Miami officers raid apartment in connection to a New York homicide, police say
Crime Miami officers raid apartment in connection to a New York homicide, police say
Miami police raided an apartment building Wednesday evening searching for evidence in connection with a murder investigation in New York.
Miami officers, along with members of the Suffolk County Police Department served a warrant around 2:30 p.m. at the Miami Riverfront Residences at 2601 NW 16th Street Road and encountered five people, said Miami police Officer Michael Vega.
Three ran away. But a man and woman, who are part of the homicide investigation in Long Island, New York, barricaded themselves inside a room in the seventh floor apartment, Vega said.
Miami police officers gather outside the Miami Riverfront Residences at 2601 NW 16th Street Road Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Police helped Suffolk County Police detectives conduct a search warrant at a unit there in connection with a Long Island homicide. Devoun Cetoute
dcetoute@miamiherald.com
Officers tried for almost four hours to negotiate with them to come out. Around 6 p.m., police went into the apartment and arrested them without incident, Vega said.
Suffolk County officers found the items they were looking for, but Miami police would not disclose it.
The man and woman were taken to Miami police homicide headquarters and interviewed by the New York detectives, Vega said.
Miami police officers gather outside the Miami Riverfront Residences at 2601 NW 16th Street Road Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Police helped Suffolk County Police detectives conduct a search warrant at a unit there in connection with a Long Island homicide. Devoun Cetoute
dcetoute@miamiherald.com
Miami police did provide details of the Long Island homicide, but Vega said the man and woman in custody had recently driven to South Florida from New York.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Devoun Cetoute
Miami Herald Go to X Go to Facebook Email this person 305-376-2026
Miami Herald Cops and Breaking News Reporter Devoun Cetoute covers a plethora of Florida topics, from breaking news to crime patterns. He was on the breaking news team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. He's a graduate of the University of Florida, born and raised in Miami-Dade. Theme parks, movies and cars are on his mind in and out of the office.
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Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Stanley Nelson, editor who probed cold cases of Jim Crow era, dies at 69
No one was charged and, as the decades passed, the case gradually faded from the town's collective memory. Even the editor of the local weekly - who sometimes wrote columns on the area's history - was unaware of what happened that night in 1964; at the time, he was a child in a white community up the road from Ferriday. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Then in 2007, the FBI released a list of cold cases from the civil rights era. The editor, Stanley Nelson, began to dig. First came old police reports and forensic files on the Morris case, including redacted FBI documents obtained from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group. Advertisement Mr. Nelson moved on to interviews, including with former KKK members, as he tried to piece together what happened. As his articles began to appear in the Concordia Sentinel, some in Ferriday applauded his efforts to reopen the past. Others, it seemed, wanted to keep the lid tightly sealed. He received threats and, at least twice, was run off the road as he drove to the newsroom he shared with two colleagues at the 5,000-circulation weekly. Advertisement 'If you don't figure out what happened, and if you don't figure out why it happened, these things will live on forever,' said Mr. Nelson, who died June 5 in DeRidder, La., at 69. In January 2011, Mr. Nelson wrote about what he believed was the key piece of the puzzle - linking Morris's death to a former KKK henchman with a faction called the Silver Dollar Group. The man denied the allegations and was not charged. He died in 2013. But Mr. Nelson's investigation - and the reporting on why the KKK targeted Morris - was among the Pulitzer Prize finalists for local news in 2011 and reoriented the journalist's career to unearth other stories from the area's Jim Crow past. Mr. Nelson's work began to resonate far from the Mississippi Delta. The PBS news show 'Frontline' featured the documentary 'American Reckoning' in 2022 largely based on Mr. Nelson's probe into the 1967 killing of Wharlest Jackson Sr., a civil rights leader in Natchez, Miss., about 10 miles from Ferriday. A bomb planted in Jackson's car exploded when he flicked on his turn signal on his way home. Best-selling author Greg Iles also said Mr. Nelson's work inspired some of the historical overlays in his novels, including 'Natchez Burning' (2014), about attempts to revisit a murder case in the 1960s and the dark legacy of KKK violence and corruption. A character in the book, journalist Henry Sexton, was loosely based on Mr. Nelson. Advertisement 'Stanley Nelson raised his pen against the sword of hatred, and as a result, one bend of the Mississippi River looks a lot less dark than it once did. Stanley Nelson gives me hope for the South, and for America,' Iles wrote in the foreword to Mr. Nelson's 2016 book 'Devils Walking: Ku Klux Klan Murders Along the Mississippi River in the 1960s,' about the hate group's suspected links to the Morris murder and other unresolved cases. To mark the 60th anniversary of Morris's death, officials in Ferriday held a memorial in December in his memory. Mr. Nelson stood alongside Morris's granddaughter and great-granddaughter. In his articles, Mr. Nelson built an extensive argument on why the KKK unleashed its fury on Morris. He interviewed people recounting how the success of Morris's businesses angered local racists. Others speculated that Morris may have been targeted for refusing demands by a corrupt sheriff's deputy seeking free shoe repairs. A wreath was laid at the former site of Morris's one-story shop, now just the outline of a foundation. Mr. Nelson often remarked how he had no idea of what happened there until the FBI cold case report reached his desk. 'All my life, I passed by this shop,' he told an NPR correspondent in 2011, 'and didn't know it.' Frank Morris, fourth from left and wearing a tie and visor, in front of his shoe repair shop in Ferriday, La., circa 1964. Photo Courtesy Concordia Sentinel and the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, 2010 Stanley Skylar Nelson was born in Ferriday on Sept. 18, 1955, and raised in Cash Bayou near the village of Sicily Island. His father was a plumber and tended a family farm, and his mother was a nurse. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Louisiana Tech University in 1977 and soon joined the Concordia Sentinel, named for the surrounding Concordia Parish. He edited stories and covered local government and agencies overseeing issues such as Mississippi River water management. Advertisement As he turned to the civil-rights-era files, Mr. Nelson was adept at trying to minimize risks as he confronted people for information on long-dormant cases. Many former Klansmen, he noted, lived in rural areas, and they were rarely happy to see a journalist at their door. Mr. Nelson sent handwritten letters specifying the date and time he planned to show up in hopes of lessening the chance of violence. 'I just wanted to find out who did it,' he told The New York Times. He also found that family members of former KKK members were willing to spill private details. Children, he said, would sometimes see an opportunity to get back at abusive fathers. 'If your daddy was going out at night, burning buildings down, kidnapping and torturing people, doing everything bad that you can think of, they probably weren't too nice at home, either,' Mr. Nelson said in a 2018 speech. 'And they weren't.' Mr. Nelson's second book, 'Klan of Devils' (2021), detailed the Klan attack on two Black sheriff's deputies in Louisiana in 1965. The suspect, a World War II veteran, was detained, and the FBI was called in. The case collapsed when witnesses refused to give statements. Those killings - as well as the deadly attacks on Morris and Jackson - remain unresolved. Mr. Nelson retired in 2023 as editor of the Concordia Sentinel. He also taught classes at Louisiana State University's school of communications, which started a cold case project inspired by Mr. Nelson's investigations. His marriage to Nancy Burnham ended in divorce, but they later reunited as live-in companions. Mr. Nelson died at their home in DeRidder, she said, but no cause was given. Survivors include two children and four grandchildren. Advertisement In 'Devils Walking,' Mr. Nelson said his motivation to begin reopening the bloodshed of the civil rights era was partly as penance for his failure to know the full sweep of local history when he was younger. 'Every community and every citizen bear the ultimate responsibility of justice, including me and including you,' he wrote. 'After half a century, who is to blame for the future of justice in cases like this? We all are.'
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Time Magazine
Why Do So Many Serial Killers Come From the Pacific Northwest? A New Book Offers a Theory
For lack of a better term, the 1970s and '80s are often called America's 'Golden Age' of serial killers throughout the Pacific Northwest. (Its nickname, after all, is 'America's Killing Fields.') In the decades since, theories about how and why the era produced a disproportionate amount of murderous psychopaths—among them: Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler, the Green River Killer, and the I-5 Killer—have included everything from Eisenhower's 1954 hitchhiker-happy interstate highway system to post-World War II child abuse by traumatized soldiers to sensationalized media coverage of then-new ' true crime.' Any or all of the above may have contributed to the era's serial killer surge, as could some less obvious explanations like this one: poisonous chemicals, specifically lead, copper and arsenic, that leached into the air from industrial smelters. ASARCO in Tacoma, Wash., for example, regularly released a cloud of lead and arsenic that floated down as a white ash that killed pets and eroded paint off cars. The air was literally the color of lead and the pungent 'aroma of Tacoma' lingers to this day. Killers Gary Ridgway, Israel Keyes and Ted Bundy all lived nearby. So too did Pulitzer Prize -winning writer Caroline Fraser, just 7 years old and mere miles away during Bundy's 1974 summer murder spree. In her new investigative book out June 9, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, she thoroughly explores the so-called 'lead-crime hypothesis,' a theory that circulated first with academics before entering the mainstream in the early 2010s. Through her unique position of coming of age in Seattle during the era, Fraser's book marks the largest and most in-depth examination of the controversial theory so far. From her home in New Mexico, Fraser explains why she's convinced toxic chemicals helped cause a sudden spike in serial killers, why she got so obsessed with them to begin with and why serial killers really aren't as smart as they think they are. TIME: Your last book was a biography of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder. How do you go from that to serial killers? Fraser: This book has been in my mind for a long time. I was born and raised in Seattle and remember growing up with the presence of Ted Bundy. Even though I wasn't touched by the case directly, just having it happen so close to where I lived was a big deal. Bundy kidnapped and killed two women on the same Sunday afternoon from Lake Sammamish—just six miles from me. After that, people knew that his name was Ted, so there were posters, drawings, and police composites of his face all over the place. It was all anybody could talk about. That summer left me with a pretty strong impression of a chaos and craziness that was happening. And then there were so many others… …the Zodiac Killer, John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgway, Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, Richard Ramirez. Did it feel like suddenly serial killers were everywhere? Certainly by the time of Ramirez [in the mid-'80s], people were thinking, 'What the hell is going on here?' It's striking to me now that nobody was asking why. Nobody was looking at the larger pattern and asking, 'Are there more killers than before? Is there something about the Pacific Northwest?' The FBI was presenting themselves as the experts, but they weren't explaining anything about the phenomenon. Serial killers have always been with us in some fashion, but certainly not in those numbers. Many theories over the years have sought to explain. How did you arrive at yours? I figure it's got to be a combination of things, first of all, and all kinds of things can make a serial killer. Physical and sexual abuse was the leading theory of FBI profilers for a long time. A lot of these guys grew up in very, very poor environments. They often have a missing father, or an abusive father, or they didn't know who their father was at all—which they blame their mothers for. As we learn more about the brain, we're thinking more about the effects of concussion and brain damage. Some people think forceps by doctors delivering babies in the '50s caused brain damage in infants. Certain vitamin deficiencies when you're in utero or an infant can produce real deficits in terms of your brain development. All this before chemical exposures. The 'lead-crime hypothesis' posits a direct correlation between crime and lead, or as you put it, 'More lead, more murder.' What's the connection? During the post-war period, an enormous amount of lead was in the air from mainly two sources: Leaded gas, which everybody used for decades, and heavy industry like smelting. People are still debating the numbers, but it is pretty well accepted now that between 20 and 50% of the sharp rise in crime in the 1980s and '90s is attributable to lead. We know lead causes aggression. We know lead damages the brain in developing children. I don't think anybody thinks lead isn't at least a factor anymore, as there's a clear association between the withdrawal of leaded gas in the '90s and the drop-off of crime. In the '50s and '60s, geochemist Clair Patterson proved that lead exposure had caused what he called 'a loss of mental acuity.' But the effects of lead are all over the map; besides intelligence, it can affect personality. Many studies connect lead exposure to a particular kind of frontal cortex damage that leads to heightened aggression. This is observed largely in males. The higher the lead exposure, the greater the brain volume mass, and reduced brain volume has been linked to higher levels of psychopathy. Is there something specific about males from the Pacific Northwest? While it's true that there were smelters all over the country, Tacoma is particularly interesting because its smelter sits right in the middle of the city. All the emissions were being spread over not just Tacoma but the entire Pacific Northwest in this plume that was up to a thousand square miles. They measured it all the way up to British Columbia. Crime was up in all of America but it was up in Washington State by almost 30%—three times the national average. That said, and this is one of the reasons I focused on him, a lot of the idea about the Northwest Pacific comes right from Bundy. He was early in this phenomenon, and he eventually talked a lot, to the point that he was mythologized, almost glamorized. The media described him as 'terrific looking' and 'Kennedyesque.' Serial killers thrive on attention and want their names out there. How do you write about them without buying into the hype? And does hype encourage others? Serial killers care a lot about their reputations and are known to have obsessions with one another; Israel Keyes, for example, was a big 'fan' of Ted Bundy. I'm trying to paint a very different portrait of Bundy than 'very attractive genius.' In part by the Hannibal Lecter phenomenon, there's this idea that serial killers are fiendishly clever, smarter than anybody else. That's really not true. The truth is, we build these people up in our minds. We have an idea of what they're like and the power they have. Then when they're finally unveiled, they're these sad, pathetic losers. The public should see that. But would any of this make someone take up serial killing in the first place? I don't think so. These crimes are sexual in nature and something has happened that makes them sexually excited by violence and terrorizing their victims. The prevalence of necrophilia during this period is very weird. It all points to something that has gone wrong with the wiring of the brain. America's Serial Killer Database counted 669 serial killers in the 90s, 371 in the 2000s and 117 in the 2010s. Where do you think they're all going? A police officer will probably tell you that we're better at catching them now because of increased resources given to police departments. Proponents of mass incarceration will tell you they're in jail earlier and longer. Certainly forensic evidence, specifically DNA, makes identifying serial killers far easier than before, as does technology and video surveillance. But I like to think of it this way: In the same way that we've built cars that are safer to drive, we've also improved health outcomes to build better humans. Pregnant mothers take prenatal vitamins, we raise our children very differently and mental health services have greatly improved. Thanks largely to American football, we better understand the connection between repeated blows to the head and later degradation of cognition and increased aggression. Toxic chemicals including lead were phased out and banned, and then the crime rate took its largest plunge in recorded history. I don't think serial killers are going anywhere as much as we didn't grow them to begin with.
Fox News
2 days ago
- Fox News
Poisoned Minds: Caroline Fraser's Murderland
An epidemic of serial killers plagued the United States throughout the 1970s and '80s. The crimes were shocking, horrific, and vile, leading many people to ask themselves: What makes a murderer? The answer to that question may be an invisible evil – a poison that penetrated the earth, as well as the minds of these monsters. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser explores the cultural and environmental factors that gave way to this plague of violence in her new book, Murderland. Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno If you have a story or topic we should feature on the FOX True Crime Podcast, send us an email at: truecrimepodcast@ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
