SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The genealogy website used to find the man accused of being California’s Golden State Killer had no idea its database was tapped in pursuit of a suspect who eluded law enforcement for four decades, the site’s co-founder said Friday.
The revelation came as former police officer Joseph DeAngelo made his first court appearance. Handcuffed to a wheelchair in orange jail scrubs, he looked dazed and spoke in a faint voice to acknowledge he was represented by a public defender. He did not enter a plea.
Authorities never approached Florida-based GEDmatch about the investigation that led to DeAngelo, and co-founder Curtis Rogers said law enforcement’s use of the site raised privacy concerns that were echoed by civil liberties groups.
“This was done without our knowledge, and it’s been overwhelming,” he told The Associated Press.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby’s team blasted his sexual-assault trial as a “public lynching” Friday and began looking ahead to an appeal as the judge ordered house arrest for the 80-year-old comedian and said he would be outfitted with a GPS ankle monitoring device.
Cosby’s appeal seems certain to focus on the judge’s decision to let a parade of women testify that they, too, were abused by the former TV star.
Defense allegations of a biased juror and the admission of Cosby’s explosive testimony about drugs and sex are among other possible avenues of appeal as he tries to avoid a sentence that could keep him in prison for the rest of his days.
Cosby remains free on $1 million bail while he awaits sentencing, probably within three months.
Judge Steven O’Neill said Cosby would be confined to his suburban Philadelphia home in the meantime. The judge’s order, issued Friday afternoon, said the comic may leave his house to meet with his lawyers or to get medical treatment, but must get permission first.
NEW YORK — Tom Brokaw denied sexual misconduct charges and told friends in a late-night email that he felt “ambushed and then perp walked” in the media as an avatar of male misogyny and stripped of his honor and achievement.
The 78-year-old broadcast journalist penned an emotional response to accusations that he had made unwanted advances on a former colleague, writing that “it is 4:00 a.m. on the first day of my new life as an accused predator in the universe of American journalism.” The letter was first reported in the Hollywood Reporter and confirmed by The Associated Press.
Brokaw, meanwhile, withdrew on Friday as a commencement speaker at Connecticut’s Sacred Heart University next month.
The Washington Post and Variety reported the charges by Linda Vester, a former NBC News and Fox News Channel correspondent. She said that Brokaw went to her New York hotel room once in the mid-1990s, proposed an affair and tried to forcibly kiss her. She said he tried to kiss her one other time at her apartment in London and once grabbed her from behind and tickled her on her waist.
She told Variety that despite not being at fault, she “suffered years of humiliation and isolation” from the incidents.
PHOENIX — As thousands of teachers and supporters gathered at the Arizona Capitol to protest inadequate public school funding for a second day Friday, Gov. Doug Ducey again skipped the chance to address them.
Instead, the Republican governor’s public relations machine sent out links to a series of interviews the previous day with TV news reporters where Ducey pushed his plan to boost teacher pay by 20 percent by 2020, talking point by talking point.
The scene was far different Friday in Denver, where several thousand teachers gathered for a second day to protest low education funding were greeted by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. He said he would work to have the state repay all of the approximately $1 billion borrowed from education during the recession.
“We see you. We hear you,” said Hickenlooper, who wore a red checked shirt and spoke for less than five minutes. “We are working with you, not just today.”
From Associated Press