Pleasantville man admits prostituting minors:
Casson Coward of Pleasantville, New Jersey was arrested back in June for pimping out two girls ages 14 and 16 from Allentown, Pa. on craigslist.
Yesterday, Coward pleaded guilty to interstate transporting of minors for the purposes of prostitution. His partner, Kevin R. Mayfield was also arrested. Both of them are looking at 10 to life and a $250K fine.
The so-called victimless crime continues.
MySpace Message Tips Parents Off To Child’s Secret Meeting:
18-year-old Frank Kelley of Millville, New Jersey was arrested after using MySpace to set up a meeting with a 12-year-old girl.
The unnamed victim’s parents told police they found their child with Frank Kelley at Mulligan Field — a local recreation park located in the north end of the Villas section of Lower Township, Cape May County — after finding messages between the two on a computer.
The article doesn’t state what happened at the meeting, but Kelley was charged with aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child.
New Jersey asks 12 Web sites to check for sex offenders:
New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has not only asked MySpace for sex offender information, she’s also asked eleven other sites to do the same.
Attorney General Anne Milgram has asked for information from Xanga.com, Facebook, Community Connect, TagWorld, Bebo, MyYearbook.com, Tagged, Friendster, LiveJournal, Imeem, Hi5 and Gaia Online.
I’ll give her this much, she’s thorough. Some of those sites I hadn’t even heard of. But like other states Attorneys General, she’s picking on MySpace…
The Attorney General’s Office has issued three subpoenas to MySpace, but the 12 other sites will soon be getting letters from Milgram asking for help.
And also, like the other state Attorneys General, there’s no mention of parents doing a better job of monitoring their children.
Not-guilty pleas in grisly slaying:
From the “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me” Dept. comes the story that both Zarate brothers have pleaded not guilty in the murder and dismemberment of 16-year-old Jennifer Parks.
So let me get this straight. They invited Jennifer to their house, beat her and stabbed her to death, dismembered her body so that they can store the body in a trunk, stored the trunk in a Jeep for 24 hours and attended a kid’s birthday party, then got caught trying to dump her body in the Passaic River, and then they plead not guilty?
What possible defense could they have? I guess they figured since the death penalty is off the table, they’ll take their chances in the trial.
Slaying-dismembering: No capital case:
Excuse my language, but…fucking New Jersey.
Jonathan Zarate, the New Jersey teen who killed and dismembered 16-year-old Jennifer Parks, will not be facing the death penalty…
On the day a grand jury handed up murder indictments against Jonathan Zarate, 19, and his brother, James, 16, Prosecutor Michael M. Rubbinaccio said he could not seek a capital case because the crime’s most-heinous aspects occurred after Jennifer Parks was dead.
Citing state law, Rubbinaccio said prosecutors must establish the murder was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman … and that it involved torture” to allow him to seek the death penalty.
“Certainly you can describe what took place after the homicide as being all those things,” Rubbinaccio said, referring to the dismemberment. “But that is not evidence of an aggravating factor that would trigger a capital case litigation.”
I don’t fault Mr. Rubbinaccio. I’m sure he did what he could. But the New Jersey law is so incredibly wrong on this. There is no justice for Jennifer Parks without the execution of Jonathan Zarate.
Mrs. Parks, I know you’re reading this, and I am truly sorry about this.
Keep kids’ photos off Web sites, state attorney general warns:
The New Jersey State Attorney General thinks pictures are the problem…
The playground isn’t the only place parents should watch over their children, state Attorney General Stuart Rabner says.
Rabner said Web sites that let users put their picture online are unsafe and the owners of those sites should adopt a policy to make it easier for people to report harassment and crime online. He said he is mainly concerned with social networking sites, sites made up of picture profiles and descriptions of children and adult users who befriend each other and comment on each other’s pages.
Rabner asked the chief financial officers of 10 social networking Web sites, such as Myspace, Xanga and Facebook, to consider installing a link that would appear on every page of their site, on which users could click if they felt bothered by another person.
This link would alert not only site officials but also law enforcement officers in order to catch criminal activity, such as sexual harassment, he said.
In a Nov. 16 letter to Web site owners, Raber expressed the need for such a policy.
“The use of your service for illegal activity, and as a medium through which child predators identify, learn about and contact potential victims, poses a serious threat to the public safety of some of our most vulnerable citizens and creates significant risks for the positive reputation and continued operations of your business,” Rabner said.
“I believe these goals can best be accomplished by making it easier for users to identify and report suspicious activity and illegal content, such as child pornography.”
Yeah, that won’t cause a plethora of false alarms.
I noticed that nowhere in his letter did Attorney General Rabner call for better parenting.
Former Boyfriend Seeks Revenge On MySpace.com:
(CBS) CLIFTON Police say Neftali Soto sent “intimate photos” of his ex-girlfriend to students at the Christopher Columbus Middle School in Clifton, NJ where she’s a teacher.
They say the 26-year-old did it by setting up a sham account on MySpace.Com, pretending to be the teacher.
“They were intimate photos they took on vacation, the kind lovers would take in this digital age,” said Joseph Del Russo, Passaic County’s Assistant Prosecutor.
Authorities say Soto stole the photos from his ex’s computer because he was angry over their breakup.
Then, according to investigators, he used MySpace’s search engine to identify students at the school.
“When a mom found out, she forwarded the pictures to her own account and she was able to freeze time.” Del Russo said.
That’s how investigators say they were able to link the photos to Soto’s computer.
MySpace had the usual non-answer…
When asked for comment about this story, MySpace.Com said they have all kinds of safety nets to make sure inappropriate material doesn’t make it on the site.
Apparently, their safety net has Buick sized holes in it.
N.J. lawmakers vote to suspend executions:
New Jersey lawmakers voted Monday to suspend executions while a task force studies the fairness and costs of imposing the death penalty.
The measure now heads to Gov. Richard J. Codey, who has indicated he will sign it before leaving office on January 17.
So, basically, New Jersey is putting a moratorium on the death penalty for now. Well, that’s all well and good, but you have to actually execute someone before you can have a moratorium. No one has been executed in New Jersey in over 40 years.
“By its action today, the Assembly joins the Senate in signaling deep concern that the state’s death penalty system isn’t working,” said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
How do you know it’s not working when you don’t use it?
Do you know who is on New Jersey’s Death Row? Jesse Timmendequas. For those of you who don’t know who Jesse Timmendequas is, he’s the scumbag that raped and killed 7-year-old Megan Kanka, the girl who Megan’s Law was named after. Here’s what the scumbag did to her…
After raping her, Timmendequas killed her by slamming her head onto a dresser and putting a plastic bag on her head. He then strangled her with a belt. He later raped her body in his car. He discarded the body in a toybox and dumped it into a park.
Does that sound like someone who the death penalty was applied to, unfairly?
Anyway, don’t act like you’re doing some great humanitarian thing by calling for a moratorium when you haven’t used the damn thing in over 40 years. Use it or don’t use it but don’t act like that New Jersey has been this unstoppable killing machine of the wrongly accused when it hasn’t.
Group ranks most dangerous U.S. cities Camden, New Jersey, named at top of list:
For the second year in a row, the cesspool on the Delaware known as Camden, NJ has been named the most dangerous city in the U.S.
Camden beat out Detroit for the second year in a row. Damn Detroit. Can’t you win at anything?
All kidding aside, I’m actually pissed about this. Camden is much deserving of this tag. It makes New Jersey look like a horrible state.
I grew up in New Jersey, and I’m damn proud I grew up there.
Unfortunately, cities like Camden and Newark give the rest of the state a bad name. Cities that are just across rivers from Philly and New York make people think that all of New Jersey is like that, when in reality, New Jersey is a very beautiful state filled with beaches, farm country, and very nice communities.
So, thanks again, Camden for making my home state look like crap to the rest of the country.
Camden, N.J., Is Most Dangerous City:
In your face, Detroit! Go, Camden. Go, Camden.
Beating out Atlanta, St. Louis, Gary, Indiana, and last year’s champ and everyone’s perennial favorite Detroit, Camden, NJ is the county’s most dangerous city.
For those of us who have lived anywhere near the area can tell you this is no surprise, and we’ve been saying it for years. How many Mischief Nights (Or Devil’s Night) have we watched Camden in flames? And yet, this is the city that the state decided to put The New Jersey State Aquarium.
We used to joke that when they built the aquarium, they built it around the fish in the Delaware River. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the State Aquarium in a beach resort town like Wildwood or Atlantic City, or even the Island Republic of Brigantine? I mean, Brigantine already has the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. Instead, the state decided to put it in a crime-infested cesspool like Camden.
Since it’s on the river, they call it “The Waterfront” now. Like, the Delaware River off of Camden is something to be romanticized. You can probably walk across it and it may be flammable. They even put the major regional outdoor concert arena on “The Waterfront”. It’s changed corporate sponsorship at least 3 times since it’s been open. Camden’s attempted revitalization is like putting a rose on top of a trash heap. Way to make New Jersey proud.