DECHAINE, DENNIS [viz Miscarriages of Justice: Dechaine, Dennis]: Crime Stories TV - Portland Press Herald online -
A young girl is murdered. The killer sent away for the rest of his life. Sixteen years later some say the police got the wrong man. Crime Stories: Lost in the Woods
At 3 p.m. on July 6th 1988 police were called to a house ... Two days later searchers found the body of Sarah Cherry. ibid.
Dechaine has always denied any involvement in the murder. And now his defence team says they have the evidence to prove it. ibid.
Dennis Dechaine has spent the last seventeen years behind bars. ibid.
The official cause of death was strangulation. ibid.
He very possibly could be the wrong man. ibid.
Dennis didn’t get a fair trial. ibid.
The legal fate of Dennis Dechaine now rests, as it has for 25 years, in the hands of Superior Court Justice Carl Bradford.
Dennis Dechaine, shown in court in Portland on Thursday, was convicted in 1989 of the murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry.
Bradford, 80, retired in 1998 but is still an active judge and is called upon to preside over certain cases, including that of Dechaine, whom Bradford sent to prison for life in 1989.
On Thursday and Friday in a Portland courtroom, Bradford listened to testimony from DNA experts. He now awaits written arguments from the defense and prosecution before he determines whether Dechaine is granted a new trial. Portland Press Herald online article 9th November 2013
DEELEY, LUKE: Code Blue: The Killing of June Fox-Roberts TV -
21st November 2021, south Wales: I’ve just come home and I’ve found my mother’s body in the dining room. She’s wrapped in plastic and there’s blood going from the front door … Code Blue: The Killing of June Fox-Roberts I, daughter’s 999 call, ITV 2023
The victim is a 65-year-old grandmother. It appears to be a random and extremely violent crime. Her body has been dismembered … Where is the rest of June’s body? ibid.
June’s head and limbs have now all been found in bags in the house. ibid.
Another man who’d come under suspicion – a 25-year-old arts student called Luke Deeley who’d gone missing. ibid. rozzer
DEEMING, FREDERICK BAILEY: Prime Suspect: Jack the Ripper TV - Casebook online -
Why was this monster never caught? Prime Suspect: Jack the Ripper, 2011
A suspect that’s never been seriously investigated before – Frederick Bailey Deeming. British born, Deeming became infamous as Australia’s first serial killer. ibid.
Windsor murder: It was here Christmas 1891 that Deeming battered his wife to death: the victim Emily Mather. ibid.
Police were soon to discover it wasn’t the first time he’d killed. ibid.
Rainhill murders: Dinham Villa – it was here around August 1891 that Deeming murdered his first wife, Marie, and three of their children cutting their throats and a fourth strangled. ibid.
The public increasingly believed he was Jack the Ripper. ibid.
He had an unnaturally strong relationship with his mother, and his father spent time in a mental asylum. ibid.
The Ripper is believed to have strangled some of his victims before cutting their throats. ibid.
Deeming was 5’6”, he was also of solid build, with strange eyes, a light coloured moustache, he wore a hard-felt hat, a chained watch and a long overcoat. ibid.
DNA has been extracted from the Ripper letter and the result is explosive ... Could Jack really be Jill the Ripper? ibid.
On 23 May 1892 conman, bigamist and multiple murderer Frederick Bailey Deeming was executed at Melbourne gaol, in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia. Convicted of murdering his wife Emily, whose naked body was discovered with a fractured skull and cut throat under the hearthstone of their rented house in Windsor, suburban Melbourne. In England when the mother of his victim was told the gruesome circumstances of her daughter’s death she recalled work Deeming had done the previous year to his then home Dinham Villa, in Rainhill, east of Liverpool. Resulting in the discovery of the remains of his first wife Marie and their four young children, entombed in concrete under the floorboards.
After murdering Emily on 24 December 1891 Deeming made his way to Perth, Western Australia, where he was arrested under the alias Baron Swanston on 11 March 1892 and extradited back to Victoria to stand trial. The press had a field day, the sociopathic savagery of the crimes guaranteed sellout editions of any newspaper hyping the story. The unsolved Whitechapel murders still fresh in the public mind, combined with Deeming’s British origins made it almost inevitable that the sensation seeking press would accuse him of being Jack the Ripper. Initiated and given credence, however, by reports he confessed in transit to committing two of the Ripper murders. Soon articles appeared nationwide advancing theories, suggesting his motive for the Rainhill murders being to silence a wife who discovered his awful secret and labeled him ‘The Jack the Ripper of the Southern Seas’. Prejudicial publicity his lawyers, which included future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, strenuously denied, seeing their clients chances of receiving a fair trial fade with each sensational headline. Casebook online article
DEFEO, RONALD BUTCH: Amityville Killer: Ronald DeFeo TV - Ronald DeFeo - Great Crimes & Trials TV - True Crime Recaps 2023 - Amityville: An Original Story TV - Very Scary People TV -
In November 1974 in Amityville New York, Ronald Butch DeFeo junior was charged with murdering his entire family. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to Life. Amityville Killer: Ronald DeFeo
3 a.m. November 13 1974: Ronald Butch DeFeo 23 and his sister Dawn were awake as the rest of the family slept. ibid.
In the weeks leading up to the murders he had been using heroin daily. ibid.
When I realised what I did I was sick. Ronald DeFeo
I got beat up since the day I was born. Ronald DeFeo
Once I started I just couldn’t stop. It went so fast. Ronald Defeo
In the early evening of Wednesday 13th November 1974 the Suffolk Country Police Department received a call from a bar in Amityville reporting a multiple shooting. When the police reached the house there was a group of young men outside, among them 23-year-old Ronald Defeo junior, the son of the owner who had raised the alarm. Great Crimes & Trials s3e9: DeFeo & Benson, BBC 1996
While being safeguarded at the police station Butch DeFeo gave them an eight-page statement about his movements during the forty-eight hours before the murder. ibid.
Butch described how he had woken at 2 a.m. Got his rifles. Killed first his father and mother, then his sister Allison, then his brothers Marc and John, and finally Dawn. ibid.
He had a reputation for violence and his contemporaries were wary of him. ibid.
The father was particularly violent and on occasions beat up his wife. ibid.
The DeFeo story had one final twist which sets it apart from the other family murders: for the house was sold at the end of 1985 to new owners ... Some twenty-eight days later they fled in terror. The story of constant unexplained noises, foul smells and inexplicable events which culminated in sighting demonic figures became the basis for the film The Amityville Horror. ibid.
November 13th 1974: Ronald DeFeo jr grabbed a .35 calibre rifle and shot his father and mother twice in their bed. Then he shot his brothers Mark and John; they were 11 and 9 years old. Next he shot his sister Alison; she was 13. Then he went up to the third floor and shot his other sister Dawn; she was 18. True Crime Recaps: Amityville Horror True Story, Youtube 32.36, 2021
When Ronnie DeFeo jr was arrested for the murders the next night he said voices in the house made him do it. About 13 months after the murders the Lutz family bought the house from Ronnie at a bargain basement price … They only lasted 28 days. ibid. ibid.
The other more controversial theory is that Ronnie didn’t act alone. ibid.