Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Alert 04.19.23

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

New boyfriend kills mother, then goes after her son. Mother strangles her 11-year-old and drives into the ocean.  For more crime and justice news go to crimeonline.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace. Breaking crime news now, Letitia Martinez-Cosman last seen with a date at a Seattle Mariners game. The date, Brett Glitchell, tells Martinez' disabled adult son, Patrick Cosman, that mom was in an accident, but he's happy to take Cosman to her. Glitchell, driving Martinez' car, instead takes Cosman to a remote area and tries to suffocate him. Cosman escapes. Primal Lines' John Limley. After the attempted kidnapping, Martinez's car is found burning. Martinez sent a selfie with Glitchell to her family. The couple had met at a local Costco. Glitchell later robbed $10,000 in jewelry from the store

while wearing the same clothes he had on in Martinez's photo. Glitchell was arrested there and connected to Cosman's kidnapping by scratches and bite marks on his hands. Washington cops recover the mom, Letitia Martinez's body in the same area where Cosman is found. Glitchell now facing murder, attempted murder, and kidnapping charges. Ruth DiRienzo Whitehead lets her 11-year-old son sleep with her after a rough day. The next morning, her husband finds the door locked. When he goes in,

he finds their son, 11 years old, strangled, dead, his wife gone. DiRienzo Whitehead used a belt to strangle the little boy to death, then left home in her car. DiRienzo Whitehead used a belt to strangle the little boy to death, then left home in her car. DeRienzo Whitehead drove to a New Jersey beach and into the ocean until the car was inoperable, then walked to a nearby property the family owned where she was arrested. DeRienzo Whitehead found 100 miles away, now awaiting extradition, charged with murder. More crime and justice news after this. Now with the latest crime and justice breaking news, Crime Online's John Limley. An 84-year-old white man in Kansas City, Missouri,

has been charged with first-degree assault for shooting a black teen who mistakenly went to the man's home to pick up his younger brothers. Prosecuting attorney Zachary Thompson says there was a, quote, racial component when Andrew Lester twice shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who is recovering at home after being released from the hospital. But nothing in the charging document says the shooting was racially motivated. The shooting outraged many in Kansas City and across the country. Civic and political leaders, including President Joe Biden, demanded justice.

Some, including lawyers for Yorle, pressed the racial dimensions of the case. Yorle, an honors student and Allstate band member, was supposed to pick up his two younger brothers when he approached the wrong house at roughly 10 p.m. April 13th. Lester came to the door and shot Jarl in the forehead, then shot him again in the right arm. The probable cause statement says no words were exchanged before the shooting, but afterward, as Jarl stood up to run, he heard Lester yell, quote, don't come around here. The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's second-degree murder conviction in the killing of George Floyd and let his 22-and-a-half-year sentence remain in place.

For more, we turn to Sydney Sumner with Crime Online. Chauvin's attorney has asked the appeals court to throw out the ex-officer's convictions for a long list of reasons, including the massive pretrial publicity. He also argued that legal and procedural errors deprived Chauvin of a fair trial. But the three-judge panel sided with prosecutors who said Chauvin got a fair trial and just sentence. Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, used his knee to pin the black man's neck to the ground for nine and a half minutes. A bystander video captured Floyd's fading cries of, I can't breathe. Floyd's death touched off protests around the world,

some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism. Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years after jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin later pleaded guilty to a separate federal civil rights charge and was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison, which he is now serving in Arizona, concurrent with his state sentence. A Mississippi sheriff says in a new court filing that there's no point in serving an arrest warrant on a white woman in the 1955 kidnapping

that led to the lynching of black teenager Emmett Till because last year a grand jury decided not to indict the woman. Till's kidnapping and killing became a catalyst for the civil rights movement when his mother insisted on an open casket funeral in their hometown of Chicago after his brutalized body was pulled from a river in Mississippi. Jet Magazine published photos. The Mississippi arrest warrant for Mrs. Roy Bryant was issued shortly after Till's death but was never served on the white woman who has since remarried and is now known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. Last June, a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found the unserved warrant. In July, the Office of Mississippi Attorney General Len Fitch said

there was no new evidence to pursue a criminal case against Donham. In August, a district attorney said a Leflore County grand jury declined to indict Donham. A second teenager has been charged with kidnapping several migrants and allegedly holding them captive for several days at a Houston hotel before they were rescued by FBI agents during a confrontation that ended with the fatal shooting of another suspect. Once again, Crime Online's Sydney Sumner. 17-year-old Demarcus Celestine was charged with three counts of aggravated kidnapping, according to court records. His arrest was made public on Monday by a tweet from the FBI's Houston office, which said Celestine had been arrested by FBI agents

and the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston. Celestine, who appeared in court Monday, remained jailed on bonds totaling $300,000. Authorities allege the kidnapping began on March 18th in neighboring Waller County when three migrants who had been traveling on Interstate 10 were stopped and forced from a vehicle. Authorities also say that the migrant's driver might have called 911

and informed the Waller County Sheriff's Office about the kidnapping. The Sheriff's Office later worked with the FBI to find the migrants. K-9 units perform a routine drug search at an Alabama high school, checking students' lockers and cars, but the only alert is on a van owned by the school board. Teacher Rodney Waddell uses the car to drive students to school in the morning. Waddell fails the sobriety test and cops find drugs in his personal car.

Well, he's now charged with public intoxication and reckless endangerment. For the latest crime and justice news, go to crimeonline.com. For This Crime Alert, I'm Nancy Grace. This is an iHeart Podcast.