Texas Child Protective Service (CPS) Workers Arrested for Numerous Felonies in Alicia Moore Case While Terry Ramshire Takes a Plea and Great Uncle Michael Indicted for Alicia Moore Capital Murder

Last November, a pretty little girl named Alicia Moore disappeared on her way home from school to her grandmother's house. She was petite and cute and wore glasses, had a nice smile. Maybe you've seen her picture. Alicia Moore was 16 years old when she died.

Alicia Moore Murder: Terry Ramshire Takes Plea on Sexual Assault Charges, Great Uncle Michael Charged With Capital Murder

A few weeks ago, Terry Ramshire was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after he pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child in connection with Alicia’s death. This was a plea bargain deal with the local prosecutors, based upon two Grand Jury indictments that stated Terry Dwayne Ramshire had sexually assaulted a “Jane Doe” victim under the age of 17 years on multiple occasions, as well as (indictment no. 2) indecency with a child by sexual conduct, between July 2009 and December 2010.

Maybe you remember this story when it happened last fall. 

 Alicia Moore was last see alive as she got off her Van Zandt County school bus near her home in Greenville; her body was discovered 4 days later. They had video of her leaving the bus, no big clues there. 

Four days later, Alicia's nude body was found around 35 miles away from the school bus stop, stuffed in the back of a trunk dumped on the side of rural county road in Hunt County.

Skip from November 2012 to May 2013, and there's big news in the case.

The Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office arrested Alicia’s great-uncle, Michael Vincent Moore, of Grand Prairie, for her killing. Investigators reported that DNA evidence linked Uncle Michael to his niece’s murder. Uncle Michael has been formally charged with capital murder (which carries the death sentence if convicted). No trial date yet; no plea deal.

Now, 3 CPS Workers Arrested for Felony Evidence Tampering and Felony Oppression in Alicia Moore Case

 This week, the Hunt County Grand Jury issued arrest warrants for Laura Marsh Ard, then program director for the Rockwall, Texas, branch office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (she retired in March 2013) along with Natalie Ausbie-Reynolds, who worked out of the CPS office in Hunt County, and Rebekah Ross, another CPS Investigator. (Both Ausbie-Reynolds and Ross quit their CPS jobs in the past few months.)

 According to media reports: 

• Ard was arrested on one felony count of tampering with evidence; 
• Ausbie-Reynolds was arrested on one felony count of tampering with evidence and three felony counts of official oppression; and 
• Ross was arrested on one felony count of tampering with evidence and four felony counts of official oppression.

Every single one of these charges brings with it, under Texas law, a maximum sentence of 2-20 years incarceration in a Texas prison and a possible maximum monetary fine of $10,000.

These are CPS workers who have been arrested and charged for FELONIES in connection with a CPS case.  This is a big deal.  

Right now, we don’t know what exactly is going on here — the Hunt County District Attorney isn’t giving details on what these three CPS people allegedly have done to be arrested on so many felonies, but it’s understood that it’s dealing with the “Alicia Moore case” as opposed to the “Alicia Moore murder.”

 This case made the national news.

Jane Velez Mitchell interviewed the family shortly after the homicide was discovered, and the Huffington Post provided good, detailed coverage of the investigation as it was progressing (including online uploads of the school bus video showing Alicia leaving the school bus and the police reports that were filed at the time).

Of importance here, early in the case, was the failure of any arrests being made between November 2012 and May 2013. The FBI, the Texas Rangers, and local authorities frustrated the family with a lack of information and results, and there was the additional problem that Alicia Moore was first considered a runaway and not someone in danger - and therefore never placed on an Amber Alert.

Would Alicia Chanta Moore be alive today if there had been an Amber Alert? Good question.

Maybe a better question soon to be asked by a lot of folk is would Alicia Chanta Moore be alive today if CPS had taken action regarding information in CPS investigatory files?

There's a mighty big reason that three CPS employees are now facing felony charges - this doesn't happen all that often here in Texas.

Whitey Bulger Trial Begins Today: a Lesson in Real Life Mafia Crime and How Organized Crime Works (and Succeeds).

Whitey Bulger's Mugshot

Whitey Bulger goes on trial today and while I haven't been following this case before now, I'm suddenly fascinated with what is happening up in Massachusetts starting this week. So I'm going to be posting about the case, sharing what I'm learning with you, Dear Reader.  
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Today, the trial begins in a Boston federal courtroom for James (”Whitey”) Bulger, who was on the lam for 16 years before getting nabbed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Santa Monica, and it’s a big deal.

He’s facing charges of racketeering as well as 19 separate murder charges and his pretty blonde girlfriend, Catherine Greig, has been busted too (she already been convicted and sentenced to eight years incarceration for helping Whitey hide from the law).

Starting tomorrow, 675 people who make up the jury pool will begin the process of making their way to the Moakley Courthouse each morning as the judge and attorneys on both sides work to find 18 people out of that group to serve as the 12 jurors and 6 alternates in a trial that is sure to take months and months to complete.

Whitey Bulger Story is a Fascinating Story to Many:  Best Sellers, Big Movie 

This is a big deal for many people, in many ways. There’s already a couple of bestselling books detailing the life of this alleged mobster, and there’s also a big time movie in the works. (Johnny Depp was cast to play the role of Whitey, but he quit this week in an apparent salary dispute.)

The details of this federal trial are going to be a real-life education for many of us that heretofore learned about organized crime through Mario Puzo’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather series or perhaps watching the TV series, The Sopranos. 

 No fictionalized version of things this time. Follow this trial carefully and it may prove better than any award-winning fiction.  This is the real deal, and it's pretty darn spooky (and this from reading only the pleadings filed in the public record.)

Lessons in Real World Organized Crime: The Structure of the "Cosa Nostra"

Consider this from the live pleadings, the Fourth Superceding Indictment, where I for one learned lots of different descriptions for what the movies refer to as the “Cosa Nostra” in the movies and how the organization works, as well as the charges that have been brought against Whitey Bulger. 

 Summarizing from the first few pages of this indictment:

1. Since1965, both in Massachusetts along with other parts of the country, there has been a “secret criminal organization” which has several nicknames among its membership including:

• "La Cosa Nostra"
• "stu Cosa"
• "The Mafia"
• "This Thing of Ours," and
• “This Thing”.  (Who knew?  I never heard of "this thing" for the Mafia before, did you?)

2. The secret criminal organization is efficiently structured into groups called “Families" which operate all across the United States. The Families are overseen at a national level by a national “"commission" which is headquartered in New York City. The Commission’s membership are the leaders of each “Family” known as their "Bosses."

3. The indictment describes one of these Families as follows:

• “The Patriarca Family of La Cosa Nostra (the "Family"), which operated in the Districts of Massachusetts,on July 11, 1984 and who was then succeeded by his son, Raymond J. Patriarca, aka "Junior," until he was succeeded by the defendant FRANCIS P. SALEMME.“
• “The Patriarca Family existed and acted in conformity with the rules of La Cosa Nostra (LCN).“

4. Within the the Patriarca Family, the organizational chart involved the following:

1. The head man (or CEO as it were) is the "Boss."
2. His right hand man is the "Underboss."
3. His advisor and counselor is the Family’s "Consigliere."
4. Below the Underboss are a number of "Capo Regimes" or "Capos", men who are each in charge of a group of members who are their “crew.”
5. Within the crew, each member is a “made man” known as a “Soldier.”
6. Associates to the family are those who help the organization succeed and act with the Family members but these Associates are not officially “made” members of the Family.

5. The Family’s business operations were definitely for profit. According to the indictment, this Family gained revenue from a variety of illegal operations such as “…illegal gambling, extortion, loansharking, and narcotics distribution businesses and the collection of unlawful debts.”

6. In Massachusetts, there was a separate criminal organization known as "The Winter Hill Gang" and "South Boston." James “Whitey” Bulger was the Boss of the Winter Hill Gang.

7. The Winter Hill Gang acted with “...the purpose of controlling, supervising, financing, and otherwise participating in and deriving income from illegal activities, including illegal gambling, extortion, loansharking, and narcotics distribution businesses and the collection of unlawful debts.”

8. The Winter Hill Gang was competing with La Cosa Nostra in the New England area in these illegal marketplaces (gambling, extortion, drugs, etc.)for many years, viciously and successfully.  Things got ugly.

More in my next post.