Ma vs Phillip Markoff-alleged Craigs list killer

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Suspected 'Craigslist Killer' Philip Markoff indicted by grand jury in murder of Julissa Brisman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, June 21st 2009, 10:09 PM


Garfinkel/AP


BOSTON - A former medical student accused of killing a 25-year-old masseuse he met through craigslist has been indicted by a grand jury.

Philip Markoff's indictment on charges of first-degree murder and other crimes moves his case from district court to Superior Court, where he is scheduled to be arraigned Monday. The indictments were returned late Thursday and announced Sunday.

He was indicted for the April 14 shooting of 25-year-old Julissa Brisman of New York, who advertised on the "exotic services" section of Craigslist at the Boston Marriott Copley Place hotel. He was also charged with the April 10 armed robbery of a 29-year-old Las Vegas woman at the Westin Copley Place hotel.

The 23-year-old upstate New York native who had been living in Quincy is being held without bail after pleading not guilty in district court.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said the grand jury reviewed dozens of exhibits, including Internet and telephone records, during a two-month investigation.

"Contained in those records was a wealth of information, all of it pointing directly at the defendant," Conley said. Markoff, a second-year medical student at Boston University, was arrested April 20 on Interstate 95 while driving with his fiancee to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.

Defense attorney John Salsberg said Markoff would continue to plead not guilty.

The indictment makes no mention of a Rhode Island warrant that accuses Markoff of pulling a gun on a stripper April 16 at a Holiday Inn Express in Warwick, R.I. Markoff faces assault and weapons charges in that case.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/06/21/2009-06-21_accused_craigslist_killer_markoff_indicted.html #ixzz0JFnTcUPA&D

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Philip Markoff has been indicted by a Boston grand jury on charges of first-degree murder in the so-called "Craigslist killing," the shooting death of a masseuse who had advertised in the "erotic services" section of the online bulletin board.

Boston University medical student Philip Markoff stands during his arraignment in Boston Municipal...

Boston University medical student Philip Markoff stands during his arraignment in Boston Municipal Court, Tuesday, April 21, 2009, in Boston. Accused "Craigslist killer" Philip Markoff was put on a suicide watch today after correction officers found shoelace marks on his neck, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
(Mark Garfinkel/Pool/AP Photo)Markoff, 23, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Suffolk County, Mass., Superior Court.

Markoff was indicted for the April 14 shooting of 25-year-old Julissa Brisman at the Boston Marriot Copley Place hotel. Brisman, it was later discovered, had advertised on the "erotic services" section of Craigslist.

Also charged with the April 10 armed robbery of a 29-year-old Vegas woman, Markoff, who pled not guilty in district court, is being held without bail.

indictments were handed down on Thursday but were released to the public today.

According to the indictment, evidence suggest that Markoff and Brisman struggled in the hotel room she had rented, and he hit her in the head several times with the butt of a 9mm semiautomatic pistol.

"The blows to her head were so sharp and so violent that they fractured her skull," Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley said.


He then allegedly shot Brisman three times in the chest and stomach from close range, killing her almost instantly, according to the indictment.

Police identified Markoff as the suspect by tracking the e-mails that were sent to Brisman to set up the meeting, according to a statement released by the prosecutor.

They used the Internet protocol address for the e-mail accountto determine the physical adress from which the e-mails were sent, and when they staked out the location, saw a person who matched the description they had of the alleged assailant. That person turned out to be Markoff, the statement said.

When they learned he was a student at Boston University's medical school, investigators contacted university police to get a copy of his school identification photograph. When they showed that photo to the Las Vegas woman who had been robbed, she identified him as the man who had attacked her, according to the district attorney's statement.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7894310&page=1

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Police found 16 pairs of women's panties in the home of Philip Markoff, the Boston University Medical student charged with the murder of a sex worker who was shot dead in an upscale hotel room, a law enforcement source told ABC News today.

Police find 16 pairs of women's underwear hidden in Philip Markoff's apartment.The panties were hidden under Markoff's bed in the Quincy home he shared with his fiancee. Along with the panties was a large bag with roughly 60 pairs of plastic flex-cuff restraints, the law enforcement source said.

Markoff has been charged with allegedly contacting two women through the Web site Craigslist, and luring them to upscale hotels, where police say he bound their hands with plastic cuffs and robbed them. Markoff is also accused of killing one of the women, Julissa Brisman, after she resisted. He has pleaded not guilty.

The panties and restraints were found along with duct tape next to a hollowed-out copy of "Gray's Anatomy" that hid the semi-automatic weapon police believe was used to shoot Brisman, 26, of New York City April 14. Brisman had rented a room at the tony Boston Copley Marriott from Monday April 13 through Wednesday April 15 to offer $200 massages "with hand relief."

Markoff, who has been dubbed the "Craigslist Killer," is charged with bashing Brisman's head in around 10:10 p.m. Tuesday night and shooting her three times at point-blank range.

He is currently in the psychiatric unit of Nashua Street jail, where he is monitored around-the-clock after he attempted to strangle himself with shoelaces and tried to slice his wrists with a spoon he sharpened to a point using concrete in his cell, a law enforcement source said.

Last week, he told his parents, brother and sister-in-law during a jailhouse visit to "move to California and forget about him,'' another law enforcement source told ABC News.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7464224&page=1

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(Mark Garfinkel/Pool/AP Photo)Markoff, 23, also pleaded not guilty to the armed robbery of another woman as well as kidnapping and weapons charges.

The former medical student, who showed up to court freshly shaved, with a new haircut and wearing a crisp, white button down shirt, is known as the "Craigslist Killer" for allegedly finding his victims on the popular Craigslists online classified ads site.

When asked how he pleads, Markoff in a loud and confident voice yelled out his innocence with a loud, "Not guilty."

Asked by the court if he waived the reading of the indictment Markoff responded, "Yes."

The indictment, originally handed down on Thursday, accused Markoff of the April 14 shooting of Julissa Brisman, 25, at the Boston Marriot Copley Place Hotel.

Brisman was a masseuse who had advertised in the "erotic services" section of the online bulletin board.

Markoff is also charged with the April 10 armed robbery of 29-year-old Las Vegas woman named Trisha Leffler in another Boston hotel.
He is being held without bail at the Nashua Street Jail.

Markoff never made eye contact with his parents, Richard Markoff and Susan Haynes, who were sitting in the packed courtroom just a few rows behind him in the courtroom.

As the charges against his son were read, Richard Markoff rocked back and forth in his seat. Haynes twitched her hands nervously in her lap.

Markoff's brother, Jonathan Markoff, was also in court alongside his wife, Deanna, whom he held hands with throughout the arraignment.

Asked by ABC News whether he still believed in his son's innocence, Richard Markoff nodded yes.


Victim Julissa Brisman's mother, Carmen Guzman, cried as Markoff made his pleas.

Brisman's sister bowed her head and began to cry audibly when prosectors read the details of the attack during which they said Brisman was "hit on the head before shot at point blank range three times."

Suffolk County Prosecutor Edmond Zabin described to the courtroom "three violent assaults against three female victims."

Zabin said that Markoff had used the ID of a man from upstate New York by the name of Andrew Miller to purchase the 9mm gun he later used to kill Brisman.

According to Zabin, Markoff drove to Mason, N.H., in February to purchase the gun when his fiance, Megan McAllister, was away for the weekend. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco an Firearms traced the murder weapon to the New Hampshire shop and found Markoff's prints on the purchasing document, prosecutors said.

Those prints also matched those found at the scene of Brisman's killing, the DA said in court.

Andrew Miller is cooperating with the investigation, said Zabin, who did not comment on how Markoff and Miller knew each other.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7897975&page=1

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Seven Days of Rage the Craigslist killer....48 Hours Full episode shown

Very interesting for a man who seemed to have it all...never arrested before.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5323113n&tag=related;photovideo

[SavannahStar]

Seven Days of Rage the Craigslist killer....48 Hours Full episode shown

Very interesting for a man who seemed to have it all...never arrested before.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5323113n&tag=related;photovideo

I watched this Friday night, LLL. It was excellent. I learned a lot that I did not know about the case. I had not followed it real closely.....had just seen the headlines and read a few articles.

One thing that was especially good about the 48 Hours show is they really talked a lot about Julissa, who he murdered. Sometimes in such a heinous widely known case, where the perp has committed more than one crime, the victim(s) are almost "nameless" to us. There was quite a bit about Julissa as a person.....friend, family member, etc., on the show. Very sad.

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updated 3 hours, 39 minutes ago

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- They were crimes born of the Internet age -- romantic solicitations on popular Web site Craigslist that police say led to the fatal shooting of one woman and the robbery of another in Boston hotels this past spring.

And it was high-tech, 21st-century sleuthing, along with some old-fashioned gumshoe detective work, that put police on the trail toward a suspect and eventually an arrest.

CNN's Randi Kaye recently took a behind-the-scenes look at how technology was used to lead police to 23-year-old medical student Philip Markoff, who has been indicted on seven counts, including first-degree murder.

Prosecutors said Julissa Brisman, a model from New York who advertised as a masseuse on Craigslist, was shot three times at close range and suffered blunt head trauma at the Marriott Copley Place hotel on April 14. And a 29-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada, woman was robbed of $800 in cash and $250 in American Express gift cards at the Westin Copley Place hotel, police reports said.

Investigators knew they had crimes born of the Internet on their hands, but how were they able to use that same technology to help them find a suspect who went to great lengths to hide his tracks?

"The figures involved communicated with each other [via] text and e-mail, and they only met at the very last minute," said special correspondent Maureen Orth, who investigated the story for Vanity Fair magazine. "And then the way the police were able to solve the crime was going back, using the clicks and the Internet addresses."

In Brisman's case, police knew she had communicated on Craigslist with a person calling himself "Andy."

Mark Rasch once headed the computer crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. Now an Internet forensic expert, he helped Boston police track the alleged killer.

"The first thing you start with was the e-mail address. In this case, it's an e-mail address from Live.com, which is Microsoft," Rasch explained to CNN's Kaye. Watch Randi Kaye's full report »

Rasch showed Kaye the tracer program he used to help follow the e-mails from "Andy."

"Trace Back does what it says -- traces the route that the e-mail took on its way from its origin to the destination," Rasch said.

Rasch says police got the Internet protocol address for the e-mailer's computer. From there, investigators tracked down the company providing Internet service to the suspect, which told them that the subscriber lived in a Quincy apartment building, outside Boston.

Even though police had what they believed was the killer's real name and home address, that still was not enough, Kaye reports.

"They have to validate and actually get this guy's fingers on the keyboard," Rasch said. "So in the end, they reverted to the old gumshoe thing of a stakeout."

Police zeroed in on Markoff. They'd seen a tall, blond male they believed was the killer on the hotel surveillance cameras. And they did what many people do on a daily basis -- they Googled him.

Police learned their prime suspect was a medical student at Boston University. He was engaged to be married.

Again, the Internet helped. They got a better look at him through pictures with his fiancee online. It's a piece of a digital trail criminals rarely think about, Kaye reported.

"As one of the law enforcement people told me, if you can see it, they can see it," Orth said.

Markoff's cyber footprint was growing more clear to authorities every day. On April 20, six days after Brisman's slaying, detectives arrested him.


They said he was carrying on him a New York driver's license with a photo of someone named Andrew or Andy Miller. Police say Markoff used that driver's license to purchase the gun that killed Brisman and that his fingerprints were on the paperwork.

In June, Markoff pleaded not guilty to Brisman's death and the other charges against him. He remains in jail.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/24/craigslist.slaying.investigation/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

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Grand jury indicts craigslist suspect on Warwick charges

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, October 8, 2009

By Donita Naylor

Journal Staff Writer

MARKOFF
The former medical student awaiting trial in Boston as the alleged “craigslist killer” was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on Warwick charges that he will face after his Boston murder trial, the Rhode Island attorney general’s office reported Wednesday.

Phillip Markoff, 23, who is being held without bail in the Nashua Street jail in Boston for his trial in the April 14 murder of Julissa Brisman, 29, of New York City at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, and the April 10 robbery of Trisha Leffler, 29, a Las Vegas prostitute, at the Westin Copley Place.

The Rhode Island charges result from an investigation by Warwick police after a Las Vegas exotic dancer, 26, reported that she was held at gunpoint on April 16 at the Holiday Inn Express on Jefferson Boulevard. She said her husband came to her rescue and was also assaulted, they told Warwick police.

Before Markoff was arrested April 20, the man being sought was dubbed the “craigslist killer” because he contacted women who advertised erotic services through the online classified service craigslist.

The two felony counts on which Markoff has been indicted in Rhode Island each carry 20-year maximum penalties.

more at the link.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/CRAIGSLIST_KILLING_SUSPECT_INDIC_10-08-09_JSG_v11.3b3c818.html


Markoff is now indicted by Rhode Island for two felonly counts...
This trial will take place after the Boston trial...so I didn't open a new trial thread, yet...