William Ray Hagy Jr., who was convicted this week of one 1980s murder and is accused of another, is to plead no contest Friday to resolve the remaining charges against him, said his attorney, Gary Lumsden. Ray Hagy, 49, also is to be sentenced Friday, the Roanoke Circuit Court Clerk’s office confirmed. Ray Hagy, who […]
Forensics
Update Yolanda Baker Trial
Closing arguments have began in the Yolanda Baker trial. She went missing about 11 years ago and was legally declared dead in 2009. She was the mother to twins, a boy and a girl. This is only the third time that a “no body” murder case was tried in D.C. according to a U.S. attorney’s […]
Hank Johnson to be exhumed
Hank Johnson was murdered more than 100 miles away from home almost two years ago and a key clue may be buried with him. His mother, Sandi Johnson will be at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery to watch what she thinks should have been done a long time ago. She believes he was buried with crucial […]
Execution halted for Hank Skinner!
The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Hank Skinner execution about an hour before he could have been taken to the Texas death chamber. The brief order grants him the delay but does not ensure he will get such testing. The court order came as relatives of Busby were climbing the steps of the Huntsville prison […]
Hagy, presenting no defense, guilty of 1984 slaying
William Ray Hagy Jr. on Tuesday denied killing a Roanoke woman in 1984, speaking not from the witness stand in his murder trial but in a 2-year-old recorded interview played by prosecutors. “I have a feeling you’re going to charge me with this,” Hagy said in the conversation with the Roanoke police detective who reopened […]
Update Cynthia Denise McCray
Willam Hagy Jr. just pleaded not guilty in the cold case murder of Cynthia Denise McCray from 1984, see my post “Hagy goes on trial today in 1984 slaying.” Hagy’s defense attorney argued for and won a bench trial, meaning there will not be a jury to decide Hagy’s guilty or innocence. The judge delayed a […]
Hagy on trial today in 1984 slaying
Two Roanoke women killed less than six months apart. Their unclothed bodies left about a mile from each other. Both strangled during or after sex. For almost a quarter-century, any connection between the slayings of Cynthia Denise McCray, a 21-year-old black woman dumped under an Interstate 581 overpass, and Audrey Anne West, a 33-year-old white […]
DNA lab offers help in Hank Skinner case
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals may be indifferent to the truth in the Hank Skinner case (focusing only on procedural questions), but Chromosomal Laboratories in Phoenix, Arizona, isn’t. In response to a plea by the Innocence Project, Chromosomal Laboratories in Phoenix, Arizona has offered its accredited DNA testing services to help pursue justice. The […]
UK Detectives solved murder case using dog DNA
No murder weapons were ever found in the case of Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi. However, scientists used DNA profiling to prove that samples collected during the investigation were a billion times more likely to come from two specific dogs than any other animals. The results conclusively linked them to Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi’s death. The dogs used in the […]
DNA fails unidentified WWI soldiers
Family members of the WWII soldiers thought to have been killed in the 1916 battle of Fromelles gave DNA samples after the bodies were exhumed last year. But it has not been possible to identify all the 250 Allied soldiers found buried in the mass grave. It has only been possible to say that three […]