Wisconsin Man Accused of Chaining and Sexually Assaulting 2 Men

Good lord, how many of these sick-o's are out there? So many people missing... .....................at right, Edward Lanphear, kidnapper, sexual sadist, deviate.

WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wisconsin — A 46-year-old man abducted two men in their 20s, chained them up at his rural house and sexually assaulted them before one managed to escape and get help, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Edward Lanphear, 46, was ordered held on $1 million bond, but court records online did not show charges filed against him as of Wednesday evening. The Wood County jail confirmed he remained in custody but would not release any attorney information for him.

A 23-year-old man was held in Lanphear's home from Saturday until Tuesday, according to an affidavit filed by sheriff's investigators seeking support for Lanphear's arrest. The young man had told friends Friday that he was going to walk home after a fireworks show, the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune reported.

Lanphear was driving the man home when he pulled over, told him he was a police officer and handcuffed him, the affidavit said.

When one of the handcuffs became loose, Lanphear hit the man in the head and knocked him out, the document said. When the man revived, he was chained up in Lanphear's basement.
The affidavit said Lanphear used a knife to cut off the man's clothing and sexually assaulted him at least three times while he was restrained.

The document says Lanphear attached a string to a shotgun and connected the string to the man's chains, warning him that if he moved the gun would shoot him, the affidavit says.
Another affidavit says that sometime Sunday or Monday a 21-year-old man got drunk at a Wisconsin Rapids bar and passed out in his car, then later woke up naked and hanging in Lanphear's garage by locked chains.

He told authorities Lanphear hit him with a metal pipe and sexually assaulted him. His hands were bound by chains and flex cuffs, and he was blindfolded, the affidavit says.

The man somehow escaped and fled, still wearing chains, to a house across the street, where people there called police. Officers who went to the scene found the 23-year-old in the basement.

The 23-year-old was taken to a hospital and treated for injuries, but the affidavits don't give information about medical treatment of the other man.

The 21-year-old man identified his captor, saying Lanphear frequented the same Wisconsin Rapids bar, the documents said.

On this Day July 7, 1947:UFO Sighted in Roswell, N.M.

July 07, 2008 12:10 AM
Dulcinea Staff

On July 7, 1947, William Brazel reported seeing a UFO at his New Mexico ranch, sparking widespread public rumors about aliens and a U.S. government cover-up.

William “Mac” Brazel said he stared in awe as a massive, shining object cut through the muggy summer sky above his ranch in Roswell, N.M.

He alerted local sheriff George Wilcox, and within hours the Roswell Army Air Field announced that it had come into possession of “a flying saucer.”

The Roswell incident set off a wave of public suspicion about the existence of extraterrestrial life forms.

A 1947 Federal Bureau of Investigation report stated that the alleged flying saucer had in fact been a radar-tracking balloon used by the military.

The public was not convinced and accused the government of lying to cover up its retrieval of an alien spacecraft.

Ex-teacher pleads guilty to sex with boy

The Nebraskan took the 12-year-old student to Mexico.
Associated Press

OMAHA - As part of a deal to ensure she'll spend less than a decade in federal prison, a former teacher pleaded guilty Wednesday to fleeing to Mexico with a 13-year-old student so she could have sex with him.

Kelsey Peterson, 26, cried in court and shook her head when the prosecutor said she started having sex with the boy when he was 12 years old and a student at the middle school in Lexington where she taught.

But she pleaded guilty to a charge of transporting a minor across state lines to have sex, and avoided a similar charge that would have carried a mandatory 10-year sentence.
Peterson and the boy left Lexington in October and were found a week later in Mexicali, Mexico.

Peterson admitted the two of them had sex.

Peterson's attorney, James Martin Davis, has publicly questioned the boy's birth certificate. Davis said the boy was likely at least 16, and that he was the aggressor.

Amy Peck, attorney for the boy and his family, said that suggestion was disgusting.
"He was a 12-year-old boy, and the defendant knew it," Peck said Wednesday.

The plea agreement calls for a sentence of at least 70 months in prison, up to a maximum of 87 months. The judge could decide on a different sentence at a hearing in September, but that would give Peterson the right to change her plea, said federal prosecutor Jan Sharp.

District Attorney Nola Foulston tries to help families whose children are removed by SRS to navigate the court system.

It would seem to me that if people need directions to navigate the system, the system is unfairly biased toward the common folks. How can one defend oneself in a system that is a mystery to anyone who doesn't work at the courthouse?

BY ROY WENZL
The Wichita Eagle

The three mothers who showed up at Nola Foulston's office on Wednesday came to complain that their kids had been abused, falsely accused and neglected while in state custody.

Foulston, the Sedgwick County district attorney, had invited them so she could answer their questions, and because she's still angry about Kansas Social and Rehabilitation Services director Don Jordan saying recently that her office "bullied" SRS workers into putting information into court documents that they don't believe.

Jordan has since said he had no basis in fact to say what he did. But Foulston said he still did a lot of damage.

The meeting started with hard feelings on both sides, but ended with Foulston advising the women on how to navigate the legal system.

After a few tense minutes, Foulston told the mothers -- Vaniece Crawford, Carlene Eye and Annette Jones -- that she wanted to help them and other families better understand the system.
Before getting to that, she reminded them that she'd met at least two of them a few days ago, when they and their group, Sunflower Community Action, protested at her election campaign lunch at Larkspur restaurant, and a month ago, after Jordan's comments appeared and about 60 people protested at her home.

Those two meetings were badly handled by both sides, Jones said.

Outside Foulston's home, Jones said, at least two protesters, "people obviously never potty trained," yelled at and heckled Foulston on her doorstep, "enough so that I turned on them myself, and told them to shut up."

But Jones said that when the group showed up at Larkspur a week ago, Foulston greeted their leader with curses.

Foulston was still angry about those previous visits; in a letter to set up Wednesday's meeting she'd asked for the names and addresses of the attendees. "Don't worry," she wrote. "I don't plan to picket any of you at your homes."

She also told them on Wednesday, when they told her that many parents think the District Attorney's Office is too eager to remove children from homes, that, "It is not my purpose to fly over Sedgwick County on a broom, removing children from their families."

The best way families can navigate through the courts is to insist that the lawyers representing the children help them do that, Foulston told the mothers.

For one thing, she said, it's the lawyers' job; for another, the District Attorney's Office is barred by law from talking to families represented by counsel.

But she also told the mothers that her office needed to do a better job of "being transparent," and helping families learn to navigate the system.

She asked them to help her write an information booklet. They liked this idea and said they would.

Some of the mothers asked why there were errors in documents prepared by Foulston's office for cases involving their children.

Foulston told them she is barred by law from talking specifics about their children's cases. But she and Ron Paschal, a deputy district attorney, told them that court cases have to be filed soon after a child is removed, and often end up with "boilerplate" paragraphs when filed. Lawyers for the families can advocate to have those documents changed, he pointed out.

"But I've asked my court appointed attorney to do that, and he didn't," one mother said.
"But that's a problem with your attorney," Foulston said.

She told them that if they are not getting proper representation, they have the right to ask their lawyer to tell the judge that they object to the job the lawyer is doing.

Foulston said she hoped the result of Wednesday's meeting would be that families might be better helped in dealing with the system.

Jones said she hopes for the same thing. But she also said that the mothers had tried for a long time to ask Foulston's help, "and she didn't give us the time of day until after we showed up outside her house and then later at Larkspur."

Polygamist Sect Women Sell Clothing Online

These people are kidding, right?

SALT LAKE CITY -- The women of a polygamous sect are selling their distinctive handmade children's clothing online.

The enterprise was started to provide Texas Child Protective Services with clothes for the 440 children seized in an April raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' ranch at Eldorado, Texas.

Now, the polygamous sect's women hope to earn a living from the site.
FLDS member Maggie Jessop tells The Salt Lake Tribune there has been a lot of interest.

The sect is offering many items of clothing including dresses, overalls, shirts, pants, nightclothes, onesies for babies and ankle-to-wrist underwear. Women's apparel could be added if there is demand.

Kids caged in car--Posen, Illinois

POSEN Scrap hauler kept daughters in enclosure while he worked
July 3, 2008
By WILLIAM LEE Southtown Star

Nothing about the outside of Ricardo Gonzalez's rusting navy-blue pickup truck tells there's a homemade jail inside -- where he encaged his two young daughters.

Inside the 1995 Chevrolet S10 truck, Gonzalez placed a wire cage behind the driver and passenger seats to hold the girls, ages 2 and 5, while he drove around as a scrap hauler, Posen police said.

The only exit from the cage was a small place between the two front seats, which had a padlock. (Mary Compton/Southtown Star)

The cries of the two girls attracted a bystander, who called police. (Mary Compton/Southtown Star)

The cries of the two girls from within the cage alerted a bystander, who called police from a Marathon gas station in the 3000 block of 147th Street in Posen about 4:15 p.m. Monday.

Gonzalez, 35, of the 3600 block of 153rd Street in Midlothian, was charged with two counts of misdemeanor child endangerment, and police impounded the truck. Police said they were working with Cook County prosecutors about possibly upgrading to felony charges.

Police said Gonzalez told them he constructed the cage to restrain his daughters while he worked because he didn't have a baby-sitter.

The truck's back window is covered with a large plywood board. Two black-tinted windows hide the interior, where Gonzalez had bolted and welded the cage to the frame of the truck and taped and tied it together.

The only exit from the cage is a small space between the two front seats, which was fashioned with chain-link fencing that was closed with a padlock.

"I wouldn't put my dog in that," Cpl. William Alexander said as he looked over the truck at the Fair Towing lot in Posen.

Inside the cage, a child's safety seat sat unrestrained. The rear seats were covered with pink fleece blankets.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed the girls and placed them in foster care on Monday. DCFS had prior contact with the family, having investigated the girls' mother, Yesenia, for neglect in 2006 and having provided "supportive services" for the family last year, DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said.

Local and national outbreak of grave robbing

By Nicholas J.C. Pistor
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/30/2008

Grave robbing has become an above-ground affair. Gone are the days when enterprising thieves would dig up an old grave and pillage for gold teeth and rings. Today, it's mostly the bronze markers and flower vases that draw their attention.

Rising scrap metal prices, coupled with the lagging economy, have triggered a string of cemetery thefts both locally and across the nation. "I can't think of anything lower," said David Evans, general manager for Valhalla Gardens of Memory in Belleville. "Nothing's worse than stealing from the dead."

But grave robbers beware: The authorities are getting wise. States are passing laws and police are cracking down. In March, the Madison County Sheriff's Department arrested three people for stealing 40 vases from two Metro East cemeteries. The owner of a Granite City scrap recycling center turned them in.

Late last year, a trio of thieves hit the Valhalla Memorial Park cemetery in East Alton. They stole 17 bronze vases from graves in the cemetery. A month later, they went back and stole a dozen more. The two men and a woman were arrested after a tipster reported a suspicious vehicle. Charges are pending.

The scrap value of a bronze vase is about $10, according to cemetery operators; the replacement price often tops $300.

Grave robbery was more common in the 19th century, when thieves dug up the dead in a search for gold. Sometimes they snatched the bodies for medical experiments.





In 1876, three men broke into Abraham Lincoln's burial site in Springfield, Ill., in an attempt to steal the body and hold it for ransom. The men were caught in progress. Through the decades, such nefarious acts became uncommon. But now, grave robbery is quietly sweeping the nation. Again. Three men were arrested earlier this month on charges of stealing more than 1,000 brass vases and headstones from nine Chicago-area cemeteries.

Also this month, about 150 bronze vases were reportedly stolen from a West Virginia cemetery. In addition, a man was arrested on charges of stealing 55 vases from grave sites in the Fort Myers, Fla. area. In the last few weeks, robberies have been reported at cemeteries in Arizona, Maryland, Michigan and North Carolina.

Stronger laws and new technology are helping catch the thieves. A Missouri law passed last month is aimed at helping police track thieves who steal brass and bronze and sell it to scrap metal dealers. The state stiffened the fines for dealers who don't keep proper paperwork and requires them to get a copy of a photo ID for those who aren't regular customers.

Illinois enacted a similar law earlier this year. Ed Wilkerson, the police chief in Millstadt, said his department has begun paying for an Internet-based system, www.leadsonline.com, that tracks the sale of scrap metal online and in pawnshops. He said the Mount Evergreen Cemetery in Millstadt was robbed of bronze vases last year. No arrests have been made.

Evans, the Belleville cemetery manager, said his facility has stepped up security. "They come and take a few at time, and then wait awhile before coming back," said Evans. Evans said there has been no theft at his cemetery since one of the Madison County arrests.

Apparently, there is a way relatives can keep their deceased loved ones from becoming targets of thieves."Most of the stolen vases we've had come from vases that didn't have any flowers," Evans said.