaica and Cuba in ruins. (


    YAMIL LAGE

    AFP via Getty Images

    The Trump administration is ending the family-reunification parole programs for Cuba, Haiti and six other Latin American countries in another blow to legal migration from the region.

    The Department of Homeland Security “is terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs for aliens from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras, and their immediate family members,” the agency said Friday.

    Migrants who benefited from the program and are already in the United States will lose their legal status on Jan. 14 unless they have applied for permanent residence or to adjust their status by Dec. 15, DHS said. The agency will also revoke employment authorizations for migrants who lose their status.

    DHS justified the decision by arguing that family-reunification parole programs “had security gaps caused by insufficient vetting that malicious and fraudulent actors could exploit to enter the United States, which posed an unacceptable level of risk to the United States….. DHS is prioritizing the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”

    It is unclear, however, which security gaps the agency is referring to. Individuals granted parole under the family-reunification programs have already passed the vetting for a regular immigration visa and have been approved for one. The parole just allowed them to travel to the United States and wait here while the visa became available.

    “These people were invited to come to the U.S. by the government and followed all of the regulations, and now they are being pushed out,” said Miami immigration attorney Patricia Elizée.

    The original parole programs were put in place to expedite family reunification for Cubans and Haitians. Under the program, relatives of lawful U.S. permanent residents or citizens, who are already approved to immigrate to the United States, are offered the opportunity to travel to the U.S. and wait for permanent residency here rather than in their home country. The wait can take anywhere from eight to 10 years.

    It was unclear Friday evening how many people will be affected by the administration’s decision.

    The family-reunification parole process has suffered from backlogs and, in the case of Haiti, shuttered U.S. consular services in the Caribbean country. Even after arriving in the U.S., individuals benefiting from the program face a long wait before receiving their green cards. Those are the individuals the Trump administration is targeting with the new policy, while also closing the door on those still awaiting U.S. green light in their home countries.

    The parole programs for Cubans and Haitians were suspended during the first Trump administration. They were reinstated by Biden, who later expanded them to include Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an effort to decrease the number of migrants from those countries trying to illegally cross the U.S. border.

    The programs’ termination is another sign that the Trump administration does not welcome legal immigration from countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. Earlier this month, the administration halted all immigration processes, including adjustment of status, for Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans and nationals of 13 other countries.

    Ira Kurzban, a prominent Miami-based immigration attorney, said that Trump and his immigration czar, Stephen Miller, have “long planned the end of parole programs that protect the lives of many in the United States.”

    “They stopped the parole programs during the first Miller/Trump administration. The only difference is that they are getting more adept at blaming Biden for everything. This decision, made during the first Miller/Trump administration, truly has nothing to do with Biden or what happened at the border. They just don’t want Hispanics and refugees of color in the United States,” he said. ”Trump virtually admitted it at [a] rally in Pennsylvania.”

    Already, families split between South Florida, Cuba, and Haiti have found themselves in legal limbo and with very few options to reunite. Trump included Cuba and Haiti in a travel ban in June that paused family reunification involving relatives of permanent residents. And thousands of Cubans and Haitians who entered the country through another two-year humanitarian parole program created under Biden face deportation after DHS canceled the program and revoked their paroles.

    Melodie, a Haitian national who asked for her last name to not be used, told the Miami Herald she has been waiting almost a decade to join her mother and siblings in the United States after her mother applied for permanent residency for her. In 2021, she received a letter notifying her she had been “technically approved.”

    “Since then, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity for an interview in Haiti,” she said about one of the final hurdles needed before being allowed to travel to the United States to complete the process. “There’s a long wait for the residents’ interviews.”

    Though she periodically checks her status online, she said, she began losing hope in November 2024 when she saw that Trump had won the election. This was further cemented when he instituted a travel ban for Haiti.

    “I’ve just sort of been telling myself…I’m among the lucky few. I have good work in Haiti. I live in Cap-Haïtien with family, and I’m committed to living here,” she said. ”I didn’t sell my house like other people did, and pack up everything, so I minimized my risks, and I didn’t quit my job.”

    Still, the idea of possibly being shut off from the U.S. while living in a country on the brink of collapse is daunting, said the 41-year-old who had basically put her life on hold after moving from gang-torn Port-au-Prince. “I was moving to the States because that’s where my family is.”

    The DHS called the termination “a necessary return to common-sense policies and a return to America First.”

    This story was originally published December 12, 2025 at 6:21 PM.

    Nora Gámez Torres

    el Nuevo Herald

    Nora Gámez Torres is the Cuba/U.S.-Latin American policy reporter for el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald. She studied journalism and media and communications in Havana and London. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from City, University of London. Her work has won awards by the Florida Society of News Editors and the Society for Professional Journalists.//Nora Gámez Torres estudió periodismo y comunicación en La Habana y Londres. Tiene un doctorado en sociología y desde el 2014 cubre temas cubanos para el Nuevo Herald y el Miami Herald. También reporta sobre la política de Estados Unidos hacia América Latina. Su trabajo ha sido reconocido con premios de Florida Society of News Editors y Society for Profesional Journalists.

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    Nora Gámez Torres,Jacqueline Charles

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  • Police chases in Aurora skyrocket after policy change, injuries more than quintuple

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    Police chases increased tenfold in the six months after Chief Todd Chamberlain broadened the Aurora Police Department’s policy to allow officers to pursue stolen vehicles and suspected drunk drivers, a move that made Aurora one of the most permissive large police agencies along the Front Range.

    Aurora officers carried out more chases in the six months after the policy change than in the last five years combined, according to data provided by the police department in response to open records requests from The Denver Post.

    The city’s officers conducted 148 pursuits between March 6 — the day after the policy change — and Sept. 2, the data shows. That’s up from just 14 police chases in that same timeframe in 2024, and well above Aurora officers’ 126 chases across five years between 2020 and 2024.

    The number of people injured in pursuits more than quintupled, with about one in five chases resulting in injury after the policy change, the data shows. That 20% injury rate is lower than the rate over the last five years, when the agency saw 25% of pursuits end with injury.

    Chamberlain, who declined to speak with The Post for this story, has heralded the department’s new approach to pursuits as an important tool for curbing crime. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman believes the change has already had a “dramatic impact” on crime in the city.

    However, the effect of the increased pursuits on overall crime trends is difficult to gauge, with crime generally declining across the state, including in Denver, which has a more restrictive policy and many fewer police pursuits.

    “You throw a big net out there, occasionally you do catch a few big fish,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “But you also end up with the pursuit policy causing more accidents and injuries.”

    More people died in police chases in this Denver suburb than in the state’s biggest cities

    Impact of Aurora’s pursuits

    Eighty-seven people were arrested across more than 100 pursuits in Aurora between April and August, according to an Oct. 15 report by the independent monitor overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Aurora Police Department.

    Of those 87 arrestees, 67 had a criminal history, 25 were wanted on active warrants, 18 were on probation and seven were on parole, the monitor found.

    “What we find is that people who steal cars, it’s not a joyriding thing, it’s not a one-off, they tend to be career criminals who use these vehicles to commit other crimes,” Coffman said. “There seems to be a pattern that when we do apprehend a car thief, they tend to have warrants out for their arrest, and we do see the pattern of stealing vehicles to commit other crimes. So we are really catching repeat offenders when we apprehend the driver and/or passengers.”

    The soaring number of pursuits was largely driven by stolen vehicle chases, which accounted for 103 of the 148 pursuits since the policy change, the data shows.

    Auto theft in Aurora dropped 42% year-over-year between January and September, continuing a downward trend that began in 2023. In Denver, where officers do not chase stolen vehicles, auto theft has declined 36% so far in 2025 compared to 2024.

    Denver police officers conducted just nine pursuits between March 6 and Sept. 2, and just 16 so far in 2025, data from the department shows. Four suspects and one officer were injured across those 16 chases.

    “I think there are broader societal factors at work,” Nix said of the decline in crime, which has been seen across the nation and follows a dramatic pandemic-era spike. “When something goes up, it is bound to come down pretty drastically.”

    Aurora officers apprehended fleeing drivers in 53% of all pursuits, and in 51% of pursuits for stolen vehicles between March and September, the police data shows.

    Coffman said that shows officers and their supervisors are judiciously calling off pursuits that become too dangerous. He also noted that every pursuit is carefully reviewed by the police chain of command and called the new policy a “work in progress.”

    “I get that it is not without controversy,” Coffman said. “There wouldn’t be the collateral accidents if not for the policy. So it is a tradeoff. It is not an easy decision and it is going to always be in flux.”

    Thirty-three people were injured in Aurora police chases between March 6 and Sept. 2, up from six injured in that time frame last year. Those hurt included 24 suspects, five officers and four drivers in other vehicles.

    One bystander and one suspect were seriously injured, according to the police data.

    The independent monitor noted in its October report that it was “generally pleased” with officers’ judgments during pursuits, supervisors’ actions and the post-pursuit administrative review process, with “two notable exceptions” that have been “elevated for additional review and potential disciplinary action.”

    The monitor also flagged an increase in failed Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT, maneuvers during pursuits, which it attributed to officer inexperience. The group recommended more training on the maneuvers, which are designed to end pursuits, and renewed its call for the department to install dash cameras in its patrol cars, which the agency has not done.

    “It sounds reasonable,” Coffman said of the dash camera recommendation. “They are not cheap and we need to budget for it.”

    ‘No magic number’

    It’s up to city leadership to determine if the benefits of police chases outweigh the predictable harms, and there is no “magic number,” Nix said.

    “When you chase that much, bad outcomes are going to happen,” he said. “People are going to get hurt, sometimes innocent third parties that have nothing to do with the chase. You know that is going to be a collateral consequence of doing that many chases. So knowing that, you should really be able to point to the community safety benefit that doing this many chases bring.”

    The majority of large Front Range law enforcement agencies limit pursuits to situations in which the driver is suspected of a violent felony or poses an immediate risk of injury or death to others if not quickly apprehended.

    Among 18 law enforcement agencies reviewed by The Post this spring, only Aurora and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office explicitly allow pursuits of suspected drunk drivers. The sheriff’s office allows such pursuits only if the driver stays under the posted speed limit.

    Aurora officers pursued suspected impaired drivers 13 times between March and September, the data shows, with five chases ending in injury.

    Omar Montgomery, president of the Aurora NAACP, said he is a “cautious neutral” about the policy change, but would like Aurora police to meet with community members to explain the impact in more detail.

    “People in the community do not want people on the streets who are causing harm to other individuals and who are committing crimes that makes our city unsafe,” he said. “We want them off the streets just as bad as anyone else. We also want to make sure that innocent people who are not part of the situation are not getting harmed.”

    Topazz McBride, a community activist in Aurora, said she has been disappointed by what she sees as Chamberlain’s unwillingness to engage with community members who disagree with him.

    “Do I trust them to use the process effectively and responsibly with all fairness and equity to everyone they pursue? No. I do not trust that,” she said. “And I don’t understand why he wouldn’t be willing to talk about it. Why not?”

    Montgomery also wants police to track crashes that happen immediately after a police officer ends a pursuit, when an escaping suspect might still be speeding and driving recklessly.

    “They are still going 80 or 90 mph and they end up hitting someone or running into a building,” he said. “And now you have this person who that has caused harm, believing that they are still being chased.”

    The police department did not include the case of Rajon Belt-Stubblefield, who was shot and killed Aug. 30 by an officer after he sped away from an attempted traffic stop, among its pursuits this year. Video of the incident shows the officer followed Belt-Stubblefield’s vehicle with his lights and sirens on for just under a minute over about 7/10ths of a mile before Belt-Stubblefield crashed.

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  • Sara Jane Moore, whose attempt to assassinate President Ford shocked the nation, dies at 95

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    Sara Jane Moore, the former psychiatric patient who tried to assassinate President Ford during an era of astonishing violence and upheaval in California, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tenn.

    Moore, who retreated to North Carolina after serving 32 years in federal prison but then was jailed again late in life, was 95. News of her death was confirmed by Demetria Kalodimos, executive producer at the Nashville Banner, who developed a relationship with Moore over the last two years. A cause of death was not reported, but Kalodimos said Moore had been bedridden for about 15 months after a fall.

    As shocking as Moore’s attempt to kill the president was, it seemed a little less so during the frenetic 1970s.

    It was 1975 in San Francisco. Charles Manson was on death row, kidnap victim-turned-accomplice Patty Hearst had just been arrested, and a very young governor named Jerry Brown was in his first year in office.

    Moore chose this moment for a shocking crime in an era nearly defined by them — on Sept. 22, 1975, she tried to assassinate Ford in front of the fashionable St. Francis Hotel.

    She was the second would-be assassin to confront the 38th president in the space of a month.

    Her bullet missed, thanks to the quick reflexes of a former Marine standing next to her.

    The attempt came just 17 days after a Manson follower in a nun’s habit, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, pointed a gun at Ford in Sacramento. It was never clear whether she tried to pull the trigger.

    News accounts of the time portrayed Moore as an enigma. They emphasized her supposedly conventional past. She was described as an average housewife and mother whose conversion to radical politics seemed an unlikely twist. She herself insisted she had been a relatively normal suburbanite before joining the leftist underground.

    It wasn’t true. Moore’s entire adult life had been punctuated by mental health issues, divorces and suicide attempts. Many people who knew her described her as unstable and mercurial.

    Born Sara Jane Kahn on Feb. 15, 1930, in Charleston, W. Va., Moore had been an aspiring actress and nurse before finding work as a bookkeeper. She married five times, was estranged from her family, and abandoned three of her children. A fourth remained in her care at the time of the attempted assassination. Her erratic behavior had cost her jobs, and she had been treated for mental illness numerous times.

    This history led some, including Ford himself, to conclude that she was “off her mind,” as the former president said in a 2004 CNN interview.

    She was in her mid-40s, divorced and living in Danville, outside San Francisco, when she went to work in 1974 as a bookkeeper for People in Need. The organization had been set up to distribute food in response to ransom demands by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the extreme leftist group that had kidnapped Hearst in early 1974 and shortly after engaged in a furious gun battle with Los Angeles police, one of the longest shootouts in U.S. history.

    Moore’s ties to other radical organizations were murky. She would later cast herself as a sought-after FBI informant who had come to live in fear of some unspecified threat. Its source was either from the government or her radical brethren, depending on the interview. Authorities downplayed this, saying her occasional calls to agents and local police officers were unsolicited.

    Hearst had been arrested a few days before the assassination attempt. The day before, the 45-year-old Moore had been detained by San Francisco police officers who seized a gun from her. She made a vague threat and the Secret Service was alerted, but agents concluded she was not dangerous and released her.

    Moore immediately bought a .38 caliber revolver.

    Wearing polka-dot slacks, she went to the hotel where Ford was speaking to the World Affairs Council. She waited outside, and raised her arm to fire when the president emerged at 3:30 p.m. Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, saw the weapon and deflected her arm just as the gun went off.

    The bullet went over the president’s head, ricocheted and injured a taxi driver. The president’s security detail rushed to the airport, and Ford was whisked out of California as fast as possible.

    After her arrest, acquaintances said Moore was very concerned that people would assume she was mentally ill. She alluded often to her political motives for trying to kill Ford. Reporters eagerly interviewed her to learn more, but she never seemed able to clearly explain her political agenda.

    Her lawyers were preparing a defense related to her mental condition when she abruptly pleaded guilty, against their advice. She was given a life sentence with a possibility of parole. Moore’s attempt prompted Senate scrutiny of presidential security.

    “Am I sorry I tried?” Moore said at her sentencing. “Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life, although I realize there are those who think that’s the one good thing resulting from this. And no, I’m not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.”

    Moore made headlines briefly again in 1979 when she escaped fbriefly from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, W.Va., by climbing a 12-foot fence.

    Otherwise, her prison years were uneventful. She was reported to fill her time with needlepoint and bookkeeping duties, and was paroled in 2007 at the age of 77 from a low-security federal facility for women in Dublin, east of San Francisco. Her parole was essentially grandfathered by federal rules that have since been tightened.

    “It was a time that people don’t remember,” Moore told NBC’s “Today” show in 2009. “You know we had a war … the Vietnam War, you became, I became, immersed in it. We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that new revolution.”

    In 2015, Moore was interviewed remotely by CNN, her location only listed as North Carolina.

    Moore was jailed again in early 2019 when she was detained at JFK Airport for traveling outside the country without telling parole officials. Friends said she had become ill in Israel, forcing her to stay longer than she intended. She was released six months later.

    Moore maintained that she had not been influenced by Fromme’s assault on Ford. Fromme was paroled in 2009 and moved to upstate New York, largely disappearing. Both women were depicted in the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins,” which won a Tony Award in 2004.

    Sipple, who deflected the shot, was lauded as a hero but later sued several newspapers for invasion of privacy. He said media reports that he was gay had ruined his family relations, but he lost the case. He died in 1989.

    Subsequent attacks on public figures would eclipse Moore’s crime. Three years later, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated. John Lennon’s murder came two years after that, and John Hinckley Jr.’s shooting of President Reagan a few months later.

    Ford, who died of natural causes at age 93 in 2006, was said to be nonplussed by Moore’s attempt on his life. But other members of his entourage saw it as consistent with the place and time.

    Asked by the San Francisco Chronicle to sum up the event, Ford’s press secretary Ron Nessen, who was with him when he was targeted, framed it this way: “It was the ‘70s in San Francisco and California.”

    Leovy and Marble are former Times staff writers.

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  • Lyle Menendez denied parole, will remain in prison along with younger brother Erik

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    SACRAMENTO — A day after his younger brother was denied release, Lyle Menendez also saw California parole officials reject his bid for freedom, ruling he will remain behind bars for now for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents.

    The parole board grilled Menendez, 57, over his efforts to get witnesses to lie during his trials, the lavish shopping sprees he and his brother Erik, 54, took after their parents’ killings, and whether he felt relief after the murders.

    “I felt this shameful period of those six months of having to lie to relatives who were grieving,” Menendez told the board. “I felt the need to suffer. That it was no relief.”

    As the elder brother, Menendez said he at times felt like the protector of Erik, but that he soon realized the murders were not the right way out of sexual abuse they were allegedly suffering at the hands of their parents.

    “I sort of started to feel like I had not rescued my brother,” he said. “I destroyed his life. I’d rescued nobody.”

    The closely watched hearing for Lyle Menendez, one of the most well-known inmates currently in the state’s prison system, was thrown into disarray Friday afternoon after audio of his brother’s parole hearing on Thursday was publicly released.

    The audio, published by ABC 7, sparked anger and frustration from the brothers’ relatives and their attorney, who accused the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of leaking the audio and tainting Lyle’s hearing.

    A CDCR spokesperson confirmed the audio was “erroneously” issued in response to a records request, but did not elaborate or immediately respond to additional questions from The Times.

    “I have protected myself, I have stayed out of this, I have not had a relationship with two human beings because I was afraid, and I came here today and I came here yesterday and I trusted that this would only be released in a transcript,” said Tiffani Lucero-Pastor, a relative of the brothers. “You’ve misled the family.”

    Heidi Rummel, Lyle Menendez’s parole attorney, also criticized CDCR, accusing the agency of turning the hearing into a “spectacle.”

    “I don’t think you can possibly understand the emotion of what this family is experiencing,” she said. “They have spent so much time trying to protect their privacy and dignity.”

    After the audio was published, Rummel said family members who planned to testify decided not to speak after all, and said she would be looking to seal the transcripts of Friday’s hearing.

    Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said regulations allowed for audio to be released under the California Public Records Act. Transcripts of parole hearings typically become public within 30 days of a grant or denial, under state law.

    During his first-ever appeal to the state parole board, Lyle Menendez was questioned over his credibility.

    Garland referred to Menendez’s appeal to get witnesses to lie, plans to escape, and lies to relatives about the killings as a “sophistication of the web of lies and manipulation you demonstrated.”

    Menendez said he had no plan at the time, there was just “a lot of flailing in what was happening.”

    “Even though you fooled your entire family about you being a murderer, and you recruited all these people to help you … you don’t think that’s being a good liar?” Garland asked.

    Menendez said the remorse he felt after the crimes perhaps helped create a “strong belief” he didn’t have anything to do with the killings.

    Dmitry Gorin, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, said the board’s decision denying parole was consistent with past decisions involving violent crimes.

    “Although this is a high-profile case, the parole board rejecting the release demonstrates that it seeks to keep violent offenders locked up because they still pose a risk to society,” Gorin said. “Historically, the parole board does not release people convicted of murder, and this case is no different.

    He called the decision a win for Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who has opposed the brothers’ release.

    The brothers were initially sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the killings of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez, but after qualifying for resentencing they gained a chance at freedom.

    Many family members have supported their cause, but the gruesome crime and the brothers’ conduct behind bars led to pushback against their release.

    The killings occurred after the brothers purchased shotguns in San Diego with a false identification and shot their parents in the family living room.

    The bloody crime scene was compared by investigators to a gangland execution, where Jose Menendez was shot five times, including once in the back of the head. Evidence showed their mother had crawled, wounded, on the floor before the brothers reloaded and fired a final, fatal blast.

    The brothers reported the killings to 911, according to court records. Soon afterward, prosecutors during the trial noted, the two siblings began to spend large sums of money, including buying a Porsche and a restaurant, which was purchased by Lyle. Erik bought a Jeep and hired a private tennis instructor.

    Prosecutors argued it was access to their multimillion-dollar inheritance that prompted the killing after Jose Menendez shared that he planned to disinherit the brothers.

    But during the trials, the Menendez brothers and relatives testified that the two siblings had undergone years of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their father.

    In contrast to their frenzy around their trial, Thursday and Friday’s parole hearings were quiet — yet occasionally contentious — affairs.

    A Times journalist was the only member of the public allowed to view the hearing on a projector screen in a room inside the agency’s headquarters outside of Sacramento.

    During the Friday hearing, the parole board quickly dived into the allegations that the brothers were sexually assaulted by their father, which Lyle Menendez said confused and “caused a lot of shame in me.”

    “That pretty much characterized my relationship with my father,” he said, adding that the fear of being abused left him in a state of “hyper vigilance,” even after the abuse stopped and his father began to abuse Erik.

    “It took me a while to realize that it stopped,” Menendez said. “I think I was still worried about it for a long time.”

    Growing up, he said, taking care of his younger brother gave him purpose, and helped to protect him from “drowning in the spiral of my own life.”

    Menendez alleged his mother also sexually abused him, but said he did not share it during his comprehensive risk assessment because he “didn’t see it as abuse really.”

    “Today, I see it as sexual abuse,” he said. “When I was 13, I felt like I was consenting and my mother was dealing with a lot and I just felt like maybe it wasn’t.”

    Board members also questioned Lyle Menendez on why he didn’t mention the possibility they were removed from their parents’ will in their submissions to the board, but Menendez contended their inheritance was not a motive in the killings.

    Instead, he said, it became “a problem afterward” as they worried they would have no money after their parents’ deaths.

    “I believe there was a will that disinherited us somewhere,” he said.

    The result of Thursday’s hearing means Erik can’t seek parole again for three years, a decision that left some relatives and supporters of the younger brother stunned.

    “How is my dad a threat to society,” Talia Menendez, his stepdaughter, wrote on Instagram shortly after the decision was made. “This has been torture to our family. How much longer???”

    In a statement issued Thursday, relatives said they were disappointed by the decision and noted that going through Lyle’s hearing Friday would be “undoubtedly difficult,” although they remained “cautiously optimistic and hopeful.”

    Friends, relatives and former cellmates have touted the brothers’ lives behind bars, pointing to programs they’ve spearheaded for inmates, including classes for anger management, meditation, and helping inmates in hospice care.

    But members of the board questioned both siblings about their violation of rules, zeroing in at times about repeated use of contraband cellphones.

    During the hearing Friday, Lyle said he sometimes used cellphones to keep in touch with family outside the prison. But Deputy Parole Commissioner Patrick Reardon questioned this explanation, and asked why Menendez needed a cellphone if he could make legitimate calls from a prison-issued tablet.

    The rule violation, board members pointed out, had resulted in Menendez being barred from family visits for three years.

    Reardon pointed out that Menendez pleaded guilty to two cellphone violations in November 2024 and in March 2025. Menendez was also linked to three other violations, although another cellmate of his took responsibility for those violations.

    Menendez said the violations occurred when he lived in a dorm with five other inmates, and admitted the use of cellphones was a “gang-like activity.” The group, he said, probably went through at least five cellphones.

    Heidi Rummel, Menendez’s parole attorney, argued in her closing that despite the cellphone issues, Menendez had no violent incidents on his prison record.

    “This board is going to say you’re dangerous because you used your cellphones,” she said. “But there is zero evidence that he used it for criminality, that he used it for violence. He didn’t even lie about it.”

    But members of the board repeatedly focused on what seemed to be issues of credibility. Reardon said at times it felt like Menendez was “two different incarcerated people.”

    “You seem to be different things at different times,” Reardon said during the hearing. “I don’t think what I see is that you used a cellphone from time to time. There seems to be a mechanism in place that you always had a cellphone.”

    Garland asked Menendez about whether he used his position on the Men’s Advisory Council — a group meant to be a liaison on issues between inmates and prison administrators — to manipulate others and gain unfair benefits.

    Menendez said the position gave him access to wall phones, and used the position to help him barter or gain favors.

    Garland also pointed to an assessment that found Menendez exhibited antisocial traits, entitlement, deception, manipulation and a resistance to accept consequences.

    Menendez said he had discussed those issues, but that he didn’t agree he showed narcissistic traits.

    “They’re not the type of people like me self-referring to mental health,” he said, adding that he felt his father displayed narcissistic tendencies and lack of self-reflection. “I just felt like that wasn’t me.”

    Menendez pointed to his work to help inmates in prison who are bullied or mocked.

    “I would never call myself a model incarcerated person,” he said. “I would say that I’m a good person, that I spent my time helping people. That I’m very open and accepting.”

    The parole board applauded Menendez’s work and educational history while in prison, noting he was working on a master’s degree.

    Despite the violations, Menendez argued he felt he had done good work in prison.

    “My life has been defined by extreme violence,” he said, tears visible on his face. “I wanted to be defined by something else.”

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    James Queally, Salvador Hernandez, Richard Winton

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  • Erik Menendez Denied Freedom in His First Appeal to the California Parole Board  – LAmag

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    Photo: Courtesy California Parole Board Pool

    Erik Menendez was denied parole during his first hearing in front of the state agency on Thursday, a disappointment to his extended family that came 36 years and one day after he and his older brother Lyle killed their parents in a spurt of violence in Beverly Hills.

    “Today is the day all of my victims learned my parents were dead,” he said. “So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey,” Erik Menendez, 54, said of his extended family, many of whom were in attendance as he addressed members of the Parole Board Thursday for nearly ten hours at the hearing where more than a dozen relatives testified in favor of his release, along with his older brother Lyle. Erik participated in the hearing via video from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. 

    The younger Menendez brother was grilled for hours, asked about why he killed his mother, Kitty, when it was his father whom he had accused of barbaric sexual abuse that had started when he was a young child. Menendez said he shot his mother because she had “betrayed him” by not stopping the abuse. “I saw my mother and my father as one person after I learned that she knew, so when I was running into the den, I was in a state of terror, of panic, of rage,” he said. State Parole Board Commissioner Robert Barton heard evidence of Menendez’s rehabilitative efforts behind bars, his unflinching remorse, and noted the lack of family members pushing for him to stay behind bars. He was also sympathetic to what he says he suffered at the hands of his father. “We recognize and understand that many sexual assault victims find it hard to come forward, especially when the perpetrators are family members,” Barton said.

    Still, he wanted to know why Erik, who was 18 at the time of the crimes, didn’t just leave the home or go to the police. By the end of the long, grueling day of testimony, Barton denied Erik his freedom, saying: “You have two options: one is to have a pity party … and then you become a self-fulfilling prophecy, probably not getting granted [parole] next time. Or you can take to heart what we discussed. I hope that the people that are out there supporting you continue to motivate you.” The board said he can next be eligible for parole in three years.

    The decision was disappointing to the brothers’ family, who issued a statement: “While we respect the decision, today’s outcome was of course disappointing and not what we hoped for. But our belief in Erik remains unwavering and we know he will take the Board’s recommendation in stride. His remorse, growth, and the positive impact he’s had on others speak for themselves. We will continue to stand by him and hold to the hope he is able to return home soon,” they wrote. “Tomorrow, we turn our attention to Lyle’s hearing. And while it is undoubtedly difficult, we remain cautiously optimistic and hopeful that the commissioner will see in Lyle what so many others have: a man who has taken responsibility, transformed his life, and is ready to come home.”

    The hearing was covered by a single pool reporter from the Los Angeles Times, who provided updates to other media outlets. James Queally wrote that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation allowed him as the sole reporter to watch the hearing on a projector screen in a room inside the agency’s headquarters, just outside Sacramento.

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  • Board denies parole for Erik Menendez despite reduced sentence for his parents’ 1989 murders

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    Erik Menendez was denied parole Thursday after serving decades in prison for murdering his parents with his older brother in 1989.A panel of California commissioners denied Menendez parole for three years, after which he will be eligible again, in a case that continues to fascinate the public. A parole hearing for his brother Lyle Menendez, who is being held at the same prison in San Diego, is scheduled for Friday morning.The two commissioners determined that Menendez should not be freed after an all-day hearing during which they questioned him about why he committed the crime and violated prison rules.The brothers became eligible for parole after a judge reduced their sentences in May from life without parole to 50 years to life.The parole hearings marked the closest they’ve been to winning freedom from prison since their convictions almost 30 years ago for murdering their parents.The brothers were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. While defense attorneys argued that the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers sought a multimillion-dollar inheritance.A judge reduced their sentences in May, and they became immediately eligible for parole.Erik Menendez made his case to two parole commissioners, offering his most detailed account in years of how he was raised, why he made the choices he did, and how he transformed in prison. He noted the hearing fell almost exactly 36 years after he killed his parents — on Aug. 20, 1989.”Today is August 21st. Today is the day that all of my victims learned my parents were dead. So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey,” he said, referring to his family members.The state corrections department chose a single reporter to watch the videoconference and share details with the rest of the press.Erik Menendez’s prison recordMenendez, gray-haired and spectacled, sat in front of a computer screen wearing a blue T-shirt over a white long-sleeve shirt in a photo shared by officials.The panel of commissioners scrutinized every rules violation and fight on his lengthy prison record, including allegations that he worked with a prison gang, bought drugs, used cellphones and helped with a tax scam.He told commissioners that since he had no hope of ever getting out then, he prioritized protecting himself over following the rules. Then last fall, LA prosecutors asked a judge to resentence him and his brother — opening the door to parole.”In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” Menendez said. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”A particular sticking point for the commissioners was his use of cellphones.”What I got in terms of the phone and my connection with the outside world was far greater than the consequences of me getting caught with the phone,” Menendez said.The board also brought up his earliest encounters with the law, when he committed two burglaries in high school.”I was not raised with a moral foundation,” he said. “I was raised to lie, to cheat, to steal in the sense, an abstract way.”The panel asked about details like why he used a fake ID to purchase the guns he and Lyle Menendez used to kill their parents, who acted first and why they killed their mother if their father was the main abuser.Commissioner Robert Barton asked: “You do see that there were other choices at that point?””When I look back at the person I was then and what I believed about the world and my parents, running away was inconceivable,” Menendez said. “Running away meant death.”His transformation behind barsErik Menendez’s parole attorney, Heidi Rummel, emphasized 2013 as the turning point for her client.”He found his faith. He became accountable to his higher power. He found sobriety and made a promise to his mother on her birthday,” Rummel said. “Has he been perfect since 2013? No. But he has been remarkable.”Commissioner Rachel Stern also applauded him for starting a group to take care of older and disabled inmates.Since the brothers reunited, they have been “serious accountability partners” for each other. At the same time, he said he’s become better at setting boundaries with Lyle Menendez, and they tend to do different programming.More than a dozen of their relatives, who have advocated for the brothers’ release for months, delivered emotional statements at Thursday’s hearing via videoconference.”Seeing my crimes through my family’s eyes has been a huge part of my evolution and my growth,” Menendez said. “Just seeing the pain and the suffering. Understanding the magnitude of what I’ve done, the generational impact.”His aunt Teresita Menendez-Baralt, who is Jose Menendez’s sister, said she has fully forgiven him. She noted that she is dying from Stage 4 cancer and wishes to welcome him into her home.”Erik carries himself with kindness, integrity and strength that comes from patience and grace,” she said.One relative promised to the parole board that she would house him in Colorado, where he can spend time with his family and enjoying nature.The board brushed off prosecutor’s questionsLA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said ahead of the parole hearings that he opposes parole for the brothers because of their lack of insight, comparing them to Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom denied him parole in January 2022 because of his “deficient insight.”During the hearing, LA prosecutor Habib Balian asked Menendez about his and his brothers’ attempts to ask witnesses to lie in court on their behalf, and if the brothers staged the killings as a mafia hit. Commissioners largely dismissed the questions, saying they were not retrying the case.In closing statements, Balian questioned whether Menendez was “truly reformed” or saying what commissioners wanted to hear.”When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they’ve made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents,” Balian said.What happens nextLyle Menendez is set to appear over videoconference Friday for his parole hearing from the same prison in San Diego.The case has captured the attention of true crime enthusiasts for decades and spawned documentaries, television specials and dramatizations. The Netflix drama ” Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ” and a documentary released in 2024 have been credited for bringing new attention to the brothers.Greater recognition of the brothers as victims of sexual abuse has also helped mobilize support for their release. Some supporters have flown to Los Angeles to hold rallies and attend court hearings.

    LOS ANGELES —

    Erik Menendez was denied parole Thursday after serving decades in prison for murdering his parents with his older brother in 1989.

    A panel of California commissioners denied Menendez parole for three years, after which he will be eligible again, in a case that continues to fascinate the public. A parole hearing for his brother Lyle Menendez, who is being held at the same prison in San Diego, is scheduled for Friday morning.

    The two commissioners determined that Menendez should not be freed after an all-day hearing during which they questioned him about why he committed the crime and violated prison rules.

    The brothers became eligible for parole after a judge reduced their sentences in May from life without parole to 50 years to life.

    The parole hearings marked the closest they’ve been to winning freedom from prison since their convictions almost 30 years ago for murdering their parents.

    The brothers were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. While defense attorneys argued that the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers sought a multimillion-dollar inheritance.

    A judge reduced their sentences in May, and they became immediately eligible for parole.

    Erik Menendez made his case to two parole commissioners, offering his most detailed account in years of how he was raised, why he made the choices he did, and how he transformed in prison. He noted the hearing fell almost exactly 36 years after he killed his parents — on Aug. 20, 1989.

    “Today is August 21st. Today is the day that all of my victims learned my parents were dead. So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey,” he said, referring to his family members.

    The state corrections department chose a single reporter to watch the videoconference and share details with the rest of the press.

    Erik Menendez’s prison record

    Menendez, gray-haired and spectacled, sat in front of a computer screen wearing a blue T-shirt over a white long-sleeve shirt in a photo shared by officials.

    The panel of commissioners scrutinized every rules violation and fight on his lengthy prison record, including allegations that he worked with a prison gang, bought drugs, used cellphones and helped with a tax scam.

    He told commissioners that since he had no hope of ever getting out then, he prioritized protecting himself over following the rules. Then last fall, LA prosecutors asked a judge to resentence him and his brother — opening the door to parole.

    “In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” Menendez said. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”

    A particular sticking point for the commissioners was his use of cellphones.

    “What I got in terms of the phone and my connection with the outside world was far greater than the consequences of me getting caught with the phone,” Menendez said.

    The board also brought up his earliest encounters with the law, when he committed two burglaries in high school.

    “I was not raised with a moral foundation,” he said. “I was raised to lie, to cheat, to steal in the sense, an abstract way.”

    The panel asked about details like why he used a fake ID to purchase the guns he and Lyle Menendez used to kill their parents, who acted first and why they killed their mother if their father was the main abuser.

    Commissioner Robert Barton asked: “You do see that there were other choices at that point?”

    “When I look back at the person I was then and what I believed about the world and my parents, running away was inconceivable,” Menendez said. “Running away meant death.”

    His transformation behind bars

    Erik Menendez’s parole attorney, Heidi Rummel, emphasized 2013 as the turning point for her client.

    “He found his faith. He became accountable to his higher power. He found sobriety and made a promise to his mother on her birthday,” Rummel said. “Has he been perfect since 2013? No. But he has been remarkable.”

    Commissioner Rachel Stern also applauded him for starting a group to take care of older and disabled inmates.

    Since the brothers reunited, they have been “serious accountability partners” for each other. At the same time, he said he’s become better at setting boundaries with Lyle Menendez, and they tend to do different programming.

    More than a dozen of their relatives, who have advocated for the brothers’ release for months, delivered emotional statements at Thursday’s hearing via videoconference.

    “Seeing my crimes through my family’s eyes has been a huge part of my evolution and my growth,” Menendez said. “Just seeing the pain and the suffering. Understanding the magnitude of what I’ve done, the generational impact.”

    His aunt Teresita Menendez-Baralt, who is Jose Menendez’s sister, said she has fully forgiven him. She noted that she is dying from Stage 4 cancer and wishes to welcome him into her home.

    “Erik carries himself with kindness, integrity and strength that comes from patience and grace,” she said.

    One relative promised to the parole board that she would house him in Colorado, where he can spend time with his family and enjoying nature.

    The board brushed off prosecutor’s questions

    LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said ahead of the parole hearings that he opposes parole for the brothers because of their lack of insight, comparing them to Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom denied him parole in January 2022 because of his “deficient insight.”

    During the hearing, LA prosecutor Habib Balian asked Menendez about his and his brothers’ attempts to ask witnesses to lie in court on their behalf, and if the brothers staged the killings as a mafia hit. Commissioners largely dismissed the questions, saying they were not retrying the case.

    In closing statements, Balian questioned whether Menendez was “truly reformed” or saying what commissioners wanted to hear.

    “When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they’ve made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents,” Balian said.

    What happens next

    Lyle Menendez is set to appear over videoconference Friday for his parole hearing from the same prison in San Diego.

    The case has captured the attention of true crime enthusiasts for decades and spawned documentaries, television specials and dramatizations. The Netflix drama ” Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ” and a documentary released in 2024 have been credited for bringing new attention to the brothers.

    Greater recognition of the brothers as victims of sexual abuse has also helped mobilize support for their release. Some supporters have flown to Los Angeles to hold rallies and attend court hearings.

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  • Erik Menendez to remain in prison after decision by California Parole Board

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    SACRAMENTO — Erik Menendez will not be released, the California Parole Board decided in a highly anticipated and lengthy hearing Thursday, curtailing for now the contentious push by he and his older sibling to be freed after the 1989 killing of their parents in their Beverly Hills home.

    The hearing came after years of legal efforts by Menendez and his brother to be set free despite being convicted of life without the possibility of parole in 1995. Their jury trial, and accounts of an abusive upbringing in the upscale Beverly Hills home, inspired several documentaries and television series that drew renewed attention to their case and allegations of sexual abuse against their father.

    The hearing — the first time Erik Menendez, 54, has faced the Parole Board — offered a never-before-seen glimpse into his life behind bars over more than three decades. A separate hearing for Lyle, 57, is set for Friday.

    The hearing, Erik Menendez noted, was 36 years and a day after his family realized his parents were dead. The killing occurred on Aug. 20, 1989.

    “Today is the day all of my victims learned my parents were dead,” he said. “So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey.”

    After a nearly 10-hour hearing, the board decided to deny parole to Menendez for three years. He could petition for an earlier hearing.

    “This is a tragic case,” Parole Commissioner Robert Barton said after issuing the decision. “I agree that not only two but four people were lost in this family.”

    Relatives, friends and advocates have described the Menendez brothers as “model inmates,” but during the hearing Thursday members of the Parole Board raised concerns about drug and alcohol use, fights with other inmates, instances in which Erik Menendez was found with a contraband cellphone, and allegations that he helped a prison gang in a tax fraud scam in 2013.

    More than a dozen relatives testified in favor of release for Menendez, with many of them saying they had forgiven him and his brother for the killing. Although amazed by the family’s support, Barton said Menendez should not be released on parole.

    “Two things can be true,” Barton said. “They can love and forgive you, and you can still be found unsuitable for parole.”

    In a statement, a spokesperson for relatives of the two siblings said they were disappointed.

    “Our belief in Erik remains unwavering and we know he will take the Board’s recommendation in stride,” the family said in a statement. “His remorse, growth, and the positive impact he’s had on others speak for themselves. We will continue to stand by him and hold to the hope he is able to return home soon.”

    They said they remained “cautiously optimistic” for Lyle Menendez, whose hearing was set for Friday.

    Erik Menendez testified he obtained cellphones despite risking discipline because he didn’t believe there was a chance of him ever being released. He took the gamble, he said, because the “connection with the outside world was far greater than the consequences of me getting caught with the phone.”

    He associated with a gang, he said, for protection.

    That all changed in 2024, he said, when he realized there was a chance of parole at some point.

    “In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” he told the board. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”

    The crime that put Menendez and his brother in prison began when the siblings drove to San Diego, bought shotguns with cash using someone else’s identification, then returned home and opened fire in the family living room while their parents were watching television.

    Investigators have said the gruesome crime scene looked like the site of a gangland execution. Jose Menendez was shot five times, including once in the back of the head, and evidence showed Kitty Menendez crawled on the floor, wounded, before the brothers reloaded and fired a final, fatal blast.

    The brothers called 911, with Lyle screaming that “someone killed my parents,” according to court records. But while they appeared as grieving orphans, Erik and Lyle also began spending large sums of money in the months after the killings. Lyle bought a Porsche and a restaurant while Erik purchased a Jeep and retained a private tennis instructor with the intentions of turning pro. The two were infamously seen sitting courtside at an NBA game between the murders and their capture.

    Prosecutors argued the brothers killed their parents out of greed to get access to their multimillion-dollar inheritance. Jose was planning to disinherit the brothers because he considered them failures, according to court filings. The brutality of the crimes and the juxtaposition of such violence against the family’s Beverly Hills image turned the case into an international media circus, only rivaled at the time by the O.J. Simpson trial.

    Although mobs of reporters also circled the brothers’ resentencing hearings in Van Nuys this year, Thursday’s parole hearing was a much more solemn and quiet affair. With the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tightly controlling media access, a Times journalist was the only member of the public allowed to view the hearing on a projector screen in a room inside the agency’s headquarters just outside Sacramento.

    The parole hearing is not meant to relitigate details of the case or the brothers’ roles in the killings, but members of the board questioned Erik Menendez on Thursday on details of the grisly murders, which the brothers and supporters in their family said were committed because they had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father.

    “In my mind, leaving meant death,” Menendez told the board when asked why he didn’t leave the house or go to the police. “My absolute belief that I could not get away. Maybe it sounds completely irrational and unreasonable today.”

    Menendez said he and his brother purchased the shotguns because they believed that their parents might try to kill them, or that his father would go to his room to rape him.

    “That was going to happen,” he said. “One way or another. If he was alive, that was going to happen.”

    Asked why the two killed their mother as well, Menendez said that the decision was made after learning she was aware of the abuse, and that the siblings saw no daylight between the two.

    “Step by step, my mom had shown she was united with my dad,” he said at the hearing. “On that night I saw them as one person. Had she not been in the room, maybe it would have been different.”

    He said the moment he found out his mother was aware of the alleged abuse was “devastating.”

    “When mom told me … that she had known all of those years. It was the most devastating moment in my entire life,” he said. “It changed everything for me. I had been protecting her by not telling her.”

    Asked whether he believed his mother was also a victim of his father’s abuse, Menendez said, “Definitely.”

    “He was beating her because I failed,” he said.

    After denying parole, Barton pointed to their decision to kill their mother, calling it “devoid of human compassion.”

    “The killing of your mother especially showed a lack of empathy and reason,” Barton said. “I can’t put myself in your place. I don’t know that I’ve ever had rage to that level, ever. But that is still concerning, especially since it seems she was also a victim herself of domestic violence.”

    Menendez was visibly overcome with emotion when discussing details of the murders, although he did not appear to cry.

    After the murders, Menendez said, the spending sprees between he and his brother, including buying a Rolex, were an “incredibly callous act.”

    “I was torn between hatred of myself over what I did and wishing that I could undo it and trying to live out my life, making teenager decisions,” he said.

    Menendez eventually confessed to the killings in discussions with a therapist, and L.A. County sheriff’s deputies found a letter in Lyle Menendez’s jail cell admitting to the murders. After jurors hung in their first trial, Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996.

    L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian opposed parole for Erik Menendez during the hearing, arguing he lied to the Parole Board and had minimized his role in the killings during the hearing.

    “When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they’ve made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents,” Balian said. “Is he truly reformed, or is he just saying what wants to be heard?”

    Menendez, Balian argued to the board, was still a risk to society and should not be released.

    Interest in the brothers’ case was revived in recent years following a popular Netflix series, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” The show aired after a Peacock docuseries, “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” uncovered additional evidence of Jose Menendez’s alleged sexual abuse of his children and others, including Roy Rosselló, a member of the boy band Menudo.

    The new evidence was part of the brothers’ most recent legal appeal in the case. More than 20 of the brothers’ relatives formed a coalition pushing for their freedom, arguing they had spent enough time imprisoned for a pair of killings that were motivated by years of horrific abuse.

    Last year, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón petitioned a judge to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez to 50 years to life in prison, making them eligible for parole. After he defeated Gascón in the November election, new Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman quickly moved to oppose the resentencing petition, going as far as to transfer the prosecutors who authored it and asking a judge to disregard Gascón’s filing.

    L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic denied that request. After finding prosecutors failed to prove the brothers were a danger to the public, Jesic granted the resentencing petition in May, clearing the path for Thursday’s parole hearing.

    Fellow inmates and rehabilitation officials have described the two as “mentors,” spearheading programs and projects for inmates.

    The two have created programs to deal with anger management, meditation and assisting inmates in hospice care and to improve conditions inside prison.

    Lyle Menendez spearheaded a Rehabilitation Through Beautification project at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility to work on upgrades and create green space in the prison, along with painting a 1,000-foot mural. Erik Menendez has worked with other inmates to do the artwork for the project.

    But members of the board questioned Erik Menendez on various incidents, including a fight in 1997.

    Menendez said another inmate hit him first, but admitted that he “acted aggressively” as well. In another fight, Menendez said, he “fought back” in self-defense.

    Members of the board also questioned Menendez on multiple incidents in which he was found with contraband, including art supplies, candles, spray cans, and cellphones that Menendez said he would pay about $1,000 to obtain.

    He used some of the art supplies to decorate his cell, he said.

    Menendez said he also gave other inmates access to the phone, because “if it was someone that I trusted or someone that I knew had a phone, I didn’t want to tell him no.”

    He said he used the phones to speak with his wife, watch YouTube videos and pornography.

    “I really became addicted to the phones,” he said.

    During the hearing, Barton said he was concerned about the number of support letters that refer to Menendez as a model inmate, saying it could minimize the impact of cellphones in the prison.

    Menendez said it wasn’t until later that he realized the larger impact that cellphones could have, despite how prevalent they could be in prison.

    “I knew of 50, 60 people that had phones,” he said. “I just justified it by saying if I don’t buy it someone else is going to buy it. The phones were going to be sold, and I longed for that connection.”

    But in January, he said, he had an in-depth talk with a lieutenant and took a criminal thinking class that made him reassess.

    “The damage of using a phone is as corrosive to a prison environment as drugs are,” he said. “In the sense that someone must bring them in, they must be paid for, it corrupts staff … phones can be used to elicit more criminal activity.”

    Members of the board spent a significant amount of time questioning Menendez on the use of contraband phones, and pointed to them as part of their reasoning in denying parole.

    “Your institutional misconduct showed a lack of self-awareness,” Barton said. “You’ve got a great support network. But you didn’t go to them before you committed these murders. And you didn’t go to them, before you used the cellphone.”

    Dmitry Gorin, a former prosecutor, said Menendez’s decision to break the rules while in prison affected his chances at winning release, even though he was young when he was convicted.

    “If you’re not going to comply with the rules in prison, you’re not going to comply out in society — that’s what they’re saying here,” Gorin said. “The big picture here is without serious medical issues or being elderly, I don’t know anyone who killed two people who has been paroled.”

    Nancy Tetreault, an attorney for former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, said that despite public support for parole, Menendez was considered moderate risk in the comprehensive risk assessment. To have a better chance at release, he would have to be considered low risk, she said.

    “That’s very hard to overcome,” she said.

    The two brothers were involved in classes, but also would need to be more involved in rehabilitative programs for a favorable decision, Tetreault said.

    “Yes, they have a lot of classes and things like that that I was reading the classes they’ve put together, like meditation, for insight, that they’re leaving it, but they need to, they need to start programming,” she said.

    Menendez admitted to drinking alcohol and briefly using heroin at one point in prison, which he said he tried because he was “miserable” and feeling hopeless.

    “If I could numb my sadness with alcohol, I was going to do it,” he said. “I was looking to ease that sadness within me.”

    Members of the board also asked Menendez about his connection to a prison gang and a tax fraud scam in 2013, but did not discuss details of the scheme.

    Menendez said part of the reason he associated with members of the gang, known as 25s or Dos Cinco, was fear of his safety.

    “When the 25ers came and asked for help, I thought this was a great opportunity to align myself with them and to survive,” Menendez said, adding that he thought he needed to keep himself safe because he had no hopes of being paroled at the time. “I was in tremendous fear.”

    The gang was in charge of the prison yard, he said, and a member approached him about the scheme, although Menendez said he did not personally control the checks. The gang also supplied him with marijuana, he said.

    Much changed after 2013, Menendez said, and he curbed his use of drugs and alcohol. At one point, members of the gang also believed he had become an informant.

    “I did not like who I was in 2013,” Menendez said. “From 2013 on, I was living for a different purpose. My purpose in life was to be a good person.”

    In Oct. 14, 2023, his mother’s birthday, he committed to stop using drugs, he told the board.

    Deputy Parole Commissioner Rachel Stern asked Menendez about his work with hospice inmates, including a World War II veteran convicted of an unspecified sexual violence crime that Menendez helped with getting his meals and bedding.

    Menendez said he saw his work with the inmate as a way to make amends for his father.

    Menendez apologized to his family during the hearing, noting their support.

    “I just want my family to understand that I am so unimaginably sorry for what I have put them through,” he said. “I know they have been here for me and they’re here for me today, but I want them to know that this should be about them. It’s about them and if I ever get the chance at freedom I want the healing to be about them.”

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    James Queally, Salvador Hernandez, Richard Winton

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  • Killer in 1987 Salem murder granted parole

    Killer in 1987 Salem murder granted parole

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    BEVERLY — A man who was serving a life sentence for a 1987 execution-style murder in Salem has been granted parole, despite the objections of the victim’s family and the Essex District Attorney’s office.

    Charles “Chucky” Doucette, who pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Raymond Bufalino, was granted parole by the state parole board on May 13.

    Doucette, who is now 64, shot Bufalino twice in the head as they were sitting in Bufalino’s car near Harmony Grove Cemetery on the Salem-Peabody line in 1987. He was also convicted of two violent home invasions while on bail awaiting trial, and was arrested when he was out on parole on two previous occasions.

    In its unanimous decision, the parole board said Doucette “has demonstrated a level of rehabilitation that would make his release compatible with the welfare of society.”

    In testimony before the parole board in March, Bufalino’s wife, Shauna O’Sullivan, pleaded with the board not to release Doucette.

    “With his tendency for violence I fear that he will reoffend,” she said in a video of the hearing. “I would hate to hear of another person having to live through the anguish and emotional turmoil that I went through. I believe he made his choice all those years ago and that he should be held accountable for his crimes.”

    O’Sullivan said her son was 9½ months old at the time his father was murdered.

    “I’m not angry or bitter,” she told the board. “I’m past that now, some 38 years later.

    “I feel I owe it to my husband’s memory to say something.”

    Bufalino’s sister and brother also spoke against giving Doucette parole. In a statement read by a victim service advocate at the parole hearing, Suzanne Maynard and Anthony Bufalino called Doucette a “menace to society and a true threat to society.

    “Look at what happened the first time he got paroled,” they said. “Nothing but trouble. So tell me, since being back in prison has he changed? I doubt it.”

    Essex County Assistant District Attorney Kayla Burns also spoke against parole, saying Doucette has continued to minimize his culpability and deflect blame.

    “He puts the blame on other people being in his life,” Burns said.

    During the hearing, Doucette, who has lived in Beverly and Peabody, said he has changed in his years in prison thanks to counseling and programs on subjects such as domestic violence and anger management.

    “I’ve always been bigger and stronger than most people. I always got my way through intimidation and being a total ass,” he told the parole board. “I’m not that person today. I have children. I have grandchildren. I have great-grandchildren. I don’t want them to make the mistakes I made. I want them to learn from the mistakes I made.”

    Doucette’s mother and sister spoke in favor of his release. His sister, Kim Malick, said Doucette has remained close to her children, who are now in their 20s.

    “He met my oldest daughter when she fit into the palm of his hand in prison,” Malik said. “I would love for him to have the opportunity to come home and see her.”

    Doucette had been granted parole twice previously and was arrested both times — once on a rape charge that was later dropped, and another on a domestic assault charge of which he was acquitted — and sent back to prison.

    In total, Doucette was serving seven life sentences for the murder, two counts of home invasion, two counts of armed robbery, and two counts of stealing by confining or putting a person in fear.

    He was denied parole in his last three attempts before the board granted parole in May.

    According to the board’s decision, Doucette has invested in his rehabilitation, including participating in domestic violence programs and counseling, and working and volunteering in the prison law library. “He has strong vocational skills and work ethic,” the board said.

    Doucette has maintained stable relationships with his family and has been sober since 1990, according to the board.

    He told the board he wanted to get his commercial driving license and move to Texas to be near his family.

    Bufalino, of Salem, worked for Doucette’s father at a Salem gas station and was considering a lawsuit after getting injured while working. Doucette was also angry that Bufalino owed him money, according to the parole board’s statement of the case.

    While seated together in Bufalino’s car, Doucette shot him once behind the right ear and once in the mouth. Bufalino’s body was found by his wife, who had gone to search for him. He was 30 years old.

    At the hearing, Doucette apologized to Bufalino’s family. At one point he broke down crying when he said that his own daughter no longer talks to him.

    “I know how bad it hurt me with my own daughter not being part of my life,” Doucette said. “I can’t put into words what I must have cost Ray’s family and his son especially.”

    After gaining parole, Doucette was scheduled to be released to a long-term residential program. Conditions included a 10 p.m. curfew, electronic monitoring at the parole officer’s discretion, a substance abuse treatment plan, domestic violence counseling, counseling for intimate partner/co-dependence relations, and no contact with the victim’s family.

    Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.

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    By Paul Leighton | Staff Writer

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  • ‘Son of Sam’ killer Berkowitz denied parole in 12th attempt

    ‘Son of Sam’ killer Berkowitz denied parole in 12th attempt

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    “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, who set New York City on edge with late-night shootings in the 1970s, was denied parole after his twelfth board appearance.Berkowitz, 70, was rejected after a Board of Parole prison interview on May 14, according to information listed on a state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision web site. Officials with the corrections agency would not provide additional information on Tuesday.Berkowitz terrorized the city with a series of shootings that killed six people and wounded seven beginning in July 1976. The shooter targeted young women and couples sitting in cars. The papers called him the ”.44 Caliber Killer.” In taunting notes to police and a journalist, he called himself “Son of Sam” and said he received demonic messages to kill.Berkowitz was arrested Aug. 10, 1977, a little more than a year after the first victim, Donna Lauria, was shot and killed in the Bronx.The New York Police Department formed a 200-person task force to find the killer. The case was finally cracked after a witness reported a strange man on the street near the final shooting. Police checked traffic tickets that had been issued in the area and traced them to Berkowitz’s car and home in nearby Yonkers.Berkowitz was sentenced in 1978 to the maximum prison term of 25 years to life for each of the six slayings. He first became eligible for parole in 2002.Berkowitz has since expressed remorse and said he is a born-again Christian. He is being held at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison about 60 miles north of New York City.

    ALBANY, N.Y. —

    “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, who set New York City on edge with late-night shootings in the 1970s, was denied parole after his twelfth board appearance.

    Berkowitz, 70, was rejected after a Board of Parole prison interview on May 14, according to information listed on a state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision web site. Officials with the corrections agency would not provide additional information on Tuesday.

    Berkowitz terrorized the city with a series of shootings that killed six people and wounded seven beginning in July 1976. The shooter targeted young women and couples sitting in cars. The papers called him the ”.44 Caliber Killer.” In taunting notes to police and a journalist, he called himself “Son of Sam” and said he received demonic messages to kill.

    Berkowitz was arrested Aug. 10, 1977, a little more than a year after the first victim, Donna Lauria, was shot and killed in the Bronx.

    The New York Police Department formed a 200-person task force to find the killer. The case was finally cracked after a witness reported a strange man on the street near the final shooting. Police checked traffic tickets that had been issued in the area and traced them to Berkowitz’s car and home in nearby Yonkers.

    Berkowitz was sentenced in 1978 to the maximum prison term of 25 years to life for each of the six slayings. He first became eligible for parole in 2002.

    Berkowitz has since expressed remorse and said he is a born-again Christian. He is being held at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison about 60 miles north of New York City.

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  • Sacramento man convicted of four freeway shootings and sentenced to 90 years to be released early

    Sacramento man convicted of four freeway shootings and sentenced to 90 years to be released early

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    (FOX40.COM) — A man who was convicted of four freeway shootings and sentenced to 90 years in prison was approved to be released back into Sacramento County after only serving 14 years.

    Kyle Douglas Frank was convicted by a jury for firing several gunshots at cars on four separate occasions in August and September of 2009. His victims were all Black or Hispanic and officials believe his crimes were racially charged.

    “He unloaded his gun and put about six bullets in my passenger door, shattered my side view mirror, and all because I looked inside of his car,” said Paul Adcock, a survivor of one of the freeway shootings on I-80 in 2009. “Calling me the N-word and everything else and giving me the finger.” 

    On April 10, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Board of Parole Hearings granted parole to Frank.

    “I thought justice was done, when they said 90-plus years. It hasn’t even been half of that. So why he’s getting out so soon, is beyond me,” Adcock said.

    Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Rochelle Beardsley voiced concerns about the possibility of Frank being released from prison.

    “It’s our position that he is not eligible or amenable to parole,” Beardsley said. “Public safety is the mandate of the District Attorney’s Office.”

    Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho’s office warned the public of Frank’s release.

    “Each victim was either Hispanic or African American,” the DA’s office said. “He attempted to murder eight innocent people simply because of their skin color.”

    The DA’s office said they asked Governor Gavin Newsom to intervene with the boards decision, but if he doesn’t, Frank will be released back into the Sacramento community.

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    Veronica Catlin

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  • Ex-Jewish Defense League bomber’s parole a ‘gut punch’ for Palestinian Americans

    Ex-Jewish Defense League bomber’s parole a ‘gut punch’ for Palestinian Americans

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    Nearly 40 years ago, long before the latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas militants, a bomb ripped through the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, taking the life of the group’s regional director, Palestinian American activist Alex Odeh.

    The FBI labeled the bombing a terrorist attack and early on identified the Jewish Defense League as “the possible responsible group.” At the time, the JDL was the focus of numerous state and federal investigations and had gained notoriety as an underground network of radical militants, espousing a violent form of Jewish nationalism that mainstream Jewish leaders rejected.

    The FBI never formally charged anyone in Odeh’s death, but for years the agency’s investigation focused on Robert Manning, a burly ex-boxer from Los Angeles, and his wife, Rochelle, both JDL adherents.

    With the Odeh probe still underway, Manning was convicted in 1993 of an unrelated murder: a 1980 mail-bomb attack that killed Patricia Wilkerson, a Manhattan Beach secretary. Manning was sentenced to life in prison. And in the ensuing decades, the Odeh case largely went cold.

    Since becoming eligible for parole in 2001, Manning tried — and failed — seven times to win release. He appealed the most recent rejection, and on Oct. 3, an appellate board overturned the decision in accordance with a federal law that mandates parole for inmates who have served 30 years of a life sentence and are deemed unlikely to reoffend.

    Now 71, Manning is on track to be paroled in July from a federal penitentiary in Phoenix.

    The appellate board found that Manning’s “almost spotless record during his 32 years of incarceration made it unlikely he would reoffend.” The decision also took into account Manning’s age and health concerns, according to a U.S. Parole Commission spokesperson.

    Paul Batista, an attorney representing Manning, declined to comment and did not make his client available for interview. At a past parole hearing, Manning detailed plans to live with his sister in Los Angeles and sell his prison artwork online if he won release.

    Among Arab American leaders, news of Manning’s parole has aggravated the painful wound of Odeh’s still unsolved death, and for some, has reinforced a belief that the American judicial system let them down.

    “It was a gut punch,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights group created in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes. “If Manning was truly reformed, then he would cooperate and give law enforcement names of the individuals he worked with or the individuals that he knows were involved in the Odeh assassination. He’s done none of that.”

    Ayoub learned of Manning’s parole through the Justice Department’s victim notification system, an alert service for federal crime victims. The decision came just days before the committee hosted its annual memorial banquet for Odeh in Garden Grove.

    Founded by controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL emerged in New York City in 1968 in the wake of the Six Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. Its members embraced a self-appointed mission to aggressively combat antisemitism with swaggering slogans like “every Jew a .22” that over time evolved into terror campaigns against their perceived enemies.

    Five terror attacks in 1985 alone led the FBI to warn Arab Americans that they were in a “zone of danger” from an unnamed group taking aim at the “enemies of Israel.”

    “To many Jews in North America, they were seen as heinous crimes,” said Alon Burstein, an Israel Institute Fellow and visiting assistant professor in UC Irvine’s political science department. “On the other hand, it was also seen as the first time — with the exception of the state of Israel — that Jews were standing up militantly and saying ‘never again.’ ”

    Manning grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Los Angeles, where he dropped out of Fairfax High School at 17. He joined the Army only to leave a year later on a “not able to adjust” discharge. He worked variously as a private investigator, machinist and draftsman.

    Manning joined the JDL’s West Coast chapter in 1971 and soon ran afoul of the law. He was convicted in the 1972 bombing of an Arab activist’s Hollywood home, and sentenced to three years’ probation after disavowing his JDL affiliation in court.

    After the case, he left for Israel, where he renewed his JDL ties and continued to travel back and forth to the U.S.

    Federal authorities considered Manning a suspect in four political bombings in 1985, including the one that killed Odeh. One attack killed a suspected Nazi in Paterson, N.J.; another bomb exploded outside the home of a suspected Nazi in Brentwood, N.Y., and a third injured two police officers trying to defuse a bomb sent to an Arab American group in Boston.

    But the attack Manning served time for — Wilkerson’s mail-bomb murder — did not appear political in nature. Two years after Manning’s 1993 conviction, a Los Angeles federal jury convicted real estate agent William Ross of paying Manning to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said Ross intended the bomb for Wilkerson’s boss, who had sued Ross over the sale of a Manhattan Beach house, costing him thousands of dollars.

    Manning’s wife, Rochelle, whom prosecutors also implicated in the bombing, died in an Israeli prison in 1994 while fighting extradition to the U.S.

    With Manning in prison for the Wilkerson murder, the FBI continued to question him in the Odeh bombing. At his last three parole hearings, the Odeh family and representatives of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were recognized as victims of Manning and allowed to argue against his release.

    During a Nov. 2020 hearing, Manning explicitly denied involvement in the Odeh bombing and challenged the government to bring a case. “If they say I’m the top subject, then charge me for it, and I’ll go to court and prove my innocence,” he said.

    Last year, Manning sued the government for allowing the Odeh family and the Arab committee to participate in his parole hearings. A judge dismissed the suit in February.

    Odeh’s eldest daughter, Helena, said being recognized as victims at Manning’s parole hearings had brought her family some comfort. Now, with him set to be paroled, even that half-measure of justice seems to be slipping away.

    “It does seem like we’re taking a step back,” Helena said. “But we’re going to continue to fight for justice and hope that my dad’s murder is solved. He didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.”

    Odeh was seen as a polite, soft-spoken voice of moderation in his day. He was a poet and lecturer at Coastline College in Orange County, as well as West Coast director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He held an unwavering commitment to Palestinian statehood as a prerequisite for peace in the Mideast.

    With the Israel-Hamas war exploding anew, Helena said she is thinking of her father more often than usual.

    “I wonder what he would do or say in this situation,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t want innocent people getting hurt all around.”

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    Gabriel San Román

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  • Gypsy Rose Blanchard Approved For December Prison Release

    Gypsy Rose Blanchard Approved For December Prison Release

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    Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who suffered years of abuse by a mother who foisted numerous fake illnesses upon her, will be released from prison early after serving eight years of a decade-long murder sentence.

    Blanchard, 32, has been granted parole and is scheduled for release on Dec. 28, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed Friday. Local Missouri outlet Ozarks First was the first to report the news Thursday.

    Blanchard, whose story was portrayed in the 2019 scripted Hulu series “The Act,” has been in custody since 2015 for her involvement in the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who is suspected to have had an undiagnosed case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

    That mental disease, experts said during the trial, caused her to fabricate what she claimed were her daughter’s various illnesses, including leukemia, muscular dystrophy and brain damage from a premature birth. She also unnecessarily made her child use a wheelchair, shaved her head to mimic the side effects of chemotherapy, and gave her medication that led to severe tooth decay, all while collecting gifts and donations from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and other charities for sick children.

    After Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in her Springfield, Missouri, home, her daughter admitted to conspiring with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to carry out the murder while she hid elsewhere in the house as he ended the older woman’s life.

    Gypsy Rose Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, while a jury found Godejohn guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    In an interview with ABC News’ “20/20” in 2018, Blanchard said prison was more liberating than life with her mother, who she eventually discovered was fabricating her various illnesses.

    “The prison that I was living in before, with my mom, it’s, like, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t have friends. I couldn’t go outside, you know, and play with friends or anything,” Blanchard said. “Over here, I feel like I’m freer in prison than with living with my mom. Because now, I’m allowed to … just live like a normal woman.”

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