Drew Peterson Charged with
Third Wife's Murder

By Mike Fleeman

Originally posted Thursday May 07, 2009 09:35 PM EDT

Drew Peterson Photo by: Roger Wong / INF

One of Drew Peterson's former wives was found dead, another went missing, and yet the former police sergeant had steadfastly – some say brashly – maintained his innocence in the face of suspicions by police and the victims' families.

But on Thursday, Peterson, 55, was arrested during a traffic stop in Bolingbrook, Ill., on charges of murdering one of those women, Kathleen Savio, his third wife, whose body was discovered in an empty bathtub in 2004. Her death was originally ruled an accidental drowning but later called a staged homicide.

The grand jury that indicted Peterson in Savio's death continues to study the possibility of charges in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, the mother of their two children, according to Charles B. Pelkie, state attorney for Will County, Ill., CNN reports.

Lawyer Says Peterson's Innocent

The sister of the woman allegedly killed by Drew Peterson said the world is finally a "safe place for me" now that he sits in jail on murder charges.

But Peterson, well known for his wisecracks and blase attitude, had a less dramatic reaction to his arrest Thursday, reportedly saying, "I guess I should have returned those library books."

Peterson, an ex-cop, was charged Thursday in Illinois with two first-degree murder counts in the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. He's also under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson. He is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon.

"He's an idiot," Susan Doman, Savio's sister, said today on "Good Morning America," dismayed that Peterson would make jokes after he was arrested for his wife's murder.

Kathleen Savio's brother Nick was clearly pleased with the arrest.

"This is step one. Step two would be a conviction so my sister can rest in peace," Nick Savio told "GMA."

Peterson has maintained his innocence to anyone who would listen both in Savio's death and Stacy Peterson's disappearance. At times he's even seemed to revel in the spotlight.

"Drew takes these charges very seriously," his lawyer Joel Brodsky told "Good Morning America." Those jokes, he said, are his way of dealing with stress. "That's just his nature."

Doman said the arrest is a long time coming and the family hopes this is the first step in justice for her sister. Peterson was arrested shortly before he was scheduled to to fly to Reno to interview for a security job at a brothel featured on a cable television show.

"It was a big relief because he wasn't going on all these shows, going around joking and laughing," Doman said.

Prosecutors are hoping to enter into evidence letters from Savio that reveal her fear of what her husband might do. A new law in Illinois, passed in light of the Peterson case, would allow for such evidence, legislation Peterson's lawyer is planning to fight.

"Obviously we have problems with that law," Joel Brodsky told "GMA." "And we're going to challenge the law."

Peterson, 55, was being held at the Will County Adult Detention Facility in Joliet, Ill., with bond set at $20 million, and could face 60 years in jail, Will County State's Attorney James W. Glasgow said.

"This is a grave and serious matter, and I think that's reflected in the bond," Glasgow told reporters.

"We are very confident in our case," he added.

Brodsky has called the $20 million bond "excessive" and said he hoped to get it reduced. Another attorney told The Associated Press that Peterson had an alibi for Savio's death.

Savio, 40, was found face-down in an empty bathtub in March 2004, her hair soaked with blood from an apparent head wound.

The death initially was ruled an accident, but was reclassified a homicide in 2008 after her body was exhumed and given a new autopsy following Stacy Peterson's October 2007 disappearance.

That autopsy determined Savio had drowned, Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich said.

The indictment handed down by a grand jury Thursday morning accused Peterson of "two counts of first-degree murder, one on the theory of intentional killing, the second [for] knowingly doing an act that can cause great bodily harm," said Glasgow, whose office will prosecute the case.

Peterson was arrested "without incident" in a traffic stop by a uniformed state trooper and plainclothes officers near his home in Bolingbrook, Ill., Dobrich said. He added that Peterson's four children were in the process of being removed to government care.

Peterson's 'Lock-Tight Alibi'

Andrew Abood, an attorney for Peterson, told The Associated Press the indictment was not a surprise because "there was tremendous pressure for the government to do something in this case."

He added Peterson had a "lock-tight alibi" because Peterson and Savio's teenage son said last month in a television interview that he was with his father at the time of his mother's death.

"I highly do not believe that my dad had murdered my mom," Thomas Peterson, 16, told CBS' "The Early Show." "Because, first off, he wasn't there. He was with us during that period of time."

Peterson, a former duty sergeant for the Bolingbrook Police Department, was the first officer to respond to the scene of Savio's death. His nearly-three-decade career in law enforcement ended when he stepped down after Stacy Peterson disappeared.

Brodsky said he had not spoken with his client Peterson as of late Thursday night, but expected to speak with him Friday.

Savio Sis Hopes Peterson's 'Eating Oatmeal' in Jail

Doman told ABC News she hated watching Drew Peterson walking around freely and seemingly basking in the media limelight in the year and a half since Stacy Peterson vanished, an event that inflamed her own family's suspicions about Peterson regarding her sister's death.

Doman added that she hoped now "he's eating oatmeal" in jail.

She knew Peterson's arrest was coming because she had been working with authorities, and she hoped justice would finally be done.

May 13 would have been Kathleen Savio's 46th birthday, her sister noted. Every year, she said, family members visit her grave and relive the pain of her death. This year, she added, there will be some relief.

Savio's divorce from Peterson was nearly complete at the time of her death. She had received an order of protection in 2002 against Peterson, alleging a pattern of physical abuse and threats.

Doman said she wants to encourage battered women to get out of bad relationships, claiming Drew Peterson battered her sister.

"No matter how strong you are, get out," she said she would tell other abused women.

A lawyer for the Savio family, Martin Glink, told ABCNews.com the family is "very grateful and relieved that at long last he [Drew Peterson] is going to be charged.

"We're hoping that Mr. Peterson will get a measure of justice," Glink added. "We're looking to have the right thing done and that obviously points to Drew Peterson."

Mystery Surrounding Stacy Peterson's Disappearance

Stacy Peterson, then 23, vanished Oct. 28, 2007, after reportedly telling her minister that Peterson had confessed to killing Savio.

Caylee Anthony's Family Spokesman Resigns, Citing 'Erratic Behavior'

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A man hired to be the spokesman for the family of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony has quit the job, citing their “erratic behavior.”

Larry Garrison was retained in August to speak to the media on behalf of the Anthonys. He resigned Wednesday, according to MyFOXOrlando.com.

“Due to the erratic behavior over the last several months exhibited by the Anthony family, Larry Garrison is resigning as their spokesperson,” he said in a prepared statement.

“It is my opinion that others have manipulated them into situations that would not dignify the family. I can no longer be part of that behavior. I wish them all the peace and resolution they so deserve. The truth always comes out in the end, and in this case, ‘The truth is better than the spin.’ ”

The 3-year-old girl has been missing since mid-June and is believed to be dead. Her mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony, is behind bars and charged with her murder.

Earlier this week, two groups of volunteers looking for signs of the child called off their searches, and a bounty hunter who led one said it was time to let Caylee rest in peace.

Texas EquuSearch and bounty hunter Leonard Padilla suspended their operations after several days of unsuccessful searches for the toddler.

Padilla believes that Caylee’s body was dumped in the Little Econ River in Orlando, the focus of his search with a dive team Monday at J. Blanchard Park, MyFOXOrlando.com reported.

Over the weekend, Texas EquuSearch led more than 1,000 volunteers around Orange County, hoping to find the little girl in wooded areas.

People gathered at J. Blanchard Park Tuesday for a prayer service for the missing toddler led by Casey’s ex-fiance Richard Grund. Two women hung up a sign that said “R.I.P. Caylee” and Padilla told MyFOXOrlando.com that it was time to say goodbye to the toddler.

The little girl’s grandparents were angered by the service. Cindy and George Anthony hope that Caylee still alive.

Casey Anthony has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter and four counts of lying to investigators about the disappearance of her daughter.

She didn’t report Caylee missing until July. The toddler disappeared two months shy of her third birthday.

Forensic tests released last month confirmed that hair found in the trunk of Anthony’s Pontiac Sunfire came from a decomposing body. DNA evidence suggests a corpse had been in the car’s trunk.

Anthony said she left Caylee with a baby sitter, but police contend that’s a lie. The little girl has not been found. Authorities say she was killed.

Offer to mother of missing Fla. girl expires

By SARAH LARIMER – September 2, 2008

MIAMI (AP) — The mother of a missing toddler did not respond by Tuesday to an offer that would have given her some protection from prosecution if she told investigators what she knows about her daughter’s disappearance.

Officials say 3-year-old Caylee Anthony is probably dead. Her mother, Casey Anthony, missed a 9 a.m. deadline to respond to an offer of limited immunity, a spokeswoman for the state’s attorney’s office said.

Under the offer, prosecutors could not have used Anthony’s statements against her, but they could have used any evidence found as a result.

The decision capped a weekend of twists in the search for Caylee, who hasn’t been seen since June. Her mother did not report her missing until July.

A spokeswoman for Anthony’s attorney, Jose Baez, declined comment.

“We really don’t want to discuss our conversations with the state attorney’s office and law enforcement,” Christina Baez said. “We feel no need to try out case in the media. we’re not going to discuss that.”

Authorities said Monday there was a decomposing body in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car and investigators believe there is a “strong probability” that Caylee is dead.

“We’re still holding out hope, of course, unfortunately as time goes on and more evidence presents itself, it seems to indicate something else,” Carlos Padilla, a spokesman for the Orange County sheriff’s office, said Tuesday. “But we still have our hopes up that maybe this will turn out differently.”

Anthony, 22, faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing the investigation into her daughter’s disappearance.

She was released Aug. 21, but a bondsman rescinded her $500,000 bail after she was arrested again last week on charges of check fraud and theft.

Investigators believe she used a friend’s checkbook to buy items at Target and Winn-Dixie, and to write a check for cash in July.

This weekend, central Florida residents continued to search for Caylee. More than 200 people combed an area near Orlando International Airport, looking for clues about the child’s disappearance. Anthony family spokesman Larry Garrison said Casey Anthony’s mother, Cindy, remains hopeful the girl will be found.

“As far as Cindy Anthony is concerned, we are looking for Caylee alive,” he said.

Caylee Anthony was reported missing in July, about a month after she was last seen. Casey Anthony told investigators she didn’t immediately call authorities to report Caylee missing because she was conducting her own investigation, according to an affidavit. But authorities say she has shown no remorse or concern for Caylee under questioning.

“She continues to hold the key to this case,” Padilla said.
 

Missing tot’s grandmother clings to hope
she’s alive
Cindy Anthony says police should be searching instead of building a case

By Bob Considine
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 9:48 a.m. ET Sept. 2, 2008

Even as evidence mounts that Florida toddler Caylee Anthony is dead, her grandmother insisted Tuesday that the 3-year-old is alive and that the child’s mother is only guilty of poor judgment and lying.

“I believe Caylee is with someone that [her mother] Casey had trusted,” Cindy Anthony told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Tuesday. “And I believe that Casey has been, you know, betrayed.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s going to take the average citizen to bring Caylee back home to me alive, and not the authorities.”

Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. John Allen said Sunday that Caylee’s decomposing body was likely in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car.

Casey Anthony, 22, was released on bail on Aug. 21, but was rearrested on Friday for charges unrelated to Caylee’s disappearance.

Prosecutors have reportedly offered Casey Anthony, who they are labeling as a “person of interest,” limited immunity in exchange for cooperation in finding the child’s remains, a deal that was set to expire today at 9 a.m.

However, family spokesman Larry Garrison said he has “not heard of any such deal.”

“Again, this goes to false information in the media and the spin that has been put on this case,” Garrison said.

Timeline of trouble
Caylee Anthony was last seen in mid-June and was reported missing to authorities on July 15.

Cindy Anthony had called 911 and said she had not seen her granddaughter in several days and that her daughter Casey’s car trunk smelled like a dead body.

She would later rescind the comment, claiming the smell to be from an old pizza and other trash in the trunk of the automobile.

Casey Anthony has only told investigators that she dropped her daughter off with a baby sitter and went to work. But detectives quickly said those claims were not true.

At a July hearing, detectives also said Casey Anthony’s trunk contained hair samples appearing to belong to Caylee and also a suspicious stain that glowed under black light. They also said the car smelled strongly of human decomposition.

Allen told various media outlets on Sunday that there is a strong probability that Caylee Anthony is dead, based on FBI lab results from the findings in the trunk and “additional evidence that has not been made public.”

“My reaction is that John Allen is speaking out of context,” Cindy Anthony told Lauer. “I believe that because I’m still getting phone calls of people who have seen Caylee and they’re frustrated because the authorities aren’t investigating.”

But authorities say the investigation is ongoing. Orange County detectives have directed search teams to a wooded area near where Casey Anthony abandoned her car.

At the same time, on Sunday some 150 volunteers helped Texas EquuSearch try to find other evidence related to Caylee’s disappearance. Texas EquuSearch is an organization that uses computer mapping and other technologies to establish evidence of missing persons.

“I’m getting phone calls from people saying why they’re not out looking in the woods —because they don’t believe Caylee is out there,” Cindy Anthony said. “They believe Caylee is alive and Caylee is with somebody, so that’s my reassurance.”

New charges
Investigators took Casey Anthony back into custody on Friday night on charges of fraudulent use of personal information and petty theft.

She is accused of stealing more than $600 from a friend, taking a checkbook from that friend’s car in July, before her first arrest.

As Casey Anthony was drawn from her house by police, wearing a shirt bearing her daughter’s face and asking “Have you seen me?,” she was met by protesters calling her “baby killer.”

Garrison told Lauer he is fearful for the safety of Caylee and Cindy Anthony because of the anger of some protesters.

“First and foremost, the spin has gotten out of control,” he said.

“I’m not confident that the police are going to come and help them out. I really am not. They have not before, and all I can say, there are a lot of people out there that believe [Caylee] is still alive.”

Orange County officials say more charges unrelated to Caylee’s disappearance are in store for Casey Anthony.

Her attorney, Jose Baez, told reporters over the weekend: “This is nothing more than an attempt by law enforcement to play mind games with my client. They leaked the arrest to the media and deliberately avoided telling me so she could turn herself in in a dignified fashion. They clearly wanted the media to capture my client in the worst possible light.”
 

Caylee Anthony’s Mom May Return to Jail
Bounty Hunter Says He Will Take Steps to Revoke Bond for Casey Anthony
By SCOTT MICHELS
Aug. 28, 2008

A bounty hunter who arranged the release of Casey Anthony, the mother of missing toddler Caylee Anthony, said today he plans to take steps to revoke her bond and now believes she was involved in her daughter’s death.

Leonard Padilla said he would ask his associates to withdraw Anthony’s $500,000 bail. That could force Anthony to return to jail, unless she can find another way to post bond. Padilla told ABC News he expected her to be returned to jail by Saturday at the earliest.

He also said that, in light of preliminary air sample tests that reportedly show a decomposing body was in Anthony’s trunk, he now believes that Anthony accidentally killed her daughter, who has been missing since mid-June.

“I think it was an accident,” he said. “Her friends called and said she wouldn’t have harmed her, but if she did, she would have freaked.”

Padilla, a self-styled celebrity bounty hunter, a few weeks ago offered to bail 22-year-old Anthony out of jail, saying that he thought he could convince her to cooperate in the search for Caylee. Padilla has said Anthony has not cooperated since her release.

A law enforcement source confirmed to ABC News that air sample tests taken from Anthony’s trunk allegedly revealed evidence of human decomposition. The results were first reported Wednesday.

Anthony also claimed to work for an Orlando theme park, but investigators say she had not worked there in months. The documents include a poem Anthony wrote on July 7, eight days before she reported her daughter missing: “What is given, Can be taken away. Everyone lies. Everyone dies.”

Also this week, the sheriff’s department confirmed that a sheriff’s deputy had been fired for reportedly lying about his relationship with Anthony.

Anthony Rusciano was fired Aug. 22 after investigators found evidence on Casey Anthony’s computer that the two had a relationship. A department spokesman would not comment on the nature of their association, but said it went “beyond a casual relationship.”

Earlier, Rusciano reportedly had denied the relationship, saying he had only met Anthony briefly at a party, according to an Orange County Sheriff’s Department memo.

A department spokesman said investigators do not think Rusciano is involved in Caylee’s disappearance.

ORLANDO, Fla. 8/23/08 (AP) - A spokesman for the mother of a missing Orlando girl says she’s trying to help find the toddler after getting out of jail.

Larry Garrison said Saturday that Casey Anthony has been discussing the case with her attorney, but not members of her family.

Casey Anthony’s parents are upset with continued media coverage focusing on the woman’s possible role in 3-year-old Caylee Anthony’s disappearance. It has been a circus outside the Anthony’s home since she was able to post a $500,000 bond and get out of jail Thursday.

The missing girl’s grandmother says the frenzy affects the family.

The 22-year-old mother is confined with an electronic ankle device to the home. She faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing the investigation.

$500,000 bail posted for mom of missing
Fla. girl

By SARAH LARIMER – August 21, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A bondsman posted bail Wednesday for the Florida mother of a missing toddler and said he hoped her release would help lead investigators to the girl, officials said.

Casey Anthony has been jailed on $500,200 bail since mid-July. Police say Anthony lied to them and didn’t report her 3-year-old daughter, Caylee, was missing for more than a month. She faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation.

The earliest Casey Anthony could be released from the Orange County Jail is Thursday morning, jail spokesman Allen Moore said in an e-mail.

“They’re extremely pleased, this is what we anticipated,” said Larry Garrison, a spokesman for the Anthony family. “We want what’s the best for Caylee. We want Caylee found.”

A group from a California bail bonds company flew to Florida on Sunday to help Clearwater-based bondsman Albert Estes, who shares the same surety group, post the bond. They said they believed the 22-year-old mother might be more likely to talk about her daughter’s disappearance if she were released from jail.

“It’s not about getting Casey out to make sure she feels better,” bondsman Tony Padilla said. “It’s all about the interest of finding Caylee. Hopefully, she will get us some information.”

A hearing in the case is scheduled Thursday morning, but Anthony is not expected to appear.

“OK, folks, this is not O.J. Simpson,” her attorney, Jose Baez, said. “I’m not going to parade her out there.”

Still, a throng of reporters gathered outside the jail Wednesday evening as Baez spoke and said thanked Padilla for posting the bond.

Anthony told detectives she didn’t immediately call authorities to report her child missing because she was conducting her own investigation, according to the charging affidavit.

The apartment where she said she dropped off the girl hadn’t been occupied in months, and Anthony gave detectives a bogus employer, manager’s name and work telephone number, according to the affidavit.

Mom of missing Fla. girl released on
$500,000 bail

August 21, 2008 04:41 PM EST | AP

ORLANDO, Fla. — The mother of a missing toddler was released from jail on $500,000 bail Thursday and returned to her parents’ home, where authorities will monitor her with an electronic ankle device.

Casey Anthony, 22, said nothing as she left the Orange County jail Thursday. She faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation into the disappearance of 3-year-old Caylee, who has been missing since June.

Police say Casey Anthony lied to them and didn’t report Caylee missing for more than a month. Caylee’s grandmother reported her disappearance in July.

Anthony’s attorney, Jose Baez, escorted her out of the jail under a black umbrella amid a throng of reporters. He scuffled with a journalist, pushing him out of the way.

Baez said Anthony whispered into his ear on her way out, “I’m innocent. I’m going to walk out of this place with my head held high.”

Anthony, who had been jailed since mid-July, arrived several minutes later at her parents’ home. She was driven straight into a garage, which was quickly closed so camera crews and reporters waiting outside could not see her. She did not emerge from the house to comment.

“Right now the family is in there hugging and enjoying time as a family together,” Baez said outside. “There’s a lot of tears, a lot of emotion.”

Anthony was also arraigned Thursday, but did not attend the hearing. A written plea of not guilty was entered, according to court documents. A pretrial hearing was set for Nov. 5 and a trial for Nov. 17.

“The most important thing is that Casey is home and her parents are very grateful,” family spokesman Larry Garrison said by phone Thursday. “Now we are asking the public to please help us find Caylee. Now more than ever, we are convinced that she was kidnapped.”

A group from a California bail bonds company helped a Clearwater bondsman post bail, saying Anthony might be more likely to talk about her daughter’s disappearance if released from jail.

Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla said a member of his team is staying with the family and predicted they will find Caylee within a week. There is a $225,000 reward for her return.

Anthony told investigators she left Caylee in an apartment with a nanny June 9. But investigators say the apartment had been empty for several months.

She told detectives she didn’t immediately call authorities to report Caylee missing because she was conducting her own investigation, according to an affidavit.

But authorities say Anthony, a single mother, has shown no remorse or concern for Caylee under questioning. Cadaver-sniffing dogs detected a scent in her car, and hair, dirt and a strange stain were found in the trunk. Investigators are still awaiting FBI tests on that evidence.

A neighbor told detectives Anthony had asked to borrow a shovel some time in June. Her father said she had stolen two gas cans from the garage and refused to let him get something from the trunk of her car. A boyfriend said she never told him in June that Caylee was missing.

Missing Florida Tot’s Mom Out on Bail

By SARAH LARIMER

posted: 2008-08-20 18:49:53

ORLANDO, Fla. (Aug. 21) - The mother of a missing central Florida toddler was released from jail on $500,000 bail Thursday and returned to her parents’ home, where authorities will monitor her with an electronic ankle device.

Casey Anthony, 22, said nothing as she left the Orange County jail Thursday. She faces charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation in the disappearance of 3-year-old Caylee, who has been missing since June.

Questions Swirl Over Missing Tot

Casey Anthony, the mother of a missing Florida toddler, was released from jail Thursday -- even as police report no new leads in the baffling case. Casey Anthony didn’t report her daughter, Caylee Anthony, missing for more than a month. Here, she’s escorted out of Florida’s Orange County Jail by her attorney.

Police say Casey Anthony lied to them and didn’t report Caylee missing for more than a month. Caylee’s grandmother reported her disappearance in July.

Anthony’s attorney, Jose Baez, escorted her out of the jail under a black umbrella amid a throng of reporters. He got into a scuffle with a journalist, pushing him out of the way.

Baez said Anthony whispered into his ear on her way out, “I’m innocent. I’m going to walk out of this place with my head held high.”

Anthony, who had been jailed since mid-July, arrived several minutes later at her parents’ home, where she was fitted for an electronic monitoring device that plugs into her home phone.

“Right now the family is in there hugging and enjoying time as a family together,” Baez said outside the home. “There’s a lot of tears, a lot of emotion.”

Anthony was also arraigned Thursday, but did not attend the hearing. A written plea of not guilty was entered, according to court documents.

“The most important thing is that Casey is home and her parents are very grateful,” family spokesman Larry Garrison said by phone Thursday. “Now we are asking the public to please help us find Caylee. Now more than ever, we are convinced that she was kidnapped.”

A group from a California bail bonds company flew to Florida on Sunday to help Clearwater-based bondsman Albert Estes post the bond. They said they believe Anthony might be more likely to talk about her daughter’s disappearance if released from jail.

Anthony told investigators she left Caylee in an apartment with a nanny June 9. But investigators say the apartment had been empty for several months.

She told detectives she didn’t immediately call authorities to report Caylee missing because she was conducting her own investigation, according to an affidavit.

But authorities say Anthony, a single mother, has shown no remorse or concern for Caylee under questioning. Cadaver-sniffing dogs detected a scent in her car, and hair, dirt and a strange stain were found in the trunk. Investigators are still awaiting FBI tests on that evidence.

A neighbor told detectives Anthony had asked to borrow a shovel some time in June. Her father said she had stolen two gas cans from the garage and refused to let him get something from the trunk of her car. A boyfriend said she never told him in June that Caylee was missing.

2008-08-20 18:49:53

Caylee Anthony’s mother set to bond out of jail?

Sarah Lundy and Bianca Prieto | Sentinel Staff Writers
9:59 AM EDT, August 16, 2008

The mother of missing 3-year-old Caylee Anthony may be out of jail in a few days.

A California bondsman is flying to Orlando on Sunday with the sole purpose of putting up the money to secure Casey Anthony’s release. That means Anthony could be freed from the Orange County Jail as early as Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

Anthony, 22, has been held on charges of child neglect and filing a false report since July 16. Investigators have characterized the single mom as a “person of interest” in Caylee’s disappearance, which was reported in July -- a month after the toddler was last seen.

On Saturday morning, Anthony declined a scheduled video visitation with her brother Lee Anthony, according to Allen Moore, a spokesman for the Orange County Jail. Moore said that Casey Anthony told the on-duty corporal at the jail that she refused the visit on the advice of counsel.

Anthony’s lawyer has been unsuccessful in trying to win reduction of her bail, which a judge set at $500,200.

A group from Tony Padilla Bail Bonds, based in Sacramento, Calif., is scheduled to arrive at Orlando International Airport at 4 p.m. Sunday, said Leonard Padilla, a bounty hunter and Tony Padilla’s uncle. Leonard Padilla has been a perpetual candidate for public office in California. He ran in 2006 for Sacramento County supervisor and has run several times for Sacramento mayor -- most recently in June, when he was defeated in the primary. In 2005, he announced a bid for a congressional seat. And he was among the many candidates vying to replace recalled Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.

The bail-bond company is affiliated with Texas-based Financial Surety, which is licensed in Florida -- making it legal for the West Coast company to put up funds for Anthony’s release.

Anthony’s lead attorney, Jos Baez, and a third party contacted the company about arranging a bond, Padilla said. Baez could not be reached for comment Friday.

Padilla said he thinks Caylee is alive and that Anthony is not a flight risk.

When released, Anthony will be confined to her home and must wear an electronic monitor on her ankle that will alert authorities if she leaves an approved area or tampers with the device.

If she flees, the bondsman could lose the $500,200.

The Padilla family has been in the bail-bond business for three decades and has handled several high-profile cases. It’s not unusual for the company to travel far to post bond, Leonard Padilla said.

Anthony’s attorneys tried twice but failed to get the court to lower the bail so her family could afford to get her out. They were not able to come up with the 10 percent fee wanted by local bondsmen.

Leonard Padilla said he would not discuss the financial arrangements.

News of Casey Anthony’s possible release came the same day that her family acquired a spokesman. Larry Garrison, who is based in Los Angeles, said he will handle media inquiries for the family. “They will not be speaking publicly anymore,” he said by phone Friday.

Garrison is a film and television producer, journalist and actor. He is an author of Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise, about the 2005 disappearance of an Alabama teenager.

He also represented the family of John Mark Karr, the man who falsely admitted to killing Colorado 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.

Garrison said he has been watching the Caylee Anthony coverage and reached out to the family when he saw the “spin” happening in the media.

“I have never seen a case so blown out of proportion,” he said.

Casey Anthony has told investigators she left the child with a baby sitter, who cannot be found. Media coverage inferring that Caylee might be dead kept at least two people who claim to have seen Caylee alive from alerting authorities, Garrison said.

“That’s just a shame,” he said. His goal, he said, is to get the public to focus on the search for Caylee. He said he’s not getting paid for his work.

“This is not about a movie or a book,” Garrison said. “I’m trying to help get these people their life back.”

Willoughby Mariano, Susan Jacobson, and Helen Eckinger of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

For Immediate Release

Larry Garrison, President of SilverCreek Entertainment will be handling all publicity for Sue Doman.  Sue is the sister of Kathleen Savio in the Drew Peterson case.  Sue has been working diligently with authorities to seek justice for her deceased sister, and anticipates a speedy resolution in the near future.  

Contact:

Larry Garrison
805-370-3630

Loose lips could nail Drew Peterson,
expert says
Secretly monitored conversations might be used to solve two mysteries

By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 8:29 a.m. MT, Thurs., July. 24, 2008

Secretly monitored conversations in which Drew Peterson allegedly talked about the death of his third wife and his missing fourth wife could be the break investigators were waiting for, according to MSNBC senior legal analyst Susan Filan.

“This I would consider a breakthrough,” Filan told TODAY’s Amy Robach Thursday after The Chicago Sun-Times reported that two of Peterson’s friends wore wires to record his conversations with them from last November until mid-June. “We don’t have a body. We don’t have a lot of clues. But if these are in fact taped statements, they are incriminating, they are damaging and I think they are helpful.”

Filan said there is still little evidence connecting Peterson to the suspicious death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson. “There’s a lot of suspicion, not a lot of evidence,” she said. But, she added, if the tapes contain the information that the informants say they do, it is a significant piece of evidence.

“You build cases brick by brick by brick,” said Filan, a former prosecutor. “This is a good brick. I like this brick, but it doesn’t mean we’ve got the whole house — yet.”

Denial by Peterson
In an earlier interview on Thursday, Peterson told TODAY’s David Gregory that he never made statements attributed to him by Len Wawczak, 42, and his wife, Paula Stark, 38, who said they have known Peterson for 16 years. Wawczak told the Sun-Times that he approached Illinois State Police and volunteered to wear a wire while talking to Peterson.

Wawczak claimed that Peterson, a retired Bolingbrook, Ill., policeman, called police who investigated Savio’s death “idiots,” preceding the word with an expletive. Peterson also allegedly said he should have had Savio’s remains cremated so that investigators could not exhume her remains and change the initial finding — that her death was due to accidental drowning in her bathtub — to homicide.

“ ‘I should have had that b**** cremated. It would have cost me less and I wouldn’t be going through this trouble,’ “ Wawczak quoted Peterson as saying.

He also said that Peterson said he expected that he would be tried and acquitted in the murder of Stacy Peterson before her body was found. Then, if the remains were discovered, he would be free because he could not be tried twice for the same crime.

“I never made any statement like that,” said Peterson, who continues to maintain Stacy Peterson ran away with another man and is alive.

“That’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Peterson’s attorney, Joel Brodsky, told Gregory. “That somebody would have a plan to commit murder, to be arrested, tried and acquitted before a body was found. That’s just insane to think that somebody would make that kind of plan.”

Profit motive?
Peterson and Brodsky suggested that Wawczak and Stark are trying to profit from their relationship with him, as he said they have before. The couple are in severe financial straits and see this as their ticket to solvency, Brodsky said.

“I know that Paula, for example, has filed for bankruptcy five times in the last nine years,” Brodsky said. “Len has filed bankruptcy twice since 2004. These are people that are in a very bad financial situation, they’re about to be thrown out of their house, and they need money. They are trying to make money as other people have made money off of this case.”

Illinois State Police have declined to comment on the possible existence of taped conversations. But, Brodsky said, if they do exist — and he is not convinced of that — and the couple went public with the information on them, they could be in serious legal trouble.

“The Illinois State Police and the prosecutors, if there are tapes with anything incriminating on them, would never allow these people to go on the media and talk about it,” Brodsky said. “It’s a felony. To taint their entire investigation like this would be nuts.”

Conflicting stories
Peterson said he has known the couple for 25 years instead of the 16 years Wawczak told the Sun-Times. “Lenny Wawczak is somebody I met by arresting him. I arrested him on a couple of occasions. It was just recently, when I was getting ready for retirement, I was talking with him about going into a rehab business. Lenny’s a handyman. We were going to buy and rehab houses together, that’s how a more intimate relationship began.”

The former cop, who was wearing a full beard and sporting a deep tan, admitted that he had given the couple one of his guns, as reported in the newspaper. But, he said, there was nothing illegal about that transaction.

“My gun card, I found out, was being revoked, and I had a gun in my possession that I had to get rid of,” Peterson told Gregory. “Those were the only two people available, so I made a legal transfer of that firearm to Paula Stark, who had a valid gun card.”

Peterson said that when he went to New York last year for a TODAY show appearance, Wawczak and Stark asked him to bring back a hat from the show. He said he autographed it at their request, and learned that they auctioned it off on eBay for $10,000.

“These people are in financial trouble and are totally motivated by money,” Peterson said.

Gregory asked Peterson if he still believes Stacy Peterson is alive.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I have a lot of speculation on that, but I believe, yes, she’s alive.”
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC September 22nd -Operation Baghdad Pups is a SPCA International (www.SPCA.com) initiative created to provide medical care, clearance and transport for the animals our U.S. soldiers have come to love during deployment in the Middle East. On September 29, SPCA International will send 3 Operation Baghdad Pups rescue experts to Baghdad, Iraq to save 18 more U.S. soldiers' pets.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East befriend animals in the war zone to help themselves cope with the hardship and terror they face every day. These dogs and cats become their lifeline - saving them from deep depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals-Soldiers can face immediate court-marshal and some even see their dogs brutally murdered by a direct gunshot to the head from commanding officers who will not bend the rules.

The military refuses to help or formally recognize the lifeline these animals give to our mentally wounded soldiers. Veterans returned from Iraq are committing suicide at twice the rate of average Americans.  The dogs and cats befriended by our troops rescued by Operation Baghdad Pups are providing proven pet therapy to soldiers who may otherwise suffer from PTSD and deep depression.

Terri Crisp, Operation Baghdad Pups Program Manager, as well as participating soldiers and soldiers' families available for interviews. Larry Garrison, President of SilverCreek Entertainment, is handling all public relations for SPCA International.


Press Contact:
Larry Garrison
President SilverCreek Entertainment
(805) 370-3630
 

Ex-WellPoint Exec Accused of Womanizing

By TOM MURPHY
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 26, 2008; 5:29 AM

INDIANAPOLIS - David Colby was one of corporate America’s most admired executives before he was abruptly fired last spring for what was vaguely described at the time as misconduct of a “non-business nature.” Now details about his personal life are spilling out, and it’s clear he was more than just Wall Street’s darling.

In a cluster of lawsuits gathered up by The Associated Press, the former chief financial officer of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. is depicted as a corporate Casanova _ a world-class, love-’em-and-leave-’em sort of guy who romanced dozens of women around the country simultaneously, made them extravagant promises and then went back on his word with all the compassion of a health insurance company denying a claim.

One woman says Colby got her pregnant and harangued her via text message (“ABORT!!”) to terminate the pregnancy. He also allegedly gave some of his girlfriends sexually transmitted diseases, and proposed to at least 12 women since 2005.

The allegations are contained in lawsuits filed before and after Colby’s departure by three women who say they were ill-used by the businessman.

Colby and his attorneys have refused to comment, though in court papers he has disputed some of the allegations, and one of the lawsuits was thrown out a few months ago by a judge who found insufficient grounds for legal action.

By all accounts, the 54-year-old Colby _ a pudgy, bespectacled figure with salt-and-pepper hair _ charmed attractive women by showering them with compliments and gifts. While at least one of his accusers was a WellPoint underling, it appears he met many of the other women outside of work, via online dating sites, and he has not been accused of workplace sexual harassment.

“I’m not surprised that there are women who would come forward with the same story, because that appears to be Dave’s modus operandi,” said Mark Hathaway, a lawyer for two of the women who sued. “We’ve been contacted by a number of women.”

His ouster is the latest, and perhaps the most lurid, in a string of cases in which corporate chieftains were bounced for alleged misbehavior outside the boardroom.

Last year, HBO’s chief executive was forced out after being charged with throttling his girlfriend. Before that, a Boeing CEO lost his job after admitting to an affair with a female underling.

“There’s no question companies are much more sensitive to ethical conduct on the part of their executives,” W. Michael Hoffman, executive director for the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., said after Colby’s ouster.

It was Colby who helped put together the $16.4 billion deal that created Indianapolis-based WellPoint in 2004. He was named best CFO in managed care for four years in a row by Institutional Investor magazine. Stockholders and Wall Street professionals saw the Columbia University graduate as someone who “gave it to you straight,” said stock analyst Thomas Carroll.

“He would give you the good news along with the bad news,” Carroll said. “If he said something, you could really hang your hat on it.”

After the company passed him over for its CEO last February, it gave Colby thousands of stock options to stick around. But three months later, to Wall Street’s surprise, he was out. All WellPoint has ever said was that he was ousted over a nonbusiness violation of the company code of conduct.

Days before Colby was fired, a California woman, Rita DiCarlo, sued him for possession of a $4.4 million house in exclusive Lake Sherwood, Calif., that she said he had promised her. (He has denied making such a promise.)

Exactly what his marital status was at the time of some of the alleged romances is unclear, but as of last month, he was going through a divorce from wife No. 2.

Some of the allegations of his philandering began surfacing in the months after his ouster, but the extent of his alleged womanizing and the details of how he supposedly wooed his girlfriends are only now coming out.

DiCarlo and the other women suing him tell similar stories of aggressive courtship, big promises and broken hearts.

They say that Colby was carrying on with more than 30 women in the last half of 2007 alone and that he would tell them all the time them how beautiful they were or how much he loved them. “You forever!” read one text message, included in court files. “I chose you! Goodnight!” another message read.

Colby would supplement such declarations with gifts such as jewelry or trips, the women say. DiCarlo says in court papers that he gave her $100,000 “to make me feel more secure” three days after she found out he wasn’t divorced.

Another lawsuit was filed last month by Elizabeth Cook, a Los Angeles woman who met Colby in 2006 at a function for a California school their children attended.

A single mother with two children, she says in court papers that she dodged his initial advances but relented under a bombardment of calls, texts and e-mails, many of them containing sexually explicit propositions.

She says she soon broke her lease at his urging, with plans to move into his Lake Sherwood home. She says she stopped searching for ways to afford the brain surgery her severely epileptic 6-year-old son needed after Colby promised to pay. Then, she says, she got pregnant, and the text messages abruptly changed tone.

“ABORT!!” Colby allegedly told her in flurry of text messages included in the lawsuit. “Get rid of it. Have an abortion and we can be together.”

(Her attorney would not comment on the case. According to court papers, Cook was still pregnant as of Dec. 31.)

Cook accuses Colby of infecting her and other women with STDs, including herpes and chlamydia. She also accuses him of breach of contract over the surgery she says he never paid for. She never moved into the multimillion-dollar home _ which DiCarlo still occupies.

As for DiCarlo, she says that she met Colby through Match.com and that he proposed the first time they met in person. An engagement announcement for the couple ran in The Indianapolis Star in February 2006. But the two never wed. DiCarlo says she discovered he was living a “secret life,” with multiple fiancees.

She also accuses him of stopping payment on her health insurance even though she had a kidney removed for donation last fall.

Another woman, Sarah Waugh of Ventura County, Calif., sued Colby last June, accusing him of causing her emotional distress and exposing her to sexually transmitted diseases by sleeping with others.

Waugh says her relationship with Colby started with office shoulder rubs and offers for dinner in 2001 when she was a 22-year-old employee and he a 48-year-old married executive at California’s WellPoint Health Networks Inc. Waugh says Colby promised monthly support and private school for the children of his many other girlfriends.

Late last year, U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner threw out the lawsuit.

“Although Colby’s conduct may be ungallant, it simply does not rise to the level of being `utterly intolerable in a civilized community,’” Klausner wrote, referring to Waugh’s claim of emotional distress.

Still, Hollywood producer Larry Garrison thinks there’s an audience for the lurid stories. Garrison, president of SilverCreek Entertainment, said he plans to put together a book and movie deal.

At WellPoint, Colby was paid more than $700,000 in salary and received a $1.1 million bonus in 2006. He left with a severance payment of $666,190 and later bought a $4.7 million home in Scottsdale, Ariz. His Indianapolis home, which he shared with a woman who identified herself as Angela Colby, is on the market for $1.6 million.

A former neighbor, Chad Christensen, said the couple were “very nice people, very down to earth and open.” He also recalled an awkward moment at a neighborhood picnic last summer, a few months after Colby’s romantic entanglements first became public.

A magician who was entertaining children asked the kids to reach into a bag and pull out some scarves. Then he turned to Colby.

“David reaches in and what he pulls out is some panties,” Christensen said. “I’m just thinking, `How uncomfortable does he feel right now?’”

The NewsBreaker Goes Hollywood... TV Series in the Future

Larry Garrison President of SilverCreek Entertainment, Journalist, and New York Times best selling author has just effectuated a deal to executive produce a series based on his life as a rebel journalist known as “THE NEWSBREAKER” as portrayed in his memoirs on Amazon now. Larry has partnered with the Jay Firestone, who’s new company Prodigy will executive produce in association with SilverCreek Entertainment. Paradigm, a major powerhouse agency in Los Angeles is presently packaging the series. Larry has worked on the “Oh My God” stories of the Century from the White House, to The Oklahoma Bombing, 9/11, The Pentagon, The Natalee Holloway Story (Co-authoring the book “Aruba,”) The Ramsay Case, The Robert Blake Case, The Jackson Jurors among many others.  Garrison autographs his book with the quote “The truth is better than the spin.” The series will be a twist along the lines of a “CSI” and “Law and Order” that will rock the news world.

The Dana Pretzer Show on Scared Monkeys Radio - Tuesday at 9PM EST 8/21/07, Guests: Eric Spinato, Mark Finkelstein, Robert Peters and Larry Garrison

The Dana Pretzer Show on SCARED MONKEYS RADIO This week’s guests include: 

• Former Cable TV Producer Entertainment Specialist and President & CEO of Spinato & Associates Eric Spinato Discussing Sports Stars in trouble with the law.
• From Newsbusters, Mark Finkelstein discussing MSNBC’s liberal bias.
• Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media Discussing recent nude advertisements in the NY Post.
• President of SilverCreek Entertainment and Journalist Larry Garrison The News Breaker - John Mark Karr 1 year later. Larry Garrison will also be giving the exclusive announcement on the NewsBreaker TV series in development.  

June 5, 2007, 8:32 am

Ex-WellPoint CFO: The Biopic

Wellpoint CFO's fall potential film fodder

Producer gains rights to 20 women's stories

By Stephanie Hoops
Saturday, June 30, 2007

The love life of former WellPoint Inc. executive David C. Colby — which reportedly included relationships with more than 15 women at one time and has been detailed in lawsuits filed by two of them — could become the basis of a movie.

The producer, Larry Garrison, president of Thousand Oaks-based SilverCreek Entertainment, said he has met with more than 20 women and has procured the rights to their stories.

"Colby reminds me of Philip Seymour Hoffman," he said. "That's on my wish list, for him to play Colby."

The most recent lawsuit was filed Thursday in Los Angeles County against the Thousand Oaks-based company, and Colby, 53, by former employee Sarah Waugh. In 2001, at the age of 22, she was working as an associate at WellPoint Health Networks in Thousand Oaks.

The company merged in 2004 with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and became known as WellPoint Inc., the country's biggest health insurer.

Waugh said Colby was a married father who came onto her, rubbing her shoulders at the office and asking her out. She said she repeatedly rebuffed his advances. Eventually, however, the relationship became intimate the night of a company holiday party at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles.

When Waugh later complained to supervisors at WellPoint, she was fired, the suit states.

Colby, she claims in the lawsuit, took care of her financial needs after her job ended, giving her monthly "support payments" and promised to keep paying for her even if their relationship, which she says "was not steady," ended.

Waugh, now 29, is seeking an unspecified amount in damages for sexual battery, breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress.

In an odd twist, Waugh's younger sister, Jessica Waugh, 27, also had an intimate relationship with Colby.

He took Jessica Waugh with him on European vacations and to corporate functions, and had promised to pay for her children's private schooling.

The suit states that since 2004, Colby has had concurrent relationships with more than 15 women, including Rita DiCarlo, the Waughs, Angela Doan-Colby, and others who allowed only their first name and last initial in the suit.

DiCarlo also filed a lawsuit against Colby, and drew the attention of producer Garrison, who lives a few blocks away from her.

"She'd been after me for about three months," Garrison said of DiCarlo. "When I got her story in a breakdown in an e-mail I thought, Oh my God.'"

Garrison said Colby's resignation from Wellpoint came soon after he called the company in late May to discuss DiCarlo and Colby's relationship.

"I think they realized at that point that the sky was falling," he said. "They decide in one day, right after I called that he was going to be let go."

Spokespersons at WellPoint could not be reached for comment.

DiCarlo's suit, filed May 25 in Ventura County, is seeking a 7,500-square-foot house in Lake Sherwood.

A registered nurse and chiropractic doctor, DiCarlo, 43, met Colby through the online dating service Match.com in 2004. She moved into Colby's Lake Sherwood home in 2005.

Colby bought her an engagement ring and approved an engagement announcement in The Indianapolis Star newspaper, the suit states.

Colby could not be reached for comment, and his Los Angeles divorce lawyer, Susan Carter, said she had no comment.

Colby was a Wall Street darling, widely viewed as one of the country's best chief financial officers in managed care.

From a career standpoint and by most measures, he has done well, earning more than $740,000 annually and selling over $100 million in WellPoint stock since mid-June.

He was forced to resign from his CFO position with WellPoint in late May for unspecified breaches of a conduct code that were "of a non-business nature," according to court records.

David C. Colby, former CFO of WellPoint…
Asked to Resign for “Unspecified code of conduct Violations”

What on earth was going on at WellPoint all these years? The golden boy, former CFO David C. Colby, was asked to step down for unspecified “code of conduct” violations. That would be code for scandal.

Colby, the company said in a statement, had committed unspecified violations of its code of conduct. An investigation uncovered nothing illegal and the alleged infringement was unrelated to WellPoint business, the company said. But Colby was out nonetheless and WellPoint would have nothing more to say. Women who said they dated him during his 10 years at WellPoint and accompanied him on business trips across the U.S. and Europe haven’t been so reticent. They described amorous entanglements that could embarrass the company if they became public — as it seemed they might, considering that at least four women signed up with Larry Garrison, a Hollywood producer who said he was shopping for development deals for their stories. (LA Times)

June 15th, 2007 at 09:30am

The Hollywood Movie Machine... So You Want to be in the Movies, Now Its a Reality.

Imagine playing Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca? Or dream you are Judy Garland in The Wizard of OZ or more recently, any one of the numerous characters from The Lord of the Rings? Think it is impossible, not any more. Thanks to an innovative and amazing new video experience, The Hollywood Movie Machine. You too can be a star.

(Hollywood Movie Machine, retail version)

The Hollywood Movie Machine in the brainchild of Dennis Fountaine and Jamie Day. After about two years of putting in their due diligence, the once small idea has now developed a life of its own. As Jamie Day stated, “we wanted to be able to provide the opportunity to put people in the movies and provide them with their 15 minutes of fame.” Jamie also said they wanted to create a family friendly product as well, “what a great way for parents and their children to spend time together, The Hollywood Movie Machine provides a great outlet for the entire family to be involved in an activity at home.”

You can be your favorite star for a day and get your 15 minutes of fame without having to have an embarrassing video pop up on You Tube that requires more explaining than fame. However, in this case with The Hollywood Movie Machine Experience you can replay your 15 minutes of fame over and over again.

The Hollywood Movie Machine™ makes it possible for the consumer to magically appear on-screen as if they actually are that famous actor, singer or celebrity - granting them their very own 15 Minutes of Fame.
 
Through a fun and interactive “Hollywood Movie Making Experience”, a participant’s face and voice electronically replaces the original performer’s face and voice in a clip from a variety of famous Movies, TV Programs, Music Videos, Cartoons, or even Video Games.  (Hollywood Movie Machine)

(Hollywood Movie Machine Home prototype)

The Hollywood Movie Machine will come in a retail and home version. However, it does not stop there. Larry Garrison, President of Silvercreek is developing the concept for a reality TV series and a feature based on The Hollywood Movie Machine. Move over, American Idol … The Hollywood Movie Machine Reality “SCREEN TEST” is coming. For all those individuals who participate in reality series to gain fame and fortune or their 15 minutes within the music industry, one for acting is right around the corner. Imagine being discovered by those in the movie industry, this reality TV show is the next big reality show vehicle to do just that.

Larry Garrison known as “The NewsBreaker” and also of President of SilverCreek Entertainment in Los Angeles, CA is in development of a reality series and a feature based on “The Hollywood Movie Machine.” Pixie Monroe has been tapped for casting.  Garrison states that The Hollywood Movie Machine will sweep the nation in movie theatres and malls, and equates the home version to be a family oriented innovation for young and old alike.   

Dante Grayson has been instrumental in making Jamie and Dennis’s dream come true. He has worked aiding in financing the development of the machines. He has also been influential on the series and feature, and will work producing with his company and Executive Producer Larry Garrison.  

The Hollywood Movie Machine idea and concept has been a work in process. Obviously in the visual world we live in and the advent of reality TV, the people behind the Hollywood Movie Machine are really on to something.  When asked what was the most difficult part of the process was Jamie stated, “finding the right movie clip. One that is memorable to a movie, yet one that does not have a tremendous amount of head movement.” She also stated that they are in talks with numerous movie studios for the licensing rights for film usage. Jamie stated, “right now anyone could become Fay Wray from the original 1933 King Kong or Carry Grant, Eva Marie Saint or James Mason from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.”

The Hollywood Movie Machine, great for the family, entertainment for all ages, providing you with your moment of fame and soon to be a TV acting reality series.

The Hollywood Movie Machine asks, “Are you ready for YOUR Close-Up?”

For more Information & Publicity contact:

Larry Garrison
President
SilverCreek Entertainment
805-370-3630

      E-mail:  GPINews@aol.com

March 28th, 2007 at 01:14pm Posted by Scared Monkeys

Excerpt: 'The Newsbreaker,' by Larry Garrison

Larry Garrison To be Interviewed Tonight on Larry King Live … his book The Newsbreaker, JonBenet Ramsey and John Karr

This afternoon the Boulder, CO District Attorney Mary Lacy faced the music regarding the debacle that has become the “confession” and extradition of John Karr from Thailand to Boulder, CO. John Mark Karr who confessed and appears to actually believe that he killed JonBenet Ramsey nearly 10 years ago was cleared yesterday.

“John Karr sincerely believes he killed JonBenet Ramsey, there’s no question in his mind about that,” Lacy said.

She said Karr still believes, even now, that he killed the young girl even though evidence points to someone else. (CNN)

No charges will not be brought against him as his DNA did not match that of which was found at the crime scene.

Boulder DA Mary Lacy is facing the media with some tough questions as to how and why they would have thought John Karr was involved in the murder of JonBenet. It appears that prosecutors had nothing to go on except Karr’s bizarre comments, statements and confession.

Later tonight to get the Karr family’s perspective, Larry King will be interviewing Larry Garrison on ”Larry King Live“. They will be discussing Larry Garrison’s up coming book, The NEWSBREAKER and the John Mark Karr case in which Larry Garrison represents the family as a spokesperson. Interestingly enough Garrison’s new book, The NEWSBREAKER, covers many of the most read and watched news stories in the past 10 years including Terri Schiavo case, Michael Jackson, TWA Flight 800, 9/11, the Oklahoma bombing, Andrew Cunanan and the murder of Versace, the Robert Blake murder case, Mary Kay Letourneau and Jon Benet Ramsey.

For twenty-five years, Larry Garrison has been a news broker, operating within the secret side of the news, finding and releasing some of the most sensational stories of the last couple decades. Now, in this riveting account of the news behind the news, Garrison lets readers in on how such headlining stories are found, manipulated, and released to the public, blowing the whistle on the news media, and divulging what really happens when all of the major news agencies compete to report the same top stories. Garrison goes inside some of his biggest cases, providing never-before-released info on the Terri Schiavo case, Michael Jackson, TWA Flight 800, 9/11, the Oklahoma bombing, Andrew Cunanan and the murder of Versace, Jon Benet Ramsey, the Robert Blake murder case, Mary Kay Letourneau, and many, many more. Gutsy and gritty, Larry has uncovered and been exposed to facts of some of the biggest headlines of our times. And now, in The NewsBreaker, he finally tells the story behind the headlines, how news is made and reported, and why the networks wouldn’t, or couldn’t, give the full story on some of the most important news events of our time. (Amazon)

Larry Garrison is also known for co-writing “Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise” along with Dave Holloway and R. Stephanie Good. Larry Garrison will also be interviewed Wednesday night on Entertainment Tonight discussing his book, The NEWSBREAKER and the recent events in the John Karr fiasco.

Karr family spokesperson Larry Garrison tells ET: “The family is very grateful for the truth coming out. We knew from the beginning that the resolution would evolve as it has come to be. We would like to thank all the people that believed in us and allowed us the forum to speak.”

We also had the opportunity to ask Larry Garrison how the Karr family felt about the recent dropping of charges by the Boulder DA and the fact as to why John Mark Karr would have confessed in the first place. Larry’s response was as follows:

The family and I are very please with the outcome. We knew he is innocent and the truth always comes out in the end. His motivations will be revealed at a later date.

More on the JonBenet Ramsey and John Karr connection can be found at Missing & Exploited.

August 29th, 2006 at 01:56pm Posted by Scared Monkeys | Media, Crime, Missing Persons

Ramsey Suspect Remains in L.A. County Jail

New Arrest in Natalee Holloway Case

Monday May 22, 2006 8:55am EST

Natalee Holloway CREDIT: AP

Dutch Police Arrest Natalee Suspect

Guido Weaver, A Casino Worker, Detained In Connection With 2005 Murder

An undated photo of Guido Weaver. (CBS)

Holloway Detainee Held On Drug Charges

Geoffrey Van Cromviort, in a photo with his sister. Quote "It's a very, very new name that hasn't even been on the radar screens." Dave Holloway

Natalee Holloway's Father Hopes for the Best

April 10, 2006— It has been almost a year since Natalee Holloway vanished from her spring break trip in Aruba. Since then, her parents, Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway, have struggled to keep her name in the news.

Holloway has released a book called "Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise."

He said that when he first arrived on the island, he stopped at two police stations to inquire about his daughter's disappearance and was asked for money.

"The detective in charge, the first question he asked me was how much money I had," he said. "I was in a state of shock. We finally gathered ourselves together and met with him and decided that we probably would be doing this search on our own."

Natalee Holloway was captured on video last May at an Aruban casino, sitting and drinking with a group of young people, including Joran van der Sloot. Van der Sloot, a Dutch teen, told ABC News he left the casino with Natalee that night and spent time alone with her on the beach.

When Natalee wasn't on the flight home, her mother flew to Aruba to search for her. In the next few months, Aruban police took a number of men into custody, including van der Sloot and his father, Paulus van der Sloot. All were eventually released because of a lack of evidence.

A Hopeful Parent

Last October, Dave Holloway journeyed to Aruba to search the waters offshore, but found nothing. He said that unraveling the mystery of his daughter's disappearance was like trying to figure out a crossword puzzle.

"I have a lot of information in this book. Hopefully someone will read it and get some answers," he said.

Holloway's ex-wife, Beth Twitty, has said that she has accepted the fact that her daughter has died, but Holloway has not been able to come to that place.

"As a parent, you hold out hope that maybe — look at this investigation and you look how it has gone, maybe they are wrong," he said. "You really have to look at what the FBI has said. They told us about the 10th day in that Natalee was probably not with us."

Holloway said there had been no substantial developments in the case except that the police and Dutch authorities had cleared the sand dunes to look for new evidence. The FBI is also requestioning Natalee's classmates from Alabama.

The case has reverberated across the United States and the world. More schools and parents are taking more care when it comes to children on vacations.

"You have to stop and think you are leaving the United States and the protection of this government," he said. "I want more than just a plane ticket. What I want is more protection from the U.S. government."

Van der Sloot maintains that he did not harm Natalee or see her in distress. Holloway said that he was sure that van der Sloot, who has since moved to Holland, was lying about something.

"We have seen him lie over and over and over again," Holloway said. "So, you know, it is just another set of lies that we have seen all over again. I think he's guilty of something."

Natalee's disappearance will be featured on a Dutch television program, and Holloway hopes it will help shed light on what happened.

"Maybe it will give the Dutch people more confidence to call in for tips and leads whereas they have not in the past," he said.

Book Excerpt: Natalee Holloway's Father Speaks Out

April 7, 2006 — Alabama teen Natalee Holloway disappeared 11 months ago during a high school graduation trip to Aruba with her classmates. Since then, local police have been unable to find enough evidence to convict anyone on charges related her disappearance.

Dutch youth Joran van Der Sloot and two friends were questioned and detained by Aruban police, but all three were eventually released. Natalee's family continues to believe that Van Der Sloot has information about her disappearance, and the family has filed a civil suit against the youth and his father, Paulus, in New York.

Nobody has been charged, and Natalee Holloway remains missing.

Natalee's father, Dave Holloway, has written a book called "ARUBA" in which he describes the family's turmoil as the search for clues about Natalee's disappearance continues. Following is an excerpt from "ARUBA."

Be sure to tune in to "Good Morning America" on Monday, April 17 for an exclusive interview with Natalee's father.

"ARUBA, THE TRAGIC UNTOLD STORY OF NATALEE HOLLOWAY AND CORRUPTION IN PARADISE"

I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH IT HURTS TO LOSE A child. There are no words to describe the feelings that choke a parent who outlives a daughter. It is not supposed to happen this way. I was never prepared for this kind of pain, this type of emptiness. My heart has an insurmountable void that used to be filled with Natalee's presence.

I watched as she received her high school diploma, and I took pictures of her at her graduation ceremony. I planned to be there when she graduated from college and then medical school. My pride would have enveloped us both. I had long imagined the day when I would see my Natalee in her beautiful white wedding gown. We would meet in the back of the church for her last moment as "daddy's little girl" and, as she encircled my arm with hers, I would lean down and whisper the words that all fathers must say to their daughters on that very special day, "I love you." I would walk her down the aisle and proudly offer her hand to her fiancé, and I would return to my seat knowing that my girl had accomplished all that a father could desire. At that moment, it would be clear that the first tier of her life with me had come to an end and that the man she would now look to for approval and love would be her husband. But she would always be my little Natalee . . . always.

When Natalee and her brother Matt were young, we lived in Clinton, Mississippi. We had been building some very special memories, but lately it has been difficult to recall them without a lot of pain. I try to picture Natalee riding her bike around the neighborhood, or envision the excited expression on her face when she woke up on Christmas morning and spotted the toys we had stayed up half the night putting together. I remember how she loved climbing up onto my back as I crawled along the floor on my hands and knees and how when she wanted to show off her dancing, she jumped up on her miniature table to do a routine and it tipped over, throwing her off and breaking her arm. I think back to her first days of kindergarten when she was only five and how I drove her up to school every morning and walked her to class to show her around and get her used to it. I can still see her sad little face during the second week when I told her it was time to go in on her own. She still wanted Daddy to walk her to class. I keep thinking back because I'm so afraid that if I don't, the memories will begin to fade. And, for now, that is all I have of her to hold on to.

Natalee was seven and Matt was five when their mother, Beth, and I divorced in 1993. After I remarried in 1995, my wife, Robin, and I lived in Jackson, Mississippi, but we relocated back to Clinton in 1996 to be close to Natalee and Matt. When Beth remarried in 2000, she and her husband, Jug, moved to Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Robin and I moved to Meridian, Mississippi, where our two daughters, Brooke and Kaitlyn, were born. Natalee and Matt live in Mountain Brook with Beth and Jug and visit us in Mississippi as often as their schedules allow. Prior to Natalee's sixteenth birthday and obtaining her driver's license, she and Matt had been coming to our home every other weekend and more frequently during their summer vacations from school. But, during Natalee's senior year in high school, her visits were a bit less frequent due to her many extracurricular activities. So Robin and I made it our business to visit her and watch her dance at football games with her dance team, the Dorians.

Robin and I have maintained a close, loving relationship with Natalee throughout her childhood and teenage years. We have tried to instill certain values and traits in all of our children that would enable them to succeed in life. Those values include honesty, integrity, morality, and a deep faith in God. We believe that Natalee has a solid foundation in those values. Robin and I have our own set of faith-based values that guide us in our daily lives. At this time of upheaval, we have gained strength from our reliance upon those values. We have felt God's presence every step of the way, and that is what has sustained us in these, our darkest hours of need.

Natalee is missing.

I desperately want her back.

From the moment that she was born on October 21, 1986, she has always been an exceptional human being. A father could not ask for more from a child. Her younger sisters lovingly call her Sissy, and she is a sensitive, loving, and articulate young woman. She is blessed with being beautiful both inside and out.

As Natalee completed her senior year, we were all excited about her next stepping stone in life. She was prepared to go off to the University of Alabama on a full scholarship to major in premed after graduating with honors and a 4.15 grade point average from Mountain Brook High School. She participated in numerous extracurricular activities, including the dance team and the Bible Club, and she was a member of both the math and Spanish honor societies. She had a part-time job at a health food store and performed volunteer work. She has some great friends, is well-traveled, and has always looked toward the future. She never showed any interest in drugs or alcohol, and she kept close ties with her siblings and classmates who all care for her very much.

In February 2005, Natalee called me and asked for permission to go on a trip to Aruba with her graduating class. This is apparently a rite of passage for teenagers all over the country. They convince their parents to allow this one-time privilege as a gift for all of their hard work, and parents often agree, even when their instincts tell them otherwise. I was apprehensive about Natalee taking this type of trip, and I tried to talk her out of it. I did not like the idea of her traveling that far away with so many other students and so few chaperones.

When I received the trip brochure I saw that the cost was approximately $985. Robin and I are from the old school, and we felt that was a bit extravagant for a high school graduation trip. After a few days of consideration, I told Natalee that we could not approve of the trip for two reasons: it was too extravagant, and we did not think it was appropriate. However, I told her that I would give her a graduation gift of half the amount of the cost of the trip for her to do with as she pleased. Since Natalee's stepbrother had been to Aruba with his class two years earlier, and her twin cousins were graduating with her class and were going along with her this year, Beth felt comfortable allowing Natalee to make the trip.

The months passed, and upon receiving the invitation to Natalee's graduation, she advised us that the school had opted to hold the ceremony at a local university theater hall. Due to the limited amount of seating, each graduate was allocated only eight tickets. We were to have three of them for my wife, Robin, Natalee's grandmother, and me. That left her two sisters out. Due to the distance, I asked Natalee if she could get two more tickets for her sisters otherwise Robin might have had to stay behind to care for them. As graduation weekend drew near, Natalee and I spoke again of the tickets, and she assured me that she would call all three hundred of her classmates if she had to in order to come up with them. On Monday, May 23, we heard from Natalee, and, in a hoarse voice, she told us that after calling nearly every student, she was finally able to get us the tickets. She said that she was just not going to give up on us. I praised her determination.

On graduation day, we arrived at Natalee's home expecting to rush up to the door, grab the tickets, and leave. Instead, she insisted that her two sisters come in to see her room. Natalee's grandparents, Beth's mother and mine, also wanted to catch up, so Robin and I and the family spent about forty-five minutes in my ex-wife's home. The situation was very unusual for us and somewhat awkward for me, but it was Natalee's big day. Looking back, I think that God had a hand in putting us all together on that very special day, the last day that we may be sharing a momentous occasion with Natalee.

As we were about to leave, Natalee informed us that she and her friends would be going somewhere after the graduation ceremonies, so she might not see us later on.

There were approximately three thousand people in attendance at graduation. When the ceremony ended, I realized that I hadn't given Natalee the gift we had brought, so we tried to locate her. Everyone had headed outside to a reception, but there were so many people, all wearing the same graduation gown, I just assumed that we would not see her again that day. I thought she might have already hooked up with her friends and left. We headed for the car, but Robin insisted that we go back to try to find her. Suddenly Natalee called my cell phone and said she wanted to see us. We communicated back and forth until we were able to locate each other. I gave her our graduation present, a check for $500. She was thrilled and thanked us. We hugged, and I took some photos. I mentioned the trip to Aruba and asked her to be careful. We all said our good-byes and left. Later that evening, she called to thank us again.

The day before Natalee was to leave for Aruba, she called and spoke to Robin. She told her how excited she was about the trip, and Robin once again strongly cautioned her to be careful. The next day, Natalee left with approximately 125 students and 7 chaperones. We heard that, upon their arrival in Aruba, the chaperones scheduled daily meetings with the students and collected their passports before distributing their room keys. Every day the students were to check in with the chaperones at a specific time.

On Monday, May 30, Natalee's trip came to an end, and she was due to fly home to Alabama. But late in the afternoon, I received a call from Matt telling me that Natalee had missed her flight and that Beth was getting on a plane to Aruba. She had told him to call me, but had no details yet. I attempted to get in touch with Beth. No answer. I googled hotels in Aruba and found a number for the Holiday Inn where the kids had been staying. I called and was able to talk to one of the trip chaperones who had stayed behind in Natalee's room. He filled me in about Natalee missing her flight. At the time, there was not much to go on. Someone from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was there on vacation, and he made a few calls to the police. Apparently, they have the same rule that we have in the United States about waiting twenty-four hours before taking a report on a missing person. I would later find out that it is one of the very few rules or laws that the United States and Aruba have in common.

Beth had flown out of Birmingham on a friend's private jet as soon as she learned that Natalee had missed her flight. I contacted a commercial airline and booked the next flight out for 5:30 a.m. the following morning. I immediately started a checklist and packed my bags. I stayed in contact with Matt, and by around 10:00 p.m., some of the Mountain Brook kids who had arrived back in Birmingham indicated to him that Natalee left a bar with a nice kid who played soccer and was visiting Aruba from Holland. Some of the Mountain Brook boys said they sat with him around the poker table in a casino on the previous evening.

Later that night, Matt called again to tell me that Natalee's flight had been rebooked, and she would be coming home the next day. Someone from Delta Airlines had confirmed that a female had called and changed the flight. Matt felt that Natalee had simply missed her plane and rebooked it. I cancelled my flight, but I was still concerned because no one had heard from Natalee. The next morning, I started making more calls. I could not reach Beth, and I was unable to get a member of the Aruban police force to talk to me on the phone about Natalee. I called the Holiday Inn again, but nobody answered the phone in Natalee's room. By noon I learned that Natalee was not getting on the plane. I found out that it had been a chaperone from Natalee's group who had changed her flight in the hopes that she would reappear. It was then that I knew something tragic must have happened. I feared the worst, but prayed for a miracle. I hung up the phone and broke down. My mind was racing with so many "what ifs." Once I was able to regain my composure, I called my brothers, Phil, Steve, and Todd, and my brother-in-law, Michael. Phil, Michael, and I all tried to book flights out right away but could not get any until the next day. I tried to discourage my youngest brother, Todd, from coming. He was in bankruptcy and couldn't afford the trip. But he said he had to come, and he stayed behind to sell two of his vehicles just to get the money for the plane ticket. Steve, a fireman, had to make arrangements to get coverage for his job, so he also came in a little later on.

My pastor heard the news and called from out of town to pray with me over the phone. I can still hear his comforting words, "God, please give Dave and his family the strength to get through this." Our family is very strong, and we were determined to find out what happened to Natalee and bring her home.

My world was turned upside-down, and my emotions ran wild. I could barely function. I had to keep myself together in order to help Natalee. She needed me to find her. The search-and-rescue planning began immediately.

We left Meridian, Mississippi, on the evening of May 31, 2005. The flight to Aruba was long, and I was in a panic. On one hand, I was traveling there to bring Natalee home. On the other hand, I was afraid of the worst.

When I arrived in Aruba with my family, we hit the island running. We rented a car and immediately headed out to find a police station. There were only four on the island and I was amazed to find that the first two we entered knew nothing about Natalee's disappearance. We were then directed to a third one, the Noord Police Station. I walked in and said, "I'm Dave Holloway, and I need to talk to you about my daughter who is missing." A man in the back stood up and said, "How much money do you have?" That was how I first met Detective Dennis Jacobs, the investigator who was assigned to handle Natalee's case after Beth made a report to him upon her arrival on the island. I thought his comment about money was odd, but I ignored it and just tried to talk to him about finding Natalee.

Jacobs painted a scenario that questioned all of the beliefs and values that we had instilled in Natalee. He insinuated that she had met someone and fallen in love. "This happens all the time. She will probably show up in a few days," he theorized. "She was just partying hard," he added. "Don't worry. Just go down to Carlos'n Charlie's and have a beer." It was June 1, 2005, our first evening in Aruba, my daughter was missing and a detective was telling us to go to a local bar and have a beer. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He said it was the hot spot for vacationing kids. "Maybe she will show up." In fact, he was so confident that she was just partying it up or on drugs that he told us this particular bar would be the best place to find her. However, he did warn us to watch our drinks very carefully, adding that sometimes people put drugs into them. When I talked about searching for Natalee, he questioned why we would want to do that.

He told us to go to Carlos'n Charlie's rather than the crack houses where he said that Beth's husband, Jug, and his friends had gone the night before. They went there due to information received from the police that a lot of the kids do drugs and party and that Natalee was probably with them. Jacobs told us that he had received reports that Jug's people were busting up the drug houses?he didn't want us going there and stirring things up too. He said we should leave any searching to the police, and if we had reason to believe that Natalee was in a crack house, we should call him and he would check it out. He then told us that the government controlled the crack houses in order to keep the drug addicts off the streets and away from where tourists shop and dine.

Jacobs also told us that the day before we arrived, he had interviewed the boys who eventually became the three main suspects in Natalee's disappearance, Joran van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe, and his brother Satish. Beth had informed him of them after receiving information about videotapes taken from the security cameras outside of the Holiday Inn and in the hotel's casino. It had been determined that they were the last people to be seen with her. Jacobs considered the boys' statements to be consistent in that they had all said that they dropped Natalee off at the hotel. However, I did not realize at the time that Beth had already told him that the tapes did not show Natalee returning to the Holiday Inn that night.

We left the police station in a state of shock. We couldn't believe the attitude of the detective. Just the fact that he asked how much money I had took me by surprise. What kind of question is that to ask the father of a missing child? It seemed as if he was not at all concerned about our daughter. But, since he was in charge of the investigation, we followed his instructions and traveled to Carlos'n Charlie's hoping to find out what had happened to Natalee. We arrived there at about 10:30 p.m. and what I found was not like anything I had envisioned. While customers must pass by a bouncer at the door, there was no indication that he was stopping anyone from entering. The bar was packed with teenagers doing Jell-O shots and sleazy-looking island boys preying on the beautiful young female tourists. The place has more than one bar, and people were dancing and singing in every corner of the bi-level establishment. It was an unbelievable scene, one that I wish I had known about before Natalee left on her trip. I did not want to stay inside, so we hung out around the street corners. In less than two hours, we probably experienced at least ten to fifteen offers from various drug dealers who wanted us to buy from them. Some government control, I thought. Out of curiosity, my brother asked one of them what he had. "Whatever you need," he answered. "I have it or I can get it." We managed to strike up conversations with some of them who confided that the "higher ups" wanted them to always remember one thing: while peddling their drugs, they were never to commit a crime against a tourist, especially any American around the cruise dock areas. Later that evening, we went back to the hotel and planned our next strategy.

The following day, we began searching the beaches and mountain areas in the morning; in the evening, we returned to the street corners looking for leads about Natalee. After several nights there, we were confronted by some of the stray drug addicts who had come into the tourist area with tips about Natalee. Apparently, Jug's friends had started handing out money for information about Natalee's whereabouts. We had heard that Beth and the people who were searching with her were handing out hundred dollar bills. Due to the information that we were receiving about drug use on the island, Beth's side of the family was pursuing the possibility of a drug-related kidnapping, and they were going into drug houses and driving around town.

One particular drug addict gave us a tip that Natalee was in a specific drug house operated by "Tanya and Jim." He said there was an escape door in the back of the house, and if we entered, she might be whisked away into a secret room. My brother Phil knew this was just a hoax as we had several others trying to get money from us for the same type of tip. The drug addicts were only interested in getting more money, and when word got out among them that the family was paying for tips, all of them wanted in on the action. Some asked us for $10, and when my brother began asking more questions without paying, the price dropped to $5. Phil started to walk off, and one man kept following him. He wanted money, any amount, and he finally yelled out, "Isn't she worth at least two bucks?" Phil was just about ready to bust him with a right-hand fist when an off-duty police officer walked by. The drug addict knew him by name and asked if he was on duty. He said no and kept walking. The drug addict then turned and walked off.

Meanwhile, I did some investigating and found out more about the locals Natalee met who had been hanging out with the students from her hometown. Apparently, the boys had been throwing around lies about where they were staying. We heard that one of them, Joran van der Sloot, the son of a Dutch justice official, did not reveal that he lived on the island, but instead led the girls to believe that he was a vacationing student from Holland staying at the Holiday Inn. He was the boy Matt had told me about and one of the three that Dennis Jacobs had questioned.

From what we had learned, on what was to be her last night in Aruba, witnesses saw Natalee leave Carlos'n Charlie's with the three locals, Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch boy, and Surinamese-born brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. After that, she disappeared. When the boys were initially brought in for questioning, they all admitted having been with Natalee on the night of her disappearance, saying that they were at the bar but left there with her around 1:30 a.m. to take a fifteen-minute drive out to the lighthouse because she wanted to see it. They claimed to have brought her right back to the Holiday Inn where she was staying, and to have left her there with security guards who helped her inside because she was supposedly very intoxicated.

According to what we found out from the Mountain Brook students, Natalee had met Joran van der Sloot in a casino the day before she disappeared. It's inconceivable that Natalee would have gone off with any of those boys so late at night and voluntarily. Everything about their story was unsettling. I know my Natalee. She must have been forced or drugged to go with them, if she really did. And, if she did go with them, then the last men to see her alive were walking around free. That gave them more than enough time to get rid of any evidence that Natalee might have left behind with them.

Incredibly, the police did not feel there was a need to search for Natalee. My daughter was missing without a trace, and the police considered the situation a kid's prank, something that responsible children just go off and do on a whim. No way. I disagreed with their theory of what happened. I know my daughter. She would never worry her family like that, and there was no way that she would get involved with three strangers unless she did not know what she was doing.

There I was in Aruba, a strange place, searching for my little girl, not knowing where she was, how she was, or what had happened to her. As I reflected on what the police had told me, I realized that they were trying to use the most innocent details to create a motive for Natalee to have voluntarily disappeared. For instance, they had somehow seen the quote that she had put in her high-school yearbook. It was from Lynyrd Skynyrd's song "Freebird":

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now,
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.

They wanted us to believe that those words were an indication that our daughter had been planning to leave of her own free will and that she needed to get away. Natalee had disappeared, leaving every one of her possessions, including her passport, behind in a hotel room. Their hypothesis simply does not make sense. She is not the type of person to be so irresponsible as to deliberately miss a plane flight home without a word. Not my Natalee!

From my first day on the island, I realized that I could not rely on the police to find my daughter. If they refused to search, we would organize and do it ourselves. We were able to obtain enough information to learn the route the boys had taken with Natalee. We decided to start the search at the California Lighthouse on the northwestern tip of the island and work our way back to the Holiday Inn. I enlisted about fifty tourists to help. We searched the ground area but did not do any type of digging at that time. Incredibly, a publicity agent named Carla, from a New York City firm that handles publicity for tourism in Aruba, tried to stop us from searching near the California Lighthouse, a tourist attraction, saying that it would be harmful to the island and bring too much negative media attention. She said she had even discussed it with Beth and that she had agreed. But I advised her that the search would go forward, no matter what kind of attention it brought. Natalee made a statement when giving us those graduation tickets: "I wasn't going to give up on you." And my statement to her now was, "I'm not going to give up on you either!"

While I was frustrated by the complete lack of police involvement, the process of an investigation wasn't completely foreign to me. My employment background includes sixteen years of investigation into auto accidents. Some of the cases I have dealt with involved lawsuits, and as a manager I had the opportunity to work closely with many attorneys. In fact, I managed a claim unit that supervised the litigation process prior to becoming an agent. During those years, I learned that in order to do a thorough investigation, whether in a criminal or civil case, a top priority while gathering evidence is patience. However, I also know that the first few days are always the most critical because, as time goes by, the evidence is increasingly difficult to obtain or is lost. Witnesses forget details or confuse them; important facts may be overlooked that could end up making or breaking the case. If the police were going to let those crucial days pass by without searching, then I was thankful that I was able to use my years of experience and knowledge in the investigation to do my own search for our daughter Natalee.

While Beth's side was taking care of most of the public areas, such as visiting schools, putting out posters in shops and public places, and riding around in vehicles at night chasing leads, my team focused on the ground search. The terrain on Aruba is unforgiving. The island is volcanic, and most of the land is uneven, jagged, pitted, rock formations. In some areas, if you fall without protection, you will cut yourself to shreds on the rocks. Almost all of the vegetation involves some sort of thorns, stickers, or cacti, including the trees and bushes. Due to the heat and rough terrain, it was similar to being in the desert. We searched through caves and other treacherous areas, and we came in every evening, sweaty, sunburned, cut up by thorns, briars, and most anything else we touched. It was an ordeal, but if we could find Natalee, it did not matter what we had to endure.

One day, while searching in a rocky area on the south side of the island, we surprised some mountain goats that were lazily sleeping in their safe cave hideout in a secluded inland mountain rock ridge overhang. I was probably the first human being that a couple of those baby goats had ever seen. Their parents trotted off out of the opposite end of the open cave while the young ones curiously watched as I sat on a rock and allowed myself to briefly let go. Tears ran down my face. I was worn out, and I was having one of those moments that I suppose was perfectly normal, under the circumstances. I still could not believe what was happening. How was it possible that I was in a foreign country searching for my missing daughter?

After a few minutes of much-needed rest, I regrouped, and we continued to clear the area. When we felt that we had exhausted our search there, we moved down to the beach and discussed our next plan of action. We searched by foot one day, by four-wheeler the next, and alternated with a four-wheel drive and walkers. We worked in groups of two each, for a total of four people, my brother, brother-in-law, and me. The other person was Patrick Murphy. He was from the Cayman Islands, and when he first saw Natalee's story break, he decided he would come to Aruba to help out. He joined in and assisted us for about two weeks. He said he was a little surprised when he found out that the three of us were conducting the search. The way we worked it was that two people would be let out of the vehicle. The second two would drive the vehicle approximately half a mile down the road at the southeast beach. They would get out and move forward. The other two would work toward the vehicle, then get in and drive past the other two and park the vehicle and continue to move forward. We each had radios to communicate.

During our daylight searches throughout the island, our group came across many abandoned houses where drug addicts had left razors and other drug paraphernalia. Some were filled with foul smelling odors, feces, urine, cardboard boxes they used as blankets or beds, and general trash. One of those houses was located right next to a fine restaurant near the hotel area and a McDonald's.

In a conversation with some locals, I was told that the island was a major shipment area and that drugs were abundant. After what I saw, I couldn't disagree. Several times, people came into the hotel to meet with other locals and an apparent drug deal was taking place. The person would come in to scope out the area prior to doing the deal. I witnessed a number of twenty-to-thirty-year-old couples entering the hotel after a hard night of partying, and it was obvious that their intoxicated state was from something other than alcohol. Where else could you go and have a weekend of crack or cocaine and return home without having to worry about being arrested for buying or using drugs? You certainly couldn't risk doing it that freely in the United States!

The days passed with no real leads and nothing to indicate whether Natalee was still alive. Hundreds of calls came in with tips that led nowhere and suggestions of crazy schemes that would try anyone's patience. We kept searching and praying. It was all we could do for Natalee, and we hoped it would be enough.

Aruba, being a Dutch protectorate, falls within the jurisdiction of the Dutch government, so I was told to arrive at the Coast Guard headquarters at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 5, 2005, to meet with the captain of the Dutch Marines, along with some people from the police department. When everyone had assembled, I asked them what the plan was. They stared blankly at me and said that they were just told to show up and I would be in charge. I couldn't believe that I was expected to run the show, as though I knew their island better than they did, and well enough to tell them where to start looking. What an unbelievable situation! I wondered if they were either too incompetent to conduct a search on their own or whether they were trying to cover up a crime and hoping to appease me with the offer to look for Natalee wherever I suggested. Either way, it was incredibly frustrating, and it made me feel somewhat helpless. But I had brought a huge map with me that my team had been following and had crossed out where we had already searched. I showed them all where I thought they should begin. My brother and I arranged for the Dutch Marines to help search at the south end of the island in the sand dunes while we were going to search the area just south of the Holiday Inn in four-wheelers. We all agreed to meet back at the Holiday Inn at 11:00 a.m. to discuss our next move, then we left for our assigned areas. Phil rode in a police helicopter while Patrick and I split up and searched the beach.

Everything came to a sudden halt when the Dutch Marines found a bloody mattress in a shack on the beach. The media immediately swarmed the area. I went back to my hotel to notify everyone of the find. Thankfully, the blood turned out to be from a dog.

Not even a full week had passed, and I had become so engrossed in my daughter's disappearance that I was hardly aware of what was going on in the rest of the world. I had absolutely no idea that Natalee's situation had sparked widespread news coverage until I phoned home and heard about it from Robin. The only news channel that we were able to view in the hotel by the time we got back to our room late at night was CNN, and to hear from Robin that Natalee's picture was being broadcast all over the world was unbelievable. And it brought home the message that everyone, not just her family, took her situation seriously. I was glad to see that our plight had gained so much support in such a short time.

Natalee had become everybody's child.

Natalee Case In 'Critical Last Phase'?
March 22, 2006

In an exclusive interview with 48 Hours correspondent Troy Roberts, the lead investigator in the Natalee Holloway case says he believes the teen's body is on Aruba. Police suspect it was moved to avoid detection and then re-buried.

(CBS) 

Quote "He [the witness] wanted to talk about the fact that he knew more about the whereabouts of Natalee...concerning a specific burial location... The information that this person gave was too specific to just be a story that was just made up by someone."

Attorney: Van Der Sloot, Kalpoes Could Go On Trial This Summer

The Natalee Holloway case continues to attract viewers in massive numbers. According to an analysis of Nielsen ratings, last Thursdays Primetime Live, which featured an interview with Joran Van Der Sloot, the Dutch teenager who is the prime suspect in the case, drew its highest ratings in three years. And on Wednesday of this week, Greta Van Susteren's interview with Van Der Sloot on Fox News Chennel brought her the highest ratings among 25-54-year-olds than any cable news personality, including the usual champ, Bill O'Reilly.

EXCLUSIVE: 'I Think I'd Hate Her'
Joran van der Sloot told his side of the story about Natalee Holloway's disappearance in an exclusive interview with ABC News' 'Primetime' on Feb. 23, 2006. (ABC News) The Search for Natalee Holloway Suspect's Parents Exclusive: Van Der Sloot Home Videos ...

Natalee Holloway Story: Many Just do not Get its Popularity, Including Aruba

"The bottom line is it makes no difference what they're saying," Thomas Mesereau Jr. told The Associated Press, pointing out the jurors announced their turnaround Monday as they began publicizing book deals.

"Twelve people deliberated and out of that process justice is supposed to result. Now, two months later, these jurors are changing their tunes. They clearly like being on TV," Mesereau said. "I'm very suspicious."

Eleanor Cook and Ray Hultman said in a televised interview that they believed the singer's young accuser was sexually assaulted.

"No doubt in my mind whatsoever, that boy was molested, and I also think he enjoyed to some degree being Michael Jackson's toy," Cook said on MSNBC's "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct."

Their comments will have no bearing on the verdict, which prosecutors cannot appeal.

Cook and Hultman said they agreed to go along with the other jurors when it became apparent that they would never convict the pop star. The two denied being motivated by money and tried to explain why they were coming forward now.

"There were a lot of people that were interested in this case from day one. People expect to know what's going on with their justice system and how things work," Hultman said.

Added Cook: "I'm speaking out now because I believe it's never too late to tell the truth."

Cook and Hultman also alleged that jury foreman Paul Rodriguez threatened to have them kicked off the jury.

"He said if I could not change my mind or go with the group, or be more understanding, that he would have to notify the bailiff, the bailiff would notify the judge, and the judge would have me removed," Cook said in a transcript provided by MSNBC.

Hultman said he also felt threatened and didn't want to get kicked off the trial.

A call to Rodriguez was not returned. A jury foreman cannot remove other jurors just for disagreeing.

Cosby asked Cook if the other jurors will be angry with her.

"They can be as angry as they want to. They ought to be ashamed. They're the ones that let a pedophile go," responded Cook, 79.

Hultman, 62, told Cosby he was upset with the way other jurors approached the case: "The thing that really got me the most was the fact that people just wouldn't take those blinders off long enough to really look at all the evidence that was there."

The New York Daily News first reported Aug. 4 that Hultman and Cook planned books and believed Jackson was guilty.

Hultman has said that when jurors took an anonymous poll early in their deliberations he was one of three jurors who voted for conviction.

On June 13, the jurors unanimously acquitted Jackson of all charges, which alleged that he molested a 13-year-old boy, plied the boy with wine and conspired to hold him and his family captive so they would make a video rebutting a damaging television documentary.

Cook told MSNBC: "The air reeked of hatred and people were angry and I had never been in an atmosphere like that before."

In June, Hultman told the AP about the verdict: "That's not to say he's an innocent man. He's just not guilty of the crimes he's been charged with."

During an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" with five other jurors in June, Cook was one of three who raised their hands when asked if they thought Jackson may have molested other children but not the 13-year-old boy.

"We had our suspicions, but we couldn't judge on that because it wasn't what we were there to do," she said at the time.

Hultman's book will be called "The Deliberator" and Cook's is "Guilty as Sin, Free as a Bird," said Larry Garrison, a producer who is working with both on their separate books and a combined television movie.

08/09/05 07:52 EDT

Larry Garrison, President of SilverCreek Entertainment will be our Special Guest today December 7, 2004, pertaining to the LeeBonny Bakley/Christina Schier/ Robert Blake film and book that he has in development.

AIRING: 2 PT/5 ET LIVE ON COURT TV

Beth Carey
Senior Producer

To: Larry Garrison/SilverCreek Entertainment

Dear Larry,

So my boss was right, Blake was delayed yet again. But not to worry we won't wait till December 20th we'll do your segment before that.

Thanks so much, again I appreciate your patience. I promise you we will do you justice.

Beth Carey
Senior Producer

NEWS RELEASE                                                               July 26, 2003

ROBERT BLAKE TRIAL NEWS

BONNIE BAKLEY'S CONFIDANT CHRISTINA SCHEIER TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Los Angeles/New York- Christina Scheier, best friend of Bonnie Bakley, the murdered wife of Hollywood film and TV star Robert Blake, is speaking out again. This time her statements are about Bonnie's ex-lover Christian Brando's possible motive to help kill her.

Larry Garrison, President of SilverCreek Entertainment, who executive produced "Like Mother/Like Son" for CBS starring Mary Tyler Moore, and who's Harper Collins true crime book "The Son Of the Grifter", which won the Edger Allen Poe Award, has inspired Christina to go public. Garrison and Scheier both appeared on national TV news shows last year while Blake was still in prison including Larry King Live, 48 Hours, E-Entertainment News, Extra, Catherine Crier Report , Court Television, and many others. The news that Larry Garrison had obtained the rights to produce a new motion picture about The Robert Blake Murder seen through the eyes of Christina Scheier, Bonnie Bakley's best friend of 35 years, made front page news in Daily Variety.

Now, Larry Garrison has persuaded Christina Scheier to tell her story with these and other new developments: The following is only a sample of her statements as told to Larry Garrison and police by Christina Scheier.

Christina Scheier has told the police that Christian Brando was having an affair with Bakley. Uncovered through communications from Brando to Bakley and pertinent information given to Scheier, she feels Brando should still be under suspicion and may be part of a conspiracy.

Scheier believes that Christian Brando may have murdered Bakley with aid of Blake!

Bonnie Bakley told Christina Scheier the following in a Jacuzzi in a hotel in Flemington New Jersey during Bakley's pregnancy:

Bonnie said Brando was speaking to Blake.

Christian Brando told Bakley that "Somebody may knock you off."

Bonnie was in love with Christian Brando and put that in postcards (which are in possession of Scheier).

Bonnie played Brando with the baby like she did Blake, because she felt Brando had more money.

Bonnie said to Christina that "Marlon Brando did not like Bonnie and wanted her away from Christian."

Bonnie said "Christian was doing drugs, and cut down walls in his home."

Bonnie said she feared Christian but also never thought anything would happen to her.

Christina Scheier fears for her life now, but wants justice to prevail. "Bonnie may have done some wild things, but she did not deserve to die. Best friends really never die, they live on in your heart forever." states Christina Scheier

Larry Garrison is in development on the first Robert Blake feature film and book "The Confidant", as documented in the Daily Variety story, )"The Confidant" (5/1/2002). Garrison's advisors have recommended Drew Barrymore for the lead role of Bonnie Bakley.

For interview requests please contact: Edward Lozzi, Edward Lozzi & Associates

Public Relations 818-995-8036 epl@lozzipr.com