Mindhunters | Murder

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A Tale of Three Murder Trials

By Mark Olshaker On May 21, 2013 · 1 Comment

Amanda Knox, Casey Anthony & Jodi Arias

As I write this, a Phoenix, Arizona, jury is considering whether Jodi Arias should be sentenced to death or life in prison for the murder of her former boyfriend Travis Alexander. So this is as good a time as any to review what went right in this trial and what went wrong in two others.

Over the past year and more, the media have been in nirvana with three criminal defendants of the type that make their ratings and circulation-driven hearts go all aflutter. All three are attractive white women, and each was accused of the grisly murder of someone very close to her: a roommate, a child, a lover. In each case, press, public and a large part of the investigative force had a preconceived idea – what we in the law enforcement community call a confirmation bias – firmly in place long before each trial began.

But in the murder trials of Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy; Casey Anthony in Orlando, Florida; and Jodi Arias in Phoenix, we see both similarities and differences that provide a virtual user’s manual on how to, and now not to, prosecute high profile crimes.

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More on the Kyle Bruner Case

By Mark Olshaker On May 20, 2013 · 3 Comments

Kyle Bruner

We have been extremely moved by the outpouring of sympathy and admiration for Kyle Bruner, the 33-year-old son of my high school friend Rick Bruner, who was murdered in the Bahamas while heroically coming to the defense of a woman being attacked. We have also been gratified that Bahamian police quickly made an arrest in the case.

Here is Rick’s update on the latest developments:

Mark, they now have four men in custody and are searching for a fifth in connection to my son’s murder. It appears this was a criminal gang that police think were behind dozens, maybe hundreds of armed robberies in Nassau over the past few years. The outrage over his death brought people forward to give information to the police, which has allowed them to extend the investigation and find the other members of the gang, all of whom are being charged with murder.

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This One Is Personal

By Mark Olshaker On May 13, 2013 · 7 Comments

Kyle Nicholas Bruner

UPDATE: Today (May 14, 2013) Rick Bruner reported: I have just been informed that Bahamian police have apprehended the alleged shooter in my son’s murder and the shipmate who was with Kyle at the time of the shooting, positively identified him from a police lineup.

Yesterday I received the horrifying news that the son of my good high school friend Rick Bruner had been murdered. This was Rick’s message to his friends:

It is a very sad morning as I bid farewell to my son, Kyle Nicholas Bruner, 1st mate of the Yankee Clipper, age 33, sailor, poet, teacher, musician and rascal, who was shot and killed this day on a street in Nassau, Bahamas. He did the things he loved. He loved and was loved by many. He was at times exasperating and inspiring… charming and maddening. He loved the sea and it always called him back from where ever he might have seemed settled. We will miss him, but we won’t be alone in that.

Later in the day, we found out that Kyle had been shot while trying to protect two women who were being mugged.

As Rick put it, “It doesn’t make it any easier to handle, but it fits with the way he lived his life.”

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Arias: Considering the Death Penalty

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker On May 9, 2013 · 13 Comments

Travis Alexander

As we write this, the jury in the Jodi Arias trial is about to reconvene to consider a punishment appropriate for its finding of murder in the first degree in the death of Travis Alexander. Basically, the jury has three options: life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, life in prison without the possibility of parole, and death by lethal injection.

Now, you can be for capital punishment or against it for a variety of moral, practical and/or procedural reasons. But if we are going to have a death penalty on the books at all and you don’t use it here, why even bother?

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Little Weird Side Hobbies

By Mark Olshaker On April 16, 2013 · 1 Comment

Richard Meltz

Just when we thought we’d heard the last from NYPD “Cannibal Cop” Gilberto Valle comes news of the arrest by FBI agents of two of his Internet pen pals, or, as the august New York Times put it, “part of the same online community of sadists.”

Now, unlike the aforementioned Mr. Valle, these two didn’t want to eat women; they were content just to beat them, which, as I’ve lamented in previous columns, is a more socially acceptable practice in some societies. But not in ours. Well, not just beat them, actually, but you get the idea.

But what struck me most about this report was what these two guys did for a living, and then how they explained it all.

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