EXCLUSIVE Overlooked detail in Bryan Kohberger's confession REVEALS chilling link to another repulsive killer who targeted female college students
His icy stare and one-word responses to the judge revealed very little. But now his signature – stiff and barely legible – afixed to his confession has been made public and it says far more about the madman's mental state and character than was previously known, says graphologist Tracey Trussell.
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The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini is convicted of murder in the 2021 shootings of his wife's parents
Retired MLB pitcher Daniel Serafini has been convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shootings of his wife's parents during a burglary at their home four years ago near Lake Tahoe in California. A Placer County jury on Monday found the 51-year-old guilty of killing his father-in-law, Gary Spohr, and severely wounding his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood, on June 5, 2021, at their home on the lake's west shore. Wood received extensive rehabilitation but died a year after the shooting. Serafini also was convicted of first-degree burglary. Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller, who prosecuted the case, told jurors that Serafini hated his wife's wealthy parents and was heard saying he was willing to pay $20,000 to have them killed, the Sacramento Bee reported. A left-hander, Serafini was drafted in 1992 by the Minnesota Twins. He also played for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies. The jury was shown transcripts of angry emails and text messages between Serafini and his in-laws in which they were involved in a heated, ongoing dispute over a $1.3 million loan to help fund his wife's fledgling horse ranch business, the Bee reported. Defense attorney David Dratman argued that there was no physical evidence linking Serafini to the crime scene, noting that security camera footage showed a masked intruder entering the couple's home who appeared to be younger with a smaller body frame than the former baseball player. Dratman told the jury that although his client had a rocky relationship with his in-laws, the couple was generous with Serafini and his wife, loaning them money and treating them to lavish vacations. 'Does that provide a motive for murder? That's killing the golden goose,' Dratman said in his closing argument. Dratman declined to comment about the verdict. Serafini faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced Aug. 18.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Family of US citizen beaten to death by Israeli settlers calls on Trump administration to prosecute killers
Relatives of Sayfollah Musallet, a US citizen from Florida beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, are calling for the Trump administration to arrest and prosecute those responsible for his killing. The 20-year-old from Tampa was visiting his family in an area near Ramallah, and died last week trying to protect their farm from invaders, they said at an emotional press conference in Florida on Monday afternoon. His uncle Hasem Musallet paid tribute to the 'loving, respectful' boy who loved baseball and had just opened an ice-cream business in Tampa with several of his cousins. He decried what the family saw as indifference from the US government over the murder of one of its citizens. 'Somebody needs to be held accountable,' he said. 'He wanted to be a businessman ever since he was young. He was planning on expanding, finding a wife, having a family. That was his dream but it was cut short at 20 years old, cut short unjustly.' Musallet was beaten with clubs and bats, and died in the same attack that killed a 23-year-old Palestinian man. Razek Hussein al-Shalabi was shot and left to bleed to death, the Palestinian health ministry said. Hasem Musallet said the settlers prevented ambulances from reaching the injured men, and that a brother watched Sayfollah take his last breath. Hiba Rahim, deputy executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), said Musallet's family wanted Donald Trump, and the departments of justice and state, to prosecute his killers under US law. She also condemned a statement from the state department that said it had no comment on Musallet's death 'out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones during this difficult time'. Rahim said: 'We're not asking, and his family is not asking for silence. We're asking for accountability. 'If Sayfollah was killed by anyone else or in another country, there would already be investigations, there would already be attempts for arrest, and calls for arrest and outrage in Washington. 'Where is the outrage from our government? Where is the accountability?' Hasem Musallet broke down in tears as he remembered his nephew as 'just a very rare soul' who would help anybody in need. He said Musallet was on a trip with family members from Florida, and enjoying time in the mountains and barbecuing with friends in the West Bank in the days before his death. 'He was very loving, caring. Just like any other 20-year-old he would go out with his friends after work, he'd watch comedy, he'd go out driving, he'd go to the beach. He would come to my house always, and come to his grandmother and give her a hug and kiss her hand,' Hasem said. Rahim dismissed an Israel Defense Forces account of Musallet's killing suggesting there was an altercation between groups of settlers and Palestinians. 'There were no clashes. These are the same lies we hear every time a guilty party is guilty of monstrous activity like what we saw with Sayfollah's death,' she said. 'This is not an isolated tragedy. There's a devastating pattern of Americans being killed in Israel, brutalized and murdered with impunity by Israeli forces and settlers.' Musallet's death is part of a growing wave of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the territory and injured at least 9,000 since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
How the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files led to a Maga meltdown
The release of the 'Epstein client list' has long been the holy grail for the Maga movement. Supposedly, this list, once released, would incriminate a veritable who's who of liberal elites complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex-trafficking operation and expose the moral rot at the heart of the Democrat establishment. The mystery surrounding the Epstein files also became a vehicle for QAnon conspiracy theorists to push their ideas about a 'deep state' cover-up of a network of global pedophiles into the broader tent of the Maga movement. During his campaign, Donald Trump promised on several occasions to declassify the Epstein files, which would include the 'list'. Before they joined the government, Trump's FBI chief Kash Patel and deputy FBI chief Dan Bongino, spent years on podcasts and TV appearances winking at QAnon and Epstein conspiracy theorists and demanding the files' release, even suggesting that the Biden administration was withholding them to protect its own. Then, on the heels of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the justice department quietly dropped a bombshell in the form of a memo. A 'systematic review' of the Epstein files by justice department officials 'revealed no incriminating 'client list',' the memo stated, nor did they find evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful figures. The memo also affirmed that Epstein died by suicide in his Brooklyn jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Since the memo's release, Maga has been in turmoil – and some of Trump's most loyal foot soldiers have been in open revolt against his administration, accusing it as now being part of a cover-up and calling for attorney general Pam Bondi's resignation over her handling of the Epstein files. On Truth Social, Trump offered a stern rebuke to his detractors, claiming that the Epstein files were actually a hoax, because they were written by 'Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.' But not everyone's buying it. 'This is the worst response I've ever seen from President Trump,' said rightwing commentator Benny Johnson. Disgraced former general Michael Flynn, considered a hero by the QAnon movement, wrote: '@realdonaldtrump please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR IS NOT GOING AWAY.' Rightwing commentator Matt Walsh called Trump's statement 'extremely obtuse', adding: 'We don't accept obvious bullshit from our political leaders.' Maga's obsession with the Epstein files is an indication of how the core ideas associated with the fringe QAnon conspiracy – that a shadowy cabal of government elites working to cover up a global child sex-trafficking operation – have taken root in the broader pro-Trump movement. QAnon took a long tradition of antisemitic, 'deep state' and 'satanic panic' conspiracy theories, put them on steroids with a pro-Trump flavor, and assigned the enigmatic Q, supposedly a government official with top secret clearance and a penchant for posting on 8chan, at the helm of the movement. 'The unique thing about QAnon is that you had an anonymous poster on an anonymous chatroom putting out clues for people to try to solve,' said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami specializing in the study of conspiracy theories. When QAnon emerged in 2017, allegations against Epstein had been swirling for over a decade. Epstein's arrest in 2019 on federal charges was a boon for QAnon. The movement quickly sought to incorporate information about the case into their propaganda. The case also surfaced a trove of digital media that QAnon sleuths could pore over looking for 'clues' – such as photographs of Epstein with various public figures (including many with Trump), Epstein's flight logs and aerial images of his private island. 'Epstein engaged in crimes, but I think there's a whole fantasy lore surrounding it that goes far beyond any available evidence,' said Uscinski. Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, told the Guardian that as 'QAnon and Maga have become increasingly intertwined in recent years, we have seen the embrace of increasingly fringe conspiracies and extremist narratives like 'Pizzagate' and 'Save the Children' by mainstream political figures.' These narratives turned out to be useful for Trump and his allies, who harnessed simmering suspicion of establishment figures and cast the former reality star as the only person brave enough to take on 'the deep state'. 'As Trump and other prominent Republican figures amplified QAnon content and used it as a political cudgel against Democratic politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they were providing legitimacy and approval to the very same conspiracy theorists who are now decrying Pam Bondi and the justice department,' said Lewis. Tensions over the Epstein files have been building since February, when Bondi went on Fox News and said Epstein's client list was sitting on her desk 'right now for review.' A week later, at a press event at the White House, Bondi handed out binders that she promised contained 'declassified' Epstein records to two dozen Maga influencers present. The influencers quickly realized there was basically no new information in them. In response to the ensuing backlash, Bondi said that the FBI had failed to disclose a tranche of Epstein files, and that she'd ordered Patel to compile them. Months later, in June, Elon Musk – amid the dramatic feud with his former friend Trump – claimed without evidence that the reason the Epstein files hadn't been released in full was because the president was implicated in them. (Musk has since deleted the post). The scale of the current Maga meltdown 'certainly shows the significance of Epstein conspiracies within the broader QAnon pantheon', said Lewis, and 'should lay bare just how deeply the disease of the QAnon movement has seeped into a Republican Party which has welcomed its most conspiratorial, antisemitic, reactionary fringe into Congress and the Executive Branch with open arms.' The backlash Trump is facing is a leopards-eating-faces moment for the administration. 'This was a conspiracy that Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and these Maga extremists have been fanning the flames of for the last several years, and now the chickens are coming home to roost,' House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday. Uscinski noted that's 'the interesting thing that happens when you use conspiracy theories to get into power'. 'Because conspiracy theories should be aimed at the people in power, right? They accuse powerful people of doing something wicked behind the scenes,' he added. In Trump's case, he 'spent the last 10 years building a coalition of largely conspiracy-minded people in the US', said Uscinski. 'So in order for him to keep these people engaged and donating and going to his speeches, and voting for him and voting for Republicans, he has to keep pressing the conspiracy theories.' But experts are skeptical that this current Maga meltdown will have any lasting impact. Trump's overall approval rating hasn't fluctuated dramatically over the past week. In fact, it's almost at exactly the same place it was at the same point in his first administration. '[Trump's supporters] are disgruntled, they're upset and they're going to express that on social media. But they're not going to abandon him, because he's the only game in town for them,' said Uscinski. He compared the current moment to the backlash Trump faced back in 2021. After courting favor from anti-vaxxers, Trump was booed when he announced during a live Bill O'Reilly interview that he'd received his Covid-19 booster shot and urged Americans to get theirs. Despite the importance of the Epstein files to the Maga and QAnon movements, Lewis thinks that 'it's unlikely this outrage will last'. 'The culture war will move on to its next target … and the rage machine will follow with conspiracies and vitriol' said Lewis. 'It's much easier to be angry at an immigrant than to wonder whether you've been lied to for the last eight years.
