Articles Posted in Murder

In a follow-up to my blog posting yesterday concerning the murder of Charles Cantave in the Hyde Park section of Boston, new information was released suggesting that the incident arose from a car repair dispute.

From information released by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the criminal defendant, Mario Burns, and the victim, Charles Cantave, were involved in a small-claims court hearing over a repair bill. Cantave was the manager at Brockton Four Wheels where the defendant’s wife, Kenya Burns, had taken their Volvo to be serviced. In her civil complaint, Kenya Burns claimed she paid $2,196 to have her engine replaced, but was later told by a Volvo technician that the work was no good. Burns disputed the repair costs, and the matter ended up in small-claims court in Dorchester on March 29.

After the civil court hearing in Dorchester, prosecutors allege that Burns followed Cantave to his car and fatally shot him. A witness told police that he heard a gunshot and then saw a man leaving in a GMC truck. The witness provided the Boston Police with the license plate number, and the vehicle was soon stopped on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester, with Burns driving.

Another mistrial was declared yesterday in the murder trial of Antwan Carter and Daniel Pinckney, Jr. yesterday for the killing of Cedirick Steele, 18, in March of 2007. The Suffolk County Jurors who had been deliberating for over a week told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked against reaching a unanimous verdict.

The key witness for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Latoya Dickson, had testified before a Suffolk County Grand Jury and against the two defendant’s in their first murder trial. During this, the second, trial, Dickson recanted her previous testimony.

Boston Criminal Attorney Lefteris K. Travayiakis handles all criminal matters, from simple misdemeanors to major felonies, and has a proven track record of acquittals after jury trial.

Geoffrey Wilson, 31 of Malden, Massachusetts, was arraigned yesterday in Malden District Court on murder charges for killing his 6 month old son, Nathan Wilson. A the time of this writing, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office had not yet determined the cause and manner of death, citing that the matter is still under investigation.

The boy’s father, who works at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab as an administrative assistance, allegedly told police that the baby became cranky and he picked him up over his head and shook him, trying to simulate the motion of a moving car to calm the child. The Middlesex County D.A.’s Office, however, have said that preliminary reports suggest the infant child suffered “non-accidental injuries and trauma.”

The prosecuting attorney further informed the judge at Wilson’s arraignment that the baby had signs of bruising on his forehead, chin and cheek, and that it appeared that the baby was subjected to extreme violent shaking causing a retinal hemorrhage. Although an autopsy has not yet been completed, it is believed that the child succumbed to his injuries as a result of “Shaken Baby Syndrome.”

Edgard Anziani, 27 of Lawrence, Massachusetts, was arrested on March 1 in Maryland for allegedly killing his girlfriend’s 15 month-old baby in Bangor. The criminal suspect had been pursued by the FBI’s Boston Office, who had secured a federal arrest warrant charging him with Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution.

In an affidavit, the baby’s mother alleged that she left the child in Edgard Anziani’s custody while she went to the hospital to be treated for severe abdominal pain in the early morning hours of February 23. Some time thereafter, Anziani handed the child to fire department officials, at which time the baby was already blue and not breathing.

Anziani told police that he heard a ‘thumping’ noise while he was in the kitchen preparing milk, and then discovered the child had collapsed on the landing of the stairs, suggesting he had fallen down the stairs. The autopsy performed, however, indicated that the child suffered injuries that “were inflicted” and “nonaccidental in nature”, including fractured bones and evidence of a human bite mark on the child’s arm.

On February 26, 2010, a Suffolk County Jury yesterday convicted Steven Odegard for the 2008 Boston South End murder of Daniel Yakovleff. After meeting Yakovleff at a Boston South End bar, prosecutors accused Odegard of taking him to his home, engaging in sexual relations, and then stabbing him to death in a fit of rage.

The criminal defendant, Steven Odegard, testified in his own defense and admitted to meeting Yakovleff at a gay bar the previous evening and returning with him to his home. He claimed, however, that there was also a third man who returned to his home with them and it was this man who went into his bedroom with Yakovleff after Odegard and the victim had already had sex. In his testimony, Odegard told the jury he woke up around 6:00 a.m. and found Yakovleff in his bed with a 13-inch knife in his chest and the third man already gone-he then called 911 and spoke with the Boston Police Officers who responded to his call. Odegard’s defense at his murder trial was that he had passed out on the couch after a night of alcohol, prescription drugs and the Levitrol sex drug that he took.

The defense had also called called a physiology/pharmacology expert in its case, who testified that the combination of alcohol and drugs that Odegard took that evening could have made him inebriated to the point where his cognitive and physical skills were so diminished that he wouldn’t have been able to function.