California
Judge allows San Diego high school gunman to be resentenced after 23 years in prison
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge granted a request Tuesday by the gunman in a 2001 shooting at a San Diego high school to be resentenced, potentially allowing him to be freed after 23 years in prison.
Charles Williams, who was 15 at the time, pleaded guilty to killing two students and injuring 13 others after opening fire with his father’s revolver at Santana High School on March 5, 2001. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
The judge’s decision Tuesday means Williams’ case will be sent to juvenile court and lead to his immediate release from prison without parole supervision or evaluation, according to San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office.
Prosecutors will challenge the ruling in the appellate court to try to stop his release, the office said.
“As prosecutors, our duty is to ensure justice for victims and protect public safety, and the defendant’s cruel actions in this case continue to warrant the 50-years-to-life sentence that was imposed,” Stephan said. “At some point our laws must balance the rights of defendants, the rights of victims, and the rights of the community to be safe.”
Williams killed two students, 14-year-old Bryan Zuckor and 17-year-old Randy Gordon. He wounded 11 students and two staff members.
Now age 39, he is currently being held at the California Institution for Men in Chino and became eligible for parole in September 2024.
He was denied parole after being deemed an “unreasonable risk to public safety” by a state board, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The board also said it was unclear if Williams understood why he committed the shooting.
Prosecutors say Williams’ case has been transferred to juvenile court for a disposition hearing. Due to his age at the time of his shooting, his convictions will be redesignated as juvenile “true findings,” after he will be released from prison and potentially placed on juvenile probation, prosecutors said.
Williams was able to petition for resentencing due to a law enacted in 2011 that allowed judges to give juvenile offenders with life without parole sentences a chance to be resentenced. An appeals court decision in 2022 made those with the “functional equivalent” of life without parole sentences eligible as well.
New Jersey
Notorious ‘Torso Killer’ confesses to 1965 killing
FAIR LAWN, N.J. (AP) — One of the New York City area’s most notorious serial killers has confessed to another killing.
Police in New Jersey announced Tuesday that Richard Cottingham, known as the “Torso Killer,” admitted killing Alys Eberhardt in 1965.
The 18-year-old was found dead in her family’s home in Fair Lawn, a suburb about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Manhattan.
Investigators reopened the cold case in 2021, and “through countless interviews” over several years, extracted a full confession from Cottingham, “including details that were never publicly known,” the department said in a statement.
Fair Lawn Police Chief Joseph Dawicki said Cottingham will not face additional charges as the department closes the case.
The 79-year-old has been imprisoned since his arrest in 1980. He is serving three life sentences at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
“Alys was a vibrant young nursing student who was taken from our community far too soon,” Dawicki said in a statement. “While we can never bring her back, I am hopeful that her family can find some peace knowing the person responsible has confessed and can no longer harm anyone else.”
Lawyers in New York and New Jersey who have represented Cottingham over the years didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Cottingham has claimed responsibility for up to 100 homicides going back to the 1960s, though authorities in New York and New Jersey have officially linked him to about a dozen.
In 2022, he admitting killing five women in the New York City suburbs of Long Island in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
He was sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1968 slaying of 23-year-old Diane Cusick but received immunity from prosecution for the four other killings as part of the plea deal.
Cottingham was previously convicted of killing five other women — three in New York City and two in northern New Jersey. He has since admitted to killing several others while behind bars.
He is known as the “Torso Killer” because he dismembered some of his victims.
Massachusetts
Pamela Smart seeks to overturn conviction for having teenager murder husband
BOSTON (AP) — Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, is seeking to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations.
The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.
“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”
The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it would have no comment about the petition.
A spokesman for New Hampshire’s attorney general said it would not comment on pending litigation “other than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”
In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but in the transcript were the word killed in the sentence “you had your husband killed,” the word busted in the sentence “I’m gonna be busted” and the word murder in the sentence “this would have been the perfect murder.”
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”
Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned because the verdict was tainted by the media attention and due to faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.
They also argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.
Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.
It took until 2024 for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband’s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”
Smart’s trial was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced and that she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been released.
Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry condominium and forced Gregory Smart to his knees in the foyer. As Randall held a knife to the man’s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers served prison sentences and have been released.
The case inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
Arizona
Ex-lawmaker gets probation for using forged signatures
PHOENIX (AP) — A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action was sentenced Tuesday to probation and a five-year ban on running for public office for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.
Austin Smith, 30, pleaded guilty in mid-November to charges of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, and illegal signing of election petitions. He had acknowledged trying to use petitions with forged signatures that he knew were false and forging a dead woman’s signature on a nominating petition.
Smith represented an Arizona House district in the Phoenix suburbs for one term before dropping his reelection bid in April 2024 when questions arose about signatures on his nominating petitions.
He resigned at the time as a leader at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Turning Point USA, which has become a major force in Arizona Republican politics. His bio page said Smith was approached in 2019 by Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, another top leader of the group, about launching Turning Point Action.
“If you try to illegally manipulate Arizona’s elections or mislead Arizona voters, you will be held accountable under the law,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “There are real consequences for cheating the system.” Kurt Altman, Smith’s lawyer, told the judge that his client was mortified by his conduct and will never run for public office again. “He realizes that things got out of hand,” Altman said. “And in today’s political atmosphere, things get out of hand very quickly. He is embarrassed by the lapse in judgment.”
When handing down the sentence, Superior Court Judge Aryeh Schwartz said the offense undermined the integrity of the election process, but also said Smith accepted responsibility for his actions. Smith, who was also fined $5,500 as part of his sentence, declined to address the judge during sentencing. He also declined to comment outside of court when a reporter asked him if he wanted to do so.
The Associated Press left messages for a Turning Point spokesperson. Altman told the judge that Smith has started an agricultural business.
Smith previously portrayed the allegations against him as a coordinated attack by Democrats that was “silly on its face,” but said he would drop out of his reelection campaign to avoid racking up legal bills.
In campaign literature, Smith voiced support for a Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County that ultimately ended without producing proof to support President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Smith also sponsored an unsuccessful proposal to ban voting by mail and complained in a campaign ad about political elites breaking election laws.
Judge allows San Diego high school gunman to be resentenced after 23 years in prison
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge granted a request Tuesday by the gunman in a 2001 shooting at a San Diego high school to be resentenced, potentially allowing him to be freed after 23 years in prison.
Charles Williams, who was 15 at the time, pleaded guilty to killing two students and injuring 13 others after opening fire with his father’s revolver at Santana High School on March 5, 2001. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
The judge’s decision Tuesday means Williams’ case will be sent to juvenile court and lead to his immediate release from prison without parole supervision or evaluation, according to San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office.
Prosecutors will challenge the ruling in the appellate court to try to stop his release, the office said.
“As prosecutors, our duty is to ensure justice for victims and protect public safety, and the defendant’s cruel actions in this case continue to warrant the 50-years-to-life sentence that was imposed,” Stephan said. “At some point our laws must balance the rights of defendants, the rights of victims, and the rights of the community to be safe.”
Williams killed two students, 14-year-old Bryan Zuckor and 17-year-old Randy Gordon. He wounded 11 students and two staff members.
Now age 39, he is currently being held at the California Institution for Men in Chino and became eligible for parole in September 2024.
He was denied parole after being deemed an “unreasonable risk to public safety” by a state board, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The board also said it was unclear if Williams understood why he committed the shooting.
Prosecutors say Williams’ case has been transferred to juvenile court for a disposition hearing. Due to his age at the time of his shooting, his convictions will be redesignated as juvenile “true findings,” after he will be released from prison and potentially placed on juvenile probation, prosecutors said.
Williams was able to petition for resentencing due to a law enacted in 2011 that allowed judges to give juvenile offenders with life without parole sentences a chance to be resentenced. An appeals court decision in 2022 made those with the “functional equivalent” of life without parole sentences eligible as well.
New Jersey
Notorious ‘Torso Killer’ confesses to 1965 killing
FAIR LAWN, N.J. (AP) — One of the New York City area’s most notorious serial killers has confessed to another killing.
Police in New Jersey announced Tuesday that Richard Cottingham, known as the “Torso Killer,” admitted killing Alys Eberhardt in 1965.
The 18-year-old was found dead in her family’s home in Fair Lawn, a suburb about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Manhattan.
Investigators reopened the cold case in 2021, and “through countless interviews” over several years, extracted a full confession from Cottingham, “including details that were never publicly known,” the department said in a statement.
Fair Lawn Police Chief Joseph Dawicki said Cottingham will not face additional charges as the department closes the case.
The 79-year-old has been imprisoned since his arrest in 1980. He is serving three life sentences at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
“Alys was a vibrant young nursing student who was taken from our community far too soon,” Dawicki said in a statement. “While we can never bring her back, I am hopeful that her family can find some peace knowing the person responsible has confessed and can no longer harm anyone else.”
Lawyers in New York and New Jersey who have represented Cottingham over the years didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Cottingham has claimed responsibility for up to 100 homicides going back to the 1960s, though authorities in New York and New Jersey have officially linked him to about a dozen.
In 2022, he admitting killing five women in the New York City suburbs of Long Island in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
He was sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1968 slaying of 23-year-old Diane Cusick but received immunity from prosecution for the four other killings as part of the plea deal.
Cottingham was previously convicted of killing five other women — three in New York City and two in northern New Jersey. He has since admitted to killing several others while behind bars.
He is known as the “Torso Killer” because he dismembered some of his victims.
Massachusetts
Pamela Smart seeks to overturn conviction for having teenager murder husband
BOSTON (AP) — Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, is seeking to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations.
The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.
“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”
The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.
A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it would have no comment about the petition.
A spokesman for New Hampshire’s attorney general said it would not comment on pending litigation “other than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”
In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but in the transcript were the word killed in the sentence “you had your husband killed,” the word busted in the sentence “I’m gonna be busted” and the word murder in the sentence “this would have been the perfect murder.”
“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”
Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned because the verdict was tainted by the media attention and due to faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.
They also argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.
Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.
It took until 2024 for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband’s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”
Smart’s trial was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced and that she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been released.
Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry condominium and forced Gregory Smart to his knees in the foyer. As Randall held a knife to the man’s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers served prison sentences and have been released.
The case inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
Arizona
Ex-lawmaker gets probation for using forged signatures
PHOENIX (AP) — A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action was sentenced Tuesday to probation and a five-year ban on running for public office for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.
Austin Smith, 30, pleaded guilty in mid-November to charges of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, and illegal signing of election petitions. He had acknowledged trying to use petitions with forged signatures that he knew were false and forging a dead woman’s signature on a nominating petition.
Smith represented an Arizona House district in the Phoenix suburbs for one term before dropping his reelection bid in April 2024 when questions arose about signatures on his nominating petitions.
He resigned at the time as a leader at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Turning Point USA, which has become a major force in Arizona Republican politics. His bio page said Smith was approached in 2019 by Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, another top leader of the group, about launching Turning Point Action.
“If you try to illegally manipulate Arizona’s elections or mislead Arizona voters, you will be held accountable under the law,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “There are real consequences for cheating the system.” Kurt Altman, Smith’s lawyer, told the judge that his client was mortified by his conduct and will never run for public office again. “He realizes that things got out of hand,” Altman said. “And in today’s political atmosphere, things get out of hand very quickly. He is embarrassed by the lapse in judgment.”
When handing down the sentence, Superior Court Judge Aryeh Schwartz said the offense undermined the integrity of the election process, but also said Smith accepted responsibility for his actions. Smith, who was also fined $5,500 as part of his sentence, declined to address the judge during sentencing. He also declined to comment outside of court when a reporter asked him if he wanted to do so.
The Associated Press left messages for a Turning Point spokesperson. Altman told the judge that Smith has started an agricultural business.
Smith previously portrayed the allegations against him as a coordinated attack by Democrats that was “silly on its face,” but said he would drop out of his reelection campaign to avoid racking up legal bills.
In campaign literature, Smith voiced support for a Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County that ultimately ended without producing proof to support President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Smith also sponsored an unsuccessful proposal to ban voting by mail and complained in a campaign ad about political elites breaking election laws.
