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    Killer of 2 Women in National Park in 1996 Has Been Identified, F.B.I. Says

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    A convicted serial rapist who died in an Ohio prison in 2018 was responsible for the murder of a couple at Shenandoah National Park in a case that initially was believed to be a hate crime.It took the authorities one week to find the bodies of Julianne Williams and Laura Winans near their campsite at a national park in Virginia in 1996 after their family reported them missing. But it would take nearly three decades for the authorities to identify the person they believe killed them.The F.B.I. office in Richmond on Thursday announced that new DNA evidence showed that Walter Leo Jackson Sr., a convicted serial rapist from Ohio who died in prison six years ago, had killed the couple in what initially was believed to have been an anti-gay hate crime and led to charges against another man that were eventually dropped by prosecutors in 2004.“After 28 years, we are now able to say who committed the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams in Shenandoah National Park,” Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia, said in a news release. “I want to again extend my condolences to the Winans and Williams families and hope today’s announcement provides some small measure of solace.”An F.B.I. investigative team revisited the case in 2021, the agency said. It re-examined previous leads and interviews and evidence recovered from the site of the killings. Investigators submitted some of the evidence for DNA testing and found a match to Mr. Jackson’s DNA, the agency said.“Even though we had this DNA match, we took additional steps and compared evidence from Lollie and Julie’s murders directly to a buccal swab containing Jackson’s DNA,” Stanley M. Meador, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Richmond, said in a news release.Mr. Jackson, who painted homes for a living, died in an Ohio prison in March 2018, officials said. He had an extensive criminal history, including convictions for rape, kidnapping and assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read the Ruling by the Virginia Court of Appeals

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      Safeguards in the Twenty-First Century, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. 479, 514 (2006); Gisli H. Gudjonsson, The
      Science-Based Pathways to Understanding False Confessions and Wrongful Convictions, 12 Frontiers
      Psychol. Feb. 2021. Further, Grimm presents a report from Dr. Richard Leo, Ph.D., J.D. Dr. Leo is a subject
      matter expert in false confessions and reviewed both the content and context of Grimm’s confession.
      DECISIONAL STANDARD
      “A person seeking a writ of actual innocence faces a daunting task; the process begins not with a
      presumption that a petitioner is innocent, but rather, that he or she is guilty.” Haas v. Commonwealth, 74
      Va. App. 586, 624 (2022); see also Tyler v. Commonwealth, 73 Va. App. 445, 459 (2021) (recognizing that
      this Court begins “with the presumption that [petitioner]’s conviction, the result of a full criminal trial that
      has been affirmed on direct appeal, is correct”). “Because the petition is filed with us in the first instance, we
      are not reviewing a judgment below in the traditional appellate sense, and consequently, there is no appellate
      standard of review to apply.” Tyler, 73 Va. App. at 458. “Rather, actual innocence petitions ‘present[] one of
      the rare situations in which the General Assembly has charged an appellate court with engaging in factual
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      evaluation.” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting Dennis v. Commonwealth, 297 Va. 104, 127 (2019)).
      Therefore, “[s]itting ‘as a court of original jurisdiction[,]’ we have ‘the same authority to weigh and
      evaluate documentary and physical evidence as a trial court would have.” Id. at 458-59 (second alteration in
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      original) (quoting Haas v. Commonwealth, 283 Va. 284, 292 (2019)). In exercising such jurisdiction, this
      Court must consider “the record of any trial or appellate court action,” Code § 19.2-327.11(D), and “the
      petition, the response by the Commonwealth, previous records of the case, the record of any hearing held
      under this chapter, and, if applicable, any findings certified from the circuit court pursuant to an order issued
      under this chapter[.]” Code § 19.2-327.13. The purpose of this review is “to allow us to perform the fact-
      finding function the General Assembly assigned us in the statutory scheme-determining whether the
      petitioner has produced sufficient new evidence to establish the statutory requirements to the requisite level of
      proof to warrant overturning a presumptively valid conviction.” Tyler, 73 Va. App. at 459.
      – 11 – More

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      Rex Heuermann, Gilgo Beach Serial Killing Suspect, Is Charged With 2 More Murders

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      Rex Heuermann, who has been accused of killing four women, has been charged with the murders of two more.Rex Heuermann, who was arrested last summer and has been accused of murdering four women in the Gilgo Beach serial killings on Long Island, was indicted Thursday on murder charges in the deaths of two more women.Mr. Heuermann, 60, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges in connection with the first four women’s deaths, has remained in jail for nearly a year awaiting trial. In the meantime, investigators turned to the six other victims — four women, a man and a toddler — whose remains, like those of the first four women, were found along Ocean Parkway by Gilgo Beach.On Thursday, Mr. Heuermann was charged with killing one of them: Jessica Taylor, whose partial remains were found near Gilgo Beach in 2011 and then linked to other partial remains found eight years earlier in a remote wooded area in Manorville, a 45-minute drive east.He was also charged with killing Sandra Costilla, a 28-year-old New York woman whose remains were found in 1993 in the Hamptons. Her long unsolved murder had not previously been associated with the Gilgo Beach investigation.The new indictment followed a recent flurry of activity in the investigation: a nine-day canine search completed last month in Manorville and a wooded area in Southampton where Ms. Costilla’s body was found. Last month, investigators also conducted a six-day search of Mr. Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park, which had been exhaustively searched for two weeks last summer after his arrest.The Gilgo investigation dates back to late 2010, when investigators discovered the first of 10 victims left along a desolate stretch of Ocean Parkway running east from Jones Beach.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mother of Dead Baby Found at Phoenix Airport in 2005 Is Arrested

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      The authorities said that genetic evidence was used to find Annie Anderson of Washington State. She will be charged with first-degree murder in the death of her child, who came to be known as Baby Skylar.The dead baby girl was found in a trash bin in a women’s bathroom at main airport in Phoenix on Oct. 10, 2005. Wrapped in newspapers and a towel, the newborn had been stuffed into a plastic bag from a Marriott Hotel, the police said.Detectives immediately began investigating the death of the child, who came to be known as Baby Skylar. A medical examiner determined two days after the baby was found that she had been suffocated and was the victim of a homicide. But leads in the case eventually dried up, and the investigation remained dormant for years.On Tuesday, more than 18 years after the gruesome discovery at Terminal 4 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the authorities announced at a news conference that they had identified and arrested the baby’s mother, Annie Anderson, 51, of Washington State, and that she would be charged with first-degree murder in the child’s death.Ms. Anderson was in custody in Washington on Tuesday, and was awaiting extradition to Maricopa County, Ariz., Lt. James Hester of the Phoenix Police Department said at the news conference.Among the few and early leads that the police had was the plastic bag in which the baby’s body had been found. That prompted detectives to investigate Marriott hotels in the Phoenix area, Lieutenant Hester said. But those leads and others proved unsuccessful.Then, in 2019, the Phoenix police partnered with the F.B.I. to use genetic genealogy, an emerging tool in solving cold cases, to look into the Baby Skylar mystery, Lieutenant Hester said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Plush Dog, Samurai Sword and 42,439 Guns: Inside an N.Y.P.D. Basement

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      A Plush Dog, Samurai Sword and 42,439 Guns: Inside an N.Y.P.D. BasementIn the office of the Manhattan Property Clerk, evidence and lost items arrive by the tens of thousands. A small band of officers and civilians has to manage never-ending pressure.Feb. 14, 2024Charmain Carryl moved with purpose through the dim, cavernous room.She turned down a shadowy aisle of rolling library stacks and scanned the shelves until her eyes landed on the aim of her pursuit: a samurai sword.The sheathed blade, an identification tag tied to its golden hilt, is just one oddity kept in the basement of New York Police Department headquarters.The office of the Manhattan Property Clerk, as it is known, is a subterranean repository for lost objects and the tangible aftermath of crime and misadventure. Ms. Carryl has been a police evidence and property specialist there for more than a decade. Thousands of people walk through One Police Plaza each day not knowing an archive that allows the criminal justice system to run is just one story below their feet.Every piece of evidence stored in the basement resides in its own plastic bag, never to be opened while underground.Almost every item that passes through the borough’s 22 precincts must go to the basement to be numbered and cataloged to be held as evidence for a trial or wait for its rightful owner. Some objects come from crime scenes. Others were turned in after they were left behind on a park bench or a sidewalk.Ms. Carryl supervises the meticulous bookkeeping. She keeps track of the expected — guns, drugs, samples of DNA — and the bizarre: a gold dental grill, a half-drunk bottle of Smirnoff and a weathered brown suitcase. It is stuffed with muskets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More