Controversial, self-proclaimed 'prophetess' Glynis Bethel behind bars in Baldwin County

BAY MINETTE, Al.
Glynis Bethel, the self-proclaimed prophetess from Loxley who over the summer caused the Baldwin County school system to go into lock-down because of a threatening phone call, is being held without bail in the Baldwin County jail and is expected to serve sentences on various charges.

Bethel

Bethel, 49, was transferred Wednesday from the Mobile Metro Jail to the Baldwin County Corrections Center in Bay Minette. Jail records list Baldwin charges of obstructing government operations, harassment, disorderly conduct, third-degree criminal trespass, criminal coercion and fugitive charges.
Baldwin sheriff’s spokesman Maj. Anthony Lowery said the charges are unrelated to the incident in July in which Bethel left a voicemail with sheriff’s deputies saying that she was armed with a gun and was ready to be a martyr. Baldwin school officials locked the doors at all facilities as a precaution in the wake of the call. At that time, Bethel’s whereabouts were uncertain.
In February 2010, Bethel pleaded guilty to coercion and obstructing justice and in each case was sentenced by Baldwin County District Judge Michelle Thomason to serve six months of a one-year sentence and given two years on probation, according to court records. The sentences were to run concurrently, records show. She also pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was given a 30-day suspended term and one-year probation.
Bethel appealed those cases but all were denied, according to Lowery and court records.
Once transferred to Baldwin County on Wednesday, she was served with outstanding warrants, which included three issued in June for failing to appear in court relating to the 2009 cases. There were also three other warrants and three bond forfeitures issued in January relating to several cases from 2010, Lowery said.
Ashley Rains, spokeswoman for the Mobile Police Department, said Bethel was picked up by Mobile police on Aug. 4 for warrants out of Tennessee and remained in the Mobile Metro Jail until her transfer to Baldwin County.
Rains said she was unsure of what precipitated the arrest by Mobile officers. Court records show that Bethel pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 2009 and another similar charge in 2006, both in Mobile County District Court.
It is unclear how long Bethel had been in the Mobile area.
For years, Orlando and Glynis Bethel gained local media attention occasionally through public antics in addition to legal battles with the school board, other government entities, and businesses.
Glynis Bethel garnered more attention after moving to Nashville late last year. In January, she tried to register her children to attend public schools in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, claiming that her family was homeless. Her group soon held protests outside Brentwood High School. Earlier this summer, she was tackled by police officers and charged with assault after allegedly spraying an officer in the face with pepper spray. She and a group of others had been preaching publicly on a downtown sidewalk.

Alabama Motorsports Park investors give land for proposed Mobile County track back to bank

MOBILE, Al.
Compass Bank now owns much of the land that was slated for a Mobile County auto racing complex after investors deeded the property to the lender to avoid foreclosure, according to court records.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The former landowners are part of Gulf Coast Entertainment, a Mobile-based group of 30 investors that planned a $640 million motor sports project on more than 2,000 acres in Prichard, Saraland and Mobile County.
It's another setback for a project first announced in September 2006 with the backing of one of the country's most high-profile race car drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
After a tug-of-war search involving sites in Mobile and Baldwin counties, the park landed off Ala. 158 and Interstate 65, with most of the land in Prichard. The icing on the cake was the name: the Alabama Motorsports Park, a Dale Earnhardt Jr. Speedway.
Since that time, the project has been significantly scaled back -- from 6 tracks to 3 -- and Earnhardt dropped out in fall 2009.
Current plans include a 75,000-seat oval track, a road course and a karting track, along with an RV park and entertainment venues.
Court records indicated that the mortgages were in difficulty as early as May 2010, when the bank negotiated a forbearance agreement involving millions in loans on a handful of separate tracts to delay foreclosure proceedings.
According to court records, Rick Edwards, G.C. Outlaw III, George T. Grau, John McInnis III, and Rick Skelton, a race car driver living in Atlanta, deeded land back to Compass on Sept. 23.
McInnis' family owns The McInnis Company. Based in Orange Beach, it built the Foley Beach Express toll road with other partners. McInnis is also an owner of the landmark bar, Flora-Bama, in Perdido Key, Fla.
Skelton was a partner in the failed Bon Secour Village, a mixed-use development on more than 900 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway in Gulf Shores. Most of that property was foreclosed on, then sold by the lender last year.
Mike Dow, spokesman for Gulf Coast Entertainment and former Mobile mayor, said the investor group continues to work on the project. He said Gulf Coast Entertainment has a letter of intent from one prospect who wants to develop the site, but he would not say if that plan includes a racetrack.
"These are complex times for banks, investors and landowners," Dow said. "The bottom line is, as long as we have the ability to move forward and develop that property, we're happy with that."
The landowners named in the court record remain investors in the project, Dow said.
Edwards said that deeding the property to the bank is "the best thing we need to do as landowners.
"And the banks are doing what they have to do to clean the books up," he said. "The deal is still alive. We're still optimistic that everything is going to work out."

House collapses, owner injured during Center Point fire

CENTER POINT, Al.
A Center Point house partially collapsed and the owner suffered minor burns during a house fire tonight, according to the Center Point Fire Department.

Fire Chief Donnie West said the fire at the house, on Cort Circle, just off Reed Road and 20th Avenue Northeast, was going strong when firefighters arrived shortly before 8 p.m. Ammunition in the basement was exploding, West said.

"They had a lot of ammo. There was a lot of fire showing" when firefighters arrived, West said.

The owner was being treated at the scene after being burned while trying to put out the fire himself. His wife escaped the house and was not injured, West said.

The right side of the house collapsed into the yard, West said.

The cause of th

Henderson Murder Trial: Deputy Bonham takes stand (Deputy James Anderson's partner)

Opelika, Al.

A jury heard testimony Thursday from the partner of a slain Lee County sheriff’s deputy during the accused killer’s capital murder trial.

Katie Bonham

Gregory Lance Henderson, 39, of Columbus, Ga., faces capital murder charges for allegedly running over Lee County Sheriff’s Deputy James Anderson during a routine traffic stop in rural Smiths Station in 2009.

Investigator Katie Bonham took the stand to describe how Henderson attempted to flee from the officers and in the process ran over Anderson.

Henderson’s intent as he tried to flee the deputies was the focus of opening statements by prosecutors and defense attorneys. The prosecution argues Henderson deliberately ran over Anderson in his attempt to escape. The defense countered, saying Henderson, who had used methamphetamine and marijuana in the hours before the traffic stop, accidentally killed the deputy.

On Sept. 24, 2009, Bonham said she and Anderson, her training supervisor, followed Henderson after observing him turn around to possibly avoid them. Once the tag on the 1991 Honda Civic driven by Henderson came back to a 1980s-model Ford Thunderbird, Bonham said the deputies decided to pull him over. Bonham said they pulled in behind the white Honda in a residential driveway in Smiths Station along Lee Road 240.

Anderson exited out of the passenger side, drew his gun and ordered Henderson to stop as the white Honda began to reverse. Bonham said she maneuvered the patrol car to block the escape.

“He pressed the accelerator as fast as it would go and plowed over Deputy Anderson,” she said.

Bonham was joined on the witness stand on Thursday by a Lee County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher, a volunteer firefighter who responded to the calls for help and an Alabama Bureau of Investigation officer who examined the scene afterward.

Bonham began to cry as the jury was shown the dashboard tape from her patrol car. The incident is recorded in the audio of the camera.

Henderson’s car is seen pulling in front of a small house before reversing quickly and accelerating off to the right, out of view of the camera. In a muffled voice off camera, Anderson is heard commanding him to stop. Soon after, Bonham begins to shout.

“He just ran over 46 (Anderson),” Bonham said. “ … The car is laying on top of 46. Shots fired.”

In the background, the engine of Henderson’s car continues to rev. On the tape, Bonham says she fired two shots at Henderson in his car before subduing him. One missed his head, striking the car frame, and the other struck the front panel of the car, she said.

Bonham commands Henderson repeatedly “not to move.” Henderson is seen briefly in front of the patrol car as Bonham searches and questions him before putting him in the back seat.

Bonham’s voice grows frantic as she asks the homeowner for help and continues to shout at Henderson.

“Do not move. I am not kidding you. I will put a bullet in your head,” she says in the video. “You just ran over my deputy … You better not move an inch.”

Henderson is heard crying in the background and saying he will not move.

“Anderson stay with us, Anderson stay with us,” Bonham says on the tape.

The tape records the rush to find car jacks to lift the car off Anderson, and Bonham repeating the story of what happened to Anderson, who, at one point in the video, she describes as a father figure.

Volunteer firefighter Clint Knox said he arrived on the scene along Lee Road 240 to find Bonham holding Henderson at gunpoint on the ground. Knox testified he helped handcuff Henderson and assisted in the efforts to free Anderson from under the car.

“He was laying on his left side, about center of the vehicle, and he wasn’t breathing,” Knox said. “That’s when we tried to jack the vehicle.”

Knox said the car jacks kept sinking into the soft ground.

Eventually, a passing wrecker was flagged down and the edge of its hydraulic flatbed was used to free the deputy, who remained unresponsive. Knox said an ambulance had arrived by that time and CPR was performed on Anderson.

Anderson was taken to the Columbus Regional Medical Center in Columbus, Ga., where he was pronounced dead.

On the tape, which lasted for more than an hour, an unnamed man is heard advising the responding deputies to act as professionals and not lash out at the man who ran over their friend.

“I know it is hard for you, it is hard for me because he is one of our family,” the man says.

The state said it expects to finish its side of the case Friday, when the trial will resume at 9 a.m.

Death of Auburn University student under investigation

Auburn, Al.
The cause of death of an Auburn University student is under investigation by Auburn police, although no foul play is suspected, according to an Auburn Police Division release.

Kyle E. Nixon, 22, of Lakeland, Fla., was pronounced dead at 1:32 a.m. Thursday at the East Alabama Medical Center after Auburn police and emergency personnel were called to a duplex apartment in the 800 block of West Longleaf Drive at approximately 12:42 a.m.

Nixon, who was visiting with friends, was discovered almost immediately by friends after he collapsed, said APD Chief Tommy Dawson.

Nixon’s body has been sent to Montgomery for an autopsy. The case is also being investigated by the Lee County Coroner’s office and the State Medical Examiner’s office.

Former Alabama Organ Center executives charged with health care fraud, mail fraud

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama 
Two former executives of the Alabama Organ Center have been charged with health care fraud and mail fraud and both men have agreed to plead guilty to the charges, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance announced today.
 
A document filed in U.S. District Court charges former director Demosthenes Yanga Lalisan, 45, and Richard Alan Hicks, 39, the former associate director, with receiving more than $498,000 in kickbacks from a local funeral home that did business with the organ center.
 
Authorities did not release the name of the funeral home.
 
Lalisan and Hicks were fired in August after a federal investigation was made public.
 
Vance said the two men have entered separate plea agreements with the government.
 
A news release from Vance's spokeswoman, Peggy Sanford, outlines the charges against the two:
 
From sometime in 2003 until about July 2011, Lalisan and Hicks received kickbacks in exchange for promoting the funeral home and recommending its hiring by the organ center.
 
"Neither Lalisan nor Hicks disclosed to the organ center or the foundation that they were receiving payments from the funeral home. Both men falsely represented to the foundation that neither of them had any financial conflicts of interest from customers, suppliers, contractors or competitors, according to the court documents," Sanford's statement read.
 
Vance said while Lalisan's and Hicks's conduct did not endanger donors or recipients of organs or tissue, it did violate the public trust.
 
The center is the federally approved organ procurement organization for the state and provides kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers, pancreases and other tissues to UAB Hospital's transplant program and for other surgeries statewide.
 
"We can't and won't tolerate fraud in our community. My office is committed to punishing criminals who engage in health care and mail fraud," Vance said.
 
Lalisan, who graduated from UAB with a biology degree and received a master's degree there, was named director of the Alabama Organ Center in 2006 and had worked at the center for 14 years before that.
 
Hicks, who also graduated from UAB and attended the school of public health there, worked at the center since 1999, according to his resume.

No student to be denied Ala. school admission

MONTGOMERY, Ala. 
Alabama's interim state school superintendent, Larry Craven, says public schools will comply with Alabama's new immigration law by checking the citizenship status of new students, But he says no one will be denied admission if their parents fail to provide documentation of citizenship.
Craven described the effect of the law on public schools Thursday, which was the first day that major portions of the law took effect.
He said school systems will ask parents for a child's birth certificate upon enrollment for the first time. If they have none, they will be asked for additional documentation and to sign a statement that the child is a legal resident. Craven said all students must be enrolled whether they have documents or not.
He said those already enrolled won't be checked.