Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Hoping to help solve a gruesome murder and abduction case in Georgia, the FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for leading to the discovery of the wife of an 88-year-old Georgia man who was found decapitated, CNN reports.

The FBI said it will pay “up to $20,000 for information leading to the location of Shirley Wilcox Dermond and/or the arrest of the individual(s) responsible for her disappearance,” according to Special Agent Stephen Emmett of the FBI’s Atlanta office.

The search also continues for the man’s head after authorities said he was killed between May 2 and May 4.

The FBI posted at least 100 billboards with Dermond’s description throughout Georgia.

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI is trying to crank up its efforts against cyber crime.

Over the next few weeks, the bureau is expected to announce new searches, charges and arrests of cyber criminals, Reuters reports.

“There is a philosophy change. If you are going to attack Americans, we are going to hold you accountable,” the FBI’s Robert Anderson told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington. “If we can reach out and touch you, we are going to reach out and touch you.”

Anderson, who took over the cyber program in March, said the FBI will exhibit “a much more offensive side.”

The result will be more arrests of more serious cyber criminals, he said.

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

What turned into the largest mass arrests of L.A. County sheriff’s officials in decades began with a single letter from a jail inmate, the Los Angeles Times reports.

FBI Agent Leah Marx testified that the probe began in June 2010 when a county jail inmate detailed a pattern of violence by deputies.

The letter prompted a joint civil rights and public corruption investigation after more inmates began describing excessive force, Marx said on the stand for one of the deputy’s trials.

One inmate told the FBI that deputies were offering contraband for a bribe.

Steve Neavling

A former U.S. Border Patrol agent has been indicted – for the second time in a superseding indictment.

Raimundo Borjas was issued with a revised indictment that charges whim with 10 counts of money laundering on top of the original charges of trying to avoid detection of deposited funds, the Arizona Daily Star reports.

Originally indicted in April 2013, Borjas is now accused of making nine cash deposits totaling $61,600 in 2012 from proceeds of a cocaine distribution operation.

“He disputes the entirety of the allegations made against him,” Borjas’ attorney, Stephen G. Ralls, said.

Steve Neavling

Although Clint Hill was one of the closest witnesses to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the former Secret Service agent said he would never divulge the harrowing account publicly, especially not in a book, the Marin Independent Journal reports.

Hill, who is now 82 and lives in Tiburon, Calif., said he changed his mind after all of these years when he was assured any book he worked on would not include gossip.

After all, he had quite a compelling story to tell: As Jackie Kennedy’s guard, he is widely known for climbing into the president’s car just after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.

Hill, who has written two New York Times best-sellers with co-author Lisa McCubbin, is to receive a Lifetime of Civic Leadership award from the Concord-based JFK University’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership on Friday.

Their most recent book, “Five Days in November,” hit book stores in November.

“I’m glad we did (the books), because it provides information to people that is quite persuasive about what happened that day,” Hill said.

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• Secret Service Agents Saved North Texas Woman in Medical Emergency
• Muslim Groups Calls for Investigation of FBI Agent in Florida Shooting
• Kentucky Sues DEA to Release Imported Hemp Seeds

Steve Neavling

The FBI agent who fatally shot Ibragim Todashev in his small Orlando apartment last year has a troubling, controversial history as a former officer for the Oakland Police Department in California, the Boston Globe reports.

Not much was known about the agent who killed the Chechen friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because the FBI declined to identify him. But the Globe has discovered that the agent’s name is 41-year-old Aaron McFarlane.

According to the Globe, McFarlane retired from the department at the age of 31 after he was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations.

Authorities have said the agent was justified in shooting Todashev because he lunged at the investigators inside his apartment.

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Two Democratic senators are accusing the Obama administration of trying to “ignore or justify” factual misrepresentations to the Supreme Court about warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency.

The New York Times reports that the senators, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ryan Wyden of Oregon, complained in a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. that the Obama administration was contributing to a “culture of misinformation.”

The issue is over the legality of permitting warrantless NSA surveillance.

The Justice Department is reviewing the complaints.

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Authorities aren’t certain how many children have been victimized by a teacher who has been accused of drugging and molesting boys over four decades at schools worldwide.

But the FBI is beginning to get a better idea after hundreds of people have contacted the bureau since investigators announced last month that William Vahey molested at least 90 boys whose photos were kept on a memory drive, the Associated Press reports.

On Tuesday, the FBI said it has “been contacted by several hundred individuals from around the globe wishing either to reach out as potential victims or provide information in the ongoing investigation.”

Vahey, 64, committed suicide after a maid stole his memory drive that contained the images.