2010.03.09 - Today's Current News - ***NO DISCUSSIONS HERE PLEASE ***

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Angel Who Cares

Angel Who Cares

If you seek an angel with an open heart, you shall
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2010.03.09 - Today's Current News - ***NO DISCUSSIONS HERE PLEASE ***
 
I think this video is from late last night as it mentions Elizabeth's hearing this morning.

Private Investigator Believes Baby Gabriel Is Alive
CBS 5 News interviews the private investigator in the case of missing baby Gabriel Johnson.

Video: http://www.kpho.com/video/22782404/index.html

ETA: Article now available that goes along with this video:

Baby Gabriel's Mom To Appear In Court
Private Investigator Jay J. Armes Says He's 'Optimistic' About Finding Gabriel
POSTED: 8:34 am MST March 9, 2010
UPDATED: 9:01 am MST March 9, 2010

http://www.kpho.com/news/22785043/detail.html
 
Mother of missing Tempe baby refuses to go to court
Mar. 9, 2010 10:52 AM

Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of missing baby Gabriel, refused to leave her jail cell for a court hearing Tuesday morning, prompting a Superior Court judge to demand authorities "use any means necessary to get her to court."

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan continued the pre-trial conference hearing to March 17, saying that Elizabeth Johnson needed to be present and called on Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies to ensure Johnson makes the appearance, said Karen Arra, a court spokeswoman.

Johnson's defense attorney refused to comment on the case.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/...9elizabeth-johnson-misses-court-abrk0209.html
 
Mother of missing Tempe baby refuses to go to court
Mar. 9, 2010 10:52 AM
<snipped>
Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of missing baby Gabriel, refused to leave her jail cell for a court hearing Tuesday morning, prompting a Superior Court judge to demand authorities "use any means necessary to get her to court."

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan continued the pre-trial conference hearing to March 17, saying that Elizabeth Johnson needed to be present and called on Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies to ensure Johnson makes the appearance, said Karen Arra, a court spokeswoman.

Johnson's defense attorney refused to comment on the case.

Photos: Search continues for baby Gabriel Johnson 1-14
http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/co...9elizabeth-johnson-misses-court-abrk0209.html

Focus of lost-baby case shifts to what-ifs
http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2010/01/24/20100124baby0124.html

Article:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/...9elizabeth-johnson-misses-court-abrk0209.html
 
Gabriel's mother a no-show in court
March 9th, 2010 @ 9:54am
<snipped>
The mother of a baby boy who vanished in December refused to leave her jail cell Tuesday for an appearance in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The judge told sheriff's deputies to use any means necessary to make sure Elizabeth Johnson is in court on March 17. Johnson, 23, was scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on charges of child abuse, kidnapping and custodial interference.

Jay J. Armes, a private investigator hired by Gabriel's father, Logan McQuery, said outside of court Tuesday that he believes the child is still alive. "We have had no sightings or any evidence that the baby is demised," Armes said. "I believe she sold her baby."

He said selling children is not uncommon and he believes Gabriel may be in the underground market. "They go shopping for kids the way they go shopping at a supermarket -- blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, brown hair and all that. They go (sell) for from $50,000 to $150,000."

Armes said he's chasing down more than 100,000 tips. He put the chances of finding Gabriel at 50-50.

Article:
http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1272165
 
Mom of missing Arizona baby refuses to go to court
March 9, 2010, 12:38PM
<snipped>
The mother of an 8-month-old Arizona boy missing for more than two months refused to go to court Tuesday, delaying the case. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan would have ruled on two motions had Elizabeth Johnson, 23, not refused to leave her Maricopa County jail cell. Ryan rescheduled Tuesday's hearing for March 17, telling sheriff's deputies to "use any means necessary" to get her there. Ryan is expected to rule on a couple of procedural matters at the hearing, including designating the case as complex so attorneys have more time to argue their cases.

For weeks, San Antonio police have been searching a landfill where they think Gabriel's body might be if he was killed, but they hadn't found anything as of Tuesday.

Tammi Smith, a north Scottsdale woman who wanted to adopt Gabriel from Johnson, also is charged in the case, although police said she was not connected to the boy's disappearance. Smith has pleaded not guilty to charges of felony forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference. Her next hearing is scheduled for April 5.

Article:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6904471.html
 
Mom of Baby Gabriel refuses to go to court
Last Update: 2:08 pm
<snipped>
The mother of an 8-month-old Arizona boy missing for more than two months refused to go to court Tuesday, delaying the case.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan would have ruled on two motions had 23-year-old Elizabeth Johnson not refused to leave her Maricopa County jail cell.

Ryan rescheduled Tuesday's hearing for March 17, when he's expected to rule on a couple procedural matters.

Article:
http://www.woai.com/news/local/stor...es-to-go-to-court/qj1a2r6ulUqf1O_iBPxWUw.cspx
 
Mom in missing Tempe baby case a no-show in court
Last Update: 12:17 pm
<snipped>
Tempe woman whose baby has been missing for more than two months refused to leave her jail cell Tuesday morning, forcing the delay of a scheduled hearing in her case.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan would have ruled on two motions had 23-year-old Elizabeth Johnson come to court. Those motions -- to designate counsel and designate the case complex -- can not be ruled on without the defendant in court.

Ryan has rescheduled Tuesday's hearing for March 17. An assistant for Ryan said Johnson will be brought to court that day, "by any means necessary."

Police say mother Elizabeth Johnson is not cooperating with authorities, who are working with the FBI in at least four states to find her baby.

The search for Gabriel continues.

Article:
http://www.abc15.com/content/news/s...-no-show-in-court/6PhW8F-82kSl7PwFqFdGgw.cspx
 
UPDATED: Pre-Trial Conference for Elizabeth Johnson Delayed
Missing baby's mother refuses to go to court
Updated: Tuesday, 09 Mar 2010, 12:17 PM MST
Published : Tuesday, 09 Mar 2010, 9:34 AM MST
<snipped>
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan would have ruled on two motions had Elizabeth Johnson, 23, not refused to leave her Maricopa County jail cell. Ryan rescheduled Tuesday's hearing for March 17, telling sheriff's deputies to "use any means necessary" to get her there. Ryan is expected to rule on a couple of procedural matters at the hearing, including designating the case as complex so attorneys have more time to argue their cases.

Johnson has pleaded not guilty and has declined to be interviewed. Her attorney, Vanessa Smith, declined to comment Tuesday. Smith has requested the court proceedings to be closed to still and video cameras, saying that intense media scrutiny will jeopardize her client's safety and right to a fair trial. "With the massive media coverage to date, it will be very difficult to find a fair and impartial panel of jurors," Smith wrote in a motion filed late last month.

For weeks, San Antonio police have been searching a landfill where they think Gabriel's body might be if he was killed, but they hadn't found anything as of Tuesday. Tammi Smith, a north Scottsdale woman who wanted to adopt Gabriel from Johnson, also is charged in the case, although police said she was not connected to the boy's disappearance. Smith has pleaded not guilty to charges of felony forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference. Her next hearing is scheduled for April 5.

*2-Videos Included In Article!

Article:
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/local/phoenix/johnson_case_030910
 
Baby Gabriel's mom refuses to go to court
March 9, 2010 - 11:27AM , updated: March 9, 2010 - 3:24PM
<snipped>
Elizabeth Johnson was scheduled to appear before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan for a pretrial conference, but her public defenders appeared without her to request a new hearing date and see if they could get the media banned from being in the courtroom. Ryan said: "Use any means necessary to get Ms. Johnson here for her next court date. It will be an issue we have to take up sooner or later."

Ryan rescheduled the hearing for 10:30 a.m. on March 17 as a courtroom full of media looked on.

Renowned private investigator Jay J. Armes, his son, Jay J. Armes Jr., and one of their associates who are helping the McQueary family search for Gabriel arrived in Phoenix from El Paso, Texas late Monday to attend Tuesday's hearing.

Armes said his office is receiving 60 to 70 leads a day about the case, some are credible and some are extortion attempts. "She's protecting whoever has the baby," Armes said of Johnson's refusal to leave her jail cell.

However, Armes Jr. said what worries them is that Johnson has no emotional attachment to the baby and wouldn't have any problem crossing the line when it comes to killing Gabriel because she isn't showing any remorse for her actions now. "To her, the line is not there, or blurry at best," Armes Jr. said.

Armes Jr. also said he believes Johnson refusing to leave her jail cell was a "calculated action" on her part and a stall tactic. "She knows this doesn't look good for her," Armes Jr. said. "The last thing you want to do is (tick) off the judge. She has been given too much free reign to manipulate the system to her advantage. The only one that it has helped has been her, not Logan and definitely not the baby."

Article:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/151656
 
*Missed This Article!

Troubled pasts of women in 'Baby Gabriel&#8217; case
March 5, 2010 - 8:36PM
<snipped>
When Tammi Smith and Elizabeth Johnson met for the first time in August at Boston&#8217;s Logan International Airport, Johnson no longer wanted to be a mother. And Smith badly wanted to be a mother again. Smith, 37, of Scottsdale, and Johnson, 23, of Tempe, have troubled pasts, similar dysfunctional histories in their relationships and criminal records, according to police reports and court documents. They are scheduled to appear for separate hearings in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday , both on felony charges in connection with the missing child that Johnson initially said she killed but later claimed hat she had given to an unknown couple in the parking lot of a motel, according to Maricopa County Superior Court documents.

Johnson&#8217;s attorney, Vanessa Smith, who works for the Maricopa County Public Defender&#8217;s Office, has filed a motion with the court to ban any media coverage of the court proceedings, arguing that it would infringe on Johnson&#8217;s right to a fair trial and jeopardize her safety. Repeated requests for interviews with Smith and her lawyer in recent weeks were declined. Requests for jailhouse interviews with Johnson also were denied.

Troubled pasts
Smith once worked as an exotic dancer in New Orleans, aspired to be a country music singer pursuing fortune and fame in Nashville, Tenn., and at one time was married to two men at the same time, according to police reports and court records. In 2001, she paid to give her three children up for adoption to her ex-husband and his wife after a costly 2½-year custody battle, according to Smith and the second of her five husbands, Kieth Facio. More recently, Smith tried to adopt children from China and Africa, according to her MySpace page, which has since been blocked from public view and Facio.

&#8220;She&#8217;s trying to fill a gap,&#8221; said Facio, who lives with their three teenage children near New Orleans. &#8220;Tammi knows she screwed up with her own children and is trying to make up for it. She&#8217;s tried to adopt other children for several years, but it always falls through for some reason and she can&#8217;t. It&#8217;s likely because of her past.&#8221;

Johnson, meanwhile, grew up with her twin brother in five different foster homes before the age of 10 due to her drug-addicted mother drowning when Elizabeth was about 12 and her father dying of liver cancer in 2007, according to Johnson&#8217;s grandfather, Robert Johnson of Scottsdale.

A mother&#8217;s rage
In the last year alone, Johnson&#8217;s relationship with Gabriel&#8217;s father, Logan McQueary, was marked by her outbursts of rage as she destroyed three apartments by tearing up clothes and a couch with a large knife before demolishing a baby bed, smashing a television set and breaking windows, according to Tempe police reports.

San Antonio police are conducting a missing persons case parallel to a homicide investigation, not knowing whether the child is alive or dead. More than 30 people currently are searching a section of a landfill to see if they can find anything in connection with the case. Witnesses at the motel also told authorities that they saw Johnson with a Hispanic male and that they appeared to be a couple. However, authorities have been unable to locate him, according to police.

In the ongoing investigation, authorities have compiled 1,575 pages of discovery and 52 CDs of recorded interviews, according to Maricopa County Superior Court documents. As the story of &#8220;Baby Gabriel&#8221; has played out on national television shows, the Web search engine &#8220;Google News&#8221; shows more than 1 million hits, mostly originating from media outlets throughout the Valley, according to Maricopa County Superior Court records. On the social networking site Facebook, five pages dedicated to the search for Gabriel have at least 14,000 members.

Desperation and deception
Investigators said it was Tammi Smith&#8217;s &#8220;desperate attempts&#8221; to adopt the child that hindered the investigation. Police allege that the Smiths had a plan in place to adopt Gabriel or were developing a plan to somehow pick up the child in Nashville, Tenn., and her contradictory statements to police and to the media led to her arrest. Jack Smith, a former pedal steel guitarist in the Grand Ole Opry&#8217;s House Band in Nashville and a former studio musician for country music singer &#8220;Whisperin&#8217; Bill&#8221; Anderson, was cleared in the case.

Smith&#8217;s attempts to acquire custody of the boy included trying to persuade a Maricopa County Family Court judge into letting her adopt Gabriel as she told the judge during a recorded phone message that she believed Johnson would bring the child back to Arizona if she knew he would be &#8220;safe.&#8221;

Neglect and silence
Smith&#8217;s oldest daughter, Gabriele Victoria Facio, 19, recently wrote in a Facebook message to a Tribune reporter that she only considers Tammi her biological mother and not her &#8220;real mother.&#8221; &#8220;She neglected us,&#8221; Gabriele Facio said. &#8220;She took us, sorta kidnapped us, right before I turned 6. After that, my dad had enough and divorced her. She wanted money and fame. She didn&#8217;t like working or taking care of children. It was never her thing. She wanted to make an album, be a country singer. That&#8217;s when she met Jack and left her guy. &#8220;In the end, it was us or him. She chose him.&#8221;

The longer the case continues without Johnson revealing where Gabriel is, concern increases that the case will have a &#8220;tragic outcome,&#8221; according to Dr. Erin Nelson, a forensic psychologist who has worked for Steven Pitt and Associates in Scottsdale on national cases such as the Columbine school shootings in Colorado, the rape allegations against Kobe Bryant and the Baseline Rapist case in Phoenix. &#8220;It&#8217;s not an accident she&#8217;s keeping her mouth shut. Denial is a powerful psychological defense mechanism,&#8221; Nelson said. &#8220;But there can be a number of factors that can ultimately compel someone to cooperate.&#8221; A &#8220;significant person,&#8221; Nelson said, might be able to get Elizabeth Johnson to talk. Or, she added, an attorney telling the young mother what she&#8217;s facing might prompt her to cooperate.

Johnson&#8217;s attorneys are urging her to remain quiet as part of their legal strategy. But her grandfather wants her to come clean &#8212; now. &#8220;Tell them where the baby is and get on with it,&#8221; Robert Johnson said. &#8220;If the baby is alive and well, she&#8217;ll be able to get out of jail, but she seems content with staying there. &#8220;I just don&#8217;t understand. I still don&#8217;t understand why she won&#8217;t say where that baby is.&#8221;
*Much More Info At Link!

getimage.dll


Timeline of events
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/babygabriel

Read the latest print edition
The e-Trib is an interactive online representation of the printed paper. Editions can be searched back to 2002.
http://epaper.aztrib.com/Default/Sk...ily=EVT&Enter=true&AppName=1&AW=1268174816845

Article:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/151556
 
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