fbpx

True Crime Reporter™ Podcast

  • About
  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • News Team
  • Making News
  • Follow Podcast
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Archives for Robert Riggs

November 11, 2020 By Robert Riggs 17 Comments

Prisoners Stand To Receive Upwards of $2.6 Billion In Stimulus Payments

November 11, 2020 By Robert Riggs – Dallas, Texas

Millions of dollars in $1200 stimulus checks intended for economic relief for the COVID-19 pandemic are flowing into prisoners’ accounts inside prisons and jails across the country.

The stimulus payments could total as much as 2.76 billion dollars if all of the people incarcerated apply and qualify for the pandemic aid which is likely under the rules.

A Georgia prison warden not authorized to speak publically complained that the sudden windfall is fueling the supply of drugs and contraband cell phones inside prisons.  Flush with cash, inmates are paying their associates on the outside to use drones to fly contraband over the walls of prisons shut down by the coronavirus. 

A prison investigator said he was shocked to find that an inmate who had already served twenty years of a life sentence had received a $1200 stimulus check. The stimulus aid has caused a shift in the balance of power between prison gangs according to the investigator who was not permitted to speak on the record.

Prisoner advocacy groups across the country are assisting prisoners in filing claims.

For example, the Mississippi Center For Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center in partnership with Black Lives Matter describes on the MCJ website that it mailed almost 18,000 CARES Act packets–each containing all relevant instructions and Form 1040 with a stamped return envelope to inmates.

A sample form provides step-by-step instructions on how to file for a $1200 stimulus check. 

The 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons are probably eligible to submit a “Non-Filer” claim to the IRS and will automatically receive $1200 stimulus checks.

Parnell McNamara the Sheriff of McLennan County, Texas says prisoners in his Waco jail are having their $1200 stimulus checks sent to family members.

“A lot of hardcore career criminals are receiving money intended for hard-working people. That they should receive one dime is a travesty,” said McNamara.

The IRS has sent thousands of forms to the Texas prison system for its 122-thousand inmates to claim $1200 stimulus checks under the CARES Act.  The prison system recently put up IRS posters instructing inmates on how to apply for economic relief for the COVID-19 pandemic.

This scene is playing out in state prisons and jails across the nation in the wake of a federal court order in October for the IRS to make the stimulus payments available to 2.3 million incarcerated prisoners. 

Less than ten stimulus checks have arrived at Texas prisons according to Jeremy Desel the Director of Communications for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. 

Desel says it is the department’s policy to first confirm that the IRS checks are valid before depositing the money into an inmate’s commissary trust fund account. Texas inmates use the money to purchase snacks, soft drinks, ice cream, and toiletries not provided by the prison system. Inmates also have the option of having the checks sent to family members.

The 2-trillion dollar Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or the CARES Act hastily passed by Congress on March 27 did not specifically ban payments to prisoners. The 883-page bill provided broad eligibility to get one-time payments for financial relief into people’s pockets as fast as possible. 

In May an internal auditor for the IRS discovered that the agency had automatically issued payments to prisoners. A federal report in June found that the government had paid $100 million in stimulus money to about 85,000 prisoners. The government demanded repayment and some federal prisons intercepted and returned stimulus checks.

A class-action lawsuit was filed in California on behalf of incarcerated individuals in local, state, and federal facilities that challenged the IRS actions.

A district court in San Francisco agreed, finding the IRS’s policy of withholding stimulus payments “arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with the law.” 

On October 14, 2020, Chief Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of the Northern District of California found the IRS’s policy of withholding stimulus payments “arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with the law.”  Judge Hamilton ordered Treasury and the IRS to send the relief money. Read a copy of the Judge’s order.

Inmates who receive stimulus checks in error do not have to return those checks because Congress did not include a “clawback” provision in the CARES Act.

Filed Under: Prison

March 15, 2020 By Robert Riggs Leave a Comment

Inside The Mind Of A Psychopath – Kenneth Allen McDuff

The rotor blades of a low flying helicopter beat the Virginia sky with the distinctive thumping sound of Apocalypse Now. Gunfire cracks from all corners of the FBI’s sprawling Quantico Training Academy located south of the nation’s capital in Virginia.  

Agents of the elite Hostage Rescue Team clad in body armor, helmets, and goggles, step from the helicopter’s skids while precisely placing rounds into targets, as they practice rescuing a downed team member.

At another corner of the Academy on a mock Midwestern-style main street dubbed “Hogan’s Alley” agent trainees converge on a mock hotel where a violent fugitive is holed up.  Role-playing bad guys fire a volley of 9mm paintball rounds at the agent trainees from their handguns.

And at another point of the compass at the Academy, FBI agents assigned to the Hazardous Materials Response Unit teams don “moon suits” to practice the legal protocols of collecting forensic evidence from the site of a weapon of mass destruction attack. 

In sharp contrast to the frenetic training, a discreetly located Academy building houses the Behavioral Analysis Unit, which is commonly referred to as the “profilers”.  Mindhunter the Netflix TV series is a fictional account of how FBI Agent John E. Douglas helped found the unit to figure out how serial killers think.

In June 2006 I met Supervising Special Agent Mary Ellen O’Toole as she quietly and methodically unraveled clues that might help local detectives catch psychopaths who had committed monstrous crimes. 

O’Toole, who closely resembles the actor Ann Margaret, matched wits face-to-face with violent psychopaths throughout her career. O’Toole says a hallmark personality trait of the disorder is, “that lack of empathy for other people, that lack of concern for other people and what they are going through as a result of your actions. For a psychopath, they don’t have a sense of hurting of others, being concerned about what others think, they just don’t have it.”

O’Toole’s work often focused on psychopathic serial killers, child abductors, and sex offenders who have intertwined sex and violence, “that is a deadly combination. That’s a frightening combination,” she explains.

Serial Killer Kenneth Allen McDuff
Serial Killer Kenneth Allen McDuff

Indeed, serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff, who murdered an estimated two dozen young women in Central Texas during the mid-1990’s, used a euphemism of “using them up” to describe his killings. 

The six-foot-four inch McDuff would take his victims to the brink of death and revive them to resume his sadistic sexual tortures.  McDuff’s name became synonymous with a revolving door prison system and triggered a major overhaul of the penal code in Texas.

Most state parole boards do not use the recognized tests to determine if an inmate is a psychopath before they vote to release an offender.  O’Toole says it’s only a matter of time until a psychopath commits a new crime.

 “It’s a very short period of time before he or she will re-offend and re-offend in a violent way. Some of the current research indicates that psychopathic sex offenders who undergo prison treatment programs are actually worse when they are released,” she says.  

Psychopaths can learn how to perfect their crimes from prison therapy programs says O’Toole. “Psychopathy is a personality disorder. It does not lend itself to treatment or to rehabilitation. So if you think you can help someone become a non-psychopath that’s very naive.”

Air Force Cadet David Graham and his fiancée Naval Midshipman Diane Zamora appear to have been a marriage of psychopaths. The Texas couple murdered a former high school classmate in a twisted plot for Graham to prove his love for Zamora.  Both are now serving life sentences in the Texas prison system for capital murder. 

In a display typical of the cold-hearted grandiosity of psychopaths, Graham believes that after taking college courses in prison that he could be a poster boy for rehabilitation, “I think if I got out today I would be the ultimate example of respect of life. I would probably be the best way to learn why to cherish life and why not to take a life.”

There are an estimated two million psychopaths in North America.  It’s crucial that people recognized the traits of a psychopath who may be very close to them in personal and work relationships.  Some of the traits resemble the personalities of celebrities and politicians, but O’Toole stresses that it requires an expert analysis.

Besides a lack of conscience, O’Toole says a psychopath is also manipulative, self-centered, extremely narcissistic, glib, charming, and impulsive. She also notes that they are unable to bond in relationships, live life on the edge, blame others for their mistakes; and lead a parasitic life style, “whether they are a criminal, or they are your boss, or whatever aspect, or they are your husband, they can really wreck havoc in people’s lives.” 

Most people mistakenly believe that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts. O’Toole warns that there are white collar psychopaths who may head corporations or governments, “they can go in and create a great deal of confusion, tumultuousness, and have no regard if the company or the country implodes on itself because their primary interest is on themselves.”

O’Toole says that if you are worried that you may be a psychopath, then you are not. During a prison interview, O’Toole says an inmate gave a very good definition of what a psychopath is, and said he felt being one was a good thing.

 “People who have these traits view these traits as allowing them to do special things, Allowing them to live on the edge. Allowing them to get away with things. Because a conscience really limits you.  You are constrained because of your emotions. A psychopath does not have those kinds of constraints.”

Filed Under: Serial Killer

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • Next Page »

JOIN OUR TRUE CRIME COMMUNITY

Get notified about new episodes and exclusive access to free information.

Search

Recent Tweets

There are no recent tweets.

View more tweets

Recent Blog Post

Othram DNA Lab In Texas Helps Solve 29-Year-Old Murder Case

How Forensic Genetic Genealogy Found Distant Relative Of Killer 14-year Stephanie Anne Isaacson left her father’s apartment in North Las Vegas early on the morning of June 1, 1989. She walked … Continue Reading

Recent Episodes

Idaho Arrest Affidavit Traces Path Of Suspected Killer of 4 Students

True Crime Reporter® Answers Questions About Murder Mysteries

Reporter Robert Riggs Answers Questions About Serial Killers

Search

Copyright © 2023 True Crime Reporter

Sitemap · Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions · Disclaimer · Cookies Policy

Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}