Crime

Prosecutors investigating Jeffrey Epstein in Florida “sabotaged their own case” and missed an opportunity to stop America’s most prolific sex offender a decade earlier, lawyers for his victims told The Times.

Transcripts from preliminary proceedings in the 2006 criminal case against Epstein — which have now been made public — showed attorneys for Florida making “atrocious” attempts to excuse his behaviour.

Florida prosecutors knew Epstein raped teenage girls 2 years before cutting deal, transcript shows

Florida prosecutors heard graphic testimony about how the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal, according to transcripts released Monday of the 2006 grand jury investigation.

The transcripts were at the center of a court battle for about a decade after media investigations into Epstein’s ties to the rich and the powerful seems to have allowed him to continue to rape and sex traffic teenagers without ever being sent to prison or serving a serious jail term.

You can view the transcripts here

The 12-year-old Houston girl whose brutal killing has shocked the nation and re-opened the debate over the border crisis was laid to rest in Houston today, surrounded by hundreds of Texans who wanted to pay their respects.

The death of Jocelyn Nungaryay, who was strangled, bound and whose body was thrown in a bayou, has captured national attention as the two men accused in her death entered the US illegally in El Paso, Texas.

Venezuelans Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, 21, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, are facing capital murder charges in her slaying.

A provincial task force charged with probing carjackings in Ontario says it has made 124 arrests and recovered 177 stolen vehicles valued at over $10 million.

The task force said Tuesday that it made the arrest and recoveries over a seven-month period from September 2023 to March 2024. Official said a total of 749 criminal charges were laid and eight firearms were seized as well.

Wait till you hear the Bail figures.

via GIPHY

Outside a retirement complex in east Toronto, where all but shift workers are asleep in the early hours, a dramatic police takedown is about to unfold.

In less than five hours, a police officer will be in hospital, a suspected car thief in handcuffs and a second suspect – a wanted fugitive.

This is the frontline in the war against auto theft in Canada — where a car is stolen roughly every five minutes.

The 400 kilograms of stolen gold disappeared from view on a country road outside Toronto, somewhere past a golf course and an apple orchard.

In the days after the brazen April 2023 robbery at Pearson Airport, Peel Police canvassed 225 homes and businesses, looking for security camera footage, hoping to trace the path of the white five-ton truck that had ferried away the pallet of gold bars.

It was the middle of the pandemic, and the dizzyingly complex criminal case against Arash Missaghi was falling apart.

A looming trial was about to test the most substantial set of charges Missaghi — a man who would become known as a “prolific fraudster” — had ever faced. But in the midst of the pandemic, as courts struggled to hear proceedings on Zoom, the case was collapsing in a virtual Ontario courtroom.

Ten weeks out from a jury trial, Justice John McMahon heard reservations from Crown attorney Mitchell Flagg about several of the accused, including Missaghi, having yet to retain a lawyer, and the prospect of running a trial with several self-represented people, including one who would need the entire hearing translated into Farsi.