PENSACOLA, Fla. - A wealthy Florida Panhandle couple slain in their home during a precisely executed break-in were being laid to rest Friday as investigators said they still have more people they want to talk to about the crime.

Byrd and Melanie Billings, known for adopting 13 special needs children, were shot to death and a safe was taken from their nine-bedroom home west of Pensacola last week. Six men and a teenager are charged with murder, and a woman, Pamela Long Wiggins, is charged with being an accessory after the fact.

An arrest report on Thursday said the woman’s husband told investigators that the safe was hidden in her backyard in suburban Gulf Breeze. Authorities would not say where they had found the safe or what was in it.

Long Wiggins was released on $10,000 bond and has not returned numerous phone messages.

At least one of the other suspects told investigators that her red minivan had been left near the Billings home to help the suspects get away. Some suspects said the safe and guns were transferred to the minivan, which was later spotted at an antique store she owns in Gulf Breeze.

The report said information indicated Long Wiggins was in the van with the guns and knew they’d been used during the break-in.

Family and friends gathered Thursday night for a visitation for the couple at Liberty Church west of Pensacola. A funeral was set for Friday at the church.

‘Simple’ motive
State Attorney Bill Eddins said the case was mostly wrapped up.

“In our opinion, this was a home invasion robbery where the people stole a safe,” he said. “It was as simple as that as to the motive.”

But Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said at a news conference with Eddins that other motives may emerge and there are still people investigators want to talk to.

“We have some people of interest that we’re continuing to look at and I can tell you that those are now numerous people,” Morgan said.

Surveillance cameras at the Billings home captured footage of masked men — some dressed as ninjas — slipping into front and back doors, and one of the people investigators want to talk to may have been someone who failed to carry out an assignment to disable them.

The surveillance videos led investigators to a full-size red van — not the red minivan — used as an initial getaway car and eventually to the suspects, a loosely connected group of mostly day laborers who knew each other through a power washing business and an auto detailing operation.

Web of suspects
Morgan has said Wiggins is a friend and landlord to 35-year-old Leonard Gonzalez Jr., described as a “pivotal person” in organizing the break-in. Gonzalez, who is charged with murder, proclaimed his innocence in court Tuesday. He and the other six, including a 16-year-old male, are being held without bond on two counts of murder each.

Morgan also confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration is assisting with the investigation of the suspects, but he said the agency is not investigating the Billings family.

Nine of the couple’s adopted children were home during the break-in. Three saw the intruders but were not hurt. The couple also had four children from previous marriages. The adopted children are together and staying with family members.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): JODOMLEGALVIDEO

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Authorities say a Florida woman called 911 three times after McDonald’s employees told her they were out of Chicken McNuggets.

A police report says 27-year-old Fort Pierce resident Latreasa L. Goodman told authorities she paid for a 10-piece last week but was later informed the restaurant had run out.

She says she was refused a refund and told all sales were final. A cashier told police she offered Goodman a larger portion of different food for the same price, but Goodman became irate.

“This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn’t have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one,” Goodman told police, according to The Stuart News. “This is an emergency.”

Police say Goodman was cited on a misuse of 911 charge. A current phone listing for Goodman couldn’t be found.

A McDonald’s spokesman says Goodman should have been given a refund, and she’s being sent a gift card for a free meal.

SOURCE: MSNBC

MIAMI — A Boca Raton couple got a new dog, and it’s just like their old dog. Not just the same breed and gender, but the same DNA.

Nina and Edgar Otto picked up their cloned yellow lab puppy at the Miami International Airport Monday night. Lancelot Encore was cloned from the DNA of the Ottos’ late dog Lancelot, which died of cancer in January 2008. Guessing that pet cloning would one day be possible, the Ottos had DNA samples of their dog frozen five years ago.

The Ottos paid $155,000 in a San Francisco biotech firm’s dog-cloning auction last July.

BioArts International created Lancelot Encore in South Korea, where he was born 10 weeks ago. The Ottos say he’s the first single-birth, commercially cloned puppy in the United States.

SOURCE: FOX NEWS

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger’s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.

In the aftermath of the explosion, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the explosion was caused by the failure of an “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive explosion. As a result of the explosion, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.

In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.

On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2009-01-28

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) — The remains found in a wooded area last week in Orange County, Florida, are those of Caylee Anthony, authorities confirmed at a news conference Friday.

The announcement marks the end of a six-month search for the 2-year-old.

“It is with regret that I’m here to inform you that the skeletal remains found on December 1 are those of the missing toddler,” Orange County Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia said.

She said the cause of death was homicide, but she could not determine how Caylee was killed.

Casey Anthony, 22, faces charges including first-degree murder in the June disappearance of her daughter. Remains described as being those of a small child were found last week a half-mile from Casey Anthony’s parents’ home, in the area where a meter reader first directed police.

At Friday’s news conference, police will identify the meter reader who, they said Thursday, called the department four months ago, directing them to the site of the remains three times in August.

At a Thursday news conference, Capt. Angelo Nieves, a Sheriff’s Department commander, said investigators were looking into whether the tips, called in August 11, 12 and 13, were properly followed up.

In one of those phone calls, the meter reader reported seeing a gray bag on the side of the road, Nieves said. On August 13, a deputy responded to the site and did a “cursory search” but found nothing, Nieves said.

Nieves said police were getting more information from the tipster and the deputy who responded to the tips. He said the department was investigating the “thoroughness” of the deputy’s response but would not identify the deputy.

The meter reader “is not a suspect,” Nieves said. “He is a credible witness.”

Nieves’ latest announcement is raising questions about whether police missed several chances to find remains believed to be Caylee’s.

The meter reader is not the only one, or the first, to have pointed police toward the site containing the remains.

KioMarie Cruz, Casey Anthony’s childhood friend, also told police to investigate the same wooded area near Hidden Oaks Elementary School a month before the meter reader, according to CNN affiliate WFTV.

In an interview with detectives, according to WFTV, Cruz said that she and Anthony “pretty much used to hang out there most of our time,” would “snack on food for hours” and went there to “get away from our parents.”

The Sheriff’s Department followed up on that tip, but the wooded area was covered in floodwaters, preventing a search. Nieves said the water may have been present at the time of the meter reader’s tips as well.

Nieves also said Thursday that searchers combing the site after the skull’s discovery had found “significant skeletal remains” consistent with those of a small child on the outer perimeter of the search area.

The area will be enlarged, and processing and searching of the site will continue, probably into the weekend, he said.

Some of the remains have been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, in an effort to identify them. Authorities have said the remains are believed to be Caylee’s, but an identification is pending.

Sheriff’s spokesman Carlos Padilla said last week that authorities believe the remains are Caylee’s for three reasons: No other children have been reported missing in the area; the remains are consistent with those of a child of Caylee’s age; and the remains were found near the home of the grandparents, where the 2-year-old and her mother were living just before Caylee disappeared.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday that he did not know when tests would be complete, but an attorney for Anthony’s parents said the FBI is likely to have results “within the next week.”

Casey Anthony could face a sentence of life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors said this month that they would not seek the death penalty.

SOURCE: CNN.COM