(NEW YORK) — A suspect has been taken into custody on Long Island, New York, in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
A man was arrested at a home in Massapequa Park, sources said. His identity is under seal until he appears in Suffolk County criminal court later on Friday, sources said.
Police were led to the suspect through advanced communication analytics, according to the sources.
The Massapequa Park address “has been on our radar for some time,” a source close to the investigation told ABC News.
“This all came down to phone data,” the source added.
Fears of a serial killer on the South Shore of Long Island began in 2010 with the discovery of a woman’s body along Ocean Parkway.
Over the next year, the bodies of seven more women, a man and a toddler were discovered in the same general area.
Investigators have long believed it was possible there was more than one killer because of the different conditions of the victims. Additionally, the wooded stretches along Ocean Parkway were long known as dumping grounds for bodies.
It’s believed the suspect under arrest is tied to a subset of the 10 bodies.
In recent months, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison invited the FBI to help and formed a task force focused on the case.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Cristina Corbin and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — An attorney for Hunter Biden sent a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, claiming that Trump’s rhetoric on social media and elsewhere “could lead to [Hunter Biden’s] or his family’s injury.”
Abbe Lowell, one of the younger Biden’s lawyers, cited past examples when Trump’s language allegedly inspired violence, notably the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, the October attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, and the man arrested near the Obamas’ Washington, D.C., residence last month with an arsenal of firearms.
“This is not a false alarm,” Lowell wrote. “We are just one such social media message away from another incident, and you should make clear to Mr. Trump — if you have not done so already — that Mr. Trump’s words have caused harm in the past and threaten to do so again if he does not stop.”
Lowell also defensed his client against suggestions made by Trump and others that cocaine found at the White House earlier this month might have belonged to Hunter Biden, who is a recovering drug addict.
The Secret Service closed its investigation into the matter on Thursday without identifying a suspect.
“You know, if Mr. Trump does not, that Mr. Biden has neither committed nor been accused of the charges that your client is claiming … and that the Biden family was not at the White House (let alone in the vestibule) in the period when the cocaine was found,” Lowell wrote.
Lowell wrote that Trump’s team “need not respond,” but encouraged them to convey to the former president “how his incitement can further hurt people and cause himself even more legal trouble.”
(NEW YORK) — Authorities in Vermont announced Thursday that one person was killed during this week’s flooding.
Stephen Davoll, 63, from Barre City, died Wednesday as a result of a drowning accident in his home, the Vermont Department of Health said. Davoll is the first confirmed fatality in the state related to this week’s storms and flooding.
The death comes as extreme weather continues to ravage the country, with heat waves in the West, and severe storms in the Midwest and East.
Severe storms spawned multiple tornadoes across northern Illinois on Wednesday evening that knocked down trees, ripped off roofs and disrupted hundreds of flights in the Chicago area.
There were at least five reported tornadoes in the Prairie State — two in Cook County and one each in DuPage, Kane and McHenry counties. One of the twisters that touched down in Cook County reportedly damaged warehouses on the west side of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Damage to homes and other buildings were reported elsewhere, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 170 flights departing O’Hare International Airport were canceled while over 500 were delayed on Wednesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.
There were two other reported tornadoes in Iowa and Michigan, with reports of damage in the latter, as well as damaging straight-line winds over 70 miles per hour recorded from Texas to Michigan. There were also numerous reports of golf ball-sized hail in Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas.
The dangerous weather on Wednesday evening was part of a storm system moving through the midwestern United States. The severe threat shifts back into the Northeast on Thursday, stretching from Kentucky to Vermont.
Damaging winds, large hail and even tornadoes will be possible along the storm system’s projected path, which includes the cities of Cincinnati, Ohio; Charleston, West Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Binghamton, New York; Albany, New York; and Burlington, Vermont.
A flood watch has been issued for parts of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, was already hit by historic rainfall and flooding earlier this week.
Thursday’s threat of heavy rainfall and flooding will persist into the weekend for the Northeast, including the Interstate 95 travel corridor. The latest forecast shows an additional 3 to 5 inches of rain is possible across northern New England, including Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans across 15 U.S. states are under heat alerts for Thursday, from Washington to Florida. The heat index could surpass 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the mid-South, the Gulf Coast and Florida, with potentially record high temperatures from Houston to Miami.
On Wednesday, temperatures in Phoenix reached 110 degree Fahrenheit for the 13th straight day, putting Arizona’s capital on track to break the record 18-day streak that was set in 1974.
The latest forecast shows the heat is only going to get worse and won’t ease for at least another week, with temperatures across the Southwest expected to peak over the weekend. An excessive heat watch will be in effect for Burbank, California, from Friday through Monday as temperatures could top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hospitals nationwide have seen emergency department visits for heat-related illness more than double over the past month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(BOSTON) — Authorities questioned serial rape suspect Matthew Nilo back in July of 2008 about a suspected sexual assault after he was arrested for marijuana possession in Boston’s North End, a spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office told ABC News.
Nilo was arrested July 12, 2008, around 4 a.m., according to a copy of the police report obtained by ABC News. There is no mention in the report of a suspected sexual assault. The official from the DA’s Office told ABC News it was their understanding Nilo was questioned back then about a sexual assault in the area; the spokesperson gave no further comment.
Nilo, a Manhattan attorney, is accused of a string of sexual assaults against women in Boston 15 years ago. The alleged attacks occurred between January 2007 and July 2008 in the Boston neighborhoods of Charlestown and the North End, where Nilo was living at the time, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
Nilo was ordered to pay $50,000 in additional bail Thursday, on top of the $500,000 in cash bail he already posted from a previous arraignment.
Nilo denied the latest allegations for which he was arraigned Thursday in a statement released through his attorney, Joseph Cataldo.
“You can expect both a legal and factual challenge to the government’s case,” Cataldo said in a statement to ABC News.
Nilo, with his fiancee standing by him, will remain free for the time being with a GPS tracker. He can return to New Jersey where he lives.
He was formally arraigned Thursday after being indicted by a grand jury on June 27 for multiple charges, including rape, after allegedly attacking four women in 2007 and 2008. The charges included one count of rape, one count of aggravated rape, three counts of assault with intent to rape, and two counts of indecent assault and battery.
The additional bail came after he was arraigned earlier in June for attacks on four other women in Boston. At that time, he was charged with three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape, and one count of indecent assault and battery. He pleaded not guilty to those charges and was released on $500,000 bail on June 15.
His next court date is set for Sept. 14 and his trial is scheduled to begin on June 25, 2024.
Nilo was first arrested in May in connection with several decades-old rapes in Boston. He was identified using forensic genetic genealogy.
After Nilo was identified as a person of interest, he was put under surveillance by law enforcement and the FBI was able to obtain various utensils and drinking glasses that they saw Nilo use at a corporate event, according to the district attorney’s office.
(LOS ANGELES) — The national board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) voted Thursday to go on strike, summoning its 160,000 members to hit the picket lines, union officials said.
The national board voted unanimously to proceed with a strike, said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the union and the chief negotiator. He said union members will go on strike at midnight Thursday and called on members to join picket lines Friday morning.
Crabtree-Ireland said the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers “remains unwilling to offer a fair deal,” and so the SAG-AFTRA board of directors decided to issue the strike order against studios and streamers.
“Despite our team’s efforts the AMPTP has remained steadfast in its commitment to devaluing the work of our members,” Crabtree-Ireland said of the weeks of negotiations that began on June 7.
Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, said “the eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us.”
“What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is what’s happening across all fields of labor by means of when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run,” Drescher said.
It will be the first time since the 1960s that both SAG-AFTRA and the 11,000-member Writers Guild of America will be on strike at the same time.
The SAG-AFTRA board of directors’ strike vote came after the union’s negotiating committee voted unanimously to recommend a strike in a move that is expected incapacitate Hollywood productions.
The union’s contract expired at 11:59 p.m. PT Wednesday. The contract was originally going to expire on June 30 but was extended after SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP reached an agreement.
The labor stoppage was called after union leaders and the AMPTP agreed on Tuesday to meet with federal mediators to possibly hammer out a deal, but failed to do so before the contract expired, according to SAG-AFTRA.
In June, 98% of the union’s members agreed to authorize a strike if an agreement wasn’t reached, SAG-AFTRA said.
Drescher said she entered the negotiations thinking the union would be able to avert a strike.
“The gravity of this move is not lost on me or our negotiating committee, or our board members who have voted unanimously to proceed with a strike. It’s a very serious thing that impacts thousands if not millions of people all across this country and around the world, not only members of this union but people who work in other industries that service the people that work in this industry,” Drescher said. “And so, it came with great sadness that we came to this crossroads, but we had no choice. We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity.”
The biggest roadblock in the negotiations are concerns over streaming residuals, the impact of AI technology, and union member earnings.
Crabtree-Ireland said the current streaming model has “undercut preformers’ residual income and high inflation has further reduced our members’ ability to make ends meet.”
“To complicate matters further, actors now face an existential threat to their livelihoods with the rise of generative AI (artificial intelligence) technology,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “We proposed contract changes that addressed these issues, but the AMPTP has been uninterested in our proposals.”
Prior to the strike announcement, the AMPTP issued a statement, declaring, “We are deeply disappointed that SAG-AFTRA has decided to walk away from negotiations.”
“This is the Union’s choice, not ours. In doing so, it has dismissed our offer of historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses, and more,” said the AMPTP. “Rather than continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has put us on a course that will deepen the financial hardship for thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihoods. There are 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA and over 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America.”
Earlier Thursday, Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC News, said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the expectations of the writers and actors’ unions “are just not realistic.”
“It’s very disturbing to me. We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID, which is ongoing, it’s not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption,” Iger said. “I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver. We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the Directors Guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
Iger predicted that the SAG-AFTRA strike, coupled with the Writers Guild of America strike, “will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business.”
He added, “Unfortunately, there’s huge collateral damage in the industry to people who are supportive services, and I could go on and on. It will affect the economy of different regions, even, because of the sheer size of the business. It’s a shame, it is really a shame.”
(WASHINGTON) — Multiple former senior Trump White House officials have testified before a federal grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources tell ABC News.
Among the group that has testified are former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and former top Trump aide Hope Hicks.
Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin also met with prosecutors, sources told ABC News. Griffin is currently a cohost with ABC’s The View.
The news was first reported by the New York Times.
According to sources, federal prosecutors asked the former White House officials to speak to the mindset of the former president in the days and weeks after losing the 2020 election, leading up to the Jan. 6 attack.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment when contacted by ABC News,
Representatives for Kushner, Hicks and Griffin also did not respond to requests for comment.
(WARREN, Pa.) — As the manhunt for suspected murderer and “self-taught survivalist,” Michael Burham stretched into its seventh day Thursday in the northeast Pennsylvania woods, an official who viewed surveillance video of the jail escape said the fugitive “looked like a spider” as he quickly made his getaway from the lock-up’s rooftop recreational yard cage.
More than 200 officers from 15 federal, state and local agencies are conducting an intense search for the 34-year-old Burham, who was being held on $1 million bail at the Warren County Jail when he escaped on July 6, authorities said.
Officials suspect Burham received assistance in the jailbreak and since being on the lam, authorities said.
Investigators are looking for a person who was operating a drone near the Warren County Jail around the exact time Burham absconded, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens revealed Wednesday evening. Bivens said while there could be a “reasonable explanation” for the drone flying in the area, he added, “I’m not a big believer in coincidences.”
“If there’s not an innocent explanation, perhaps that assists us in finding him and also finding anyone providing aid,” Bivens said.
Warren County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said he viewed a video of the escape and defended the response time of the jail staff, saying they marshaled a response within seconds of Burham’s escape, but that the fugitive was too fast for them and got away by using bed sheets tied together to rappel from the jail’s roof to the ground and flee.
Eggleston said according to what he saw in the video, the 5-foot-10, 160-pound Burham appeared “like a spider” as he climbed atop workout equipment in the 40-foot-by-40-foot rooftop recreation room, and squeezed through a hole at the top of the of the caged exercise area. Eggleston said Burham also breached a second chain-link fence barrier over the jail’s roof, finding a “small portion” where pieces that hold down the fencing were broken.
The commissioner estimated the entire escape took about 10 seconds.
“The fundamental problem is that there was a structural weakness in the cage on the roof. That’s it,” Eggleston said when pressed by ABC News. “As far as the facility goes, if that hadn’t been the case, you wouldn’t be here we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Before making his brazen escape around 11:20 p.m., Burham was in the recreation room with three other inmates, Eggleston said. He said that while there was no guard in the recreation room, jail staff were monitoring cameras focused on the area.
“The amount of time that he got out of that room was quicker than anybody could respond to get inside the room,” Eggleston said. “Within seconds of Michael Burham’s escape, and that’s him getting on the roof outside of the cage, our people were alerted, the entire facility was put on alert and began to respond.”
Eggleston added, “There was no delay, nobody was having a sandwich. It wasn’t a situation where somebody was asleep at the wheel.”
Warren Police Chief Joe Sproveri, whose agency is investigating the escape, told the Warren Times Observer newspaper that it appears an “extensive amount of preparation” went into the escape.
Sproveri said Burham was last seen on security camera at 11:23 p.m. on June 6 and that his officers were called around 11:25 and on the scene by 11:27 p.m.
He said that while his officers quickly set up a perimeter around the jail, they didn’t have a sense of where Burham went after accessing the roof until they discovered the tied-together bedsheet on the western side of an adjacent courthouse. He said officers still didn’t know which direction Burham ran once on the ground until they managed to view the exterior courthouse surveillance camera footage about 60 to 90 minutes after the escape, giving Burham a significant head start.
He blamed “technical difficulties” for causing the delay in getting the exterior courthouse video.
Reached by ABC News, Sproveri confirmed that his comments published by the Times Observer are accurate.
“There was a significant time delay before we knew where the track was to put the K-9,” Sproveri said. “(We) need a pretty specific location to start running a dog trail.”
A $19,500 reward is being offered for information leading to Burham’s capture. Bivens said more than 500 tips have come in, mostly from residents of northeast Pennsylvania claiming Burham was spotted.
Bivens said Burham was being held at the jail on kidnapping and burglary charges. The Chautauqua County, New York, District Attorney’s Office confirmed that Burham is the prime suspect in the May 11 slaying in Jamestown of 34-year-old Kala Hodgkin.
Burham is accused of fleeing the area following the Hodgkin slaying as police searched for him. While on the run in May, he allegedly abducted an elderly couple in Warren County and forced them to drive him to South Carolina, where he was arrested on May 24 and brought back to Pennsylvania, police said.
Bivens reiterated Wednesday evening that Burham is suspected of being armed and dangerous, and advised anyone who spots to not approach him and call police immediately.
“Without going into a lot of detail, we have additional information that we have gleaned recently that causes me to have additional concerns that he may be armed,” Bevins said.
(BOSTON) — Manhattan attorney Matthew Nilo — who is accused of a string of sexual assaults against women in Boston 15 years ago — was ordered to pay $50,000 in additional bail Thursday, on top of the $500,000 in cash bail he already posted from a previous arraignment.
Nilo, with his fiancee standing by him, will remain free for the time being with a GPS tracker. He can return to New Jersey where he lives.
He was formally arraigned Thursday after being indicted by a grand jury on June 27 for multiple charges, including rape, after allegedly attacking four women in 2007 and 2008. The charges included one count of rape, one count of aggravated rape, three counts of assault with intent to rape, and two counts of indecent assault and battery.
The additional bail came after he was arraigned earlier in June for attacks on four other women in Boston. At that time, he was charged with three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape, and one count of indecent assault and battery. He pleaded not guilty to those charges and was released on $500,000 bail on June 15.
His next court date is set for Sept. 14 and his trial is scheduled to begin on June 25, 2024.
Nilo was first arrested in May in connection with several decades-old rapes in Boston. He was identified using forensic genetic genealogy.
After Nilo was identified as a person of interest, he was put under surveillance by law enforcement and the FBI was able to obtain various utensils and drinking glasses that they saw Nilo use at a corporate event, according to the district attorney’s office.
The alleged attacks occurred between January 2007 and July 2008 in the Boston neighborhoods of Charlestown and the North End, where Nilo was living at the time, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
Nilo denied the latest allegations for which he was arraigned Thursday in a statement released through his attorney, Joseph Cataldo.
“You can expect both a legal and factual challenge to the government’s case,” Cataldo said in a statement to ABC News.
(LOS ANGELES) — The national board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) voted Thursday to go on strike, summoning its 160,000 members to hit the picket lines, union officials said.
The national board voted unanimously to proceed with a strike, said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the union and the chief negotiator. He said union members will go on strike at midnight Thursday and called on members to join picket lines Friday morning.
Crabtree-Ireland said the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers “remains unwilling to offer a fair deal,” and so the SAG-AFTRA board of directors decided to issue the strike order against studios and streamers.
“Despite our team’s efforts the AMPTP has remained steadfast in its commitment to devaluing the work of our members,” Crabtree-Ireland said of the the weeks of negotiations.
Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, said the “the eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us.”
“What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is what’s happening across all fields of labor by means of when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run,” Drescher said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(ATLANTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it has launched a civil investigation into the Fulton County, Georgia, jail system following a series of reports of inmate abuse and neglect, including the Sept. 13, 2022, death of LaShawn Thompson, who died in a bed bug-infested jail cell.
Kristen Clarke, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division head, said investigators will examine living conditions in the jail, inmates’ access to medical and mental health care services and allegations of use of excessive force by staff.
Fulton County officials and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office responded to the probe in a joint statement.
“Fulton County and the Sheriff’s Office have been made aware of a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice to examine conditions at the Fulton County Jail and will be cooperating fully with the investigation,” the statement said.
The DOJ said the investigation will be conducted by the Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia.
Family calls for justice after death of inmate allegedly ‘eaten alive’ by bedbugs
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the investigation will determine whether “systemic violations of federal laws exist, and if so, how to correct them.”
“People in prisons and jails are entitled to basic protections of their civil rights,” Garland said.
Attorneys Ben Crump and Michael Harper, who represent the Thompson family, claimed Thompson was “eaten alive by bed bugs.” They had previously called on the DOJ to launch a probe into the conditions of Fulton County jails.
Crump and Harper welcomed the investigation, saying the DOJ had heard the family’s “cries for justice.”
“While nothing can undo the injustice that Lashawn Thompson faced, it is a tragedy that can hopefully amount to much needed change inside of the Fulton County Jail,” they said in a statement. “It is our prayer that the DOJ confirms the clear pattern of negligence and abuse that happens in Fulton County and swiftly ends it so that no other family experiences this devastation.”
Clarke told reporters the probe will examine whether the jail discriminates against incarcerated people with psychiatric disabilities and cited several cases that led the DOJ to launch the investigation, including the death of Thompson.
Georgia man found dead in bed bug-infested jail cell died of ‘severe neglect’: Independent autopsy
An independent autopsy report commissioned by Thompson’s family and obtained by ABC News lists “dehydration, malnutrition, severe body insect infestation” as well as “untreated decompensated schizophrenia” as the conditions that led to Thompson’s death.
The Fulton County autopsy was completed on Sept. 14, 2022. Photos of Thompson covered with bed bugs and images of his filthy cell went viral on social media.
“It’s enough that the bed bugs and lice sat there and ate my brother to death, but it’s the neglect that hurts me the most,” said Thompson’s brother, Brad McCray, during a press conference on May 22.
Thompson was arrested on June 12, 2022, for simple battery against police officials, according to jail records. The Atlanta Police Department and the Office of Professional Standards launched an investigation into Thompson’s death.
Fulton County Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Labat told ABC News in a statement on May 22 that “it was painfully clear there were a number of failures that led to Mr. Thompson’s tragic death.”
Labat noted there have been “sweeping changes” at the jail following Thompson’s death.
ABC News’ Janice McDonald contributed to this report.
