By Arianna Thome, Project Reporter
Monday, December 28, 2020
Clearing DNA Backlog Could Be Key In Solving Cases
Editor's Note: Story Updated Below due to Illinois State Police report in
By Mallory Renee Nickelson
They wait for weeks, months, years for their perpetrators to be arrested. They wait while living in fear and full of anxiety as their perpetrator walks free. Their families wait with no closure and an alleged murderer or rapist of their loved one goes free. They wait, knowing and fearing the potential that a murderer or rapist could kill or sexually assault someone again while their DNA is being processed. They wait, knowing justice may never come.
In January 2020, nearly three years after the 2017 brutal murder of Diamond Turner, 21, an investigation led to the arrest of Arthur Hilliard, a man long identified as a suspect in the case. It was widely reported that DNA processing was delayed in the case, which resulted in Hilliard’s release.
During this waiting period and his release, Hilliard pleaded guilty to stabbing to death another woman, identified by police as Andra Williams, 52. It was finally the results of DNA, police officials said that led to the arrest of Hilliard, then 52, for Turner’s slaying for which he has been charged with first-degree murder.
A Safety Net Seeks to Save Trafficked Women
By Kristin McKee
Jennifer Gaines, a survivor advocate at Breaking Free, was pampered by her first trafficker before being sold to his friends at 14. Tom Jones, founder and director of The H.O.P.E. Project, used prostitution to network after being in the Navy for four years. Santiago Navarro, a restaurant worker in San Diego, had his immigration on the line by a woman named Betty while doing labor work for her.
These are just some of the survivor stories told through the World Without Exploitation organization that make human trafficking a kaleidoscopic nightmare.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline defines human trafficking as “the business of stealing freedom for profit.” The National Hotline adds that it is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry that affects 24.9 million people around the world.
Since 2007, the hotline has received 246,267 contacts and 56,504 reports of distinct human trafficking situations. The most recent data was recorded in June 2019 with 23,784 contacts and 4,585 reports from the beginning of that year up to the end of June. However, the hotline emphasizes that this data does not reflect the totality of human trafficking as many cases go unreported.
Saturday, December 26, 2020
The Dreamcatcher Foundation, On the Street, Reaching One Woman at A Time
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| Brenda Myers-Powell, co-founder of the Dreamcatcher Foundation |
By Mallory Renee Nickelson
At just 14, Brenda Myers-Powell was a victim of human trafficking. For 25 years, she was on the streets. Not just any streets, but Chicago’s meanest streets where crime, drugs and murder consume full grown women and girls alike, consigning them to alleys and gutters in varying states of inebriation, often with no hope.
Myers-Powell knows firsthand the perils of the streets. She was strangled before, she says. Shot. She was addicted to drugs. But she wanted something better, Myers-Powell, 62, recalled in an interview.
Today, as co-founder of the Dreamcatcher Foundation established in 2007, she is an advocate for girls and women who find themselves in the streets and lifestyle that once held her hostage.
“I am an advocate to the ladies, to their families because I don’t just deal with the ladies,” Myers-Powell said. “I deal with the families. This was me. This used to be me. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still them.”
Into the Mind of A Serial Killer
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| James Garbarino, psychological expert witness in murder cases and professor of psychology at Loyola University and author of "Listening to Killers" |
London’s Jack the Ripper targeted women who worked as prostitutes, mercilessly cutting his victim’s throat and mutilating their bodies in the late 1800s. The Boston Strangler is believed to have murdered at least 11 women in Boston between 1962 and 1964. They were among the world’s most infamous serial killers.
But Chicago is not immune nor without its own horrid history of serial killings. Consider H.H. Holmes, a mustachioed serial killer who murdered and mutilated nine women, possibly more, lured into his so-called hotel on Chicago’s South Side during the 1893 World’s Fair. The hotel, later dubbed the “Murder Castle” was the grisly scene of Holmes’ butchery, though historical accounts, some of them said to be exaggerated, place the number of Holmes’ victims as high as 200.
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