Making A Murderer’s Steven Avery Engaged To Woman He’s Only Met Once

These are the crime stories making headlines today, September 26, 2016 …

• Making a Murderer star Steven Avery is set to tie the knot with Lynn Hartman, a legal secretary. Avery has been dating Hartman for approximately eight months, but most of the couple’s courtship has unfolded via letters and phone calls. They have reportedly met only once in person, when Hartman secretly traveled to visit Avery in Waupun Correctional Institute in Wisconsin. Their romance has been kept under wraps due to the fact that Hartman has suffered online abuse and threats, and been accused of seeking money and fame by some of Avery’s supporters. Speaking from his prison cell, Avery, who has been engaged twice and married once before, has reportedly asked the public to respect his relationship. “She’s going to be my future wife, we’ll be laughing forever,” he said. [Daily Mail Online]
  
• The California man who went missing in 2004 and and was discovered in a New York marina on Monday may have been in a wooden crate for over 10 years, his brother said. James Michael Brannon, 60, was fatally shot in the head and packed into a black trash bag before being dropped at the Locust Point Marina, NYPD officials say. But the motive for his death — and how he got across the country in the first place — remain a mystery. “I’m not surprised he died, but the bizarre way he died and how he got to New York, I can’t figure out,” said James’s older brother, Thomas Brannon, 80. The elder Brannon had been trying to track down his missing brother for more than a decade. So far, there have been no arrests in the strange case. [DNA Info]

James Schmitt’s mug shot [Mugshots.com]

• A Ventura County Probation Agency officer was arrested Thursday on two felony charges of possessing child pornography. James Richard Schmitt, 52, of Oxnard, has been on paid administrative leave since February when the FBI served a search warrant at his home and seized computers on which child pornography allegedly was found. Schmitt’s arrest resulted from a joint investigation by the FBI and the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, officials say. Schmitt was arrested by officers who had been following him, and is currently behind bars at the Ventura County jail in lieu of $50,000 bail. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to three years and eight months in state prison. [Mugshots.com]
• Ex-actor Daniel Wozniak has been sentenced to death to following a murder and cover-up. An Orange County Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced the former Costa Mesa community actor, 32, to death for killing Irvine resident Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, and her Army veteran friend Samuel Herr, 26. In 2010, Wozniak was desperate for money to cover his rent and fund his upcoming wedding and honeymoon. So he came up with a plan to kill Herr, who was his neighbor, in order to steal the $62,000 that Herr had saved from his military service in Afghanistan. However, the convicted double murderer was only able to acquire $2,000 before his arrest. [Los Angeles Times]

• Graz Airport in Austria [Wikimedia Commons]

  A Moroccan woman traveling through Graz airport in Austria has been detailed by customs officials for carrying two containers of entrails into the country that are believed to belong to her late husband. The woman suspected that her husband, who died during an operation in the couple’s home country, had been poisoned, according to Kleine Zeitung newspaper. Customs officials stopped the woman due to the fact that she was behaving “suspiciously,” and she reportedly told them that she wanted to have tests done on her husband’s remains to determine if he had been murdered. But a doctor who came to the scene said that an investigation could not be carried out without the full cadaver. [The Independent]
• A suspect has been arrested in the Washington mall shooting that claimed five lives. Police said Arcan Cetin, 20, was arrested in Oak Harbor, which is around 30 miles away from where he allegedly opened fire at Burlington’s Cascade Mall. Following the shooting, police released surveillance videos of the suspect, which paid off when an investigator spotted him walking down the street, and witnesses described his demeanor as “zombie-like.” Early reports said that an ex-girlfriend of Turkish-born Cheten may have worked at Macy’s in the past, but other outlets have reported that the woman in question worked at a different location. Officials have said that the shootings did not appear to be related to terrorism. The investigation continues. [NBC News]

• A severed head and other body parts have been found in Chicago’s McKinley Park Lagoon, officials said. Police say that they were called to the lagoon after a worker found what appeared to be human remains in the water. Area Central detectives are conducting a death investigation, and though they have not issued final confirmation, sources say that the parts are believed to be a person’s head in a bag. This discovery led to more human remains being found in the lagoon, Chicago police say. Investigators have revealed that the person was believed to be black, but have not been able to determine if they were a man or a woman. [Chicago Tribune]
• Surveillance footage that shows the moment a Georgia woman opened fire at three armed men who broke into her house, killing one, has been released. The surveillance footage, released by the Gwinnett County Police Department, shows the intruders — all of whom are carrying guns — bursting through the front door in the middle of the night and rummaging through the house on September 16. Seconds after entering the home, the woman is seen coming out of her bedroom in pajamas with a handgun, and fires several shots at the armed suspects, according to WSB TV. The residence was packed with boxes full of restaurant supplies, and the woman was reportedly staying there for work-related reasons. [Daily Mail Online]Main photo: Steven Avery and Lynn Hartman [Steven Avery Project/Facebook]