Hard Boiled News

True Crime and News of the Weird from around the Globe

Black Gunman Eyed as Serial Killer in Slayings of 5 White KC Hikers

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

Frederick Demond Scott has been charged in the death of two men and is a top suspect in three other killings

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — A 22-year-old Missouri man is being eyed as a possible serial killer responsible for the shooting deaths of five middle aged men who he may have targeted because they were white, authorities said.

Frederick Demond Scott, who is black, has been charged in the fatal shootings of two of the victims and is considered a top suspect in the death of three others who were all gunned down along a popular hiking trail in Kansas City.

Police say it is not clear if the attacks were racially motivated, but in 2014, Scott was arrested for threatening to shoot up a high school “Columbine style” and “kill all white people,” according to the Kansas City Star.

He was sentenced to six months in jail but later had the sentence suspended and was put on probation. His mother told the paper that her son suffered from paranoid schizophrenia but refused to get treatment.

The victims, who ranged in age from 54 to 67, were killed on and around the Indian Creek hiking trail between August 2016 and August of this year. Several of the shootings appeared to be ambush killings in which the victims were shot in the back of the head. Some were killed while walking their dogs, with the animals remaining by their sides until their bodies were found.

Police say Scott boasted, “they didn’t see it coming,” when questioned by detectives.

Investigators got a break in the case after the fifth killing, which occurred on a city street in broad daylight, when they located surveillance footage showing Scott follow the victim a bus before he was shot.

Scott was later linked to the scene from DNA detectives lifted from a iced tea bottle and a cigarette butt found at the scene of the final killing. The DNA also matched that found on a t-shirt left at the scene of an earlier killing.

People who knew Scott said he had never been the same following the shooting death of his half-brother, Gerrod Woods, in a robbery in 2015. The killer in that case, who is black, was recently sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Oklahoma Top Cop Resigns After Being Tied to Neo-Nazi Organizations

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

Bart Alsbrook was named Colbert’s interim police just last week

COLBERT, Oklahoma — The interim police chief in a small town on the Oklahoma-Texas border has resigned after a local TV station reported that he appeared to have ties to neo-Nazi organizations.

Bart Alsbrook had been a reserve police officer in Colbert until being named interim chief last week.

But news station KXII-TV reported soon after that a Bart Alsbrook showed up in records as the owner of two websites, ISD Records and NS88 Videos, that sell neo-Nazi paraphernalia, like such as music by “The Klansmen,” and Nazi patches.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, has listed both sites as connected to hate groups. The Center also listed him as the Texas coordinator of Blood & Honour USA, a racist skinhead gang.

When contacted by the Tulsa World newspaper, Alsbrook insisted that someone had stolen his identity and that he was not responsible for the websites.

“Someone has been using my name for years on the Internet in regards to racist topics. It’s not me, rather someone who has hijacked my name due to my combativeness and rejection to white power skinheads who were always coming to the heavy metal shows, starting fights and messing up our scene,” he said. “We hate each other. They use my name in all sorts of things.”

But within hours of being contacted by the local TV station, both web sites tied to Alsbrook were taken down.

 

 

 

KKK Prison Guards in Florida Convicted in Plot to Murder Black Inmate

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

From left: Charles Thomas Newcomb, David Elliot Moran and Thomas Jordan Driver

LAKE CITY, Florida — A pair of Florida prison guards who were secretly members of the KKK have been convicted of plotting to murder a black inmate after his release.

Prosecutors said the plot dated back to 2015, when David Elliot Moran, 49, and Charles Thomas Newcomb, 45, and a third guard who had previously pleaded guilty, tried to enlist the help of an FBI informant to kill the inmate.

The men were infuriated by the inmate after he bit the third guard, Thomas Jordan Driver, 27, who, like the others, is  a member of the Traditionalist American Knights branch of the Ku Klux Klan, during a fight. The three guards believed the prisoner was infected with HIV and hepatitis.

One version of the plot involved injecting the inmate with insulin and then forcing him face down into a river with a fishing pole in his hand to make it look an accident. Another involved shooting him and chopping his body into pieces.

But the scheme was quickly foiled after recorded conversations between the three former guards and the FBI informant revealed the murder plot.

“These Klansmen plotted to murder a black inmate after he was released from prison, but swift action and clever investigative tactics on behalf of investigators foiled their plot and may have saved a life,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

At the time of the murder conspiracy, Driver and Moran were guards at the Department of Corrections Reception and Medical Center in rural north Florida. Newcomb was a former correctional officer who had been fired in 2013 for failing to meet training requirements.

Driver pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in March and was sentenced to four years in prison.

The head of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Frank Ancona was shot and killed in Missouri earlier this year and his body dumped by a river. His wife and son-in-law have been charged in his death.

 

Cops Hunt Man Who Stole Signs Meant for the Blind Along a Hiking Trail

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

U.S. Cops are asking for help identifying this man

GENESEE PARK, Colorado — Cops are hunting for a brazen thief who made off with 37 Braille interpretive signs meant to help the blind from a hiking trail in Colorado.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office says the man took the signs — valued at over $18,000 — from two trails in Genesee Park sometime between April 22 and May 6.

A man caught on surveillance footage stealing a laminated paper sign that had been placed in the park to replace one of the stolen signs is considered a “person of interest,” cops said.

Investigators described him as between 55- and 65-years-old, with white hair, but bald on top. They said he stands between 160 and 190 pounds at the time of the theft, and was wearing a blue jacket with white lettering on the left breast. He was accompanied by a small black dog, cops said.

Tipsters are encouraged to call the sheriff’s office at 303-271-5612.

Man Convicted in Bizarre Adult Adoption Immigration Scheme

By HardBoiledNews Staff 1 Comment

Helaman Hansen says he meant well, and making off with $1 million was just a coincidence

SACRAMENTO, California — A man accused of bilking hundreds of illegal immigrants out of over $1 million with the false promise of securing them citizenship by having them adopted as adults, has been convicted of fraud.

Helaman Hansen, 64, of Elk Grove, California was accused of running the bizarre and elaborate scheme from 2012 through 2016, netting as much as $10,000 from each of the immigrants he conned.

The scam was based around the bogus promise that the victims would be granted U.S. citizenship if they were legally adopted by an American. Hansen did arrange for several adult victims to be adopted but none ever received citizenship as the law only allows someone under the age of 16 to be granted such status following an adoption.

In reality, adult adoptions are exceedingly rare, and Hansen’s con came unwound when court officials in the Sacramento and Alameda Superior Courts noticed an unusual amount of such adoptions and grew suspicious that something wasn’t kosher.

Prosecutors say that Hansen had created a number of entities, such as Americans Helping America, to sell memberships in what he called a “Migration Program,” through which the adoptions would be arranged.  At the beginning, memberships were sold for an annual fee of $150, but that cost gradually grew as high as $10,000.

Many of Hansen’s victims were over the age of 50 and a substantial number hailed from Pacific island nations like Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand, prosecutors said.

In all, prosecutors say he duped over 500 people and collected over $1 million in fees.

After an 11-day trial, a federal jury found Hansen guilty of 12 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and two counts of encouraging and inducing illegal immigration for private financial gain. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

White Cop Files Race Discrimination Suit After Discovering He is Part Black

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

Cleon Brown recently discovered that he is 18% black

HASTINGS, Michigan — A Michigan cop has filed a racial discrimination suit against his department, saying he became the subject of non-stop racist taunting after discovering he had black ancestry.

Sgt. Cleon Brown, 49, said in his civil suit that the police chief repeatedly called him “Kunta,” after the character Kunta Kinte in the famed slave epic, “Roots,” by Alex Haley. He said others whispered “Black Lives Matter,” and raised their fists in a black power salute as he walked past.

And at Christmas time, the sergeant said he found a black Santa figurine with “18%” written on its beard, in a stocking that hung in the department with Brown’s name on it.

The figure was a reference to the 18% black ancestry Brown discovered he had when he had done an Ancestry.com genetic test. Brown says department staff grew increasingly chilly towards him after he objected to the taunts, and began to ignore him completely after he filed a complaint with the equal employment opportunity commission.

The suit, filed in federal court, names Police Chief Jeff Pratt, City Manager Jeff Mansfield, and several others.

Brown found this statue in his office Christmas stocking

The department and Mansfield countered that it  was Brown who started the racial bantering and that others just followed suit when he would joke about his black ancestry. They accused Brown on engaging in “typical racial stereotypes.”

City officials told MLive.com that they weren’t even sure if Brown’s genetic makeup even qualified him as a protected class under civil rights laws.

Brown has served on the force since 1998 and had spent seven years in the Army before joining the Hastings department.

Black Suspect Busted in Racial Arson Attack He Tried to Pin on ‘White America’

By HardBoiledNews Staff 1 Comment

Curtis Flournoy is accused of setting a fire he tried to blame on ‘White America’

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Police arrested a black man for a racially-charged arson attack on a North Carolina store in which a threatening note was left that was signed “White America.”

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department say they busted 32-year-old Curtis Flournoy on Sunday for the attack and charged him with ethnic intimidation, burning a commercial building and writing anonymous and threatening letters.

Police had previously said they were investigating the attack Thursday evening on Charlotte’s Central Market, which sells South Asian products, as a hate crime. Investigators said a rock had been thrown through the store’s window and a fire set in its entrance way which burned itself out by the time authorities arrived.

No one was hurt.

A note found at the scene stated that refugee business owners weren’t wanted and “that they would torture the owner if they did not leave and go back to where they came from,” police said. The note was signed “White America.”

But video surveillance footage captured a black man leaving the scene.

 

The store’s owner, Kamal Dhimel, previously lived in Nepal and Bhutan before coming to the U.S. in 2010. He opened the store in 2014, selling goods from Nepal, India and Pakistan.

He told The Charlotte Observer that he hadn’t faced anti-immigrant attitudes in the U.S. before last week’s episode.

Police did not say what they believed Flournoy’s motive might have been. He has a long rap sheet with multiple arrests for drugs as well as damaging property and assaulting a government official. He is currently being held on $22,500 bond.

Bosnian War Criminal Sentenced for Lying About Past to Get U.S. Passport

By HardBoiledNews Staff 1 Comment

Slobo Maric was convicted of abusing Bosnian Croat prisoners of war like these men

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — An unemployed Florida man convicted of war crimes in Bosnia has been sentenced to a year-and-half in federal prison for lying about his past as a sadistic prison warden when he applied to become a  U.S. citizen.

Slobo Maric, 56, had been a member of the Bosnian army during the civil war that tore that country apart in the early 1990s. Authorities say that during that time he served as the second in command at an elementary school-turned detention center for captured Bosnian Croat soldiers in the city of Mostar.

Under his command, prison guards routinely meted out brutal beatings of the prisoners of war . They also sent them to the front lines to dig trenches, fill sandbags and carry away the dead, and many were killed by sniper fire and bombs, authorities said.

In 1994, Maric was arrested and charged with war crimes against prisoners but was released as part of a prisoner exchange the following year. In 1996, he applied for refugee status in the United States. Prosecutors say he lied about whether he had ever violated the law, and the application was granted.

He then moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and in 1998 became a permanent resident and once again lied about his past on the application. Two years later, Maric was indicted for war crimes in Bosnia and was tried and convicted in absentia. U.S. prosecutors say Maric hired a lawyer and filed letters in his own defense in the case.

Shortly after his conviction, Maric applied to become a U.S. citizen and lied once again about  his past and in 2002, he was granted citizenship.

Maric pleaded guilty to the fraud last July and will have his U.S. citizenship revoked after he has served his sentence. He will then be deported back to Bosnia where he will likely face jail time for his war crimes conviction.

Man Poses as Jew, Vandalizes Own House with Swastikas, Is Arrested

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

Andrew King not only wasn’t targeted for being Jewish — he’s not even Jewish

SCHENECTADY, New York — They may be considered God’s chosen people, but this guy wasn’t included.

Police in upstate New York have arrested a man who allegedly painted swastikas on his own home and falsely reporting it as a hate crime.

In an even odder twist, the man, Andrew King, isn’t Jewish despite claiming to be so and wearing a yarmulke in interviews with reporters on television.

After a five-week investigation into the Feb. 10 incident, cops determined that the 54-year-old King did it himself.

“Our detectives interviewed many witnesses in the neighborhood to determine if anyone saw anyone do this,” said Sgt. Matt Dearing of the Schenectady police. “We take this very seriously.”

And when WTEN-TV asked local Jewish groups around Schenectady for comment, many leaders said they didn’t know King. Several people who do know him said he isn’t Jewish, although he has tried to convert more than once but has been turned away.

King was also charged in a separate case in which he is accused of harassing a county employee. He claimed in court that he was roughed up by police leaving him with two black eyes.

“He had no altercation with us when he was brought in yesterday,” Dearing said.

Four Teens Arrested for Turning Menorah into Swastika

By HardBoiledNews Staff Leave a Comment

An Arizona family was stunned to find their menorah turned into a swastika

CHANDLER, Arizona — Police in Arizona have busted four teens for a chilling act of vandalism in which a family’s front-lawn Hanukkah menorah was reconfigured into a swastika.

Clive Jamar Wilson was among those arrested

The Chandler police department says the episode occurred Dec. 30, when someone went into the family’s yard and taken their eight-foot high menorah, which had been fashioned out of PVC piping, and turned it into a symbol of hate.

On Friday, cops say they busted 19-year-old Clive Jamar Wilson, and three juvenile males, whose names were not made public, on charges of criminal trespass and aggravated criminal damage. All four were released pending the submission of charges to the Maricopa County Attorney’s office, police said.

At the time of the incident, the FBI said it was investigating to see if vandalism constituted a hate crime. Police say the investigation is ongoing.

“It just makes me sad and it makes me feel sick that’s still how people look at the world in 2016,” Seth Ellis, who built the menorah for his children said at the time.