TV station removes Juliana Redding “arrest” story from its Web site
Juliana Redding
Please note that at 10:55pm PST on March 10, 2009 the headline for this story was updated from “TV station: Arrest made in Juliana Redding case” to “TV station removes Juliana Redding ‘arrest’ story from its Web site.”
Update (March 10, 2009, 10:55pm PST): More than 24-hours have passed since a Tucson TV station reported that an arrest had been made in the Juliana Redding case. Tonight, there are indications that KVOA-TV’s report was incorrect. Firstly, the following text appeared in an e-mail I received today from a trusted source: “Per Sgt. Renaldi Thurston with Santa Monica police, KVOA’s report last night that an arrest has been made in the Juliana Redding murder case is NOT ACCURATE. No arrest has been made.” Secondly, no other media has reported that an arrest has been made. And lastly, KVOA appears to have removed the story from its Web site. The specific URL for the KVOA story posted last evening on kvoa.com now contains text that begins, “Our Apologies / The page you requested is currently unavailable…” (However, Beyond90Seconds.com has memorialized the lost record here).
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Update (March 9, 2009, 11:54pm PST) Please note that at 11:54pm PST on March 9, 2009, the headline on this story was updated from “Possible development in Juliana Redding case“ to “TV station: Arrest made in Juliana Redding case”
KVOA VIDEO
Update (11:42pm PST): KVOA-TV: ARREST MADE IN MURDER OF FORMER SALPOINTE STUDENT
Update (10:53pm PST): Beyond90Secondscom has just spoken with a representative of one major Los Angeles media outlet. That person shared that she has also heard an unconfirmed report that an arrest has been made in the Juliana Redding case. This media outlet had already contacted the Watch Commander for the Santa Monica Police Department. I was told that the Watch Commander had explained that he/she had not heard anything from detectives in the Redding case. The person at the media outlet told me that this outlet hopes to contact the detectives in the morning.
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(March 9, 2009) Beyond90Seconds.com has received an *unconfirmed* report that an arrest has taken place in the Juliana Redding murder case.
At 9:31pm (Arizona time), Beyond90Seconds.com placed a phone call to the Redding family home in Tucson.
When a man answered the phone , I identified myself and explained that I’d just heard from someone in Tucson that an arrest had been made in the case. The man who answered the phone heard me out and politely responded, “We have no comment. Thank you for calling.”
Beyond90Second.com is aware that at least one other media outlet called the Redding home earlier in the evening.
On March 16, 2008, Ms. Redding, 21, was found dead in the condo she’d rented on the 1500 block of Centinela Avenue in Santa Monica, California. Media reports stated that Redding had been assaulted. The autopsy report has not been released.
Beyond90Seconds.com will continue to work into the night to learn whether anyone has been arrested in this case.
Please stay tuned.
Johnny Miller update: Divorce “finalized”
Johnny MIller in "Return to Castle Dome"
Just a quick post here to follow-up on an August 10, 2008 Beyond90Seconds.com video featuring a former member of Wayne Bent’s Lord Our Righteousness Church.
As regular readers of this blog may recall, *part one of Return to Castle Dome profiled former LOR member Johnny Miller. Although Miller had left the New Mexico church and moved to Arizona, his wife remained a loyal member of Bent’s flock in the Land of Enchantment.
Miller’s transition to the outside world was not without struggle. And when discussing his wife in Return to Castle Dome, a hint of the emotional toll appeared to reveal itself.
On Friday, March 6, I received an e-mail from Miller informing me that he is now divorced. He has given me his permission to publish that e-mail here:
Hello Mark,
Just wanted to let you know that my final link to the LOR has been officially broken. Lillian’s divorce from me was finalized 28 February 2009. The papers from the courts arrived yesterday. We are no longer married. Thank you again for your interests in this on-going drama and your up to date coverage. Even from prison, Wayne Bent still reaches out and effects souls. You have my permission to use this information in the on-going coverage of this story, in the event your readers want to know what became of my situation and status with Lillian.
Sincerely yours,
Johnny Miller
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(*note: The link provided to part one of Return to Castle Dome will take you to the video as it appears on Vimeo. This is for your convenience as the more recently published Vimeo version tends to load much faster than the version published last August.)
Mother of two young victims takes stand in ex-husband’s murder trial
COMMENTARY
As a surgically-repaired Tiger Woods stepped deeper into the familiar glare of the media’s spotlight during a “match play” golf tournament near Tucson on Thursday, a 32-year-old woman who’s long-shunned reporters appeared on a witness stand in a Pima County courtroom.
Jamie Hallam’s round with the legal system would have nothing to do with sudden death, though.
For here, the light of truth exposes a case wherein at east one child endured brutalities lasting weeks. Maybe even months.
In that courtroom yesterday, Hallam answered questions about the brief lives of a beautiful 4-year-old girl. And a handsome 5-year-old boy.
Her kids.
Hallam has rarely spoken publicly about the deaths of Ariana Payne and Tyler Payne. The children she’d allowed to visit her ex-husband, only to never see them again.
Never.
Below, you can choose to watch Thursday’s TV news reports featuring Hallam on the stand. But first, please permit me to share a bit of background. Not a ton of facts, to be sure. Rather, what follows will hopefully convey a bit of what it was like two years ago, when this disturbing story first made headlines.
It was two years ago this month that the unthinkable chain-of-events began to unfold.
And it started with the discovery of what little was left of a tiny body found inside a tub pulled from a dumpster. It’s believed that the tub—and its heart-wrenching secrets—had spent months sealed within the darkness of a storage locker located only a few feet away from the dumpster.
In time, we learned that the human remains had once helped form a vibrant, smiling…yes, very-much alive… little girl named Ariana Payne. Snapshots taken during her short life could…as is often said…”melt your heart.”
And this story only grew darker.
Ariana had a brother.
Where was Tyler Payne?
His mother hadn’t seen either child for…months.
How could that happen?
I was reporter for a Tucson TV station assigned to this story. And I found myself returning to that storage locker area more than a few times. Hoping to learn who had rented it. Wondering who had brought Ariana to it.
Had Tyler been there, too?
Then, the story spread to a new location. It’s relevance seemed obvious, yet you hoped it wouldn’t be true.
A helicopter’s camera zoomed-in on a team of investigators all clad in white. The people on the ground also wore masks as they sifted through tons of garbage at the local landfill.
They were searching for Tyler. They didn’t find him. Still haven’t. An outcome that’s often gnawed at me ever since.
For one year earlier, back in 2006, I’d covered a story about a Tucson woman whose husband had accidentally thrown-out her treasured rings (as I recall, she’d taken the rings off her fingers just prior to washing dishes and had tucked them away inside a folded napkin she’d placed on a nearby counter).
The ringless woman and her husband soon managed to convince the folks at a landfill to let them search for a missing wedding band, et al. Some employees even helped.
You know what? They found those rings. Really. It was a wonderful, positive story.
If Tyler is in a landfill, it really is a shame… Well, “shame” hardly seems to be the proper word. “Travesty” seems closer to the point I’m trying to make here.
In time, police arrested Christopher Payne.
If we are to use DNA as a standard of measure, Payne is to be called the “father” of Ariana and Tyler. Yet, if what police and prosecutors say about Payne is true, it would seem nothing could further from the truth than “father”.
Later, Ariana’s bones revealed that she’d suffered numerous injuries prior to her death.
12-broken ribs.
A broken shoulder blade.
Payne’s girlfriend, also arrested, ultimately shared how the children had spent considerable time locked-up in a closet with little food and water.
Perfection is rarely found within humanity. And in this case, flaws would be exposed on all sides.
State lawmakers wanted to know how such a tragedy could happen. Weren’t mechanisms in place to protect Ariana and Tyler? (And another Tucson child who’d died in a separate case).
Last year, Arizona’s Child Protective Services settled a lawsuit when the state agreed to pay Hallam $1 million.
Without a doubt, many followers of this case will be quick to point out that no telling of this story would be complete without mentioning that Hallam’s testimony has revealed what many had long-suspected. She’s done meth. She says she’s been clean for some time now.
To learn more about Hallam’s testimony, I recommend reading today’s story in the Arizona Daily Star.
You can also watch Thursday’s news coverage from KVOA-TV and KGUN-TV (below).
I just know that whenever this story comes up, I see the faces of two small children. Kids who had no way to protect themselves from neglect or monster.
I remember the emotional toll this story took on an employee at the storage business where Ariana’s remains were found.
And before my mind moves on, I always wonder, “Where’s Tyler?”
doneRecommended reading on this case: The Murder Trial of Christopher Payne (Crime, Interrupted /blog)
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Wayne Bent speaks from prison
LISTEN: “Turning Point” (Wayne Bent speaks from prison)
The imprisoned leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church isn’t letting incarceration keep him from espousing his foreboding pronouncements from his familiar post in cyberspace. A new audio recording featuring the voice of Wayne Bent appeared on the LOR’s Web site today. It sounds as if it was recorded over the telephone.
In this latest recording, the convicted sex offender can be heard for 12-minutes and 57-seconds. Here’s one excerpt:
It seems like ages ago when they murdered my distant cousin, Charles Bent, the first governor of New Mexico. It was in Taos, the same dark town where they murdered me. They beat down his door, shot him, then cut off his head. They hated this new ruler who was over them.
Bent finishes-up his latest message with these words:
Angels now sing their songs, and the sounds of my prison are overcome in the music and melody of my Father. We will soon go away, and men will never behold our brightness again.
The entire transcript of the recording is posted on strongcity.info.
COMMENTARY
As I listened to Bent’s latest offering, I found myself reminded of a song by the late Johnny Cash. Bent’s oft-scratchy audio and the tone of his message seemed similar to Cash’s spoken words at the beginning and the end of The Man Comes Around (The first 20-seconds of Cash’s tune can be heard here) .
I went to YouTube and watched a few videos featuring The Man Comes Around. The first one included news footage of nuclear explosions, riots and the attack on the Twin Towers (although this video did not include Cash’s spoken words at the beginning).
Next, I went to Wikipedia to learn a bit more about the song I’ve often listened to on my iPod. According to Wiki:
The song is introduced by a spoken portion from Revelation 6:1-2 in the King James Version. This portion of Scripture describes the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each heralded by one of the “four beasts” first mentioned in Revelation 4:6-9. The first horseman rides a white horse. The musical portion then begins with Cash reciting that a man, presumably Jesus, will one day come to pass judgment. The chorus indicates that these events will be accompanied by trumpets, pipers, and “one hundred million angels singing”.
With such glaring reminders of the content Bent has posted on the Internet over several years, I had to wonder how his song might begin. That is, if Bent were to sing a song aimed at warning the world that he “will one day come to pass judgment.”
Wayne Bent trial transcripts emerging Online
Bent 'scripts
Two frequent contributors to the comments sections of this blog have teamed-up to post written transcripts of the Wayne Bent trial on the Internet.
Sam Redman and Jan Brennan are publishing the transcripts at Redman’s Strong City “mirror site“.
According to Redman’s mirror site, the names of the victims will be redacted from its published transcripts.
Redman is not simply an observer of the Bent case. He appeared on the prosecution’s witness list as a computer forensic expert. He did not testify, however.
According to the mirror site, Brennan is a true crime author and a romance novel book reviewer.
On December 15, 2008, a jury in Taos, New Mexico found Bent guilty of one count of second-degree criminal sexual contact of a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Fifteen days later, the leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church was sent to prison for ten years. He’d received an 18-year sentence with 8 of those years suspended.
As of this writing, the transcripts provided Online include preliminary motion discussion, the prosecution’s opening statements, defense attorney Sarah Montoya’s opening statement, Montoya’s direct questioning of Wayne Bent and closing remarks from the prosecution and defense. The prosecution’s rebuttal to Montoya’s close is also provided.
Expect more to come.
“We will be adding daily and the plan (lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise) is to do every last word in the trial from gavel to gavel (including Wayne’s last comments, as he is taken from the courtroom in cuffs). Everyday, there will be more,” Redman wrote to Beyond90Seconds.com in an e-mail received today.
On January 27, 2009, Beyond90Seconds.com addressed its concern about posting the trial “transcripts”. After ordering the transcripts from New Mexico’s Eighth Judicial District, they arrived as audio files on seven CDs.
Reached by telephone, Union County Court Deputy Clerk Karen Vieites explained that the court usually preserves transcripts as audio—not text—files.
While this blog could have posted those audio files, the decision was made not to do so because the names of the victims could be heard throughout the audio recordings.
The considered tasks of removing the victims’ names from seven days of court audio or transcribing the audio and redacting those names would be too time consuming for this blogger.
For reasons of time and sensitivity to the victims, Beyond90Seconds.com decided not to post the transcripts here in any form.
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BACK AT THE RANCH…
Wayne Bent’s son, Jeff, has published a new post at strongcity.info. Find out what has Bent & “Esther” drawing a line in the sand, here.
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“Esther” returns to Strong City
Update (February 9, 2009 / 2:35pm PST): A note from Esther
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She’s back.
25-year-old Aquinnah O’Keefe (aka Esther) returned to the Lord Our Righeousness Church compound known as “Strong City” on Saturday afternoon. According to strongcity.info, O’Keefe returned to “the land” in remote northeastern New Mexico around 2:30pm local time.
A photo posted on the church’s Web site shows O’Keefe with her half-sister, Lorraine Irwin. The Web site reports that Irwin returned O’Keefe to the compound.
Last month, Irwin appeared on the Dr. Phil television program. The episode was titled, “Family Cult, part 2″.
Armed with a court order, authorities removed O’Keefe from the LOR property on January 28th. The young woman had reportedly been fasting since LOR leader Wayne Bent was sent to prison on December 30, 2008.
On January 29th, strongcity.info posted video of law enforcement and aid workers removing O’Keefe.
On February 1, KOB-TV aired an exclusive interview with O’Keefe. She told investigative reporter Jeremy Jojola that she was fasting because God had instructed her to do so. She also said that she was “willing to die on what I stand on.”
In December, a Taos jury convicted Bent on one count of second-degree criminal sexual contact with a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
VIDEO: Chasing swans…
Washington state’s Skagit Valley is a well-known winter home for swans and geese. I hadn’t planned to videotape those feathered snowbirds. Until my parents called the other day.
My mom told me there were tens of thousands of swans in several fields along Pioneer Highway between Stanwood and Conway.
“They’re right up to the edge of the road,” I was told.
Winter’s fading, the temperature is rising and those birds will soon be gone.
Maybe it’s already too late, I thought.
But the excited dispatches from my parents got my motor running.
Camera-in-hand, I set-out to find swans on Wednesday and Thursday; for about two hours each morning.
On Wednesday, I traveled south from Conway to Stanwood. I saw very few birds, and simply kept on driving to Camano Island. I didn’t expect to find swans there, either, but a quiet park called the English Boom only requires a hint of sunshine to produce a spectacular daybreak.
The English Boom did not disappoint. The first few scenes in the video here were shot at that location.
20-minutes later, I first drove south to the opposite side of this narrow stretch of the island. It proved to be a great decision as the new day also revealed Mount Rainier.
Then, it was back to Conway. Along the way, I did stop to enjoy the site of a few swans in a green field. Three eagles in a large tree also made for a pleasant site.
Soon, I was back at the water’s edge, but now across Skagit Bay from the English Boom. This turned out to be a great location. An even closer look at an eagle in a tree. A nest, too.
A local man pointed to a spot many miles to the east, beyond Interstate-5. A massive cloud of white. A bit later, I drove in that direction, but never found the flock.
That night, the weatherman said the daytime high had reached a record-tying 63-degrees.
Day two delivered. Not tens of thousands, or even hundreds of swans. Just a few here and there. But they were enough for me. Close enough to get some decent video.
While day two also began with sunshine, fog rolled-in by about 10am. It hardly dampened my enthusiasm. Clearly, the decision to chase swans had been a good one.
BREAKING NEWS: Body found near 1995 Arizona murder scene
POLICE: Cases are *not* connected
AUDIO: Thatcher Police Chief Mark Stevens
(Thatcher, Arizona) In what appears to be a bit of an eerie coincidence, a woman’s body has been found about a hundred yards away from what is arguably this rural town’s most high-profile unsolved murder: The 1995 murder of 29-year-old Mary Ann Holmes.
Speaking from this latest scene by telephone about an hour ago, Thatcher Police Chief Mark Stevens told Beyond90Seconds.com that an “older” woman’s body was found today beneath an irrigation canal bridge.
Chief Stevens added that it’s not yet known whether the woman found today died as a result of foul play. She has yet to be identified.
Holmes, meantime, was murdered on July 9. 1995. An Arizona Republic article stated she died from “trauma to the head from several chopping-like blows by a large knife or hatchet.”
Investigators in Holmes case have always had the body. They have yet to find her killer or killers. Anyone with information about the Holmes case or the discovery of the body found today can call Thatcher police at (928 ) 428-2296.
Strong City posts its video of “Esther” interview with KOB-TV
When KOB-TV sent reporter Jeremy Jojola more than 300-miles for an exclusive interview with a woman who’d been fasting for nearly a month, his station would not have the only camera in the room. Members of Wayne Bent’s “Strong City” also videotaped KOB’s unfolding interview with Aquinnah O’Keefe (aka “Esther”).
Today, Strong City published its video of the interview on its Web site, strongcity.info. The video runs nearly 7-minutes. But it’s not unedited, as it does include a single dissolve.
When Beyond90Seconds.com asked about the edit this afternoon, Bent’s son declined to comment. However, Jeff Bent added that an explanation might come at a later time.
VIDEO: KOB-TV’s exclusive interview with “starving” woman
Just hours before authorities removed Aquinnah O’Keefe (aka “Esther”) from a “cult” compound in northeastern New Mexico last Wednesday, KOB-TV’s Jeremy Jojola conducted an exclusive interview with the young woman.
O’Keefe, who said she’d not eaten since December 30th, had been fasting to protest the imprisonment of Wayne Bent (aka “Michael Travesser).
O’Keefe’s sister is now overseeing her care. Last month, Lorraine O’Keefe appeared on the Dr. Phil television program. 
The episode was titled, “Family Cult, part 2″ (watch an excerpt of that episode here).
Jojola’s report also included an interview with Bent’s son and an exclusive interview with Elsa Sayer. Ms. Sayer is the mother of Wayne Bent’s two teenage victims.
done
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