Archive for October 27th, 2011

Quickies.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Robert “Ratso” Rizzo sold his house in Huntington Beach.

It went for $939,000. Ratso paid $1.13 million in 2007. (Four bedrooms, three baths, two stories, 3,250 square feet, “…a cherry-wood walk-in closet in the master bedroom, built-in cherry-wood bookshelves in the living room and a formal dining room and travertine, granite and marble surfaces throughout. There are crystal chandeliers in the bathroom.”)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos has been asked to testify in an ongoing DWI trial.

Lykos is unlikely to appear, because she is out of town.

And if you’re not reading “Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center” already, why not?

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We got the (crime) beat.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Here’s the longer HouChron story I expected about yesterday’s decision to bar the Harris County DA from participation in a grand jury investigation that may implicate the DA’s office.

I also wanted to note another story out of Houston: Roderick Fountain was convicted of murdering his 3-year old son. What makes this story noteworthy (in my opinion) is that he was convicted even though nobody has ever found the son’s body, and mostly based on the word of jailhouse informants.

Murder convictions without a body are not unheard of, but they are certainly rare and unusual enough to be noteworthy. (As a side note, the phrase “corpus delicti” does not mean the body of the victim, but the “body of the crime”; that is, all the evidence that indicates a crime has been committed. It is entirely possible to have a “corpus delicti” without a murder.)

It does seem, though, that the murder conviction without a body is becoming more common. This is the second case I can think of in Texas in the past year or so. (Here’s a link to some press coverage of the other case.) Does this point to improvements in forensic science? Or is there something more sinister going on?

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