Kelly Ann Tinyes | |
---|---|
Born | March 5, 1975 |
Died | (aged 13) Valley Stream, New York, United States |
Cause of death | Homicide by strangulation |
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | United States |
Occupation | Student |
Known for | Murder victim |
The murder of Kelly Ann Tinyes /TIN-uhs/ occurred on March 3, 1989. [1] Tinyes was a thirteen-year-old Valley Stream, New York resident who was strangled, stabbed, and mutilated. [2] Her body was discovered in the basement of her neighbor, twenty-one-year-old bodybuilder Robert Golub, who was charged with and convicted of her murder. [3] Golub was convicted based on DNA evidence that showed that he matched the genetic markers found in a blood sample discovered on evidence. [4] The trial was the first case in New York state to have a case won by DNA forensic evidence. [5] [6]
The case was re-opened on March 3, 2009, to investigate the possibility of an accomplice. [7]
On March 3, 1989, Kelly Tinyes was babysitting her younger brother Richard when he answered a phone call from someone identifying himself as "John" and asking to speak with Kelly. [8] Shortly after speaking with the other person on the phone, Tinyes told her brother that she was going to go to a friend's house and that she would return shortly. After waiting a short period of time, Richard went to the friend's home and was told that Kelly had not been there. [9] A neighbor child told Richard that he had seen Kelly go into the Golub house. Attempts by Richard to call the Golubs and to knock at their home were unsuccessful. [9] His parents arrived home around 5pm and also attempted to locate Kelly, but were unsuccessful. A friend of Kelly's, Sharon Stonel, also commented that she had seen Kelly go into the Golubs' house. Two detectives visited the Golub house the following day and interviewed several members of the Golub family. The detectives later returned to the house and requested permission to search the property. After gaining permission from the senior John Golub, the detectives searched the home and found the body of Kelly Tinyes in the house's basement. [9]
Robert Golub was charged with the murder of Kelly and brought to trial in late 1989 after a bloody handprint matching Golub's was discovered. [10] His brother John Golub was suspected of being involved in the murder, [11] but was never formally charged. [12] During the trial Golub's lawyer Salvatore Marinello raised questions over the police search, saying that it was an improper and unlawful search, [13] [14] as well as questioning the DNA evidence's accuracy. Marinello argued that the DNA testing was unreliable, [15] and that the testing process performed on the blood samples might be in question. A supervisor for the testing facility Lifecodes Corporation stated that "the tests on the blood samples were accurate, and asserted that the chances of the blood belonging to someone other than Robert Golub were 1 in 707 million." [16]
On April 7, 1990, Golub was found guilty of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. [17] [18] Golub attempted to appeal the decision, but was turned down. [19] On November 18, 2013, while nearing completion of the 25 year minimum sentence for the crime, he had his first parole hearing. On November 25, he was denied. The parole board said releasing him early would be "incompatible with the welfare of society." Robert Golub maintained his innocence as recently as 2009 in an interview with Newsday calling himself "tragedy #2" with Kelly Tinyes being "tragedy #1." In a parole hearing in November 2013 Golub admitted responsibility for Tinyes' death and stated that he had accidentally knocked Tinyes down the stairs, causing her to fall unconscious, then subsequently beating her and finally stabbing her to death. [20] Golub's parole was denied in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021.
The Tinyes family later brought a civil suit against the Golub family in July 1990, stating that the Golubs had "failed to supervise their son properly" and were responsible in part for the murder of Kelly Tinyes. [21] The Tinyes sought $602 million in damages. [22]
Author Ronald J Watkins wrote a book about the murder, Against Her Will: The Senseless Murder of Kelly Ann Tinyes, which was published on April 19, 2000. [23]
DNA profiling is the process of determining an individual's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding.
Albert Henry DeSalvo was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered 13 women in the Boston area between 1962-64. Due to physical evidence, DeSalvo's confession was believed, yet he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. DeSalvo's claims to have murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.
Colin Pitchfork is an English child-murderer and child-rapist. He was the first person convicted of rape and murder using DNA profiling after he murdered two girls in neighbouring Leicestershire villages: Lynda Mann in Narborough in November 1983 and Dawn Ashworth in Enderby in July 1986. He was arrested on 19 September 1987 and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 January 1988 after pleading guilty to both murders. The sentencing judge gave him a 30-year minimum term.
The murders of Diane and Alan Scott Johnson occurred on September 2, 2003. They were shot to death in their Bellevue, Idaho, home by their 16-year-old daughter, Sarah Marie Johnson.
Shirley Ann Duguay was a Canadian woman from Prince Edward Island who went missing in 1994 and was later found dead in a shallow grave.
Carolyn Warmus is an American former elementary schoolteacher who was convicted at age 28 of the 1989 murder of her lover's wife, 40-year-old Betty Jeanne Solomon. After a hung jury at her first trial in 1991, Warmus was convicted of second degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm at her second trial in 1992. She served 27 years for the murder and was released from prison on parole on June 17, 2019.
Vincent Joseph Marinello was an American longtime sportscaster who was featured on WWL AM/FM radio and, previously, on WVUE and WDSU in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was later known as a leading media personality, covering aspects of the recovery of the city from the devastation following Hurricane Katrina. Before his arrest for the murder of his third wife, he served as an in-house television host and analyst at the Fair Grounds Race Course from 1990 until 2005. Marinello died in custody at Dixon Correctional Institute on February 21, 2020 of natural causes.
Salvatore Avellino Jr., also known as Sally, is an American mobster and former caporegime in the Lucchese crime family who was involved in labor racketeering in the garbage and waste management industry on Long Island, New York. Avellino also served as right-hand man and chauffeur to boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Joseph M. Giarratano was an American murderer and prisoner who served in Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County, Virginia, and was on death row until having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. On November 21, 2017, he was granted parole. He was convicted, based on circumstantial evidence and his own confessions, of murdering Toni Kline and raping and strangling her 15-year-old daughter Michelle on February 4, 1979, in Norfolk, Virginia. He had said that he was an addict for years and had blacked out on alcohol and drugs, waking to find the bodies. He was sentenced to death, and incarcerated on death row for 12 years at the former Virginia State Penitentiary.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Riley Ann Sawyers was a two-year-old American girl who was beaten to death by her mother Kimberly Dawn Trenor and her mother's partner Royce Zeigler in a filicide. Her body was later found in Galveston Bay, Texas.
The murder of Linda Cook was committed in Portsmouth on 9 December 1986. The subsequent trial led to a miscarriage of justice when Michael Shirley, an 18-year-old Royal Navy sailor, was wrongly convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992 his case was highlighted as one of 110 possible miscarriages of justice in a report presented to the Home Office by the National Association of Probation Officers and justice groups Liberty and Conviction. His conviction was eventually quashed in 2003 by the Court of Appeal after the DNA profile extracted from semen samples recovered from the victim's body was proven not to be his. Cook's murder took place shortly after six sexual assaults had been committed in the Buckland area of the city, and the killer was initially dubbed the Beast of Buckland by the news media. When police revealed that footprint evidence had been recovered and launched a search for matching shoes, the case became known as the "Cinderella murder". Because of the brutal nature of the murder and the preceding sex attacks, Hampshire police were under public pressure to quickly make an arrest.
The murder of Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears, occurred on 3 November 1989 while she was attending a 16-year-old boy's birthday party at Stockton Beach, New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia. The 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual. After being kicked and spat on by the group, Leigh left the party. Her naked body was found in the sand dunes nearby the following morning, with severe genital damage and a crushed skull.
Bandali Michael Debs is an Australian convicted serial killer currently serving four consecutive terms of life imprisonment plus 27 years for the murder of two Victoria Police officers in August 1998 and for the 1997 murder of teenager Kristy Harty. Debs was detained at HM Prison Barwon in Victoria. On 12 December 2011, Debs was convicted of the April 1995 shooting murder of New South Wales sex worker Donna Ann Hicks. He is portrayed by Australian actor Greg Stone in the telemovie Underbelly Files: Tell Them Lucifer was Here.
Dawn Lee Swan Magyar was an American woman found murdered in March 1973, in a wooded area in Chapin, Michigan. She had been reported missing since January 27, 1973, from her home in Chesaning, Michigan. Believed to have been abducted from a shopping center in nearby Owosso, she was found to have been raped and shot three times.
On February 24, 1986, the body of Sherri Rasmussen was found in the apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten, in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. She had been beaten and shot three times in a struggle. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) initially considered the case a botched burglary and were unable to identify a suspect. Rasmussen's father believed that LAPD officer Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, who was formerly in a relationship with Ruetten, was a prime suspect.
On March 18, 1989, thirty-one-year-old Dennis Dechaine of Bowdoinham, Maine was convicted for the 1988 murder of twelve-year-old Sarah Cherry, who was abducted, tortured and found in a wooded area. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Dechaine has filed a number of appeals, maintaining that he is innocent. However, he remains incarcerated at Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine. Many consider this case to be the most infamous crime in the state of Maine.
Harry Edward Greenwell, known as The I-65 Killer and The Days Inn Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who committed at least three murders along Interstate 65 in Indiana and Kentucky between 1987 and 1989. The killings were linked to Greenwell via DNA in 2022, but he had died of cancer in 2013.
James Ray Cable was an American serial killer. Originally convicted in 1990 for kidnapping and torturing a teenage girl, he was later linked via DNA to the murders of three women in across Kentucky between 1982 and 1989. He was subsequently charged with these crimes, but died while awaiting trial in 2013.