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Former Trooper Robert Breeding Arrested for Burglary
CUMBERLAND, MD
A former Maryland State Police trooper is behind bars after he allegedly broke into a woman’s home on Christmas Eve.
Robert Breeding is being accused of breaking into his estranged wife’s home, on Louisiana Ave., and stealing her personal property.
Witnesses, at the scene, told police that Breeding had fled into the woods on foot.
Officers checked the areabut were unable to find him.
Four hours later, a Cumberland Police K-9 unit located Breeding walking near Byrd Avenue towards Louisiana Avenue.
The officer approached Breeding and told him he was under arrest.
Breeding refused to stop and tried to run from the officer.
The Police K-9 was released after him, but was called off when Breeding stopped running.
As police tried totake Breeding into custody, officers sayhe was resisting and attempted to pull an unknown object from his pants pocket.
A Taser was deployed to take Breeding down.
Breeding was then transported to Police Headquarters and charged.
The former trooper has already been in trouble with the law.
Court documents show he’s already been convicted on assault and theft charges.
Police say, because of his extensive criminal history, he’s being held on almost a half million dollars bond.
Warrior Woman
The circle of abuse….still perpetrated by those men who get divorced and THEN decide to be a REAL father. Still perpetrated by these men who hail a murderous man who got a bad “deal” on his divorce. All men are not like YOU men. Some men don’t raise their hand or their voice to their beloved wives/girlfriends….mother of their child. I know because I have one of those men now….a REAL man.
This man I am now married to is level headed and listens to my opinions, dreams, thoughts and hopes for the future. This is the man who would never call me a whore, slut, tramp, bitch or the all time favorite…cunt. He calls me beautiful EVERY day. This man who doesn’t berate me in front of friends or forbid me from spending time with my family. A man who encourages me to follow my dreams that I thought once were lost. Who doesn’t constantly tell me I’m worthless or that I will never find ‘anyone’ else to love me (oh how you were wrong on that one!). Now I know how much of a liar you are. How deceptive to think that you could hit me how many times until the small fire of self worth I had left took over and I grew the courage to leave you once and for all.
You now know you were wrong…you should have killed me when you had the chance….you could have had a wonderful life….but you chose to deceive and abuse. I thank you for teaching me that even when I thought my life would never get any better than getting dragged out of bed by my hair at 4am while you were drunk because there was ONE dirty cup in the sink or even getting sodomized while I was asleep and I awoke to being tied to the bed while you made me bleed. After all of that…and more….you may have tried to break me….but I assure you I am not broken. I now have a life that I love, a man who adores me and 7 years to go until the child I share with you is 18 and I NEVER have to see your face again…nor will I.
You now know you were wrong…you should have killed me when you had the chance….you could have had a wonderful life….but you chose to deceive and abuse. I thank you for teaching me that even when I thought my life would never get any better than getting dragged out of bed by my hair at 4am while you were drunk because there was ONE dirty cup in the sink or even getting sodomized while I was asleep and I awoke to being tied to the bed while you made me bleed. After all of that…and more….you may have tried to break me….but I assure you I am not broken. I now have a life that I love, a man who adores me and 7 years to go until the child I share with you is 18 and I NEVER have to see your face again…nor will I.
So I am the lucky one…I am alive….I am happy…and you still are miserable….that to me is justice in itself. You can keep taking me back to court so you can lay your eyes upon me. You will never have me again, I am free. So go ahead dress up like Santa or the Easter Bunny and show the world what kind of man you really are. There are some men that made that murderous man out to be a martyr which I suspect that those men are cut from the same cloth as my abuser or others. You should be ashamed of yourselves for everything that you’ve done to your wives/girlfriends but especially what you’ve done to your children. But then I thank all the men that have ever abused me…..YOU have made me who I am today…..STRONGER.
“A strong woman is determined to do something others are determined not to be done.”~ Marge Piercy
www.rights4mothers.org
http://rights4mothers.blogspot.com/
For all the Mothers and Children out here who have been tortured and ripped from the arms of your loving mother, WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP!
Just like Holly Collins, the mother who refused to accept her fate of abuse and when push came to shove she shoved right back!
Family Court Judges, CPS, Guardians Ad Litem, Counselors, Psychologists and all other “powers that be” take heed for we are Lions and you should NEVER get between a mama Lion and her Cub….
Change IS coming and I feel the momentum building of women that may have been battered in the past, but what hasn’t killed us has made us stronger and it’s on now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/01/AR2008120102721.html
DESPICABLE!
Abrupt Divorce Ruling for Accused Child Killer
Defendant Tasered After Outbursts
By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 2, 2008; B02
The man accused of drowning his three children in a hotel bathtub was zapped with a Taser in a Montgomery County courtroom yesterday after he told a judge that he was “done” with a hearing related to his divorce, then struggled with deputies trying to subdue him.
Mark Castillo, 42, had just raised one of many objections — almost all of which were overruled by Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ronald B. Rubin — when he abruptly stood up and said: “I’m done, your honor. I’m done.” As he turned toward the door of the seventh-floor courtroom in Rockville, three deputies forced him back into his seat and tried to handcuff him. When Castillo resisted, a deputy shot him in the shoulder with a Taser.
“Put your hands behind your back,” the deputy warned as Castillo fell to his stomach behind the table where, minutes earlier, he had been questioning his wife, Amy Castillo, in divorce proceedings.
“Let’s just get him out of here,” another deputy said.
The outburst marked the high point — although not the end — of the turbulent hearing, which was unrelated to the criminal charges Mark Castillo will face in the March 29 deaths of his three children: Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 2.
The end came when Mark Castillo dropped all of his objections and the judge finalized the couple’s divorce.
Mark Castillo, who is accused of drowning the children one by one in the bathtub of a Baltimore hotel, had challenged the terms of a divorce agreement he signed in September. He argued yesterday that he agreed to it under duress and that his wife removed a handwritten portion near his signature that stated as much.
He displayed a range of emotions in court — sometimes politely and intelligently questioning the judge on legal matters, and other times sobbing, closing his eyes and refusing to acknowledge direct questions. He seemed especially concerned whether documents were originals or copies, at one point asking his wife to tell him whether the date on a piece of paper had been handwritten or photocopied.
When she responded that it had been written, he said, “Gotcha, hon,” then began a tirade after being chastised by the judge.
“Your honor, I’ve dealt with this for 20 months,” he said. “All I want to do is go be with my children.” He made similar references to his own death throughout the hearing.
Amy Castillo, 43, was far more composed, even as she faced an interrogation from the man accused of killing her children. She seemed to regard her estranged husband with a puzzled sadness, furrowing her brow and blinking intently as she tried to fight back tears and follow his scattered line of questioning.
By the end of the hearing, an exhausted Mark Castillo had dropped all of his objections to the agreement, even suggesting that the parties simply go ahead and make the divorce final. A hearing to do that had been set for December.
“We can get [divorced] today, and you can go on with your life,” Mark Castillo told his wife, who was seated on an adjacent chair.
With the judge prepared to finalize the divorce, though, Castillo dropped another bombshell:
“Before you grant it,” he told the judge, “I would like to kiss my wife one more time.”
Amy Castillo let out an exasperated laugh as Rubin seemed to briefly consider the matter.
“It’s unorthodox, I know,” the judge said, turning his gaze to Amy Castillo and her attorney, Eric S. Namrow. He ultimately rejected the request and granted the divorce.
After the hearing, Amy Castillo said she could not help but feel sad throughout the proceedings. Mark and Amy Castillo were married almost 10 years ago and had separated in December 2006.
“This is not how I wanted my family to turn out,” she said. “It’s the loss of a dream, the end to a dream of having family and children.”
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
http://publik18.blogspot.com/2008/12/estranged-husband-shoots-wife-dead.html
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Estranged husband shoots wife dead
A woman who was shot dead by her estranged husband in Sydney’s south-west yesterday had taken out an apprehended violence order against him, police said.
Just after 4pm yesterday, John Kudrytch, 39, walked into the BP service station on the Hume Highway at Casula and shot his wife, Melissa Cook, 29, who was working there.
Police arrived shortly after and conducted CPR on the victim until paramedics arrived.
Ms Cook, who had been hit in the chest, was taken to Liverpool Hospital in a critical condition but died a short time later after emergency surgery.
Four hours later police found Kudrytch dead inside the couple’s former home on Pine Road, just one kilometre down the road from the service station, where he lived.
Police say it appears that he shot himself.
Police have confirmed that Ms Cook had taken out an apprehended violence order against her estranged husband, from whom she was separated and was in the process of divorcing.
A spokesman last night said “domestic violence issues” had come to the attention of police in the past.
It is not yet known when the AVO was granted or what conditions it stipulated.
The murder-suicide was the result of a domestic dispute, police said.
Kudrytch’s neighbour Carina Olivos said Ms Cook and Kudrytch had been together for seven or eight years and moved in together three years ago.
Ms Olivos said Ms Cook had told her recently of the couple’s separation, saying she was “free” and didn’t want anything from Kudrytch, just the chance to “start a new life”.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/415754.html
Mother, son killed; teen wounded
Man charged in what police say is homicide related to domestic violence
By April Bethea
abethea@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, Dec. 15, 2008
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Scott E. Davis Sr.
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Domestic violence march set for Thursday
The Domestic Violence Advisory Council will march at 12:15p.m. Thursday to honor Elizabeth Michelle Elder, Gabrielle Kinard and Roschelle Woyee, victims of what Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said are domestic-violence-related homicides.
The council traditionally holds marches on the Thursday after a death believed to be related to domestic violence. Thursday’s will be different, as participants will meet at the Square at Trade and Tryon streets uptown then walk to police headquarters on Trade. There, ribbons will be placed on a memorial tree honoring domestic-violence-homicide victims from across the state. The tree will be on display through year’s end.
For help, call the domestic violence hot line at 704-332-2513; for domestic violence programs and treatment, call the Mecklenburg County Women’s Commission at 704-336-3210.
Police say the 18-year-old son of a woman who was shot and killed Sunday in a domestic-violence-related homicide died this morning of wounds from the shooting.
A Charlotte man has been charged with murder of the teen’s mother, Gabrille Kinard, 38.
There is no word yet from police if additional murder charges will be filed in the death of Anjelo Kinard, who died this morning at Carolinas Medical Center.
Anjelo Kinard’s sister was shot as she tried to flee, with her 5-month-old sister in her arms.
The case marked the 10th and 11th domestic-violence-related homicides in Mecklenburg County this year, police said — and the fourth case in two weeks. That exceeds last year’s total by one, and Mike Sexton, who has worked with the Mecklenburg County Women’s Commission for several years, said he’s never seen four cases happen in such a short period.
“We can try to find blame with the economy, or because of the holidays and the stress and gaps in the system,” said Sexton, the incoming chair of the Domestic Violence Advocacy Council, “but ultimately it’s the guys, the abusers, the batterers … that are doing the damage.”
On Sunday, police arrested Scott E. Davis Sr. and charged him with one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder in connection to the death of Gabrielle Kinard, 38, and the shootings of Anjelo and Gabriella Kinard.
A friend of Gabrielle Kinard said Davis was her boyfriend and the 5-month-old infant’s father.
Police said they received a call at 11:45 p.m. Saturday reporting a domestic disturbance at a home on Thornwood Road in the Hidden Valley neighborhood in north Charlotte. When officers arrived, they found Gabrielle Kinard on the front yard of the residence. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
Anjelo Kinard, 18, was found injured inside the home. Gabriella Kinard, 15, was released from the hospital earlier in the day with what police described as minor injuries.
The Domestic Violence Advocacy Council plans to honor Gabrille Kinard at a march on Thursday. The council had already planned a march for that day in honor of Elizabeth Michelle Elder and Roschelle Woyee, who police say were shot and killed by their boyfriends recently in separate incidents.
The advocacy council holds marches the Thursday after deaths believed to be related to domestic violence to help raise awareness about counseling and education programs.
Sexton said it is important for people who may be in abusive situations to seek help, including creating a safety plan to get out of a dangerous situation, such as going to a family member’s house or a church.
Sexton said having such a plan is especially important when someone is trying to end a relationship. He said about 80-85 percent of domestic-violence-related homicides occur when someone is trying to get out of the relationship.
He said domestic violence often is about power. “Homicides are often the ultimate act of control, whether it’s the victim themselves or killing their children, or both,” Sexton said.
Bernadine Rankin, who described herself as a long-time friend of Gabrielle Kinard, said Kinard was a bus driver for the Charlotte Area Transit System. The two met about eight or nine years ago on the job and became close because both were single mothers.
Kinard had just moved into the one-story home in the Hidden Valley neighborhood in recent months, Rankin said.
Rankin said she spent more than an hour talking with her friend Tuesday. She said Kinard was upset because Davis was not supporting the family the way he should have.
“I just talked to her,” Rankin said while standing outside Kinard’s home on Sunday, “and she’s not here (anymore).”
Rankin said family was very important to Kinard, especially her children. She said Kinard had just lost her mother a few months ago.
Rankin said her own mother died on a Dec. 13, the same day as her friend Gabrielle.
“She was working too hard to make ends meet,” Kinard said. “She didn’t deserve this. All he had to do was leave.”
Staff writer Steve Lyttle and news researcher Brooke Cain contributed.
Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare Director Seeks Transfer
JSOnline ^ | December 15, 2008 | Crocker Stephenson
Posted on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 8:23:21 AM by Diana in Wisconsin
Denise Revels Robinson announced Monday that she will step down from her position as director of the embattled state-run Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare.
In a letter to the state Department of Children and Families, its private agencies and bureau staff, Revels Robinson wrote that she had requested a transfer within the department.
“The details of my new position are being finalized; however, I expect to begin my duties in January 2009,” she wrote.
The state-run bureau in Milwaukee has been under fire for the way it and one of its private contractors, La Causa, handled the case of Christopher Thomas, the 13-month-old foster child police say was beaten to death by his aunt last month, despite regular visits from a La Causa caseworker.
Department of Children and Families officials admitted Friday that a series of serious mistakes were made in Christopher’s case, and promised to enact sweeping reforms in the Milwaukee County system.
The La Causa caseworker has been reassigned and placed on probation and her supervisor demoted. The nonprofit agency that employs them is under threat of losing its $11 million contract with the state.
Reggie Bicha, secretary of the department, also vowed Friday that every foster child in Milwaukee County 3 years old or younger will be examined by a nurse and that caseworkers will be required to double the number of home visits they make to foster children under 3.
Revels Robinson became director of what was then the Milwaukee Child Welfare System in February 1997, a year before the state, in response to a class-action lawsuit, took over the Milwaukee County child welfare system.
She began her career in 1969 as a foster care caseworker in New York City. She came to Milwaukee from Minnesota, where she had been the director of the Family and Children’s Services Division with the Minnesota Department of Human Services since 1992.
“Child welfare has been my life’s work,” Revels Robinson wrote in her letter. “However, at almost 62 years of age, I believe it is time for me to take my professional life down another path.”
In a statement, Bicha said Revels Robinson would move to the Division of Prevention and Service Integration. “She will continue to work on protecting children, strengthening families and building Wisconsin communities,” he said.
Bicha thanked Revels Robinson for her leadership of the Milwaukee bureau, during which the number of children living in out-of-home care in Milwaukee County shrank from 7,000 to fewer than 3,000 and hundreds have been adopted.
“She has dedicated her entire career, nearly 40 years, to serving children and families,” he said.
Change welcomed
Child welfare advocates welcomed Monday’s announcement, but warned that changes in leadership would not be, in and of themselves, sufficient to solve Milwaukee County’s child welfare problems.
“Leadership is unquestionably a determining factor in how a child welfare system is run and whether it protects children,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of New York-based Children’s Rights, the organization that filed the class-action lawsuit against Wisconsin in 1993. The lawsuit settled in 2002, and Children’s Rights continues to monitor the Milwaukee child welfare system.
“But merely changing the leadership of BMCW is not going to make Milwaukee’s children safer unless it is coupled with a commitment to address the system-wide problems that are leaving children in harm’s way to begin with,” she said.
Susan Conwell, executive director of Kids Matter Inc., a Milwaukee-based foster and kinship care advocacy group, saw Revels Robinson’s departure from the bureau as step forward in accountability.
“The good thing is that the department is accepting responsibility,” she said. “But what it means is wide open.
“They haven’t announced a plan. If they are serious about getting people in the community together and putting their shoulders to the wheel, that’s great.”
Kia Woda-Rudolph of West Allis is the foster mother of a 17-month-old girl. She and her husband, Joe, have adopted two of their foster children: a daughter now 5 and a son now 9. She is also president of Voices United Inc., a support group for foster, kinship and adoptive parents.
The foster care system, she said, “hasn’t changed, hasn’t gotten better, in 10 years.”
“We need positive change in the bureau,” she said. “It starts at the top. Change is good.”
Sen. Robert Jauch (D-Poplar), chairman of the Senate Committee on Children and Families and Workforce Development, said current economic troubles will put Revels Robinson’s replacement in a difficult situation. Adequate support must come from the entire state.
“We all share the social and moral responsibility of protecting children,” he said. “In memory of Christopher Thomas, we should all step up.”
The DNA of Violence by Marie Tessier
The story of one man’s escalating violence that ends with a quadruple murder in an Atlanta courthouse provides a cautionary tale to a public that still fails to understand the seriousness and persistence of violence against women.
December 15, 2008
A jury has convicted Atlanta courthouse killer Brian Gene Nichols, and Atlanta has heaved a sigh of relief. Nichols was sentenced Saturday to seven life sentences and four sentences of life without parole plus 485 years for the crimes he committed on March 11, 2005.
At that time Nichols captured national when he overpowered a sheriff’s deputy at an Atlanta courthouse, stole her gun, beat her to permanent brain damage, shot dead the judge and court reporter in his sexual assault trial, killed a sheriff’s deputy and later an off-duty federal officer.
Nichols, a computer systems administrator, then led local and state officials on a desperate 26-hour manhunt, some of it televised live on CNN.
Since the murders, few have noted that Nichols’ crimes began with a classic case of domestic violence sexual assault—a revenge rape of a former girlfriend who chose to see another man. Nichols was in the midst of a second trial on those charges when the killings occurred. The first trial ended in mistrial when jurors could not agree on a verdict.
The Nichols case illustrates an essential truth. Domestic violence and sexual violence are the DNA of violence throughout society. It’s where violence begins.
Consider these allegations presented at trial, according to transcripts culled by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
After a number of menacing confrontations with his former girlfriend and the man she was dating, Nichols stormed into the woman’s home at 5 a.m. one morning in 2004, pointed a silver semiautomatic handgun at her and demanded she turn off a security alarm. The woman had set a new password on the security system because she hadn’t had time to change the locks to keep Nichols out, she testified.
The woman, a corporate executive, said Nichols bound her with duct tape, put her in the bathtub and left. When he came back, he brought a cooler stocked with food and told her that he planned to stay and assault her until her birthday three days later. He pulled a can of lighter fluid out of a duffel bag and threatened to set her ablaze if she yelled or tried to escape. The next day, he unbound and rebound her, committed forcible oral sodomy, raped her and used a machine gun to terrorize her.
After the sexual assault, she said, Nichols warned her not to “escalate” the situation by contacting authorities, or he would kill her family and friends. The woman also testified that Nichols told her he would stop bothering her: “I’m out of your life. This is over for me as well. This has put closure to us.”
Some jurors later said they thought the woman’s story was too outlandish to believe beyond a reasonable doubt. It was an outlandish result at the time that did not make the news, but it is also a horrifyingly common outcome in courtrooms across the country every day.
Most people like to believe they can tell the good guys from the bad guys, the rapists from the reckless, and batterers from true lovers, loving husbands and decent exes. But in crimes of domestic violence—and the sexual assault case against Brian Nichols was a prototypical example—the public often fails to comprehend the two-faced criminal personality at work. Like many perpetrators, Nichols was a charming, church-going professional in public, and a cruel controlling brute behind closed doors.
Prosecutors, police and people who work with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence know that Nichols’ alleged spiral of violence fits a common pattern, especially as a perpetrator’s fear of losing control of his target victim becomes more acute.
Atlanta police understood Nichols’ potential for escalating violence at the time of his original arrest on sexual assault charges. They sent a SWAT team to arrest him after his former girlfriend reported the assaults.
The judge understood Nichols’ potential for escalating violence. He kept Nichols in jail pending trial.
The prosecutor’s office understood Nichols potential for escalating violence. The attorney trying the case moved for a retrial within days of the mistrial—a dizzying speed in any court system.
Yet the jury failed to convict an attractive man on charges of raping a former lover.
The foreman of the first Nichols jury detailed his doubts about Nichols’ guilt on the rape charge in a 2005 letter to the Atlanta newspaper that blamed the prosecutor for providing too little evidence. “Our Nichols was, at worst, a conniving, jealous, philandering snake who was in the process of losing his Sugar Mama and may have forced her to have sex with him one last time,” Jack Liles wrote. “He did not appear to us, however, as a man about to snap as he did.”
Court systems everywhere can invest millions in new security systems to try to protect against future escapes and murders in the full light of day, even in the very halls of justice. Yet public safety would be enhanced far more by a small dose of common sense and public acceptance of sexual assault as an inherently violent crime.
Had every member of the jury understood the power and control motives at the root of domestic and sexual violence and the criminal nature of sex at gunpoint, Nichols would likely have been in prison, not in a local courthouse in the midst of a second trial.
The successful prosecution of sexual assault and domestic violence has become a routine part of the legal system in most major cities. Now it’s the public’s turn to believe victims who tell horrifying tales of violence at the hands of rapists and batterers—the first time.
