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∞ Pastor from Baptist Megachurch Arrested in Sex Sting -- The Dallas Morning News
Joe Barron, a 52-year-old minister at the Prestonwood Baptist Megachurch in Plano, TX is in some trouble. He allegedly drove to Bryan TX to get busy with a 13-year-old kid. The 13-year-old — inevitably — was an undercover cop.
Police say Barron had a webcam, headset and condoms in his car. Investigators have searched Barron’s home in Plano and confiscated several computers and related equipment.
Barron was one of 40 — yes, 40 — ministers at Prestonwood, a church with more than 20,000 members. He was listed on the church staff page as a minster of Single Adults.
At least he wasn’t involved in the childrens’ ministry. At Prestonwood, that is.
I grew up in a city where Southern Baptists dominated the religious landscape, so hypocrisy like this never surprises me. But I’ve long since gotten past the schadenfreude I used to feel whenever an “upstanding” Christian like Barron was accused of criminal or immoral behavior. Maybe it’s because I’ve attended churches filled with truly decent people that I now tend to think more of them and the shock they surely feel when a story like this hits the news. If Barron is guilty, it’s just a tragedy, and I’m not so cynical that I find anything funny about such things, anymore.
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Police in Mesa, AZ believe they’ve caught a serial strangler and rapist; thirty-six-year-old businessman Trent Benson.
Benson’s alleged crimes date back to at least 2004. He’s been charged with 1st-degree murder, sexual assault and violent sexual assault.
I kinda doubt Benson started down the serial road at age 32. He was up to no good long before 2004, if he is indeed the serial criminal they’ve been searching for.
This is definitely his MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/217550325.
There’s not much there, save info about where he has lived in the past — Fosston, MN. My question about that is the same as the one asked by Websleuther “Taximom” — any unsolved sex crimes in or around Fosston from the late 1980s? I’m sure investigators are checking that out as we speak.
This Yahoo 360 profile appears to have been created by Benson as well. Not much there either, save another photo of him, holding a child, and photos of a car and a dog.
It shouldn’t be too surprising that Benson is hard to find online. If he is indeed a serial killer, well, they’re good at that — hiding in plain sight.
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∞ Austrian Ax Murderer Reinhard Steinbauer Was Bankrupt
Steinbauer, a “public relations executive for the Austrian Parliament,” killed his wife, child, father-in-law, and parents.
Apparently he was bankrupt, and his excuse for taking an ax to his loved ones was his desire to save them from the ‘shame of financial ruin.’
Yet he killed his wife and daughter in Vienna, then took the time to drive more than 100 miles to kill his parents and father-in-law. Seems like there was far more calculation than passion in Steinbauer’s annihilation of his family.
Based on Reinhard Steinbauer’s stated profession and location, it would appear that this is just one of many web pages with his information attached. E-mailing Herr Steinbauer might be futile, but if you woke up this morning in a mood to cuss out an ax murderer, have at it.
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∞ Cross-dressing, car-jacking tranny rampage - NOLA.com
It’s a cliche, I know, but you really just can’t make this up:
As employees were preparing to open Sunday at about 4 a.m., a tall, slender redhead, dressed in a colorful floral dress and pink necklace, entered the store. But the figure wasn’t a mother popping in for a warm Mother’s Day breakfast. “She” wasn’t even a woman, but a cross-dressing robber.
Less than 20 minutes before this steaming hot plate of strange was served up at the Burger King, a dude in a dress and wig carjacked a truck. It isn’t clear as to whether the two events are connected.
Later in the same article:
In early January, a man wearing makeup, a black wig, sunglasses and boots, a dark jacket and pants and carrying a black purse robbed a Metairie Road bank. Later that month, a man wearing what one eyewitness described as a “long, blond wig, like Nancy Sinatra” opened fire on a man in Algiers outside a neighborhood bar…
Oy.
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∞ Hinterkaifeck -- StevenHuff.net
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to make note of this before, but if you click the link above it will take you to a piece I wrote last year about another incest-related tragedy that took place many years ago.
It didn’t happen in Austria, but there was an element of the Fritzl family horrors in what happened to the Gruber family. First the father, Andreas, was jailed along with his daughter for incest; then later the entire Gruber household was murdered.
Technically, Hinterkaifeck remains an unsolved mystery. Read the post I wrote and the comments left on the post by others to find out why I say it’s only “technically” unsolved.
Don’t read the story of Hinterkaifeck at night under any circumstances. Especially if you live in a remote, wooded area. Just sayin’.
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∞ Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Austria -- SPIEGEL ONLINE
Another day, another Austrian family at the center of a horrible tragedy.
An Austrian man went to a Vienna police station Wednesday and said that his “dead wife and dead child” were lying in his “flat.”
He may have killed them with an ax.
It didn’t end there — it looks as though the man made the rounds, killing his own parents and his father-in-law, who lived in the towns of Linz and Amsfelden.
So far, Josef Fritzl has been unavailable for comment.
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∞ SARAH HANNAH CALENDER, murder, 3rd February 1890. (Old Bailey Online)
Found in the court record linked above…
EDWARD ARTHUR BANTON:
We found the place had been on fire;
Four of the children were there,
But not the baby, Florence Ada—
I saw her dead body
Next day at the mortuary.
JANE HANNAH BANTON:
I was awoke
by the smoke—
I got up, and found the room full of smoke
Mr. Morment, the lodger,
He came and broke
Open the door
I did not see anything of the baby.
PHILIP FRANCIS GILBERT:
I have had the prisoner
Under observation
While she has been
in Holloway Prison
In my opinion
She is insane
She said she had heard voices,
Which she could not explain,
That people,
And a man named Emile,
Had tried to murder her
That people went about
With electricity
That certain rooms
Smelt of death
GUILTY of the act, being insane.
Ordered to be detained
Until Her Majesty’s pleasure
Be known.