In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
06-28-2007, 10:03 AM
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In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
I live in a very small town outside Phoenix in the east valleyhere in AZ. I've lived in AZ twice before and when I returned this time the wife, daugther and I selected Queeen Creek a small bedroom community of 20,000 because I wanted a quiet and safe place to build or retirement home and to live when I retire (55 years old) in 3 1/2 years. Several days ago something took place that has me think perhaps I have one more move to make. I've seen more then my share of cruelty in my life time but this is senseless killing. Please read the story below.
'Girl fought for her life'
2 boys, 16, held in brutal killing of teen
Kristi Eaton and Becky Bartkowski
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 28, 2007 07:50 AM
While Pinal County officials in Florence were announcing arrests in a gruesome murder, Teresa Galinberti was laying flowers at the Queen Creek-area home of Amber LeAnn Hess. She said she was friends with both the teenage victim and the suspects.
Nicolas Castillo and Todd Hoke, both 16, were arrested in the killing of Hess, whose burned body was found Monday in the desert near Florence, Pinal County Sheriff's officials said.
Authorities talked to Castillo and Hoke late Tuesday and early Wednesday and said they believe the teens took part in the killing of Hess, 17. Hess' body has been positively identified using dental records, authorities said.
At a tearful press conference Wednesday morning in Florence, parents Michael and Candy Hess thanked the community for helping deputies identify the suspects.
Candy Hess said Hoke was one of her daughter's best friends, who spent hours in their home playing video games and watching movies. He would call constantly, she said.
"He was like a brother to her, which makes this even more confusing to us," Candy Hess said.
Galinberti, who was placing flowers at the Hess home Wednesday morning, said Hoke and Castillo were "nice guys."
"We'd just hang out together," said Galinberti, describing her friendship with the two boys and Hess.
She said they would go swimming or have water balloon fights.
Galinberti said she had talked with both Hoke and Castillo and they were crying, telling her they didn't do it.
"I can't believe it," Galinberti said. "It just doesn't make sense. In my head, they just didn't do it."
Candy Hess said her daughter had a falling out with Hoke, who had called the girl a disrespectful name. The mother emphasized the boy wasn't her daughter's boyfriend.
Both boys were students at Coolidge High School, where Amber had recently graduated. They live within blocks of her home.
"Basically they just didn't like her and for whatever reason were planning to kill her," Pinal County Sheriff Chris Vasquez said. "They went to her home and through a combination of beating, stabbing and choking, killed her."
The teens were booked in connection with first-degree murder charges, with other charges are likely, Vasquez said. The teens likely will be charged as adults.
The teens were to have a juvenile hearing Wednesday afternoon.
Hess' parents had been away on a trip over the weekend, and when they returned Sunday they found blood and signs of a struggle in their home.
Amber's 2002 Mitsubishi was found Tuesday just down the street from one of the suspect's homes, Vasquez said.
The assault is believed to have happened late Friday or early Saturday. Detectives aren't sure if Hess let the two boys into her home or if they forced their way inside.
"From what I'm told this girl fought for her life in that home, and she didn't die easy. It was very brutal," Vasquez said in an interview from Salt Lake City, where he is attending a law enforcement convention. "If they had been adults, I would be screaming for the death penalty in this case."
Detectives got several anonymous tips that led them to the suspects. One tipster told of the teens coming to borrow supplies to use in cleaning up after the
'Girl fought for her life'
2 boys, 16, held in brutal killing of teen
Kristi Eaton and Becky Bartkowski
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 28, 2007 07:50 AM
While Pinal County officials in Florence were announcing arrests in a gruesome murder, Teresa Galinberti was laying flowers at the Queen Creek-area home of Amber LeAnn Hess. She said she was friends with both the teenage victim and the suspects.
Nicolas Castillo and Todd Hoke, both 16, were arrested in the killing of Hess, whose burned body was found Monday in the desert near Florence, Pinal County Sheriff's officials said.
Authorities talked to Castillo and Hoke late Tuesday and early Wednesday and said they believe the teens took part in the killing of Hess, 17. Hess' body has been positively identified using dental records, authorities said.
At a tearful press conference Wednesday morning in Florence, parents Michael and Candy Hess thanked the community for helping deputies identify the suspects.
Candy Hess said Hoke was one of her daughter's best friends, who spent hours in their home playing video games and watching movies. He would call constantly, she said.
"He was like a brother to her, which makes this even more confusing to us," Candy Hess said.
Galinberti, who was placing flowers at the Hess home Wednesday morning, said Hoke and Castillo were "nice guys."
"We'd just hang out together," said Galinberti, describing her friendship with the two boys and Hess.
She said they would go swimming or have water balloon fights.
Galinberti said she had talked with both Hoke and Castillo and they were crying, telling her they didn't do it.
"I can't believe it," Galinberti said. "It just doesn't make sense. In my head, they just didn't do it."
Candy Hess said her daughter had a falling out with Hoke, who had called the girl a disrespectful name. The mother emphasized the boy wasn't her daughter's boyfriend.
Both boys were students at Coolidge High School, where Amber had recently graduated. They live within blocks of her home.
"Basically they just didn't like her and for whatever reason were planning to kill her," Pinal County Sheriff Chris Vasquez said. "They went to her home and through a combination of beating, stabbing and choking, killed her."
The teens were booked in connection with first-degree murder charges, with other charges are likely, Vasquez said. The teens likely will be charged as adults.
The teens were to have a juvenile hearing Wednesday afternoon.
Hess' parents had been away on a trip over the weekend, and when they returned Sunday they found blood and signs of a struggle in their home.
Amber's 2002 Mitsubishi was found Tuesday just down the street from one of the suspect's homes, Vasquez said.
The assault is believed to have happened late Friday or early Saturday. Detectives aren't sure if Hess let the two boys into her home or if they forced their way inside.
"From what I'm told this girl fought for her life in that home, and she didn't die easy. It was very brutal," Vasquez said in an interview from Salt Lake City, where he is attending a law enforcement convention. "If they had been adults, I would be screaming for the death penalty in this case."
Detectives got several anonymous tips that led them to the suspects. One tipster told of the teens coming to borrow supplies to use in cleaning up after the
06-28-2007, 03:34 PM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
I agree. Check this story out. It will make your stomach turn. There a lot of sick people in this world.
Police: Student slain, burned on grill
Authorities say Texas A&M student's ex-boyfriend confessed to grisly crime
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:21 p.m. CT March 25, 2007
HOUSTON - For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment.
What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time?
The answer turned their stomachs.
According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart’s body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a press conference Saturday.
“I just don’t know what to think about it,” said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd’s in the quiet tree-lined enclave in northern Houston. “I thought he was a nice normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing.”
Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, a college freshman who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship.
Officials first thought Shepherd had disposed of her remains in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied, launching an intense debate in the area about whether the Sheriff’s Department should conduct a massive and expensive search of area landfills for Stewart’s remains.
Stewart was last seen March 15 and was reported missing March
19. The next day the Harris County Sheriff’s Office homicide division launched its investigation.
On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity — and the unpleasant odor — on Shepherd’s balcony.
“The smell was awful,” said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. “I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference.”
At times, Evans said, the flames from the grills leapt dangerously close to the roof of the balcony. Evans says he called 911, but when firefighters arrived, the flames had calmed and Shepherd assured them everything was under control.
A leasing agent at the apartment complex also noticed the thick dark smoke and the intense flames and asked Shepherd what he was doing, Evans said. Another neighbor, 18-year-old James Hebert, told The Houston Chronicle that he often cooked out with Shepherd, and even left his grill at Shepherd’s apartment. When he wasn’t invited over, he asked his neighbor what was going on. Shepherd replied that he was cooking for a wedding, the newspaper said.
Dionne Whitaker, 31, who lives in the complex, said she saw Shepherd carry the grill and smoker to a garbage bin a day or so later, the newspaper said.
Human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, and authorities have not said how it is possible that Stewart’s remains could be completely burned on a patio grill.
“This certainly turned out to be one of the most heinous crimes I’ve ever seen in my 38 years (in law enforcement),” Thomas, the sheriff, said Saturday.
Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond in the Harris County Jail. Telephone message left with his attorney, Chip Lewis, were not immediately returned. On Sunday, the door to Shepherd’s apartment was covered with plywood boards.
Police: Student slain, burned on grill
Authorities say Texas A&M student's ex-boyfriend confessed to grisly crime
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:21 p.m. CT March 25, 2007
HOUSTON - For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment.
What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time?
The answer turned their stomachs.
According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart’s body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a press conference Saturday.
“I just don’t know what to think about it,” said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd’s in the quiet tree-lined enclave in northern Houston. “I thought he was a nice normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing.”
Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, a college freshman who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship.
Officials first thought Shepherd had disposed of her remains in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied, launching an intense debate in the area about whether the Sheriff’s Department should conduct a massive and expensive search of area landfills for Stewart’s remains.
Stewart was last seen March 15 and was reported missing March
19. The next day the Harris County Sheriff’s Office homicide division launched its investigation.
On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity — and the unpleasant odor — on Shepherd’s balcony.
“The smell was awful,” said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. “I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference.”
At times, Evans said, the flames from the grills leapt dangerously close to the roof of the balcony. Evans says he called 911, but when firefighters arrived, the flames had calmed and Shepherd assured them everything was under control.
A leasing agent at the apartment complex also noticed the thick dark smoke and the intense flames and asked Shepherd what he was doing, Evans said. Another neighbor, 18-year-old James Hebert, told The Houston Chronicle that he often cooked out with Shepherd, and even left his grill at Shepherd’s apartment. When he wasn’t invited over, he asked his neighbor what was going on. Shepherd replied that he was cooking for a wedding, the newspaper said.
Dionne Whitaker, 31, who lives in the complex, said she saw Shepherd carry the grill and smoker to a garbage bin a day or so later, the newspaper said.
Human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, and authorities have not said how it is possible that Stewart’s remains could be completely burned on a patio grill.
“This certainly turned out to be one of the most heinous crimes I’ve ever seen in my 38 years (in law enforcement),” Thomas, the sheriff, said Saturday.
Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond in the Harris County Jail. Telephone message left with his attorney, Chip Lewis, were not immediately returned. On Sunday, the door to Shepherd’s apartment was covered with plywood boards.
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For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
06-28-2007, 04:03 PM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
Those stories are very sad indeed, but the thing you have to remember as Techman pointed out, nutcases can be found anywhere. In a town of 4,500 people the size of my hometown, there were plenty of examples of wacko murders, one even included a cop who just happened to be the police chief's step-son.
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06-29-2007, 10:28 AM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
Sad, truely sad. Man just when you think you've heard it all....[&o] I can't concieve of such cruel and vicious behavior. We seem to sink a little lower in the cess pool as the years go by. How do you act one way and behave another. You just don't know whats in the heart of a person or what they are capable of. I will always remember the saying( don't judge a book by its cover) unfortunately I always thought of it in the opposite canotation.
06-29-2007, 01:52 PM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
I strongly believe that people who commit crimes of this nature should be taken to the town square and beheaded like they do in the Middle East.
06-29-2007, 02:26 PM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
Or perhaps castrated, that way there is no chance that they will join forces with the enemy overseas. My theory is if they can't use it properly, then they should lose it.
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06-29-2007, 06:34 PM
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RE: In the Quiet little town of Queen Creek AZ
Wow, I was just in the Phoenix area earlier this week.... didn't hear about this, but as others have mentioned, it's out there, no matter where you live. Unless you become a hermit on an island (and even then, someone may still pay you a visit by boat) you can't entirely escape it. Pretty sad commentary on our species as a whole.
