Need your help ATS! Cousin Falsely Accused of Murder

Before I advise my cousin to contact the ACLU and NARF on the issue, I would appreciate any help that you can provide on this. I know this isn't really the type of board to post it at, but the speed at which ATS members can collect data makes this place an invaluable resource.

About seven years ago, my cousin and his girlfriend was being hounded by police officers and Texas Rangers. Basically they were accusing his girlfriend and him of killing someone. He had several alibis and even receipts of buying stuff with his coworkers. Regardless, he was under a pretty close watch at the time.

Due to lack of evidence, they let up and the case was basically closed back in 99�.

Well, suddenly in the last couple of days media outlets have been swarming his house � the case apparently has been reopened. He has denied comment and is furious about what the papers are saying.

The paper gives several different �suspects�, of which they label one suspect, my cousin as an �American Indian� that could have possibly killed the guy in some sort of �Indian Ritual�. What I�m trying to do is find if there is any such ritual by Native Americans or any ritual at all, that describes the way in which the guy was murdered. My cousin is part of the Hupa aka Hoopa tribe in California, currently living in Texas.

He was burned alive and had his lower jaw removed. More information about this case can be found at

www.dallasobserver.com...

The article isn�t accurate in some of what it says, as it says that both his girlfriend and he are part of the Hoopa tribe, even though she isn�t. Even so, it�s going to probably cause a rift in his community towards him, and it could make him lose his job.

Thanks for any help you guys can provide on the issue. If you guys can come up with anything, I�ll let him know who to thank hehe.

Haven't found anything on Native Americans having a ritual where they remove the jaw bone.
I did find a case in Tanzania where they killed people accused of witchcraft and found a guy with a human jaw.

Police have arrested several suspects, including one who was detained for chasing a small boy. A search of his clothing revealed he was carrying a bloody human jaw, tongue, nose and teeth. Police say 357 suspected witches have been killed in the past 18 months, but the Ministry of Home Affairs believes that the true figure is much higher. A departmental survey said as many as 5,000 people were lynched between 1994 and 1998.

www.illusions.com...

I'll keep looking.

Im not aware or any ritual of this kind, but i will ask around for you,

One of the things is that rituals and ceromonys are kept secret, as many are sacret from old times, so you may find it difficult finding anything on this,

Thanks for the help so far. As for the rituals being secret and such, I thought about that as well. I asked him directly about it and he said he knows of no such ritual. He'll probably try and contact his tribe members and find out if any such ritual existed in the past -- if it didn't, I will advise him to contact the ACLU or the NARF and relate the 'defamatory' statements that the paper printed about him. Although this does nothing to deter the police/rangers, hopefully it will keep together his marriage and let him keep his job.

I found some cases on the web, of cults mutilating animals and removing their jaw bones but nothing recent on Native Americans doing this.
Just something that archaelogists found in Texas that dated back 1100 years ago.

www.texasbeyondhistory.net...

I don't know anything about indian rituals but this site offers legal advice which is probably what you need more of now.

forum.freeadvice.com...

I hate to hear about your cousins run in with the law here in Texas. The justice system here is mid-evil to say the least like other states in the south. All they want is a conviction and most of the time they dont care about guilt.

I dont know of any rituals in Native American culture that come close to what you discribe. Native Americans dont remove body parts as far as I know. I'm no expert just part Cherokee. It goes against everything my grandmother was about.

You might want to look into 'Santeria' a vodoo type cult common in Cuba and Haiti that has been exported into Northern Mexico as witnessed by the case of Mark Kilroy, the college student that was killed in a ritual sacrifice along with at least 12 other people, mostly drug 'mules' in Matamoros, Mexico several years ago. Here is a link:

www.skepticfiles.org...

Quote from the link:

"The dead included 21-year-old University of Texas student Mark
Kilroy, who vanished last month in Matamoros while on spring break,
Sheriff's Lt. George Gavito said."

"Kilroy apparently was chosen at random after the cult members ``were
told to pick one Anglo male that particular night,'' Gavito said."

"The cult had been involved in human sacrifices for about nine months,
the lieutenant said, and prayed to the devil ``so the police would not
arrest them, so bullets would not kill them and so they could make more
money.''

"Authorities would not identify the other victims, but said all were
males."

"Some victims were shot in the head, and others appeared to have been
slain with machetes or sledgehammers, Neck said."

"Perez said that the cult members removed some of the victims'
vertebrae to use them for necklaces, and that investigators had also
found bowls and a caldron from which brains, hearts and other organs of
victims were eaten."

I read the newspaper details about the murder, but there is one thing that bothers me why are those body parts missing, could it be that they removed them not for ritual purposes but to get the bullets out. Perhaps he was killed with some sort of gun that is perhaps rare or this person assumes someone would automatically say, well so and so has a gun like that, which would either mean that this murderer was well known for having a gun of that type or really paranoid. Second to remove those body parts as opposed to just digging around to find the bullet means someone has some skill as a butcherer or medical skills with anatomy and knew thats what organs the bullets struck. As for the jaw bone, my guess would be this murderer was attempting to perhaps remove the teeth which is a way of easy identification and something spooked him or her before they could finish the job and hide the body properly. Also did I miss it, does anyone know specifically know how he was murdered, and where he was murdered? Yes I did read that his body was found by the creek but was that the site of the murder or just where the body was dumped? Have you thought of writing Cold Case Files to ask them to investigate or perhaps there is a new show about a coroner who is famous for breaking cases.

Ya'll have collected quite a bit of info! My thanks (and my Cousins after I call him today!) go out to all of you. Goose, the whole thing is just messed up. Since you read the link, you'll have noticed that they totally botched (the investigation team) up the crime scene by contaminating nearly all the evidence. They didn't follow proper procedure at all. They have no clue how the guy died either, they labeled like eight different ways (strangulation, decapitation, blunt trauma, etc.).

I had a theory about the teeth and the way the guy was burned to death that whoever did it wanted to make it look like the guy was dead, but in reality he is still alive. According to the paper, the guy was a major stool pigeon, who got into a lot of 'bad' stuff but eventually 'saw the light' and turned whoever was doing the stuff in. The body could have been somebody else (already dead) and the teeth, which were his (that way they could 'confirm' it was him). TexasConspiracyNut, very interesting link. Since they think that the guy that was killed was dealing in drugs, this might be related.

I don�t know though, your theory is interesting as well, and I hope they have sense enough to look at the other suspects to see if they have any medical training or close friends/family have medical training. I hope that everything works out for all parties involved. My cousin is madder at his now-wife for lying to him all the years (she was 'Banks', his girlfriend, in the story) rather than the newspaper claiming that the way the body was desecrated was part of an �American Indian� ritual.

So my idea that someone was trying to conceal the identity instead of ritual murder goes right along with your theory that this guy is still alive and could have staged this to make it look like he was dead since his life might have been in jeopardy. Getting a hold of a body would be difficult but not impossible, I've read of people going into a cemetary and digging up a fresh corpse to stage things like this. All they would have to do is fill the grve back in and no one would be the wiser. Burning the body would also go right along with a coverup, no facial features or identifying marks like tattoos and then of course the fingerprints. The missing organs could be from a surgery that the deceased person could have had prior to their death or perhaps the surgery was done and they died doing the surgery, or their a donor and the organs were removed for that purpose, I'm reaching on that one as I don't recall the organs that were removed. Look back through the newspapers for any car accidents or victims of other types of accidents or deaths days prior to the disappearance or during the time of the disappearance up to the time the body was found. That would explain the missing body parts and the lower jaw was probably removed in an attempt to conceal the identity, either the person doing the removal was sickened and could not continue or they got afraid of being caught with the body. Can you get your hands on a coroner's report of the autopsy, any coroner worth his salt would probably be able to tell if the body parts were removed by a surgeon. What about a toxicology report, if the person died during surgery they would have had a notable amount of drugs in their system from anesthesia. Also you say the body was burned beyond recognition, what about the feet, yes we can be identified by an expert by prints from them just like fingerprints if there are any existing records of the victim, that could be used to rule him out as the deceased, also of course DNA, much more advanced now and if there are any tissue samples from the body that could be compared to the families, it could prove once and for all whether he is the victim. Do you think there is a cover-up by the police, protecting someone whom they believe was a snitch and going to die so they helped him set this whole thing up to save his butt and thats why they have not actively pursued the killer because they know the so called deceased is still alive and well and no real murder occurred.