- Biology’s unsolved chicken-or-egg problem: Where did life come from? Big Think
- Life Evolves. Can Attempts to Create ‘Artificial Life’ Evolve, Too? Scientific American
- Life: Modern physics can’t explain it—but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might Phys.org
- Great Mysteries of Physics: will we ever have a fundamental theory of life and consciousness? The Conversation
- Life: modern physics can’t explain it – but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might The Conversation
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Unsolved
Idaho State Police adds patrols to university campus as school holds vigil for 4 students killed in unsolved stabbings
CNN
—
Idaho State Police has added four campus patrols and 14 patrols for the general community as the University of Idaho hosted a vigil Wednesday night for the four students fatally stabbed earlier this month.
Several hundred people attended the vigil on the campus of 9,300 students to commemorate the victims: Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21.
Several family members spoke about their loved ones.
“We lost four beautiful souls,” said Goncalves’ father, Steve. Later, he told those watching to find someone they love and tell them. “The only cure to pain is love,” he said.
Chapin’s mother, Stacy Chapin, talked about how their family was very close. They shared meals when they could, they played games together and loved spending days on the boat listening to country music, Ethan’s “most favorite thing in the whole world.”
“We are eternally grateful that we spent so much time with him,” she said, and then, as her voice cracked, she implored the audience to do the same with their families. “Because time is precious and it’s something you can’t get back.”
The parents – including Mogen’s father, who spoke lovingly about his “great kid” who was “just nice to everybody” – also thanked law enforcement and university officials for their work since the November 13 slayings.
Investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find the murder weapon, but a spokesperson for the Idaho State Police said they have begun to receive forensic testing results, Fox News reported.
“I do know that each type of testing… some take longer than others. And I also do know that there have been results that have been returned and those go directly to the investigators, so that way they can help, again, paint that picture as we keep talking about,” spokesperson Aaron Snell said, while declining to say who the DNA belonged to.
CNN has reached out to Snell for comment.
State police are assisting police in Moscow, a city of about 26,000 people, with the investigation. The uncertainty and lack of information around the unsolved killings has left the campus emptier than usual after Thanksgiving break.
While there is no official number on how many students returned, Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence told CNN professors are reporting that about two-thirds to three-quarters of students are attending in-person.
“This is a heavy situation, and we are moving forward by trying to be supportive of all of our people, our faculty, our staff, our students, and trying to address their needs,” Lawrence said.
One student told CNN that, with a killer not identified, people are “sketched out.”
“It definitely feels a little bit different,” said student Hayden Rich. “It seems kind of a sad setting. It is kind of quiet.”
Snell told CNN on Tuesday they’ve seen an uptick in 911 calls while the cases remain unsolved. Most of those calls are concerning “suspicious person” activity, or “welfare check.”
“We are recognizing that there is heightened fear in the community and so the officers are going to those calls and they’re handling them as they come up,” Snell said.
University of Idahos President Scott Green acknowledged last week that some students did not want to return until a suspect is in custody.
“As such, faculty have been asked to prepare in-person teaching and remote learning options so that each student can choose their method of engagement for the final two weeks of the semester,” he wrote in a statement.
Dozens of local, state and federal investigators are still working to determine who carried out the brutal attack. Investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find a weapon – believed to be a fixed-blade knife – and have sifted through more than 1,000 tips and conducted at least 150 interviews.
The four students were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home in Moscow. The killings have unsettled the campus community and the town, which had not seen a murder since 2015.
Police said they believe the killings were “targeted” and “isolated” but have not released evidence to back up that analysis. They also initially said there was no threat to the public – but later backtracked on that assurance.
“We cannot say there’s no threat to the community,” Police Chief James Fry said days after the killings.
Authorities said they have not ruled out the possibility that more than one person may be involved in the stabbings.
So far, using the evidence collected at the scene and the trove of tips and interviews, investigators have been able to piece together a rough timeline and a map of the group’s final hours.
On the night of the killings, Goncalves and Mogen were at a sports bar, and Chapin and Kernodle were seen at a fraternity party.
Investigators believe all four victims had returned to the home by 2 a.m. the night of the stabbings. Two surviving roommates had also gone out in Moscow that night, police said, and returned to the house by 1 a.m.
Police earlier said Goncalves and Mogen returned to the home by 1:45 a.m., but they updated the timeline Friday, saying digital evidence showed the pair returned at 1:56 a.m. after visiting a food truck and being driven home by a “private party.”
The next morning, two surviving roommates “summoned friends to the residence because they believed one of the second-floor victims had passed out and was not waking up,” police said in a release. Somebody called 911 from the house at 11:58 a.m. using one of the surviving roommates’ phones.
When police arrived, they found two victims on the second floor and two victims on the third floor. There was no sign of forced entry or damage, police said.
Investigators do not believe the two surviving roommates were involved in the deaths.
A coroner determined the four victims were each stabbed multiple times and were likely asleep when the attacks began. Some of the students had defensive wounds, according to the Latah County coroner.
Student Ava Forsyth said her roommate is staying home because she does not feel safe. Forsyth said she feels “moderately” safe, but “not so much” at night, when she takes advantage of a free campus walking security service.
Rich, the student who said people are “sketched out,” said he decided to come back for the many tests he has this week. Student Lexi Way told CNN that she feels safe with upped campus security and “tends to learn better in class.”
Third unsolved stabbing attack resurfaces amid college slaying mystery
MOSCOW, Idaho – As investigators skipped Thanksgiving celebrations to continue their search for a suspect in the unsolved slaying of four University of Idaho students, a third unsolved stabbing in the Pacific Northwest has resurfaced with eerie similarities.
Reporters at a news briefing Wednesday asked Moscow police about the possible connection between the students’ slayings and a second unsolved stabbing, which left Travis Juetten dead and seriously injured his wife Jamilyn in Oregon.
Authorities say an intruder attacked the couple in their sleep around 3 a.m. on Aug. 13, 2021.
Travis Juetten, 26, fought back but succumbed to his injuries. His wife, who is 26 now, survived 19 stab wounds.
IDAHO MURDERS: INVESTIGATORS WORK THROUGH THANKSGIVING DAY AS COLLEGE TOWN SHUTS DOWN
“We’re looking at every avenue, and we have other agencies reaching out to us with other cases, stuff that we are going to follow up on,” Moscow Police Chief James Fry said Wednesday. He said his office knew about the case and was looking into it, but no official connection has been drawn between the two cases.
READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP
The following morning, the Idaho Tribune reported that a third nearby attack shared similar characteristics.
Sandra Ladd, 71, was found dead in her home in Washougal, Washington, on June 14, 2020, according to Oregon Crime Stoppers. Her death was ruled a homicide after the medical examiner found multiple stab wounds in her torso, Washougal police said at the time.
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO STUDENTS KILLED: A TIMELINE OF EVENTS
The two attacks happened 14 months apart but within 70 miles of one another. The locations are roughly a five-hour drive west of Moscow, Idaho.
IDAHO POLICE INVESTIGATING QUADRUPLE MURDERS ASKED ABOUT SIMILARITIES TO 2021 UNSOLVED OREGON STABBING ATTACK
University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were stabbed to death in their sleep on Nov. 13, 2022 between 3 and 4 a.m. in a rental house just off campus, according to police.
Like the attack on the Juettens, the incident happened between 3 and 4 a.m. on the 13th of the month.
Details about the timing of Ladd’s death were not immediately clear. Her body was discovered at 4:30 p.m. – in her bed, the Oregonian reported at the time.
In all three cases, no suspect has been identified.
IDAHO MURDERS: FOX NEWS’ TED WILLIAMS PUSHES BACK AGAINST ‘PEEPING TOM’ THEORY, ‘MORE PERSONAL’
Aaron Snell, the communications director for the Idaho State Police, told Fox News Digital Thursday that investigators would be digging into any possible connection between the cases.
“Unequivocally, even without asking anybody, our detectives will be aware of that,” he said. “They will look into the possibility that they’re linked…anything that would be a remote possibility as a connection will be something that we consider.”
He said investigators had “not ruled out any idea or concept” but that it was too early to say definitively whether any of the three cases shared a connection.
IDAHO COED KILLER: FBI PROFILER REVEALS SUSPECT’S LIKELY ATTRIBUTES
State, local and federal investigators spent the Thanksgiving holiday on the job Thursday, digging for clues 11 days after the students were found dead at a grisly crime scene just a few yards off campus.
WATCH: FBI personnel arrive at the Idaho command center on Thanksgiving:
Two other roommates in the home, who were sleeping on the bottom floor, were not attacked, according to police.
They have been ruled out as suspects, along with several other people who encountered some of the victims the night before their slayings.
Moscow police have said they believe the student slayings were “targeted,” but they declined to elaborate.
No murder weapon has been recovered and investigators are asking anyone with surveillance video of the surrounding area to send it in.
They were also looking into reports that Goncalves had a stalker before the attack.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Kaylee mentioned having a stalker, but detectives have been unable to corroborate the statement,” police said in a statement. “Investigators are requesting anyone with information about a potential stalker, or unusual instances, to contact the tip line.”
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the tip line at 208-883-7180 or email tipline@ci.moscow.id.us.
A new experimental study tackles the unsolved mystery of ‘nanobubbles’
Nanobubbles are extremely small (i.e., nanoscopic) gaseous cavities that some physicists observed in aqueous solutions, typically after specific substances were dissolved in them. While some studies reported the observation of these incredibly tiny bubbles, some scientists have argued that they are merely solid or oily residues formed during experiments.
Researchers at Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados Unidad Monterrey and Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas Unidad Monterrey in Mexico have recently carried out an experiment aimed at further investigating the nature of these elusive and mysterious objects, specifically when xenon and krypton were dissolved in water. Their study, featured in Physical Review Letters, identified the formation of what the team refers to as “nanoblobs,” yet found no evidence of nanobubbles.
“Our aim was to create xenon and krypton nanobubbles using a clean method,” Carlos Ruiz Suarez, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “I must say that there many scientists claim that nanobubbles, despite their use in many applications, do not exist. Rather, it is thought that they are oil/solid contaminants formed during the experiments.”
To solve the “mystery” of nanobubbles, Ruiz Suarez and his colleagues devised a “clean” method that should have theoretically allowed them to produce “real” nanobubbles. This method entailed dissolving the two noble gases xenon and krypton in water, by applying high pressure to them, and then depressurizing and inspecting the resulting liquid.
The team assessed the results of this procedure in both molecular dynamics simulations (MDSs) and laboratory experiments. While they actually observed nanobubble-like particles, when they analyzed these particles they were surprised to find that these were most likely gas-water amorphous structures, rather than gaseous bubbles.
“To bring together the noble atoms to nucleate into bubbles, we needed to increase their concentrations in the water medium,” Ruiz Suarez explained. “By performing MDSs, we found that the correct proportions between water molecules and the noble atoms were around 30 water molecules/atom. Thus, we needed to build a high- pressure cell to force the atoms to dissolve in water by pushing the gas inside.”
Xenon and krypton are two hydrophobic gases. This means that they can only enter water and aqueous solutions under high amounts of pressure (over 360 bars or atmospheres). Once they enter water, however, they can bond with each other through hydrophobic and van der Waals forces.
“There is currently no way to see inside the cell, but we supposed that the bubbles existed because we believed our MDSs,” Ruiz Suarez said. “The next step for our work was to depressurize the sample and see the bubbles. However, to our great surprise, there were no bubbles, but something else: nanostructures formed by gas and water, which we called nanoblobs. These are sui generis structures that give rise to clathrates hydrates.”
The existence of nanobubbles remains a debated topic in particle physics and the recent work by these researchers could help to solve this mystery. Just like xenon and krypton, many other gases used to form nanobubbles can also form clathrate hydrates (i.e., water structures with molecules inside them). Overall, the team’s findings thus suggest that what many previous studies identified as “nanobubbles” could instead be these amorphous nanostructures formed by clathrate hydrates.
“It is important to remark that when an existing physical theory cannot explain experimental findings, physicists like to name it as a catastrophe,” Ruiz Suarez said. “Since nanobubbles have high pressure inside them (the smaller they are the higher the pressure), theory says that their lifetime is very short (of the order of microseconds). However, observations revealed that they exist for much longer, so this has been called the Laplace Pressure Bubble Catastrophe.”
If the findings collected by this team of researchers are valid and reliable, they could greatly contribute to the present understanding of nanobubbles. Essentially, their findings suggest that the Laplace Pressure Bubble Catastrophe does not exist, as previously observed “nanobubbles” are instead “nanoblobs,” or alternative structures resulting from clathrate hydrates in experimentally used gases.
“We are now building an experimental apparatus that will allows us to see inside the cell and observe the nanobubbles at high pressure,” Ruiz Suarez said. “We would like to see their evolution when we decrease the pressure and the moment when they become clathrate hydrates. Meanwhile, we are also studying other important gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide.”
Mystery of the nanobubbles solved
More information:
Angela M. Jaramillo-Granada et al, Xenon and Krypton Dissolved in Water Form Nanoblobs: No Evidence for Nanobubbles, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.094501
Angela M. Jaramillo-Granada et al, Xenon and Krypton Dissolved in Water Form Nanoblobs: No Evidence for Nanobubbles, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.094501
© 2022 Science X Network
Citation:
A new experimental study tackles the unsolved mystery of ‘nanobubbles’ (2022, September 13)
retrieved 14 September 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-09-experimental-tackles-unsolved-mystery-nanobubbles.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Father and Son Help Crack Unsolved 1969 Bank Robbery
The boy watched as his father, John K. Elliott, sat in the kitchen one afternoon in 1970, lost in thought.
“Can you pass the mashed potatoes?” Peter J. Elliott asked his father, a U.S. marshal in Cleveland, Ohio, who was thinking about the man who had pulled off one of the biggest bank robberies in the city’s history.
“When am I going to get Ted Conrad?” Mr. Elliott asked his son, a year after Theodore J. Conrad had walked off with $215,000 in cash, the equivalent of about $1.6 million today.
On Friday, more than 50 years after the heist, the younger Mr. Elliott, now a U.S. marshal himself, had an answer for his father.
The U.S. Marshals Service announced that it had found Mr. Conrad after investigators pursued a lead and discovered that he had been living under the fictitious name Thomas Randele in Lynnfield, Mass., about 16 miles north of Boston, until his death from lung cancer in May.
Investigators had chased leads across the country, to California, Hawaii, Texas and Oregon, in search of their fugitive. Mr. Conrad was featured on several true-crime shows, including “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Investigators learned that after the theft, Mr. Conrad fled to Washington, D.C., and then to Los Angeles, and eventually went to Massachusetts in 1970, where he established deep roots with his wife and daughter. There, he was a golf pro, worked at a luxury-car dealership for 40 years and enjoyed watching “NCIS” and other law enforcement shows on television, Mr. Elliott said.
Mr. Conrad was well liked in his community by police officers and other law enforcement officials.
“That’s probably why, you know, we didn’t catch up with him in the past because he was a law-abiding citizen, and we didn’t have any fingerprints on file,” Mr. Elliott said.
On his deathbed, Mr. Conrad told his family the truth, Mr. Elliott said. He told them his real name and what he had done on July 11, 1969.
It was a Friday, and he went to work at the Society National Bank in Cleveland, where he was a bank teller. At the end of the day, he stuffed money from the vault into a paper bag and left.
By Monday morning, as his co-workers opened the vault and wondered where their colleague was, Mr. Conrad had a two-day head start on the authorities.
Some of the details of the robbery, such as the denomination of the bills and how Mr. Conrad was able to stroll out without being noticed, were not immediately available. But Mr. Elliott said there was not much security at the bank, where employees were not even fingerprinted.
A year before, Mr. Conrad had been obsessed with “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a 1968 Steve McQueen film in which a bored billionaire robs a bank to amuse himself. Mr. Conrad had told friends that he planned to rob a bank, bragging about how easy it would be, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
“He was a darer, so to speak,” Mr. Elliott said. “After seeing that movie, I believe he thought, ‘Hey, what if I do this and get away with this?’ I really think it was a challenge for him to be able to do it.”
Years later, the authorities would retrieve a letter that Mr. Conrad wrote in 1969 to his girlfriend. In it, he confessed to the crime and expressed regret for committing it.
After Mr. Conrad confessed this year, his family did not contact the authorities, Mr. Elliott said. Only after the authorities saw an obituary for Thomas Randele, 73, did they begin to piece together evidence, which had been mostly gathered by Mr. Elliott’s father decades ago.
Mr. Elliott said the Randele family would not be charged for failing to disclose Mr. Conrad’s confession to the authorities. Mr. Conrad had been indicted and there is no statute of limitations on bank robbery, so he would have still been arrested if the authorities had found him, Mr. Elliott said.
He declined to share what led investigators to the obituary. But once they saw it, they found information that mirrored that of Mr. Conrad’s genuine life. Mr. Conrad’s real birth date was July 10, 1949. In the obituary, the birth date listed was July 10, 1947.
The second clue was his parents’ names. They were almost exactly the same in the obituary. The obituary also included his actual alma mater, New England College, and birthplace, Denver.
“When people lie, they lie close to home,” Mr. Elliott said.
Then, the final clue that pieced it all together: a signature from a college application, which was first found by Mr. Elliott’s father, which was similar to one that the authorities found on a bankruptcy court document in 2014, scribbled with the name Thomas Randele.
That was all Mr. Elliott needed. He traveled to Lynnfield, knocked on the door and was greeted by Mr. Conrad’s family, who were surprised to see the officials.
“I feel bad for them because of a father-husband that they really never knew who he was, and also, you know, they are living under a fictitious name,” Mr. Elliott said.
Kathy Randele, Mr. Conrad’s widow, said in an interview on Saturday that “we’re still mourning his loss, and he was a wonderful dad and a fabulous father.” She declined further comment.
The last time Mr. Elliott and his father talked about the bank robbery case was in March 2020, when John K. Elliott was in hospice.
Mr. Elliott wanted to cheer him up, so he reached for his iPad and played “Lake Erie’s Coldest Cases,” a documentary series that featured an episode on the case and showed his father being interviewed.
“Hey, look, you’re on TV,” Mr. Elliott told his father, who smiled.
John K. Elliott died a few days later.
Perhaps soon, Mr. Elliott said, he will watch “The Thomas Crown Affair,” see Steve McQueen try to get away with it, and think of his father.
South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh shot months after wife and son were killed in unsolved case
South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, whose son and wife were murdered in a double shooting in June, has been shot, according to authorities.
A spokesperson for South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division confirmed to Fox News that state law enforcement had been asked to investigate a shooting in Hampton County and that the victim was the 53-year-old Murdaugh, but he could not release additional details.
Murdaugh was found on Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County Saturday afternoon, his lawyer, Jim Griffin, told the Charlotte Observer.
He told the Island Packet that Murdaugh had been driving to Charleston when car trouble stopped his journey. He did not divulge any details about the extent of his injuries after the shooting.
MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: PROSECUTOR RECUSES HIMSELF FROM CASE
Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, 22 and 52, were found shot to death on a family property in Islandton on June 7. The homicide case remains unsolved.
It was Alex Murdaugh who discovered the bodies, and in gut-wrenching 911 calls pleaded for help. He came across the scene after returning from a visit to his terminally ill father, who died days later.
Family members did not immediately respond to Fox News’ requests for comment, but a spokesperson told the WCBD that Alex Murdaugh was expected to survive.
“The Murdaugh family has suffered through more than any one family could ever imagine,” they told the station. “We expect Alex to recover and ask for your privacy while he recovers.”
MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: SOUTH CAROLINA INVESTIGATORS RELEASE HARROWING 911 CALLS
The area’s top prosecutor, 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, recused himself from the double homicide case in an Aug. 11 letter to the state attorney general. He was a longtime friend and colleague of the Murdaugh family.
Three generations of Murdaugh men held Stone’s job before he was elected in 2006. Alex Murdaugh was still a volunteer in Stone’s office during the shootings of his wife and son.
The June murders drew national attention, and no suspects or arrests have been announced. Investigators have released few details about the incident although documents tied to related incidents from years prior have begun to emerge at a steady pace.
MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: 2019 BOAT CRASH SURVIVOR FEARED CROSSING FAMILY OF LAWYERS
Shortly after Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were killed, state investigators said they found information that led them to reopen the investigation into the suspicious 2015 death of a 19-year-old man named Stephen Smith.
And at the time of the double murder, the younger Murdaugh was awaiting trial in connection with a deadly 2019 boat crash near Parris Island that killed 19-year-old passenger Mallory Beach and injured others.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
That case has raised questions about the family’s ties to local law enforcement and a state investigation and civil litigation regarding whether there had been undue influence.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
In Louisville, Kentucky, homicides go unsolved as number of killings climbs
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — This is a city under siege.
Homicides — particularly deadly shootings — have piled up with no clear end in sight.
The city had reported 125 homicides as of Sunday and is in danger of breaking its homicide record for a second consecutive year.
Roughly 65 percent of this year’s killings have gone unsolved, a sharp change from just three years ago when about 39 percent of killings were not resolved.
Louisville’s current 34 percent solve rate falls far short of the 61.4 percent national average in 2019, the last year for which FBI data is available.
Louisville is one of several major U.S. cities grappling with a surge of violent crime over the past year and a half.
City officials and the Louisville Metro Police Department say they are working to find solutions and trying to regain control of the climbing homicide numbers and the woeful case-closure rate.
The city, for instance, has nearly quadrupled its investment in efforts to tackle violent crime by pumping money into officer recruitment, community outreach and social service programs.
But the mayor and others say progress, so far, has been stymied by myriad factors including easy access to guns, a shrinking police force and officers reluctant to carry out their duties because of increased scrutiny.
What’s more, the police killing of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 exacerbated issues of community mistrust of police, and a pending Justice Department investigation suggests there may be long-standing problems within the department.
Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields, through her communications team, declined several requests for interviews.
During the inaugural episode of the police department’s podcast “On the Record,” she acknowledged the crime surge and said shootings “have to stop.”
“The pace at which we’re seeing these shootings is absolutely unacceptable,” Shields said.
Citywide slayings pierced the life of Marcus Collins, whose 17-year-old stepson, LaMaurie Gathings, was killed June 4.
“It’s really taken a toll on my wife. I’m here trying to hold it together,” Collins said.
Sometime past 2 a.m., Gathings snuck out of the house to meet with his cousin.
A short while later, possibly after leaving a party, relatives said, Gathings was fatally shot. His cousin was shot three times, once in the neck, but survived.
“I still haven’t heard nothing. I haven’t heard anything about what happened or from the detective at all. It’s been a month,” Collins, 43, said.
Louisville police haven’t arrested or charged anyone for Gathings’ killing.
“The police aren’t doing a good job investigating,” Collins said, adding that officers have told the family they don’t have enough resources to adequately investigate.
This points to a larger hurdle for the city: solving homicides.
Louisville is among several U.S. cities experiencing a high volume of homicides recently. The nation’s murder rate was up nearly 15 percent last year, according to a preliminary FBI report released in September.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of the killings nationwide.
Some experts have said existing issues like rising gun ownership, poor relationships between police and citizens and socioeconomic inequality became worse during the pandemic and the 2020 calls for racial justice.
In Louisville, Mayor Greg Fischer attributes the number of homicides to easy gun access, social media beefs morphing into deadly street violence and a culture of retaliation.
“Anyone can walk down the street with an assault rifle. Guns are everywhere,” the mayor said.
Shields has stopped short of criticizing her officers but said on the department’s podcast that officers could help prevent homicides by being more confident while on duty.
“It’s getting officers to feeling confident and knowing they can be proactive. I need them to be proactive. I need them to be making arrests,” the chief said on the podcast, which was posted to the police department’s YouTube page in June.
A January report commissioned by the Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government said Louisville officers may be experiencing low morale.
Officers who responded to a survey expressed concern about a lack of support and leadership from upper management and the community, resulting in many of them wanting to leave the department, according to the report, which was conducted by Hillard Heintze, a Chicago consulting firm.
Shawn Butler, executive director of the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police, said low morale doesn’t incentivize officers to do more than bare-minimum work.
“I think low morale is an occupational hazard. You aren’t going to do your job as effective,” Butler said. “It doesn’t help when we’ve had the civil unrest that we’ve had.”
Howard Henderson, a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., said more focus needs to be placed on why morale is low.
“It’s bad for the system to have officers with low morale. The lower the morale, the worse the job performance,” Henderson said. “The question really needs to be why is morale low? Is it that morale is low because people are being held accountable for the first time? Morale might be low for a good reason.”
The police department is short about 240 police officers, many of whom have retired or taken jobs elsewhere, city officials said.
As it stands, 1,048 officers make up the current Louisville police force, compared with 1,247 at the beginning of 2019, police records show.
That includes the 43 officers added this year either through recruitment or rehiring. That number is lower than in each of the last three years, records show.
Police officials say officers typically investigate four to five homicides per year, but they are now working eight to 10.
“It’s very difficult when you’re catching a homicide case every two weeks,” Lt. Donny Burbrink, the commander of the LMPD homicide unit, said during an LMPD podcast episode. “We’re having a very difficult time right now. If I pick up a homicide today, at the rate we’re on right now, in two weeks I’ll pick up another homicide.”
LMPD has been so short-staffed that last year the department pulled several officers from their regular beats to investigate homicides.
“When you put more cases on a homicide detective, that means there’s only so many interviews and investigations they can do in a 24-hour time,” said Henderson, who is also director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University. “That means there are cases they aren’t going to even get to or they spend fewer hours working a case.”
Meanwhile, families left to grieve their slain children say the homicides must stop.
“Living in Louisville is terrible,” said Delisa Love, 44, whose 19-year-old daughter, Kelsie Smart, was killed hours before Mother’s Day last year. Smart was a sophomore nursing student at Northern Kentucky University.
Love said her 21-year-old nephew survived being shot in June. She said she also lost a 17-year-old nephew to gun violence in 2006. “I’ve never seen so much violence,” Love said.
Louisville police confirmed nobody has been arrested in connection with Smart’s death.
Collins, whose son was killed earlier this summer, wants to know why more homicides aren’t being solved.
“My son was a good kid, just hard-headed. He didn’t have a criminal record,” Collins said.
Officials and residents say witnesses not bringing forth relevant information regarding homicides has stifled police efforts.
“I’m convinced it’s unusual for a homicide to take place and someone not know who did that,” Fischer said. “There’s going to be zero tolerance for gun crime, violent crime and homicides.”
That would require overcoming the broken relationship between police and members of the community, particularly people of color.
LMPD is currently under investigation by the Justice Department to determine whether officers engage in a “pattern or practice of violations of the Constitution or federal law.”
The investigation was announced in April, more than a year after officers killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment as they served a “no-knock” warrant. No criminal charges were brought in direct connection with Taylor’s death.
The shooting inflamed racial tensions in the city, prompted calls for police reform and led to numerous protests and the hiring of Shields as police chief.
“There’s no trust at some level. And when there’s no trust, you can’t get things accomplished in a collaborative way,” Louisville activist Christopher 2X said. “Most people don’t want to participate in any way or be connected to a violent crime through a judicial process.”
He added that when people think about feeling protected versus giving the police relevant information, they conclude it’s not worth it.
Love, who spent this year’s Mother’s Day surrounded by family, said charging someone in her daughter’s death will be difficult unless someone talks.
“It’s devastating. That was my baby, my only girl,” Love said.
Police say they are doing what they can to prevent gun violence.
“How do you stop these shootings? They have to stop. Our ground-level tactical units are getting far more engaged,” Shields said on the podcast. “They are identifying repeat violent offenders, and you’re going off after them and their network of associates. You’re not randomly just hoping that you get the right people. It’s a very deliberate effort, and the results are rolling in.”
City officials have increased gun violence prevention funding in this year’s city budget from $5 million to $19 million. The spending plan went into effect July 1.
More than $3 million will go toward enforcement initiatives allowing LMPD to expand technology, recruit a diverse workforce and train officers.
About $3 million more will be for a “deflection” program providing social service response when addressing people experiencing homelessness, mental health issues or substance abuse.
About $500,000 will go toward Reimage, a collaboration with KentuckianaWorks helping to stop incarceration and recidivism by connecting youths to education and training in IT, manufacturing and construction career fields.
Roughly $600,000 is for a new “reconciliation” program to build on the city’s work to improve relationships between LMPD and the larger community.
These city-touted initiatives come as little consolation for those who want swift change, arrests and a safer city.
“Things have gotten terrible. I don’t know what to say about it. I know people have gotten sick and tired of all this killing,” Carl Fels, 61, said.
His son, 26-year-old Dominique Fels, was gunned down earlier this year while breaking up a fight at a hotel.
Unsolved mystery of Russia’s missing hikers may have finally been cracked
The mystery of the Dyatlov Pass has raised questions for over half a century.
Soviet investigators/Creative Commons
The Dyatlov Pass incident is a spooky tale most often told in hushed tones around a campfire, but this very real — and very mysterious — event has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, scientific conjecture and even a movie or two. But the truth of what drove nine experienced hikers to slash through the safety of their own tent and flee, half-dressed into the snow of the Ural mountains, has remained inconclusive for over half a century.
That is, until now. After 62 years of speculation, scientists believe they may have figured out what happened in the Ural Mountains, all those years ago.
Thanks to simulations, analytical models and even some borrowed Disney technology, the data indicates an impactful force of nature could very well be the conclusive answer.
What is the Dyatlov Pass mystery?
In January 1959, a team of experienced Russian mountaineers were trekking in the Ural Mountains — at least, they were, until they perished under mysterious circumstances.
Personal diaries and film discovered on site confirm that the team had made camp on a stretch of the slopes known as Kholat Saykhl, or “dead mountain.” However, something caused the hikers to flee in the middle of the night, cutting their way out of the tent and sprawling across the mountain — barely dressed despite subzero temperatures and a thick layer of snow.
When a search and rescue team finally found them, scattered over the pass weeks later, they discovered that while six of the hikers had died from hypothermia, the remaining three hikers had been killed by extreme physical trauma. There were body parts missing — one hiker’s eyes, another’s tongue — and severe skeletal damage to some of the skulls and chests.
The only problem? There was no convincing evidence to explain why or how this had happened. At the time, the investigators concluded only that an unknown but powerful “natural force” had compelled them to leave their tent. Conspiracies range from katabatic winds through to Yeti attack and even infrasound-induced panic, but no definitive conclusion was ever made to explain the deaths.
Until, potentially, now.
Simulations, Disney and a potential answer
In an article published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers identified data supporting the theory that a small, impactful avalanche could have been the culprit.
It’s not the first time such a hypothesis has arisen. In fact, it was one of the first conclusions drawn — it just had no supporting evidence. In 2019, a team of Russian scientists also concluded that it was an avalanche, but the data to support the theory was once again lacking. There had been no definitive evidence of an avalanche — even a small one. The topography and snowfall levels didn’t match such an incident.
Now, however, a team from the Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at the École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has been able to use analytical models, simulations and even technology from Disney’s animation studios to explain how an avalanche may have occurred without leaving behind evidence.
Reported by National Geographic, the data indicated the avalanche would have been particularly small — perhaps as small as 16 feet of ice and snow, compacted into a solid slab. This would allow for the conditions to mask the phenomena over time, with snowfall obscuring any debris, while still creating enough of a threat to compel the hikers to slash their way out.
But it still didn’t explain the extreme trauma left on some of the bodies. To answer that question, the team looked to Disney’s Frozen. Johan Gaume, head of the laboratory, combined their simulation tools with animation models borrowed from Frozen’s creative team to analyze how the impact of the avalanche would affect the bodies.
Using the simulation, enhanced by these animation models, the team was able to conclude that the suspected avalanche could have had enough of an impact if the hikers had arranged their bedding on top of their skis, providing a rigid base upon which the force would have been exerted — crushing skulls and chests between the two hard forces.
There’s still little evidence as to what happened next, given that all the hikers were found outside the tent, but the best theory is that they then tried to escape the avalanche and rescue their injured teammates — though their injuries and the extreme temperature would eventually prove fatal. As for the missing body parts? Animal scavengers are the likely culprit.
So while the study goes a long way in explaining a possible, even likely, scenario for the deaths of the hikers on Dyatlov Pass, a lot of questions still remain.
And those questions are inevitably going to keep conspiracy theorists busy speculating for years to come.