Cell phone pings helped find children’s bodies
Boise (US): Authorities used cell phone information from the now-deceased uncle of two missing Idaho children to find the youths’ bodies on a rural property earlier this month, according to court documents.
Police found the remains of 17-year-old Tylee Ryan and her brother, 7-year-old Joshua JJ Vallow, on June 9 after months of searching.
They hadn’t been seen since September and investigators said the children’s mother Lori VallowDaybell and her husband Chad Daybell lied to police about the children’s whereabouts.
KBOI reported that court documents made public late Friday reveal that the FBI tracked the cell phone of Alex Cox, Vallow’s brother and JJ and Tylee’s uncle.
The FBI tracked Cox’s cell phone on Daybell’s property four times during the month of September. According to court documents, Cox’s phone pinged on Sept. 6, 9, 23 and 25 at the location where the remains were found.
Neighbors also confirmed they saw fires on the property around Sept. 6 and 9, which they said was unusual because a fire pit on the property was hardly used, according to court documents.
Chad Daybell has pleaded not guilty to destroying evidence. Lori Daybell has been in jail since February, charged with child abandonment and obstructing the investigation. Both Daybells are being held on 1 million bond, and both are scheduled for preliminary hearings next month.
The complex case spans several states and began when Lori Daybell’s brother shot and killied her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in suburban Phoenix last summer in what he asserted was self-defense.
Vallow was seeking a divorce, saying Lori believed she had become a god-like figure who was responsible for ushering in the biblical end times.
Her brother, Alex Cox, then died in December of an apparent blood clot in his lung.
Shortly after Vallow’s death, Lori and the children moved to Idaho, where Chad Daybell lived. He ran a small publishing company, putting out fiction books he wrote about apocalyptic scenarios loosely based on the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He also recorded podcasts about preparing for biblical end times, and friends said he claimed to be able to receive visions from beyond the veil.
He was married to Tammy Daybell, who died in her sleep last October of what her obituary said were natural causes. Authorities grew suspicious when Chad Daybell married Lori just two weeks later.
They had Tammy Daybell’s body exhumed in December. The results of that autopsy have not been released. (AP)
Controversial Lenin statue erected in German city
Berlin: A far-left party in Germany has erected a controversial statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin, a media report said on Sunday.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) installed the statue in front of its headquarters in the western city of Gelsenkirchen, the BBC report said.
City authorities had attempted to stop the statue being installed and launched an online hashtag saying there was “no place for Lenin”.
But courts blocked their appeals and the unveiling went ahead on Saturday.
Lenin was a leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and led the country until his death in 1924, when he was succeeded by Josef Stalin.
However, he has remained a symbol of communism rule across the world, both among supporters and those who remember the human rights abuses that took place under the Soviet Union.
Germany itself was divided for decades between the West and the communist East, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. (IANS)