Crime Scene

Since April 29, we’ve spent a good deal of time reporting on and writing about the death of Rene Javier Perez, a homeless Guatemalan immigrant found dead on the side of Byram Lake Road in Bedford. The most recent was written by my colleague Bruce Golding and ran today. You can “read it here”:http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070624/NEWS02/706240356.

Few stories have gotten more reader commentary than the death of Rene Perez. There have been a variety of reasons for the discussion, but much of … Read more of this entry »

Anyone who has kept tabs on Lower Hudson Valley events in recent months has likely heard of “RoccerMom,” the Yorktown mother who was just jailed for the drunken-driving crash last year that killed her daughter’s 16-year-old friend. Her real name is Ann Marie Ciarcia, the 47-year-old wife of former Yorktown Town Engineer Dan Ciarcia. The Sept. 18 predawn crash, which came after Ciarcia spent the night clubbing with her own teenaged daughter and her friend, captured more than a few … Read more of this entry »

I came across an interesting online resource recently. A group called Family Watchdog has “online maps here”:http://www.familywatchdog.us that they said records where sexual offenders live in the community. The link, as you’ll see, asks for a city, state and zip code, then maps the area. A toolbar link also provides a simple list.

I emailed the company to inquire if they were part of an official law enforcement agency. The response from their customer service department was that it was a … Read more of this entry »

It was just over three weeks ago that Mamaroneck Village police began the gruesome task of identifying a female torso that washed up on a village beach. Little else has been learned since about the woman, whom police said was likely Hispanic, between 35-50 years of age, weighing 180 to 200 pounds and approximately 5 feet 4 to 5 feet 6 in height. Now comes word of another grisly discovery.

Police in White Plains today reported that human skeletal remains were … Read more of this entry »

....sometimes there’s just a stack of documents.
Hard to make this sound sexy to an outsider. But we’ve been looking for paperwork all month.

See, we’ve been tracking developments in Yonkers that still seem to have more questions than answers. Namely, two federal subpoenas have now been served on City Hall, with few clues because the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office won’t confirm or deny that there’s an investigation, although everyone in Yonkers has been speculating over what it’s about … Read more of this entry »

There is no getting around the occasionally grisly nature of crime reporting. It certainly has been that way for me in the past week, as I have teamed with reporter Leslie Korngold to keep readers updated on the Mamaroneck police investigation of a woman’s torso that washed up at Harbor Island Park on March 3. It doesn’t get much more heart-wrenching than that.

Thus far, police have been frustrated in their attempts to identify the woman, although there are periodic leads … Read more of this entry »

All of us on the criminal justice beat can point to a handful of stories we seem coming back to. Sometimes it’s unavoidable: The case keeps turning up in court or on appeal or whatever. But sometimes we take it on ourselves to keep in touch.

One such story for me is the case of Eli Wilson, a 3-year-old boy from Pittsburgh who nearly drowned Aug. 19 during a family outing at Putnam Lake. His aunt, Gladys Mendoza, drowned saving Eli’s … Read more of this entry »