Archives

Uzbek Immigrant Charged with killings in NYC

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth,
© artharris.com, all rights reserved

It wasn’t a matter of if, but when major terror would hit the streets of New York City again.

The Big Apple is a coveted crown jewel for terrorists who targeted its twin towers in 2001, and it was in the cross-hairs of evil for at least a year before a radicalized Uzbeck immigrant mowed down innocent people in a rental truck, killing eight and injuring more than a dozen enjoying a beautiful Halloween day on the bike paths of Lower Manhattan.

In the first alleged terrorist killings since 9-11, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a 29-year-old from Tashkent, Uzbekistan living in New Jersey, is now charged with providing material support to ISIS, committing violence and destroying motor vehicles, acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim told reporters.

CNN reported he appeared in federal court in a wheelchair and didn’t enter a plea.

The Bald Truth has learned the immigrant was on the FBI radar in an unrelated investigation, but never detained or interviewed. Say what?

How was the bearded radical able to so easiliy rent a killing machine in New Jersey, where he lived with his wife and three children, scout out the killing zone in advance, then drive his truck onto the sidewalk, crushing and dragging unwitting tourists and cyclists, before crashing into a school bus, then getting shot by a brave New York City cop?

From tracking 9-11 hijackers hiding in plain site in Atlanta before the World Trade Center attack to reporting on ISIS inspired terror from Europe to the U.S., I was on Nancy Grace’s radio show Wednesday talking about how the FBI had the future terrorist on its radar for a year before the incident, but didn’t have enough to turn him into a suspect.

Suggest going to 4:30 to start.

Nancy Grace podcast Wednesday 11012017 (3).mp3

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Jurors in the manslaughter trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor Monday found Dr. Conrad Murray guilty of killing his pop superstar patient with an overdose of drugs designed to help him sleep, including the powerful hospital anesthetic, propofol.

As the clerk read the verdict in a wavering voice, someone in the Jackson family entourage let out an audible squeel, but was not admonished.

Murray, glum if elegant in a gray suit, was denied bail.

Judge Michael Pastor explained Murray was now a risk to public safety, convicted of a homicide, and should not be free as he has been in weeks and months during the trial. He said the penal code justified keeping him in custody until sentencing, set for Dec. 29 in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Conrad Murray in Court

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Within minutes, the manslaughter verdict of Dr. Conrad Murray will be read, ending a six week trial to determine whether the $150,000 a month cardiologist Michael Jackson hired to administer the pop star’s insomnia drug of choice, Propofol, is guilty of killing him, or whether the pop star was an addict gave who gave himself the fatal dose.

“Every single doctor that testified in this case said they would never do what Conrad Murray did,” Deputy District Attorney David Walgren told jurors in closing arguments last Thursday.

But defense attorneys have argued the superstar did himself in, taking powerful painkillers for years, and creating a “perfect storm” of drugs inside his body that led to his death on June 25, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Knox: Free, Conviction Overturned

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, © www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

With Amanda Knox’s murder conviction reversed, as the appeals court cited faulty DNA evidence, and reports emerged of her prosecutor under fire for misconduct in other cases, it made me wonder if a tough American lawyer I watched tangle with Italian justice a few years back might have made a difference.

Had Gloria Allred been willing or able to take on Amanda Knox’s cause, might her media librettos have raised enough hell to expose Italy’s judicial dysfunction as she did after the murder of a California woman caught in its macho of indifference?

She made a small dent five years ago, but it was too late for Toni Dykstra.

Here’s what I remember:

It was 7 AM on the last Friday in September when the gray Lancia rolls down Via Sistina and pulls up to the five-star InterContinental hotel. Rome is waking up to the aroma of rich espresso laced with exhaust fumes and to the furies of an American feminist lawyer on a mission. Read the rest of this entry »