Happy Holidays!

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Wishing you a very happy holiday full of love and joy!

Thank you for sharing in my journey with me.

Renee

Saroo Brierley: Two Different Stories

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60 Minutes Australia, above

CBS 60 Minutes aired the fascinating story of Saroo Brierley, who at the age of 5, was a child beggar.  Looking for his brother, who was out of sight after waking up from a nap on bench, he climbed on to a train looking for his brother in India, and ended up in the city of Calcutta, a foreign place to him where people spoke a different language. Without knowing his last name or the city of residence, and afraid of police because they didn’t take kindly to beggars,  Saroo tried to survive on the streets until someone brought him to an orphanage. Eventually, Saroo got adopted by an Australian family at the age of six.

By age 19, Saroo never forgot his birth family and images from his childhood. He was determined to find out where he came from. So using Google earth, he traced all the tracks that ran out of Calcutta looking for landmarks he remembered such as damn, water tower and the station where he used to go.  After six years, Saboo finally found his home, and reunited with his mother and siblings, only to find the brother he was begging with that day was hit and killed by a train.

What is interesting, however, is if you saw the American CBS 60 Minutes version, there are quite a few differences in the story told by the Australian 60 Minutes.

In the American version, Saroo ended up on a train car all alone for what he said seemed like 24 hours. In the Australian version, they showed him in a train car with other passengers and never mentioned him being “alone”.

In the U.S. version, Saroo goes back to his homeland, and when he arrives in his home city, he recognizes it right away. In the Australian version, he doesn’t immediately recognize it, even doubts if he is in the correct place, but he does eventually find his way home.

In the U.S. story, his childhood home is abandoned. In the Australian version, his childhood home is in rumble.

In the U.S. version, “a man approached who spoke English. Saroo said he was looking for the family that had lived in this house. The man told Saroo to come with him.”

In the Australian version, a man recognizes him from his childhood photograph and leads him to his mum.

Why the dramatic variances on a story if the story is true? Something is off here….

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Here is the transcript from the CBS 60 Minutes in the U.S.

Mark Carver on 20/20 and Touch DNA

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ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

If you watched 20/20 this past weekend, you saw the story of Mark Carver–a fisherman who was on the banks of the Catawba River in North Carolina 100 yards away from Irina Yarmolenko, a UNCC student, who was murdered in 2008.

Carver was looked at by police because of his close proximity, and eventually charged and convicted of her murder on what appears to be a very weak, if not even flawed case.

ABC’s 20/20 presented a compelling case why he might be innocent. I saw no red flags to support guilt in the interviews shown, but I’d have to see interviews prior to his conviction to make a fair assessment. I honestly don’t remember if the interviews shown were pre- or during the trial or not.

I am also curious who the man was who didn’t identify himself on the show.  He was the man on the pontoon who said he talked to Carver the afternoon Yarmolenko was murdered. He only showed his back to the cameras and wouldn’t identify himself. He peaked my interest because police never spoke to him!  Who is this man?

I will also say I am adamantly against using “touch” DNA in cases like this because its not totally understood. While it may be accurate in identifying people or an “unidentified” person’s DNA who came in contact with the item tested, without knowing how far “touch” DNA can travel, or how easily it can be transferred nefariously or innocently, I fear it’s use will be abused.

If you remember in the JonBenet case, D.A. Mary Lacy declared that “touch” DNA exonerated the Ramseys because the “touch” DNA found on JonBenets leggings didn’t match the Ramseys. But in tests run by experts on a CBS show discussing the Ramsey case clearly showed that new panties bought on store shelves contain “touch” DNA before anyone even opened or used them!  It obviously came from the workers at the factory, which shows how someone can make erroneous assumptions about “touch” DNA.

We should conclude then that “touch” DNA should never  be used to exonerate anyone and it may be questionable in putting someone at a crime scene, too, because it might be easily transferred from one person to another or to different objects. We just don’t know enough about it to use it as objective science yet. I can think of only one instance where it might be plausible to use it, but we just don’t know enough yet.

I wish a court would mandate that further studies need to be done before we use such technology because we don’t fully understand it, and using it without full knowledge of how it can be transferred is flat out reckless in my opinion.

Sherri Papini Case

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Many of you have written to me asking me my opinion on the Sherri Papini case.

It’s one of the strangest cases we’ve seen in a long, long time.  You have a husband who comes home from work to find his family is nowhere to be found.  He quickly comes to the conclusion his wife is missing and calls police after finding her phone.

Then we have a shady character by the name of Cameron Gamble, who is a self-proclaimed expert in abductions. He gets involved in the case, separate of law enforcement.  Supposedly an anonymous donor offers money for Sherri’s return and Gamble is the designated spokesperson.  The sheriff was adamantly opposed to his involvement, but the husband, Keith Papini, goes forward anyway.

But in a strange twist, Gamble takes the money off the table just hours before Papini is found alive on a highway at 4 a.m. Thanksgiving morning.

What are the odds?

Taking a few minutes to look at the case closer, I am flagged on several levels.  The husband’s behavior raises my eyebrows as well as Cameron Gamble, and I haven’t seen Sherri at all.

I can’t come to any conclusions at this point, but I will tell you I have a lot of questions I’d like answered!! Things aren’t passing the sniff test for me at this point.

What do you think?

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Amber Hilberling Commits Suicide

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Amber Hilberling, who was convicted of 2nd degree murder for pushing her husband out of their 25th floor apartment building in 2013, committed suicide in October. She was 25 years old. She was found hanging from a prison bed.

Amber continually claimed that she was innocent and didn’t intentionally harm her husband, though the two had a volatile relationship.

When Dateline played Amber’s recorded police recording just after her husband’s tragic death, her emotions and words betrayed the story she wanted us to believe.  It was actually horrifying to watch.

Amber tried to get media attention to get “free”. She went on the Dr. Phil show and was still actively writing media outlets. As a matter of fact, she wrote a letter and it was postmarked the day she committed suicide.

You can see the letter in a video here.

When psychopaths (I’m not saying she is or isn’t) feel trapped, they often do pull the plug.

I do not find her choice to take her life surprising.

Her parents, however, didn’t believe she was down and out–questioning if it was, indeed, a suicide.  They say the letter she last wrote showed she still had hope.

However, her former attorney says she warned the prison twice before she died that she was, in fact, suicidal.  In that same article, they list all of Amber’s misconduct in prison.  It’s quite interesting.

Do you wonder what made me doubt Amber’s story? There was one big whopper she let out among many other behaviors and actions that sealed her fate.  You can read my post here on Amber after seeing her story on Dateline NBC.