Johnny Cash's great-niece found fatally stabbed, stuffed in box

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The great-niece of the late singer Johnny Cash has been found stabbed to death and stuffed in a box in a house, authorities in Tennessee said Thursday.

Putnam County Sheriff David Andrews said Courtney Cash's body was found Wednesday morning in a home near Cookeville, about 70 miles east of Nashville.

Cash's body was found in a chest just inside the front door, Andrews said. A man identified as William Austin Johnson, Cash's boyfriend, was being treated for stab wounds at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Andrews said.

Andrews said the pair had gone out with a friend before an altercation took place in the house where Johnson and Cash lived with their young child. The friend, identified as Wayne Gary Masciarella, has been charged with first-degree murder.

Johnson escaped the attack and took the child with him before driving to the hospital, Andrews said. The scene inside the house was "somewhat bloody," Andrews told reporters at a news conference.

"There was a struggle," the sheriff said.

The suspect may have been trying to hide Cash's body, Andrews said. A motive was not released, but Andrews indicated the stabbings were likely connected to drugs.

"This is a senseless, tragic death of a young lady whose life was probably taken as a direct or indirect result of drugs," Andrews said.

Johnny Cash's brother, Tommy Cash, released a statement asking for prayers for the family after the loss of his granddaughter.

"We are completely heartbroken," the statement said.

Masciarella is being held without bond. He has a court date scheduled for April 21. Officials in Putnam County said they do not know if he has a lawyer.

 

Taking Hating Co-Workers to a New Level

PITTSBURG -- A Pittsburg business owner was arrested on conspiracy charges Friday after he hired an officer posing as a hit man to "disfigure" one of his former employees, police said.

Joseph Mosis, owner of plastic-cutting and aluminum-framing firm Monsam Enterprises, was arrested about 10 p.m. after he provided a series of "graphic details" about his desire to assault a former employee over a labor dispute, Pittsburg police Lt. Ron Raman said. Mosis, 52, was upset over a settlement the employee had received, and described looking for an "enforcer" to take care of him.

After learning of the man's intentions, police enlisted an undercover officer to pose as a hit man and meet up with Mosis to discuss a plan, Raman said. During the meeting, Mosis described the ways in which he wanted the employee's body disfigured, provided documents showing his intent and agreed on a price for the crime to be carried out.

Police arrested Mosis on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated mayhem after searching his home and business shortly after the meeting, Raman said. He remains in custody in lieu of $1.5 million bail.

VIA mercurynews

Our Best Weapon Against Revenge Porn: Copyright Law?

When federal agents arrested Hunter Moore last month, the Internet breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Dubbed the “Most Hated Man on the Internet,” Moore ran the notorious revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp. His site racked up millions of pageviews and thousands of dollars in advertising revenue by posting sexually explicit photographs and detailed personal information about the people he featured on the site.

According to the indictment, Moore relied on a co-defendant, Charles “Gary Jones” Evens, to hack into victims’ email accounts and obtain nude photographs to feature on IsAnyoneUp. The pair is charged with one count of conspiracy, seven counts of aggravated identity theft, and seven counts of “unauthorized access of a protected computer to obtain information.”

Moore allegedly obtained some of the photos through hacking, but bitter exes submitted many more.

The photos hosted by websites like IsAnyoneUp are often referred to as “revenge porn.” The phenomenon is surprisingly common: One in 10 former partners threaten to post sexually explicit images of their exes online, and an estimated 60 percent follow through. (It’s also worth mentioning that upwards of 80 percent of revenge porn victims are women.)

The harms caused by revenge porn websites are very real—people featured on these sites receive solicitations over social media, lose their jobs, or live in fear that their family and future employers will discover the photos. 

The Origins of Revenge Porn

Moore may have been the “King of Revenge Porn,” but he wasn’t the first contender for the throne.

In 1980, someone at Hustler Magazine had the idea to start Beaver Hunt, a contest that published reader-submitted images of naked women. Beaver Hunt photos were often accompanied by details about the woman: her hobbies, her sexual fantasies, and sometimes her name. Some of the photos were stolen. Exes submitted many more.

Throughout the '80s, women sued Hustler for publishing their photos in Beaver Hunt without their permission. Several courts determined that publishing intimate photos without verifying whether the pictured women actually gave the go-ahead gave the false impression that all of the featured women felt comfortable with their pictures appearing in a “coarse and sex-centered magazine.”

Revenge porn websites have adopted many of the features that made Beaver Hunt notable: showing off user-generated content, submitted without the pictured person’s consent or knowledge, flanked by personal information.

There is one important difference between a nude photo appearing on a website or in the pages of a print magazine. The impact of the photo, even one featured in a popular magazine like Hustler, was still constrained by the fact that it was bound in print. Pages of the magazine could be torn out or photocopied, but the likelihood of a prospective employer coming across a Beaver Hunt photo through happenstance was slim to none.

The likelihood of an employer Googling an applicant and following up on a hit from a porn website? Significantly more likely. Throw links, cross-postings, and email into the mix, and it becomes all the more certain that revenge porn will be discovered.

More HERE Via The Atlantic

Cruella Deville of Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — A Las Vegas pet-store owner was videotaped letting an arsonist into her store, and she collected office files before leaving as the man set fire to the business with more than two dozen puppies inside, according to an arrest report made public Monday.

Gloria Eun Hye Lee, 35, is due before a Las Vegas judge on Wednesday to face felony conspiracy and arson charges in the fire early Jan. 27 at the Prince & Princess pet shop.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Lee had a lawyer. An attorney who represented her in the past said Monday she’s not handling Lee’s current case.

Sprinklers doused flames, and firefighters arriving to the business in southwest Las Vegas rescued the puppies, fire officials said. The dogs were taken to an area animal shelter.

The arrest report doesn’t name the man seen carrying a pair of red gasoline cans into Lee’s store a little before 1 a.m. The video also shows him talking with Lee, splashing liquid from the cans around the store and igniting the liquid with a flaming newspaper before leaving, according to the arrest report. The video hasn’t been made public.

The man hasn’t charged with a crime, and it wasn’t clear if he had been found or questioned by Clark County fire investigators. County spokesman Dan Kulin called the case an ongoing investigation.

Firefighters credited sprinklers with preventing extensive damage to the pet shop, but they estimated the fire loss at $100,000.

Authorities haven’t said what they think the motive was for the fire.

The same pet store was burglarized just over a year ago when police said two white French bulldogs, a gray Schnauzer and a black Yorkshire terrier puppy were stolen from the Prince & Princess pet shop.

About 90 minutes later, thieves tossed a large boulder through the front door of another pet store that had been featured on the Animal Planet cable TV series “Tanked” and stole four exotic birds and four bearded dragon lizards.

Las Vegas Metropolitan police Officer Bill Cassell said Monday he didn’t know the status of those investigations, or whether any arrests were made.

VIA azcentral

Why Can’t People Stop Stealing From D.C.’s Restaurants?

Peter Ogburn’s life of crime began with a copper mug stuffed down his pants. The radio producer was drinking a Moscow mule at the bar at Senart’s Oyster and Chop House not long after its 2011 opening when the impulse struck him: He’d always wanted one of the shiny cups but had no idea where to find them. So he unbuttoned his pants. And he took one.

“If you are a restaurateur and you see somebody walking out of the restaurant with a giant bulge in the front of their pants,” Ogburn says, “they’re either having a really good date, or they’re robbing you.”

Since then, Ogburn has accumulated three more mismatched mugs, taken from D.C.’s Boxcar Tavern and other bars in Las Vegas and Charleston, S.C. He regularly busts them out to make Moscow mules for friends. He admits he has a tinge of guilt about it, but he still ranks the thefts low on the scale of bad etiquette and crime. “People that are bad tippers and people that walk out on a bill are the most deplorable people,” Ogburn says. His justification is simple: “I always overtip bartenders, so karmatically, I think it’s all kind of worked out.”

Copper mugs, which are traditionally used for Moscow mules and help keep the vodka, ginger beer, and lime cocktails icy cold, have become a particularly hot target for covetous bar-goers. But they’re not cheap: The mugs can cost anywhere from $15 to $25 each. Pearl Dive Oyster Palace stopped using them because so many were stolen; Bar Pilar lost its entire collection of 50 mugs and doesn’t plan to replace them. Lincoln Restaurant tried requiring drinkers to turn in IDs to use its mugs, but that created a new problem—too many people just forgot their IDs—so the anti-theft measure was quickly dropped. Instead, Lincoln, which has lost about 30 dozen mugs to thieves, stopped engraving the mugs with the restaurant’s name to at least make replacements cheaper.

Copper mugs, forks, paintings, candle holders—it doesn’t matter. Patrons will take just about anything from bars and restaurants. The problem is so rampant that Eater has a recurring feature called “Shit People Steal,” highlighting pinched items ranging from a bulldog sculpture at Bearnaise to bar stools at Poste Moderne Brasserie. But restaurant thieves aren’t just your run-of-the-mill kleptos (though there are surely plenty of those, too). Fueled by some combination of thrill, sentimentalism, and alcohol, people who wouldn’t dream of taking a pack of gum from a 7-Eleven have no qualms about sticking beer glasses in their coat pockets. For some reason, many otherwise-law-abiding citizens don’t consider stealing from bars and restaurants to be stealing at all. And unlike in retail stores, where there are price tags, diners don’t always think about how the costs of their impulse grabs add up for restaurants.

More HERE Via Washington City Paper

Celebrity chef Mario Batali Stole from tipped staff

Celebrity chef Mario Batali has agreed to whip up a $5.25 million payment to the captains, waiters and other workers at his restaurants who claimed they had been stiffed out of tips.

Two-thirds of what may be the biggest settlement of its kind will be shared by 1,100 workers — everybody from the bartenders to the busboys — at swanky Manhattan eateries like Babbo, Bar Jamon, Casa Mono, Del Posto, Esca, Lupa and Otto, and Tarry Lodgein Port Chester, court papers revealed Wednesday.

The rest goes to the lawyers who took on Batali and business partner Joseph Bastianich.

When the workers sued two years ago, Bastianich called it a “shakedown” and made a point of sarcastically thanking some of the staff who took him and Batali to court.

He also discouraged other workers from joining the suit, saying, “Only the lawyers make money on these lawsuits,” the court papers state.

There was no immediate comment from either famous foodie after word of the huge settlement leaked out.

Lawyers for both sides issued a single statement saying, saying, “The matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.”

Both

Batali and Bastianich have known for several months that a giant tab was heading their way.

The agreement was hammered out after a marathon mediation meeting in October and still needs to be approved by a Manhattan federal judge before any checks are cut.

The settlement covers staff who worked for Batali’s restaurants from July 2004 through February of this year, and the payouts will be proportional — based on the number of hours worked.

The case against Batali and Bastianich was filed by Stephanie Capsolas and Hernan Alvarado, a waitress and a kitchen runner at Babbo.

Capsolas claimed she was harassed after she sued.

“I have found the word ‘rat’ written on my locker at work,” she said in court papers.

Capsolas and Alvarado claimed they were forced to share their tips with other workers who weren't legally entitled to them — and charged they’d been short-changed on wages and overtime.

More than a hundred other workers at Batali’s and Bastianich's restaurants then joined in the suit.

Many claimed the multimillionaire owners refused to pay them the minimum wage — and forced them to work more than 40 hours a week.

Previously, the biggest settlement for tip skimming was the $3.9 million paid by the Shelly Fireman's Restaurant group, which owns Trattoria Dell'Arte, Cafe Fiorello, Fireman's of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Diner USA, Redeye Grill and Shelly's New York.

The famed Sparks Steakhouse had to pay out $3.1 million for the same practice, as did the Nobu restaurants,who settled with their workers for $2.5 million

Read Full Settlement HERE

Via NYDaily News

Hundreds of teens trash mall during flashmob

A wild flash mob stormed and trashed a Brooklyn mall, causing so much chaos that the shopping center was forced to close during post-Christmas sales, sources said Friday.

More than 400 crazed teens — who mistakenly thought the rapper Fabolous would perform — erupted into brawls all over Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Mill Basin on Thursday at 5 p.m., sources said.

The troublemakers looted and ransacked several stores as panicked shoppers ran for the exits and clerks scrambled to pull down metal gates.

“I was begging them to stop. There were a lot of kids, hundreds of kids . . . [Security] would chase them out one door and they would come back in another door,” said Abu Taleb, 31, a clerk at the kiosk Candy Plaza 2. “I’ve been here seven years, and I have never seen anything like this before.”

Some of the teens staged a game of “knockout” on the top floor — and one may have been carrying a gun, sources said.

“They were playing the ‘knockout’ game,” said Shante, a 21-year-old perfume merchant, in reference to a violent trend in which teens try to knock out an unsuspecting victim with a single punch.

“People were getting really scared,” she said.

The mall was shuttered at around 7 p.m. for roughly an hour and has since issued a temporary “no teens” rule, in which anyone under 21 must be accompanied by an adult, police sources said.

Fights at the mall also broke out in front of McDonald’s and Best Buy, where a group of girls began screaming and throwing punches as security guards struggled to break up the brawl.

Two security guards also carried a teenage boy out by his wrists and ankles, video footage shows.

Some of the teens — who had planned the rowdy meet-up on social media — later took to Facebook to brag about it.

Via NYPost