Category: Murder
Ivory Towers and the Volume of Women
Some years back as closing time crept up about half-a-dozen of us were still hanging out at the local dive….
Texas fugitive wears hoodie with chilling message on it amid arrest in connection with woman’s ‘suspicious death’
A Texas fugitive was dressed in a hoodie with a menacing message on it amid his arrest in connection with what authorities called a woman’s “suspicious death.”
The Azle Police Department said in a statement that it had worked with United States Marshals, Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigations Division, and the Parker County Special Crimes Unit to locate and arrest Kruz Dean Wanser on Jan. 15.
‘She will be remembered for her creativity, humor, and the unwavering love that radiated from within her.’
Police said Wanser was a “wanted fugitive, who was sought in connection to the suspicious death of 37-year-old Margaret Pennington.”
Police said Pennington was found dead inside an Azle residence on Jan. 11.
“At this time, the cause of death is still pending,” law enforcement stated; the Tarrant County Medical Examiner is conducting the autopsy.
Police on Jan. 12 announced that Wanser was a “person of interest” in the suspicious death investigation and offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Police said Wanser was arrested three days later and charged with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance, and parole violation.
In his mugshot, Wanser wore a blue hoodie with the following message on it: “I will put you in a trunk and help people look for you. Stop playing with me.”
Police did not reveal any relationship between Wanser and Pennington and did not name a motive for her death.
According to Tarrant County court records the New York Post reviewed, Wanser was charged with evading police with a vehicle in 2021 and drug possession in 2022 and in July 2025.
Pennington’s obituary states she was “deeply loved by her family and friends.”
“Margaret had a creative and sentimental spirit. She found comfort in baking, crocheting, enjoyed music, had a keen interest in genealogy, and loved collecting vintage treasures that carried history and meaning,” her obituary reads.
Pennington is survived by her mother, father, former husband, and his three children, and she “cherished her role in helping raise” the kids.
“Margaret’s life was a tapestry of complexity, yet she embodied the essence of humanity and the profound love she shared,” the obituary reads. “She will be remembered for her creativity, humor, and the unwavering love that radiated from within her.”
The obituary cites 1 Corinthians 13:4, 7: “Love is patient, love is kind. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Police are urging anyone with information about the case to contact them at 817-444-3221.
While police don’t mention Wanser’s hoodie message in their Facebook post, plenty of commenters sure noticed it. The following are but a few of the more than 1,000 reactions:
- “You know that saying, ‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have’ really applies here,” one commenter wrote.
- “I don’t know if what the hoodie says can be used as evidence, but please find DNA on it and photograph it as evidence so it at least makes it into the court documents,” another user said.
- “I mean, have we checked the trunk?” another commenter asked.
- “Sometimes jokes write themselves…” another user observed.
- “The hoodie is not a good look bud,” another commenter stated.
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Brazilian au pair turns on former lover during murder trial, says he plotted wife’s death by luring stranger from fetish site
The trial of a Virginia man accused of orchestrating a scheme to have his wife killed began Tuesday. The man’s former au pair, who prosecutors say was having an affair with him, testified that another man was lured to the crime scene through a fetish website.
As Blaze News previously reported, 40-year-old Brendan Banfield was arrested in September 2024 and indicted in connection with the February 2023 double murder that occurred in his home in Herndon — which is approximately 20 miles west of Washington, D.C.
‘He mentioned his plan to get rid of [Christine].’
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis and Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced in a statement that officers “descended upon an appalling scene” on Feb. 24, 2023.
Officers discovered Christine Banfield — Brendan Banfield’s 37-year-old wife — in an upstairs bedroom suffering from stab wounds to her upper body. She was transported to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Police said 39-year-old Joseph Ryan was found dead in the home from apparent gunshot wounds to his upper body.
Investigators soon set their sights on Brendan Banfield and Juliana Peres Magalhaes — the family’s Brazilian au pair, who was 21 when she began working for the family in October 2021.
Chief Davis stated, “We know Brendan Banfield and Juliana Magalhaes, the family au pair, were involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the murders.”
According to WJLA-TV, Magalhaes claimed she began an affair with Banfield in August 2022.
When Magalhaes asked Banfield about the possibility of him divorcing Christine, WJLA reported that he allegedly told the au pair that a divorce would cost too much money and that he didn’t want to split child custody.
“He mentioned his plan to get rid of [Christine],” Magalhaes told prosecutors, according to the New York Post. “Initially, he didn’t know what he would do. He just mentioned that he would think about it [and] let me know when he thought about it.”
Citing prosecutors, WTOP-TV reported that two months before the murders, Magalhaes and Banfield went to a shooting range; Banfield then returned to the range on Jan. 28, 2023, and bought a Glock from the range.
WJLA added that Magalhaes claimed Banfield instructed her to get a new phone and Apple ID and ordered her to park in a different location on the day of the murders.
Citing prosecutors, Fox News noted that Banfield — a former IRS special agent — was impersonating his wife on a fetish website for a month. Ryan was then “summoned to the couple’s million-dollar Herndon home” through the site, according to the New York Post.
Court documents also show Magalhaes told investigators that Ryan was framed as a home intruder.
‘There’s somebody here; I shot him. But he stabbed her. She’s bleeding. She’s got several marks on her neck. What do I do?’
Court TV reported that Ryan went by the username “TacoSupreme7000” on the site and responded to the messages, believing he was talking to Christine Banfield. Court TV added that Magalhaes read messages aloud to the jury, saying that she and Brendan asked Ryan to bring restraints and a knife to the Banfield home.
Magalhaes on Tuesday testified that “Christine … yelled back at Brendan, saying, ‘Brendan, he has a knife.’ That’s when Brendan first shot Joe.”
According to NBC News, lead prosecutor Jenna Sands told the courtroom this week, “Brendan enters the bedroom, first shooting Joe in the head, picks up the knife that Joe had brought and stabs Christine repeatedly in the neck. He directs Juliana to shoot Joe a second time with her gun. This time the bullet enters Joe’s chest with Christine dead or dying.”
Magalhaes was arrested in October 2023 in connection with Ryan’s alleged murder.
Magalhaes was originally charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in October 2024. She will be sentenced after Banfield’s trial.
According to CNN, Banfield was heard identifying himself as a federal agent in the 911 call to report the stabbing and shooting.
Banfield reportedly told the emergency dispatcher, “There’s somebody here; I shot him. But he stabbed her. She’s bleeding. She’s got several marks on her neck. What do I do?”
Banfield’s attorney, John Carroll, questioned Magalhaes’ motivation for taking a plea deal after nearly a year of protesting her innocence.
“The whole reason she was arrested was to flip her against my client,” Carroll claimed.
WDCW-TV reported that Brendan Banfield was charged with aggravated murder in connection with his wife’s death, plus child abuse and endangerment charges, since the Banfields’ 4-year-old daughter was at home at the time of the deadly shooting and stabbing.
If convicted on all of the charges, Banfield faces a maximum punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 13 additional years of incarceration, a judge said on Monday, WDCW reported.
Banfield pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The Fairfax County Police Department and Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Blaze News.
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Career criminal with over 20-year-long rap sheet reportedly gets sweetheart plea deal — now a beloved teacher is dead
A career criminal killed a beloved North Carolina teacher in a horrific home invasion, according to police — and new reports suggest the suspect previously received a sweetheart plea deal that allowed him back on the streets.
The Raleigh Police Department said in a statement that officers responded to a report of a burglary just after 6:30 a.m. Jan. 3.
‘It was like a horror movie.’
Police said the victim — 57-year-old Zoe Welsh — indicated a man was inside her home.
“While still on the phone with dispatch, the suspect began to assault her,” police stated.
Police said Welsh was suffering from life-threatening injuries when officers arrived at her home. However, Welsh later died at a hospital.
Officers arrested 36-year-old Ryan Camacho, and he was taken into custody without incident.
Camacho was charged with murder and felony burglary. He was denied bond and is being detained at the Wake County Detention Center.
Raleigh Police Chief Rico Boyce said of Welsh, “I am deeply heartbroken for this mother, friend, and mentor to many in our community, and for the unimaginable trauma her family must endure.”
Boyce added, “The arrest of the suspect sends a strong message that criminal acts will not be tolerated in the city of Raleigh.”
This investigation remains ongoing.
Welsh had taught AP biology and forensic science at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh since 2006, a school spokesperson told WTVD-TV.
“Her loss is deeply felt by all of us who had the privilege of working with her and learning in her classroom,” the school spokesperson said.
Calysa Sauls, one of Welsh’s former students, told WRAL-TV, “She really cared for her students. She definitely was one of those teachers who was passionate about the subject that she taught.”
Olivia Alvarez — Welsh’s house cleaner for years — added to WTVD, “I’ll remember her smile; she was always happy.”
Alvarez added, “I love you, Zoe, so much, you are now with God, and this man is going to pay, he’s going to pay.”
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) wrote, “Zoe Welsh, by all accounts, was a special teacher and person. My heart goes out to her family and students, who have suffered a traumatic loss from another senseless act of violence.”
Camacho reportedly has a lengthy criminal history spanning over 20 years but allegedly has benefited from generous plea deals.
In December, a judge dismissed breaking-and-entering charges against Camacho after a mental competency examination, WRAL noted in a separate story.
Prosecutors recommended that Camacho be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, but that request was denied by Judge Louis Meyer, according to District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.
Freeman told WRAL, “Based on the evidence that was available to the court at the time, the court did not find that he met the threshold for involuntary commitment. For involuntary commitment, the judge has to make a finding that they are a danger to themselves or others.”
Meyer did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.
WRAL reported that Camacho’s lengthy rap sheet includes charges of assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering, larceny after breaking and entering, malicious conduct by a prisoner, injury to personal property, injury to real property, trespassing, stalking, and probation violations.
In 2025, Camacho reportedly got a sweetheart plea deal that allowed him back on the streets.
Citing public records, WRAL reported that Camacho faced up to a four-year prison sentence for four felony charges — but all the felonies were reduced to a single misdemeanor.
What’s more, Camacho in 2021 attempted to escape from the Piedmont Correctional Institution in Salisbury, according to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction.
Freeman on Monday said “he has spent a lot of time bouncing between the prison system and the local jails over the last few years and has really been in custody all but maybe a total of 12 months within the past six years.”
Wes Phillips — a long-time Raleigh resident — claimed he was forced to move after Camacho, his former neighbor, allegedly harassed and stalked his family nearly a decade ago.
In the spring of 2016, Phillips said he discovered two tires on his car were slashed and a mirror was torn off while a mirror on his wife’s car also was torn off.
According to the Raleigh News and Observer, Phillips questioned Camacho about the vandalization of the cars, “The lightbulb sort of went on for me at that point, and I asked him, ‘Did you touch my [expletive] car?'”
Phillips alleged that Camacho walked toward him and “cocked his fists into a fighting position.” Phillips’ wife reportedly broke things up.
In October 2016, as Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina, Phillips noticed Camacho outside his home.
“It was like a horror movie, like he was standing there in a black jacket, staring at us in front of our house during a hurricane,” Phillips told WRAL-TV. “Not talking, like making sure that we knew who he was.”
Just days later, Phillips alleged that after he entered his vehicle and locked the doors, Camacho “was pulling on the door, trying to get in.”
WRAL reported, “Security video from that day showed a man throw a rock into the windshield of Phillips’ car and then through the sunroof, before punching and kicking the vehicle.”
Phillips’ landlord let him end the lease early so he and his family could move away from Camacho, but the suspect allegedly showed up at Phillips’ new townhome with a gun.
Phillips explained, “He shot into our building where he thought that we lived. That’s something that stays with us.”
Citing court documents, WRAL reported that no one was injured in the shooting, but Camacho was arrested and spent two years in prison.
In fear of violence from Camacho, the Phillips family armed themselves with “lethal and non-lethal protection measures.”
Phillips noted, “It’s not like there weren’t signs. We were really adamant about the danger that we felt we were in, and perhaps other people were in, and it just wasn’t taken seriously.”
Phillips said that there was a complete failure that led to a “woman being killed.”
Phillips continued, “My wife and I are asking ourselves right now as we think about what happened this past week, how close did we come to being that person, and could that have been prevented?”
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Wife of Jill Biden’s ex-husband found dead in Wilmington home after domestic dispute call
Police officers responding to a report of a domestic dispute in Wilmington, Delaware, found a woman dead on Sunday at the home of Jill Biden’s ex-husband, Bill Stevenson.
According to the New Castle County Police Department, officers arrived around 11:16 p.m. and found Linda Stevenson, 64, unresponsive in the living room. Despite administering life-saving measures, Mrs. Stevenson was later pronounced dead.
‘She’s the greatest thing in my life.’
Detectives with the NCCPD’s Criminal Investigations Unit responded to the scene and have taken over the investigation. The decedent’s body was, meanwhile, turned over to the Delaware Division of Forensic Science so that an autopsy can be conducted to determine the cause of death.
When pressed by the Daily Mail about the suggestion by the decedent’s daughter, Christina Vettori, that the death is being investigated as a murder, the New Castle County Sheriff’s Office responded, “No, it is a death investigation.”
No charges have been filed.
Bill Stevenson, the founder of the University of Delaware-area bar Stone Balloon, married the former first lady in February 1970. The pair divorced in 1975 — two years prior to her marriage to Joe Biden.
RELATED: ‘Obvious f**king failure’: Even Hunter Biden admits dad’s Afghanistan exit was a total disaster
Photo by Cynthia Johnson/Getty Image
Jill Biden’s biographer Julie Pace claimed in a 2022 interview that “she had these expectations of sort of what that marriage was going to be, and the marriage did not live up to those expectations.”
Stevenson told the Daily Mail in 2020 that he suspected that Jill was having an affair with Biden in August 1974 — when she declined to join him on a trip to meet Bruce Springsteen, allegedly claiming she had to look after Biden’s kids, who had lost their mother years earlier in a car crash. Jill and Joe Biden alternatively claim that they began dating in March 1975.
Stevenson claimed, however, that he was not bitter because “if it wasn’t for my divorce, I would never have met my wife, Linda, and she’s the greatest thing in my life.”
Citing law enforcement sources, TMZ reported that Bill Stevenson was the individual who called police to report the domestic dispute at his home and was present when authorities pronounced his wife dead.
The Office of Joe and Jill Biden did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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Trump broke decorum. The media broke the truth — again.
Recently, Paul du Quenoy published a necessary piece at Chronicles putting President Trump’s remark after the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner in proper context. In a Truth Social post that went viral, Trump quipped that Rob Reiner had died of “Trump derangement syndrome,” while also offering condolences and praying that the deceased would “rest in peace.”
The media response was instant and hysterical. As du Quenoy notes, legacy outlets erupted in moral outrage, eager to condemn Trump as uniquely depraved. He highlights one of the ugliest examples: a sermon from David Remnick in the thoroughly politicized New Yorker, denouncing Trump as a “degraded” human being.
Trump’s remark was ill judged. The media’s response was dishonest. Only one of those failures is being treated as a permanent moral indictment.
Du Quenoy asks: Where was this moral sensitivity when figures on the left trafficked in venom — or worse — after the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
The answer, of course, is nowhere.
This double standard defines our media culture. When rhetorical excess comes from the left, it is ignored, excused, or rationalized. When it comes from the right — especially from Trump — it is proof of moral disqualification. Etiquette is enforced selectively, always against the same targets. From the BBC to the Los Angeles Times, outlets had no difficulty canonizing Reiner while casting Trump as a cartoon villain.
A fair point must be made: Trump should not have said what he did. A president should observe certain proprieties, and Trump violates them all too often. I supported his policies and voted for him repeatedly, but that does not require defending every avoidable verbal misfire. This one was a mistake.
What deserves closer scrutiny, however, is the media’s attempt to weaponize that mistake. In outlets like People magazine, Trump’s comment was contrasted with Reiner’s allegedly noble reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Reiner, we are told, expressed “horror.” Trump, by contrast, showed cruelty.
This framing collapses under minimal honesty.
After seeing this contrast repeated again and again, I searched for Reiner’s public statements — not about Kirk, but about Trump. What emerges is not a portrait of an angelic figure suddenly besmirched. For years, Reiner unleashed a steady stream of invective against Trump: “mentally unfit,” “con man,” “fascist,” “lying buffoon,” along with a great many four-letter flourishes unprintable here. He pushed the Trump-Russia hoax long after it had been exposed as fantasy. His political obsession was not subtle, incidental, or private.
RELATED: Glenn Beck addresses Trump’s controversial Rob Reiner message
Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Yet this entire record has been scrubbed from the story. Media profiles dwell on Reiner’s filmmaking career and his role as a loving father while erasing his lifelong activism and venom toward Trump. The reason is simple: The people telling the story agree with Reiner’s politics and share his hatred of Trump. Presenting Trump’s animus as unprovoked is not journalism. It is narrative laundering.
The comparison with Charlie Kirk’s murder is equally dishonest. Kirk, to my knowledge, never publicly attacked Reiner. There was no shared history, no prolonged feud. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) put it plainly: Trump should have said nothing after Reiner’s death, even if Reiner was obsessed with him. Still, pretending that Trump’s reaction should mirror Reiner’s response to Kirk ignores reality. The relationships were not the same.
Nor should Reiner be recast as a purely apolitical figure whose ideology can be set aside for the sake of a tidy morality play. He embraced his identity as a committed leftist as openly as he embraced his Hollywood career. The media’s erasure of that fact mirrors older myths, such as the claim that the “Hollywood Ten” were merely innocent artists with no communist affiliations. You can oppose blacklisting without lying about politics. The left never resists the temptation to lie.
So once again, we are presented with a familiar fable: a gentle, virtuous man smeared by a deranged tyrant for no reason at all. It is nonsense — but useful nonsense. It allows the media to posture as arbiters of decency while ignoring their own complicity in coarsening public life.
Trump’s remark was ill judged. The media’s response was dishonest. Only one of those failures is being treated as a permanent moral indictment — and that tells you everything you need to know.
How pro-life leaders betray the one truth they can’t afford to compromise
Many pro-abortion activists brazenly say that abortion is health care. Anti-abortion Christians must respond to such falsehoods by rejecting the premise, instead affirming that abortion is murder — the unjustified taking of a human life made in the image of God.
But here is a widespread problem in the pro-life movement: While pro-life groups broadly reject the claim that abortion is health care, they undermine their own position when they support laws to regulate abortion as health care rather than criminalize abortion as murder.
They should instead agree with the truth of God concerning abortion and work toward criminalizing abortion as murder.
The most recent examples of this sorrowful trend are Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue, two of the leading pro-life groups in the state of Ohio, and their support for House Bill 324, known as the “Patient Protection Act.”
This legislation, according to a press release from the Center for Christian Virtue, would require “in-person exams, clear disclosure of risks, and follow-up care for drugs that cause serious adverse effects” in more than 5% of patients. Ohio Right to Life similarly said that any woman who wants to murder her pre-born baby would first be “required to make an in-person visit to her doctor and be informed of the dangerous side effects before taking the abortion pill.”
House Bill 324 would indeed create an indirect way to target mifepristone — one of the two major substances used in the typical abortion pill regimen. Because a recent study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center asserts that 11% of women who take abortion pills experience “serious adverse events,” the legislation purports to restrict abortion pills because of dangers to women who want to murder their own babies.
There are some unfortunate methodological questions about the study, which likely overstates the extent to which abortion pills actually harm women, a reality that will jeopardize House Bill 324 if eventually passed into law. But in any case, the actual text of House Bill 324 does not even directly mention abortion.
The legislation would require that any “dangerous drug” that causes “one or more serious adverse effects” in more than 5% of “patients” mandate an “in-person examination” and scheduling for a “follow-up appointment.”
RELATED: Why defunding Planned Parenthood is a distraction from the real fight
House Bill 324 does not prescribe any criminal penalties for distributing or taking abortion pills, but instead asks the “director of health” and the “state board of pharmacy and state medical board” to maintain a list of dangerous drugs meeting the requirements of the legislation.
Beyond the flawed legal case for House Bill 324, the entire project surrenders all anti-abortion moral high ground to the pro-abortion side.
When anti-abortion groups say that abortion is murder, then functionally treat abortion as less than murder in the laws they support, those groups erode their own moral witness to the culture and the elected officials of their states.
The very decision of choosing the “Patient Protection Act” as the name of the legislation asserts that women who murder their own babies with abortion pills are patients to be protected instead of perpetrators to be penalized.
House Bill 324 explicitly treats abortion as health care — and by regulating the practice of murdering a pre-born baby with abortion pills, the effort merely legitimizes abortion in state law.
If this legislation passes, then using abortion pills in Ohio would be treated in the law much like removing an appendix or a wisdom tooth rather than murdering a pre-born baby.
Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue claim to reject the premise that abortion is health care. But actions speak louder than words — and that includes their refusal to support legislation in their state that actually treats abortion as murder.
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Another piece of anti-abortion legislation called House Bill 370, known as the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” would affirm that “the sanctity of innocent human life” created in the image of God must be “equally protected from the beginning of biological development.”
The legislation would protect pre-born babies starting at “the moment of fertilization” simply by extending Ohio state laws against murder and assault that already protect born people.
House Bill 370 is also the only legislation that meaningfully challenges the abortion amendment in the Ohio Constitution by invoking the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because the highest law of our land requires states to establish equal protection of the laws for all persons, the abortion amendment in Ohio should be treated as null and void.
Rather than supporting House Bill 370, the leadership of Ohio Right to Life explicitly opposes the effort — even calling the legislation “out of bounds” and “inappropriate” — and the Center for Christian Virtue has publicly declined to offer its support.
In other words, two of the leading pro-life groups in Ohio have chosen to reject the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” which is the only legislation in the state that would treat abortion as murder. Instead, they have functionally conceded the malicious pro-abortion falsehood that abortion is health care.
There are thousands of pre-born babies murdered every single year in Ohio. While the abortion amendment in the Ohio Constitution is an unfortunate obstacle, pro-life groups will certainly not advance their cause with morally and legally confused legislation.
They should instead agree with the truth of God concerning abortion and work toward criminalizing abortion as murder — fighting to establish equal protection of the laws for all pre-born babies and thereby laboring to abolish abortion once and for all.
‘We Pray That God Rewards Him With Paradise’: CAIR Mourns the Loss of Convicted Cop Killer
The Council on American-Islamic Relations on Sunday eulogized convicted cop-killer Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, who died over the weekend while serving a life sentence in federal prison.
The post ‘We Pray That God Rewards Him With Paradise’: CAIR Mourns the Loss of Convicted Cop Killer appeared first on .
