NEWARK — The year was 1978 and Newark was burning.
It was an urban, inner-city plague that year. From Oakland to East St. Louis to Boston to New York, the pervasive smell was of ash and scorched timber.
In Newark, the fires were extra body blows to a cash-strapped, jobless city still staggering from the riots a decade before.
“It was Newark’s long nadir, a decade when no one was sure the city was salvageable,” remembered Rutgers University professor Clement Price. “When I think of that time, I remember the sound of fire sirens.”
Five Newark teenage boys disappeared on a muggy August night in 1978, but it would take investigators nearly 32 years to connect them with a fire that took out three buildings on Camden Street that night.
Last week’s arrest of two men charged with taking the boys to an abandoned house, restraining them and leaving them to burn to death raised horrific images and a lot of questions. Perhaps the most compelling is: How could five people die in a fire and nobody notice?
There is no easy answer, but those who lived and worked in Newark back then say it was a tragic combination of circumstances that make sense only to those who lived through them.
Eleven years after the riots, Newark was a city in chaos. People and business were still fleeing, abandoned buildings dotted the landscape, and the crime and arson rates spiraled upward as the city was laying off hundreds of police and firefighters.
“You have to remember, this was before gangs and crack and guns trashed Newark,” said educator and activist Ras Baraka, 40, who grew up just a few blocks from where the teenagers went missing. “Crime was probably worse then, but we didn’t know it. If somebody disappeared, the first assumption was it was by choice.”
In fact, police would not even start a missing persons investigation until three days after the boys failed to come home for the first times in their lives, their parents said.
By that time, firefighters, who were in charge of arson investigations, had walked away from the gutted wreck at 256 Camden St., assuming it was empty.
Ever since the riots in 1967, people had left Newark in droves, leaving behind old, mostly wooden buildings that were not worth the taxes owed on them. Some were torched for insurance, but according to a report by Carl Stoffers, chief of the arson squad to city council in 1978, profit was only the fourth most common cause. Vandalism was a more likely reason, particularly for the 833 empty structures set on fire. Then there was garden-variety pyromania. But the top cause of arson, Stoffers said, was spite — or vengeance against someone who crossed the wrong person…Read full story
Two men charged in the 1978 disappearance of five teenagers in Newark, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder Wednesday morning as about 40 family members of the victims looked on. Tonight, in our crime and punishment report, we’ll look into the case.
The story got us thinking about cold cases and missing persons cases around the country. Check out the National Missing Persons Database. It allows you to search nationwide for missing persons using a variety of search features. Anyone may search the database, but by registering in the system both law enforcement professionals and the general public will also be able to:
Dallas police have stepped up the search for a 16-year-old Molina High School girl who disappeared two months ago after texting her mother saying she was spending the night with a friend.
Missing persons detectives have exhausted all leads in the search for Angela Jaramillo, who did not have a history of running away before she was last heard from in late January, police said Thursday.
“We believe there might be more to this,” said Sgt. Eugene Reyes, who supervises the department’s Special Investigations Unit, which handles missing persons cases generally when foul play is suspected. “It’s out of character for her to be gone.”
On Saturday, Jan. 23, the girl told her mother that she was going to a party at a boy’s house. “She left about 11:30 p.m.,” said her mother, Stephanie Reyes, who is no relation to the police sergeant. “I was babysitting that night, and when she walked out the door, I didn’t see who she left with.”Later, Angela texted and asked if she could spend the night with a friend. Her mother gave her permission.
The next day, her mother tried Angela’s cell but got no answer. “I automatically dialed that friend who she was supposed to be spending the night with. They said she never showed up. I called the police immediately.”
She said the boy who hosted the party told her that Angela had come by, watched some movies and left about 2 a.m. It’s unclear who gave her a ride, her mother said. “I am taking it minute by minute,” she said. “It kills me. I can’t think. I’m putting all my hope on her coming back.”
She said Angela has two brothers, ages 3 and 4, and a 10-year-old sister. Angela enjoys school, especially soccer and volleyball, her mother said.
“She was a little kid who liked to make crafts,” she said. “She started coming out of her shell in high school, but she’s never run away or did anything like this before.”
Angela, who also goes by Angie, is 5 feet 8 inches tall, 190 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Her ears and tongue are pierced.
Schepps Dairy is offering a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the safe return of Angela. If it is determined that Angela is the victim of foul play, that same $5,000 will be available as a reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment of a suspect in the case.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 877-373-8477, or Detective E.A. Ibarra at 214-671-3646.
Mar 18 (THAINDIAN NEWS) In an epic cleaning fail, not to mention a major investigation fail, the body of Sony Millbrook, who has been missing from a Memphis hotel room since January, was found yesterday, March 17-almost 2 months later, stuffed under the bed in her hotel room 222 of the Budget Inn Motel.
The room had been rented out approximately five times in the the month and a half that the body was hidden beneath the bed, which has a metal frame bottom that sits on the floor. The mattress, box springs, and her body apparently were all fitted inside the metal box-frame. Millbrook was found yesterday when the smell finally drew attention…and detectives to the room. She is said to be the victim of a homicide.
Sony Millbrook had been reported missing to the Memphis Police Department on January 27 when she did not pick her kids up from school. Family members then told the police that she had been staying at the Budget Inn. The room had been locked that day for lack of payment, but her belongings had been taken out, the room has been “cleaned” and rented out many more times since then.
Millbrook’s sister, Linda James told reporters that she had begged the motel staff to let her check the room or to do it themselves, and they refused. “I begged. I didn’t raise my voice. But I begged,” James told the Fox news crew. “I begged that front desk staff to please go check the room and they refused.” She said if they had just checked the room, or the investigators had even done so, her sister would have been found long before now. “As far as I know, my sister could’ve been living and just suffered,” she said, adding, “If the housekeeper was in there cleaning the rooms, why didn’t they check underneath the beds?”
During the investigation of the missing woman which apparently never included a room search, Millbrook’s boyfriend, LaKeith Moody was interrogated, and later arrested on a gun violation charge. Moody, who is the father of Millbrook’s four kids, is still being held.
Memphis police’s deputy chief of investigative services,Joseph Scott, said to FoxNews.com that they’ve “never heard of anything like this…It’s stranger than fiction.” Reportedly, a homicide investigator had simply spoken with two clerks and a security guard, found out that the room had been locked for lack of payment and her belongings removed, and told that the family had picked up the items from hotel staff and took them home. Why did no one search this room?!
The body of a Purdue student missing since early Sunday was found today submerged in his car in a Fishers neighborhood retention pond, police say.
The vehicle driven by Patrick Trainor, 19, Indianapolis, was identified by family members gathered in the Fishers neighborhood of Breakwater, near 116th Street and Brooks School Road.
Fishers Fire Department spokesman Ron Lipps said authorities pulled the car from the pond about 3 p.m.
Police said they found no tire tracks leading from the road into the pond, which is about 20 feet from the road.
Trainor’s family identified the body. They declined comment.
In West Lafayette, more than 200 friends and supporters gathered Wednesday night at Sagamore Ridge Apartments for a candlelight vigil. They prayed, shared a moment of silence and wrote messages to Trainor on a large banner stretched in front of the apartment complex, which is managed by a friend of Trainor’s family.
“We’re here to support Patrick, his friends and his family through this difficult time,” said Danielle Champagne, event organizer. “We’re a community here, and this vigil is a simple way for us to come together.”
Purdue freshman and fellow Beta Theta Pi member Tom McGrath said the vigil was planned before Trainor’s body was found Wednesday. Emotionally, the ceremony came at a crucial time.
“We really appreciate all of the support. From the search efforts to everything else,” he said. “Pat was one of the strongest, most easygoing guys I have ever met, and he will be greatly missed.”… Read full story here
NEWARK, N.J. — One night in 1978, five teenage boys disappeared without a trace in what would become one of the longest and most baffling missing-persons cases New Jersey has ever seen.
Thirty-two years later, prosecutors announced the arrests of two men and disclosed the victims’ gruesome fate: They were herded at gunpoint into an abandoned building in a dispute over missing drugs and burned to death in a blaze that obliterated nearly all evidence.
“For years, their families have wondered what happened on that August day,” acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino said Tuesday. “Today, we believe that question has been answered.”
A relative of one of the victims said that one of the men charged with the crimes, 56-year-old Lee Evans, confessed to him 18 months ago, setting investigators on the task of corroborating the confession. On Tuesday, authorities would only say that a witness came forward then but didn’t give details.
“He just told me what happened,” Rogers Taylor, brother of Ernest Taylor, told reporters Tuesday.
Over the years, investigators conducted a nationwide search for the teens, chased hundreds of dead-end leads and enlisted at least two psychics. In the end, the evidence led back to a site just blocks from where the victims were last seen, in the same neighborhood where four of the teens lived, played and went to high school together.
Investigators believe that’s where two boys were taken into an abandoned house, followed later by three more. It was not known what pretense was used to get them to the house.
Laurino said the men restrained the boys and then set the house on fire. The five were believed to have died from the flames and not from gunshots, he said.
The house was destroyed in the blaze, as were houses on either side of it, Laurino said. The five bodies were never found, possibly because no one thought to look for remains in an unoccupied home. The boys were not reported missing until two days later.
Arrested late Monday were Evans, of nearby Irvington, who routinely hired teenagers to help with odd jobs; and Philander Hampton, 53, of Jersey City. They allegedly acted in retaliation for the theft of some marijuana.
Each is charged with five counts of murder and one count of arson. Both were being held on $5 million bail ahead of an arraignment scheduled for Wednesday. Prosecutors did not know whether the suspects had attorneys.
Both men were questioned after the boys disappeared, but neither was charged. Evans passed a lie-detector test… Read full story here
