Star Jones To Set The Record Straight With Oprah

Star Jones — whose rapid weight loss played into her rocky exit from “The View” in 2006 — denies she took an easy way out having gastric bypass surgery and without the changes, Jones was told she would have died.

“I’m still 300 pounds in my head some days,” Jones told Oprah Winfrey in a taped episode airing Wednesday.

Jones admitted she was scared to disappoint people and ashamed that she wasn’t able to control her weight.

“… I was an addict for all practical purposes, that I had never stuck to a real diet, that I’d never stuck to a real exercise program, and that when confronted by my doctor and the doctor said if you don’t make changes, you will die. I had no choice.” Jones said. “When you hear people say, oh, you took the easy way out, I would have longed for an easy way. It was not an easy way. It was this — the hardest struggle of my whole entire life and I still struggle.”

Jones responded to remarks by former co-host Barbara Walters that after the surgery, the show’s audience couldn’t relate to Jones anymore.

“I was hurt and upset initially,” Jones said. “I’m so sorry that I placed a burden on my colleagues. I never asked them to lie.”

Jones’ appearance is part of a show on losing weight in the public eye. Valerie Bertinelli and Marie Osmond will also appear on Wednesday’s show.

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Grieving Parents Plan To Bury Daughters With Their Murderous Brother

BOSTON (March 31) –Two sisters and the brother who killed them with a kitchen knife will share a single funeral service and be buried together. Samantha Revelus, 17, and her sister, Bianca, 5, were killed at their Milton home Saturday. Police shot the girls’ brother, Kerby Revelus, 23, after an officer saw him decapitate the younger girl. A surviving sister, 9-year-old Saraphina, was recovering at a Boston hospital Monday after having surgery.

Ernst Guerrier, a Boston attorney and family friend, said he spent Monday morning with parents Regine and Vronze Revelus as they made plans to bury the three together.

They are still dealing with the shock and disbelief of losing three of their children,” said Guerrier.
Guerrier said there was nothing to indicate Kerby Revelus “was capable of something like this or that this tragedy could have been prevented.”

Kerby Revelus had been in trouble before, but his criminal record does not show anything close to the level of brutal violence he unleashed on his sisters on Saturday.

In September 2004, he was charged with assault and battery after another sister, Jessica Revelus, then 17, called police and said her brother, then 19, had punched her in the face during an argument over a phone bill. Kerby Revelus admitted he punched his sister, and told police he was upset with her because she owed him some money, according to a Milton police report.

Jessica Revelus declined medical attention and told police she did not want to get a restraining order against her brother. “Ms. Revelus told me that she was not in fear of her brother and had no wish to pursue the matter,” the arresting officer wrote in the report.

Jessica Revelus told the Boston Herald that her brother had done two stints in jail.

He was arrested for assault and battery in August 2004 after he was involved in a fight with several other teenagers.

Then in December 2005, he was charged with carrying a firearm without a license after he tried to buy alcohol at a liquor store in Randolph. A store clerk called police when he saw a pistol magazine in Revelus’ pocket, and police later found the magazine and a handgun in Revelus’ waist band. He was sentenced to serve six months in jail, and was released in September 2008.

Investigators believe Revelus had been agitated since Friday night, when he got in a fistfight with a neighbor in this tony suburb that is also home to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Revelus attacked his siblings with a kitchen knife on Saturday while their grandmother, who neighbors say lives on the first floor, was doing laundry in the basement, investigators said. The children’s parents were not home.

Samantha Revelus called 911, but the dying girl quickly gave the phone to Saraphina, Milton police said.

According to Milton Deputy Police Chief Paul Nolan, the 911 call will not be releasedl.

“It’s horrific. We’d be doing a tremendous disservice to the survivors if we released that. They don’t need to listen to that,” Nolan said

Nolan said an officer patrolling the neighborhood arrived less than a minute after the 911 call and heard screaming inside the apartment. He kicked the door in and saw Revelus decapitate his 5-year-old sister.

As other officers arrived, Kerby ran into a bedroom and began to attack Saraphina. Two officers shot him, says Nolan.

The parents were still making final arrangements for Saturday’s burials, Guerrier said.

“The reasons why it happened, what happened, how it happened is still just a blur to them,” he said.

“They can’t even imagine it.”

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Domestic Violence Knows No Race and Apparently Age: 2 Boys Found Dead; Mom Rips The Courts

Amy Leichtenberg worried this day would come, and she begged the judicial system to prevent it.

In court documents dating back to 2005, she detailed her estranged husband’s threats against her family and fought unsuccessfully to keep him from having unsupervised visits with their two sons. Michael Connolly violated the orders of protection against him six times, police records said, and he often vowed to kill himself rather than be separated from the boys.

Connolly, 40, disappeared with Duncan, 9, and Jack, 7, on March 8, prompting a nationwide search. Their bodies were discovered Sunday near a Christmas tree farm in a remote area of Putnam County.

Police described the deaths as a double homicide and a suicide, but released few details about the killings. The boys’ bodies were found in the back seat of their father’s 1991 Dodge Dynasty, while Connolly’s body was discovered about 60 yards away.

Leichtenberg declined to comment Monday, but she issued a statement lashing out at the judicial system that allowed Connolly unsupervised visits.

“No parent should have to bury their babies,” she said. “Duncan and Jack, Mommy loves you to the heavens and back.

“I feel that the judicial system failed me,” she said. “I pray that the courts listen to the warnings from other parents like me.”

Though Connolly and Leichtenberg lived in northwest suburban Algonquin for several years, much of their bitter custody battle took place in LeRoy, a small town near Bloomington where Leichtenberg moved with the boys after ending her marriage. She received orders of protection against Connolly there, including a current order, barring him from contact with her.

Connolly, an unemployed pharmaceutical salesman, violated the order six times but was only charged with four misdemeanors between July 2006 and October 2007, McLean County State’s Atty. William Yoder said. He met with Connolly for an hour a few months ago at Connolly’s request and believed him to be “unbalanced,” Yoder said.

He declined to discuss his office’s specific involvement in the custody battle.

“This was a tragic event,” Yoder said. “This had the worst possible outcome.”

Police began a search for Connolly and the boys three weeks ago when he failed to return them after a scheduled visit. McLean Sheriff Mike Emery conceded there was a delay in the Amber Alert about the abduction, saying the department’s initial attempt did not meet all of the criteria required for the notification. Pressed to discuss the delay, the sheriff said he would not criticize the investigation.

At LeRoy Elementary School, where Duncan was in 3rd grade and Jack was in 2nd, the brothers’ desks had been left untouched since their disappearance. Blue and green ribbons, the boys’ favorite colors, were tied to trees, and parents taped pictures of the missing brothers inside their car windshields.

“In small towns something like this affects the whole town, not just one pocket or one neighborhood,” LeRoy Supt. Gary Tipsord said. “We had prepared for a lot of different outcomes, but I don’t think any of us expected this.”

Putnam County authorities discovered Connolly’s car about 5 p.m. Sunday near a Christmas tree farm about 8 miles south of Hennepin. Police say they do not know of any connection between the family and the secluded site.

Police would not say how long the bodies had been there, if they suffered obvious injuries or whether a weapon was recovered.

Connolly’s aunt, Joyce Connolly, said his family rarely saw him after the couple separated.

“I feel sorry for Michael,” she said. “I know that sounds terrible, but he must have been so tormented.”

Court records and police accounts portray Connolly as an abusive husband who tried to force Leichtenberg to stay in their marriage. He threatened to cut open her and her parents and once told Jack that he would find “a younger, prettier, nicer mama,” according to court documents.

When Connolly sensed Leichtenberg was about to leave him in 2006, she said he pressured her to sign a paper giving him custody of the boys if they divorced. He also demanded his wife make a videotape in which she claimed to abuse her sons, Leichtenberg said. It’s not clear she did either.

“He went into a rage again and told me if I didn’t get home he would kill me. I went home, and he told me if I ever take his boys again he would hunt me down and kill me and my parents and cut us open,” Amy Leichtenberg wrote in her petition for an emergency order of protection in July 2005 in McHenry County Circuit Court.

Neighbors realized something was wrong with the couple’s marriage shortly after they moved into their Algonquin neighborhood in 2003. Friends described Connolly as “controlling” and “manipulative” toward his wife and sons. Leichtenberg often would use neighbors’ telephones to call her parents because her husband didn’t like her speaking with them.

“She could never live a normal life,” former next-door neighbor Jim Gerardi said. “That’s the sad part about it, because he was watching every single move she made.”

While Connolly was out of town on a business trip in 2006, neighbors said they helped Leichtenberg pack her car, and she and the kids sought refuge at a domestic violence shelter.

Leichtenberg filed for divorce in May 2006 in McHenry Circuit Court. In her petition, she described hundreds of harassing phone messages her husband left for her and her family.

In the messages, Connolly outlined stipulations for the divorce: He wanted visitation with his sons alone and one day a week with Amy alone and promised not to hurt them, court documents said.

Leichtenberg withdrew the petition without explanation in December 2006. She returned to the family’s home in Algonquin, but neighbors said she hid inside the house and rarely socialized after the reconciliation.

The couple separated again a short time later, and Leichtenberg moved to LeRoy, where a bitter custody battle ignited. She wrote in court documents in April 2007 that he had called her home and her cell at least 18 times.

In a Tribune interview after the boys disappeared, Leichtenberg said Connolly was granted unsupervised visitation rights in December. She said she begged the McLean judge to deny the request.

“All Michael would do is file his own motions, and the judge was basically tired of him and gave him what he wanted.”

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Man Kills Sisters on 5-Year-Old’s Birthday

By GLEN JOHNSON, AP

MILTON, Mass. (March 29) — A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then headed toward his 9-year-old sister before officers shot him amid what their chief described as “a killing field.”

There is no clear motive yet for the events that unfolded about 5 p.m. Saturday in this tony Boston suburb that is also home to Gov. Deval Patrick. But there is no doubt at the carnage wrought by 23-year-old Kerby Revelus, a Haitian immigrant, against his three sisters in the two-family home they shared with their parents and grandmother.

Bianca was killed as a cake for her 5th birthday sat on the kitchen table. Sarafina, 9, dialed 911 and watched police shoot her brother as her elder sister, Samantha, lay dead on the floor.

Sarafina was hospitalized Sunday at the Boston Medical Center with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds in her abdomen and one of her legs.

“In policing, we see the raw human emotion every day, but to think that a human being could afflict such an atrocious, violent act on his own family is unbelievable,” Milton police Chief Richard G. Wells Jr. told The Associated Press.

“When I walked up to the first officer (on the scene), I could see the whole story right in his face. This just told me that this was something very bad,” Wells said.

Kerby Revelus had recently served jail time on a gun charge, Wells said, but the details would not be released until courts opened Monday. Police had been called to the same house in 2004 after a domestic violence report of Revelus allegedly punching one of the women living in the home, Wells said.

Saturday’s attack came about 24 hours after Revelus had gotten into a fistfight with a man living next door, Wells said.

“Blows were exchanged,” he said. “I don’t know the cause of it, but we’re confident that did happen. He had been agitated in the hours that followed that, going into the day and last night.”

Investigators believe that Revelus targeted Samantha, a 17-year-old senior at Milton High School, and fatally stabbed her with a household knife while their grandmother was doing laundry in the basement. At the time, the children’s parents were away; their mother is a nurse at a Boston hospital, Wells said.

Her identity, as well as that of the father, were not immediately available.

Sarafina, an elementary school student, called 911 just before 5 p.m. An officer on patrol in the neighborhood arrived within a minute, Wells said, and could hear an altercation inside as he reached the second floor. The 911 operator tried to persuade Sarafina to open the door, but when she did not, the officer broke through.

“As the officer entered the door, he decapitated (Bianca) in front of him,” said Wells. “He actually walked into a killing field. He walked into such carnage, as far as the atrocity of it, I’ve never seen it.”

Within moments, four officers were inside and two of them shot Revelus as he tried to get to Sarafina, Wells said. He fell still clutching the knife.

Details about the number of shots and who killed Revelus were pending the outcome of an autopsy Sunday.

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Up and Coming Lawyer Victim Of Domestic Violence: Husband Arrested

(March 28) — Slain attorney Chiquita Tate was such a believer in the legal system that she had a tattoo of Lady Justice on her back, college friend T. J. Crawford recalled.
“She just had an attachment to justice and doing what’s right by people. She was always very serious about that,” said Crawford, a teacher and community organizer in Chicago, Illinois.

But Tate, described by colleagues as a tenacious defense attorney who fought for her clients, could not save herself.

Family members and friends in Chicago; Atlanta, Georgia, and Tate’s adopted home — tiny Baker, Louisiana — are reeling from the grisly details of Tate’s slaying, and police say it was at the hands of her husband, Greg Harris. They had been married about 14½ months.

Harris, 37, is in custody, accused of stabbing Tate to death. He is charged with second-degree murder and the illegal use of a dangerous weapon. A judge last week set his bond at $500,000.

In a phone interview with CNN, Harris’ attorney, Lewis Unglesby, said police have the wrong man.

“Greg Harris by all accounts … is innocent. I don’t know anybody that thinks he did it, except the police,” Uglesby said. “There’s nothing in his background. He has cooperated completely with the police; he’s signed everything they’ve asked him to sign. He’s let them search his house, his car.”

Tate, 34, had started her own law firm in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was doing well, family and acquaintances said.

“She was up and coming,” said Cpl. L’Jean McKneely, a police spokesman in Baton Rouge.

Tate was representing a defendant in a high-profile murder trial when, police say, she became a homicide victim herself. Her body was found inside her law office on February 20. Tate was stabbed 38 times, according to a police warrant for Harris’ arrest obtained by CNN

While questioning Harris about Tate’s death, police discovered an outstanding warrant for him in connection with a battery-domestic violence case. It stemmed from a December 22, 2007, incident at the couple’s home.

Harris was accused of using “force and violence” against Tate, according to Baker City Court records. The court said Harris entered a not guilty plea on March 6, 2008, but did not appear for a May 8 pretrial conference. A warrant was issued for his arrest for contempt of court.

When Tate met Harris in late 2007, she fell for him, head over heels, said East Baton Rouge Parish Juvenile Court Judge Pam Taylor Johnson, Tate’s mentor and former boss.

“She came in my office one day: ‘I met the most wonderful guy! I need you to perform our marriage — tomorrow,’” Johnson recalled Tate gleefully telling her.

“I told her she had to wait three days,” as required by Louisiana law, Johnson added.

Tate did wait a bit. The couple’s marriage license is dated January 10, 2008, just two and a half weeks after the domestic violence report from Baker police. They married on February 8, their marriage license shows.

Only the couple’s immediate family members and two friends attended the ceremony at Green Chapel in Baton Rouge, said Tate’s friend Shawn Collins, who was one of those on hand for the wedding.

Neighbors in suburban Baker said the couple seemed to settle into a good life in their home on Charry Drive.

Baker, population 13,000, was one of the cities that absorbed hundreds of families from the FEMA trailer homes after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The last families housed in Baker moved out last spring.

Neighbors recalled seeing Tate frequently driving down the street in her late-model Hummer and Harris steering a Mercedes.

Ethan Koobs, who lives across the street from the couple, said Tate was a “really nice lady, very upper-class, presented herself very well.”

Koobs said he didn’t see any discontent in the couple’s lives.

“They seemed like a pleasant couple, just real nice,” said neighbor Don Patton, who lives two houses down. “They kept their house and their lawn very nice.”

He recalled the couple’s concern for their neighbors after Hurricane Gustav, which raked south Louisiana on September 1, 2008, before petering out in southeast Texas. It knocked out power to 1.5 million homes in southern Louisiana, and thousands of homes were damaged by the wind.

Harris, a carpenter, found his skills useful.

“[Harris] was just generally concerned about everybody’s well-being,” Patton said. “We’d huddle in the street and he’d ask if anybody needed anything.”

The couple helped their neighbors rebuild. But the warrant for Harris’ arrest in the murder case revealed a fracture in the marriage. Tate was “planning on divorcing the defendant due to marital problems” and had leased her own apartment, the warrant stated.

As far as their friends were concerned, there was no trouble in the marriage and Tate appeared to be a doting wife.

She also enjoyed battling it out on behalf of her clients in the courtroom.

Tate, who was raised with six siblings, was tenacious even as a youngster, recalled childhood friend Ursula Bryant-Hill.

“She was always strong-willed and she analyzed everything. Everybody told her ‘You’d be a good lawyer,’” said Bryant-Hill, of Hueytown, Alabama.

“If you knew Chiquita when she was growing up in Baton Rouge, she was always cautious about who she let in her intimate setting. ‘Watch your surroundings,’ that’s how she was,” Bryant-Hill added.

Upon graduation from college, Tate worked briefly as a legislative secretary, recording minutes at Atlanta City Council meetings.

But she longed to return home to Louisiana to attend law school at Southern University.

“When she told me she was in law school, I screamed,” Bryant-Hill said.

Her friend, Juvenile Court Judge Johnson, said Tate lived by one creed: Justice for all, especially for those more vulnerable in society.

“I couldn’t get her to accept the fact that ‘things happen.’ I told her some things you can’t change [about the system], but it is our duty to see if we can equalize things,” Johnson said.

Tate is remembered as someone who fought tirelessly for what she believed in. Now her loved ones hope the legal system will work for her.

The days have been long for Tate’s family. Asked how she has been coping, Denita Tate, the victim’s sister, said, “I’m not. It’s harder every day.”

“We want closure with our family and with our sister, and we want justice,” Denita Tate said.

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