Chapter 10: Appeals and Pleas

by **Jill Havern** 21.01.17 20:31

Chapter 10: Appeals and Pleas

What have the following in common ?

Children

Shannon Matthews
April Jones
Tia Sharp
Caylee Marie Anthony
Bianca Jones
Joana Cipriano
Harmony Jude Creech
Dominik Takács
Leonardo Giovanni Sendejas
Riley Ann Sawyers
Marina Sabatier
Michael Daniel Smith
Alexander Tyler Smith
Keisha Weippeart
Zoe Evans
Ruth Breton
Jose Breton
Samuele Lorenzi
Jhessye Shockley
Jamie Lavis

Adults

Fadi Nasri
Kirsi Gifford-Hull
Joanna Nelson
Sharon Malone
Lee Harvey
Rachel McClean
Shafilea Ahmed

Answer

In every case they were reported as having been “abducted”, or as “missing”, on in other ways someone gave false statements to police, and in every case they had been harmed either by a member of their own family who had made that false report, or by someone very close to the family and known to them.

Only Shannon Matthews escaped with her life. Her case was slightly different from the others, and involved her being used in an attempt by her mother and another relative to obtain the reward money by deception. It is believed she was influenced by the McCann case.

Every one of these children was included on the lists of “Abducted” or “Missing” children, about which the public are told to be so concerned, and from which other people make so much money.

Interestingly some of these names still have not been removed from the lists published by the many “Charities” which exist, allegedly to ‘assist’, even though the cases have been concluded, and the guilty sentenced.

We append a short précis of each case.

1 Shannon Matthews
In 2008 Karen Matthews reported her 9 year old daughter Shannon missing to the police, and went on to make a number of emotional public appeals for her daughter’s return, begging for anyone holding Shannon to let her go.
Shannon was found alive, hidden in the base of a bed, at a house belonging to Michael Donovan (Karen’s boyfriend’s uncle). The family were supposedly planning to claim the £50,000 that Newspapers had put up as a reward for Shannon’s return. Michael Donovan was charged with Kidnapping and False Imprisonment, while Karen Matthews was charged with Child neglect and Perverting the course of justice. They were both jailed for eight years.

2 April Jones
April Jones is a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, who disappeared on 1 October 2012, after being sighted willingly getting into a van near her home. On 3 October 2012, April Jones's mother made an appeal for information about her daughter. Her disappearance generated a large amount of press coverage, both nationally and internationally. A 46-year-old man was subsequently arrested and charged with Jones's abduction and murder, while searches for her body continued. He was well known to the family. Bridger was found guilty of murder and given a full life sentence

3 Tia Sharp
Tia Sharp was a 12-year-old English schoolgirl who was reported missing from the home of her grandmother, Christine Sharp, in New Addington, on 3 August 2012. On 7 August Tia's uncle, David Sharp, made a televised plea for Tia's safe return. Fifty-five sightings were reported by members of the public, but none was substantiated. When police discovered her body in the loft of the house seven days later, they arrested Christine Sharp and Stuart Hazell on suspicion of murder. Hazell is Christine Sharp's partner and the former boyfriend of Tia's mother, Natalie. Hazell was charged with Tia's murder the following day. A year later, during the trial, he changed his plea to Guilty. He was sentenced to 38 years.

4 Caylee Marie Anthony
Caylee Marie Anthony was an American two-year-old girl who was reported missing July 15, 2008, in Orlando, Florida. Her skeletal remains were found in a wooded area near her home on December 11, 2008. Her then 22-year-old mother, Casey Marie Anthony, was tried for the first degree murder of Caylee but acquitted. She was, however, convicted of misdemeanour counts of providing false information to police officers. There are moves to reopen the case at Federal level.

5 Bianca Jones
A Detroit man was so obsessed over toilet training that he fatally beat his 2-year-old daughter for having an accident. D'Andre Lane, 32, charged with child abuse in the Dec 2012 and for the disappearance of Bianca Jones, whose body has never been found, maintained his innocence insisting she was taken during a car jacking.
The car was found less than an hour later, but the girl wasn't in it. Dogs indicated that a cadaver had been in the vehicle. He was found guilty of Murder and Child Abuse

6 Joana Cipriano
Joana Cipriano was an eight-year-old Portuguese girl who disappeared from the village of Figueira, near Portimão, in the Algarve, on 12 September 2004. After criminal investigation, she was later assumed to have been murdered, though her body was never found. The investigation by the Polícia Judiciária ended with the conviction for murder of Leonor and João Cipriano, Joana's mother and uncle. Leonor Cipriano confessed to killing her daughter. Her uncle confessed to having beaten her up after which she stood "quiet on the floor". He said he cut his niece's body in small pieces, put her in a fridge box, then put her inside an old car that was taken to Spain to be crushed and burned. When he was asked if he had sexually abused his niece he said in the presence of his lawyer "I did not harm her, I only killed her"

7 Harmony Jade Creech
Harmony was an 11-month-old girl whose remains were found in the attic of a Spring Lake home two years ago. Johni Michelle Heuser, 27, was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Harmony Jade Creech.
Deputies found the toddler's remains in her mother's attic on Oct. 20, 2007.
The child had been wrapped in a plastic bag and stuffed in an empty diaper box in a corner of the attic, authorities said. The body was so badly decomposed that medical examiners have never been able to determine a cause of death.
When the child's father, Sgt. Ronald Creech II, returned from a 15-month deployment in Iraq, Heuser initially claimed the baby had been abducted, prompting a state-wide Amber Alert. She later told investigators that she found the baby dead in her crib weeks earlier and hid the death out of fear. She was found Guilty of murder and given life without parole.

8 Dominik Takács
Dominik Takács a two-year-old Hungarian boy was reported missing in 2007 by his mother in central Budapest. Pictures of the boy dominated Hungarian media for several weeks. Takács' mother said that she saw her son heading towards the Danube and tried to run after him, but fell over and lost consciousness for a few minutes. When she came to, he was nowhere to be seen. In October 2007, the mother admitted that he had been attacked by their own fighting dogs and she and the boy's father wheel-barrowed the body to fields near the family's home and buried it. Subsequently, in October the Hungarian police discovered the body of the two-year-old boy. As a result, the parents faced charges as they had not given "rational reasons" for their actions.

9 Leonardo Giovanni Sendejas
Ruth Petra Sendejas, 18, told authorities that two men invaded her home, threatened her, tied her up and placed a plastic bag over the head of her son, Leonardo Giovanni Sendejas. The woman later changed her story, telling police that she staged the home invasion after finding her child unresponsive in his crib and fearing that she would lose custody of the boy, according to court documents. Police found the child unresponsive in his crib. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was asphyxiation. During later questioning Ruth Petra Sendejas allegedly admitted to being the only person in the residence at the time of her child’s death and that there had been no home invasion. She pleaded guilty to 2nd degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

10 Riley Ann Sawyers (Baby Grace)
In the capital murder charge the couple, Clyde Zeigler II and Kimberly Dawn Trenor were accused of intentionally and knowingly causing the death of 2 year old Riley Ann Sawyers. Trenor and Zeigler were initially charged after Trenor gave a statement in which she described how the couple beat Riley with belts, held her head under water, smashed her head on the tile floor and pushed her face into the couch. After Riley died, Trenor said she and Zeigler wrapped her body in plastic bags, sealed it in a plastic storage box and eventually tossed it into Galveston Bay.
Trenor said Riley died on July 24, but the box was found by a fisherman washed ashore in late October and Trenor did not turn herself into authorities until nearly a month later. The couple had originally claimed that Riley Ann had been abducted. Both Trenor and Ziegler were sentenced to Life without parole - as an alternative to the Death Penalty.

11 Marina Sabatier
The 6 year old girl died in 2009 in a series of acts of torture and neglect.
In April 2009, Marina was hospitalised for more than a month of foot lesions resulting from abuse. She was returned to the parents, But Marina died on 6 August 2009. According to the parents, she did not survive the last torture session where she was immersed in an ice bath, forced to drink vinegar and coarse salt before being beaten. The couple then locked her in the basement, naked. They found her lifeless the next day. Eric Sabatier attempted to lead the police down a false track, saying his daughter had been taken from the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. After three days, they eventually confessed everything and took police to the place where they had hidden the body of their daughter. It was found in a closet, wrapped in a cloth, in a plastic crate, filled with concrete. They were sentenced to 30 years imprisonment.

12/13 Michael Daniel Smith and Alexander Tyler Smith
In 1994, Susan Smith told police in South Carolina, USA that she had been car jacked by a black man who had driven off with her two young sons still in the vehicle. Smith appeared on television appealing for the man to return the children. Nine days later, Smith confessed to Police that she had driven the car into a lake, with her children still inside. It then emerged that she had been having an affair with a man, and had killed her two boys because he had said that he didn’t want any children. She was convicted of murder, and given a life sentence.

14 Keisha Weippeart
Kiesha's mother, Kristi Abrahams, told police she tucked her daughter into bed. She was reported missing the next morning. As the search entered its third day on, Ms Abrahams made an emotional appeal for anyone who may have seen her daughter to come forward. Police located a shallow grave site where they believe the body of missing girl is located. Kristi Abrahams, 28, and Robert Smith, 31, were arrested. They have been formally charged with the girl's murder. In 2013 the mother and stepfather pleaded Guilty to manslaughter.

15 Zoe Evans
In 1997, 9-year-old Schoolgirl Zoe Evans went missing from her home. Zoe’s naked body was found six weeks later, in a badger sett. Her mother, Paula Hamilton, and stepfather Miles Evans appeared at a press conference, begging for her to come home. It transpired that Zoe had been taken her from her bed and sexually assaulted by her stepfather. A post-mortem examination showed she died from asphyxiation Evans was arrested and convicted of murder.

16/17 Ruth and Jose Breton
In October 2011 Joseph Breton reported the disappearance of his two children, Ruth and José, aged six and two. According to his version, they were visiting a Parque in Cordoba, when the children vanished without a trace. The investigation soon disproved the Breton version.
Despite the interrogations, confrontations and reconstructions of the facts by the police, Breton never revealed the true whereabouts of the children. The key was to find out what happened between 14.30 and 18.18 of October 8. The children were spending the weekend at the farm of Quemadillas that morning and had been playing with cousins. In the afternoon, when, supposedly, they left the farm, Breton disconnected his mobile. At 18.18 it was reconnected and Breton called his brother to report the alleged disappearance of children.
Police had always focused enquiries on the paternal grandparents farm. In the early stages of the enquiry charred skeletal remains had been found in the ashes of a bonfire lit on the farm, but reports attributed them to a dog or small rodents. This proved to be wrong, and subsequently they were identified as the human remains of Ruth and Jose. The father was found guilty of their murder

18 Samulele Lorenzi
three-year-old Samuele Lorenzi was found dead on 31 January 2002 while sleeping in his parents' bed in his family home in the mountain village of Cogne, in Aosta Valley, northern Italy. The cause of death was found to be a blow to the skull. The murder weapon has never been found. In July 2004 an Italian court sentenced Samuele's mother Anna Maria Franzoni to 30 years in prison for aggravated murder. In 2007 the penalty was reduced to 16 years of jail for homicide. Franzoni always refuted the charge, asserting that an intruder had killed her child in the few minutes she left home to accompany her older son David to the school bus station. Mrs. Franzoni was also charged and found guilty of defamation against the Chief Prosecutor of Aosta.

19 Jhessye Shockley
Hunter is facing charges of first-degree murder and child abuse in Jhessye's disappearance. Hunter reported her daughter missing. Police believe with certainty that Jhessye was killed and her remains were placed at the Butterfield Landfill. On Nov. 23, about six weeks after Jhessye was reported missing, a woman contacted investigators. She said that seven to 15 days before Hunter reported her daughter missing, she gave Hunter a ride to Tempe. At the time, Hunter put a large, heavy suitcase in the woman's trunk. When they got to Tempe, Hunter put it in a skip. Hunter even apologised to the woman for the smell of the suitcase. Police tested the trunk of that car and it tested positive for blood.
Jhessye's body has never been found. Glendale police said they believe she was killed and her body was thrown in a trash can. Investigators have been working on the case since Oct. 2011, when Hunter reported her daughter missing. In 2015 Hunter was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to life, plus 20 years for child abuse.

20 Jamie Lavis
Bus driver Darren Vickers was the last man to see eight-year-old Jamie Lavis on May 5, 1997. After the boy vanished he befriended his distraught family in Openshaw, Manchester, making a tearful TV plea on their behalf. In April 1999, at Preston Crown Court, Vickers was jailed for life for Jamie’s murder.

Adults

21 Fadi Nasri
On the evening of 11 May 2006, Patel-Nasri was reported to have gone outside her home carrying a chef's knife. It is believed that this was the murder weapon. A man wearing a hooded top was seen running away from the scene. During the subsequent trial, it transpired that Patel-Nasri had been stabbed inside her home and had staggered outside the front door before collapsing. Fadi Nasri made a public appeal to find the killer of his new bride Nisha Patel-Nasri who he had stabbed with a 13-inch kitchen knife at her home

22 Kirsi Gifford-Hull
In 2006, a dog walker found the decomposed remains of Kirsi Gifford-Hull buried in a shallow grave, in woods. Just a few days earlier, her husband Mike Gifford-Hull contacted Police claiming that his wife had left him – and later made a TV appeal pleading for his wife to get in touch because their children had made a banner for her birthday. In fact Mike Gifford-Hull had strangled his wife during a row over the state of their marriage and his having had sex with prostitutes. He then concealed her body. He was found guilty of murder and jailed for 17 years.

23 Joanna Nelson
In 2005, Joanna Nelson vanished. Police launched a massive search but Miss Nelson’s body was not found until over a month later. Shortly after her disappearance, her boyfriend Paul Dyson, appeared on television acting as if he was very concerned. Under interrogation Dyson eventually admitted he was responsible for his girlfriend’s death, saying that he had strangled her after a row about housework. He was sentenced to life in prison, and Judge Tom Cracknell, highlighted his appearance on the TV appeal for information, saying “You went on TV and displayed breathtaking and nauseating hypocrisy.”

24 Sharon Malone
Sharon Malone vanished in 1999, and was later found bludgeoned to death in nearby Woodland. Her husband, Garry Malone, had participated in a televised police press conference to appeal for her return. He later invented a story about his wife having been killed by a gang, because of an unpaid debt. Mr Malone fled the country confirming the suspicions of detectives. Garry Malone was convicted of his wife’s murder, after being extradited from Spain, where he had adopted a new identity.

25 Lee Harvey
In 1996, Lee Harvey was stabbed to death on an isolated road. His fiancée, Tracie Andrews, told police that he had been attacked by a motorist after a “road rage” incident. The former model later appeared at a Police press conference looking distraught and begging for help in catching the killer, claiming a “fat man with staring eyes” had attacked her boyfriend, stabbing him more than thirty times.
Detectives became sceptical of the story after it emerged that the couple had a stormy and often violent relationship. Tracie Andrews was charged with murder, and at her trial a jury was told she had stabbed him to death after a row. She was sentenced to life.

26 Rachel McClean
In 1991, the boyfriend of Rachel McLean reported her missing to Police. John Tanner not only appeared in a press conference appealing for help but also took part in a televised reconstruction. He claimed Miss McLean had seen him off at the railway station, and said a long-haired stranger had offered to give her a lift home. A few days later, police discovered Rachel’s remains under the floorboards of her flat, and Tanner was immediately arrested. His story crumbled, and he was charged with her murder. At his trial, Tanner changed his story and said that he had ‘snapped’ and killed his girlfriend after she admitted that she had been unfaithful. He was convicted of murder and jailed for life.

27 Shafilea Ahmed
AFTER 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed vanished from her home in Warrington, Cheshire, on September 11, 2003 her parents Iftikhar and Farzana gave an emotional TV interview. The body of Shafilea was found in a Cumbrian river in February 2004. In May 2012 her parents were jailed for life for her “honour killing”.

References

These are taken from the net, and in several cases the most convenient summary is to be found on “Wikipedia”. www.wikipedia.org/
Their absolute accuracy cannot therefore be guaranteed.

A search will reveal more links for each of the cases. The primary sources, the Court reports, are obtainable, sometimes for a fee.

Children

Adults

21 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nisha-patel-nasri-trial-verdict-husband-310554

22 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1530154/Husband-buried-his-wife-where-he-had-sex-with-lover.html

23 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-368005/Life-Joannes-killer-mum-turned-in.html

24 [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts /4537825.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts /4537825.stm[/url]

25 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018706/Tracie-Andrews-release-Killer-shows-remorse-Lee-Harvey-murder.html

26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Rachel_McLean

27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shafilea_Ahmed

Mother 'Threw Baby Down 40ft Rubbish Chute'

A newborn baby was thrown down a five-floor rubbish chute by her mother in an attempt to kill her, a court has heard.
The six-day-old girl from Wolverhampton is alleged to have been wrapped in material and dumped down the 40ft tube which ran down the family's tower block, hitting a metal deflector at the bottom at over 30mph which left her with several skull fractures and brain injuries.
Jaymin Abdulrahman, 25, initially told police that her daughter had been kidnapped by strangers in September last year, but the baby was found a few hours later, apparently lifeless, by the father at the bottom of their block of flats.
Abdulrahman, who is on trial at Birmingham Crown Court, denies charges of attempted murder, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and inflicting grievous bodily harm.
In his opening speech, prosecutor Andrew Smith QC told the jury: "The reason why she decided to place her daughter in the rubbish chute may be never be known or understood.
"However, the prosecution say that her intention can be clearly identified from her actions."
Abdulrahman allegedly tidied up her flat after dumping the baby girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The court was told that pieces of a broken Moses basket were found in a bin at the bottom of the chute, and bits of wood were discovered inside the flat.
A crash dummy test was carried out by experts to reconstruct the fall, and the jury was shown computer-generated images of that experiment.
Using a dummy of a nine-month-old child and a chute with a 44ft vertical drop, Mr Smith revealed that the estimated speed of impact with the metal deflector that is used to slow down pieces of rubbish was 32mph.
Speaking in court, Mr Smith compared it to "having been in a 30mph car crash without wearing a seat-belt."
http://news.sky.com/story/1102266/mother-threw-baby-down-40ft-rubbish-chute