Couple wrote suicide notes, FBI expert says
Couple wrote suicide notes, FBI expert says
GALVESTON, Texas — A couple accused of beating the woman’s 2-year-old daughter to death and dumping the body out to sea wrote suicide notes expressing remorse, witnesses in the woman’s capital murder trial testified Thursday.
An FBI handwriting expert said he was able to lift the impression of the suicide notes from an underlying sheet of a notebook seized from the suburban Houston home of Kimberly Dawn Trenor and Royce Clyde Zeigler II.
Both have been charged with capital murder in the death of Riley Ann Sawyers, whose mother had moved from Mentor, Ohio, to be with Zeigler in Texas. Zeigler will be tried later. Trenor, 20, is on trial this week.
Gabriel Watts, an FBI forensic document examiner, told jurors the suicide notes were written on the same page.
Trenor’s brief note read: “My heart is black dead. There is nothing left. I can’t live with myself after Riley. I go to be.”
Zeigler’s note, said he was taking his life “because of guilt for past sins which I have confessed ... My wife, Kimberly Zeigler, is innocent and lived in fear because of thought of what I would do to her.”
Leaders of Turkey, Israel argue over Gaza offensive
DAVOS, Switzerland — Turkey’s prime minister stalked off the stage at the World Economic Forum red-faced Thursday after reproaching Israel’s president over the Gaza offensive by saying “You kill people.”
The packed audience, which included President Barack Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett, appeared stunned as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres raised their voices and traded accusations.
Peres was passionate in his defense of Israel’s 23-day offensive against Hamas militants, launched in reaction to eight years of rocket fire aimed at Israeli territory.
The heated debate with Israel and Turkey was significant because of the key role Turkey has played as a moderator between Israel and Syria.
Priest doubts Holocaust
ROME — A priest in an ultraconservative society recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI has defended a bishop in his group and joined him in expressing doubts about the Holocaust.
Though making more cautious remarks than Bishop Richard Williamson, the Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz echoed, in an interview published Thursday by an Italian daily, the prelate’s doubts that Jews were gassed during World War II.
“I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect, I can’t say if anybody was killed in them or not,” Abrahamowicz told La Tribuna di Treviso.
Brief police chase ends in 3 boys’ deaths
FONTANA, Calif. — A 15-year-old driver and two younger boys were killed when they fled at speeds up to 90 mph and then crashed into a house after a police car pulled them over.
California Highway Patrol officials say an officer had stopped the car for running a red light Wednesday evening in Fontana. But the driver sped off as the officer walked toward the car.
The driver lost control after a brief chase, crashing through a cinderblock wall and into a house in the working-class suburb east of Los Angeles.
The driver, identified as Devon Keeten, 15, and the 11-year-old boy were ejected from the car and died at the scene. Nine-year-old Dylan Green, who was in the back wearing a seatbelt, died at a hospital. The name of the 11-year-old was not released.
Army nixes PB items
WASHINGTON — Worried about salmonella, the Army said Thursday it’s removing some peanut butter items from warehouses in Europe, the latest in an ever-growing list of recalled peanut products linked to a national salmonella outbreak linked to the Blakely, Ga., plant owned by Peanut Corp. of America.
Already more than 430 kinds of cakes, cookies and other goods in the civilian world have been pulled off store shelves in what the Food and Drug Administration is calling one of the largest product recalls in memory. The Army’s recall does not affect Meals-Ready-to-Eat, but another kind of military grub called Unitized Group Rations-A, which provide a complete 50-person meal.
Associated Press