This week there were developments in various crime stories that should be acknowledged. I’m not putting these stories out with any agenda. But simply to say, I noticed. We noticed.
AFTER 3 MONTHS, MITRICE RICHARDSON IS STILL MISSING
On Monday, Sheriff Baca announced that the case was being moved to the homicide desk, not because anybody knows anything dire about Mitrice’s fate, he assured her father, but because the change in designation will get the case more resources.
This is a move that one imagines it would have been helpful to make weeks ago, even though it sounds as if the officers working the case are working hard. More is needed.
Jasmyne Cannick went with the missing woman’s father to meet with the Sheriff, and has a rundown on where the case stands, and why the fact that 24-year-old Mitrice Richardson is still missing is so very disturbing.
For the back story on Mitrice, read here and here what Anne Sobel has been writing for the Malibu Surfside News.
And, then after you read Sobel’s stories, take a look at the location of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s station from which Mitrice Richardson was released in the middle of the night alone, without a car, a phone, her purse, or any money—in what was likely a disoriented state.
(The LA Times’ Carla Hall reported Sunday that Mitrice’s journal indicates she may have been in the midst of an extreme mental breakdown.)
Most recently, Matrice Richardson’s family are pushing very hard to have the FBI involved in the case, citing other cases they contend would suggest Fed involvement was possible.
DAE’VON BAILY’S STEPFATHER (SORT OF) GETS 25 TO LIFE
After pleading guilty to beating his girlfriend’s 6-year-old son to death in front of the boy’s 5-year-old step sister, Marcas Catrell Fisher, received a sentence of 25-to-life.
Hector Beccera of the LA Times, reminds us of the rest of the story about this little boy, Dae’von Baily, whom everybody failed.
A convicted rapist, Fisher had agreed to care for Dae’von and his daughter after their mother, Tylette Davis, put five of her six children in other people’s care. The boy and his siblings had been the subject of 10 child abuse or neglect investigations since 1999 by the time he came under Fisher’s care.
In the last three months before his death, Dae’von twice told authorities that he had been physically abused by Fisher, but both times he was left with the man who eventually killed him.
Los Angeles Police Department detectives said that the boy’s body bore bruises in different stages of healing, indicating that he had been abused for an extended period of time….
Becerra writes that the boy’s kindergarten teacher, Majella Maas, said Dae’von was the most affection-hungry child she had encountered in 28 years of teaching, always asking for hugs.
CUSTODY BATTLE ENDS IN FOUR DEATHS
And finally there is the case, of Elizabeth Fontaine and her two little girls, Catherine, 4, and Julia, 2. who along with Fontaine’s mother, were shot to death in an apparent murder suicide that occurred a few hours after a judge decided to award temporary custody of the girls to Fontaine’s ex-husband’s sister.
My Thuan Tran of the LA Times has the rest of the story.
Unlike with Mitrice and Dae’von, it is as yet, unclear what might have prevented the tragedy.
I’m sorry but I think that any “authorities” responsible for leaving this poor little kid in the custody of an abusive rapist – especially when the kid himself was blowing the whistle on the guy – deserve to be tried and convicted of manslaughter and spend at least 8 years in prison as much or more than the young woman who killed and injured the two drunk guys by reckleslly doing 80 in a 55 zone you wrote about the other day. I’m serious. I actually think this case is worse and less defensible. These “authorities” should be brought up on very serious charges. More important, the oversight and regs under which they operate need to be vastly improved.
Incidentally, while I realize the guy got the 25-life sentence because of a guilty plea, sparing the state, etc. etc. etc., that’s not – as the news article states – the maximum penalty for 1st degree murder. It’s third, after the death penalty and life without parole.
Mexican drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva’s body shown to reporters after wild shootout
December 17, 2009 | 11:37 am
The shootout that left drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva dead reportedly involved 200 Mexican marines who quietly evacuated residents of an apartment complex before storming the building in the city of Cuernavaca.
Beltran Leyva’s body, which remained at the scene early today, was briefly shown to reporters who were allowed inside the apartment complex.
Authorities said Beltran Leyva, known as the “boss of bosses” as the head of a Sinaloa-based gang, and six members of his cartel died in the shootout Wednesday night. Cartel operatives had tossed grenades and fired weapons during the battle, which left one marine dead and wounded at least two, officials said.
“First they were asked to surrender, but they didn’t yield and they opened fire,†said one of the ski-masked marines who participated in the raid, and who was not authorized to give his name, according to the Associated Press
The Mitrice disappearance struck me from the start as a case where if, as alleged, the Sheriff’s dept. was just following standard procedure, something’s very wrong with that procedure. They impounded her car, knew she had no money or cell phone, knew she was mentally unstable (at least, she’d been described as such at the dinner where she was arrested for non-payment), yet released her on foot virtually in the middle of nowhere at 2 a.m. Shouldn’t they have at least taken her to a bus stop with fare to get home, if in fact as reports claim, she didn’t want to wait for her mother, who was on her way? I can’t keep up with all the contradictions in the story and latest details, but if the LAPD had done this, I’m sure the right would have been all over Chief Bratton alleging some sort of “elitist” or PC plot behind it.
Reg, yeah, I noticed that too (the sentence). I don’t know what’s up with the 25 to life thing. She’s either missing a fact or has some part of it wrong.
WBC, my feelings precisely. I’ve not spoken to any law enforcement people on this so I’m reluctant to leap on LASD with both feet. But I too have been so bothered by this case from the get go.
Ms. Fremon?
why are you bothered? Do you really know the facts of the case? I do…
P. No, what I know is limited, which is why I’ve done little in the way of blog posting about it. I’ve read the existing news accounts and spoken to the family’s lawyer, but obviously he’s partisan. Also one of my students did a bit of reporting and turned up some interesting stuff.
Do you know things that are different than what has been reported?
My friend works at lost hills and was there when they advised her over and over to feel free to take a nap in the lobby area until the early morning hours. They offered free local phone calls too… They even went beyond their scope of work and were bending station rules to help her out. She refused, and exited out the door….
There are so many cases of mental illness incidents similar to this which never make it on the frontpage newspaper…. … For some reason, everyone is up in arms, pointing blame and sucker punching the Sheriff Department on half ass reported facts. Certain people are ready to make this into a racial issue too – or police stereotyping brutality case.
I’ve seen cases where people have lost their mental capacity and became ill at the wrong place- at the wrong time. A close friend lost his mental capacity and memory while visiting downtown Santa Barbara in the mid-90s. Approximately four months later, Ventura County Sheriffs detained him for begging in downtown Ventura. Did they run a major news bulletin on his missing status? Not at all. Only close friends and relatives cared to actually find him. If Ms. Richardson would have lost her mental capacity and walked out of the Compton Station – would this still make the major headlines? Ask yourself that?
Aside from what I stated above, we all want to find her asap – this can happen to anyone of us or to a close relative.
In what I was told about her – she was just an overall good person.
Thanks, P. I appreciate that you have filled in the details. When people are upset and scared, they tend to want someone to blame. It somehow makes the awful thing seem more understandable.
Five years ago today Mitrice Richardson was released from the Malibu/Lost Hills sheriff’s station in Agoura Hills, CA and was missing for 11 months. Tragically, her naked skeletal remains were discovered in a remote canyon not too far from the station. Through a series of intentional or unitentional mishaps, many things went wrong in her case. According to the detectives, her case remains a death investigation which is “clue driven”. It is our hope that the Mitrice Richardson documentary, “Lost Compassion” will compell someone to come forward with information that will aide n solving her case. http://youtu.be/paG5aKfVmRA