Category: Miscellaneous

Pamela Kaichen, 44, robbed six banks in New York and Connecticut over a 48 hour period in May of 2003. She pretended to have a gun during the robberies, and when she was arrested more than $42,000 was found in her apartment and car.

A judge sentenced her to just 4 years in jail — despite federal sentencing guidelines that call for 7 1/4 years for crimes similar to Kaichen’s. The judge bought Kaichen’s claim that she suffered from a mental condition that was worsened after she volunteered at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks and that she only stole the money in order to give it to 9/11 victims. During at least two of the robberies she told bank tellers that she had either lost a loved one or personally “went through” the 9/11 terrorist attack, both claims that were false.

In giving her a lenient sentence, U.S. District Judge Ellen Bree Burns said,

It’s clear this defendant was acting under significant mental disabilities trigger by her horrendous experience at Ground Zero . . . When Ms. Kaichen saw the sheer magnitude of grief as a result of 9/11, she began to feel like a failure. It is not a stretch to say if it was not for what Ms. Kaichen experienced on 9/11, we would not be here today.

Sources:

“I Went Through Sept. 11”. Associated Press, May 28, 2003.

9/11 experience drops ‘Blond Bandit’ sentence. Associated Press, February 3, 2004.

In mid-January, Mary Masson, 29, was acquitted on charges of making false sexual abuse charges against her former husband in one of the more bizarre such cases.

In 2002, Masson left her husband, Jean-Yves Masson. She then told her sister-in-law and police that in 1999 she discovered a videotape that her then-fiancee had made of him sexual abusing their daughter. She claimed that she had forced her fiance to write a confession to that effect, and wrapped the confession around the videotape which she then placed in an attic.

Police doubted her story almost from the moment she said it, finding it difficult to believe that Mary would marry Jean-Yves and repeatedly leave him alone with their daughter if the claim were true. When police searched the attic, they found no tape and after an investigation charged Mary Masson with making a false accusation.

Most damning was Mary’s statement to police that she discovered the videotape while she was on the phone with a friend. According to Mary, she had screamed while on the phone to her friend and later met with her to discuss the videotape.

But the friend testified that the phone conversation never took place and that Mary Masson never told her about any video showing Mary’s fiance sexually abusing the daughter. The friend testified that she too had left her child alone with Jean-Yves and said,

I would never be so desperate as to leave my daughter with someone I suspected (of child abuse). . . . I don’t recall any incident where she screamed like a blood-curdling scream. It’s not something I would have ever forgotten.

In acquitting Mary Masson, Justice Russell Merredew said,

Notwithstanding Det. James Davies’ healthy skepticism and not without skepticism in my own mind, I cannot find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sources:

Not guilty of mischief. Sean McKibbon, Ottawa Sun, January 15, 2004.

Former Friend Denies Hearing Of Sex Video. Sean McKibbon, Ottawa Sun, November 14, 2003.

Cops Questioned Sex-Abuse Accusation. Sean McKibbon, Ottawa Sun, November 13, 2003.

A 45-year-old Barkhamsted, Connecticut woman was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of cruelty to persons in the death of her husband.

Nancy Roy was charged for leaving her husband at home on January 11, 2003, when he was either dying or dead, and travelling to Las Vegas for an overnight gambling trip with her boyfriend (the couple were estranged and seeing other people, although they continued to live together and had not divorced). Roy apparently did not notice that her husband had died until the morning after returning from her gambling trip.

Roy told police that her husband wasn’t feeling well when she went to work the morning of January 11, and that she wasn’t suspicious that when she returned from work that he was “sleeping” in the exactly the same position as when she left. She claimed that she thought the foul odor she notice upon returning from Las Vegas was simply her husband’s body odor rather than a decomposing body.

After pleading guilty to cruelty to prisons, Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto told Roy,

You showed a total disregard for the welfare and dignity of another human being and that should not be tolerated in this society.

Roy’s boyfriend, Thomas Caves, told the Hartford Courant that Roy plead guilty in order to get the whole mess behind her.

Sources:

Wife sentenced for ignoring ill husband. Associated Press, January 21, 2004.

Widow’s friend speaks out. David Owens, Hartford Courant, January 23, 2004.