unexpected twist Wednesday when authorities identified a local real estate agent, Pamela Laverne Long, as one of possibly two persons of interest in the case.

Ashley Markham talks about the investigation and the hope for her siblings. Long, reportedly the landlord of Leonard Gonzalez Jr. who police called a “pivotal” player in the double murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings, is sought by police for questioning but was not believed to be on site when the murders occured, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Police have arrested and charged seven suspects for their role in what Morgan called a “perfectly executed” murder, but suspect at least one more accomplice failed to disable the Billing’s survellience. “Obviously there was supposed to be an eight or ninth person” that was supposed to take care of the survelliance, Morgan said. Earlier Wednesday, the Billing’s oldest daughter said she is shocked at the brutal killings that left her and 16 other siblings parentless. “I just can’t believe that there’s people in the world that are capable of this type of hate,” Ashley Markham, 26, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” today. “This is just unimaginable.”

Markham’s parents, Byrd and Melanie Billings , were shot to death July 9 in what police have called a highly organized, military style operation in which robbery was the primary motive. A safe was among the items taken from the home.

Two of the seven suspects , 35-year-old Leonard Gonzalez Jr., and 28-year-old Donnie Ray Stallworth, had military training, police say. Stallworth worked in the Air Force’s elite Special Operations Command with an aircraft maintenance squadron and Gonzalez was a former soldier in the National Guard.

Several of the suspects, including Gonzalez, have criminal records. Wayne Coldiron, 41, served two years in a Tennessee prison in the early 1990s after killing a man during a fight. Gonzalez stood before a Florida judge Tuesday and defended himself, saying there was “no hard evidence that links to the scene of the crime July 9.” But Gonzalez’s former sister-in-law, Jennifer Herkel, feared his violent side and said he threatened her family over the Internet. “If he would have gotten away with this crime, my family would have been the next one you would be reading about shot in the house,” she said.

The Billings were parents to 17 children, 13 adopted and four biological. Nine of them were at home when police say the murders took place. “We are holding up the best that we possibly know how,” Markham said.

Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan when he announced investigators had taken all the major suspects into custody, including a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old. “We have found them, they are in custody,” Morgan said as he hugged Markham. There were “no direct ties” between the alleged murderers and the slain couple but at least some of the individuals arrested had been on the Billings’ property in the past, said Morgan. One of the suspects, Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., 56, owned a pressure washing business and had hired three of the suspects as day laborers as he needed them, according to Morgan. Gonzalez Sr. is believed to have been the group’s getaway driver, according to Morgan.

The four other suspects, including the 16-year-old, had worked at an auto detailing business in nearby Okaloosa County. Coldiron had been on the Billings’ property “at least one time,” said Morgan. It was not immediately clear what type of work Coldiron had performed for Byrd, 66, and Melanie, 43, Billings. All seven will likely be charged with an open count of murder, and the juvenile will be treated as an adult, said Florida State Attorney Bill Eddins. Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., father of Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., was initially charged with tampering with evidence for allegedly trying to disguise the red van that police believe was used as the getaway vehicle. He is likely to see his charge increased to an open count of murder as well.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A passenger plane bound for Armenia from Iran crashed Wednesday morning in northwest Iran, and all 168 people aboard were believed to have perished, Iranian state media reported.The Russian-made Tupolev plane crashed near the city of Qazvin at about 11:30 local time after leaving Tehran on a flight to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, Hussein Behzadpour, the police chief of Qazvin, said in comments quoted by Iran’s English language Press TV. The crash site was near Jannatabad, a village just outside Qazvin, Mr. Behzadpour said.

The spokesman of Iran’s Aviation Organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, told Press TV that the plane, Caspian Airlines flight 7908, crashed 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.

The plane was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew, state television reported. The broadcast showed wreckage mingled with human body parts and a fire brigade official was quoted as saying the debris was strewn over a broad area.

The footage showed a crater gouged into farmland with mangled pieces of metal scattered about, Reuters reported.

News reports said the pilot may have been attempting an emergency landing after technical problems occurred.

The Associated Press quoted a spokesman for the airline in Yeravan as saying most of the passengers were Armenians but that some Georgians also were on board the plane. Caspian Airlines is Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993, The A.P. said.

“Outlaw Journalist” defies order to stop recording

July 9, 2009

It is said that silence is often louder than speech, that a voice quashed is more powerful than one left free.

So, as I undertake the third night of a six-day civil disobedience imprisonment, there is no urgent crush to communicate. But it is fitting to outline the events which led here and the cause which fires so many others to suffer a similar path.

It is Christendom’s two thousand and tenth year. But within the nation where that faith once held greatest sway, a cruel epidemic waxes. It is not a pestilence of truly natural origin, not a pestilence at all by the traditional meaning of the noun. It is a millstone fervently worn – literally celebrated – by the plurality of those who endure its crushing weight. Through its privations hapless families are flung apart, innocent souls ripped from feeble bodies and innocence itself shorn from the hearts of its unaccountable enforcers. All unfolds on the dime of the hapless worker and plundered businessman, above the graves of twenty-five thousands who died fighting a three percent document tax.

It is the grand, hungry march of exploding government authority, parading around the prison gulag which grows with every step of its progress. As these words take form its advance unfolds exponential. No truce or parley checks its dark course. Beside the New England forts which stood or fell in the first revolution, all ’round the siege lines which still mark the British surrender, lights are going out…the lights of homes stolen by State forfeiture or eminent domain, of businesses ruined by growing tax and mandate.

But the most golden beams to dim have been those of personal liberty and peaceable rebellion. Like night-blind children compelled toward the isolated candles of a primitive village, we who live for such light have found ourselves drawn toward the places where it still feebly shines. And of those places, one has stood above the others, cast a truer shadow, made possible a greater hope. It is the land English invaders lamented, a jungle of prodigious hilltops and ruthless ice.

In this unborn country, a calm revolt – or rather a series of revolts – is undertaken. Its politicians rebel (selectively) against Washington control, its people against its politicians and its media pipelines against any of the above which would muzzle them. It is a place of constructive defiance. It has never been anything less.

Toward this partially wild East, America’s most deliberate migration project since the Homestead Act enters its sixth year. Five hundred over-active refugees from the authoritarian states of “Republikrat” America link arms with New Hampshire’s native liberty community and cobble a loose but increasingly potent defense against the seemingly unstoppable march of Authority. With a calculated desperation not seen since the days of Parks and King, some clumsily follow the path of the same. To the unjust they say: Ignore us and admit the wrongness of your victimless crime edicts, or seize us and amplify our message.

There are, it is believed, several lines of defense which must be held in this manner against the encroaching cancer. Perhaps the most valuable of these is the newly decentralized exercise of press freedom. The practice of camcording official activity and placing it upon the waves of the electronic web for all to support or decry, that practice has fallen into the desperate hands of the “little people.” As a check against government abuse it is indispensable. It is, in this land of so many hills, a good one upon which to die.

Across New Hampshire, the freedom to record exists, but only in a tenuous, ambiguous form. An elderly “wiretapping” law is often cited by officials wishing to frighten from their presence the troubling light of independent recording. In courtrooms, judges are encouraged by law to permit independent taping but granted a hazardous leeway to limit the same. Some choose to expand their mandate and exert censorship over the lobbies outside their force-funded chambers. Others permit relatively unfettered access, ban cameras altogether or moodily swing from one extreme to the next.

In the twilight of 2008, videographer Tom Caruso gently presses Keene District Court for leave to film the controversial trial of a victimless defendant. The defendant approves, but Caruso’s lens captures the judge in a fit of anger. The New York documentarian has driven four hours to record this proceeding, but four minutes into it the flustered jurist’s enforcers compel him to stop. Meanwhile the defendant is hustled away and tried in relative secrecy. In protest, I report to the court with a promised course of action. I pledge that come the next such proceeding, weeks hence, I will follow Caruso’s path and endeavor to film. But I will peaceably disobey any unjust order to turn my camera off.

In the event, upon arrival, press recording is forbidden completely…both in the court itself and in the lobby outside. Lawful or not, the unsigned order has the weight of a smalltown army behind it. I am seized in the lobby, camera in hand, perhaps the first journalist to video-broadcast his own arrest live. Much of what ensues is well-known to our liberty community: The five arrests surrounding my arraignment, the more heroic and robust stand of videographer Sam Dodson, the eventual re-admission of our cameras to Keene District Court.

But it is our purpose which gives meaning to these deeds:

The purpose of accountability, holding “our” officials before the cleansing glare of a camcorder’s sunlight and saying to all who would interfere: “On the job means on the record.”

The purpose of liberty…the right of each soul to do all she pleases that harms or threatens none against their will…

And, as unprecedented government growth brushes a nation toward the cliff of collapse, the purpose of ensuring it may never be said we did nothing.

Decades after the largely peaceable struggles which brought partial liberation to the bonded peoples of India and the American South, children still asked “What did you do in the Struggle, grandpa?”

From this concrete box it is appropriate only to ask: Please do what you are able, while there is still time, to ensure that when you stand before this question, you may proudly provide a convincing answer.

Dave Ridley
RidleyReport.com
Grafton

6,494 players all had a dream of winning the 2009 World Series of Poker main event.

Of those 6,500 players, only 101 remain.

Darvin Moon is the current chip leader of the main event, as he has taken approximately 5.7 million chips with him into the Day 6 dinner break.

Billy Kopp (5.18 million), Antoine Saout (4.81 million), Hamid Nourafchan (4.81 million) and Wesley Ismay (4.2 million) also have top 5 stacks at this point.

Phil Ivey currently has around 2.68 million in chips, thanks in large part to a big hand that took place about a half hour ago.

Ivey got all-in against his opponent pre-flop holding pocket Kings, while his opponent (Bob Whalen) held A-K offsuit.

Whalen didn’t manage to connect and was sent to the rail. Ivey, on the other hand, managed to add to his more-than-respectable stack.

Ivey was on the brink of elimination yesterday, but managed to quickly accumulate chips to stay alive in the tournament.

There are a number of well-known names who are also still alive in the main event. They are:

Eugene Katchalov (3.6 million)
Fabrice Soulier (3.55 million)
Jeff Shulman (3.2 million)
Antonio Esfandiari (2.33 million)
Dennis Phillips (2.2 million)
Adam “Nestegg” Bilzerian (1.91 million)
Tom Schneider (1.44 million)
Owen Crowe (1.4 million)
Hac “trex313″ Dang (1.04 million)
Peter Eastgate (940k)
Prahlad Friedman (700k)
Noah Boeken (481k)
Joe Sebok (300k)

David Benyamine, Joe Hachem and JC Tran were some of the names that hit the rail on Day 6.

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, who was near the top of the leaderboard for almost two full days, has also been eliminated from the main event.

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan returned 62 sex offenders to prison in the past week after they were mistakenly released because of glitch in how psychologists determined their treatment plans, authorities said.

The parolees, who were outfitted with GPS tethers, were picked up immediately after officials learned of the mistake, Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said Wednesday. Some were released again after the parole board determined it was safe to do so, though most remained incarcerated while the board considered whether they should be freed.

Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s administration has worked to shrink the prison population due to budget deficits but says only low-risk offenders are being paroled earlier than they may otherwise have been and all have served their minimum sentences.

House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer, R-Kewadin, on Wednesday called on Granholm to stop any earlier paroles “until we know the scope of the problem.” He characterized the mistaken releases as “negligence.”

Starting June 1, sex offenders approved for parole began answering a new questionnaire designed to determine their needed level of treatment. Two private psychologists hired by the state to assess the test scores were then supposed to put the inmates into one of three treatment categories: outpatient, inpatient or detention.

Outpatient or inpatient determinations meant the prisoners would be paroled to attend therapy while living at home or a residential center. A recommendation of detention meant their parole would be halted.

The psychologists, however, put some inmates into an unauthorized fourth category if there was insufficient or invalid data, Marlan said. Sixty-two of those prisoners were released June 22-24 before the department learned of the error last week.

“The issue has been rectified,” Marlan said Wednesday.

Another Republican, Rep. Rick Jones of Grand Ledge, brought the issue to the media’s attention Wednesday, saying he had gotten a call from a mother who was upset her son was released from prison and then put back within days.

A newly expanded parole board is using risk assessment scales to evaluate sex offenders, while in the past the board relied on reports of how treatment had gone in prison along with details of the crime and other factors.

“They were making for the most part their decision on sex offenders off emotion, the original crime,” Marlan said. “There’s a stigma that goes with sex offenders. What we wanted them to use was true data.”

The parole board is releasing more prisoners who have served past their minimum sentence after independent experts found Michigan inmates stay in prison longer than is the case nationally. Key Democratic and Republican lawmakers backed the parole changes in January but have not yet put new requirements into law.

A SURVIVOR has been found at the site where a Yemeni Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros, a Yemenia airline official said.

The wreckage of the jet, carrying 153 people, was spotted about an hour before the discovery.

“A small plane flew over the scene and the pilot spotted debris and the craft,” the Government’s secretary-general, Nourdine Bourhane, said at about 6pm (AEST).

Yemen’s civil aviation authorities said some bodies had also been spotted at the site of the plane crash.

“Bodies were seen floating on the surface of the water and a fuel slick was also spotted about 16 or 17 nautical miles from Moroni,” senior civil aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader said.

The Airbus, belonging to Yemen’s national carrier Yemenia was carrying 66 French nationals, and Comorans.

Abdel Kader said three of the passengers were newborn babies, while the 11-member crew was made up of various nationalities. The crash occurred less than a month after an Air France Airbus carrying 228 passengers plunged into the Atlantic while en route from Brazil to France.

No Australians are thought to have been on board the flight, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

“The Australian embassies in Port Louis, Riyadh and Paris are urgently seeking to confirm the reports and determine whether any Australians are on board,” she said.

“We have not had any suggestions that any Australians were involved.”

A Comoran airport official told AFP the plane went down in stormy weather conditions.

“The flight was expected at 2230 GMT (0830 AEST, Tuesday). Before landing the control tower lost communication with the crew,” said Hadji Mmadi Ali, the director of Moroni international airport.

“The weather conditions were unfavourable with strong winds.”

The plane was was due to have touched down in Moroni at 2300 GMT on Monday (0900 AEST, today).

The flight started at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport yesterday when an Airbus A330-200 aircraft took off for Marseille in southern France and then on to Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.

In Sanaa, passengers changed to an Airbus A310 and departed for Moroni via Djibouti.

A crisis taskforce has been set up at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Yemenia was set up in 1978 and is 51 per cent owned by the Yemeni Government and 49 per cent by the government in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.