Federal Indictment: James Burke, Former Suffolk Co PD Chief, December 2015 - #3

Does anyone know if GC lived in Massapequa for a period of time? If he did live south of Merrick Rd in Pequa, I knew him growing up.

PickleChris said:

Does anyone know if GC lived in Massapequa for a period of time? If he did live south of Merrick Rd in Pequa, I knew him growing up.

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GC as in GC who called the cops for Shannan?

Scorpio girl said:

...
3b SG was not abducted. i will never understand - if someone WAS trying to kill her and she ran - why he didn't grab the phone and shut it off.

OH THATS RIGHT - HE DID. ...

Doc is not going to expect a investigation from police since he WAS police. ... there was NO FOLLOW up to the 911 call and that doc called family to PREVENT further search.

...

Shannan was falling down drunk, or falling down from being injected with something that was forced upon her at Brewers. ...

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A lot of it is confusing to me, but one basic question seems central to whether there is a great conspiracy involving a lot of connected people or simply a few coincidences.

Are there any indications in the calls to Amanda Barthelemy and the boyfriend of her sister that indicate that she lived more than a day after meeting her 'final customer'.

If there are then Shannon's case is probably related and there are at least several people involved and they have a significant amount of local influence.

If there are no such indications then it could well be that the people involved in Shannon's death have epic bad luck but are not necessarily a bunch of cops on some dark project to kill hookers.

If the former is the case then the police officers involved would have had an excuse to keep the calls private. Not a valid excuse, since their intention would have been to cover murders, but an excuse that would have worked with other police who were outside that group, i.e., 'We have to keep the calls secret because any girls being held would be killed if the calls were made public.".

http://www.thedailybeast.com/melissa-barthelemy-the-long-island-serial-killer-victims-secret-life

Meanwhile, Barthelemy's sister, Amanda, began to receive calls, about one each week.

The caller ID indicated the call came from Melissa's cellphone. The man who sounded like an "older white guy" wanted to know if the person on the line was Melissa's little sister. "The whole year I continued to pay for the phone bill," Melissa's mother, Lynn, told The Daily Beast. "It was only turned on when the guy would turn it on, when he made the phone calls. He would only keep it on for three minutes."

...

Lynn said they received five more calls, the last one on August 26, 2009. "The last call, he said he killed her," then hung up. Investigators also discovered that a call made to Barthelemy's voicemail the day she vanished came from Massapequa, a Long Island town about 20 miles from where her body was later discovered.

... One of the phones was linked to the name Mickey Mouse.
...
Around the same time, Terry said he began to get his own taunting phone calls. His calls were from a "white guy," he said.

"He was threatening me," recalled Terry. "He said, you like to do some crazy stuff with Melissa, I know where you be at. Most of the time he seemed to be drunk. He knew who I was. He knew I had tattoos on my back. Maybe he felt [Melissa] was doing something he didn't like."

Terry said the anonymous caller called him more than 30 times over a period of eight months. He said he reported the calls to the cops. Months later, Terry said, he was approached by the police again, but this time not as a suspect. They wanted to know about the john on Long Island. They asked if he could describe the house and if he could pick it out if he was taken there. He said he could.

"They already knew about the guy in Long Island," he said. "I said if they come to get me I would go. They didn't come."

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nager-phone-sent-texts-strangling-victim.html

According to the New York Post, the killer said to Amanda: 'Is this Melissa's little sister?'. 'Yes,' replied the girl.

'Do you know what your sister is doing? She's a *advertiser censored*.' Barthelemy had lied to her mother, Lynn, that she was an exotic dancer. Half a dozen more calls and texts followed in the next six weeks.

The killer always phoned in the evenings, spoke for less than three minutes and in a low voice, calmly mocking the youngster. The family feared he had seen Amanda when she visited her sister's home and stayed over.

...

Police have yet to link their deaths with the four victims in New Jersey - Kim Raffo, Molly Jean Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Ann Roberts. But there are several coincidences.

In each case, the killer dumped four prostitutes near water and in close proximity. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition, suggesting he kept some for a time after they died.

All eight were sex workers, and the four in New York used Craigslist. Each had been strangled.

He had removed the shoes from both sets of bodies, ...

'It's the same guy,'one law-enforcement source told the Post.

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http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/31/long-island-man-pleads-not-guilty-in-cold-case-murders/

“Her manner of death is very similar to the two other women,” Spota said. “All of the women’s remains were uniquely positioned in the very same manner.”

...

But Spota said besides the killer leaving the woman in similar and unique poses, he also took a vital clue from each of them that will remain a secret until trial

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http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html

Leser says that both women were working, street-walking prostitutes near the Patchogue Inn, a hot sheets motel on Main Street in Patchogue which was a red-light district back in the 1990s. "Both women were brutally beaten and strangled," said Leser. "He crushed their skulls and choked them to death."

Then their bodies were staged exactly alike with each victim's arms placed behind her back, legs spread wide apart, and a left shoe missing from each victim.

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1) All the evidence points to a group of police officers aware of the crimes to a degree that is problematic.

2) The only mystery involves the reason for calling. A group of people would not normally have one of their number call victims like that. Calling to taunt is a prankster type thing an individual does.

3) Spota knew that the missing left shoes from the girls supposedly killed by Bittrolff were not relevent to Bittrolff's 'guilt'. Why was he coy with that evidence? He was bothered by something, hiding something, and Bittrolff was a target to deflect on. His goal was to portray Bittrolff as the killer of all the girls.

4) Almost certainly Bittrolff did not kill any of the girls, including the ones he was convicted of killing. There are too many connections between the killings to call them unrelated and the fact that the police, e.g. Leser etc, try to paint Bittrolff as a candidate for other killings, suggest that several of the top cops there are hiding something. There is conclusive absolute evidence that Bittrolff could not have killed most of the victims. But instead of saying that, the police say he was not involved in an open ended way that leaves doubt.

Getting back to Burke, he started his career by getting information that compromised a powerful person, Spota, and blackmailing that person to watch over his career. Burke then became useful to other people and developed his job security around getting dirt on people so he could control them. Normally that might not be the worst thing, a lot of politicians operate that way, but in this case Burke's character is relevent. He worked as an undercover drug cop for a while. There is no such thing as an honest undercover drug cop, but Burke probably lowered the bar further. He also presided over police who had apetites similar to his.

It is almost impossible anywhere for a police officer to be arrested for rape, unless there is a lot of publicity, and the fact that quite a few Long Island cops have been suggests that they are hiring from a pool that includes more of that type of person than even most other police departments. It seems certain that most of the police officers involved in the Bittrolff case, as well as other official types involved in that case, are hiding more about the murders than they are presenting. An easy way to find out if that is the case might be to find the very first lab result that the Suffolk police got in '93 regarding the dna from the McNamee and Tangredi murders.

Abcdefgh said:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/melissa-barthelemy-the-long-island-serial-killer-victims-secret-life



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nager-phone-sent-texts-strangling-victim.html



http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/31/long-island-man-pleads-not-guilty-in-cold-case-murders/



http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html



1) All the evidence points to a group of police officers aware of the crimes to a degree that is problematic.

2) The only mystery involves the reason for calling. A group of people would not normally have one of their number call victims like that. Calling to taunt is a prankster type thing an individual does.

3) Spota knew that the missing left shoes from the girls supposedly killed by Bittrolff were not relevent to Bittrolff's 'guilt'. Why was he coy with that evidence? He was bothered by something, hiding something, and Bittrolff was a target to deflect on. His goal was to portray Bittrolff as the killer of all the girls.

4) Almost certainly Bittrolff did not kill any of the girls, including the ones he was convicted of killing. There are too many connections between the killings to call them unrelated and the fact that the police, e.g. Leser etc, try to paint Bittrolff as a candidate for other killings, suggest that several of the top cops there are hiding something. There is conclusive absolute evidence that Bittrolff could not have killed most of the victims. But instead of saying that, the police say he was not involved in an open ended way that leaves doubt.

Getting back to Burke, he started his career by getting information that compromised a powerful person, Spota, and blackmailing that person to watch over his career. Burke then became useful to other people and developed his job security around getting dirt on people so he could control them. Normally that might not be the worst thing, a lot of politicians operate that way, but in this case Burke's character is relevent. He worked as an undercover drug cop for a while. There is no such thing as an honest undercover drug cop, but Burke probably lowered the bar further. He also presided over police who had apetites similar to his.

It is almost impossible anywhere for a police officer to be arrested for rape, unless there is a lot of publicity, and the fact that quite a few Long Island cops have been suggests that they are hiring from a pool that includes more of that type of person than even most other police departments. It seems certain that most of the police officers involved in the Bittrolff case, as well as other official types involved in that case, are hiding more about the murders than they are presenting. An easy way to find out if that is the case might be to find the very first lab result that the Suffolk police got in '93 regarding the dna from the McNamee and Tangredi murders.

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Not sure about bittrolf ... i cant read him at all. Seems like a good old boy.

However, with evidence important to the bittrolf case conveniently missing it should have been thrown out. How can that issue ,in and of itself, not raise reasonable doubt in a juror is beyond my understanding???

When i think about bittrolf, a bob dylan lyric from hurricane plays in my head " all the criminals in their suits and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sunrise".

I DO think the atlantic city murders are connected to lisk. Like tina foglia, molly dilts said she was seeing a doctor.

Why in the world would melissa's boyfriend wait for the cops to pick him up to show them the house of the john on long island???? Why do we still not know where that house is and who it belongs to? If someone that i loved went missing, i would make sure law enforcement, the news, or the world knew the house. Its still not too late.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

maddalena1 said:

Not sure about bittrolf ... i cant read him at all. Seems like a good old boy.

However, with evidence important to the bittrolf case conveniently missing it should have been thrown out. How can that issue ,in and of itself, not raise reasonable doubt in a juror is beyond my understanding???

When i think about bittrolf, a bob dylan lyric from hurricane plays in my head " all the criminals in their suits and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sunrise".

I DO think the atlantic city murders are connected to lisk. Like tina foglia, molly dilts said she was seeing a doctor.

Why in the world would melissa's boyfriend wait for the cops to pick him up to show them the house of the john on long island???? Why do we still not know where that house is and who it belongs to? If someone that i loved went missing, i would make sure law enforcement, the news, or the world knew the house. Its still not too late.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

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Regarding Bittrolff, if he did have sex with two of the victims within 2 hours of when they died then it would probably be okay to not put too much effort into flagging his case as problematic.

The prosecution's entire case, as far as I know, is built on the supposed dna evidence, which if authentic would be enough.

The so called sperm tail evidence is silly. She was last seen a few weeks before her body was found "after getting an anonymous call about the body", so there are two possibilities.

1) She was kept alive, as evidence seems to indicate may have happened with some other victims, before she was killed or
2) The body was not that fresh when it was found.

In either of those cases, and one or the other is likely, there are problems accusing Bittrolff. If she were kept alive it would not have been something within the capability of Bittrolff at that time, and if the body had laid out for twenty some days then the homicide detectives story about sperm tails etc is fiction. Either way it is one of many problems with the case against Bittrolff.

It is very clear that the prosecution was dishonest in every single verifiable piece of evidence used against Bittrolff. But nobody is suspicious about the dna?

Considering that the only indicator of guilt, the only actual evidence, seems to be supposed dna results, and considering that there is not one single other aspect of the case that the prosecution handled honestly, refer to the indyeastend link, a person should not trust the police / prosecutor with dna evidence in the Bittrolff case unless the dna evidence is documented out the yinyang, which it is not.

It's an absolute headscratcher how people are able to trust those specific police and prosecutors with that dna evidence.

You have a mindbogglingly corrupt group of people with very strong motive to solve a particular crime in an improper way, and they suddenly say "We solved the crime at just the right moment and it is with ironclad evidence, but we can't show you the exact details of the documentation".

No.

The dna evidence against Bittrolff was faked. Who and how remains to be seen.

Re which murders are related, can there really be three different killers that steal shoes from their victims and bash their skulls to the point that their brains are partially pushed out?

And why was Spota playing so odd with the missing shoes from the girls he tried to say were killed by Bittrolff. Look at Spota's 2014 comment about the "vital clue from each of them that will remain a secret until trial".

Then look at how the woodchip evidence morphed.

It is bizarre how people give any credibility to the case against Bittrolff.

Then of course there is the obligatory confession. In this case Bittrolff was not willing to give a videotaped confession, probably because he is not guilty, but also because the police were under too much scrutiny to dangle his nads over a paper shredder to encourage a confession. So what do they do about the necessary confession?

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/...n-manorville-carpenter-for-killings-1.8877226

"Given this guy's comments when he was interviewed by the police, I think there's substantial evidence," Biancavilla said Wednesday.

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Well okay now we have evidence, right? A confession. So the dna evidence must be genuine. No need to check.

Let's check the video of the confession.

Oh wait, all the video is the exact opposite of a confession. He doesn't even act guilty. So where is the confession that you promised, Mr Biancavilla?

He declined to say what Bittrolff said....

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But Suffolk county being what it is there has to be a confession, so they produce

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/...-sgt-was-suspect-in-double-slaying-1.13754093

At the end of that day, McLeer said Bittrolff asked him how they focused on him and got his DNA. McLeer said when Bittrolff’s brother got arrested on an unrelated charge, scientists determined his DNA was such a close match to the DNA found in both victims that it probably was left by a relative.

“I [expletive] knew it,” Bittrolff replied, according to McLeer.
Keahon suggested that was in response to realizing his brother inadvertently led police to him.

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"McLeer said"

Abcdefgh said:

Re which murders are related, can there really be three different killers that steal shoes from their victims and bash their skulls to the point that their brains are partially pushed out?

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I'm confused. I have never seen anything indicating that LISK (at least G4) or AC had their skulls bashed.

SageRhiannon said:

I'm confused. I have never seen anything indicating that LISK (at least G4) or AC had their skulls bashed.

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Sorry, I meant that the cases overlapped in a lot of ways and there were a number of these overlapping cases besides the three that police say Bittrolff was involved in, which involved that.

There seems to be a pattern that evolves a bit with what seem like trivial differences. Here is a very partial list.

Start with Jessica Manners found naked and strangled with semen in her body. Slightly different because she was 14 years old but similarity is there. Police arrest Christopher Loliscio and he admits he had sex with her but says he did not kill her. A brief look at the evidence strongly supports him not being the killer.

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nager-phone-sent-texts-strangling-victim.html

Police have yet to link their deaths with the four victims in New Jersey - Kim Raffo, Molly Jean Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Ann Roberts. But there are several coincidences.

In each case, the killer dumped four prostitutes near water and in close proximity. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition, suggesting he kept some for a time after they died.

All eight were sex workers, and the four in New York used Craigslist. Each had been strangled.
He had removed the shoes from both sets of bodies, though the women in New Jersey were clothed. Those in Long Island had been stripped naked and were found without jewellery or belongings, each wrapped in burlap.
'It's the same guy,'one law-enforcement source told the Post.

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Then the ones police say Bittrolff killed

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/31/long-island-man-pleads-not-guilty-in-cold-case-murders/

Tangredi was found dead in a wooded area in East Patchogue in November 1993; McNamee was found dead two months later in the woods in Shirley. Both women – who were considered sex workers at the time – were found nude, beaten and strangled, police said.

They had been beaten so brutally that their brains were ripped from their heads, CBS 2’s McLogan reported.

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http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html

Leser says that both women were working, street-walking prostitutes near the Patchogue Inn, a hot sheets motel on Main Street in Patchogue which was a red-light district back in the 1990s. "Both women were brutally beaten and strangled," said Leser. "He crushed their skulls and choked them to death." ... "There was no semen in Sandra Costilla," said Sgt. Leser. "But like Tangredi and McNamee her left shoe was missing." ... During the homicide squad's sweep of the Patchogue netherworld John Bittrolff was never questioned because although he'd been arrested for a DWI and a bar fight, he had no history of contact with prostitutes.

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And then this from shortly after Tangredi and McNamee.


http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/nude-woman-found-butchered-article-1.702864

Investigators believe she was killed by a crushing blow to the head. ... Each was found nude. Police believe the women, who have not been identified, may have been transient prostitutes because a nationwide check of missing persons turned up no clues and no one has reported them missing. The women apparently were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped. ... The first victim was discovered by a pizza worker behind a Yonkers pizzeria June 27, 1992. The victim, found in a plastic garbage bag, had a gaping hole in the back of the head from an ax-like weapon. ... The severed limbs were not found in any of the cases, police said. Gierasch said there were no apparent links between the three mutilation killings and the murders of three prostitutes in Suffolk County in 1993 and 1994.

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Since the victim that was identified http://buffalonews.com/1995/12/14/dismembered-victim-identified/ Melani Vilavencencio does not appear anywhere on Google except for that article, I'm guessing it is 'unsolved'.

Note http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html

Leser says that both women were working, street-walking prostitutes near the Patchogue Inn, a hot sheets motel on Main Street in Patchogue which was a red-light district back in the 1990s. "Both women were brutally beaten and strangled," said Leser. "He crushed their skulls and choked them to death."

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More likely, if brain matter were expelled, they were choked to death first then bashed with some object. Very difficult to break the skull clean open without some object. Is it a trivial mistake Leser made?

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/...ial-hears-gruesome-autopsy-details-1.13701086

Caplan said one wound to the left side of Tangredi’s head left a 4-by-2 1⁄2 inch hole in her skull, with bone fragments driven into her brain. A fracture extended from that hole to behind her nose, and back across the base of her skull to behind her left ear, Caplan said. Autopsy photos showed her skull was almost cracked in two.

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My guess is that
1) it would be very rare for two separate killers to take shoes from their victims. That by itself should be enough to call several of the other murders probably related to Tangredi and McNamee.
2) It would be very rare for a killer to both strangle and smash the skull of a victim. So if there are multiple bodies, the 3 Bittrolff was accused of and the three that don't seem mentioned elsewhere, with smashed skulls they are probably related.

Also, it is important to remember that the detectives who gave evidence to convict Bittrolff were employed, and promoted, at a time when you did not get promoted for competence. They were detectives who did as they were told, including, and there seems to be plenty to support this, fabricating evidence.

Everything about this looks like a group of police officers who followed victims, from Jessica Manners on, and arranged the crimes to appear a certain way. From the culture of scpd at that time it may well have been several cops acting more or less independantly but in sort of competition or rivalry, discussing amongst themselves what they did within the protected walls of their little mafia.

It seems certain, just from reading the statements of Leser and Gierasch, that something they are hiding about these murders is significant.


Here's the tldr version

SageRhiannon said:

I'm confused. I have never seen anything indicating that LISK (at least G4) or AC had their skulls bashed.

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Lisk may be a loose knit group of cops who discussed their crimes amongst each other. It seems like a very strange thing, but an analogy would be similar crimes in wartime. You can find people who served in various wars who will brag about raping and killing women. Maybe brag is the wrong word. In those cases you had a group of guys with absolute authority to do anything, with the absolute certainty that their buddies would back them up with literally no limits or restrictions. When these guys are in their little group, while they have power, there is a rush they get from being able to do certain things at will. It seems likely that scpd may have had groups like that.

I don't want to drive away the regulars by overposting the same points in great length, so I'll try to avoid posting on this anymore except if somebody who enjoys paper wants to try and get the initial police report that mentions the dna, as well as the initial lab result from 1993 regarding that dna, I'll contribute $100 to the costs. I know that type of material is for sale if a person is good at filling forms. The only requirement is that each of the papers, police report and lab result, must have the names of people who certified the results. If a more regular user of this website wants to hold the money they can get a btc or ltc address, Coinbase is an easy place to do that, and if the person is a longstanding poster on this website I'll send the usd equivalent for them to hold.

Secondarily, I'll pay $20 in btc or ltc for details of John Bittrolff's arrest for a barfight that includes commentary by the arresting officer.

note http://www.newsday.com/long-island/...1990s-murders-of-two-women-cops-say-1.8862420

Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Robert Biancavilla said in court that DNA from the Tangredi and McNamee crime scenes was that of "a single-source male." The Suffolk crime lab was able to "enhance" those samples and, over the course of a long investigation, "an exemplar DNA sample* " was obtained and matched to both victims.

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*:thinking:

Details of that process which includes the paperwork from the "Suffolk crime lab" is worth another $40 in btc or ltc as long as it has the names of at least two employees.

Documentation showing when Suffolk police submitted their sample to codis is worth another $20.

So a total of $180 in btc or ltc, at rates on the day the coins are sent, which can be held in escrow by any long term poster on this website.

The missing shoes of the ac4 and the missing shoe of the 3 in long is lsland suggests a connection indeed.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

Didn't Robert Shulman confess to the Yonkers victim?
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2015/06/02/yonkers-victim-serial-killer/28353213/

Abcdefgh said:

Sorry, I meant that the cases overlapped in a lot of ways and there were a number of these overlapping cases besides the three that police say Bittrolff was involved in, which involved that.

There seems to be a pattern that evolves a bit with what seem like trivial differences. Here is a very partial list.

Start with Jessica Manners found naked and strangled with semen in her body. Slightly different because she was 14 years old but similarity is there. Police arrest Christopher Loliscio and he admits he had sex with her but says he did not kill her. A brief look at the evidence strongly supports him not being the killer.

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nager-phone-sent-texts-strangling-victim.html



Then the ones police say Bittrolff killed

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/31/long-island-man-pleads-not-guilty-in-cold-case-murders/



http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html



And then this from shortly after Tangredi and McNamee.


http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/nude-woman-found-butchered-article-1.702864



Since the victim that was identified http://buffalonews.com/1995/12/14/dismembered-victim-identified/ Melani Vilavencencio does not appear anywhere on Google except for that article, I'm guessing it is 'unsolved'.

Note http://www.indyeastend.com/Articles...7-THE-COP-WHO-TRACKED-A-COLD-CASE-KILLER.html



More likely, if brain matter were expelled, they were choked to death first then bashed with some object. Very difficult to break the skull clean open without some object. Is it a trivial mistake Leser made?

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/...ial-hears-gruesome-autopsy-details-1.13701086



My guess is that
1) it would be very rare for two separate killers to take shoes from their victims. That by itself should be enough to call several of the other murders probably related to Tangredi and McNamee.
2) It would be very rare for a killer to both strangle and smash the skull of a victim. So if there are multiple bodies, the 3 Bittrolff was accused of and the three that don't seem mentioned elsewhere, with smashed skulls they are probably related.

Also, it is important to remember that the detectives who gave evidence to convict Bittrolff were employed, and promoted, at a time when you did not get promoted for competence. They were detectives who did as they were told, including, and there seems to be plenty to support this, fabricating evidence.

Everything about this looks like a group of police officers who followed victims, from Jessica Manners on, and arranged the crimes to appear a certain way. From the culture of scpd at that time it may well have been several cops acting more or less independantly but in sort of competition or rivalry, discussing amongst themselves what they did within the protected walls of their little mafia.

It seems certain, just from reading the statements of Leser and Gierasch, that something they are hiding about these murders is significant.


Here's the tldr version




Lisk may be a loose knit group of cops who discussed their crimes amongst each other. It seems like a very strange thing, but an analogy would be similar crimes in wartime. You can find people who served in various wars who will brag about raping and killing women. Maybe brag is the wrong word. In those cases you had a group of guys with absolute authority to do anything, with the absolute certainty that their buddies would back them up with literally no limits or restrictions. When these guys are in their little group, while they have power, there is a rush they get from being able to do certain things at will. It seems likely that scpd may have had groups like that.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. A group can be likely. I personally enjoy your posts because it is making me think about alternatives. I have strongly believed Bittrolff to be guilty & you are making me waver in that conviction.

SageRhiannon said:

Didn't Robert Shulman confess to the Yonkers victim?
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2015/06/02/yonkers-victim-serial-killer/28353213/

Click to expand...

Actually I noticed there were a bunch of serial killers arrested at that time, but I didn't know one or more of those three apparently related killings was attributed to one of them.

So is Melani Vilavencencio considered to be one of his victims? Why is there only one mention of her on Google, and that from an upstate paper?

-

Anyway, considering all things, a person should draw conclusions from evidence and not from convictions. A conviction only means the police were able to convince a jury. Facts weigh more than sleight of hand.

Abcdefgh said:

Actually I noticed there were a bunch of serial killers arrested at that time, but I didn't know one or more of those three apparently related killings was attributed to one of them.

So is Melani Vilavencencio considered to be one of his victims? Why is there only one mention of her on Google, and that from an upstate paper?

-

Anyway, considering all things, a person should draw conclusions from evidence and not from convictions. A conviction only means the police were able to convince a jury. Facts weigh more than sleight of hand.

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The details of Melani Vilavencencio in the article you posted seem to be exactly the same as Kelly Sue Bunting (found in a dumpster in Melville by someone searching for a lottery ticket, Melani tattoo). Kelly Sue Bunting is another victim of Shulman. Maybe she used an alias & the article you found was before they found her legal name? But by all accounts, it appears to be the same victim. This link details Kelly Sue Bunting's discovery by the man looking for a lottery ticket:

https://www.leagle.com/decision/200576ny3d117

Thanks I'll research that.

The most disturbing part of these cases is when you research the defense lawyers.

You kind of start to get a sense of how it is going to end before you even get to the trial, like a family calls police and says "We couldn't find a babysitter so we left the infant with our pitbull and when we came back the baby was gone".

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... then the police catch "the kidnapper" and "prove he is guilty" at trial...

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I just read a little of your link and am boggled. This body also had baking soda or soddium bicarbonate, then another had calcium carbonate or chalk, and the bodies police tried to put on Bittrolff had what bphotos indicate are a powder, but which police then used chicanery to portray as woodchips?

An interesting sidenote to the link you posted.

both of her hands had been cut off .... Because there was no way to fingerprint the victim...

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If I recall at least one of the girls supposedly killed by Bittrolff had been arrested shortly before she was killed, for prostitution.

The difficulty identifying this girl, and the mistakes along the way, are odd.

It would be interesting to compare the time frame between "last arrest for prostitution" and "time of disappearance" and see if there is a statistical likelihood thatbeing arrested for prostitution at that time and place had a lethality that diminished quickly after a year or two comparing different causes of death.

One last thing I'm curious about and am having a hard time finding information on.

Did either Shulman or Steven Lavalle http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/ex-con-nabbed-rape-slaying-teacher-article-1.760592 ever challenge their confessions?

My guess is that both might be guilty, but there are some real absurdities in claims the police made about LaValle and Shulman seems the type who could be made to confess to anything convincingly.

Abcdefgh said:

One last thing I'm curious about and am having a hard time finding information on.

Did either Shulman or Steven Lavalle http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/ex-con-nabbed-rape-slaying-teacher-article-1.760592 ever challenge their confessions?

My guess is that both might be guilty, but there are some real absurdities in claims the police made about LaValle and Shulman seems the type who could be made to confess to anything convincingly.

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Shulman did not challenge his confession. And the physical & circumstantial evidence against him were overwhelming. Plus his brother plead guilty to helping him dispose of the bodies. But I can see why the suspicion given who his attorney was. It is possible that Tangredi & McNamee could be Shulman. Some believe there were more victims attributed to him. But neither of them were dismembered, which seemed to be Shulman's preferred method of disposal. I am not familiar with LaValle so I can't comment on that.

I have speculated on here that Shulman's brother may have continued his brother's killing style and be responsible for some of the victims along Ocean Parkway.

SageRhiannon said:

Shulman did not challenge his confession. And the physical & circumstantial evidence against him were overwhelming. Plus his brother plead guilty to helping him dispose of the bodies. But I can see why the suspicion given who his attorney was. It is possible that Tangredi & McNamee could be Shulman. Some believe there were more victims attributed to him. But neither of them were dismembered, which seemed to be Shulman's preferred method of disposal. I am not familiar with LaValle so I can't comment on that.

I have speculated on here that Shulman's brother may have continued his brother's killing style and be responsible for some of the victims along Ocean Parkway.

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The connection between the bodies Bittrolff and Shulman were convicted of is stronger than the evidence against Bittrolff.

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And it is bizarre that Keahon, who, acting as Bittrolff's lawyer ostensibly, helped deflect scrutiny of the supposed dna evidence by declaring it was valid despite his client's claims of innocence... also represented Shulman.

How does a guy with such obvious connections to the prosecution defend two killers who are accused of killing girls which indications are may have been killed by one or more police officers?

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It looks like some higher level police became aware that a police officer was killing a certain kind of women, and they created a suspect to cover those killings, perhaps telling the cop something like 'we got your back on those, now stop doing that', but the person kept on killing. It is much more common than most people suspect for police to rape and even kill women who are on the fringes, and it is the norm in most police departments for police officers who do that to not be investigated publically.

Sorry to harp on the police so much, I know people on this website are generally very uncritical of police. I don't think anybody should be held to an especially higher or lower standard than anybody else, and I think it's a shame that people blindly accept facts presented by certain police no matter how much good cause there is to doubt those facts.

If the general public just looked at the facts against Bittrolff, in this case for example, with the same eyes they look at the police with, if each were held to the same standards of evidence, there would be no case so far. At the very least the police would have to prove that the dna evidence that they 'enhanced' is from the same person who committed the crime. And they would have to explain the unbelievable similarity between victims attributed to several killers, and they would have to open up their internal affairs paperwork regarding police who have commited rapes during that time period. None of that of course is going to happen, for the simple reason that nobody is willing to demand that police be held to some standard of integrity. It is so tiring to hear police say they hold themselves to some high standard, but you almost never see a police officer question corruption.

Bittrolff might be innocent or guilty, we have no way of knowing. He had a lawyer who was basically a shill for the prosecution. He was convicted on 'enhanced' evidence not supported by anything that a person would normally expect. All of the pretrial promises of 'additional evidence' and 'things that would be revealed at trial' turned out to be utter nonsense. If he is guilty then shouldn't they have to prove it in a fair trial with honest lawyers? Or at least some reasonable questioning of the facts police presented? Or should people start holding police to that standard? There are a lot of police, many, who have commited serious crimes and do not have to worry about the overwhelming evidence that is available, much less do they have to worry about possibly fictional evidence.