This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Matthew Leddon; mefloquine made me sell meth

    Matthew Leddon; mefloquine made me sell meth

    In Pierre, South Dakota, Matthew Leddon, a former Army Reservist claimed to a judge that his ingestion of the anti-malarial drug, mefloquine, during his deployment to Afghanistan made him a meth dealer.

    I never took mefloquine, but I know people who have and I guess it does cause some weird stuff to happen in your noggin, but none of those people sell meth. The judge in this case agrees with my experience;

    Judge Barnett told Leddon he had no doubt that mefloquine perhaps made some soldiers sick.

    But it was a little too convenient for Leddon to tell police after he was arrested that he planned to use the 60 baggies of meth to commit suicide because he was so depressed.

    There were many other opportunities when he could have commited suicide. The mefloquine might damage people’s mental health, Barnett said.,

    “But it didn’t make them dishonest and it didn’t make them dealers.”

    The judge didn’t appreciate Leddon’s attempt to skate on the charges because of his military and LEO history;

    Barnett told Leddon he did wrong when he was quick to mention his police and Army experience to Pierre police officers who made a vehicle stop of Leddon and Jason Mahto on Sept. 9, 2016, on Harrison Avenue. A police officer said in a court document that Leddon raised suspicions by appearing to brag about being an ex-police officer and veteran.

    Police officers found 60 doses of meth and scales for weighing drugs and a meth “snort tube” in Leddon’s pocket used for ingesting the illegal drug, Barnett said.

    Police officers said one of the first things Leddon told them was that he was a former cop and soldier, Barnett told Leddon. That’s unfair to law officers doing their job, an attempt “to manipulate what should be a position of honesty and honor. I think you brought out your military, army and police service to deter that officer from doing his job. And I think you’re kind of putting it out there in front of me so I won’t do my job.”

    Leddon was sentenced to 41 days (plus 3 days of “time served”) and 3 years of supervised release.

  • Thursday morning feel good stories

    Thursday morning feel good stories

    From Hamilton, Canada, a former Army reservist was acquitted in the case in which he shot an intruder and the Crown tried to convict him of second-degree murder;

    Peter Khill, 28, admitted he shot Jon Styres but pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, saying he fired in self-defence when he thought Styres was pointing a gun at him.

    The trial heard that Styres, a 29-year-old father of two from Ohsweken, Ont., on the Six Nations reserve, did not have a gun at the time of the shooting.

    Peter Khill, charged with second-degree murder, leaves court in Hamilton on Tuesday, June 12, 2018. Khill, 28, is charged with gunning down an Indigenous man, Jon Styres, 29, who was allegedly trying to steal his pickup truck from his rural home in the early hours of Feb. 4, 2016. The case has overtones of the emotionally charged Coulten Boushie killing in Saskatchewan. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel

    A jury acquitted Khill this morning after beginning deliberations Tuesday afternoon.

    Khill was stoic as the verdict was read out. His wife tearfully embraced family members in the front row of the court, while Styres’ friends and family consoled each other.

    Justice Stephen Glithero thanked both sides for their participation in what he called a tough and emotional trial.

    The incident took place in the early morning of Feb. 4, 2016.

    Khill and his girlfriend – now his wife – awoke to the sound of banging outside their rural home and saw Styres inside their truck parked outside, the jury was told. Khill loaded his shotgun, left the home through the back door, and cut through a breezeway between the house and the garage to confront Styres.

    Khill told police and a 911 operator that Styres raised his arms as though he were pointing a gun at Khill, the jury heard.

    Only after Khill shot Styres did his girlfriend call 911, court heard.

    From Houston, Texas;

    An armed suspect who climbed on the roof of a Harris County deputy’s home was shot at by the off-duty officer, HCSO authorities tweeted Tuesday night.

    About 9 p.m. Tuesday the suspect climbed on the roof in the 13900 block of Beckwith Drive and ran from one roof line to another, deputies said.

    After a search, the suspect was found in a backyard hiding behind a palm tree and taken into custody, Houston Police said in a tweet. Officers assisted deputies in the search.

    The suspect was not hit by gunfire but treated for non-life-threatening wounds received from a dog bite.

  • Reality Winner changes plea

    Reality Winner changes plea

    Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who leaked classified information to the media last year, changed her plea, as expected, to guilty of a charge of one federal count of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. It earned her a sentence of sixty-three months in jail and three years of supervised release, pending approval of the judge, according to the New York Times.

    The Justice Department prosecuted Ms. Winner under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure of national-security secrets that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.

    Ms. Winner’s prosecution galvanized transparency advocates, who mounted a publicity campaign in her support that even included a billboard in Augusta, the east Georgia city where Ms. Winner lived at the time of her arrest. They were particularly infuriated by a judge’s ruling that she be held until her trial.

    “They’re just coming down on her so tough,” Billie Winner-Davis, Ms. Winner’s mother, said in an interview after Tuesday’s plea hearing was scheduled. “I can only think that it’s because she was the very first one: the one they wanted to make an example out of, the one they wanted to nail to the door as a message to others.”

    Or, it might be that they’re coming down on her because she’s a criminal.

    “It’s harsh, it’s outdated, it needs to be reformed,” Ms. Winner-Davis said. “I wanted to fight the Espionage Act. Reality Winner, I don’t want her name to go down as being someone in history who betrayed or hurt her country.”

    Maybe Miss Winner should have considered the consequences before she committed the crime.

  • Keith Hudson pleads guilty to VA fraud

    Keith Hudson pleads guilty to VA fraud

    70-year-old Keith Hudson pleaded guilty of defrauding the Department of Veterans’ Affairs of $197,237 in benefits after falsely claiming to be a military veteran of combat in Vietnam according to the Department of Justice.

    Court documents presented during the hearing established that in 2015, Mr. Hudson applied to the VA in Charleston for benefits. He used a falsified form from the Department of Defense, called a DD-214, (“Report of Separation from Active Duty”) which is a Department of Defense form given to members of the military who are separating from service. In the form, he said that was a veteran of the war in Vietnam. He represented that he was in the Navy and saw combat as a medic, suffering wounds and other trauma. He claimed that he served from August 1, 1967 through October 31, 1971 and said that he received two Purple Hearts.

    The investigation conducted by the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (OIG) showed that this DD-214 was forged and false. For instance, Mr. Hudson’s rank was listed as HN and E-4 (in the United States Navy, HN is actually the equivalent of E-3). In the awards section, it stated that he received a Combat Medic Badge. However, this is an award which is only given for service in the United States Army. It also did not list the proper citation for a Purple Heart. And the form stated Mr. Hudson received the Fleet Marine Force Medal with Marine Device. There is no such medal. It also had a stamp from the Alaska State Defense Force, which is suspicious as that group is not an official military organization, being comprised of volunteers. Additionally, the service branches do not permit their records to be combined with or loaned to other entities, including National Guard units. And, the typeset of the Social Security number on the DD-214 was different from the rest of the document.

    In fact, Mr. Hudson never was in the military.

    I guess Mr. Hudson wasn’t aware that the government keeps records;

    Additionally, employment records for him from 1967 through 1971 established that he worked at a variety of jobs in New York and in Maine. In two of them, he applied for employment and was fingerprinted. These fingerprints were still on file and matched his prints. As such, he was in the United States during the years 1967 through 1971. Therefore, Mr. Hudson was never in the United States Navy nor did he ever see combat in Vietnam.

    The investigation also showed that he had previously been prosecuted for the same scheme using the same DD-214 form in 2005 in Connecticut, where he had been placed in a pretrial diversionary program.

    United States Attorney Sherri A. Lydon claims that VA fraud is on the rise;

    “VA fraud is on the increase and so we are grateful for the work of the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General for their investigative work on the case.”

    Statistics bear out what the United States Attorney said. Between April of 2017 and October of 2017 alone, the VA Office of Investigations made 80 arrests, and recovered $2.9 million in restitution, fines and penalties relating to things like VA health-care benefits fraud. This is more than twice the amount recovered in the same period a decade ago.

    The growth of our Stolen Valor archives also bears this out.

    Thanks to SJ for the tip.

  • Jerry Harrell; panhandling phony veteran still at it

    Jerry Harrell; panhandling phony veteran still at it

    We wrote about Jerry Harrell almost three years ago when someone spotted him panhandling in Boston, Massachusetts. He was passing himself off as a Vietnam veteran, and the truth is that he has no military service, according to the National Personnel Records Center;

    Well, he’s back at it again and journalists at the Tuft’s Daily News don’t have access to Google, apparently;

    Somerville has become an increasingly expensive area to live in, with an online estimate by Zillow citing an eight percent increase in housing costs in the past year. At the same time, nonprofits like Spare Change News and the SHC have worked to help individuals throughout the area, including formerly homeless veteran Jerry Harrell.

    Born and raised in East Boston, Mass., Harrell left the city in 1970 to fight in the Vietnam War. After years in combat, Harrell found himself back in the United States as a war veteran with nowhere to turn.

    That “Spare Change” newspaper in his greasy little dick-beaters was created so the panhandlers would have something to give their benefactors on the street. Our tipster has contacted Spare Change as well as the Tuft’s Daily about Harrell and he was treated to the full-throated cricket chorus from both.

  • Dennis McGuire, Ulster County security officer

    Dennis McGuire, Ulster County security officer

    The Ulster County, New York sheriff’s office is crediting 73-year-old Vietnam veteran Dennis McGuire with restoring the dog tags of a local memorial to fallen residents when a homeless man, Jeris B. Lincoln, 29, decided that the dog tags looked better around his neck than displayed on the memorial.

    Mr. Lincoln was charged with the misdemeanor of Petit Larceny. He was arraigned in Ulster Town Court and remanded to the Ulster County Jail in lieu of $100 cash bail or $200 secured bond, to reappear in Kingston City Court on a later date.

    The arrest was especially satisfying for Officer McGuire, who proudly served his country in the United States Army and completed a tour of duty in Vietnam from 1965-66 in the A Shau Valley. Upon returning home, he began a career with the New York State Police, which spanned twenty years.

    Currently, Officer McGuire is the Chief of the Hillside Volunteer Fire Department in Rhinebeck, Commander of the American Legion Post 429 in Rhinebeck and a part time security officer at Northern Dutchess Hospital and the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office.

    Thanks to Jared for the link.

  • Manning fails in Senate primary bid

    Manning fails in Senate primary bid

    According to Fox News, the criminal formerly known as Bradley Manning failed in his bid for the Maryland seat in the US Senate, beaten by the incumbent, Ben Cardin.

    Manning’s rhetoric was incendiary throughout the campaign. In January, she called Immigration and Customs Enforcement “literally the new gestapo.” She has called for abolishing both ICE and the presidency itself.

    Another plank in Manning’s platform was to throw open the prison doors and release all of the criminals. Not surprising at all coming from a criminal.

    In recent weeks, though, Manning seemed resigned to defeat, tweeting: “we can’t expect any change thru the upcoming elections – the primaries are rigged.” Her campaign was trailing significantly in the polls, and had raised relatively little money.

    Yeah, the primaries are rigged against convicted spies.

    Someone should keep Manning away from ledges.

  • Christopher George Deane; phony Marine

    Christopher George Deane; phony Marine

    Our partners at Military Phonies share their work on this Christopher Deane fellow who claims to be a Force Recon Marine, like in this article from Yawkey Baseball;

    In that article, Deane claims that he was a Force Recon Marine and “stationed” in Iraq and Somalia with nine years of service. He’s also made verbal claims that he was a POW. He loves his tattoos;

    Well, the truth is that he spent no time on active duty, according to DoD Manpower folks. His FOIA is full of “N/A” probably because he enlisted on the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) and then never showed up for boot camp;

    So, he’s really not a Marine, and he’s proud enough to put USMC tattoos all over his body and tell wild tales about his service, but not proud enough to put his feet in the yellow footprints.