Of This and That

The Greeneville Sun is reporting that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is offering a $1,000 reward and seeking the public’s help in identifying a teenage girl whose body was found in Greene County 23 years ago.

A press release issued by the TBI about the Greene County “cold case” said that on April 14, 1985, “the body of a nude female was located by local fishermen at Exit 44, Jearoldstown Road, off of Interstate 81″ in northern Greene County.

CLICK HERE for the TBI press release and photos.

The body was found approximately 58 feet off the southbound Exit 44 entrance ramp.

“The Medical Examiner reported the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head,” the release said.

Decomposition of her body indicated she had been there about three to six weeks when discovered, the press release said.

Discovery Recalled

Capt. John Huffine, now the Greene County Sheriff’s Department’s chief detective, recalled the discovery during an interview this morning.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

A Morristown-Hamblen High School East student who allegedly lied about a gun-toting student inside the school Thursday afternoon was his own worst enemy, according to police.

According to a report in the Morristown Citizen-Tribune the boy’s story unraveled with astonishing speed, and the teenager who allegedly invented an alibi to cover his truancy found himself in a juvenile holding cell, according to police.

If convicted of the felony offense of filing a false report, he could be permanently suspended from East High.

Hugh Clement, assistant director of Hamblen County schools, said this morning that because the student is enrolled in a special-education curriculum, he couldn’t be expelled from the school system.

“We have to provide educational services,” said Clement, who added that the final decision will come as a result of a school-led assessment.

To say that the East High student suffered needless, self-inflicted harm is gross understatement, according to police.

The teen was laying out of school, walking on East Main Street around 2 p.m., when his quick alibi landed him in the soup, according to Ricky Sanders, a public information officer with the Morristown Police Department.

When the boy spotted a police cruiser, he allegedly called 911 and concocted a yarn about being confronted by an armed student in an East High restroom.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

The Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting that Knox County Juvenile authorities expect to have a detention hearing today for a 17-year-old boy accused of kidnapping an elderly woman after a home invasion and locking her in the trunk of a car.

The accused boy was identified as David R. Pulley.

According to Knox County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Ashley Carrigan, the juvenile faces charges of kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated burglary and false imprisonment.

Carrigan said the juvenile sometime Thursday night entered the Northwest Knox County residence of the unidentified woman to rob her. Carrigan said the juvenile forced the woman into the trunk of a vehicle and later abandoned it where it was found by a Knoxville police officer.

Carrigan said the woman, whose age and address were withheld, was taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Her injuries and condition were also withheld by the Carrigan, who described the victim as “an elderly lady.”

CLICK HERE for the full report.

The end to Ani Zonneveld’s “jihad” on “jihad” came during an episode of “Desperate Housewives,” when Lynette (Felicity Huffman) discovers she has cancer and throws a stone at a possum.

“Look at yourself,” replies her husband, Tom. “You’ve declared jihad on a possum.”

“At that point,” said Zonneveld, the co-director of the advocacy group Muslims for Progressive Values, “I think it is too late to redefine the true meaning of jihad.”

According to the Pew Research Center Strictly speaking, “jihad” is supposed to mean an inner struggle toward holiness. But for many Americans, the term connotes holy war, especially when militant groups like al-Qaida vow to wage jihad against the United States.

Zonneveld’s frustration with how “jihad” has come to be associated with violence reflects a broader concern among many Muslim Americans who believe various Islamic terms are being misused by the media and politicians, and co-opted by Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim critics.

Not only does such misuse disparage the faith and undercut moderate followers, they say, it also unwittingly gives legitimacy to Muslim extremists.

“The real key is not to afford (terrorists) the name of Islam and not legitimize them that way,” said Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, stressing that terrorists represented only a tiny fraction of the Muslim world.

“By calling terrorists Islamic, we’re saying that this tiny contingency is the one whose interpretation of Islam is Islam, and everyone else doesn’t matter.”

CLICK HERE for the full report.

According to the Morristown Citizen-Tribune Morristown-Hamblen High School East was placed on lockdown for approximately 30 minutes Thursday afternoon while police investigated the entirely unsubstantiated report that a student had a gun on campus.

Police searched the building and found no gun. The school returned to normal operations around 2:30 p.m.

Now the attention turns to the East High student who made the report, according to Ricky Sanders, a public information officer with the Morristown Police Department.

Sanders says the student was off campus, walking on Main Street, when he spotted a police cruiser.

Around this time, the student allegedly called 911 and reported another student had menaced him with a gun inside an East High restroom, according to Sanders.

That’s why the student said he left high school, but he did not report the alleged offense until he reached Main Street, according to Sanders.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

What better place for the central hub of a massive Mexican-based drug distribution network than the sleepy little town of Knoxville?

It’s not like the local-yokel law enforcement and prosecution teams are going to catch you, right?

According to a report in the Knoxville News Sentinel that’s what wiretap evidence shows the alleged leaders of a group ferrying tons of marijuana and hundreds of pounds of cocaine across the Rio Grande thought. Turns out, they underestimated Knoxville’s drug busters, court records show.

“We have seized 7,000 pounds of marijuana and 83 kilograms of cocaine,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracee Plowell told U.S. District Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley as she hauled in this week suspect after suspect in the alleged conspiracy.

That is nearly 4 tons of pot and more than 160 pounds of cocaine. Court records show U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Bethel Poston and his cohorts also have rounded up from an Asheville Highway stash house - coined by the alleged conspirators as the “shooting gallery” - a slew of weapons, including machine guns.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

The Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting that neglect of a resident at Hillcrest-West nursing home led to the amputation of her leg last month, according to state reports quoting a doctor who consulted on the case.

The state has censured Hillcrest nursing homes for providing substandard care three times in the past two years.

Advanced untreated pressure sores in multiple patients, broken bones and bruises are among the latest problems, which led Hillcrest to shut down new admissions at its West Knoxville facility on Middlebrook Pike.

Hillcrest nursing homes care for more than 500 Knox Countians, most paid for by Medicaid.

Now, as in the past, Hillcrest is in danger of losing federal funding if problems aren’t corrected. Hillcrest-West has until May 25 to submit a detailed plan of correction, said Lee Millman, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The federal programs rely on the state health department to evaluate nursing homes and recommend corrective action. The state has fined Hillcrest $1,500 and recommended federal fines of $4,150 a day until problems are corrected. A monitor is being appointed.

More than 70 percent of Hillcrest residents are on Medicaid, and many others are on Medicare.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

The Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting that yellow caution lights should be flashing when it comes to the city’s plan to install red-light cameras, foes said Thursday.

More than 50 people with concerns about the city’s proposal to install up to 10 red-light cameras at busy intersections heard arguments against it during a meeting in the Midtown Community Center.

Attendees were urged to mount a grassroots effort to convince Oak Ridge City Council not to approve a contract with a firm that would install the devices.

“Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends. Tell everybody,” said Fred Childress with the watchdog group Tennessee Liberty Alliance. “We’re at a point where we have to do it now.”

Engineer Dale Gedcke - nabbed by a Knoxville traffic camera when he ran a just-changed red light - said studies show the devices actually cause more rear-end crashes.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

The Roanoke Times reports that it’s a day that Ron Shandler had “always hoped for, but never expected” to happen.

The fantasy baseball guru, who operates an information empire in print and on the Web from the basement of his Roanoke County home, announced Thursday morning that he had sold Shandler Enterprises LLC.

New York-based Fantasy Sports Ventures paid an undisclosed sum for Shandler’s company. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that it was a low seven-figure deal.

Shandler, who turned 50 in December, seemed to suggest it was an easy decision after two decades of building his company from the ground up.

“I got three formal offers last year — how often does that happen?” he said in a Thursday afternoon phone interview. “It was too good of a situation to pass up.”

Shandler signed a four-year deal with FSV to continue providing analysis on baseball statistics and trends that fantasy fans use to decide what players to buy, sell and trade in the strategy game that allows them to act as general managers.

The deal will allow him to back out of the day-to-day operations of running a business — a process he expects to take the next year. Following that, he will be able to focus on the content.

CLICK HERE for the full report.

According to USA Today Patty Stewart of Redlands, Calif., is beginning to think she won’t be able to retire at 65. Or 67. Or possibly ever.

Like millions of other people, Stewart is counting on her 401(k) and her home equity to pay for retirement. But since the start of the year, the value of her 401(k) has fallen about 4%, and rising consumer prices have forced her to reduce her contributions to it. Meantime, home prices in her neighborhood are off about 25% over the past two years, making it less likely she can rely on her home equity to supplement her retirement income.

“The calculators tell me I’m going to need $1.3 million to $1.5 million” for retirement, says Stewart, 49. “That doesn’t seem like it’s something that will ever happen.”

She might be right. For years, stock investors have been led to expect average annual returns of 8% to 10%. Similarly, many people have assumed that their homes would appreciate by roughly 10% a year.

Both assumptions, though, rest on two decades of outsize returns — returns that were inflated by low interest rates that fueled bubbles in the values of stocks and real estate. Now, many financial analysts are predicting a prolonged period of below-average returns on both stocks and home equity.

If they’re right, Americans need to face a sobering fact: They’re not likely to have as much money for retirement as they’d projected. Which means that many of us will have to save more, expect less and work longer than we’d planned.

CLICK HERE for the full report.