A cryptocurrency dispute led to the alleged kidnapping and torture of an Italian man in a luxury New York City townhouse for over two weeks, according to police. Two men, John Woeltz, 37, and William Duplessie, 33, have been indicted on kidnapping, assault and coercion charges in the case. Assistant District Attorney Michael Mattson said Woeltz and Duplessie allegedly lured the man to New York from Italy by threatening to have his family killed. The alleged 28-year-old victim told police he arrived in New York from Italy on May 6 and went to Woeltz's eight-bedroom SoHo townhouse. Once the alleged victim arrived, he was stripped of his electronics and passport, bound by the wrists and subjected to beatings and electric shock, according to a criminal complaint.
Woeltz allegedly carried the alleged victim to the top flight of stairs and hung him over the ledge and threatened to kill him if he did not provide his Bitcoin password, according to the complaint. The alleged victim told authorities the suspects forced him to smoke crack cocaine by holding him down or forcing a pipe into his mouth, prosecutors said. Prosecutor Sarah Kahn shared graphic details of the alleged abuse during the defendant's arraignment hearing, showing a photo that she said depicted the alleged victim on fire and said the defendants would pour tequila on him, light him on fire and then put the fire out, sometimes by urinating on him. Woeltz and Duplessie pistol-whipped the victim with a gun, cut him with a small chainsaw and used various other instruments as part of the torture, Kahn said.
Kahn said prosecutors have had conversations with other, unnamed law enforcement agencies that indicated Woeltz and Duplessie have tortured people before. The defense pushed back during the hearing, saying there is video of the alleged victim 'having the time of his life' and engaging in activity at odds with having been tortured. Defense attorneys said they obtained a different video from an eyeglass store taken 36 hours before the alleged victim left the townhouse that purportedly shows him smoking a cigarette by himself on the street.
On the morning of May 23, the man escaped from the home.
In a separate case of brutal violence, on July 12, 2008, six members of the Shenandoah Valley, Pennsylvania, High School football team assaulted Luis Ramirez in a park. Derrick Donchak beat Luis Ramirez with a piece of metal called a 'fist pack', while Colin Walsh punched Luis Ramirez in the face, causing him to fall backwards and hit his head. Brandon Piekarsky kicked Luis Ramirez in the head while he was on the ground. During the beating, the assailants repeatedly yelled racial epithets at Luis Ramirez and told him to leave Shenandoah and 'go back to Mexico'.
As Piekarsky ran from the scene, he yelled at a bystander to 'tell your Mexican friends to get out of Shenandoah or you will be lying next to him'. Luis Ramirez never regained consciousness and died of his head injuries on July 14, 2008.
On October 14, 2010, a federal jury found Piekarsky and Donchak guilty of violating the Fair Housing Act. The jury found that the defendants' beating of Luis Ramirez was motivated by their desire to keep Latinos from living in Shenandoah. Both Piekarsky and Donchak were sentenced to nine years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Colin Walsh pleaded guilty in April 2009 and testified against the other two assailants. Walsh was sentenced to 55 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Following the beating, Shenandoah Police Department officers obstructed the investigation into Luis Ramirez's death. Former SPD Chief Nestor and former SPD Lieutenant Moyer were tried in January 2011 and were convicted of falsifying reports and lying to the FBI, respectively. Nestor was sentenced to 13 months in prison and two years of supervised release; Moyer was sentenced to 3 months in prison and one year of supervised release. The jury acquitted a third officer, former SPD Officer Jason Hayes, of obstruction charges.
Victims of abuse are not always going to act in a way that we expect people to do.
In another harrowing case, Tamara Breeden spent 10 years captive in what came to be known as Philadelphia’s basement of horrors. Four victims were rescued in 2011 by Philadelphia police, found huddled together under a stained blanket in a basement. The victims had been beaten, burned, tortured and robbed, their identities stolen by a small group of criminals living off their victims’ disability benefits.
Breeden was forced to urinate in a bucket and then empty it herself, wore clothes found in trash cans, and did not bathe regularly. Breeden was pistol-whipped across the head more times than she could count.
The last person charged, a caretaker named Eddie Wright, was sentenced to prison just last month. Linda Ann Weston, the ringleader and mastermind, was sentenced to life in prison plus 80 years. Weston and her partners, Wright, Nicklaus Woodward and Jean McIntosh, were charged with stealing the identities of mentally disabled people and using their Social Security benefits for their own gains. In September 2018, Wright was sentenced to 27 years in prison, while McIntosh and Woodward were sentenced up to 40 years in prison.
In all, five people were charged with 196 counts, after police rescued four people from the basement in October 2011. Federal prosecutors said they had never seen anything like it. Assistant U.S. attorneys Richard Barrett and Faithe Taylor argued that the heinous deeds constituted hate crimes because Weston and her partners targeted people with disabilities who could not otherwise care for themselves.
The scheme involved Weston talking the victims into naming her their legal representative payee to claim Social Security benefits intended to fund their daily care, but instead using it for herself or her family. In total, Weston and her co-conspirators stole upwards of $225,000 taxpayer dollars, according to prosecutors.
In a notorious historical case, Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris, known as the Tool Box Killers, were American serial killers and rapists who committed the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of five teenage girls in Southern California over a five-month period in 1979. Bittaker was sentenced to death for five murders on March 24, 1981, but died of natural causes while incarcerated on death row at San Quentin State Prison in December 2019. Norris accepted a plea bargain whereby he agreed to testify against Bittaker and was sentenced to life imprisonment on May 7, 1980, with possibility of parole after serving thirty years, and he died of natural causes at California Medical Facility in February 2020.
Bittaker and Norris became known as the 'Tool Box Killers' because the majority of instruments used to torture and murder their victims, such as pliers, ice picks and sledgehammers, were items normally stored inside a household toolbox. Bittaker was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 27, 1940, as the unwanted child of a couple who had chosen not to have children, was placed in an orphanage by his birth mother, and was adopted as an infant. Bittaker was first arrested for shoplifting at the age of 12 and obtained a minor criminal record over the next four years. Bittaker had an IQ of 138 but dropped out of high school in 1957, and was imprisoned at the California Youth Authority for car theft, a hit and run, and evading arrest, and upon release discovered his adoptive parents had disowned him and moved to another state.
Roy Lewis Norris was born in Greeley, Colorado, on February 5, 1948, conceived out of wedlock, with parents marrying to avoid social stigma.
In other kidnapping cases, a person was dragged down a staircase by men who said they were going to 'check the pipes', and a person was tied up with their daughter. A person was forced to transfer money, and a person was tricked into following to a fake after-party. In a separate criminal matter, three men were convicted for smuggling nine liters of cocaine, and all three men received a five-year prison sentence.