u/OwnSituation1572

Mods I rewrote my original post

Christina Riggs was Born on September 2 1971 in Lawton Oklahoma but she grew up in Oklahoma City

She had a very troubled upbringing she was sexually abused by her stepbrother from ages 7 to 13 she was also abused by a neighbor due to the trauma she began drinking smoking cigarettes and marijuana. She also become sexually promiscuous partly due to her feeling ostracized due her weight she wrote that she "felt that no boy liked me because of my weight, so I became sexually promiscuous because I thought that was the only way I could have a boyfriend"

By age 16 Christina had become pregnant with a baby boy which she then gave up for adoption

After High School she become a licensed nurse working full time at a veterans hospital and part time as a home care nurse

After dating serval men Christina began a relationship with Timothy Thomson was stationed at a nearby Airforce base

In October of 1991 she discovered that she was pregnant Thomson at first refused to accept the Baby latter called Justin as his own and moving back to his native Minnesota

Christina than rekindled her relationship with sailor Jon Riggs who was home on leave and who accepted the unborn baby as his own.

Justin was born on June 7 1992 Christina later wrote about her fears with Justin

"As I held Justin in my arms and looked into his little face, I became so scared. Would I be a good Mom? Could I give him all he needed"

Jon moved in with her however their relationship was troubled from the start they married in July 1993 tragically Christina who was again pregnant had a miscarriage on the night of their wedding

When the tension in their marriage escalated she become depressed and suicidal exasperated by the birth control medication she was taking

Christina was prescribed Prozac however when she began to feel better she stopped taking it.

In the Spring of 1994 she became pregnant again with a baby girl and in December Shelby Alexis Riggs nicknamed "Sissie" was born

Christina later claimed to be working near the blast site near the Oklahoma city bombings which led to her developing PTSD however the prosecutor disputed this at trial

In the summer of 1995 the family moved to be closer to Christina's mother in Sherwood she got a job at Baptist hospital where her mother worked as a food service worker

The marriage between Christina and Jon ended when Jon punched Justin in the stomach so hard the he required medical attention

Christina then returned to Oklahoma city where her financial problems worsened

On November 4, 1997, Riggs gathered drugs she would need. She obtained the anti-depressant Elavil from her pharmacist, the painkiller morphine and the toxic potassium chloride from the hospital where she worked.

The heart-stopping potassium chloride is the same drug used in the lethal cocktail injected into condemned inmates in the death house.

Riggs gave the children a small amount of Elavil to put them to sleep. Then she placed each of the children in their beds.

About 10 p.m., she injected Justin with undiluted potassium chloride. But unless it is diluted, the drug causes burning and pain. Justin woke and cried out in terror.

Crying herself now, she injected her son with morphine. It had no effect, and he continued to wail. She then smothered the boy with a pillow.

Next, she moved to Shelby's bed.

Riggs decided to forego the potassium chloride injection because of the pain it had caused Justin. She suffocated her daughter with a pillow.

Riggs then placed the children side-by-side on her bed and covered them with a blanket.

She wrote suicide notes to her mother and her ex-husband Jon Riggs. She took 28 Elavil tablets, normally a lethal dose, and injected herself with enough undiluted potassium chloride to kill five people. The Elavil took effect, and she fell unconscious to the floor.

The undiluted potassium chloride burned a hole in her arm as big as a silver dollar as she lay in a stupor.

After Riggs failed to show up for work the next day, her mother telephoned her daughter's home but got no response. So she drove to her daughter's apartment and let herself in. She found the children dead, and thought Christina Riggs was dead too.

Her mother called 911 crying out that "My daughter and her babies are dead"

The police found Christina barely alive and after she stabilized she was put of trial for the murder of her two children

She pleading not guilty to to insanity however she was found guilty

During the penalty phase she forbad her lawyers to put on a defense after her sentencing she convinced the court to drop all of her appeals.

Christine was executed on May 2 2000 at 9:28 pm Her final words were "I love you My Babies"

Georgiy Gongadze, the editor of a Ukrainian internet newspaper which focused on corruption, disappeared on 16 September 2000. This produced growing pressure on Ukraine's president Kuchma, who promised to personally oversee the investigation into Gongadze's disappearance. On 3 November a decapitated corpse was discovered not far from Kyiv. As the body had been doused with acid, it was impossible to establish the persona of the deceased through fingerprint analysis, however friends and relatives identified the body as belonging to Gongadze.

Oleksandr Moroz, head of the opposition Socialist Party of Ukraine, publicly accused Kuchma of involvement in the abduction of Georgiy Gongadze and numerous other crimes, presenting records of the president's conversations with senior officials as evidence. Moroz named Kuchma's former bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, as the source of the records.^([1]) He played selected recordings of Kuchma's secret conversations for journalists, supposedly confirming the president's order to kidnap Gongadze. That and hundreds of other conversations were later published worldwide by Melnychenko.

On the recording, a person with a voice similar to president Kuchma can be heard discussing ways of getting rid of Gongadze, using crude language. No mention of possible murder is present in the tapes, but the speakers talk about kidnapping the journalist or transporting him to Chechnya.^([1])

President Kuchma denied that his voice could be heard in the recordings and accused his opponents of provocation, slander and attempt to trigger a political crisis.^([1]) Mass protests took place in Kyiv from 15 December 2000 to 9 March 2001. Opposition started a campaign of non-violent resistance called UBK ("Ukraine without Kuchma"), demanding Kuchma's resignation. Despite economic growth in the country, President Kuchma's public approval ratings fell below 9%.^([)^(citation needed)^(])

Dutch experts reportedly confirmed, that the tapes had no traces of editing or other alterations, but it was impossible to prove that the voice in them belonged to the president.^([1])

Advocates argue that excessive foul language is the proof of a deliberate montage of the recordings using extrinsic audio samples. However, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, said that the tapes are genuine, undistorted, unaltered, and not manipulated, based on the FBI Electronic Research Facility's analysis of the original recording device and the original recording. These analyses found that there were no unusual sounds which would indicate a tampering of the recording, that the recording was continuous with no breaks, and there was no manipulation of the digital files.^([3])^([4])

The prosecutor of Tarascha Raion, where Gongadze's body was found, was convicted in May 2003 for abuse of office and falsification of evidence. Serhiy Obozov was found guilty of forging documents and negligence in the investigation and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, he was immediately released due to a provision of Ukraine's amnesty laws.^([25])

In June 2004, the government claimed that a convicted gangster identified only as "K" had confessed to Gongadze's murder, although there was no independent confirmation of the claim. The ongoing investigation received a setback when a key witness died of spinal injuries apparently sustained while in police custody.^([26])

Gongadze's death became a major issue in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, in which the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko pledged to solve the case if he became president. Yushchenko did become president following the subsequent Orange Revolution and immediately launched a new investigation, replacing the Prosecutor-General.

On 1 March 2005, President Viktor Yushchenko announced that the journalist's suspected killers had been arrested.^([28]) Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun announced the following day that the case had been solved, telling Ukrainian television that Gongadze had been strangled by employees of the Interior Ministry. Two of the alleged killers were said to be senior policemen working for the Interior Ministry's Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID).^([29]) Former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, one of those recorded with Leonid Kuchma in the Cassette Scandal, was also said to be under investigation. The two police colonels accused of the killing have been detained and a third senior policeman, identified as CID commander Oleksiy Pukach, was being sought on an international arrest warrant.

On 4 March, Kravchenko was found dead in a dacha in the elite residential area of Koncha-Zaspa, outside Kyiv. He had died from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, though some speculated that he might have been assassinated to prevent him from testifying as a witness. Hryhory Omelchenko, who chaired the parliamentary committee that investigated the Gongadze case, told the New York Times that Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to abduct Gongadze on President Kuchma's orders. Kuchma himself has denied this allegation but has since been interviewed by investigators. Kravchenko left an alleged suicide note: "My dear ones, I am not guilty of anything. Forgive me, for I became a victim of the political intrigues of President Kuchma and his entourage. I am leaving you with a clear conscience, farewell."^([4])

In April or May 2005, Piskun released more details of the ongoing investigation. He told the press that after Gongadze was murdered, a second group disinterred him and re-buried him where he was eventually found, in the constituency of Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz. According to Piskun, the aim was to undermine the government (led by Viktor Yushchenko when he was still Prime Minister). The second group was part of or allied with the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (SDPUo), a pro-oligarch party which had been hit hard by Yushchenko's crackdown on corruption and therefore wanted to see his government toppled. According to the journal Ukraina Moloda (14 April 2005), the SDPUo moved Gongadze's body to discredit President Leonid Kuchma and force early elections, which could have led to party leader Viktor Medvedchuk succeeding Kuchma.^([)^(citation needed)^(])

The trial against three former policemen, Valeriy Kostenko, Mykola Protasov and Oleksandr Popovych,^([10]) who had been charged with the killing of Gongadze, began on 9 January 2006. The other main suspect, ex-police officer, Oleksiy Pukach was believed to have fled abroad and therefore charged but not on trial. No-one had been charged for ordering the murder. On the day the trial started Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze commented on the fact that government officials had yet to be punished for organising Gongadze's murder, saying, "They are known and they should be punished, just the same as those who will be sitting in the dock today".^([7])

In mid-March 2008, the three former police officers were sentenced to prison for the murder of Gongadze. Mykola Protasov was given a sentence of 13 years, while Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych were each handed 12-year terms. But so far the investigations have failed to show who ordered the murder.^([8])

On 22 July 2009, Oleksiy Pukach, one of the chief suspects, was arrested in Zhytomyr Oblast.^([30])^([31]) The former chief of the main criminal investigation department at the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's foreign surveillance unit^([5]) had lived in the house of Lidia Zagorulko who had told her neighbours that Pukach was the brother of her dead husband and that he was a former sea captain.^([32]) Pukach had lived there with his real second name and original documents.^([33]) At first it was reported and that he had implicated senior political figures in the murder^([34]) and was ready to show the place where the journalist's head was hidden, but this was denied two days after his arrest by his lawyer.^([35]) According to the lawyer, Pukach was not supposed to provide this information to the investigators.^([35]) Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvedko refused to comment whether Pukach named those who ordered the murder or not, saying a "secret investigation" was underway.^([5])

On 14 September 2010, Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General issued a statement stating that prosecutors had concluded that former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to carry out the murder, and stating that Pukach had confessed to the murder.^([48]) According to Gongadze's widow, Myroslava Gongadze, "Kravchenko had had no grounds for such actions"; she believed that several people ordered the killing of the journalist.^([49]) According to Georgiy Gongadze's mother, Olesya, the statement was an attempt by the Prosecutor-General's office to excuse itself for its inactivity.^([42]) On 16 September 2010, Lytvyn asserted that the investigation into the murder of Gongadze confirmed his innocence in this crime.^([50])

Pukach's trial, on allegations he strangled and beheaded Gongadze, began on 7 July 2011. It was closed to the public.^([51])^([52]) On 30 August 2011, Pukach claimed that Kuchma was the one who ordered the murder.^([53]) During the trial he also alleged that Lytvyn ordered the murder of Gongadze.^([52])

On 29 January 2013, Pukach was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv.^([52]) Oleksiy Pukach also was stripped of his rank "General of Militsiya".^([52]) The court ruled Pukach had murdered the journalist on orders from Kravchenko, who was seeking a career promotion.^([52])

The Prosecutor-General's Office cancelled its resolution to deny opening of criminal cases against former President Leonid Kuchma and other politicians within the Gongadze case on 9 October 2010.^([56])

On 24 March 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kuchma with involvement in the murder.^([57]) The decision prompted mixed reaction among the public. Former Prime Minister and the opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko argued that Kuchma's arrest was no more than a PR stunt designed to distract people from their economic woes and prop up President Viktor Yanukovych's sagging popularity.^([57]) Another theory was that Yanukovych was driven by the desire for revenge on Kuchma, who often humiliated Yanukovych and refused to use force to stop the Orange Revolution in 2004.^([57]) Political analysts suggested that Yanukovych's "display of justice" could also be aimed at winning credit from the West, which had criticised him for authoritarian measures.^([57])

A Ukrainian district court ordered prosecutors to drop criminal charges against Kuchma on 14 December 2011 on grounds that evidence linking him to the murder of Gongadze was insufficient.^([58]) The court rejected Melnychenko's recordings as evidence.^([54]) Myroslava Gongadze appealed against this decision one week later.^([59])^([60])

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

The justices, by a 6-3 vote, granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who had urged them to undo a federal appeals court decision that overturned the verdict. The three liberal justices dissented.

Prosecutors had been preparing to try the man, Pedro Hernandez, for a third time. His first trial ended in a mistrial.

The unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed Hernandez’ murder and kidnapping conviction in the second trial because of how the judge had answered a question from jurors.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had called the basis for overturning the conviction “a slender reed” that essentially ignored a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses.

The justices agreed, in an unsigned opinion, that federal courts should not second-guess state courts under a 1996 federal law that was intended to reduce federal court oversight of state criminal trials.

“The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,” the justices wrote.

Hernandez, 64, has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

Bragg hailed the high court’s decision. “It’s impossible to imagine the pain of losing a child, waiting so long for justice and having to brace for more proceedings,” Bragg, a Democrat, said at a news conference on an unrelated issue, adding that he hoped the Patz family gained some peace of mind from the high court’s ruling.

A message seeking comment was sent to Etan’s father.

Hernandez’ lawyers said they were “terribly disappointed” by the ruling. “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” attorneys Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier said.

Hernandez made statements to confidants years ago about having killed a child or young man in New York, and he later told police he’d killed Etan. His lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate. They emphasized that his admission to police came after detectives queried him for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice.

Etan vanished while walking to his downtown Manhattan school bus stop on May 25, 1979. Hernandez worked at a nearby convenience shop at the time, but the Maple Shade, New Jersey, resident didn’t become a suspect until 2012.

Etan was among the first missing children ever to appear on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.

Hernandez already has been tried twice. A jury deadlocked in 2015, and then a different panel of jurors convicted him at a 2017 retrial.

During deliberations, the 2017 jurors asked a complicated question: If they decided Hernandez didn’t confess voluntarily when he hadn’t been read his rights yet, must they disregard his other confessions? The then-judge responded simply, “the answer is no.” The jury went on to convict.In overturning that verdict, the appeals court said the jury’s question should have gotten a more fulsome answer, including the possibility of discounting all the confessions.

Hernandez’ retrial had been expected to start in September, and his lawyers and prosecutors were due to give the trial judge a status update next week.

Asked about next steps, Bragg said prosecutors would await guidance from appellate judges and the state trial court that has handled the case.