Colorado AA Member Shoots and Kills Recovering Addicts at Sobriety House

(Photo)

Colorado Springs gunman was an AA Member

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The man who fatally shot three people during a rampage through the streets of Colorado Springs was a recovering alcoholic who posted an online video two days earlier expressing displeasure with his father for allegedly falling under the sway of a particular preacher but gave no indication of the violence to come.

Authorities on Monday identified the gunman as 33-year-old Noah Jacob Harpham, who lived steps from where his first victim was slain Saturday.

Witnesses said Harpham had a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other when he first killed a bicyclist. He calmly walked less than a mile and fatally shot two women on the porch of a sobriety house. Harpham then was killed in a gunbattle with police.

A motive for the downtown shootings in broad daylight was unknown, and Harpham left few clues in blog posts and on social media.

His mother, Heather Kopp, a writer living in New York, described his struggle with addiction in “Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk.”

Authorities have not said whether there was a link between his substance-abuse problems and the fact two of his victims were women who themselves were in addiction recovery. NA Daytona and AA Daytona Beach have violent criminals at meetings!

Colorado Springs police released no new details about the shooting but identified the victims Monday as Andrew Alan Myers, 35; Jennifer Michelle Vasquez, 42; and Christina Rose Baccus-Gallela, 34. The El Paso County sheriff’s office said four officers fired at Harpham, but they were not wearing body cameras, and their squad cars were not equipped with dashboard cameras.

A fuller picture of Harpham emerged in details from his mother’s book, in which she described him as “introverted and moody” and said he turned to drugs and alcohol about the time he gave up on college. Kopp said Harpham, who lived in Eugene, Oregon, at the time, “struggled just to live and keep a job.” His family was so worried about him, they staged a “mini intervention,” but their efforts failed.

He completed a three-month program in California but drank on his first night out, Kopp said. Holly Hill Sunrise Park holds Dangerous NA and NA Daytona meetings.

“Noah loved and hated all of us in equal measure,” she wrote. “In Noah’s mind, he was the loser child, the burnt piece of toast in the bunch.”

During a visit to his family’s Colorado Springs home years ago, he drank too much, became angry and “exploded,” Kopp said. His mood had become “so toxic it was scary.”

His mother and stepfather urged Harpham to move in with them. In Colorado Springs, she said, he found work as an insurance agent and met with an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor regularly. Mayor John Penny Holly Hill ignores dangers of AA and NA Meetings.

His mother wrote that he seemed to improve under their roof and eventually moved into his own place. She said he began helping other addicts.

In a YouTube video posted Thursday, Harpham questioned what he called his father’s involvement with the Rev. Bill Johnson and the Bethel Church in Redding, California. The church is part of a stream of Pentecostalism that heavily emphasizes signs of God’s miracles and revelations in modern-day life, along with supernatural healing. Johnson and his church have come under criticism from conservative Christians who say Johnson promotes teachings far beyond the boundaries of mainstream Christianity.

Efforts to reach Harpham’s father, Thomas, and officials with the Bethel Church by telephone on Monday weren’t immediately successful.

Kopp and other relatives did not return messages seeking comment. Benjamin Broadbent, lead minister of the First Congregational Church of Colorado Springs, released a statement he said was provided by Harpham’s family, saying they were shocked and saddened and requesting privacy.

Harpham first shot Vasquez, who was sitting outside the house, causing Galella to open the front door to see what was going on, said Galella’s uncle, Chris Bowman.

The white picket fence in front of the house was riddled with bullet holes on Monday.

Neighbor Teresa Willingham said the third victim, Myers, was a bicyclist who begged for his life as the gunman continued to fire.

http://www.semissourian.com/story/2246625.html

Fatal Shooting at Alcoholics Anonymous Anchorage Alaska Spenard Alano Club

APD investigating fatal shooting at Spenard club

Devin Kelly July 18, 2015

 

A young man died in a shooting at a Spenard club early Saturday morning, Anchorage police said. Orlando and  Port Orange NA and AA Meetings are dangerous.

Police said 18-year-old Alex Thanapong Yu was killed at about 1:20 a.m. at the Alano Club, a sober club on Spenard Road.

No other details about the circumstances of Yu’s death were immediately released. No arrests have been made, police said. NA and AA Daytona Meetings are dangerous.

The Alano Club is known as a longtime Anchorage spot for recovering alcoholics, as well as a venue for late-night weekend dances for teenagers and young adults. On Saturday morning, police tape cordoned off the side parking lot and back entrance to the building, and crime scene detectives were walking in and out of a white trailer.

Michael Cooper, 46, was volunteering at the club Friday night and said there was music and dancing. He said he was patrolling near the restrooms when he heard gunfire.

“I heard the shots, I came up front,” Cooper said. He heard screaming: “People were just running out.”

Cooper said he at first thought the shooting had happened in the parking lot. Then he walked up toward the front and saw a body lying in the middle of the dance floor, under the disco ball.

Cooper said the club, struggling with low membership, rents out the sound system to help pay for rent and electricity. It wasn’t immediately clear Saturday who was hosting the dance event.

Because of the police investigation, people who turned up Saturday morning for Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings were being turned away. Cooper said he hadn’t been able to get back inside since last night.

“I’d just like to get back in there and clean up,” Cooper said. He said he’s been volunteering at the club about a decade but could only remember fistfights breaking out.

Standing next to his patrol car near the police tape, Officer Keo Fujimoto of APD said police have regularly responded to the venue over the years. He said the after-hours dances tend to draw crowds of teenagers.

“This has always been a problem spot,” Fujimoto said.

In 2009, an 18-year-old was shot in the head in the parking lot outside the club and critically injured.

http://www.adn.com/article/20150718/apd-investigating-fatal-shooting-spenard-club

AA Sponsor Charged with Attempted Murder and Arrested for Sexually Abusing Sponsee

Retterath

Alleged sex abuser now charged with attempted murder     

OSAGE, Iowa – A case of alleged sexual abuse in Mitchell County has escalated to a charge of attempted murder.

50-year-old Mark Bernard Retterath of Osage was charged in February with three counts of 3rd degree sex abuse, one count of 2nd degree sex abuse and solicitation to commit a felony.  That involved alleged incidents in 2003, 2006 and 2012.

Retterath is now accused of intending to kill the alleged victim of that sex abuse.  The Mitchell County Sheriff’s Office says it received word on June 9  Retterath was planning to murder the alleged victim by extracting the poison ricin from castor beans, a technique Retterath reportedly saw on the television show “Breaking Bad.”

Authorities executed a search warrant at Retterath’s home on June 12 and say they discovered castor beans, documentation on how to extract ricin from the beans and equipment that could be used for such an extraction.

In addition, Retterath has been charged with 3rd degree sex abuse and sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, for allegedly committing sex acts against the will of a person while Retterath was that person’s sponsor in the group Alcoholics Anonymous.  These crimes allegedly occurred sometime between approximately mid-May and mid-June.

A preliminary hearing in the attempted murder case is set for June 19.  Retterath is being held without bond.

http://kimt.com/2015/06/16/alleged-sex-abuser-now-charged-with-attempted-murder/

Woman Murdered by Serial Killer She Met at an AA Meeting – Cold Case Solved

Family finds some closure in resolution of 1987 homicide of Judith Whitney of Amherst

By REBECCA EVERETT

@GazetteRebecca

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Joseph Graveline of Northfield remembers the day in July 1987 when his late sister, Judith A. Whitney, told him she was going to New Hampshire for a week or two to go camping with a new friend, Edward Mayrand.

“She said he was a really nice guy,” Graveline said Tuesday. “I took her on her word.”

Whitney, 43, never returned to her home in Amherst. Her body was found in woods in Winchester, New Hampshire, four months later. Police and Whitney’s family all strongly suspected Mayrand had killed her, but the New Hampshire assistant district attorney handling the case did not think there was enough evidence to charge him, Graveline said.

Mayrand, formerly of Northampton, died in prison in 2011 while serving a term for the murder of Patricia Paquette of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1994.

But after his death, a New Hampshire cold case unit worked on the Whitney case and last week, New Hampshire Attorney General Joseph A. Foster announced that investigators had concluded that Mayrand killed Whitney, as well as Kathleen Daneault, a 25-year-old Gardner woman, in 1983.

“It was the greatest Christmas present we could ask for,” said Jeannie Graveline, Whitney’s younger sister by 22 years. “It’s confirming what we already know. We knew in our hearts that he had taken her life, but it’s comforting that it’s come to an end.”

Three of Whitney’s siblings interviewed by the Gazette this week recalled her as a bright, outgoing person who loved hunting and the outdoors. She had three daughters and was like a mother to her younger siblings, too. She also had a drinking problem, they said, which led her to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1987 where she met Mayrand.

Even though they never doubted Mayrand’s guilt, the siblings said they felt a sense of closure after hearing that Whitney’s case had been solved. Closure, but not really peace, because they still believe he should have been charged back in 1987.

Though the assistant district attorney on the case told them there was not enough evidence to go forward, they said they felt that there was plenty of circumstantial evidence of Mayrand’s guilt.

“It’s something we’ve all talked about. One of the most frustrating things is he couldn’t be stopped sooner,” said Jeannie Graveline, of Greenfield. “More women would still be here.”

The nine-page statement the New Hampshire cold case unit released Dec. 23 portrays Mayrand as a rapist and serial killer who murdered three women around New England by strangling them. He was first convicted in 1975 after beating, strangling and raping a woman in Warwick who managed to escape. He got out on parole in 1983 and soon after was suspected in the murder of Daneault in 1983 because he was the last person seen with her.

After Whitney’s disappearance in 1987, Mayrand was questioned extensively by police but said he had not seen her since 10 p.m. on July 3. He had violated his parole by leaving his halfway house and the state, so he was sent back to prison to serve the rest of his sentence on the rape charge, according to Gazette archives. He was released in October 1988.

In 1994, he was convicted of strangling and dismembering Patricia Paquette in Providence, for which he was serving a 35-to-60-year sentence at the time of his death.

New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati said last week that no other active cold cases are believed to be linked to Mayrand.

The latest investigation into Whitney’s case did not turn up new DNA evidence or other scientific proof. But it did find DNA evidence tying Mayrand to the murder of Daneault. The similar ways the two women were killed, interviews with people who saw Mayrand in the days before and after Whitney’s death, and inconsistencies in Mayrand’s stories about that time frame led police to conclude that he murdered Whitney.
There was evidence that Daneault and Whitney were apparently strangled with strips of cloth torn from their own clothing. Whitney’s body was also found with a drawstring from her raincoat tied around her neck, according to the report.

Recalling Judy

Judith Whitney was born in Kentucky and grew up, the oldest of six children, in Greenfield. She married Warren Whitney and spent most of her adult life with him in Sunderland, where they raised three daughters. They were separated, but not divorced, at the time of her death.

Jeannie Graveline, 48, said her sister Judy “was like a second mother to me, because our mother passed away in 1971.”

“She was a bright, resilient, engaged person,” said Joseph Graveline 65. He said he and Whitney were close because they were the oldest siblings. “For me, she was a very special person. Once, when I was young, I got sick for three days with a fever and she sat by my bedside the whole time.”

Whitney had worked selling firearms at the former Pioneer Sporting Center at 137 Damon Road. “She loved hunting, camping, all that stuff. And she was very outgoing — she loved people,” Jeannie Graveline said. She was a licensed pilot.

Another sister, Tina Graveline, 60, of Greenfield, said Whitney’s problem with alcohol worsened near the end of her life and her family did all they could to help her with her addiction. They were pleased when she “got herself to the point to get help” and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Mayrand, who was living in the Hairston House for recovering alcoholics at 25 Graves Ave. in Northampton, was also attending those meetings as a condition of his parole, according to Gazette archives.

Tina and Jeannie Graveline said that they believe Mayrand, then 40, preyed on their sister. People out on parole for violent crimes should be meeting separately from others, they said.

“People in AA are vulnerable. And even though (Mayrand) had been in prison for rape and had been suspected in murders, all that stuff was confidential. No one could say, ‘be wary of this guy,’” Tina Graveline said. “And she was always very friendly and tried to help people. I think she took him as a nice guy.”

Joseph Graveline said his sister had told him July 2, 1987, that she would be out of town for a week or two, and he was not worried that she seemed to have stayed away longer. But Warren Whitney, whom she was in the process of divorcing, was concerned, so they went together to report it to police July 20.

Police in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, found her car and a search effort began. But Joseph Graveline said he knew long before they found her body that his sister was “gone,” because she was not someone who would get lost or just not let people know where she was.

Meanwhile, Mayrand told conflicting stories about where Whitney was to police, friends and staff at the Keene motel where he and Whitney had been staying. He drove around in her car until he abandoned it on the side of a road, police said, and gave away her jewelry to women.

Throughout the initial investigation, police were focused on Mayrand. But the Gravelines said the assistant district attorney told them there was not enough evidence to charge him.

“I was really disappointed that the district attorney at the time didn’t think they had a case that they could get before a jury,” Joseph Graveline said.

“They had circumstantial evidence, Eddie’s contradictory statements, and lots of witness testimony,” about his behavior before and after Whitney’s death, he said. “If 12 intelligent, carbon-based life forms had looked at this, I think most people would be smart enough to convict the guy.”

He said it was around 2010 when New Hampshire law enforcement officials informed him they were reopening the cases of Whitney and Daneault because Mayrand would soon be due for parole. “They wanted to prepare a case to make sure he never left prison again,” he said.

They called the family again in 2011 to let them know that Mayrand had died of lung cancer in prison. The next time Joseph Graveline heard from New Hampshire officials was about a month ago when they told him they had concluded Mayrand had killed both women and that they would release a report of their findings soon.

Joseph, Tina and Jeannie Graveline all said they were grateful that the case was re-examined and for the hard work of the investigating officers — some of whom are from another generation, Joseph Graveline said.

“It’s a kind of closure to all this. Even though Mayrand passed in jail,” Jeannie Graveline said. “They didn’t give up on pursuing it.”

http://www.gazettenet.com/home/15017392-95/family-finds-some-closure-in-resolution-of-1987-homicide-of-judith-whitney-of-amherst

New Hampshire Cold Case Unit solves decades-old murder of Amherst woman

By Diane Lederman | dlederman@repub.com

on December 24, 2014

AMHERST — In July 1987, Amherst resident Judith Whitney went to New Hampshire with a man named Edward Mayrand, whom she met at an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting the month before. NA Daytona and AA Daytona meetings smoking in Sunrise Park.

She was never seen again.

Four months later, a hunter discovered her body buried in a shallow grave in Winchester, N.H. Complaints about NA Daytona not paying rent in Holly Hill Park.

While police suspected Mayrand, they never had enough evidence to charge him, even though he was in possession of her car and a handgun.

But on Tuesday the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit established in 2009 found that Mayrand was indeed the killer. However, he died in 2011 of metastatic cancer, so he will never be charged.

Mayrand once lived in Northampton at Hairston House, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics. He was on parole for rape when he met Whitney.

According the report for the New Hampshire Department of Justice, Mayrand had a lengthy and violent criminal history beginning with a rape and assault conviction in 1975.

But he was released on parole in 1983. “It was during this period of release in the fall of 1983 that Mayrand committed another vicious crime, and left behind evidence that would eventually lead to his identity as Judith Whitney’s murderer,” according to the New Hampshire cold case report.

During his release, he met Kathleen M. Daneault, and was with her at the Mahaki Restaurant in Gardner on Nov. 17. She was found strangled the next day. But he was never charged.

He later pleaded guilty to a second degree murder charge in connection with the death of a Rhode Island woman and was sentenced to 35 to 60 years in prison. But he never was interviewed about the Whitney murder.

But according to New Hampshire officials in their report, in 2010, the cold case unit started working together with state police officers working for the Worcester District Attorney’s Office to revive the investigation. Those efforts included sharing information concerning Judith Whitney’s murder and the 1983 unsolved murder of Kathleen M. Daneault.

They were able to obtain Mayrand’s DNA before he died, and in September 2014, the DNA testing revealed that “Mayrand’s DNA was on the ligature used to strangle Kathleen Daneault,” according to the report. “This DNA finding along with other evidence convinced authorities that Edward Mayrand murdered Kathleen Daneault.

“The DNA evidence and other evidence, including corroborative evidence based upon details of the two murders and the physical evidence collected, also convinced authorities that Edward Mayrand murdered Judith Whitney,” the report stated.

In a 1995 interview after Mayrand’s arrest in the Rhode Island murder, Warren Whitney, Judith Whitney’s ex-husband, told a reporter for The Republican he was relieved by Mayrand’s capture, and not surprised Mayrand has been charged with another woman’s death.

“I never had any doubt,” Whitney said. “I’m just happy that the man is off the street and he can’t kill again. Enough families have suffered because of him.”

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/12/new_hampshire_cold_case_unit_s.html

Man Who Murdered His Elderly Mother Denied Parole to Attend Outside AA Meetings

They called this Alcohol counseling going to AA meetings? This just goes to show how much ignorance there is about what AA is and what it is not. There are no professionals or trained leaders in AA or NA. Just how many killers are allowed to go on the day leave to go to outside AA meetings in the community to sit next next to your daughter, wife or brother? This practice is just outrageous!

Convicted murderer denied parole for AA meetings

 BY MICHAEL WRIGHT, CALGARY HERALD DECEMBER 23, 2013
 A Calgary man serving a life sentence for murdering his mother has been denied leave from jail to attend alcohol counselling.

Gregory Hetrick was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2007 death of his mother Margaret Hetrick, then 79. The Orange Papers AA Criticism.

He applied this month for an escorted temporary absence from jail to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. NA DAytona and AA Daytona in Deland, Orange City and Deltona.

The Parole Board of Canada (PBC) found while there would be some benefit to Hetrick, a recovering alcoholic, leaving jail to go to the meetings, the move would be premature.

“You need to gain insight into your offending, use of violence and substance abuse previous to a release,” the decision read.

Hetrick attended a substance abuse support group in jail and off-site AA meetings would be “a duplication of support,” the board found. Holly Hill AA and NA Meetings.

It also outlined concerns over the extent of Hetrick’s accountability for his crime and his “somewhat clinical and detached” description of stabbing and strangling his mother. Continue reading

Killer Goes to AA Meeting After Slitting the Throat and Strangling Mental Health Counselor

Lia Yera Tricomo who was known to have mental problems and had been treated at the Pro 12 Step Behavioral Health Resources in Olympia Washingon. This is where she met victim John Alkins as a patient. It appears she was an AA member, considering after the killing she went to an AA meeting to confess. 

May 3rd 2013

Accused killer had moved in with victim on the day of slaying at Sunset Beach Drive

Former Behavioral Health Resources counselor John Alkins, 58, was fired in December after he “violated BHR policies concerning professional boundaries.” Five months later, a 27-year-old Olympia woman who says she was a former patient of Alkins’ at BHR is accused of slitting Alkins’ throat with a folding razor knife at his Sunset Beach Drive home. She told police she later strangled him with an extension Continue reading

AA Member Sent to Jail in Suicide Pact With Wife Who Died

Rashell Langford committed Suicide After Husband Handed her loaded rifle.

Shaun Langford became an Alcoholics Anonymous member after he was arrested after  handing a rifle to his wife and she shot and killed herself. Prosecutors subsequently charged him with negligent homicide. AA got him off easy though……..

This guy could be 13 stepping your unsuspecting daughter at a local AA meeting. AA is not a safe place for women, teens or children. Men are being abused and killed as well.

Continue reading

Mandated California AA Member Charged In Attempted Murder In Mesa Stabbings

Sean Michael Crane 23, has been charged with attempted murder. He had been sentenced to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for previous felonies. There are some very dangerous people being sent to the rooms everyday. Beware! Continue reading

Man Mandated to Alcoholics Anonymous When a Minor- Murders His Grandfather

When Kenneth Wilkinson, 22 was a minor he was mandated to Alcoholics Anonymous for 60 days. With the court not allowing him to drive until he was 21 also put pressure on the youth. How do you get to 60 AA Meetings when you can’t drive?

For reasons unknown, this man dragged his 84 year old grandfather who had Alzheimer’s, behind his truck for 6 miles to his death. One can’t help but feel that maybe sending a minor to AA meetings was NOT what this boy needed. He did not go to all of the AA meetings. Most minors do not feel comfortable with the message of powerlessness, or the fact that most participants are much older. Yet some courts are sending minors to AA and NA meetings, even though they have no meetings specifically for them.

Willits man charged with murder appears in court
By TIFFANY REVELLE The Daily Journal
Updated: 03/21/2012 02:11:59 PM PDT

Kenneth Wilkinson, 22, was in Mendocino County Superior Court today to be arraigned on a murder charge and a special allegation that he tortured his grandfather, Richard Mel Wilkinson, 84. Reliable sources said Tuesday that the younger Wilkinson allegedly killed his grandfather by dragging him behind a truck for nearly six miles Saturday night while left to care for him for a few hours, possibly in a drug-induced psychosis. “He’s not a violent person,” Kenneth Wilkinson’s mother, Kris Pearce, said outside the courtroom Wednesday while waiting for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department to transport her son from county jail for his court appearance. “This is completely out of character for him.” Public Defender Linda Thompson took the case and said she needed a week to prepare for the young man’s arraignment, which was rescheduled for 8:30 a.m. March 29 in courtroom A. He remains at the jail under a no-bail hold in the meantime.

Pearce said her son had never been diagnosed with a mental illness but had struggled emotionally throughout his life, having been picked on at school as the “skinny kid.” As an adult, he had a drug and alcohol problem, but said his drinking wasn’t heavy, according to Pearce.

Kenneth had been in court in 2008 for an allegation that he had possessed alcohol as a minor, and had been put on a deferred judgment plan. The arrangement meant the charge would be dropped on the condition that he attend 60 days of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings

in the year’s length of the plan, but according to the Mendocino County Superior Court, he didn’t comply. Pearce said that sent him into a “vicious cycle,” where he could not get a driver’s license until he was 21, making it hard for him to get a job and take care of his court obligations.

http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ci_20223569/man-accused-killing-grandfather-court