Inside the latest True Crime cases

New evidence, new trials, new suspects! In touch tells the latest news about the mysteries that gripped America.

In the case of the Menendez brothers

The Menendez brothers “have paid their debt to society” and should be released after nearly 35 years behind barsLA County District Attorney George Gascon declared on October 24. New evidence seems to confirm this Lyle And Erik Menendez‘s claims that they killed out of fear and in self-defense after suffering a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents, José and Kitty. Days later, Lyle and Erik’s lawyers reportedly filed documents with the governor in California Gavin Newsom vo Grant clemency to the brothers – which would immediately free them. When Lyle, 56, and Erik, 53, were on trial, “the world was not ready to believe that boys could be raped or that young men could be victims of sexual violence. Nowadays we know better,” says Kitty’s sister Joan VanderMolen93, who, along with other family members, long supported the brothers’ claims that they only killed after years of abuse by their father with their mother’s knowledge. “No jury today would hand down such a severe sentence without taking their trauma into account.”

In Madeleine McCann’s suitcase

The main suspect in 2007 kidnapping of British toddler Madeleine McCann has just won a legal victory that could soon put more distance between him and the police. On October 8, a court in Braunschweig, Germany, acquitted Christian Brückner47 – a previously convicted rapist, pedophile, burglar and drug trafficker who was living in Portugal when the 3-year-old was snatched from her parents’ holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, never to be seen again – on charges of rape and sexual abuse in connection with other crimes he is alleged to have committed between 2000 and 2017 (acts unrelated to Madeleine’s case, to which he was first publicly linked in 2020). Christian will remain behind bars for now – he is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal – but he is expected to be released next year. Although police continue to investigate his suspected links to Madeleine’s disappearance (he says he was not involved), they have not yet filed formal charges against him.

In the case of Scott Peterson

Scott Peterson is one step closer to a new trial, nearly 22 years after the bodies of his 27-year-old wife Laci and unborn son Conner washed up in San Francisco Bay. On October 7, a California judge granted Scott’s defense team access to evidence they believe could lead to his acquittal, including investigative data related to a burglary at a neighbor’s home in Modesto, California, that occurred around the time pregnant Laci went missing in 2002 while Scott, 52, claimed he was fishing. “I believe Laci went there to see what was going on, and then she was taken,” the former fertilizer salesman, who is serving a life sentence for the murders after being convicted on circumstantial evidence, said in August . . His attorneys are also obtaining a crime lab file and documents related to the collection of fingerprints from a burned-out van discovered nearby. The news comes months after the judge approved the retesting of duct tape on Laci’s pants. Scott’s lawyers I believe the tape may contain DNA that implicates someone else.

The Case of JonBenet Ramsey

A former suspect in the 1996 murder of a six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey is back in the news after his early release from a Colorado prison. Pedophile convicted in January Gary Oliva — who a former classmate claims confessed in a series of letters to accidentally killing the child beauty queen — has served less than eight years of a 10-year prison sentence. He was caught in 2016 with 695 images of child pornography, including 335 reportedly of or related to JonBenét. Gary has denied harming her, and DNA evidence has not linked him to the murder, but her father… John Ramsey80, has repeatedly questioned why police have still not tested the DNA of an unidentified man found on the garrote used to strangle his daughter in the basement of their Colorado home. “(I’m concerned) the only logical reason they will no longer commit to testing it is because they have lost it,” he says In touch.