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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Posted By on Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 6:33 PM

click to enlarge Midd Student Shopped at Durst's Store on Day She Disappeared
Middlebury Police
Lynne Schulze
Did Robert Durst have anything to do with the disappearance of Middlebury College student Lynne Schulze in 1971?

The answer is uncertain, but it’s one of the most intriguing leads police have come across in the four-plus decades they have been trying to solve the case, police officials said Tuesday. “I think it’s a great lead, but I do not invest myself into any lead 100 percent,” said Middlebury detective Kris Bowdish.
 
click to enlarge Midd Student Shopped at Durst's Store on Day She Disappeared
Middlebury Police
All Good Things, the health food store owned by Robert Durst in 1971 and 1972, was in the red building on the right.
National media joined local journalists at the Middlebury Police Department Tuesday afternoon for a news conference on the possible connection between the long-missing girl and real estate multimillionaire Durst.

Durst ran a health food store called All Good Things at 15 Court Street in Middlebury. Schulze shopped there on the day she was last seen.

“We don’t know if they had any personal contact,” Middlebury Police chief Thomas Hanley said Tuesday, but the possibility is being actively investigated. He added: “I feel like we’re progressing on this case.”

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Posted By on Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 9:50 AM

click to enlarge Council's Last Waltz: An Appointment and Police Militarization Votes
Alicia Freese
Neale Lunderville appears before the city council at an earlier meeting.
At the Burlington City Council’s final meeting as a 14-member body, it appointed a permanent energy czar and debated how to prevent police militarization. 

Neale Lunderville, who’s spent the last eight months as interim general manager of the Burlington Electric Department, won glowing praise for his work, and the council voted 13-1 Monday night to approve the mayor’s decision to keep him on permanently. Lunderville gave an animated speech, telling the council, “I see only vast green fields of opportunity” for the department.

Later, Councilor Sharon Bushor told him, “You just ooze with enthusiasm about topics that are really important but that probably wouldn’t hold interest for a lot of people.”

Outgoing Progressive Councilor Rachel Siegel — the lone no vote — also complimented Lunderville, but told him that she opposed his appointment because she wasn’t satisfied with the administration’s efforts to attract a diverse pool of candidates.

In a close vote that did not fall along party lines, the council passed the first reading of a resolution that would prevent the police department from acquiring military weapons. As Seven Days' Mark Davis reported last November, for nearly two decades, local police departments have been requesting and receiving assault rifles, Humvees and other equipment from the U.S. Department of Defense, which distributes its leftovers for free.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Posted By on Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 5:42 PM

click to enlarge Fleeing Man Hits a Snag
Burlington Police Department
Alonzo Jones
As he peered out a second-floor window of a South Willard Street home this morning, the 25-year-old Brooklyn man had only seconds to make his decision. 

The Burlington police and U.S. Marshal's Service officers were swarming the house. He went for it, flinging himself out of the window while stunned officers looked on. 

Gravity carried him toward freedom, but he hit a snag. His pants caught on part of the building. He dangled in the winter air for several minutes, before, like a cat stuck in a tree, he was rescued by members of the Burlington fire department.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Posted By on Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 8:18 PM

A federal judge today ordered the Vermont Attorney General's Office to release records to a woman who claims in a lawsuit that prison guards forcibly stripped her naked, then detained her without clothing for 12 hours.

Michelle Anzovino, who had been arrested on misdemeanor charges, refused to be strip-searched when she was brought to Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield to sober up in June 2013, according to court records.

Four prison guards, including three men, pinned her to the ground, stripped off her pants and underpants and cut her shirt and bra off her body, she alleges in a lawsuit. They gave her a thin plastic sheet that she struggled to keep on her body. Anzovino, a former Dover resident, claims she sat in a prison cell for 12 hours, in view of male detainees, while guards rejected her pleas for clothing. She also says she suffered minor physical injuries.

"There was no legitimate or necessary law-enforcement or safety objective to stripping [Anzovino] of her clothing and forcing her to remain unclothed during her time at the facility," her attorney, Theodore Kramer, wrote in a lawsuit filed last year. "At no time during [Anzovino's] detention did [she] become violent or pose any threat to herself, the defendant officers, or any other individuals."

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Monday, January 26, 2015

Posted By on Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 3:50 PM

click to enlarge Finally Cleared of Murder, Man Dies in Car Wreck
Courtesy of the Grega family
John Grega near his home on Long Island in 2014
Updated at 5:30 p.m. with additional comments from former inmates.

Through his arrest, conviction and years of fruitless appeals from prison, John Grega insisted that he was innocent. Someone else, Grega insisted, had raped and murdered his wife while the couple vacationed in West Dover in 1994.

In 2012, after 18 years behind bars, Grega walked out of prison a free man, the first and only Vermont inmate to be exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence. 
"I always said I would walk out," Grega said after he left Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield to cheers from his fellow inmates, according to the Bennington Banner. "I never gave up. I feel good."

His freedom was short-lived. Grega 52, died on Friday night, after his van smashed into a telephone pole in his hometown of Lake Ronkonkoma on New York's Long Island.

"It's just so sad and tragic," said Gordon Bock, who served time in a Swanton prison with Grega and kept in touch after they were released. "He went through this horrible, 18-year experience, came out the other end and only a few years later ... I'm having a hard time with this."

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Friday, January 23, 2015

Posted By on Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 1:11 PM

Updated, 3:39 p.m. on 1/23/2015: Jurors have found Edin Sakoc guilty of lying to immigration authorities in a verdict this afternoon. He was being released to home confinement; federal authorities indicated they will seek to deport him.


Jurors are now in their second day and ninth hour of deliberating the fate of Edin Sakoc, the Burlington man charged with lying to immigration officials about violent acts he allegedly committed during the Bosnian War. Prosecutors say that Sakoc, a 55-year-old father who has lived in Vermont for more than a decade, raped a woman and left her at a prison camp. They say Sakoc stood by while a soldier shot two women, and then helped him drag their bodies away. He is charged with lying about those acts while applying for American citizenship.

click to enlarge Jury Deliberating Fate of Bosnian Refugee
Aaron Shrewsbury
Edin Sakoc
So what are jurors trying to sort out?

Last night, after deliberating for an hour, jurors requested to hear nearly two hours of testimony offered during the trial. This morning, they asked the judge if they could have a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word “persecution,” one of many words used in questions on immigration forms. (Judge William Sessions III denied the request; no dictionary had been introduced into evidence.)

What could be going on in the jury room?

First, a big disclaimer: Lawyers will tell you that the best way to look foolish is to try and predict what a jury is doing by interpreting the length of their deliberations and the nature of their questions. But for the sake of discussion, please excuse my foolishness. 

Jurors could be hopelessly deadlocked. There could be one holdout. They could have reached a tentative decision but want to make sure they are right. They may have held out for a free lunch. (Don’t laugh. Rare is the jury that will return a verdict while the time for their next free meal is near.) They could be scheming for ways to get to serve on this dude’s trial.

But as we wait for a decision, let's consider some unique features in this case.

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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Posted By on Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:05 PM

Updated at 9 p.m. 1/22/15.

The case against a Burlington man charged with concealing violent crimes he allegedly committed during the Bosnian War was littered with false accusations and contradictory testimony, his attorney said in closing arguments today
click to enlarge Jurors Go Home Without Returning Verdict in Bosnian Refugee Trial
Courtesy of Beth Tailer
Edin Sakoc
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Jurors began deliberating the fate of Edin Sakoc at 2:15 p.m. after hearing from attorneys for the final time in the two-week trial.  After nearly six hours of deliberations, jurors went home shortly before 8 p.m. without reaching a verdict. They were scheduled to return in the morning.

Sakoc, 55, faces several years in prison and possible deportation if convicted of lying to immigration officials about his conduct during the Balkans conflict. 

Sakoc is accused of kidnapping and raping one woman and assisting a soldier who murdered two other women in 1992. He is a Muslim, and the women he is accused of targeting are ethnic Serbs. The two groups clashed violently during the early 1990s war.

Sakoc won refugee status in 2001, settled in Vermont, and eventually obtained citizenship. 

During a nearly 90-minute closing statement, defense attorney Steven Barth said that Sakoc had not lied to immigration officers because nothing he did in Bosnia qualified as a crime that he was required to disclose. Barth told jurors that Sakoc never committed a rape, and was acting on orders when assisting a fellow soldier who murdered two women. 

"In order to lie you have to know and believe that what you are saying is not true," Barth told a U.S. District Court jury in Burlington. "The government simply cannot prove its case because their narrative of what happened is based on testimony that is so full of inconsistencies, changing statements and outright fabrications made by [people] with ingrained prejudices."

But prosecutors said witnesses had supplied "overwhelming" evidence that Sakoc engaged in heinous crimes that he knowingly concealed. 

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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Posted By on Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 2:33 PM

click to enlarge Jury to Get Case Against Bosnian Refugee Thursday
Aaron Shrewsbury
Edin Sakoc
On the eve of closing arguments, federal prosecutors this afternoon dropped one of two charges against a Burlington man on trial for allegedly concealing violent acts he committed during the Bosnian War to gain U.S. citizenship.

The decision came after U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions III persistently questioned whether prosecutors had supplied enough evidence to support their two charges, which were very similar, against Edin Sakoc, who obtained refugee status in 2001 and settled in Vermont. The judge said the charges seemed to be for the same alleged conduct and were repetitive. Authorities say Sakoc, a 55-year-old father, participated in two murders and raped a woman during the 1990s conflict, and hid those acts from immigration officials.

Jay Bauer, a prosecutor from the Justice Department's Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, tried to fend off Sessions’ criticisms.

The first charge against Sakoc, Bauer said, was for checking “no” to questions on immigration forms that asked whether he had committed crimes or other acts of “moral turpitude,” in Bosnia. The second charge, Bauer said, was for proceeding with his quest for citizenship knowing his application was falsified.

Bauer previously characterized the differences between the charges as a “subtle, but simple,” distinction.

But Sessions called Bauer’s argument “extraordinarily confusing.” The judge said that bringing two similar charges to a jury might prompt an appeals court to overturn a verdict and grant Sakoc a new trial.

“You’re basically saying they’re identical crimes,” Sessions said. “In light of the facts in this case, it’s a significant concern that the defendant is being prejudiced by the multiplicity of charges.”

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Friday, January 16, 2015

Posted By on Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:35 PM

click to enlarge 'Burn, Burn': Balkans Killings Described in Court
Mark Davis
U.S. District Court in Burlington
Prosecutors this morning began their final day of presenting evidence against a Burlington man charged with concealing his involvement in a rape and two murders in Bosnia when he applied for U.S. citizenship.

Prosecutors played video testimony from another Bosnian who claims to have witnessed a kidnapping and two murders in 1992, when brutal ethnic fighting roiled Bosnia. Authorities say that Edin Sakoc, who settled in Vermont more than a decade ago, and a fellow soldier identified only as "Boban" stormed a home where a family was sheltering three Serbian women.

The men kidnapped a woman whom Sakoc later raped, prosecutors allege, and then Boban fatally shot the other two women.

Nilokina Ljubic, who lived with her parents in the home, recalled that Boban was more aggressive, while Sakoc consoled her.

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Thursday, January 15, 2015

Posted By on Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 2:00 PM

click to enlarge Victim of Alleged Rape in Bosnia Testifies in Burlington Man's Trial
Mark Davis
U.S. District Court in Burlington.
Updated at 5:53 p.m. with additional testimony.

A Bosnian Serb woman testified via a pre-taped video in federal court today, saying that she was raped in 1992 by a masked man during an ethnic conflict. 

Prosecutors allege that man is Edin Sakoc, a Burlington resident who is on trial this week on charges he lied about his actions in wartime Bosnia when he applied for American citizenship.

The woman, 49 years old at the time she says she was assaulted, was one of a few ethnic Serbs who remained in her tiny village of Pocitelj as brutal fighting broke out across Bosnia. Other Serbs, fearing violence from ethnic Croats and Muslims, had fled, but the woman's mother didn't want to leave.

In July 1992, she said, two armed men stormed the house where they were staying. They took the woman, saying they would interrogate her and bring her back. Instead, they took her to a prison camp.

One of the men raped her twice, once inside a home where they stopped, and again in the backseat.

"He cursed my mother, pushed me down, and raped me," the woman testified. "Did whatever he wanted, and that's it."

After the first assault, she said, the man kicked her, leaving a scar below her right knee that she showed to the attorneys.

As a general practice, Seven Days does not identify the victims of alleged sexual assaults.

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