Id. There were no signs of forced entry, and the lower floor seemed normal. Proof of a completed theft is not even required. Rector made an independent investigation. Find Patrick Russo's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading people search directory for contact information and public records. An earlier membership had been issued on February 28, 2001, to a Janet Russo at the same address. Appellant then asked several times when Cranford's husband would be home. He was able to view for free the introductory screens, photographs, and stories pertaining to the death of women by strangulation. King v. State, 29 S.W.3d 556, 562 (Tex.Crim.App.2000); Rodriguez v. State, 939 S.W.2d 211, 218 (Tex.App.-Austin 1997, no pet.). Id. Appellant did not return the next day. 1. Patrick Anthony. the nissan rogue, murano and pathfinder. In Brown, a maintenance worker at an apartment building was convicted of murdering a tenant's live-in girlfriend, Shelby Weinstein. In his interview with the police, appellant asked them what motive he would have to kill Holik, a woman that he did not know. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988); Crosby v. State, 750 S.W.2d 768, 780 (Tex.Crim.App.1988). Datelines After the Storm will include interviews with friends and family members of Diane Holik and Travis County investigators. The trial court was careful to eliminate images of unrelated sexual activity and nudity, leaving only those images showing ligature and manual strangulation of women and other items pertinent to this circumstantial evidence case where a woman was strangled in her own home. All Rights Reserved. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Dr. Coons explained that a sexual sadist is sexually stimulated with a fantasy life and becomes obsessive. The evidence was relevant. Margraves v. State, 34 S.W.3d 912, 919 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). 1998, no. On occasion Hebner's wife took care of Holik's dogs. at 224. There had been no interrogation along these lines. The evidence of actions taken by the female witnesses while interacting with appellant (taking precautionary measures, staying away from appellant, checking on a child, or calling family, friends or police) or their expressions of concern provided significant background information about the circumstances under which the events occurred. See Moreno v. State, 755 S.W.2d 866, 867 (Tex.Crim.App.1988). A chapel inside the Darrington Unit, where inmates can participate in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary program to become Christian ministers. Akia's family became alarmed when the 21-year-old failed to show up to her own baby shower on May 3. See also Robinson v. State, 701 S.W.2d 895, 898 (Tex.Crim.App.1985) (six months is not too remote). Police officers searched appellant's church office on November 21, 2001. Several accesses were on November 13, 2001, two days before the Holik murder. Cranford invited him into the house. Holik was engaged to be married and planned to move to Houston where her fianc lived. As a result of the jury's answer at the penalty stage of the trial to the special issue concerning mitigating circumstances, the trial court imposed a life sentence. Proof of a completed theft is not required. doorstep of patrick russo, a man matching the description of the mysterious stranger seen in diane holi k's neighborhood the day of the murder. Lang v. State, 698 S.W.2d 735, 736 (Tex.App.-El Paso 1985, no. He further complains that the testimony provided by Tammy Tayman and Holly Dittart are based on contact with appellant, alleged to have occurred in August 2001. Patrick Anthony Russo, Diane Holiks Killer: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. 404(b).10 No error was preserved on this basis. Rector explained that the only way to do that was to recover the entire Internet history and go through that basically by hand, look at it to see what is real estate and what is not. Detective Rector reviewed the temporary Internet files and the index.dat files to determine the computer's Internet history. Penal Code Ann. Evid. Her testimony demonstrated that appellant and his wife had more than $40,000 in available monies in 1999, but that at the time of the offense, they had approximately $1,796.19. Patrick Anthony Russo is serving a life sentence for the 2001 murder of 42-year-old Diane Holik. FACTUAL SUFFICIENCY-MURDER IN THE COURSE OF ROBBERY. He left the black-and-white flyer behind. Many of the homeowner-witnesses were able to identify appellant as the man who came to their homes, wanting to see the house or a floor plan, saying that he would be a cash buyer, having just sold a ranch, rejecting the idea of contacting a realtor, and frequently saying that he would return with his wife on the weekend. No rings were found on the body. Id. Conner, 67 S.W.3d at 197; Alvarado, 912 S.W.2d at 207; Robertson v. State, 871 S.W.2d 701, 706 (Tex.Crim.App.1993); Key v. State, 151 S.W.3d 619, 621 (Tex.App.-Beaumont 2004, pet. One resident, Melody Blount, was convinced that Russo was the killer once she heard about Holiks murder. The scene covering the Texas Killing is "After the Storm". McFarland v. State, 845 S.W.2d 824, 837 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). Rule 403 more strongly favors admissibility than did many of the earlier formulations of the appropriate balancing test, with the opponent of the evidence bearing the burden of showing that the probative value is substantially outweighed by countervailing factors. 1 Steven Goode, Olin Guy Wellborn, III & M. Michael Sharlot, Texas Practice: Guide to the Rules of Evidence, 403.1 (3d ed.2002) (citing Yohey v. State, 801 S.W.2d 232, 236 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 1990, pet. These offenders will have an exponential impact.. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site. Expensive jewelry, including a $17,500 engagement ring, was missing. This week Six Degrees of Murder looks at the . In fact, appellant did not request that the court reporter's record be included in the appellate record. Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, deputy medical examiner, performed the autopsy and determined the cause of death to be homicide by ligature strangulation. The indentations appeared to have been made by plastic zip ties or flex-cuffs once used by police to bind prisoners' wrists together. The jury is the sole judge of the facts, the credibility of the witnesses, and the weight to be given the evidence. All rights reserved. Rule 802of the Texas Rules of Evidence states: Hearsay is not admissible except as provided by statute or these rules or by other rules prescribed pursuant to statutory authority. While the authorities were canvassing in the neighborhood, they came across some peculiar information from many homeowners who had their property on sale. The facts of Carey are not the facts of the instant case. 19.02(a) (West 2003); Rey v. State, 897 S.W.2d 333, 340 n. 7 (Tex.Crim.App.1995); Brewer, 126 S.W.3d at 297. In 2004, he was sentenced to life in prison. Detective Roy Rector, a forensic computer examiner with the Austin Police Department, first made a copy of the computer's hard drive, which is protocol for forensic computer examination. The Tenth Circuit held that while the first image of child pornography was discovered inadvertently and was not subject to suppression because of the plain view doctrine relating to seizures, the detective exceeded the scope of the search warrant by searching for additional pornographic images. The thrust of Rule 403 is to favor the admissibility of evidence, Goodwin v. State, 799 S.W.2d 719, 738-39 (Tex.Crim.App.1990), and there is a presumption of the admissibility of the evidence. When Deem opened a JPG file, he viewed an image that he believed to be child pornography. The email address cannot be subscribed. The jury as the trier of fact is the sole judge of the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given the testimony and may accept or reject all or any of a witness's testimony. A statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter. pet.). Evid. According to the agents, Tony Russo was a print and computerized Journalist by calling. The mothers name is Not Available. The man, whom Cranford later identified as appellant, noted that Cranford had switched realtors, but the switch had occurred in July 200l. ref'd))). The Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence was superseded by the Texas Rules of Evidence effective March 1, 1998. Appellant complains that the jury was presented with information about his membership in the necrobabes.com Web site and substantial and prejudicial images and stories of asphyxiation that had been viewed on his computer. Guevara, 152 S.W.3d at 49. Investigators initially believed Holik, who was 43 at the time of her death, had committed suicide, but after further review realized she was murdered. Follow along as LaDonna and Alecia share the heartbreaking details of how Patrick Anthony Russo's fetish played into Diane Holik's murder. Wyatt v. State, 23 S.W.3d 18, 30 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). At the pretrial hearing, appellant's trial counsel told the trial court that he first wanted to hear the testimony of Detective Roy Rector, the forensic computer expert, and then tailor his motion to suppress accordingly. art. The special agent opened one of these files while systematically searching for NLM documents but wondered if the file might contain evidence of child pornography. He did not resume the search and find the rest of the nude images of children until after a second search warrant had been issued. Penal Code Ann. Johna Ramirez, who lived in the Upland subdivision of Austin, identified appellant as the man who came to her house, which was for sale, on May 15 and November 5, 2001, both times just after her husband left for work. See Chaney v. State, 474 S.W.2d 711, 712 (Tex.Crim.App.1972); Dean v. State, 154 S.W.2d 459 (Tex.Crim.App.1941). 28.01 (West 2006). Anthony Russo. They then released him. He has appealed his case, but the Texas Court of Appeals rejected his argument and kept his sentence intact. Anthony Russo. In Rosa v. Commonwealth, 48 Va.App. Investigation Discoverys Six Degrees of Murder: Ties That Bind chronicles the work that went into catching Dianes killer. Tex. Detective Rector reviewed the temporary Internet files and the "index.dat" files to determine the computer's Internet historyOn August 1, 2003, Rector presented the extracted Internet history to a prosecutor to "see what is real estate and what is not." They also learned that the church leader had a fascination with strangling women and often visited porn sites that featured the strangulation deaths of women, according to court records found at FindLaw. She noted down the license plate number of his vehicle. Diane Holik was brutally murdered in her Austin, Texas, home more than 15 years ago by Patrick Anthony Tony Russo, a church leader with an erotic horror fantasy. All the doors and windows were locked. It was an awkward situation. Armed with yet another search warrant, granted on November 18, 2003, Rector did a more complete search of the computer for "information pertaining to death by asphyxiation." This is true, but the hypothetical scenario propounded by the State to Dr. Coons did not include any reference to robbery. DNA evidence found at the scene also tied Patrick Anthony Russo to the murder of Diane Holik. Drichas v. State, 175 S.W.3d 795, 799 (Tex.Crim.App.2005); Clewis, 922 S.W.2d at 134. The facts do not show that Detective Rector exceeded the scope of the search warrant of June 18 in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Heres what you need to know about Russo. (In cases of ligature homicide, blood flow to the brain is blocked and consciousness is lost in 10 to 15 seconds.). He claimed that he was elsewhere at the time of the murder, but cellphone records placed him in the general area around Dianes neighborhood. P. 33.1, we observe that appellant did not object on the basis of Rule 404(b), under which the State gave notice and offered the exhibits of which appellant now complains. The Texas lawmakers said the site of smiling inmates leading others in prayer moved them and helped bring the program to Texas. The program, funded by the nonprofit Heart of Texas Foundation, was modeled after a similar effort in Angola, La. Harmond v. State, 960 S.W.2d 404, 406 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] See Tex.R.App. Id. Eventually, she bought a home there and made a life for herself with a great circle of friends. People named Patrick Anthony. Excerpts from the Texas Court of Appeals' opinion dealing with Necrobabes.com and AOL searches used as evidence: Thus, there was no probative evidence of an intent to rob. The court added: This principle applies equally to a search for electronic files. A violent thunder and rainstorm descended upon Austin in the afternoon of November 15, 2001. So, if youre wondering what happened in Dianes case, weve got you covered. To establish capital murder committed during the course of a robbery, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in addition to the alleged murder, that the defendant possessed the specific intent to obtain or maintain control of the victim's property either before or during the commission of the offense. M. Scott Taliaferro, Assistant District Atty., Austin, for appellee. ref'd). Almost more than five years ago Diane Holik was brutally murdered in her own Home in Austin Texas by Patrick Anthony "Tony Russo". Other evidence showed that several days before the murder, appellant accessed the necrobabes.com Web site which detailed a scenario that involved the ligature strangulation of a woman and the theft of her jewelry. On October 29, 2003, during a separate pretrial hearing, the written objections were mentioned. Barajas related that Holik was excited to be selling her home and was eager to do so.22. Holik's demise story has been featured on the scene of Dateline. Thats Michael Imperioli, 2012-2023, 2paragraphs Productions, LLC. Id. Find your friends on Facebook. The warrant was executed. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. As noted, on November 18, 2003, another search warrant was issued by a district judge to search the hard drive of appellant's computer for, inter alia, information, photos and text from a Web site named "Necrobabes.com" and information pertaining to death by asphyxiation. Cardenas v. State, 115 S.W.3d at 62-63. We do not reach the second point of error claiming legal insufficiency of the evidence to establish that the murder occurred in the course of a kidnapping. Appellant stated that the storm began and he left. A Storm Reveals A Murder Here again, appellant does not contest the evidence supporting the murder conviction but claims only that the evidence is factually insufficient to show that the offense occurred in the course of a robbery. 9. Patrick Anthony Russo, 82. We overrule the third point of error. The Diane Holik cases also inspired the Investigation Discoverys show Motives And Murders: Cracking The Case. According to C Net, Russo appealed, citing two relevant issues one, that police overstepped the boundaries of the search warrant when they took his computer, and two, that his subscription to Necrobabes should not have been used as evidence to convict him. P. 33.1. Nethery, 692 S.W.2d at 706; Thompson, 59 S.W.3d at 808. Detective Rector then, on a personal or lab computer, went online to the Web site for necrobabes.com which was available without charge to anyone surfing the Internet. Those in the program "have changed remarkably in the four years not just academically, but in terms of their behavior and their examples to other offenders, Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said Thursday. Deem stated that he could not determine whether a particular JPG file was within the scope of the search warrant until he opened it to see if it contained relevant information. The 43-year-old worked for IBM as an executive, ultimately settling in Austin in 1996. If you know some information, please comment below. Upon discovering the child pornography, the agent ceased his search and obtained a second search warrant to search the computer for child pornography. In such an analysis, we view all the evidence in a neutral light. At some point, Rector was able to parse the Internet history relating to "Necrobabes.com" and determine the dates and times on which the computer had accessed the "Necrobabes.com" Web site on the Internet. Tex.R. See Photos. ref'd); 1 Steven Goode, Olin Guy Wellborn, III & M. Michael Sharlot, Texas Practice: Guide to the Texas Rules of Evidence 401.3 (2d ed.2002). Susan Fox, the pastor's wife, testified about the same conversation. Cranford said that appellant's eyes somehow looked bigger and deeper and darker and that he seemed to be a different person. See order of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dated February 25, 1998, entitled Final Approval of Revisions To The Texas Rules of Evidence in Criminal Cases.. After raiding his home on November 21, 2001, police brought Russo in for questioning. Dr. Coons was presented with a hypothetical scenario based on the evidence admitted at trial (except evidence of robbery). Rector was then requested by a prosecutor to conduct a more thorough search to look for Internet activity related to real estate. Evidence of other crimes, wrongs or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith. Reviewing courts are not fact finders. In the other portion of the point of error, appellant complains of the testimony of thirteen female homeowners and realtors, relying upon Rule 403. In Hall v. State, 970 S.W.2d 137, 141 (Tex.App.-Amarillo 1998, pet. Id. his Girlfriend/boyfriends name is Not Available. There was no evidence of a sexual assault. Blount told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, I was one of the first people to report him to the police and I wasnt taken seriously then. Excerpts from the Texas Court of Appeals' opinion dealing with the search warrant: 221 F.3d at 1147. The trial court was careful to eliminate images of unrelated sexual activity and nudity, leaving only those images showing ligature and manual strangulation of women and other items pertinent to this circumstantial evidence case where a woman was strangled in her own home. That includes some who will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. The first point of error is overruled. Walser, 275 F.3d at 983-84. In Cooper v. State, 67 S.W.3d 221 (Tex.Crim.App.2002), an aggravated robbery case, the Court held that the general rule is the theft or attempted theft occurring immediately after an assault will support an inference that the assault was intended to facilitate the theft for the purposes of proving robbery. In his first point of error, appellant challenges the legal sufficiency of the evidence to establish [that] appellant committed murder in the course of robbery.. We have no more information about his spouse. During the autopsy, police officers collected biological evidence from the victim's left hand. P. 33.1. Appellant inquired whether the dog would calm down if petted. No such necklace was found. Watch Dateline's "The Accused" this Friday, September 30, at 9/8 p.m. Central on NBC. The point of error is multifarious and is not easy to decipher. After examining Gray and Carey, the Wisconsin court held that images of child pornography observed when the analyst was systematically searching for harassment evidence was admissible under the plain view doctrine relating to the seizure of contraband or illegal possession of property. He qualified as an expert witness for the State. ref'd). The computers Internet history made reference to a Web site named necrobabes.com, which was later determined to be an asphyxiation-type pornographic Web site. P. 33.1(a); Ibarra v. State, 11 S.W.3d 189, 197 (Tex.Crim.App.1999) (claim of error not preserved where defendant objected on the ground the testimony was hearsay, but failed to object to the relevancy of the testimony). The cause of death was ligature strangulation. Patrick Russo, 40, a part-time music minister, was convicted of capital murder Feb. 20 by a Travis County jury. Appellant's known fingerprints matched the prints on the black-and-white flyer and prints on the flyer box in Tammy Cranford's yard. he was in diane's area the day she was killed. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970); Fisher v. State, 851 S.W.2d 298, 302 (Tex.Crim.App.1993); see also Tex. Copyright 2023, Thomson Reuters. Almost five years ago, Diane Holik was brutally murdered in her Austin, Texas home by Patrick Anthony "Tony Russo". at 680; see also Saldivar v. State, 980 S.W.2d 475, 495 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] See also Huffman v. State, 746 S.W.2d 212, 217 (Tex.Crim.App.1988); Whitaker v. State, 977 S.W.2d 869, 872-873 (Tex.App.-Beaumont 1998, pet. This exhibit is not before us for consideration of its relevancy. (3)Then Existing Mental Emotional or Physical Condition. The State did not offer this evidence before the jury. (statement to neighbor who lived less than one minute away that particular man was in declarant's apartment was made immediately thereafter.23 A functional test should be applied, i.e., whether the proximity in time is sufficient to reduce the hearsay danger of faulty memory and insincerity. Goode, 803.2 (citing Beauchamp v. State, 870 S.W.2d 649, 653 (Tex.App.-El Paso 1994, pet. Subsequently in the conversation, Barajas recalled that Holik panicked when she realized that she did not have her engagement ring and said, Oh, my God. Barajas heard retreating foot steps after Holik put the phone down. He insisted that he be shown only vacant houses. Rector then performed some keyword searches on the hard drive copy using "Diane Holik," "Pathfinder," and "Lakki Brown" (Holik's realtor). 401, 402, 403. The demise case murder remains a mystery. See Tex.R.App. In 2010, Lt. Gov. at 1271, the detective began to browse through the file directories in Carey's computer and stumbled across a JPG file18 and opened it. Kimberlyn Nelson of Mitotyping Technologies at State College, Pennsylvania, testified that she specialized in mitochondrial DNA testing. Before his arrest, Russo worked as a worship leader and music director at New Life In Christ Church in Bastrop, Texas. For the same reason we did not reach the second point of error, we do not reach the fourth point claiming factual insufficiency to show murder in the course of a kidnapping. When the police officers rolled the body over, a charm fell out of Holik's hair. Id. A trial court abuses its discretion in the context of evidentiary rulings only if its ruling is outside the zone of reasonable disagreement. Patrick Anthony Russo is serving a life sentence for the 2001 murder of 42-year-old Diane Holik. Proof of robbery committed as an afterthought and unrelated to the murder is not sufficient evidence of capital murder. Watson v. State, 204 S.W.3d 404, 414-15 (Tex.Crim.App.2006) (reclarifying Clewis and overruling Zuniga v. State, 144 S.W.3d 477 (Tex.Crim.App.2004), to the extent of any conflict); see also Marshall v. State, 210 S.W.3d 618, 626 (Tex.Crim.App.2006). At the time, he was out on parole for aggravated kidnapping. Upon inquiry, the defendant told the officers that the computer contained child pornography. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty of capital murder. Where different theories of the offense are submitted to the jury in the disjunctive, as in the instant case, a general verdict is sufficient if the evidence supports one of the theories. Any such contention is inadequately briefed. The essence of appellant's complaint is that the police exceeded the scope of the search under the June 18 warrant when the police "used" information that they learned from the computer's Internet history to "discover private information on appellant's computer.". 5. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a2ab1842cc41cc8 As the evidence is legally sufficient to support the theory of murder committed in the course of robbery, we need not address the second point of error. by Marjorie Kamys Cotera and Jim Malewitz Sept. 23, 2016. After being let into the house by a neighbor, the police found a fully clothed body in an upstairs bedroom. In many such encounters, Dr. Coons explained, there is no completed sexual act. Knowing that the Austin storm had spawned some tornadoes, Fountain called the Austin Police Department that afternoon asking for a check on Holik. Nethery v. State, 692 S.W.2d 686, 706 (Tex.Crim.App.1985); Stilwell v. State, 434 S.W.2d 861, 863 (Tex.Crim.App.1968); Thompson v. State, 59 S.W.3d 802, 808 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 2001, pet. Appellant's DNA was found on Holik's left hand, where engagement rings are worn. Evidence which is not relevant is inadmissible.Tex.R. Ideally, the state would expand the program elsewhere in the coming years, such as its womens unit in Gatesville, about 100 miles north of Austin, Whitmire said. Cathy Vance, a forensic analyst with the white collar crime unit in the district attorney's office, analyzed appellant's financial records. Russo, a part-time music minister, pretended he was interested in purchasing Holiks home, and claimed that he could buy the $450,000 house in cash, even though his bank account was later found to only have had $1,796 in it at the time. Some DNA evidence found on a green towel in Holik's home also pointed to Russo. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires every state criminal conviction to be supported by evidence that a rational trier of fact could accept as sufficient to prove all the elements of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
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