Guest Post: Extraordinary Cases of Missing People Who Were Ultimately Found

Extraordinary Cases of Missing People Who Were Ultimately Found

The recent rescue of three Ohio women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — after they had been missing for approximately a decade has captured the attention of the nation as an extraordinary story. The women had been kidnapped and were being held captive by three men all that time. Their story and their heroic rescue has captivated us all.

There are — surprisingly — many more stories like theirs of women and men who were found many years or even many decades after they went missing. Some were taken, while others left on their own. Here are just a few of the extraordinary cases of missing people who were ultimately found:

Jaycee Lee Dugard
In this well-known case, Jaycee Lee Dugard was found 18 years after she had been kidnapped. She was taken by a husband and wife when she was only 11 and kept against her will in their home. The couple kept a hidden back yard that was guarded by a tall fence, trees and a tarp. Jaycee was kept in a series of sheds that were soundproofed.

Jaycee was discovered when she accompanied her captor to a meeting with his parole officer.

Natascha Kampusch
Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped by Wolfgang Priklopi when she was only 10 years old. For almost 9 years, she was kept in a windowless, underground cell and repeatedly raped. Ultimately, she was able to escape on her own, and her captor committed suicide.

Shawn Hornbeck
Shawn Hornbeck was kidnapped when he was 11 years old. Four years later, he was rescued by police, who were serving a search warrant to look for another missing boy in the home of William Benjamin Ownby.

Brenda Heist
Heist’s case is another that has made recent headlines. Brenda Heist was declared legally dead after being missing for many years. Eleven years after she went missing, she was found alive in Florida. She had turned herself in because she believed she was wanted on a warrant, and her true identity was discovered. She said that she had left with a group of hitchhikers who had found her crying over her impending divorce and financial troubles and had invited her to go with them. She left behind two children, 8 and 12.

Denise Desruisseaux Bolser
Like Brenda Heist’s case, this one turned out to be another missing person who left willingly. Sort of. Denise Desruisseaux Bolser was missing for 17 years before she was found after a private investigator who was browsing missing person files recognized her. Bolser says that she was helping her former boss cook the books, and he had threatened to kill her for her involvement. She faked a kidnapping note and fled.
There are many more cases of people who went missing and were found many more years later. Though the circumstances of their disappearance are never good, the fact that they are found and able to be reunited with their families is a positive. Many victims of kidnapping and sexual abuse have also gone on to raise awareness for victims of these types of crimes.

Bio:
Amber Satka writes on financial topics, such as her look into biweekly car payments. Amber is a former office manager and current mother and writer

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Guest Post: 5 Most Horrific Convictions Involving Child Murders

5 Most Horrific Convictions Involving Child Murders

Murder is always tragic, but it seems to be even more so when a child is involved. Even worse is when one person is convicted for killing dozens or even hundreds of children. This is a gruesome legacy that leaves behind families who have to grapple with that loss for years to come.

Here are 5 of the most horrific convictions involving child murders:

Andrea Yates
Though her conviction was later overturned, Andrea Yates was found guilty of murdering her 5 children by drowning them one-by-one in the bathroom of her home in 2001. The oldest child was 7 and the youngest was 6 months old. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but her conviction was overturned when expert testimony was called into question. When she was retried, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a mental-health facility.

Karla Homolka
Canadian Karla Homolka served only 12 years in prison for drugging, raping, torturing and killing young girls, including her own sister. When she was 17, Homolka became romantically involved with Paul Bernando, who became known as the Scarborough Rapist. She helped him to drug and rape young girls, believed to be virgins, including her own 15-year-old sister. They killed their victims, and even cut up some of their bodies.

Pedro Alonzo Lopez
Known as “The Monster of the Andes,” Pedro Alonzo Lopez confessed to killing at least 110 children in Ecuador, over 100 children in Colombia, and 100 more children in Peru. Acting out his rage for being raped and sexually violated multiple times as a child and a young man, Lopez sought out young girls to rape and to murder, and he vowed that if he were let out of prison, he would continue doing so. Though he spent more than 20 years in prison, he was ultimately released and remains at large today.

Joachim Kroll
Joachim Kroll was convicted of 8 murders in his native Germany, but he confessed to 13 murders. Known as “the Ruhr Cannibal” and the “Duisburg Man-Eater,” Kroll murdered and ate his young victims, including one girl who was 4 years old. Police arrested him after a neighbor complained of blocked pipes and the remains of the young girl were found inside. Kroll thought an operation would cure him of his homicidal urges, but he ultimately died of a heart attack in prison.

Jeffrey Dahmer
This infamous serious killer was responsible for the deaths of at least 17 men and young boys between 1978 and 1991. He sexually abused his victims (alive and dead) then killed them, dismembered them and ate them. When he was arrested, police found several corpses in his apartment, including dismembered heads and skulls. Dahmer was sentenced to 15 life terms, and he died in prison after being attacked by another inmate.

Though it’s hard to qualify the murder of any child as “worse” than another, these convictions stood at as some of the most horrific in recent memory.

About the Author:
Alexis Bonari writes for one of the largest open databases of college funding opportunities. Specific topics like scholarships for college are described in detail to provide multiple resources for students.

Guest Post: The 10 Most Notorious Unsolved College Crimes

THE 10 MOST NOTORIOUS UNSOLVED COLLEGE CRIMES

If all you watched on TV was CSI, you’d start to think it’s impossible to get away with murder these days. With all the dusting, printing, X-raying, and blue-lighting, the technology would seem to have closed the book on the idea of the perfect murder. And yet, we know that’s not the case. There has always been a small segment of horrible crimes that go unsolved, and even with all our forensic advancements, trails still go cold and files get shelved. These are the notorious stories of 10 college victims whose murderers have never been brought to justice.

Betsy Aardsma

The bizarre case of Betsy Aardsma has confounded police for over 40 years. A cute, smart grad student at Penn State, Aardsma was well-liked and had recently become engaged. She was so studious, she was in the library over Thanksgiving break when she was stabbed once in the heart with a small knife. A man hurriedly leaving the section told a librarian, “Somebody better help that girl,” and several witnesses were able to describe him. Aardsma died five minutes later. Police never identified the man, and today the murder is officially a cold case.

Read the rest of the article at THE 10 MOST NOTORIOUS UNSOLVED COLLEGE CRIMES

Guest Post: Murders by Firearms Lower than that of Alcohol

Murders by Firearms Lower than that of Alcohol

In 2011, the FBI’s estimated death toll of murders caused by firearms rests at 8,583. That’s a rate of one murder by gun shot in just over 58 minutes. In the same year, 9,878 people died in alcohol related car crashes. This isn’t including those who’ve perished from alcohol overdose or accidental deaths outside of driving while intoxicated. That’s nearly 1300+ more deaths caused from alcohol than by firearm murders. If the deaths of those caused by driving while under the influence can be avoided, why isn’t it more of a crime, or have as much media coverage, to kill someone with your car?

1. Prohibition of Firearms – If history teaches us anything, people will find a way to acquire what they wish to own. The alcohol prohibition was a short-lived ban on the substance, yet people were still able to find it. As people can be quite prideful when it comes to their firearms, would a prohibition on specific firearms make that much of a difference? Illegal weapon purchases would be on the rise, but the goods will still be found one way or another.

2. Respect Taught Young – Point at a family and there is probably a profound teaching within it that guides children not to drink. However, can you put faith that the same family has been teaching young children to respect firearms even if one isn’t inside the home? Just because the parent doesn’t have a firearm in the house doesn’t mean that the child’s friend won’t. Children taught at a young age to care for a firearm learn to respect the damage they can potentially cause. It’s because of this that some believe that gun safety should be taught to elementary school students.

3. Odds Are Not Favorable – You have a 33-percent chance of being involved in an automobile collisions involving a drunk driver at any given time. As one of these collisions happens every 90 seconds, the odds are good that you will be slain while driving home from the grocery store.

4. Ammunition Readily Available – Whether it is a bullet for your gun or a bullet for your gut, both forms of ammunition are readily available. However, alcohol is more so as you can purchase it from nearly every gas station and grocery store in the country. Without considering the consequences of driving while intoxicated, one is neglectful. One who knows the consequences and does it anyway should be charged with premeditated murder.

The media tends to focus on those crimes that are utterly heinous in nature. Unfortunately, many heinous crimes involve the use of a firearm. Why is there so much effort put into banning specific firearms and equipment over the mental states of the ones causing the murders in the first place? Could proper medical treatment reduce the number of deaths committed by those who are unstable? Could better parenting techniques have been used to teach the child right from wrong and the wisdom to know the difference in respecting individuals? All we can really do is speculate what could have happened within the mind of a killer instead of focusing on what should have happened in order to prevent the situation.

About the Author:

This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger and editor of www.liveinnanny.com. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: – jdebra84 @ gmail.com.

Infographic: Does The World Need More Prisons?

Guest Post: Top 10 Kidnappings Caught on Security Camera by Clint Henderson

Top 10 Kidnappings Caught on Security Camera

It takes a special kind of evil in a person to steal a human life, adult or child. Kidnapping a person means you have no regard for their existence nor regard for the dozens of friends and family of that person. It also probably means you suffer from severe psychological issues.

Before moving on, I implore everyone reading this to also read up on surviving a kidnapping as well as kidnapping prevention.

Hearing about these sadistic crimes in the news is nothing compared to seeing actual videos of the events taking place. I work for a distributor of video surveillance systems called 2MCCTV, so, I thought it fitting to offer a list of kidnappings captured by surveillance footage. I know a lot out there who are against the increase in video surveillance, but please note that many kidnapping cases have been solved thanks to the footage obtained from security cameras, including some below.

I decided to list the below Top 10 Kidnappings Caught on Security Camera in no particular order, as I found it somewhat disturbing when trying to formulate a sort of “ranking system” for the videos. So, instead the videos are in random order.

Surveillance Video Captures Child Abduction Attempt
A grocery store’s security surveillance footage shows a woman dressed in black waiting for a mother to turn away from the cart to kidnap the baby in it. As soon as the mother turns to pick out some fruit, the woman takes the cart and walks away with it. The mother realizes someone stole the cart with the baby, and starts screaming. The woman, afraid someone will catch her, abandons the cart and the baby, and runs out of the store.

Little Girl Escapes from Alleged Kidnapper in Walmart
A second grader was with her mom at Wal-Mart, when her mom decided to grab some fruit and leave her daughter in the toy aisle to play. The young girl was playing with some toys when CCTV footage shows a man trying to abduct her. Brittany, the girl being abducted, started kicking the suspect and screaming at the top of her lungs, scaring the man off. He dropped her on the floor and ran off. The security cameras outside the store captured him getting into his car, and also captured his license plate. He was arrested almost an hour later.
Never leave your child alone at any store, that is a simple rule every good parent knows. Anyone can overhear you telling your child you will meet in a few minutes or pass by and see your child unattended, giving them the opportunity to kidnap them.

Crazy Mexican Cartel Kidnapping
This CCTV camera footage captures what authorities are saying is a drug dealer. He arrives at a corner store in his red truck. As soon as his foot hits the pavement, several cars came rolling in. They surround the store from the front, in case the drug dealer tries fleeing. Then they come at him with heavy firearms, leading him into one of the cars and kidnapping him. His body was found a few days later, shot in the head.

Child Kidnapper Caught on Security Camera at Mumbai Station
This security camera footage is unbelievable! A man disembarks the train at a station, and goes to the waiting room, where he looks for a family with children. He finds a family that is all fast asleep and sits next to them, possibly to blend in and appear as part of the family. Four minutes later, he picks up the girl beside him, and simply walks off, no questions asked.
Have someone stay awake while everyone sleeps to watch over everyone and your belongings. Always be on the lookout when traveling, as kids are very easy to lose.

Child Abduction Attempt Caught on CCTV, Teacher Saves the Day!
A security camera at a school captures a teacher walking her students towards their classroom, with her at the beginning of the line. A man is seen approaching one of the students from the end of the line, and the teacher was oblivious to his presence. Thankfully, she turns around and sees the man grabbing the girls hand and starting to walk away with her. The teacher then runs to save the child, and successfully takes her from the suspect. He retaliates, however, wanting to take the girl with him. He starts fighting with the teacher, and the young girl runs to the class, with the teacher following her soon after. Then a staff member appears, scaring off the kidnapper.
When signing your kids up for a school, make sure they have a secure perimeter, so no unauthorized people can enter school property. Also pay attention to the teacher’s methods. How does she lead the kids to and from class? Does she have an assistant to help her with the students? These are all things to keep in mind.

Kidnapping Caught on CCTV, in Delhi
Using the same tactics as the man at the Mumbai station, this man goes to an area where everyone is sleeping. Several people pass by, imposing on his task, until finally when the coast is clear, he takes the sleeping baby from the sleeping mother. This kidnapping was captured on CCTV cameras at a hospital in Delhi in 2011.

Woman caught on camera abducting a child in Rajhamundary
It was a busy day in the district government hospital in Rajhamundary, India. A woman pretends to help the mother of a child, then abducts her three year old child. Security cameras capture her proceeding to walk out of the hospital, and getting away with the child.
Never trust anyone you just met with your child at a hospital, or any other place for that matter. And always carry a picture of your child with you to show to authorities if anything happens.

Man Kidnapped in his Own Car
First, a man is captured by a security camera opening a gate. He then goes back in to bring out his car, when a black car stops, presumably to let him pass. Once he gets out of the gated area and starts parking the car outside, the black car pulls up on the opposite side of the street, somewhat in a rush. The man gets out of the car to move one of the cones, when a silver car pulls up in the middle of the street. Three men come out of that car with guns; two of them kidnap him in his own car, and the third goes to the black car and switches places with the driver. The kidnappers’ car passes by again and then flees the scene. Several people then come by to investigate what just happened.

Carlie Brucia – Abduction caught on tape – Women’s Self Defense
Carlie Brucia, an 11 year old girl from Florida, was abducted in front of a car wash. Joseph Smith, the car mechanic who abducted her, grabbed her hand and kidnapped her, killing her later. He negotiated with authorities, giving them the location of her body.
Teach your kids how to fend for themselves, tell them to scream as loud as they can, and that they should never speak to strangers.

Girl Kidnapped in front of Target
This security camera, located at the front door of a Target store, captures as unexpected kidnapping. A car pulls up at the storefront and a man emerges from it. Meanwhile, one woman is following a girl and then both the man and woman grab her and force her way towards the car. A woman passing by sees the confrontation and does nothing about it. Seconds later, a car passes by and does nothing to help her out. They struggle with the girl and finally force her into the car.

Guest Post: Free giffgaff SIMs offer viable alternative to fixed-length contracts – for UK (not crime related)

Free giffgaff SIMs offer viable alternative to fixed-length contracts

Using your mobile phone to its full potential needn’t be expensive, but in many cases it is. On average, people overpay for services that they don’t end up using to the tune of around £195 per year, according to a 2011 survey conducted by the Oxford-based BillMonitor. And even if they realise they are doing it, there is nothing that they can do about it until their contract is up for renewal.

giffgaff, a UK mobile operator that makes use of O2’s network, offers an interesting alternative to this model, in the form of SIM-only deals that don’t tie you in for any length of time. This means that you can change your tariff on a month to month basis, and that there is no charge if you want to stop using the network. To order one of their SIMs for free today, and find out all about their great value monthly bundles, visit the giffgaff website.

With a giffgaff SIM in your phone, you can make UK calls for as little as 10p per minute – that’s 15p cheaper than the nearest competitor – and send texts for just 6p each. In addition, you can also access the mobile internet for just 20p a day, which is a lot cheaper than an Americano at your nearest Wi-Fi café.

While this puts them ahead of the pay-as-you-go pack, it is really the inexpensive monthly bundles that offer the best value. For just £5 a month, you can enjoy unlimited texts and free calls to other giffgaff mobiles. And for £12, they’ll give you unlimited internet and texts along with 250 free UK minutes. For those that use their phone to make a lot of outgoing calls, you can get versions of this same deal with more free minutes, with the premium £25 bundle giving a colossal 25 hours worth of free voice calls to UK numbers per month.

If you find that you need to upgrade your package, then you can simply switch to a more expensive tariff next month, and if you think that you are paying for more than you need, then you could just cut down to a cheaper tariff. With automatic payments set up, and an inclusive bundle in place, your phone will behave exactly as if it were on a contract, which means that you can use it whenever you want to. The upshot of all this is that you don’t need to lock yourself into a restrictive contract to enjoy the savings and convenience of a contract phone.

Guest Post: The 5 Worst Mass Shootings of the Past Decade

The 5 Worst Mass Shootings of the Past Decade

The incidence of random, mass shootings in the U.S. is a subject under much speculation, especially when so many seem to have occurred in just the last few years. The last decade has seen plenty of violence on this scale and the recent Newtown shooting is close to the top of the list. What most of these shootings have in common is that they are perpetrated by men, they occur in public places, and most often the shooter commits suicide.

Blacksburg, Virginia, April 16, 2007
The shooting by 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Tech ranks as the deadliest mass shooting perpetrated by a single gunman in U.S. history, not just of the last decade. He killed 32 people and injured 17 on the Blacksburg, Virginia campus in two separate incidents before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. Most of the casualties occurred inside of classroom buildings and a handful of students were injured a while escaping through windows. Cho had a history of mental illness and had been accused of stalking other students before the incident.

Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012
The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown is the second deadliest of the last ten years, and for many, the most disturbing. Adam Lanza, 20 years old, entered the kindergarten through fourth grade school building with an assault rifle and two handguns and killed 26 people, including 20 young children. Lanza took the guns from his mother’s house and killed her before shooting others at the school. Before he could be apprehended, Lanza committed suicide.

Binghamton, New York, April 3, 2009
The third deadliest shooting of the last decade occurred in Binghamton, New York at the American Civic Association immigration center. Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old naturalized citizen, originally from Vietnam, shot and killed 13 people and injured four others before killing himself. He had taken English language classes at the center and the victims were his fellow students and one former teacher. Wong had registered guns and a history of struggling to find work and to keep jobs.

Fort Hood, Texas, November 5, 2009
Nidal Malik Hasan, 39 and a major in the U.S. Army opened fire and killed 13 people on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood in a shooting that was as deadly as the incident in Binghamton. He also injured 32 people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center. Hasan worked as a psychologist in the Army and, unlike, most mass shooters, did not commit suicide. He was apprehended and charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder as well as 32 counts of attempted murder.

Aurora, Colorado, July 20, 2012
James Holmes, 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Colorado, opened fire on the audience at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at a theater in Aurora. Before shooting, he threw a gas canister into the theater. He was dressed in body armor, a helmet, and a gas mask and killed 12 people while injuring multiple others. Holmes has been charged with 24 counts of first degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder.

Mary Ellen Ellis is a career writer for Paralegal411, a career resource for individuals interesting in starting a career in the paralegal field including school information and a paralegal job board.

Guest Post: Digital Publishing: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? by Tony Viardo, CEO of publishers Astor + Blue Editions

Digital Publishing: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?

So how many articles have we read about E-books and Digital Publishing this year? For anyone who generally follows the book world (rabid booklover, book-blogger, industry pro or casual reader), we’re literally inundated with the amazing numbers—“E-book sales up 125% (again) over the 175% they were up from last year’s 225% increase!”—and equally amazing technological announcements—“Next Fall, the new ZimWittyZoomDitty tablet not only updates your Facebook and Goodreads friends whenever you snort in disgust … it cooks dinner for you at the same time!”

This leads many to take at least casual stock of what’s going on/going to happen to the “Publishing World” as we know it. And if your friends are like my friends (hardcore print book consumers), that stock is usually pretty morbid (sharp Greenwich Village angst not included): “Print books are doomed, so are brick-and-mortar stores. Goodbye literary quality. Oh and some pajama-wearing techie living in a basement with a laptop is going to be the new Sulzburger; we’ll all have to bow down!”

If you (or that good friend of yours) fall into the mortified category, my take (for what it’s worth) may come as positive news: E-books are not, and will not be, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas; in this case, the “Print World’s” bacon. Now, as the owner of a “Digital First” publishing house (Astor + Blue Editions, http://www.astorandblue.com) my opinions may easily be written off as self-serving and invalid. But bear with me for a minute… these are fact-based observations and I might just make sense (Someone tell my mom and dad).

As someone who earns a living from publishing, I have to follow numbers and industry trends as closely as possible. And while some see doom and gloom for Print, I see exciting developments for both Print and E-book formats. What do the numbers show? Digital book revenue is skyrocketing, print revenue is declining. Natural conclusion? E-books are killing print books. But not so fast. Historically, Print revenue has always seemed to be declining (even before E-books were invented), but that doesn’t mean the book market is dying or shrinking.

We have to remember that in fact the book market is growing. Readership always grows because population always grows. Every year, new readers enter the vast pool of the club that is “adult readership,” (despite Dancing with the Stars). And every year more readers are being born and theoretically being inspired by Ms. Crabtree’s elementary reading class. **So why the decline? Readership grows gradually, but the sheer number of books and book vendors grow exponentially, showing an investment loss almost every year. (Basic statistics: the widening universe makes it look like a shrinking pie when it isn’t).

So what does this mean? If you look at the numbers (historically), revenue for print books may have declined, yes, but not more than “normal,” and not significantly more than it did when there were no E-books around. (This is arguable of course, but the long term numbers do not show a precipitous drop-off). The yearly revenue decline, if there is one, can just as easily be written off to economic conditions as to E-book competition. Bottom line: Any drop in print revenue that may be caused by E-books are not significantly sharp enough to declare that E-books are destroying print book sales. (Hence no Grinch).

What may be happening, and what I believe is happening is that a whole new market for E-books is developing, while the print book market growth, like Publishing as a whole, is still growing at a historically gradual pace. (Boringly flat). Come up with your pet anecdote here, but I believe that more new readers are entering the market (who otherwise wouldn’t have) because of E-readers; existing readers are consuming more books (both print and e-book) than they did before; and while it would seem that a certain print title is losing a sale whenever readers buy it in E-book format, this is offset, at least somewhat, by the fact that more print titles are being bought (that otherwise wouldn’t) because of the extra marketing buzz and added awareness produced by the E-book’s cyber presence. All of it evens out in the end, and I believe, ultimately fosters growth industry-wide.

So take heart Print fans, E-books are not the dark villain you think they are. And here, I should correct my earlier analogy—that E-books are not the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. They may actually be the Grinch…in as much as, at the end of the story, the pear-shaped green guy ended up not only giving all the presents back to the singing Who-villers, he created a flash mob and started a big party as well.

Astor +Blue Editions has put its entire first season’s list of e-book titles on a holiday promotional sale for $0.99 or $1.99. http://astorandblue.com/catalog/. The sale will continue through January 7, 2013.

Example of the books: (one I am currently reading and truly enjoying)

The Car Thief
by Theodore Weesner

DESCRIPTION

Described as “one of the best coming of age novels of the Twentieth Century,” Theodore Weesner’s modern American classic is now re-launched for a new generation of readers to discover.

It’s 1959. Sixteen year-old Alex Housman has just stolen his fourteenth car and frankly doesn’t know why. His divorced, working class father grinds out the night shift at the local Chevy Plant in Detroit, looking forward to the flask in his glove compartment, and the open bottles of booze in his Flint, Michigan home.

Abandoned and alone, father and son struggle to express a deep love for each other, even as Alex fills his day juggling cheap thrills and a crushing depression. He cruises and steals, running from—and then forcing run-ins with—the police, compelled by reasons he frustratingly can’t put into words. And then there’s Irene Shaeffer, the pretty girl in school whose admiration Alex needs like a drug in order to get by.

For more on this book and on the author, go here: The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner

To order this book: ($0.99)
iTunes: Theodore Weesner

The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner

The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner[Kindle Edition]

Other ways to buy the book: The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner
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Guest Post: Childcare murders by Sara Dawkins

Childcare Murders

There are many murders of children nowadays but some of the scariest ones for parents are those committed by childcare workers. Nannies and babysitters hold a special place in society and are trusted to look after our children when we are at work. But what happens when something goes really wrong? In the news recently there have been two instances of childcare murders nearly back to back.

The first murder was allegedly committed by a nanny in New York City. Yoselyn Ortega, 50, was from the Dominican Republic and was charged with watching the three children of the Krim family while their mother, a pediatrician, and their father, an executive, went to work. On October 25, 2012 the mother, Marina Krim, took one of the children to a swimming lesson and while she was gone the nanny murdered the two other children and then tried to kill herself. The mother found the bodies of his two children stabbed to death in the bathroom and began screaming hysterically, prompting the neighbors to call the police. The nanny’s suicide attempt was unsuccessful and she is now being held for trial.

The second murder by a childcare worker was located near Chicago. In Naperville, Illinois on October 30, 2012 a Polish babysitter, Elzbieta Plackowska, 40, allegedly murdered her own son, 7, and the 5 year old girl she was babysitting. She was said to have forced the children to kneel and pray before she stabbed them to death, the boy over one hundred times.

These tragic deaths make parents think twice about going back to work and who they hire to watch over their children. Childcare murders are not a new thing by any means, but the disturbing nature of these murders and the fact that they occurred so close together really made an impact on families.

Author Bio
Sara is an active nanny as well as an active freelance writer. She is a frequent contributor of http://www.nannypro.com/.