This is not related to missing people, but it reflects another interest of mine — juvenile crime and juvenile justice. A higher court has reversed the decision to try 12-year-old Jordan Brown as an adult for the murder of his pregnant stepmother, a crime that took place when he was 11. The county judge had sent the case to adult court because Jordan refused to confess to the crime and claimed he was innocent — ergo, he was refusing to take responsibility for his actions and was probably unsalvageable even in his tender youth. But the district court was like, “Um, kid has not been tried yet, and there is such a thing as the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.” But the case has been bounced back down to the same county judge and he might, I suppose, find another excuse to send Jordan back to adult court.
I believe that if Jordan had freely confessed to the crime, the judge would have used THAT as an excuse to try him as an adult — “He shows no shame at all and even seems to brag about the shooting.” I mean, I’m as horrified as anyone else by what this child is said to have done, but eleven years old is not an adult by any stretch of the imagination and it strikes me as pretty cruel and unusual to send him away for life.
Doug Stewart has been convicted of murdering his wife, Venus, who went missing last April. Ain’t no surprise. The prosecution’s case, even without Venus’s body, was very strong, and the defense didn’t produce any witnesses and just relied on an appeal based on the whole “reasonable doubt” thing.
There is an article about Shantelle Hudson, whose case I just updated yesterday and will now have to do so again. The article has a few shreds of new info. I have to wonder if Shantelle ran away from home only to meet with foul play weeks or months later. If that’s the case she may very well be a Jane Doe somewhere.
And as the entire world knows, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Christopher Chichester, aka Clark Rockefeller, has been charged with murdering Jonathan Sohus, who disappeared with his wife Linda in 1985. Many of the articles on the case say Jonathan’s body was found in 1994. As I note in his casefile, the police found bones, strongly believed to be Jonathan’s — I’d be shocked if they weren’t his — but there were no teeth for dental records comparison and as he was adopted they didn’t have any relatives for DNA comparison either, so the body was never 100% identified as far as I know.
One article says Jonathan’s body was identified “recently” but doesn’t say how, and I can’t find anything else on the subject. Unless authorities were able to locate one of Jonathan’s biological family members, I don’t see how they could have done it. Unless I find more info on this alleged recent identification, I’m keeping him on Charley, the same way I’ve still got Cornelia Meyer up still even though they’ve probably found her remains too.
The Charley Project Blog 