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MSNBC’s Joy Reid says she can’t prove hackers wrote "hateful" posts

April 29, 2018 by  
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NEW YORK — MSNBC’s Joy Reid, under fire for homophobic language in old blog posts, apologized Saturday for any past comments that belittled or mocked the LGBTQ community and says she hasn’t been able to verify her claim that her account was hacked.

Reid opened her weekend show “AM Joy” by acknowledging she has said “dumb” and “hurtful” things in the past. “The person I am now is not the person I was then,” she said. But she was unable to explain blog posts from a decade ago that mocked gay people and individuals who were allegedly gay. Reid has denied posting them altogether but says security experts she hired who looked into whether she had been a hacking victim found no proof.

“I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me. But I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past, why some people don’t believe me,” she said.

“I have not been exempt for being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that I am truly, truly sorry.”

The posts that came to light in December were written for “The Reid Report,” her blog when she was covering Florida politics a decade ago. In posts, she refers to then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist as “Miss Charlie” and suggested he was “ogling the male waiters” on his honeymoon after marrying his wife, whom he has since divorced. She questioned whether the marriage was a sham by a gay man who thought it would help him politically.

Reid apologized, saying her remarks were “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb.” On Saturday, she apologized also to Ann Coulter for using transgender stereotypes to describe the conservative commentator.

This week, Mediaite revealed a set of other supposed blog posts. In one of these posts, Reid supposedly notes that “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing” and that she couldn’t see the movie “Brokeback Mountain” because she didn’t want to watch two male characters having sex. Another post says that a lot of heterosexuals find the idea of homosexual sex to be gross and that there are concerns that gay men tend to be attracted to young, post-pubescent types and want to bring them “into the lifestyle.”

Reid has said that these posts were “fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology.” She reiterated that on Saturday but acknowledged she has made hateful comments and has hopefully “grown as a person.”

“I look back today at some of the ways I’ve talked casually about people and gender identity and sexual orientation, and I wonder who that even was. But the reality, like a lot of people in this country, that person was me.”

After reading her five-minute statement, Reid then led a panel discussion on gender stereotypes and issues facing the LGBT community. 

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At least a dozen men and women died because of the Golden State Killer. Here’s who they were.

April 29, 2018 by  
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A timeline of the 1975-1986 crime spree of the Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker and the Visalia Ransacker.
Wochit

The man known outside California as the Golden State Killer has many other names inside the state’s borders: the Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist, East Bay Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, the Diamond Knot Killer. 

Some were monikers drawn from areas where the crimes were committed — from the Central Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area. In Southern California, he was known as the Original Night Stalker, and the Diamond Knot name came from the way he bound some of his victims.

But not until Wednesday did the public have the name of a flesh-and-blood suspect that prosecutors say is linked via DNA evidence to the string of crimes from 1975 to 1986. At least 12 murders and 45 rapes are included in that tally.

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, of the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights made his first appearance Friday in Sacramento County Superior Court, sitting handcuffed to a wheelchair. He is being held without bail.

► April 27: Golden State Killer suspect on suicide watch, in court in wheelchair
► April 27: Former investigator recalls obsessive search for the Golden State Killer
► April 27: Took an ancestry DNA test? You might be a ‘genetic informant’ 

DeAngelo initially was charged with two counts of suspicion of murder in connection with the 1978 deaths of a young Rancho Cordova couple, shot as they walked their dog.

Here are the slayings that prosecutors consider to be tied to the Golden State Killer:

Janelle Lisa Cruz 

Janelle Lisa Cruz, 18, was raped and killed May 4, 1986, at her parents’ home in Irvine and is believed to be the final victim of the Golden State killer

A real-estate agent discovered the restaurant cashier’s body the day after she died, the Los Angeles Times reported. An autopsy showed that blows to the head killed her.

Cruz had been alone while her parents were on vacation, and investigators believe that the killer attacked her shortly after her boyfriend left her Orange County house, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Irvine is about 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Blood, semen and hair samples saved from murder investigations of Patti and Keith Harrington and Manuela Witthuhn linked the same killer to Cruz, the Times reported.

Cheri Domingo and Greg Sanchez

Greg Sanchez, 27, and his girlfriend, Cheri Domingo, were killed July 27, 1981, in a home near Goleta where Domingo, 35, was house-sitting.

DNA evidence has linked DeAngelo to the 1981 double murder, according to the sheriff’s office. 

While charges had not been filed for the double murders as of Friday, Santa Barbara County officials have said they believe that DeAngelo committed the crimes.

Keith and Patti Harrington

Keith and Patti Harrington, ages 24 and 27, of Laguna Niguel, Calif., were bludgeoned to death Aug. 21, 1975, and are buried in Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, Calif. (Photo: Find A Grave)

Keith Eli Harrington, 24, and Patrice Briscoe Harrington, 27 were found bludgeoned to death Aug. 21, 1975, at their home in a gated community in Orange County’s Laguna Niguel, about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Keith Harrington’s father, Roger Harrington, owned the home and discovered the slain newlyweds when he arrived for dinner on a Thursday night, according to a Los Angeles Times article two days after the killings.

Keith Harrington was a fourth-year medical student at the University of California-Irvine. He and Patrice Harrington, a pediatric nurse, had met at the university’s Medical Center and been married just a few months, the Times said. 

Brian and Katie Maggiore

Brian Maggiore, 21, and Katie Maggiore, 20, were walking their dog at about 9 p.m. PT Feb. 2, 1978, in their Rancho Cordova neighborhood when they encountered their killer.

As the confrontation turned violent, Brian Maggiore, an administrative specialist at what used to be Mather Air Force Base east of Sacramento, and his wife tried to get away, The New York Times reported.

Detectives have speculated that the suspect, who shot the young couple in the backyard of a home as they fled, was attempting to protect his identity after the Maggiores saw him, according to The Washington Post. They died from their wounds at a Sacramento-area hospital.

DNA obtained during the investigation linked their slaying to other crimes committed in the Bay Area.

Dr. Robert Offerman and Debra Manning

Debra Manning, 35, and Dr. Robert Offerman, 44, were killed Dec. 30, 1979. Both are buried in Santa Barbara Cemetery. (Photo: Find A Grave) 

Dr. Robert Offerman, 44, an orthopedic surgeon, and Debra Alexandria Manning, 35, a psychologist, were murdered Dec. 30, 1979, in their condominium near Goleta, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

The crime was the first of two double murders in the Goleta area and followed what authorities believe was an attempted double murder near Goleta in October 1979. In that crime, a couple escaped after being attacked while they slept.

Lyman Smith and Charlene Smith

Lyman Smith, 43, and Charlene Smith, 33, were killed March 13, 1980, in the bedroom of their Ventura home, about 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The lawyer and his wife, an interior decorator, had been bound and bludgeoned with a fireplace log. Charlene Smith, who had been sexually assaulted, was bound with a drapery cord fastened in an ornate knot.

Lyman Smith’s 12-year-old son from a previous marriage found the Smiths’ bodies three days later. DNA collected from the scene of the double murder was used to identify DeAngelo, according to Greg Totten, Ventura County district attorney.

Claud Snelling

Claude Snelling, 45, was killed Sept. 11, 1975, at his home in Visalia, roughly halfway between Sacramento and Los Angeles. 

A criminal dubbed the Visalia Ransacker already had been active when 16-year-old Elizabeth Hupp awoke around 2 a.m. to a man hovering over her and wearing a ski mask.

► April 26: Who is Joseph James DeAngelo, the accused Golden State Killer?
► April 26: Break in Golden State Killer case came from DNA on genealogy site

The man attempted to kidnap her, Hupp said. But her father, a College of the Sequoias journalism professor, confronted him outside the back door. The man shot Snelling, hit and kicked Elizabeth, and ran. Snelling died. 

“The fact that he died saving my life means the world to me,” Hupp said. “My mom always said it wouldn’t have mattered if there were 20 guys outside with guns, he would have saved me.”

To date, no DNA evidence ties DeAngelo to Snelling, and authorities continue to exclude his death from the official count of 12 murders.

Manuela Witthuhn 

Manuela Witthuhn, 28, was home alone in Irvine when her killer broke in. She was found dead Feb. 5, 1981.

Her husband was sick and in a hospital at the time.

Detectives believe her killer may have wanted to target both and was surprised to find Whitthuhn by herself, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported.

Her husband, David Witthuhn, died in 2008. He was a suspect in his wife’s slaying, but DNA evidence cleared him.

Contributing: Silas Lyons, Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight. Jennie Espino reports for the Redding Record Searchlight; Gretchen Wenner reports for the Ventura County (Calif.) Star. Follow Espino and Wenner on Twitter: @jennyespino_RS and @GretchenWenner