Who Let the Clowns Out?

Whether clowns are wearing three-piece suits and running for high office or multicolored jumpers with big hair and large shoes, they've always been sort of scary. But a number of recent clown sightings have gotten people downright terrified...

Who let the clowns out this year? Contrary to popular opinion, the first truly troubling appearance of a bona fide clown in 2016 wasn't when presidential hopeful Donald Trump staged 'a hostile takeover' of the GOP nomination.

It started this past summer when 'Gags the Clown' launched his silent and still-unexplained midnight forays through the darkened streets of Green Bay Wisconsin.

Since then, the creepy-clown phenomena has steadily spread eastward across America, and now, as winter begins to approach, it's heading south along the U.S. coast.

Confrontations with clowns are no laughing matter: Many of us bear deep, invisible scars from too many close encounters with abrasive clowns when we were kids; usually at birthday parties or when the circus came to town.

But how would you feel if one had come up to you at a public playground and then tried "to lure" you into the woods? Or if a group of them chased you and your friends while hurtling sticks and curse words? Or if an assortment of clownish entities were stalking and harassing you on Facebook?!

That's what allegedly happened to several youngsters this autumn in states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.

In fact, one 12-year-old from Pottsville PA told reporters at WNEP TV that he'd just witnessed a child his own age fleeing a local park and screaming about having come across a group of clowns "eating something" in a wooded area nearby.

Lone clowns and clown clusters are NOT Halloween pranks: As stores stock up on clowning gear and Trump masks for the upcoming trick-or-treat season, law enforcement agencies are issuing warnings to parents of young children to be wary of clowns wherever and whenever they see them.

State and federal authorities haven't said yet if scary clowns do represent a genuine new threat to public safety, but they're also not dismissing the trend as merely due to mass hysteria or copycatting either.

Consequently, many officials are now heavily policing their districts, for fear that these weird, costumed individuals might be "sexual predators."

Just say NO to clowns: Whether they're wearing a painted smile or a sad-sack's frown (or an expensive suit and tie) there is absolutely nothing funny about being followed or fondled by a clown.

So, effective immediately, and until further notice, we at Killing Killers are advising you and yours to actively shun such types.

Especially if they're foul mouthed, ill tempered, and sporting a funky comb-over do.

Eponymous Rox

Message from Eponymous Rox

Smiley Face Killers blogger, Eponymous Rox, isn't missing, hiding, dead or drowned:

Thanks for the emails and private messages. As many visitors to Killing Killers have recently learned, a great deal of my SFK content, published here and elsewhere over the past six years, was illegally republished by a notorious Kindle self-publisher based in London, and I am still pursuing the matter.

Of course, I'm not the only one who serial plagiarist 'Tessy Rawlins' (alias 'Stephen Young' and 'Steph Young') has robbed over the years -- she's also pinched content from Websleuths, Reddit, Wikipedia, the Humanoid Database and the popular 'Missing 411' series, just to name a few -- but I do intend to be the last. Which is why I've reported her long-running cut-and-paste scam to both US and UK authorities.

Because the Rawlins/Young scheme is still semi-active on Amazon and depends on fresh or freshened uploads to remain profitable, I am rethinking how my Smiley Face Murders work will be offered online now, if at all. In the meantime, below is a screen-grab of the first death threat that 'Stephen Young' emailed after I initially complained about her cyber crime spree in June; and beneath her email, you'll find the facts of this case as it stands today.

(click image above to enlarge, print and share)

TO CATCH A THIEF [OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY]: Whether by cutting-and-pasting blog posts, eBook chapters and news articles into Word docs and fraudulently self-publishing these via Amazon, Smashwords and fake sites, or through pirating complete digital editions so they can be illegally downloaded by the thousands for free, such flagrant thefts of intellectual property have become an epidemic in recent years. Indeed, law enforcement agencies now warn that piracy has become the most frequent and fastest growing white-collar crime in the universe, and that they're literally swamped with complaints about it. Like the ones I filed against Amazon Kindle self-publisher 'Steph Young' this year.

'Steph Young' opened her own copy-paste operation on Amazon's self-publishing platform as 'Tessy Rawlins' in 2013. Through "cut and paste" thievery and sockpuppetry, ripping off countless readers, writers and websites for a full year, until folks began flagging her "blatant" scheme and her sales petered out.

In 2014, she altogether abandoned self-publishing under her infamous Rawlins moniker, reincarnating herself instead as 'Stephen Young' and upping her con job a notch:  Now she was not only falsely claiming to have "written" all of the content she was heisting, splicing and dicing, but approaching fringe talk shows for interviews as a guest "expert."

From 2014 through 2015, an American crime phenomena that shyster Steph Young often feigned to have expertise about in these interviews was The Case of the Drowning Men: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory. In reality, though, she'd never penned a single article or even once blogged about Smiley or Smiley's victims before. In fact, to this very day, neither 'Steph Young' nor 'Stephen Young' nor 'Tessy Rawlins' has any writing credentials or bibliographies other than *their* self-published Kindle catalog of plagiarized works, for the simple reason that none of *them* can write:

"Writing is terrible. Another self-published book with no much-needed editing. The writer lacks the most basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills. I wish Amazon had a minimum quality requirement or at least a separate "Amateur" category to weed out books like this from professional offerings, so buyers could at least know what to expect when they spend their money." - June 23, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Is this a high school paper, or what? ... badly written: Sentences have subjects and verbs. They are not a series of dependent clauses joined by semi-colons. Long rambling sentences are not a sign of scholastic achievement. They are distracting. Adjectives are not verbs. Words do not bleed, you can cut them ... Well, the author did follow one prime rule of writing. 'Write crappy first drafts'..." - November 30, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Why so many 5 star reviews? This book is laughably bad. I got about 25% done and gave up. There appears to be no research. All the stories are anecdotal. The narrative bounces around from topic to topic. Worst of all..the book is just dull. Many paragraphs and thoughts are repeated. And repeated. The cases are interesting, but the writing and content is very poor."  - August 31, 2016 Format: Paperback

"Poorly written, and full of grammatical errors ... it needs some very heavy editing. The book is rife with typographical and grammatical errors, awkward and confusing word choices, and immense logical leaps. It's an intriguing enough a premise, but the execution is a failure" - July 29, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

As to her claims that she's a Smiley Face Killers expert, poor blundering Young doesn't even know where Boston Massachusetts is, a major SFK kill zone, let alone the difference between a 'Harvard Man' and a man from Harvard:

“False, misinformed fact checking. I am 14% through on my kindle and have seen so many factual errors that really bother me. I was surprised at how up to date this was published, including the disappearance of Zachary Marr (who has since been found, also in the water). The problem is Young kept referring to him as a Harvard University student when he was in fact from the TOWN of Harvard - a very different place, far from the university. He was a student at Mount Wachusett Community College near his town. Young also refers to UMass Dartmouth as being 4 hours from Boston - UMass Dartmouth is 1 hour south of Boston, perhaps Young is confusing Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (which is still only 2 hours from Boston). I'm not sure if I will continue reading this book, at this point I'm just not sure what facts will be true and what will be sloppy, false information? I do think the premise of this book is great. I'm quite interested in why these young men are vanishing and do definitely agree there is some strange connection. I'd like to read more into these but I'm afraid this isn't the book for me.” (9 people found this helpful.) - March 19, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

Even worse, Britain's self-appointed *expert* on America's unsolved Smiley-Face disappearances and murders exhibits no better understanding of crime cases that occur on her native soils and shores either:

"Young refers to three people who, she claims, went missing in Clapham Wood, Sussex, in southern England, between 1972 and 1981 ... This is a case that I’ve personally researched, and I’m not aware of any convincing evidence that the people in question were in the wood when they went missing. All three bodies were eventually discovered, none being found in the wood itself."  NOT TO MENTION THAT: "there are numerous typos and grammatical errors. Even the semicolon in the title seems wrong – shouldn't it be a colon that separates the main title from the subtitle? The book lacks an index, and there’s no bibliography. There are relatively few specific references for the cases cited. In places, there are unexplained acronyms/abbreviations. And some of what Young quotes from other people strikes me as being more or less incomprehensible. In places, material is repeated. There are no maps or photographs." AND REGARDING THE MANCHESTER UK DROWNINGS: "Young refers to a psychologist who has taken an interest in the case. She names him as “Professor Gary Jackson” of the “University of Birmingham” (p. 91). In fact, though, his first name appears to be Craig, not Gary, and he’s based at Birmingham City University, not the University of Birmingham!" - July 14, 2016, Format: Paperback

So, perhaps Rawlins/Young should study up more before "hastily" self-publishing the content she's "copied and thrown together, with many editing errors." - March 7, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

But the inability to compose coherent and structurally-complete sentences of her own, or to even conjugate verb tenses and punctuate properly, isn't the reason that Steph Young launched her plagiarizing career. In fact, this illiterate young Brit really doesn't have any interest in writing books at all, which, on the average, takes an experienced writer about a year to finish just one. No, Young is only interested in selling books as an "Amazon business," she confessed in one of her recent menacing emails. Accordingly, she's hastily cobbled together about ten such copy-and-paste Kindle editions annually, for a grand total of 30 so far, in only three years.

Toward the close of 2015, however, with absolutely no published Drowning Men work nor books of her own to speak of, Young realized that, to continue her talk-show hoax regarding the complex and ever-evolving Smiley Face Murders, she'd have to finally *produce* something on the subject. And that's when she asked me if she could "use" my extensively published SFK content.

Prior to receiving that email request, I was unacquainted with this imposter -- obviously, she was NOT granted any right to use any of my work in any form whatsoever.

NEW, Expanded and Revised

INVESTIGATING THE THEFT OF THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN - AND ALL OF MY SMILEY FACE KILLER WORK & MISSING/DROWNED DATABASE: Frequent visitors to this site probably recognize my nonfiction title (left), The Case of the Drowning Men: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory as having been released in both print and digital first-editions in 2012.

You can now also recognize my Drowning Men work -- plus all my facts, phrasing, forensics, findings, victim interviews and missing found-drowned caseload -- in two of Young's 2016 plagiarized versions of it, which she deceptively titled "The Case of the Smiley Face Killers..." and "Dead in the Water ... Investigating the Smiley Face Killers" (the latter incorporating my 2013 Crime Magazine piece 'Dead in the Water', one of many SFK feature articles I wrote for CM since 2011.)

In June 2016, upon discovery of the illegal use, reuse and misuse of my work, 'Stephen Young' was sent a takedown/reimburse demand, to which she replied contritely, stating, "i would also like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere apologies with regards to this matter, and would like to think that this could be settled amicably."

In good faith I undertook to do just that, but on Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 6:11 AM, I received a starkly different message from her via a 'James Howarth' of howespercival.com in Milton Keynes UK in which he baldly asserts, among many things, that his client "Stephen Young" had "amended 'Dead In The Water' so to remove" from this one illegal republication "all" the work stolen from Killing Killers and other publications which, if not thus expunged, clearly identified me as the true creator of most of the book's content.

To wit, “our client has (without prejudice to our client’s position) amended ‘Dead In The Water’ so to remove all quotations from the Interviews and all references to the Blog or the (presumably) nom de plume 'Eponymous Rox' … rest assured, of her own volition, our client has no intention of ever quoting from, referencing or even recommending your work or mentioning your name in future. I trust that this will represent an end of the matter.”

I politely wrote back to ask attorney Howarth if drag-n-drop diva Tessy Rawlins, who claims in her Amazon bio she's also Stephen Young, was his "client" too ... and never heard from him again. 

NO END TO THE 'STEPHEN YOUNG' & 'TESSY RAWLINS' AMAZON SCAM, UNLESS 'STEPH YOUNG' IS STOPPED:  Do you blog? Did you finally publish that manuscript you slaved over for years? Have you ever posted on sites like Websleuths or Reddit or Killing Killers, or shared your heartfelt opinions via Twitter or Facebook? Well, long before Steph Young self-published her illegal knockoffs of my Smiley Face Killers work for exclusive sale via Amazon's $10 'unlimited free download' subscription plan, her ignominious aliases 'Tessy Rawlins' and 'Stephen Young' had been busily robbing other content creators just like me and you, and making out like a bandit.

It's terrific that, from the very start, conscientious customers were flagging Rawlins/Young as a fraud on Amazon so to warn off others from unwittingly enriching her. But simply posting scathingly-honest reviews won't ensure that Amazon execs take swift action to stop such scammers. That's what all the various 'report abuse' buttons on each of Amazon's webpages are for. And it only takes a minute or less to click these and send Amazon the kind of valuable feedback consistently expressed by real reviewers of scammer Young's phony books:

"Abridging of story significantly changes meaning -- integrity of author in doubt.  I did not finish the book because I had good reason to doubt it's completeness and accuracy. Upon reading the story of  Lloyd Glenn and his son Brian, I recalled that I had read this story before, several years ago, but it seemed like part of it was missing. I found the file I had saved on my computer, and sure enough, the story had been heavily abridged. Although it might simply have been edited for length, it seemed very suspicious because the edits significantly changed the story that was told and the meaning of the experience. I do not mean that the parts that were included were altered, for the most part, but it appears that Tessy Rawlins has edited out several parts of sentences, sentences, and whole paragraphs in order to change the message of the story to one that she is presumably more comfortable with. It makes me wonder, also, if she  actually got permission from the authors of these stories to republish  them, or if she simply copied and pasted from the Internet, and then  edited them to her preferences. (10 people found this helpful.)" - July 27, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Acknowledgement is needed. Author needs to give credit where credit is due.....he uses a lot of material from Albert Rosales' Humanoid Database, without giving credit or mentioning the database." - October 5, 2015, Format Kindle Edition

"Another take on the killings detailed by Eponymous Rex." - June 7, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Nothing new here. Derivative. Just repeats previously published material from other authors." - April 30, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"The Banal Meets Boring. Just..awful. For the reviews to be legit, I have to assume that people doing the reviews have never read another book before on this subject. Or..perhaps never read any other book before..on anything..Or, the reviewers are family and friends of the author..When you remove the  truism`s/cliches.. and the quotes from other books..there is nothing here." - January 1, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition  

"She ripped off Missing 411- How about you quit ripping people off and tell them you stole the idea from David? Pretty spineless." - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Plagiarism at its finest! This work, and I have a hard time calling it 'work', is a complete ripoff of the very successful Missing 411 series by David Paulides" - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Somebody in the cyber-woods wants your money. Predators in the Woods is an eclectic collection of short eye witness accounts about encounters with paranormal creatures. Exactly half of the e-book consists of excerpts from other e-books...There is no attempt at a synthesis or explanation." - January 2, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition

"Summaries. rather than telling a unique story, this short booklet is a compilation of other people's stories." - August 11, 2013, Format: Kindle Edition

"Cut and paste? No sense of direction and explanations. Disappointed. Cut and paste. Shouldn't Amazon have a minimal standard for kindle books? Can anybody cut and paste and call it a book and have a milking cow?" - November 24, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Book of lists. This really wasn't so much a book as a group of bits and pieces of information stuck together. No introduction or explanation to the chapters at all so you really don't what you are supposed to be reading. I see why it was a free download." - March 6, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"The stories are great, but I feel like they're copied and pasted from other sources. Was an editor involved in this at all?" - March 1, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"This book seemed to be hastily written-stories copied and thrown together - with many editing errors..." - March 7, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"A lot of repeated stories found in the other book by him." - September 12, 2015 Format:  Kindle Edition

"I think all of the stories could be found via a Google search..." - July 17, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Choppy. This book is a waste of time and effort. There are copious numbers of missing or duplicated pages, not to mention tons of typos. The missing pages would cut short stories or pick them up halfway through. Very, very frustrating. Please fix or pull this work!!!!!" - May 9, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Terrible Book! This is one of the worst, most ridiculous books I have ever read. It's now quite obvious that all of these five-star reviews were written by the same person — the author himself." - March 25,2016 Format: Kindle Edition

"Seems a bit cut and pasty. This book was a mish mash of news stories everyone has read..." - April 26, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Poorly written, and full of grammatical errors … The book is rife with typographical and grammatical errors, awkward and confusing word choices, and immense logical leaps…the execution is a failure" - July 29, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Where to begin? This book has so many problems that I just can't even begin to list them all! If you can get past the poor writing, bad grammar, poor spelling and improper word usage, the punctuation will put you over the top. This guy has no business writing books!" - Format: Kindle Edition

"Glad I only 'borrowed' it" By Thomas Byrne on "…This entire book seems as though it was lifted from anecdotes on the web." - August 7, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition

"Scammy. This 'book' is short chapters that read and sound like a second-rate wikipedia entry. One could easily read all of this on your own, for free if you hang out on WebSleuths or similar forums." - July 17, 2016, Format: KindleEdition

"Interesting subject matter, writing is terrible. Another self-published book with no much-needed editing. The writer lacks the most basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills. I wish Amazon had a minimum quality requirement or at least a separate "Amateur" category to weed out books like this from professional offerings, so buyers could at least know what to expect when they spend their money." - June 23, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Cheep ripoff of missing 411. This whole book has a corny uncredited feel to it..." - March 9, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Blatant rip off of David Paulides' work" - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Give it a pass. Do not be fooled with the 'well researched' comments in some of the other reviews. This is nothing more than a chaotic and poorly organized collection of folk story's and conspiracy theories. Not very informative and written (poorly I may add) along the same lines as "what ifs." - March 19, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Not Nearly the Deep Investigative Journalism Suggested ~ not even close. I only downloaded a sample, but what I read was disappointing. For each case, the information was appoximately a page in length. The information was so sparse, I did not understand what the mystery was so I went on the web and looked up the individual's name to get more on the disappearance. Once I looked it up, I saw that important pieces of info were left out of the incredibly short articles I read and, in fact, there really was no mystery." - November 27, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Is this a high school paper, or what? Badly written: Sentences have subjects and verbs. They are not a series of dependent clauses joined by semi-colons. Long rambling sentences are not a sign of scholastic achievement. They are distracting. Adjectives are not verbs. Words do not bleed, you can cut them. The reader wants to be shown, not told. Well, the author did follow one prime rule of writing. 'Write crappy first drafts....'" - November 30, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Do NOT waste your money! This book is a total rip-off...." - August 20, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

(per Amazon biography: "Tessy Rawlins ...Also writes as under pen name Stephen Young")

SCAMAZON AND THE DIGITAL DOLDRUMS: Parasites like Rawlins/Young have plagued Amazon's Kindle self-publishing platform [KDP] ever since its inception roughly a decade ago, and Amazon's only gotten more lax about policing these rogues in the past few years because of the steady decline in eBook sales.

In recent times, we've all heard about just how bad a 'corporate citizen' this behemoth web-retailer really is anyway, especially with respect to its employees. But Amazon's failure to modernize its outmoded KDP platform by at least utilizing plagiarism-detection apps, as most other responsible online publishing sources are finally doing, is a deliberate invitation for fraudsters like Steph Young to come and hawk their illicit wares.

And, now, because Rawlins/Young herself has been operating with impunity on Amazon's under-policed site for three (known) years, she and her ilk has been allowed to spread like a cancer there, which, at this late stage, would be quite painful to excise. Yet excise them Amazon must do, because it's false advertising for  the "most customer-centric company in the world" to make a claim like that while knowing for a fact that its KDP customers and content creators are being "ripped off."

Pursuant to American penal code, it's also called 'aiding and abetting.'

  

to be continued...

COMING SOON: 'A breed of serial criminal you have never met before!'

COMING SOON TO KILLING KILLERS: Profiling "a breed of serial criminal you have never met before!"

message from the admins

Updated from May 25, 2016: Admins are temporarily manning the Killing Killers crime site until your regular blogger returns. We lost contact with Eponymous Rox last week. Roxy is (still believed to be) in the Boston area investigating a series of river deaths for the next issue of Hunting Smiley. Articles submitted before last week will be published in the order received. (ty)

2014: Happy New Year from Eponymous Rox

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2014, everyone!  Be safe, be good, prosper.   -- E.R.

Newlywed Murder Plea In Glacier Park Death

"GUILTY" is newlywed murder plea

First Jordan Graham claimed she didn't do it, then she said her victim made her do it, and now she's just plain shut her mouth and pled guilty to pushing her husband of only eight days to his death.

Thus brings an end to the bizarre and circuitous tale of a union gone sour in just the span of one week. So sour in fact that the honeymooners viciously quarreled atop a steep cliff in famed Glacier Park ... and only one of them returned home that evening.

It's been a case which baffled both experts and onlookers alike, but finally the newlywed murder plea of "guilty" has been entered into the record this week, circumventing trial proceedings already underway, as well as other charges pending against a lying Montana bride who slew her hapless hubby.

Justice served in the cruel and roundabout murder of Cody Johnson -- may the groom rest in peace.

Learn more about Jordan Graham here.

E.R.

MISSING PERSON ALERT: Gianfranco Villagomez

BREAKING NEWS: Body matching description of  Gianfranco Villagomez -- missing since December 7th -- has been found today in or near his own home, and not far from where he was last seen. Read today's update HERE / original story below:

With the weird disappearance of Gianfranco Villagomez-Saldana on Saturday, yet another young male appears to have done the Kansas Vanish:

In fact, Villagomez, a grad student at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, lives only about a half hour from missing man Brad Cook, who was recently found dead in an area thought to have been thoroughly searched already.

Both young men abruptly disappeared after dark and are only in their early twenties -- an age (and gender) generally considered suspect by law enforcement...

On Friday night Gianfranco Villagomez, 23, had attended a small party with a few close friends, and they all say he left on foot early Saturday morning for his girlfriend's house nearby.

According to the group, Villagomez didn't appear inebriated, yet for some reason he never made it to his destination. 

He was last spotted at the intersection of Ninth and Michigan at 2:30 AM, but hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Villagomez, who hails from Peru, is dark-haired, brown-eyed and wears glasses. The 5-foot 9-inch tall industrial-design student weighs 165 pounds and was wearing a blue shirt with a KU Jayhawk logo on it, a long-sleeve gray shirt, black jacket, blue-jeans, and white tennis shoes when he went missing.

Anyone with knowledge of his current whereabouts or of what happened to waylay him is urged to call the Lawrence police at 785-832-7509 or CrimeStoppers at 785-843-8477.

Also read/share his missing person alert on GatherNews.

LIVE FREE OR DIE: Searching for Abby Hernandez

 12/8/13: MAJOR BREAK IN ABBY HERNANDEZ CASE
[ORIGINAL STORY FROM 10/18/13 BELOW]

In the mountainous, sparsely populated state of New Hampshire there are probably as many dead people as there are alive, although police insist the woodlands and high peaks are not teeming with corpses.

Searching that vast, rustic terrain this October for missing teenage track-star, Abigail Hernandez, who disappeared in thin air while walking home after school, officials immediately stumbled upon two bodies already: one badly decomposed and the other skeletal.

But neither of these remains belonged to the girl they are desperately seeking.

In fact, day ten since 15-year-old Abby Hernandez went missing and all the leads in her case -- even those which once seemed so solid -- have evaporated. The truth about what really happened to her now shrouded as densely as the thick clouds that sometimes hide the White Mountains.

Surely those towering, picturesque peaks, painted red and orange and gold by Mother Nature in autumn, hold the key to solving the Abby Hernandez mystery, for they lure both locals and tourists alike to come and admire them.

Rugged individuals who call the largely uninhabited state of New Hampshire home understand, however, that their alluring wilderness is more than just quaint. They know from experience that their mountains are not merely pretty places for skiing and hiking and camping. 

These can be deadly, and many a climber and Cessna has suddenly disappeared on them throughout the years, never to be seen or heard from again.

In the shadows of these mighty sentinels sit historic villages and cities that thrive on a brisk tourist trade year round.  

North Conway, where missing schoolgirl Abigail Hernandez lives with her family, is one of these municipalities, and the road she was last seen traversing on foot, known simply as the North-South Highway, is a route well traveled by residents and out-of-state visitors.

That's especially true during the Columbus Day holiday week, the height of the 'leaf-peeping' season, when the Hernandez girl strangely disappeared.

Vermont, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, Texas, Rhode Island, Connecticut ... even visitors from as far away as California make the annual pilgrimage by vehicle to view New Hampshire's splendid fall foliage this time of year.

Could Hernandez have been hit by a distracted driver and dumped somewhere in a panic? Was she kidnapped by a prowling predator taking advantage of all the bustle? Or did she secretly rendezvous with someone she connected with on social media?

That's the $20,000 question now, the reward amount posted just yesterday by the FBI, for any information which will lead to the prompt return of young Abby Hernandez, dead or alive.

1-800-CALL-FBI

Tips.fbi.gov

The Trial and Tribulation of Lauren Spierer

Three male students -- former friends of Lauren Spierer -- are reportedly the last people to have seen the still-missing young woman alive in the early morning hours of June 3rd, 2011. But if they know anything they're not talking:

This year that recalcitrant trio finally found themselves sued for her presumed and wrongful death. 

Not only do the missing girl's parents adamantly believe that these fellows were responsible for giving their petite blonde daughter too much alcohol and/or drugs, leading to her injury and  disappearance, but they also accuse the boys of deliberately "stonewalling" them.

Thus, at the two-year mark of Spierer's high-profile missing persons case, a civil action was filed seeking reasonable compensation for the untimely loss of a loved one.

This week, however, a judge patently disagreed with the Spierers and their attorneys on the subject of who is or isn't a bad guy.  At least as pertains to one of the defendants ... READ FULL LAUREN SPIERER TRIAL UPDATE HERE.

The Colleen Ritzer Murder: Is Philip Chism a Serial Killer?

The investigation into the murder of Colleen Ritzer, 24, by her student Philip Chism, 14, continues. But are police asking the right questions?

"Officer Hovey conducted a pat frisk for safety reasons and discovered that Philip Chism had a knife on his person ... [he then] inventoried the contents of Philip Chism's backpack and a bloodstained box cutter was found. Officer Hovey asked the defendant where the blood on the box cutter came from. Chism responded, "The girl." Also located from the possessions of Mr. Chism were many credit cards and two Massachusetts Driver's licenses belonging to Colleen Ritzer ... a pair of woman's bluish/green sheer underwear were found in Chism's backpack as well...

"A search of the school grounds and adjacent wooded area were conducted in the early morning hours of October 23, 2012. The body of Colleen Ritzer was subsequently found in a wooded area near the school. ... Detective Robert Sullivan of the Danvers Police observed the body and he said that it was found in a supine position covered with leaves and debris in manner consistent with attempts to hide the body ... The victim's throat was slit. A green recycle bin consistent with what was observed in the video was found approximately twenty yards from Colleen Ritzer's body. Detective Sullivan said that the victim's shirt was lifted above her breasts, and the bra pulled below her breast. No clothing was observed on the victim's body from the waist down. 

"He also advised me that the victim's legs were spread apart and slightly bent in what appeared to be a 'sexually staged' or 'sexually positioned' manner. He said that he also observed what appeared to be an approximate three foot long by inch in diameter [sic] barkless tree branch inserted into her..." READ MORE HERE

MISSING PERSON ALERT: Jesse Larson

BREAKING NEWS: The body of Jesse Larson has been found on the family farm in Crosby Minnesota today. The young man disappeared this past summer while hunting and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Condolences go out to the family who never gave up searching for their lost loved one. Read FULL COVERAGE HERE and the original missing person report below.

7/20/13: Killing Killers is re-posting this 7/2/13 missing person alert for Jesse Larson who disappeared from his rural property in Crosby, Minnesota under unusual circumstances on the 20th of June 2013.

The 27-year-old's family has been concerned for his welfare ever since his black Labrador, Annie, returned home in somewhat ragged condition, just days after the two had ventured by truck into the woodlands together, presumably to go hiking or hunting.

Thereafter, the Larsons conducted a search on their own and discovered another of their dogs inside the missing man's abandoned vehicle.

That was almost two weeks ago and though police performed a few flybys over the young man's last known location, as of the date this missing person alert was published, they have yet to launch a ground search for him.

Typical in these cases, Larson's has received scant attention from the media as well, although Senator Udall's missing brother, gone less than a week while hiking in Wyoming, is currently making front page news today.

The city of Crosby Minnesota, where Citizen Larson hails from, was once known for its rich deposits of iron and commercial mining enterprises. As a result, there are many old mines and ore pits still to be found throughout the area, some of which could potentially pose hazards.

Larson, 27, is described as a Caucasian male, about 5'9" tall and 175 pounds, with brown hair. He is believed to be wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and brown work boots. Anyone who knows what happened to him and/or his current whereabouts is urged to contact the Crow Wing County Sheriff’s Office at 218-829-4749.
 

Eponymous Rox

[Updated 2:57 PM from 10:05 AM to include Facebook link]
[Updated at 8:15 AM on July 20, 2013 - STILL MISSING]
[Updated November 23, 2013 - Jesse Larson found dead]

Shellie Zimmerman Says George Zimmerman Is Berserk

Shellie Zimmerman, the estranged wife of Trayvon Martin's killer, claims George Zimmerman has gone wacko since being acquitted of the unarmed Florida teen's assault and murder last summer.

She also said that, on the night preceding that infamous shooting, she'd actually left her husband because he once again ridiculed her in public, adding that "life would be very different now" if she hadn't foolishly returned to his aid in the aftermath of the contentious killing.

Zimmerman, who's had regular brushes with the law both before and after that undeniably life-altering event, was once more detained and arrested this month on charges of domestic violence.

This time it involved a live-in girlfriend who he allegedly threatened at gunpoint when she attempted to throw him out of her apartment. 

According to the woman, he also deliberately broke some of her possessions.

Weeks ago repeat offender George Zimmerman narrowly escaped similar charges from Shellie Zimmerman herself when he assaulted her and her father at their home whilst brandishing a firearm.

Read more about the latest incident here.

BREAKING NEWS: Missing McStay Family Finally Found

The mysterious disappearance of the McStay family in 2010 appears to have finally been solved -- California police announced today that they believe they've just uncovered the missing foursome's skeletal remains.

The doomed couple and their two young children had all been buried in shallow graves. 

Autopsy results are still pending, but officials have already stated that the victims' deaths were apparently due to homicide.

That sad find was made in the sands of the Southern California desert, not too far from where the McStay's had originally vanished.

Over the past three years investigators pursued hundreds of tips in an effort to solve the McStay family's inexplicable disappearance, eventually drawing the conclusion that they'd abruptly left their San Diego home for Mexico.

In fact, adding to the riddle of their sudden departure, and helping to bolster the official theory of a voluntary absence, the McStay family vehicle had been found parked at the Mexican border. 

Authorities were further convinced that four people seen on poor-quality surveillance video entering at the Tijuana checkpoint on foot together in 2010 were the McStays.

But it now looks like they were dead wrong.

Posted 11/15/13: Story is developing; bookmark for more updates.
Update 11/18: Did serial killer Israel Keyes slay the McStays?
ISRAEL KEYES STRIKES AGAIN

Montana Bride Played Blindman's Bluff to Kill Hubby

The case against killer Montana bride takes another ghastly twist:

If the murder case of Montana bride Jordan Graham wasn't odd enough, it's about to get even stranger, as prosecutors now try to prove she not only shoved her new husband over the edge of a cliff, but blindfolded him first.

Initially Graham, 22, had misled police about her groom's mysterious disappearance and subsequent death, saying she had seen new husband Cody Johnson, 25, drive away one afternoon with his friends, never to return again.

Then, four days later, the bad Montana bride told a ranger in nearby Glacier National Park that she had in fact located Johnson's body herself  -- lying bruised and bloody at the bottom of a rocky ravine.

"It was a place he wanted to see before he died,” she then explained to puzzled investigators.

Not long after this weird episode and gruesome discovery, Jordan Graham, who'd previously expressed serious doubts about getting married, was booked for ...

MISSING IN WISCONSIN (and found in Mexico 9 years later)

The story of a teenager mysteriously missing in Wisconsin for almost a decade, but resurfacing this week alive and well in Mexico, gives many families with similar cases cause for hope:

Connie McCallister was 16 when she disappeared in 2004. Now 25, she told police she'd been drugged at a party by an abusive boyfriend who then whisked her away to Mexico against her will.

That relationship soon ended, leaving the girl stranded in an impoverished area of a foreign country she was unfamiliar with, but eventually McCallister adapted to the new situation, marrying and having kids of her own.

This year, grown and yearning to finally return home, she made contact with the American authorities who'd been searching for her on and off since she disappeared and explained what had happened.

The wife and mother of three is currently in the process of being reunited with a relieved and overjoyed family in the U.S. and arranging for her Mexican husband to also join her here.

Statistically, the chances of someone going missing in Wisconsin -- or anywhere -- and showing up nine years later alive are quite slim. So Connie McCallister's surprising tale of survival today has renewed the dashed hopes of many who've long been searching for their lost loved ones in vain.

The Killing Killers news site aids those searching for the missing: Read next about the hunt for missing teen Abigail Hernandez who just disappeared from New Hampshire on October 9th 2013, and follow the still unsolved case of Jessica Heeringa, 26 of Michigan, who was abducted from her workplace this past spring.

E.R.

BREAKING NEWS: More Arrests in Mississippi Family Slayings

BREAKING NEWS IN MISSISSIPPI FAMILY SLAYINGS:  Police have arrested a second male suspect in the gunshot deaths of a missing Mississippi family this week.

Cedric D. Mason, 30 of Jackson, was charged with two counts of capital murder and two counts of kidnapping late last night. 

Mississippian authorities say they are still trying to determine the precise events that led up to the triple homicide of Atira Hughes-Smith, her 7-year-old son Jaidon Hill and husband Lattery Smith, but indicate that Mason criminally acted in concert with 42-year-old Timothy Burns already in custody.

Burns originally led police to the family-of-three's dead bodies, after which he was arrested on suspicion of murder. 

He has been charged with two counts of murder and arson -- investigators believe it was Burns himself who wrecked the SUV of the missing Mississippi family and then set it on fire to destroy evidence.

It is not clear if the victims were in the vehicle with him at the time, when they were all actually killed, or if the three were somehow connected to the suspects. 

The motive for the slayings also remains unknown at this time, although police continue to investigate.

"The preliminary investigation indicates Laterry Smith was murdered in a house in southwest Jackson. The crimes were committed in Hinds and Copiah counties and the district attorneys in those jurisdictions are conferring on the best manner to move forward with the prosecution of Mason and Burns," a department spokesman reported tonight.

"We have theories," he added, "but the investigation will ferret out the facts."

JONATHAN MARTIN: Richie Incognito versus Dolphins' Coaches

In bullying Jonathan Martin off the field, Richie Incognito accuses his coaches of ordering the abuse -- what did the Dolphins know, and when did they know it?

Mention bullies and it conjures images of school children heartlessly picking on their less popular peers, not grown men -- really, really grown men -- harassing their teammates to the point of quitting.

But, as if the NFL doesn't have enough problems already with rogue players like Aaron Hernandez, illegal hits, and repeat concussions, locker-room bullying is the latest kind of vexing behavior the league is being forced to publicly atone for this week.

Making matters worse, in the Dolphins' Jonathan Martin / Richie Incognito contest, a number of the team's head honchos, such as coach Joe Philbin, stand accused today of actually inciting the out-of-bounds bullying that forced newbie Martin to walk away.

At least that's what disgraced and discharged Incognito now claims ... Read my special coverage of this developing story here.

E.R.

BREAKING NEWS: Missing Mississippi Family Was Murdered

Police say they have a 42-year-old man in custody for the triple homicide of a missing Mississippi family of three that had inexplicably vanished over the weekend.

The bodies of all three members of that missing family -- including a small child -- were found this afternoon in an abandoned house not far from where their car had been discovered ablaze in a ditch on Saturday morning.

Each had been shot to death multiple times.

Authorities searching for the three missing persons were already bracing for the worse ever since recovering the family's personal items, smeared with blood, from a nearby dumpster on Monday morning.

This afternoon, police and FBI questioned a prime suspect in the family's disappearance who, they claim, then willingly led them to the bullet-riddled corpses of the missing Mississippi family. 

Shortly thereafter, that same individual was arrested on suspicion of ... read more of this breaking news story here.

MISSISSIPPI MYSTERY: Family of Three Missing After Fiery Crash

Mississippi police and the FBI continue the quest to find a family missing after their car was mysteriously found afire and personal items later spotted in a nearby dumpster.

MISSING PERSONS ALERT: A frantic search for a family missing after a weird roadside accident and fire is currently underway in Copiah County, Mississippi.
  

The missing trio's overturned SUV was found ablaze at the side of a main highway on Saturday morning, and some of their belongings were later discovered by a vagrant in a nearby dumpster.
 

Those items were said to be smeared with blood, some media outlets are now reporting.

Thirty-year-old Atira Hughes-Smith, her 7-year-old son Jaidon Hill, and her husband 34-year-old Laterry Smith vanished into thin air shortly after Hughes-Smith telephoned her loved ones on Friday night to say the three were leaving town together for the weekend.

That trip was evidently unplanned and authorities now suspect foul play in the threesome's uncharacteristic disappearance because ... read and share the rest of this special bulletin here.

"I'm really good at killing people" Obama brags

Hardly sounding like the leader of a first-world democracy, the latest Obama boast "I'm really good at killing people" may be too over the top for even his most diehard supporters to defend.

And dying hard goes to the crux of the matter when we're talking drone strikes on civilians.

A number of White House aides recently confirmed in a scathing new biography about the Kenyan-born American president that if it seems Barack Obama is a bit trigger-happy, well, that's not a coincidence.

"I'm really good at killing people" the unabashedly bloodthirsty commander-in-chief was overheard bragging in the Oval Office one day. 

Bloody Barry already *enjoys* the worst record on free speech and privacy rights of any U.S. president to date. And with damaging disclosures from former defense contractor Edward Snowden being leaked almost every single week now, he really can't afford anymore embarrassing revelations.

Obama's approval rating is already at an all time low, and continues to steadily plummet.

Rightly so, human rights advocates state, because the unconscionable conduct of President Obama, and his perverse pride about those shameless ways, is scarily on par with that of many third world dictators.

Maybe even worse, since this would-be-king is pilfering the tax dollars of the richest nation on the globe to achieve his evil objectives.

Do you think the president's murderous boasts are shocking and undignified? Call the Washington hotline at 202-456-1111 and let him know today!