Fossett crash site work wraps up
Investigators finished up Friday at the scene of Steve Fossett’s plane crash in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada just as dark clouds rolled in and winds picked up ahead of a storm that threatened to bury any remaining evidence under 2 feet of snow.
They discovered three more bone fragments Friday, said Madera County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Erica Stuart. Like a piece found the day before, they will be sent to a lab to determine whether they are human and a match for Fossett, the famous adventurer.
Teams of volunteers, as well as local and federal search crews, had furiously combed the site for any evidence that could help piece together the mystery of Fossett’s plane crash more than a year ago.
Mangled and charred plane parts and other bundles of debris were headed to a warehouse in Sacramento where investigators planned to lay them out for examination.
Philadelphia
Landlord accused of secret taping
A suburban Philadelphia landlord secretly videotaped 34 female tenants over two decades after hiding cameras in their apartments, authorities said Friday.
Thomas Daley, 45, was arraigned on more than 2,000 charges by Magisterial District Judge Francis Lawrence Jr. and waived his preliminary hearing Friday.
Daley had installed the cameras – typically one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom – in at least 7 apartments he rented to women in Norristown over the last 19 years, Reynolds said.
Daley’s sophisticated set-up fed the camera images to a recording system in the basement, enabling him to view the tapes from his home via the Internet, authorities have said.
Raleigh, N.C.
Third female soldier slain
For the third time in four months, a female soldier based at Fort Bragg is dead, and a husband or lover is charged with murder – leading critics to demand the home base of the Army’s elite soldiers exert “control over their troops” and address domestic violence.
Police on Friday charged Sgt. Richard Smith, 26, and Pfc. Mathew Kvapil, 18, with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder only days after Smith’s wife was found stabbed to death in a pool of her own blood.
Authorities said Smith hired Kvapil to kill his wife – 29-year-old Sgt. Christina E. Smith – as the couple walked together Tuesday evening in their off-base Fayetteville neighborhood.
“The number of military women being killed in North Carolina in the last eight months is horrific,” said retired Army Col. Ann Wright, a former State Department diplomat who once served at Fort Bragg and is now a peace activist. “The Marine Corps and the Army needs to very quickly show leadership and control over their troops.”