A Texas man claimed he had a 25-gallon drum of cyanide and tried to sell it to an FBI informant, touting the poison's usefulness in mass killings, according to a court affidavit.
Jeffrey Don Detrixhe, 38, of Higgins, Texas, was arrested Monday in southeastern Oklahoma on a complaint of possession or transfer of a chemical weapon. He waived his initial court appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court, and a judge ordered U.S. Marshals to extradite him to Texas. Julia O'Connell, Detrixhe's court-appointed attorney, had not yet returned to her office and was not immediately available to comment.
According to an affidavit, FBI agents taped conversations in which Detrixhe told an informant that he had a 25-gallon drum of cyanide and was willing to sell it in exchange for $10,000, a thermal imager and a fully automatic Russian-made AK-47 assault rifle.
Detrixhe allegedly told the informant he could turn the white cyanide briquettes into gas by using hydrochloric acid, according to the affidavit. "I could kill a city with that ... Euthanize a whole village," Detrixhe said in the taped conversation, according to the affidavit.
Mark White of the FBI's Dallas office said some cyanide was recovered when a search warrant was executed at Detrixhe's home near the Oklahoma border, but he would not say how much.
White said U.S. attorneys would likely seek Detrixhe's indictment in the next 30 days. Detrixhe was attending a funeral near Idabel, Okla., when he was arrested.
A Missouri mom was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in the death of a teen who killed herself over a failed Internet romance that turned out to be a hoax. A federal indictment accuses Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Missouri, of using the social networking Web site MySpace.com to pose as a 16-year-old boy and feign romantic interest in the girl.
The girl, Megan Meier, committed suicide after her online love interest spurned her, according to prosecutors, telling her the world would be a better place without her.
Drew faces up to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiracy and accessing protected computers to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.
The indictment, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accuses Drew and others of registering on MySpace as "Josh Evans" and using the account to lure Meier into an an online romance. Authorities have previously said that Drew set up the account to find out what Meier, who lived in her neighborhood, was saying about her daughter.
Prosecutors allege that Drew and the others violated MySpace's terms of service by using false information to create the account so they could "harass, abuse or harm" Meier, according to the indictment.
The two corresponded for about four weeks before "Josh" broke off the relationship, authorities said. Within an hour, Meier hanged herself in her room and died the next day.
The indictment does not allege that Drew sent the final message telling Meier the world would be a better place without her. Instead, it blames her unnamed co-conspirators, who authorities have previously said include a teenage girl. After Drew learned of the teen's suicide, the indictment alleges, she directed one of the teens involved to "keep her mouth shut" and deleted the account.
Meier's mother, Tina Meier, told CNN in November that her daughter had self-esteem issues and had struggled with depression since childhood. She said when her daughter began receiving messages from "Josh" telling her she was pretty, she was thrilled.
When "Josh" broke off the relationship, Tina Meier said, her daughter was devastated. "She was looking for me to help calm herself down like I always did and be there for her. And I was upset because I didn't like the language she was using, and I was angry she didn't sign off when I told her to," Tina Meier told CNN.
"She said to me, 'You're supposed to be my mom, you're supposed to be on my side,' and then took off running upstairs," Tina Meier said. Tina Meier found her daughter hanging by a belt shortly afterward.
"It's as if my daughter killed herself with a gun," Meier's father, Ron, told CNN. "And it's as if they loaded the gun for her."
Drew is scheduled for arraignment in June.
"This adult woman allegedly used the Internet to target a young teenage girl, with horrendous ramifications," U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said in a written statement. "Any adult who uses the Internet or a social gathering Web site to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences," O'Brien said.
In December, Missouri prosecutors declined to file charges against Drew, saying there was no law under which she could be charged. "There is no way that anybody could know that talking to someone or saying that you're mean to your friends on the Internet would create a substantial risk," St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas said. "Under the law, we just couldn't show that." Then why hide it?
#1
this bitch knew the damage caused and she's still walking around. I bet she beats the rap, but she deserves every bit of shit dumped on her. I hope her life's a living hell
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2008 8:52 Comments ||
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#2
This is what lynch mobs are better at than the justice system.
#3
It may very well die in court, but not before crushing her under the financial burden avoiding a 20 year prison sentence at the hands of a very surly jury.
#6
I heard she wanted to plead to Criminal Harassment, because the suicide wasn't forseeable. Unfortunately for her, harassment is tied to ANY effect, and the effect defines the offense. A suicide being the worst aggravation of the offense. Ergo: she's toast!
#7
I'm an asshole, and even I knew that adolescents take things more seriously than adults. She knew exactly what she was doing, she was unfortunately successful. I'd prefer "jailed, then wandering the land bearing her mark: unseen, unheard, and without human comfort"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2008 21:11 Comments ||
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A 28-YEAR-OLD man who torched himself when he set fire to a car, ran screaming for help through central Launceston and was eventually doused by two policemen. Luke Alexander Grimmond was covered in flames after dousing a utility with petrol and setting fire to it about 3am, Launceston's Supreme Court has heard.
"The accused's clothing caught fire and he was seen by a number of people including two police officers, covered in flames screaming for help and running west along Brisbane St across the intersection with George St into The Avenue," Crown prosecutor Peter Sherriff told the court.
Jason Kenna, who had been drinking with Mr Grimmond, also saw him running down the street. "Mr Kenna ran to his friend's aid and managed to get him on to the roadway where he tried to roll him in order to smother the flames," Mr Sherriff said. "The two police officers however arrived seconds later and used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire and assisted the accused who was in severe pain and wearing only the burned remnants of his clothing.
"Pieces of clothing still alight were seen strewn along the Brisbane St where he had run."
While waiting for the ambulance, Mr Grimmond was heard to say he was a "d***head", that he had torched a vehicle, and would have to pay for damage. He was also heard to say "why doesn't anybody like me?"
Mr Grimmond pleaded guilty to unlawfully setting fire to property on May 4, 2006. Chief Justice Ewan Crawford remanded Mr Grimmond in custody for sentence.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/16/2008 19:08 Comments ||
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#4
my guess is he was drunk and barbara said and evidently took a bath in the flammable procuct that he was using. from experience i would say he sprayed charcoal lighter staright on to the fire
The Australian Egg Corporation has expressed surprise at the discovery of a gecko inside a chicken egg. Darwin doctor Peter Beaumont was cooking dinner when he cracked open the egg and found the dead gecko inside the shell. Health authorities say the discovery is nothing to be alarmed about and it is being examined at a laboratory.
The research and development program manager with the Egg Corporation, David Witcombe, says he has never heard of such a case before. "Certainly the gecko wouldn't have been ingested by the bird. It would be physically impossible for it to make its way from the digestive tract into the area where the egg's formed.
"So it's a case of the gecko actually making its way through the cloaca of the bird and onto the developing egg."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/16/2008 7:36 Comments ||
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#7
Where I live is plagued with geckos. I bet Guam is too. Hence Joe's squeamishness.
My second or third night in my new apartment, I got up to investigate noises, and found a big fat gecko clinging to the ceiling above my bed. It did not attempt to sell me car insurance.
#2
Anonymoose, the whole thing was posted as an apropos to the article about Chinese quake, with a tongue firmly in cheek. ;-)
Not that there are not examples of animals reacting to the upcoming quakes in one form or anoher... they do, but to equate a frog invasion with a sure sign of a quake is, to put it mildly, unwarranted.
#3
It's spring, when amphibians travel to the nearest appropriate vernal breeding ponds or appropriate wet spot. Were it high summer, I'd be concerned.
#5
Possible - post-Midnite AM Guam time I'd observed more very large sporadic EM sparks-bursts in the skies. However, I didn't detect or sense any strong-yield/magn quakes for Guam as per Guam-specific LAND MOVEMENTS [shear] - D *** NG WINGED TERMITES [Groups, NOT Swarm] WERE OUT AND FLYIN', THOUGH, AT LEAST IN HAGATNA/AGANA + TAMUNING.
#6
Forgot to add that I also observed two large tailed fireballs over the Agana Shopping Center, going South-to-North, which IMO was stwangez [strange] becuz they roughly followed one another widin a ten-minute time frame + along similar sky tracks + direction???
First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.
As bodies are pulled from the wreckage of Monday's quake, Chinese online chat rooms and blogs are buzzing with a question: Why didn't these natural signs alert the government that a disaster was coming?
"If the seismological bureau were professional enough they could have predicted the earthquake ten days earlier, when several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei, but the bureau there dismissed it," one commentator wrote. In fact, seismologists say, it is nearly impossible to predict when and where an earthquake will strike.
Several countries, including China, have sought to use changes in nature mostly animal behavior as an early warning sign. But so far, no reliable way has been found to use animals to predict earthquakes, said Roger Musson, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.
But that has not stopped a torrent of online discussion. Even the mainstream media has chimed in, with an article in Tuesday's China Daily newspaper questioning why the government did not predict the earthquake. If you are all things to all people, Dems, pretty soon you'll be expected to predict earthquakes. Only Obama can do that!
Online commentators say the first sign came about three weeks ago, when large amounts of water suddenly disappeared from a pond in Enshi city in Hubei province, around 350 miles east of the epicenter, according to media reports. Three weeks prior and 350 miles away? Maybe it took three weeks for the water to get to the epicenter and lubricate the rocks, allowing them to slip, thus causing the quake?
Then, three days before the earthquake, thousands of toads roamed the streets of Mianzhu, a hard-hit city where at least 2,000 people and thousands of toads have been reported killed. Mianzhu residents feared the toads were a sign of an approaching natural disaster, but a local forestry bureau official said it was normal, the Huaxi Metropolitan newspaper reported May 10, two days before the earthquake.
The day of the earthquake, zebras were banging their heads against a door at the zoo in Wuhan, more than 600 miles east of the epicenter, according to the Wuhan Evening Paper. Zebras can sense these things, even hours or days before.
Elephants swung their trunks wildly, almost hitting a staff member. The 20 lions and tigers, which normally would be asleep at midday, were walking around. Five minutes before the quake hit, dozens of peacocks started screeching. The restless lions and tigers should've been the giveaway.
There are a few possible reasons for such behavior, said Musson, the seismologist. The most likely is that the movement of underground rocks before an earthquake generates an electrical signal that some animals can perceive. Another theory holds that other animals can sense weak shocks before an earthquake that are imperceptible to humans. Or it could be random events made intriguing by an unrelated event.
Zhang Xiaodong, a researcher at the China Seismological Bureau, said his agency has used natural activity to predict earthquakes 20 times in the past 20 years, but that still represents a small proportion of China's earthquakes."The problem now is this kind of relationship is still quite vague," he said. Sort of like global warming/cooling/climate change?
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/16/2008 06:03 ||
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#1
Another theory holds that other animals can sense weak shocks before an earthquake that are imperceptible to humans.
#2
It is not imùpossible that animals are able to smell certain gasses released when ea(rthquake is imminent.
Also a couple decades ago vulcanologist Tazieff advocated measuring electric resistance of the soil as a way to predict earthgeuake. Also it was not your typical swindle for big bucks disguised in reesearch: project was very, very, cheap (less than a million dollars for a country the size of France.
#3
Or you could pay Haliburton's bribe and live...for now.
Posted by: Oscar Flomoger2508 ||
05/16/2008 12:16 Comments ||
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#4
The trouble is that such "signs" are only obvious after the fact. For instance, somebody just posted a link about frogs coming out in Bakersfield, CA. Does that mean there is going to be an earthquake there? Maybe. They do have earthquakes there every now and then. Most likely coincidence.
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A Texas man claimed he had a 25-gallon drum of cyanide and tried to sell it to an FBI informant, touting the poison's usefulness in mass killings, according to a court affidavit.
Arsonist sets fire to himself
The Australian Egg Corporation has expressed surprise at the discovery of a gecko inside a chicken egg. Darwin doctor Peter Beaumont was cooking dinner when he cracked open the egg and found the dead gecko inside the shell. Health authorities say the discovery is nothing to be alarmed about and it is being examined at a laboratory.
First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.
