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

Category: Crime

  • Jonathan Bartlett Robertson arrested for theft of Purple Hearts

    Jonathan Bartlett Robertson arrested for theft of Purple Hearts

    49-year-old Jonathan Bartlett Robertson was arrested in Richmond, Virginia on a warrant from Oklahoma for his crime spree which netted him a quarter-million bucks in ill-gotten booty. From the Seattle Times;

    The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office says it has identified 20 victims so far from throughout central Oklahoma. The stolen items include TV’s, an ATV, four trailers, guns, collector’s items, expensive sound equipment, Purple Heart medals and a casket.

    Virginia LEOs pursued Robertson for more than an hour. Robertson was driving a stolen car during the chase.

  • John O’Grady; phony US Marshal

    John O’Grady; phony US Marshal

    Chip sends us a link to the story of John O’Grady in Boynton Beach, Florida who returned to the Best Buy store where he’d stolen a call phone recently. He was recognized by store personnel who called the local constabulary who confronted Mr O’Grady, who in turn, identified himself as a US Marshal;

    The pin on his gray suit, the badge and the gun seemed to confirm that.

    But O’Grady didn’t have identification nor could he name his supervisor.

    He eventually conceded that no, he was not a U.S. Marshal, and the “firearm” on his hip was a BB gun.

    Authorities arrested O’Grady on charges of impersonating a law-enforcement officer and retail theft. They reportedly found the stolen iPhone in O’Grady’s vehicle.

    Mr O’Grady is currently out on bond, but I’m sure he’ll be back in custody soon enough.

    From the Tribunist;

    One of the officers “congratulated” O’Grady for impersonating a law enforcement official, announcing it is a felony. O’Grady was handcuffed and, during the ensuing conversation, claimed he did not know that representing himself as a law enforcement officer was illegal.

  • Austin bomber was not a military veteran

    This morning I heard someone on Fox News commenting on the unpackaged meat remains of the Austin bomber say something like “He must have been in the military, how else would he know how to make a bomb?”

    Well, the New York Post has identified him, and he wasn’t a veteran;

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott…told “Fox & Friends” that the unemployed man did not have a criminal record and had not served in the military.

    I’ve said it before – Tim McVeigh didn’t learn how to build his fertilizer bomb as an 11M infantryman – we don’t get blocks of instruction on building bombs. Most of our explosives are wonders of modern technology and come pre-packaged and need only a bit of assembly. I wouldn’t know how to put together a package bomb that explodes when it’s jostled.

    Any bombers out there probably learned the craft from watching YouTube videos, not from any military instruction. I say that as someone who spent two decades as an infantryman. I can make some pretty intricate booby traps, not all of them explode, though. But those fertilizer bombs are as much a mystery to me as they are to any other American.

    I know the media is mystified why a 24-year-old unemployed Texan would go on a murder spree with explosives, and now they find out he’s not a veteran. More confusion.

  • Austin bomber dead

    Austin bomber dead

    We wake up to lots of good news this morning. First off, the fellow believed to be the Austin, Texas bomber pulled the trigger on himself, according to Fox News;

    The suspect, identified by police early Wednesday as a 24-year old male, was killed near the motel he was traced to by authorities using surveillance footage from a Federal Express drop-off store and cell phone triangulation technology, according to The Austin American-Statesman.

    The man died after fleeing the motel in a car, with police hot on his tail. He drove into a ditch, sparking the fatal confrontation.

    “We wanted this to come to a peaceful resolution tonight,” said Austin Police Chief Brian Manley. “However, we were not afforded that opportunity when he started to drive away.”

    Police said the man detonated two package bombs as police closed in, firing at him. It was not immediately clear whether he died from the bombs or shots fired by police. One officer was knocked back by the blasts, but none were seriously hurt.

    Manley said police had zeroed in on a “person of interest” over the last 24-36 hours, tracing him to the motel in Round Rock, where the spotted his vehicle.

    The bomber had managed to kill two men and injure four others in his ten day rampage in the Austin area. When police told the public that those packages hadn’t been mailed to the victims using normal package delivery carriers, he tried to shift his method of operation and send his bombs through FedEx. One detonated in a FedEx facility yesterday injuring an employee, and another was discovered and dismantled. Police were able to trace the bombs back to the point of origin and identified the bomber in security videos – and that led to the motel in Round Rock.

    Meanwhile, someone else deposited an artillery simulator in a Goodwill Dropbox in Austin which detonated and injured a Goodwill employee. It probably wasn’t related to the bomber. From the Austin Statesman;

    An employee of the Goodwill at 9801 Brodie Lane found an artillery simulator – a device meant to simulate the deafening “bang” noise of an explosion for the purposes of military training – in a box of donated items and it detonated in his hand, Austin police Assistant Chief Ely Reyes said. The victim, a man in his 30s, was treated at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center and released within a couple of hours, according to a hospital spokesperson.

    It’s not clear whether the donation of the simulator was malicious, but Reyes noted that it is common for military-style mementos to find their way to donation sites if family members find them and don’t know what they are.

    “We have no reason to believe this is an attempt at a copycat,” Reyes said.

    Though not a bomb, the incident added another layer of fear to the jitters of a city that has seen four bombs explode this month, killing two people, a fifth that exploded at a FedEx in Schertz early Tuesday, and a sixth discovered and detonated safely at a FedEx ground facility in Southeast Austin Tuesday morning.

    As far as I know, no one has made a statement that they know the motivations of any of the bombers.

  • Family turns in teen with guns and bombs

    In Paw Paw, Michigan, police arrested a teenager who they suspect had planned an attack on his school, according to WNDU. His parents alerted police to the cache of explosives and weapons that he had amassed;

    A 15-year-old student was arrested Sunday.

    During a search of the suspect’s home, police say they found Molotov cocktails, guns and materials to make pipe bombs.

    “Our investigators are 100% confident it was going to take place [Monday],” Van Buren County Sheriff Daniel Abbott said. “People were going to get shot, homemade bombs were going to be going off, this was going to be seen on the national news that’s how prepared this kid was.”

    “I’ve been here over 25 years, and this is the first very credible, terroristic act that was going to take place,” Abbott said.

    Well, it isn’t “terroristic” because there probably isn’t a political component to the student’s motivations, but I get what he means.

    The sheriff continued;

    “If it wasn’t for the family aiding us with a lot of this stuff, we probably wouldn’t be where we’re at today,” Abbott said. “This is just a prime example of where flags went up, people spoke up, and by doing so, a tragic incident did not take place.”

    A community that works together, not a village that raises a child.

  • Ronald Edward Bean; fake cop in Wasilla

    Alaska Native News tells the story of Ronald Edward Bean, who presented himself as an undercover cop in Alaska at a traffic stop and later in a residential area;

    AST received the 1st call-in early morning Friday reported that a man, later identified as 47-year-old Ronald Edward Bean, of Wasilla, had begun tailgating him and flashing his headlights on Vine Road near the Parks Highway in Wasilla. The victim reported that when he stopped at the red light “Bean got out of his vehicle, told him he was an undercover cop; he was under arrest, to produce his identification and attempted to deploy mace on him,” AST reported.

    The victim reported that he was able to safely get away from the spurious traffic stop.

    Then, minutes later at 7:15 AM, a resident on Pepper Street in Houston called and troopers to report shots fired at a neighbor’s residence. He also reported that the suspect, Bean, had pointed a firearm at him.

    Bean, hearing the responders sirens, attempted to make his getaway but got his pickup stuck in the ditch. Immediately after getting stuck, Bean entered one of the residences, held the occupants in the building and stole clothing.

    Troopers set up a perimeter around the residence and were able to get all the victims out safely through windows and the front door. Bean complied troopers orders to exit the building and was immediately placed under arrest.

    It’s a jungle out there.

  • Fourth bomb in Austin injures two

    Last week we talked about the three bombs which killed two people and injured two others. Yesterday, another bomb injured two other people. CNBC says that the bomb was left alongside a road and it was believed to be triggered by a trip wire.

    Over 500 federal agents are involved in the investigation and authorities continue to ask the local community for assistance.

    They are offering a reward of $115,000 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

    The bombings have also led to a surge in the number of suspicious packages reported in recent weeks. Police have responded to 735 related calls since the explosions were first reported at the start of this month.

    From CNN;

    None of the packages was delivered by the US Postal Service or delivery services like UPS or FedEx, police have said. All were placed in front of the residents’ houses in the overnight hours.

  • “Stolen Valor bandits” sentenced

    Last year, we talked briefly about the crooks that police called the “Stolen Valor bandits” because they wore Marine Corps uniforms while they robbed local San Diego businesses. They pleaded guilty last November and they were sentenced this week, according to Fox5;

    David Magana, 28, pleaded guilty last year to 11 counts of robbery, conspiracy, auto theft and personal use of a firearm and was sentenced to 22 years behind bars.

    Joseph Olmos, 25, pleaded guilty to eight robbery charges, conspiracy, auto theft and evading police and received 16 years in prison.

    Judge Kathleen Lewis really whacked them good.

    The robbery spree — dubbed the “Stolen Valor” bandit series because of the military gear worn in at least one of the holdups — happened between January and March 2016 at five establishments, including BBB Shoes in National City, Sombrero’s on West Main Street in El Cajon and Jamba Juice on College Grove Way. In two other robberies, the thieves got away with more than $800 and a person’s wallet, authorities said. In the March 3, 2016, robbery at Sombrero’s, one of the robbers fired a shot as the criminals made their getaway, Koerber said.

    Magana was living in his car at the time of his arrest, so he was probably on someone’s list of homeless veterans.