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In Feb. 1999, Victoria Bell Banks was in the county jail and pretended to be pregnant as a ploy to get released.  She had two doctors check on her, the second of which claimed to have heard a fetal heartbeat.  Victoria was released on bond in May 1999, after she threatened to sue the jail for failing to provide prenatal care.  In August, the sheriff, Donald Lolly, stopped Victoria and questioned her about the baby that was due in June.  After Victoria told him she miscarried, the sheriff took her to the second doctor who examined her before, and he could find no evidence she had ever been pregnant.  The sheriff then had officials with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation question her to find out where was the missing baby.  Victoria could not have been pregnant because she had had her tubes tied in 1995.

After being questioned for extended periods of time, Victoria, her husband Medell Banks Jr., and her sister, Dianne Bell Tucker all reportedly confessed to participating in the killing of the non-existent child.  They were charged with capital murder in Sept. 1999.  Rather than face the electric chair, Victoria pleaded guilty to manslaughter after her trial had begun in Nov 2000, and the other two did likewise six months later as their trial dates approached.  All were sentenced to 15 years in prison.  A nationally known fertility doctor examined Victoria and concluded she was sterile.  The prosecutor filed perjury charges against Victoria for telling a judge she had not been pregnant.  The charges were dismissed in Jan. 2003 when Victoria signed a statement that said, "I, Victoria Banks, hereby state that I lied when I said I didn't have a baby.  I am sorry."  Medell Banks faced retrial on capital murder charges in Jan 2003, but all charges were dropped after pretrial hearings established that Medell never admitted to killing a baby.  (JusticeDenied) (ForeJustice)  [11/05]

After 28-year-old Laura Henderson Ibach disappeared, her ex-husband, Jack Anton Ibach, was charged with her murder. It was alleged that Jack employed Donald “Mac” McDonald and James Kerwin to commit the actual murder. Laura was last seen with these men, and they were charged with her murder as well. Jack and Laura shared custody of their daughters, an arrangement Jack approved of. Laura was seeking full custody of the daughters, so she could take them to Oregon. Two of Laura’s coworkers stated that she talked about picking up a “tape” on the day of her murder to use against her ex-husband in the custody dispute.

McDonald was friendly with Laura, but only knew Jack on sight. Kerwin was a close acquaintance of McDonald. McDonald had a plausible explanation of why Laura had been with him in his van, along with Kerwin, for a short period on the night of her disappearance. No direct evidence existed that Jack had paid money to McDonald or Kerwin, or conspired with them in any way.

Clothes similar to those worn by Laura had been found along a two-mile stretch of Monashka Bay on the Pacific Ocean. None of the clothes were positively identified as hers and it is possible that none belonged to her. The prosecution theorized that McDonald and Kerwin tossed Laura’s body off a particular cliff into the bay. The ocean currents then carried Laura away. It was not explained how the clothes, if Laura’s, could have come off her discarded body.

A purse was found on the beach, containing Laura’s old identification. Laura had been wearing “pinkish” tennis shoes prior to her disappearance. She had recent wart surgery on her foot and was wearing Band-Aids until her wounds healed. After this information became known, a pink shoe was found on the beach with a Band-Aid inside. If these items belonged to Laura, the evidence did not explain how her sock disappeared. Even more mysterious was the fact that the found shoe was a left one, but medical records showed that Laura had surgery on her right foot. One might suspect that evidence was being planted.

Police impounded McDonald’s van and searched it twice, but found no incriminating evidence. Months later, Kodiak Police Corporal Andre reportedly called a Chicago area psychic to ask for help in the case. He said the psychic told him to “look for something in the van.” Nine days before trial, police checked McDonald’s van, then unsecured, and found an earring in plain sight near the gas pedal. The found earring was porcelain with a purple flower painted on it, consistent with the earrings Laura had been described as wearing. The prosecution theorized that Laura’s earring had been violently knocked off her during a struggle in the van. It then had gone down the front window defroster slot and had remained in the heater/defroster system during the first two searches. Subsequent towing had jarred the earring enough to fall through to the floor.

Laura weighed about 150 lbs. prior to her disappearance. McDonald’s lawyer arranged for a reenactment of the prosecution theory that McDonald and Kerwin tossed Laura’s body off a cliff into the bay. He had two men about the size of McDonald and Kerwin attempt to toss a 150 lb. sack from the location into the bay. The high tide line was 50 feet straight out and the two men could not throw the sack anywhere close to it. The defendants’ trial judge would not allow the results of the reenactment to be presented at trial. Inside Edition, a national TV show, later performed a similar reenactment, with identical results.

At trial, Kerwin retained a private lawyer and was acquitted of all charges. McDonald was found guilty of kidnapping Laura, but the jury hung on his murder charge as well as the charges against Laura’s husband, Jack. At retrial, McDonald was convicted of Laura Ibach’s murder. It is not known whether Jack Ibach was convicted. McDonald exhausted his state and federal appeals in 2004.  (http://freemac.us)  (JD26 p.3)  [2/08]

Vincent Doan was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of his girlfriend, Clarissa Culberson, also known as Carrie.  He was sentenced to 888 years in prison.  Culberson, then 22, mysteriously disappeared one night and is presumed dead.  Neither her body nor her car has ever been found.  The case against Doan was based on speculation, guesswork, and hearsay, with no hard evidence.

In 2004, police received a tip that Culberson’s body was buried on the property of Jarrod Messer.  Cadaver detecting dogs were brought in and hit on a scent.  Seven items were found buried under the concrete floor of Messer’s barn.  They included a piece of duct tape, a sock, and a shirt.  Culberson’s mother identified the shirt as her daughter’s.  Police said the concrete was poured just days after Culberson’s disappearance.

Culberson knew Messer and even introduced him to her mother.  Messer associated with Michael Fogt, who was later convicted of the 1998 murder of his wife.  The father of Fogt’s wife believes his daughter was killed because she knew too much.  Fogt also shot Messer in the back in 1998, but Messer refused to press charges.  In addition to the murder of his wife, Fogt was also convicted of a 1994 rape and the 2003 murder of a Hillsboro woman.  Culberson knew Fogt because he lived next door to her best friend’s parents.  (justiceforvincent.com) (www.justice4vinceandtracey.com)  [3/08]

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot were convicted of murdering Denice Haraway.  Haraway, 24, worked part-time at McAnally’s convenience store.  She was last seen leaving the store with a man who had his arm around her waist.  The two appeared to be a pair of lovers.  The store was found deserted with the cash register drawer opened and emptied.  Haraway’s purse and driver’s license were found inside, and her car nearby.

Months later, after Haraway still remained missing, police questioned Tommy Ward, who resembled the man accompanying Haraway from the store.  After days of interrogation, Ward confessed to the crime.  He also implicated his friend, Karl Fontenot, and Odell Titsworth, a man he never met.  During the videotaped confession, Ward frequently forgot Titsworth’s name and called him “Titsdale.”  Ward said the three gang-raped Haraway, murdered her with Titsworth’s knife, and dumped her body near Sandy Creek.  Fontenot was soon arrested and confessed after only two hours of interrogation.  His confession was similar to Ward’s but contradicted it many details, like the order in which the three raped Haraway, or the location and number of stab wounds on her.  Fontenot said the three brought Haraway into an abandoned house where Titsworth poured gasoline over her body and burned down the house.  Ward had mentioned a burned down house in an earlier unrecorded confession, and police knew it existed.

Titsworth was arrested, but he had broken his arm two days before the murder in a fight with police.  Medical and police records made him an unlikely suspect, and he was never charged with murder.  While police were sifting through the remains of the burned down house, the owner appeared.  After police told him of Fontenot’s confession, the owner said Fontenot’s story was impossible, as he himself had burned down the house 10 months before the murder.

At trial, the prosecutor presented the confessions and was forced into the position of telling the jury the defendants were lying about details while asking the jury to believe them anyway.  Two jailhouse informants supplemented the confessions.  One said Ward confessed, while the other said he overheard Fontenot talking to himself, saying, “I knew we’d get caught.  I knew we’d get caught.”  The jurors returned with guilty verdicts and death penalties.

Haraway’s body was found four months later in Hughes County, far from anyplace that was searched.  She had not been stabbed or burned, but died from a single gunshot to the head.  The case attracted the attention of a New York journalist, Robert Mayer, who published a book about the case entitled The Dreams of Ada.  (Source:  The Innocent Man by John Grisham)  (www.wardandfontenot.com)  [1/07]

Robert Norman Rivera was convicted in 2002 of murdering his 20-month-old daughter, Katelyn Selena Rivera.  On Aug. 10, 1999, Robert picked up Katelyn at her day care in Boothwyn, PA, took her to the zoo, to a restaurant, and to other places.  He then repeatedly tried to return her to her mother, Jennifer Helton, but Helton refused to take her.  Apparently, Helton wanted greater custody rights and wanted to prolong Rivera's care of her so she could argue that he did not return her.  Later that night Rivera took Katelyn to a tourist location (Longwood Gardens) and while there met a couple and ended up giving them custody of Katelyn as he had no money to continue caring for her.

Rivera was arrested in Boothwyn the next day, after traveling to Maryland, where he stayed overnight at the home of a former neighbor.  He told investigators how he gave Katelyn away and even accompanied them to Longwood Gardens.  Despite initial disbelief, Rivera's story checked out as far as investigators could determine.  Nevertheless, authorities began searching many areas where Rivera had been as though he had killed and buried Katelyn somewhere.  Despite 5000 man-hours of searches using cadaver detection dogs, no body was ever found.

On two separate occasions, a prison informant, William Lively, reported the locations of circumstantial physical evidence, which lead detective David Peifer then “found.” The first, a shovel, indicated that Rivera buried Katelyn near Elkton, Maryland after 10:15 p.m. on Aug. 10, 1999. The second set of evidence, a child’s shoe and sock, indicated Rivera buried Katelyn before 9:15 p.m. the same day near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Since it is highly unlikely that Rivera buried his alleged victim twice, the prosecution’s evidence indicates that Peifer had to have planted at least one set of evidence and that both Peifer and Lively perjured themselves. There are other indications that both sets of evidence were planted. Detective Peifer also presented a "confession" in which Rivera gave a non-incriminating answer on tape, which sounded incriminating because Peifer asserted that it is in response to an incriminating question that was given off tape. It later became known that Peifer testified, in 1982, against accused murderer Nick Yarris, a defendant who was sentenced to death, but exonerated by DNA evidence in 2004.

At trial, Rivera's attorney, G. Guy Smith, made no attempt to dispute the prosecution's evidence, and he even agreed to a stipulation by the prosecutor that on-tape statements made by Rivera confirmed that Detective Peifer had asked him incriminating questions off-tape.

Rivera was charged with capital murder in April 2000 and convicted of second-degree murder in Jan. 2002.  He was sentenced to life without parole.  Because the prosecution needed an additional felony conviction to bolster the severity of a murder conviction, the prosecution broke new legal ground and made Rivera become the first parent in Pennsylvania history to be convicted of kidnapping his own child.  The PA Supreme Court had ruled twice in the 1800's that a parent cannot be convicted of kidnapping his or her own child, but the kidnapping conviction has been upheld on appeal.  (www.freerobertrivera.org)  [12/05]

Paul William Ferrell, a rookie sheriff's deputy, was convicted of the murder of Cathy Ford, a 19-year-old waitress from nearby Maryland. Her body has never been found and no one had ever seen her with Ferrell. Some time after Ford’s disappearance, her boyfriend, Darvin Moon, discovered her badly burned truck 75 yards from Ford’s trailer home. Some believed that the truck was burned elsewhere because there was no scorching on the vegetation surrounding the vehicle.

FBI agents found traces of blood under a newly laid carpet in Ferrell’s trailer as well as on the walls and ceiling. Laboratory tests showed the blood to be that of a woman, but DNA tests could not match the blood to Ford. Ferrell said the trailer was eight years old, had been occupied by others, and might be stained by blood from a variety of sources. At trial, the prosecution purportedly engaged in “mathematical wizardry” which made the found blood look like that of Ford’s.

An FBI agent testified that while giving Ferrell a “hypothetical scenario about Cathy Ford's murder,” he had “observed signs of guilt” in Ferrell's “body language.” According to Ferrell’s appellate attorney, “this is the first time, ever, in the history of American criminal jurisprudence, that this kind of evidence has… been allowed to go to a jury.”

On the grounds that Ferrell might have committed the alleged crime for sexual reasons, his trial included circumstantial evidence that he had telephoned bookstores and libraries throughout the country posing as a physician and asking clerks who answered to read explicit passages from books on sex.

A witness, Tamela Kitzmiller, testified to having received an obscene phone call from a man she took to be Ferrell. She later recanted her testimony, claiming that the prosecution convinced her to testify by telling her that Ferrell had been involved in a series of murders in Yellowstone Park. “They told me that he was a sicko, and that he needed to be put away.” After giving her testimony, Kitzmiller says she waited for prosecutors to produce proof of Ferrell's involvement in the Yellowstone murders, as they had promised. This proof never arrived.

Kim Nelson, a neighbor of Ferrell, testified that on the day of Ford’s disappearance she heard “banging, a gunshot, and a woman’s scream” coming from Ferrell’s trailer. Later, however, she stated she “didn’t know nothin’ about Paul Ferrell killin’ anybody,” and that she had not heard anything out of the ordinary on the day in question.

Private investigator and author Martin Yant helped expose the case by publishing a story about it in a magazine.  He also got the case exposure on Montel Williams and Unsolved Mysteries. Ferrell was released pending an evidentiary hearing, but he was reincarcerated for the crime in 1997.  West Virginia Governor Underwood commuted Ferrell's sentence in Jan. 2001.  He wrote that Ferrell's convictions "are not supported by the presence of the alleged victim's body, weapon, eyewitnesses, or physical evidence such as fingerprints, hair and fibers."  The commutation made Ferrell eligible for parole which he was granted in May 2004.  (JD02) (Articles)  [2/08]

Thirty-one-year-old Doris Faye Lentz disappeared on Apri1 23, 1996 after telling a friend she was driving from her Arlington, VA home to pick up her 4-year-old daughter, Julia, at her ex-husband's home in Fort Washington, MD.  Her ex-husband, Jay E. Lentz was a naval intelligence officer.  Doris was once an aide to Senator James Sasser of Tennessee.  Doris' blood spattered automobile was found a week after her disappearance in southeast Washington, DC.  Federal prosecutors suspected Jay murdered her.  They did not have sufficient evidence to bring murder charges against him as there was no body, no weapon, no eyewitnesses, and no crime scene.

Instead they charged Jay in April 2001 with kidnapping across state lines resulting in death.  Prosecutors claimed that Jay had lured Doris from her home under the assumption that she would pick up Julia.  Julia was not with Jay, but was visiting her grandparents in Indiana at the time of Doris' disappearance.  During jury deliberation, prosecutors planted inadmissible hearsay evidence in the jury room.  The jurors sent the judge a note that they were deadlocked after four days of deliberations.  However, after more days of deliberation, the jury convicted Jay in July 2003 of the kidnapping charge.  Jay faced a possible death sentence, but Julia testified that she did not want to lose her father after losing her mother.  Jay was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Prior to jury deliberations, the defense filed a Rule 29 motion to dismiss the charge against Lentz due to lack of evidence.  The defense argued that the charge of kidnapping required that the defendant both "lured" his victim and "held" her against her will.  The defense maintained there was no proof Lentz held his ex-wife against her will even if he killed her.  The judge didn't rule on the motion, but waited until the jury verdict and sentence was rendered.

In a written opinion the judge agreed that prosecutors had failed to prove their case.  The judge ruled, "To allow this conviction ... to stand would be to allow the federal government to, in essence, secure a conviction for first-degree murder without having to support the grade of that offense with evidence."  The judge entered a verdict of acquittal.  However, on appeal in Sept. 2004, the ruling was overturned and the appeals court ordered a new trial.  In March 2006, Lentz was again convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to life without parole.  No evidence was presented that Doris was held against her will.  (Google)  [4/08]

Baltovich was convicted in 1992 of murdering his 22-year-old girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain, even though her body was never found.  Bain was last seen Tuesday June 19, 1990 on the University of Toronto's Scarborough Campus.  Her car was found the following Friday, parked at an auto body shop near campus.  Blood was pooled on the floor in the back, suggesting she was murdered.

No physical evidence connects Baltovich to the alleged murder.  According to the crown, Baltovich killed Bain by 7 p.m. on the day of her disappearance.  However, Baltovich was seen waiting to meet her outside a 9 p.m. class that she took.  The crown also argued that Baltovich drove Bain's car after 1 a.m. Friday morning to Lake Scugog, an hour's drive north of Toronto.  He then allegedly buried her body in the mud of the lake before returning to Toronto by 6 a.m.  However, Baltovich reportedly could not drive Bain's car because it had a manual transmission.

Since Baltovich's conviction, his lawyers have argued that serial killer Paul Bernardo is a stronger suspect than Baltovich in Bain's murder.  At the time of Bain's disappearance, Bernardo was known as the Scarborough rapist.  An award winning book called No Claim to Mercy by Derek Finkle was written about Baltovich's case in 1998.  Following a hearing in September 2004, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a new trial, citing an unfair and unbalanced charge to jury during the first trial.  At retrial in 2008, the crown presented no evidence and urged the jury to acquit Baltovich, which the jury promptly did.

The crown's sudden decision not to retry Baltovich was apparently prompted by one of its witnesses.  Four days before the retrial, the victim's father, Rick Bain, told the crown that his daughter told him of an imminent rendezvous with Baltovich on the day of her murder.  Since the witness had never mentioned this conversation before, he presumably was planning to perjure himself in an effort to convict Baltovich.  Disclosure rules forced the crown had to inform the defence of the conversation.  Even if the witness stuck to his previous testimony, the defence could use his reported conversation to undermine his credibility.  (InjusticeBusters) (AIDWYC)  [4/08]