All She Wanted
by Aphrodite Jones Teena Brandon, a woman who passed herself off as a man and had passionate affairs with young women--until she was murdered. Jones's access to Teena's family, girlfriends, enemies, and convicted killers make this a riveting tale of sexual betrayal and murder.
City Confidential - Ft. Lauderdale: Sin in the Sun -- Kathy Willet, a housewife turned prostitute, and one of her customers Vice Mayor Doug Danziger, who had been leading the fight against porn in Ft. Lauderdale. When Danziger's liaison with Kathy was taped, his career was destroyed--and Kathy's soared!
Male Crime and Deviance: Exploring Its Causes, Dynamics, and Nature
by R. Barri Flowers
Seeks to explore the types of offenses committed by males, characteristics of male offenders, how male criminality and delinquency compare with and differ from female delinquent and criminal behavior, explanations for male crime, and efforts at combating crime in this country. Particular attention is given to exploring the relationship between male aggression and masculinity, as well as the role that testosterone and other biological factors play in male crime and violence. The book focuses on the correlations between male violence and aggressive behavior and firearms, violence involving intimates, male sexual violence, bias crimes, workplace violence, terrorism, male perpetrated sexual offenses, youth gang crime, and school violence.
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 On a stormy winter morning, Ashley Pond, 12, a seventh-grader at Gardiner Middle School, left her South Beavercreek Road apartment complex in Oregon City, OR about 8 a.m. on Jan. 9, 2002, for the school bus stop. Ashley did not make it to school.
It had been a rough year for Ashley and she carried around more pain in her short life than any child should. On January 5, 2001, just over a year before Ashley disappeared, her biological father, Wesley Roettger, Jr., was indicted on 40 counts of raping and sexually abusing her for over 4 years. The following March, Ashley told a friend that two men were molesting her. That same spring, Ashley's reading teacher, Linda Virden, at Gaffney Lane Elementary School, reported to the principal, Chris Mills, that Ward Weaver, 39, kissed Ashley on the lips when he dropped her off at school. Then in June and July Ashley joined Ward, his girlfriend, Tammy Place, her 8-year-old daughter, and Mallori, Weaver's 10-year-old daughter, on a two-week vacation to California. Then Ashley began living at their home. In early August: Ashley accused Ward of molesting her and moved out. Ashley told her reading teacher that Ward threatened to testify against her in her father's rape trial.
After learning of Ashley's allegations against Ward, Clackamas County deputy district attorney Chris Owen reported the child abuse to a hotline on August. 31st. The hotline report was forwarded to child welfare workers on Sept. 5th. Virden also called the child welfare office to report that Ashley told her that Ward abused her, tried to rape her, and threatened to testify against her. September 6, deputy district attorney, Owen, dropped all 40 counts against Roettger, who plead “no contest” to attempted unlawful sexual penetration. He was sentenced to 120 months probation.
Things seemed to be improving for Ashley that fall. During October and November, she seemed happier and more outgoing. However, a caseworker told police that child welfare received many calls about her and her family from concerned neighbors. That Christmas Ashley told her family she was afraid of Ward.
On January 9 2002, Ashley disappeared.
Police interviewed Weaver and his daughter, Mallori, the following day.
"Ward Weaver said he felt sorry for Ashley and tried to help her as much as he could, but then she accused him of touching her, and that was it," Viola Valenzuela-Garcia, Oregon City Detective reported.
Clackamas County sheriff's deputy Marty Neiman, a dog handler, searched the property around Ward Weaver's house; on Jan. 19th with a search dog, but Ward refused to allow them to search inside his home.
Two months after Ashley's disappearance, on March 8, 2002, 13-year-old Miranda Diane Gaddis, an eighth grader, another friend of Mallori's, disappeared after she left her apartment at 8 a.m. on her way to the school bus stop, sparking a nationwide FBI search. Massive searches turned up no clues.
Ashley and Miranda had attended the same school, rode the same bus, and were in the same dance class. Recently, on February 23rd, Miranda spent the night at the Weaver home for Mallori's, birthday.
Investigators were focusing on Weaver, who lived in a cheap rental home by the school bus stop where both girls were last seen. He seemed to be basking in the limelight. He invited television crews into his home to declare his innocence, and gave interviews on top of a concrete slab in his back yard.
On March 15th Harry Oakes, a private citizen, and his search dog, with permission from Lori Pond, offered to search the surrounding area. He was told by Weaver to “stay away from freshly laid concrete” because he doesn't “want it messed up.” The dog gave a positive “death alert” behind the house.
Ward Weaver was arrested August. 13, 2002, at 5:30 p.m. in Clackamas, after his son's 19-year-old girlfriend ran off naked screaming that he tried to rape her. Francis told emergency dispatchers that his father admitted killing Ashley and Miranda.
While in custody, for attempted rape, a grand jury indicted Weaver of aggravated murder charges. FBI investigators secured his back yard with a chain-link fence.
Between August 24 and 25 2002, searchers found Ashley under the concrete slab in a barrel, and Miranda in a box in tool shed both on Weaver's property.
Weaver was charged with aggravated murder in the deaths.
Corvallis lawyers, Michael Barker and Peter Fahy Weaver's court-appointed attorneys asked to be removed from the case for unknown reasons, but ended up staying on.
Initially the defense claimed Weaver was mentally unfit to stand trial but after an evaluation at the Oregon State Hospital they informed Judge Herndon he had regained the capacity to assist in his defense.
Defense requested a change of venue claiming the media attention in the case tainted the jury pool, and was a detriment to a fair trial. Judge Herndon agreed with prosecutions arguments that Weaver intentionally sought out media attention and turned the investigation into a media circus. After Weaver gave numerous interviews to the media, Judge Herndon had issued a gag order.
While in jail, Weaver wrote letters to Mallori. In September he wrote, "You and me against the world," 2002. After being denied visits with his daughter in January 2004, Ward wrote a suicide note:
"I have spent this whole week trying to figure out how to make the pain (of my heart + soul not coming to see me) stop. I can only think of one thing. Cut my heart out and cut (off) the parts that hurt. She is my whole heart.”
Jan. 11, 2004, Weaver was treated for razor wounds at Willamette Falls Hospital and released back to jail.
To avoid the death penalty, on September 2004, Weaver, 41, plead guilty to 17 counts, of rape, sex abuse, abuse of a corpse and killing Ashley and Miranda. He was sentenced to two life sentences without parole.
Weaver's father, Ward Francis Weaver Jr., is on death row in California for raping, murdering, and burying a woman's body below concrete in his back yard. She was found in 1982.
Resources:
Photos of memorial for Ashley and Miranda
Representative of Pond, Gaddis Families Briefs Press
Probe timeline
Police look for second missing girl Second Set of Remains Found at Weaver's Home
Kidnapped girls confirmed dead
Second Set of Remains Found in Oregon Identified
Inside The Mind Of Ward Weaver
Inside the Mind of Ward Weaver: Oregon City Reaction
Kari & Associates
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Olympia, WA 98507
Copyright Kari Sable 1994-2006 |
Kiss Me, Kill Me: Ann Rule's Crime Files Vol. 9 (Ann Rule's Crime Files) Ann Rule reveals how lovers become predators, how sex and lust can push ordinary people to desperate acts, and how investigators and forensics experts work to unravel the most entangled crimes of passion. Rule re-creates the ill-fated chains of events in such cases as the ex-Marine and martial arts master who seduced vulnerable women and then destroyed their lives...the killer whose calling card was a single bloodred rose...the faithless wife who manipulated and murdered without conscience...the blind date that set the stage for a killer's brutality...and more. In every case, the victim -- young and innocent or older and experienced -- unknowingly trusted a stranger with the sociopathic skill to hide their dark motives, until it was too late to escape a web of deadly lies, fatal promises, and homicidal possession.
Crime Scene Investigation: Crack The Case With Real-Life Experts -- "Concentrate on what cannot lie: the evidence" is sage advice from one of the many popular TV shows based on investigative skills-an audience that now averages 30 million viewers each week and growing. Viewers sit glued to their TVs to watch forensic experts peer through microscopes and dust for fingerprints. Now with this book you, too, can examine every clue, searching for that singular element that can prove invaluable in an investigation.
Cold Blooded Carlton Smith -- California attorney Larry McNabney was a wealthy and well-connected legal ace and the proud owner of a champion show horse. When his wife Elisa reported him missing in September, 2001, she claimed he abandoned her after a heated argument and joined a cult. When Larry's body was found in a shallow grave three months later, Elisa was gone. Driving a red convertible Jaguar, her brown hair bleached blonde, Mrs. McNabney was already speeding toward a new life in Florida-and a new identity. She was a female fugitive wanted in the murder of her trusting husband. She was an insinuating beauty with 38 aliases, and a rap sheet 113 pages long whose criminal career was about to come undone. But in the wake of Elisa's stunning confession and conviction, there was one more shocking surprise yet to come from the poisonous black widow. |
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