Tag Archive for: Uncategorized

Beaten Black Liberian Immigrant Arrested

“….for grand larceny, possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a vehicle.” This is the case I asked you to decide on the other day. See the developing news story and video here.

Read moreApparently, Kamara (the immigrant who was beaten) was driving a stolen Nissan Altima with three friends Monday night when they ran a red light and crashed into another vehicle. All four occupants of the stolen car fled the scene. Police caught one of the occupants, and since then, Kamara has been arrested (source).

I thought that you, my readers, would find this interesting. I am not surprised. In fact, I have to wonder, did he recently steal the car, or was this awhile back? I’d be surprised, with all the spotlight on his beating, that he would have just done it, although it is possible. I’d be really curious to know the details.

I can’t help but wonder if this is a piece to a much larger puzzle…

Thanks, Nancy, for the update to the story!

Updated 11:38 am: Police say he stole the car on Monday morning. “A law-enforcement source said Kamara used ‘advanced techniques’ to break into the car, based on his statements to cops. ” Furthermore, “Kamara potentially faces a maximum of two and one-third to seven years behind bars if convicted of the top count. ” (source).

Off Topic: Hard Drive Failure

I purchased a new HP TouchSmart computer back in August. Yesterday, my hard drive failed. I called tech support, and they confirmed what I already knew. They offered to send me a replacement hard drive. I asked about free data recovery, and they said they didn’t offer that. If this was a random failure, I could absolutely understand. But I have since found out it is not.

Read moreAfter I setup a replacement to be sent, I went online using my husband’s laptop last night, and I looked up hard drive failures for the TouchSmart. To no surprise, I found I wasn’t the only one. Through some more reading, I found this article, and this article, which states these hard drives are “failing at an alarming rate”. It also states that Seagate, the manufacturer of my hard drive, is offering owners of their flagship hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.11 free data recovery.

Was I ever happy! That’s the model I have! Both articles say:

“…if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services,” the company said. ‘Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.'”

So this morning I called Seagate, and to my surprise, I got the run around. Seagate said that I bought my hard drive through HP, so they won’t deal with me. They say that I need to deal with HP, and when I call HP, they tell me they aren’t required to honor this because it is not written in “their guidelines”.

Good old big business squishing the little guy. I am so tired of it.

I called HP corporate, got put back into their technical support queue, and got the run around a second time. Finally, I called customer service back again, and I demanded a manager, and I was given to the “Executive Customer Relations” department, but it was fruitless as well. They refuse to help me because well, they chose not to. End of story.

My hands are tied.

Yet when I look at everything quoted in the article online by ComputerWorld.com or the MaximumPC.com, Seagate doesn’t say that they will only help people with affected hard drives that were purchased directly through them, does it? No, it doesn’t!

When I type in my product serial number at Seagate, it clearly says “DRIVE IS AFFECTED”

I feel violated.

To people who are experiencing this failure, like I am now, do know there is a law firm out there that is considering a class action lawsuit. You might want to put your name on the list. But I just spoke with them, too, and well, if you bought your hard drive through HP (built into your new computer), well, they aren’t interested to represent you. The waters get murky in this case. Too murky. If you are affected, like me, feel free to post an e-mail below and let me know if you want to be contacted if I get any help.

I have also contacted the local media investigative team to get the word out there. If a manufacturer of a product is offering a free service to fix a defective product, they should stand by it. I should not be denied because I bought their product through another company. Most people don’t buy hard drives by themselves. They buy them inside already manufactured computers.

This has been a very negative experience for me with both Seagate and HP.
____________________

Other People Talking about experiencing the same thing with HP and Seagate.

Update: 02-09-2009:
HP sent me another Seagate drive — same model with the same defective firmware on it, though Seagate does say that this unit by the serial number is “not affected”. I wonder if I will crash again like it did for the other guy in the forum above?

Update: 2-26-2009:
http://eyesforlies.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-hard-drive-is-back.html

It took HP 14 days to send me recovery disks. This is absolutely unacceptable.

The people who I had repair my hard drive, One Data World Recovery, told me that I run a 40% chance that this hard drive will fail, too.

Update 6-11-2009:
My second hard drive replacement failed this week, and what did HP do? They send me another defective drive by Seagate. This is unacceptable.

Christina Raines

Christina Raines spoke out about her relationship, engagement and breakup with Drew Peterson on the CBS Early Show this week. She spoke to Julie Chen. Several of you have asked for my opinion about Raines. One person says she “appears to know something”. Another asks was Raines engaged to Peterson, or not?

Who do you trust here? The suspected murderer who proclaimed he was engaged to Raines, or Raines, a young woman who says it wasn’t so?

Read moreIn the beginning of the interview, Raines tells us she knew Peterson since she was 15, and she also knew Stacy.

Chen: How did this relationship with Drew get to the point where you get engaged to him?

Raines: It started out as a friendship.
Notice how she doesn’t deny the engagement here?
….

Chen: Do you think he [Peterson] had anything to do with her [Stacy] disappearing?

Raines: I don’t feel comfortable answering that, at all, right now.
(Watch her expression here, her lip tenses)

Chen: Do you think he had anything to do with the mysterious death of his third wife?
(Notice the movement of her lips again).

Clearly, these questions cause Raines to become uncomfortable, and her lips truly confirm this, though she is trying to hide it as best she can. I wish they didn’t zoom in so close to Christina, because in this interview, her dad, Ernest, gives off some great body language. He answers questions for her, if only with his body.

Raines says she wants people to know that she is a good person, and that she fell for Peterson with her heart, but not her head. I think Raines is being very honest here when she says this, and I think everyone can see that.

Chen: Do you love him?

Raines: I don’t love him.

Chen: Did you love him?

Raines
: I thought I did.

Chen: How did you become engaged to him? When did you become engaged to him?

Raines
: It was never an engagement….really.

“Really” is what I have coined a hedge word. It’s notable. Raines tries to say a very affirming statement, yet when she finishes, she hedges with the word “really”. She is not confident, and the use of this word here tells us this. Furthermore, why didn’t she deny she was engaged when Chen asked earlier, “How did this relationship with Drew get to the point where you get engaged to him?”

The conversation continues:

Chen: What was it, then?

Raines: It was more like a “stunt”.
(Notice the words “like a”)

Chen
: On whose part?

Raines
: On Drew, so he could be in the media.

Chen
: Did you know it was a stunt?

Raines
: Well, he had told me that his lawyer wanted him…to… (notable, but slight shoulder shrug)…be in the media…and wanted to propose to…. someone…at a restaurant.

The last statement is very interesting. Raines pulls in her lips, which is indicative that she is feeling very uncomfortable, again. Notice how she doesn’t answer the last question? She rambles on, in what feels like an attempt to convince us it was a stunt, but she doesn’t say anything conclusive.

Notice how her rate of speech changed? Notice all the pauses, which are indicative of thinking on her feet? Notice how her shoulder shrugs? I can’t help but want to ask who wanted a proposal in a restaurant? Notice that this is missing? Was it Peterson? Or was it his attorney? Regardless, she doesn’t answer the question outright. Why is she being evasive?

My belief? I believe she didn’t think it was a stunt at the time, but now she feels it was, in hindsight.

I personally believed Raines’ dad, Ernest, was scared to death for his daughter when he came out in mid-December saying his daughter was engaged. He went public because he was mortified and wanted to stop her, and he didn’t know how. He talked about a ring on her hand. His actions were and are believable, and now for Raines to deny it and suggest her father was lying, doesn’t make logical sense. Mind you, four weeks after the supposed “stunt” engagement, Raines moved in with Peterson. It’s all supportive that the engagement did, in fact, occur.

The conversation continues:

Chen: And so he said to you, we’re friends, we’re dating, you want to be part of this stunt? Is that how it went down?

Raines: That’s how it went down, but I…would not…go with it. I would not go along with it.

Raines swallows awkwardly. I suspect this is due to her being “uncomfortable”, again. Notice how she also pauses again, as she speaks, and then once she gets it out, she repeats it? It’s indicative that she is not being forthright with us.

But more than that, what she is saying is nonsense. It doesn’t take any rocket scientist to see this. She says she thought she was in love with him, her father talks about her engagement to him, she moved in with him, and now she says she didn’t go along with this stunt? What am I missing? Does that make sense to anyone?

She got boondoggled, and I personally think she can’t admit it. It’s human. We’ve all been boondoggled in our lives, and she is no exception. When our emotions get in the mix, they cloud our judgment. She happened to get caught in a dangerous situation though, while the world was watching, and I am sure that makes it doubly hard to face, in the aftermath.

The conversation continued:

Chen: What would you say to him?

Raines: I told him no, and he said, if it comes out that I am engaged to someone, it’s not really true.

(not “really” true?)

Chen: So, you were never engaged to him, is that what you are saying?

Raines: No, I was never engaged to him.

Chen: But he was putting it out there that he was engaged?

Raines: That he was engaged.

Chen: To you?

Raines: He had told me that he never said it was me. He never said that he was engaged to me, but I have heard that off camera, he had told……um…his producer, the publicist, that it was me.

(Notice she doesn’t answer the question directly, again, and that she is evasive? It’s almost like she had an agreement with Peterson that she would get engaged, but only if he agreed not to talk publicly about it.)

Chen: Okay, but then let me ask you this. You did live with him, correct?

Raines: I did live with him.

Chen: What was the breaking point? Why did you break up with him?

Raines: All it was…was I…moved in with him…….and the reason why I left….is…I had went on a Monday…to collect some items from my apartment…that I shared with my ex-boyfriend, Mike, and he had sat me down…

(Notice the deep sigh? Pauses? Awkwardness of what she is saying?)

Chen: Who sat you down?

Raines: Mike. And he was telling me this is not right, he’s not a good guy…(cut out some conversation to shorten)…and Thursday is when Mike had asked me to move back in with him [Mike].

I’m not buying this is the reason for the break-up. One plus one doesn’t equal three here. If we look at the timing, and the news, the break-up actually occurred after Peterson did an interview with Martin Bashir for ABC. Raines was living with Peterson at this time. That’s when she left him, and I think the show will likely identify why the relationship fell apart, personally.

In that interview, Peterson says some very honest things. He really buries himself in this interview, because through much of it, he is shockingly honest when he talks about his womanizing, and I personally think that his honesty hit Raines hard. That, in my opinion, along with the hard facts of Peterson’s history, which Bashir concisely points out, must have broken through to her and what caused things to end.

I suspect that night when the show aired, they had a blowout. I also wonder, in that blowout, if Peterson let it be known to Raines that he truly is a threat to her, because she shows fear in her interview with Chen. That’s all speculation, of course, but it makes sense.

In the interview with Bashir on ABC, the following came out:

  1. Peterson says when talking about his younger days as an undercover cop, the big joke at the time was “you had to lie to your girlfriend so you could go home and be with your wife”.
  2. He also talks about how he cheated on his second wife.
  3. He talks about how as a police officer “the temptations are out there for womanizing”.
  4. Peterson goes on to talk about how on some TV show, he was asked if he can con anyone, and he said “Looking at it, objectively, how do you know?” He smiles eerily when he says this.
  5. Bashir identifies that the police were called to Peterson’s house on 18 different occasions when he lived with Savio.
  6. Peterson talks about and shows Bashir the house where Kathleen Savio died, as they are parked in front of it. When asked if it is painful to see the house, Peterson says, “Right. It was kind of emotional, but it was like, what can you do? Life goes on.” His response was really flippant.
  7. In the interview, they show letters Savio wrote to authorities, stating she feared Peterson might kill her.
  8. Bashir also uncovers that Stacy told Pam Bosco, “I love you. If anything happens to me, he killed me. It wasn’t an accident.”
  9. In the interview, they show Stacy’s minister admitting publicly that Stacy told him Peterson confessed to killing Savio.
  10. Bashir says in the interview that Raines’ father, Ernest, said his daughter was naive and vulnerable and that Peterson tricked her into the relationship. Peterson says, “I wouldn’t say I tricked her, but I sure romanced her real good.” His expression is horrifying at the end. He looks like, “Yup, I duped her, too”.
  11. Bashir says he met with Raines during the interview. Notice he never says anything about them “not being engaged”?
  12. Bashir talks with Peterson about how he enjoys being married, but then goes on to say, “But then you start having extramarital relationship.” Bashir says to Peterson, “So you enjoy the early stages of marriage, but once things settle down, you lose a little bit of interest”, to which Peterson says affirmatively, “Yes. Very much so.”
  13. Peterson goes on to say that his ex-wives seemed to be bored with him after a few years and the affection on all levels died.
  14. Bashir says it is a weakness in Drew, and isn’t that something that Peterson could sacrifice, to which Peterson says, “But it’s something I enjoy.” It’s interesting because Bashir is talking about having affairs and Peterson is thinking about his “affections”, and it sounds like Peterson is saying he feels he should not be denied an affair! Perhaps it was a subconscious slip? It’s certainly not the stuff to build a new relationship on when you are on shaky ground. That’s for sure.

All of this, I think, would inflame a would-be-spouse, wouldn’t you?

Hopefully, Raines learned numerous lessons in this experience. That’s all we can hope for. I just thought it was an interesting interview because most people will take Raines at face value because of all the nonsense that Peterson has put us through, but in this instance, I don’t think we can put the blame all on Peterson. Raines was a willing participant, and it was her actions that landed her as the live-in fiancee of Drew Peterson, at the very least, according to her dad.

JonBenet Ramsey Case Re-Opened

The Boulder Police have been given back the JonBenet Ramsey “cold case” from the D.A.’s office, and are said to be forming a multi-agency task force “including some of the region’s most experienced investigators” (1) from the federal and state level to take a fresh new look at this case. I am so happy to hear this.

Read moreLast year, many of you will remember the previous district attorney, Mary Lacy, got back Touch DNA evidence from JonBenet’s leggings that matched DNA from her underwear found at the crime scene. With that, Lacy cleared the entire Ramsey family of any involvement because they did not match the DNA.

Lacy automatically assumed that whoever touched JonBenet, in two places, had to be the killer. And for those of you who followed this case, I felt (along with many others) that this was a reckless move. Until the case is solved, no one can conclusively be cleared.

While I don’t know what the truth is, or what happened that night, I just have to ask this:

  1. How can we be certain that JonBenet wasn’t molested that night by a family friend or relative at that Christmas party, before they arrived home? DNA doesn’t give us the timing of events, or tell us when things occurred. With that, can we can conclusively say that the person who molested JonBenet is the same person who killed her?
  2. Furthermore, is it possible, and I don’t know, that JonBenet played with some children that night, scratched them, and contaminated herself on her leggings and underwear when going to the bathroom? Or that one child touched her on her leggings, while playing, and she then scratched them, and contaminated her underwear? Is that a possibility? Or can that be ruled out?
  3. Can we be certain there was no DNA cross-contamination at the crime scene or by the lab?
  4. Since Touch DNA is new, can we be certain it is foolproof? There have been other forensic evidence techniques developed in the past and used by the FBI that were later found to be flawed. Remember Touch DNA is new. We may not know all the pitfalls of using Touch DNA. The above referenced link talks about how a 40-year-old forensic technique was found to be flawed. Touch DNA was only used for 8 years prior to the JonBenet Ramsey case.
  5. Last, there are people who can be an accessory to a crime. That is, they know what happened, and keep it quiet in an attempt to protect others. How do we know that this is not the case in this situation? How can we conclusively say that John Ramsey or Patsy Ramsey could not be accessory?

I think each of these things are plausible reasons why no one should be excluded from this investigation, including the Ramseys.

Do I think John Ramsey killed his daughter? I don’t know. I just know I personally don’t trust what John Ramsey says. Something isn’t right. In every interview I have seen of John Ramsey over the years, I have seen red flags.

Watch what was discussed on Nancy Grace last night:

You Decide

There is a case I reviewed back in November about a Liberian immigrant who was beaten on election night. His story had a lot of red flags, and it made me suspicious. I can’t deny it. I wrote up my thoughts and shortly after I did, a foreign language teacher came by and posted her thoughts in the comment section. She explained to me his lack of emotions and his language skills were all likely due to the fact he was an immigrant. I agreed with her that what she pointed out was important to consider when looking at this case, but I was still unresolved. I was torn and suspicious, yet undecided.

A week later, when I heard there were suspects, I posted another post asking people to let me know if they saw the suspects speak. I wanted to watch them to get a better understanding of the situation, but they never spoke out. I never got a chance to look at them to come to a conclusive opinion. Four suspects have since been arrested and plead guilty (CNN). A reader informed me this morning.

So, this is your vote. You decide.

Related News Update Added February 7, 2009:
Ali Kamara, the Liberian immigrant discussed in this post above, was arrested for auto theft this week.