On Sep. 16, 2019, Noema Alavez was sitting in her car scratching off a lottery ticket while her two kids played at a nearby playground in Bridgeton, New Jersey. A few minutes later she went to check on them. She then realized her 5-year-old daughter Dulce María Alavez was gone. Some people on the basketball court next to the playground told Noema that Dulce ran behind some sheds at the same time two men were walking by and that perhaps one of those men took her. Noema then called 911. 

A police search ensued — with help from state and federal authorities. Despite what the girls on the basketball court said, police stated they did not have evidence of an abduction—a requirement for an Amber Alert. 

“Through the early morning, we were still hoping to find the child was maybe in the brush or had gotten tangled up,” the Bridgeton Police Chief said. 

As the hours ticked by, Noema begged officials for an Amber Alert. Then, 29 hours after police arrived on scene, an Amber Alert was issued, describing a suspect and the car Dulce was believed to be taken in. But without cameras in the park, police couldn’t corroborate the witness statements that led to the Amber Alert. 

The disappearance of Dulce María Alavez

Dulce Maria Alavez Jun 14, 2023

Nonprofit group joins search for missing NJ girl Dulce María Alavez

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Police have continued to investigate tips—going across the country and to Mexico. Local law enforcement officials have also kept a close eye on Dulce’s family—executing a search warrant at her home years after she went missing. But to this day, Dulce remains missing.

In September 2023, four years after Dulce’s disappearance, NBC10 investigative reporter Claudia Vargas took a fresh look at the case. She retraced Dulce’s last known steps and spoke with the girl’s family and case investigators. 

“Somebody Knows Something: The Disappearance of Dulce” premiered Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, on NBC10 and the NBC10 streaming channels. In the days leading up to the special, NBC10 aired the following stories: 

The Latest on the search for Dulce María Alavez

Since 5-year-old Dulce María Alavez went missing from Bridgeton City Park in 2019, law enforcement officials have been following up on hundreds of tips — from tracking down red cars to checking out psychic readings. Police have also traveled across the country and to Mexico in search of answers to Dulce’s disappearance. But Dulce has yet to be found. And last year, police executed a search warrant at Dulce’s family’s home — indicating that police still believe her family may know more than what they are letting on. 

Security at the park where Dulce went missing

The playground at Bridgeton City Park was not equipped with surveillance cameras when Dulce María Alavez went missing in September 2019. And so, police did not have video capturing what happened to the little girl that led to her disappearance. Based on the witness accounts of a young child and someone older, Dulce was taken by a Hispanic man who police have yet to track down. Since then, Dulce’s mom has been asking city officials to install security cameras at the playground. In late 2020, the city agreed to install several surveillance cameras throughout the park. We tested some of the cameras to see just what it captures. 

What would Dulce look like today?

Dulce María Alavez went missing from the Bridgeton City Park in Bridgeton, NJ, when she was 5-years-old and just starting Kindergarten. Presuming she is alive, her face most likely changed as she got older. At the two-year mark of her disappearance, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) issued an age-progression composite of what they thought Dulce would look like at 7-years-old. The hope is that someone in the public will recognize her. The forensic artist who drew it used family pictures of Dulce to get a feel for the girl’s feature traits. But Dulce’s family did not think the composite looked anything like Dulce. Now, four years after her disappearance, a forensic artist at NCMEC has created a new rendering and officials released it on Thursday, Sept. 14.

Delay in the Amber Alert

When Noema Alavez called 911 to report her daughter, Dulce, missing, she told police that some people on the basketball court said they saw her daughter running behind some sheds at the same time as two men were walking by. Noema shared on the line that the girls at the court said one of the men may have taken her. When police arrived on scene, they intensely searched the woods, expecting to find her lost in there. At the same time, because Dulce was under the age of 13, the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office activated its Child Abduction Response Team. But even through the next morning, the Bridgeton Police chief said there was no evidence of an abduction. Still, Dulce’s mom asked police to issue an Amber Alert. It wasn’t until 29 hours after police arrived on scene that New Jersey State Police issued an Amber Alert detailing Dulce’s suspected abduction and abductor. Questions remain if the delay hindered the investigation.

Vigil brings awareness for Dulce

Dulce’s family gathered at the park in Bridgeton, New Jersey, on Monday, Sept. 16 for a vigil to bring awareness to the missing girl. They were joined by the mayor, police chief and community members who held yellow balloons. Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly led a prayer asking for help as the search continues.

How to share tips

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

The commission, which is down to four people from its original nine member composition, removed its bylaws earlier in August.

The group has been through a lot of dysfunction, or growing pains, since its inception two years ago.

We’ve been reporting on it as the board has continued to shrink.

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And now, even more uncertainty lies ahead.

“In my opinion, the current bylaws, they do not accurately reflect the current work of the Commission,” Citizens Police Oversight Commission interim chair Hassan Bennett said.

And with that, Bennett asked that the board’s bylaws be rescinded.

Fellow commissioners John Solomon and Haakin Peay voted yes. A fourth member was absent.

However, no replacement bylaws were introduced.

The board is charged with overseeing the actions of the police department, including officer-involved shootings and allegations of police misconduct.

“The commission really wants to take its time to really think about it,” the board’s executive director Tonya McCleary said.

McCleary says it’s not required to have bylaws to function, but some governmental experts, including the Committee of Seventy executive director Lauren Cristella, say that’s not good practice.

“I think operating without any bylaws is risky behavior, right? And it can only lead to more questions and, less defined, less transparent process,” Cristella said.

“If the commission requirement is to have so many members and they’re well below that number, then the question is, can you adequately carry out your business?” Charles Elson, of the University of Delaware, told NBC10.

The board of nine is down to four members following a mass resignation last year, a suspension and the chair stepping down.

Elson also questioned whether the commission even has a quorum.

The bylaws that the three members rescinded define a quorum as five members, or half the commission plus one.

“I think someone would have a very good argument that their actions at this point are not effective because they, in fact, don’t have the necessary complement,” Elson explained.

McCleary says they believe the board’s actions are legally sound. She says the commissioners want to have new bylaws before new members join.

“They want to make sure that in the orientations and things of that nature that people understand what the work is,” McCleary said.

A selection panel appointed by city council and the mayor is currently reviewing applications for new commissioners.

“The hope is to have the slate ready by October,” according to McCleary.

In the meantime, the remaining members will continue to make decisions.

“The goal of the commission is to increase trust between government, law enforcement and residents of Philadelphia. And this level of dysfunction is only going to breed more distrust,” Cristella said.

If you’d like to apply for a spot on the commission, the panel is taking applications until this Friday, August 23. Find the application by clicking here.

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“Even the plants are withering,” said Wilson, outside her Kingsessing home. “It’s hot.”

Even on hot days, she ventures outside to care of them and when she does, she comes prepared with an umbrella, finding solace in the shade.

There isn’t a lot of natural shade on her street. The entire block only had two trees. That, combined with the constant flow of traffic, all the concrete, and other factors make her block hotter than many in Philadelphia. 

According to the non-profit, non-partisan group Climate Central, this area can be around 9 degrees warmer than the forecasted temperature.

“I didn’t really realize it was that much hotter over here,” Wilson admitted.

She lives in what’s called an urban heat island. These are places, primarily in cities, that tend to be hotter than outlying areas due to density as well as infrastructure like buildings, paved roads, parking lots as well as emissions from industry and transportation. The impacts are felt most during the summer months since the roads and buildings can absorb and retain the heat during the day and radiate it back into the surrounding air. 

Kingsessing isn’t our only neighborhood that feels warmer. Climate Central analyzed data by overlaying city maps on top of land cover types, estimating how much hotter certain areas are down to the Census block level. 

In Philadelphia, the intensity varies from about 5 degrees along the Delaware River, near the airport to 13 degrees near Dilworth Park. 

The hottest areas are concentrated around Center City, which makes sense, according to Jen Brady, the researcher leading the project. 

“You have all of this happening in very small spaces, emitting all of this waste heat, putting it into the environment and making it much hotter and then it has nowhere to go with big buildings,” Brady said. 

But many of these locations are in residential areas, such as Wilson’s.

In fact, more than a third of Philadelphia residents live in a place where the temperature can feel at least 9 degrees warmer than what’s forecasted, the Princeton-based group’s analysis found.

Brady says the real risk is baseline temperatures are increasing because of climate change which means these heat islands will be even hotter.  

“We’re looking at temperatures that are dangerous for people, to human health,” said Brady. “They’re dangerous to your life for many people.”

Prolonged periods with elevated temperatures can have long term effects that can contribute to heat-related death and illness, according to the EPA. There are disparities in Philadelphia for where these heat islands exist, the NBC10 Investigators found. 

People who identify as Hispanic are overrepresented in the hottest areas. 

In addition to that, the median annual income for areas that are the hottest sits around $34,900, which is well below the city’s average, according to Census data. It is also in contrast to the areas where it doesn’t feel as hot. Those locations have a median income around $71,000.

Brady says that means that people who live in these hotter areas might not have the means or resources to stay cool, further exasperating risks.

Brady also says there are solutions cities and citizens can implement to lower temperatures in their areas. For example, developers can construct buildings with green roofs. She says she has seen people painting streets and sidewalks so they aren’t as hot. 

Through a research project funded by the William Penn Foundation, Drexel has partnered with community organizations to put in 500 plant benches in neighborhoods across Philadelphia, including Kingsessing where Wilson lives. 

She says she is hopeful there will be some long-term solutions going forward but for now, she will care for her plants and put up her umbrella. 

“It’s important to have something that causes a little less heat in the neighborhood,” she said.

On Wednesday, April 24, around 1:30 p.m., a red Taurus crashed into a concrete bridge embankment on Rt. 322 in Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania. Four of the seven people in the vehicle – Isaiah Miller, 20, Ikeam Rogers, 20, Kalyn Billups, 21, and Tyjana Motley, 17, — died in the crash. Motley’s unborn child was also pronounced dead at the hospital.

“Our hearts and sympathy go out to those who lost their lives and their families, and everyone who was a part of that,” Pennsylvania State Police Lieutenant Adam Reed said.

As the investigation into the crash continues, several questions remain, including whether or not state troopers should have been pursuing the vehicle in the first place. While state law requires Pennsylvania State Police to keep their full pursuit policy private, Lt. Reed – who serves as the Pa. State Police communications director – revealed some of the basic facets of the policy.

He told NBC10 that last week’s ordeal began when state troopers were monitoring the Brinton Lake Shopping Center in Concord Township due to recent retail theft. They then spotted the red Taurus.

“They saw a vehicle in which the occupants were acting suspiciously,” Lt. Reed said.

State Police said the Taurus had a tinted front windshield, expired inspection stickers and a paper tag obscured by a tinted license plate cover.

“The reason for the stop was going to be the said equipment violations,” Lt. Reed said. “And the operator chose not to stop and the pursuit ensued.”

Lt. Reed said it’s state police policy to pursue a car if the driver doesn’t stop.

“Our pursuit policy does allow for our members to pursue a vehicle if the driver chooses not to yield during an attempted traffic stop,” he said.

“And it doesn’t matter what the violation may be?” NBC10 investigative reporter Claudia Vargas asked.

“It doesn’t matter what the violation is,” Reed replied.

Reed said troopers have to weigh their duty to apprehend a violator against the risk to public safety.

“I’m not going to offer any second guesses or weigh in on the decision at the time because again, every decision is different and things happen very quickly,” he said.

Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the incident internally.

Last week’s pursuit is part of a rising increase in police chases in Pennsylvania and involving state police, in particular. The number of pursuits by state police assigned to Philadelphia and its surrounding counties rose from 127 in 2019 to 373 in 2023, according to state police data.

During that time, state police pursuits have led to 200 injuries in our area as well as five deaths in 2022 and 2023.

State Police track all police pursuits in the state and is constantly updating the data on their pursuit reporting website.

Reed said he wasn’t able to answer why there’s been an increase in state police pursuits.

“You would have to ask the individuals that are choosing to flee from us,” he said.

“Well, I’m asking from the police perspective,” Claudia Vargas replied. “You guys are actively choosing to pursue some of these vehicles.”

“Well the people are choosing to run from us, you know, and we are doing our duty to attempt to apprehend them,” Reed said.

The rise in police pursuits isn’t just a local trend. Geoff Alpert – a University of South Carolina criminology and criminal justice professor who has studied police pursuits for several decades – says chases have been on the rise nationally in recent years.

“Post-COVID, we’ve seen some movement where departments are relaxing that standard,” Alpert said. “And now we’re seeing because of that relaxation, I think we’re seeing the pursuits like you’re discussing.”

Alpert said last week’s chase in Upper Chichester and others like it are inappropriate.

“They’re extremely risky with no real reason to pursue the person,” he said.

Alpert was part of a working group with the Police Executive Research Forum that issued a 160-page guide for law enforcement agencies to manage risks associated with pursuits. The 2023 report had one main recommendation.

“Pursuits should take place only when two very specific standards are met,” the report states. “(1) A violent crime has been committed and (2) the suspect poses an imminent threat to commit another violent crime.”

“Just because I don’t chase you, it doesn’t mean I can’t try to find where you were, try to find who you are,” Alpert said. “And in many cases, be able to apprehend you later.”

Reed, meanwhile, told NBC10 the Pa. State Police pursuit policy has not changed and that people need to stop when a trooper asks them to stop. Otherwise, state police are authorized to pursue.

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“I was the third person here,” Johnson said. “There were several people here already charging.”

Some of those people charging were city workers from the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

“The city should get its own charging station,” Johnson said. “That will allow us Uber drivers and people who have their personal cars to be able to not have to wait as long.”

The city has its own chargers but doesn’t have enough of them.

In December, the NBC10 Investigators reported that the city has 107 chargers for 261 electric vehicles. L&I has more than 100 of those cars and instead of having their own chargers, those workers are told to use public fast chargers.

Gabriel Li of AFSCME DC47 Local 2187 represents L&I inspectors, most of whom have a take-home electric vehicle.

“it’s a waste of time for the workers to be waiting to charge,” Li told NBC10. “We are asking that they get electric vehicle chargers behind locked gates that only municipal workers can access.”

That may happen in the coming years. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier is the chair of City Council’s Committee on the Environment. She also pushed for L&I to have the electric vehicles they currently have.

“I brought it up to the current Parker administration that we need to remedy in the upcoming budget and I think they are planning to do that,” Gauthier said.

Gauthier pointed to a budget presentation the administration made showing $5.6 million would go to new electric vehicle infrastructure over the next five years.

“Sorely needed not just by L&I inspectors but employees across the city who need to use the cars and have them charged,’ Gauthier said.

The Parker Administration hasn’t said when or if it plans to provide L&I with its own chargers. The administration is currently dealing with another electric vehicle charger infrastructure issue it inherited. None of the municipal EV chargers in Philly were installed with the required permits. Following reporting from the NBC10 Investigators, L&I cited the various city departments with violations that carry a $300 fine. The Parker Administration doesn’t plan on paying those fines, however.

“In the interest of not wasting tax dollars and resources, no City agencies will be charged fines for not having a permit to install the electrical chargers,” a Parker Administration spokesperson told NBC10.  

The administration said it is working to get licensed electricians to get permits for existing chargers and future installations. The Parker Administration spokesperson said they are working to “make sure we are well prepared – and in compliance with permits – to be ready for the next level of EVs for City use.”

“It was gorgeous. It was a nice neighborhood, family, you know, village,” Smith said.

Throughout the decades, properties on his block have fallen into disrepair. Smith says older owners died and their children either left the properties vacant or sold them – sometimes to speculators who also left them vacant.

One of those homes has two city demolition notices posted on the door. In 2022, it was cited as imminently dangerous by the Philadelphia Department of License and Inspections.

According to Philly’s building code, imminently dangerous structures need to be repaired or demolished due to the risk of collapse.

“The city was going to demolish it,” Smith told NBC10. “But they never came around.”

A spokesperson for L&I said the owners asked for more time to try to repair the house or demolish it themselves.

One of the owners told us she is weighing her options.

The Marston Street property is one example of similar sites in the city.

The NBC10 Investigators found 112 properties deemed to be imminently dangerous are still in disrepair more than one year after receiving the L&I violation. Some going back to 2020.

Thousands more properties that were cited as “unsafe” also have open violations, dating back to 2017.  

When L&I deems a property unsafe it means it is “dangerous to the life, health, property or safety of the public or the occupants of the structure,” according to Philly’s building code.  

A home on the 12000 block of Elmore Street in the city’s Northeast neighborhood was cited as unsafe in 2017 due to loose and missing bricks, according to L&I. 

“It’s an eyesore and it’s a danger,” said Bob Naylis who lives across the street from the unsafe property. 

The home failed 13 inspections after its initial citation — and still appears as unsafe in city records. 

“I think it’s going to take someone getting hurt, hopefully not killed, and then maybe the city will do something,” Naylis said.

Shortly after we spoke with Naylis, a nonprofit went to court to petition to become the conservator of the property to fix it and then potentially sell it. 

That move, according to the lawyer for the children of the deceased property owner, pushed the siblings to take action.  

“The court process forced the heirs to set aside their issues, and finally repair the house,” Don Nogowski said.   

That is something that L&I had not been able to do for years.

It’s unclear if the new administration will be able to get better compliance in those situations. 

Philly’s new Managing Director Adam Thiel says the Parker administration’s decision to split L&I into two departments is in part to focus on issues such as unsafe and imminently dangerous properties. He says they are looking to increase staffing in L&I but also the law department to address dangerous properties. 

“How to increase service, how to increase compliance,” he said. 

But even with increases in budget and staffing, he says they will still have limited resources. 

“Make sure that we’re hitting the worst actors first,” he said. 

That’s what the Kenney administration previously did– focused on the properties they considered to be most dangerous. 

And still, properties have lingered for years with active unsafe and imminently dangerous violations. 

In one case, we learned of a woman who is living in a Point Breeze property that was deemed imminently dangerous in January 2021. 

According to the code, it is unlawful to enter an imminently dangerous property– unless it is to repair or demolish it. 

“Until we can provide great alternatives for people, which is another thing that we are absolutely doing, these are, it’s a difficult space,” Thiel said. 

A staffer for Council President Kenyatta Johnson went to the woman’s home after we asked about her situation.

Johnson’s spokesman said he connected the woman with the office to see how they may be able to help. But he said that she wouldn’t qualify for many of the city’s programs that help families repair their homes because she is not the deed holder of the property. Plus she has tax delinquency and the city has taken her to court over the imminently dangerous violations, all of which make her ineligible. 

Multiple attempts to reach the Point Breeze resident were unsuccessful. 

Parallel to the Parker administration’s splitting of L&I, the City Controller is investigating the agency. 

“We’re looking into L&I’s enforcement of their codes,” Controller Christy Brady said. 

Brady said she did not know that imminently dangerous properties aren’t being immediately repaired or demolished – as mandated by the code.  

“Thank you for letting me know, because, you know, it’s something that we’ll take a look at, while we’re [investigating] L&I,” she said. 

The controller’s audit will now include L&I’s enforcement of dangerous properties.

She identified as a man then, going by a different first name.

Spain pled guilty to sexual misconduct down from a third-degree rape charge.

As part of her sentence, she was required to register as a sex offender for two decades.

But, after moving to New Jersey in 2018, she stopped registering.

Officials in Cumberland County issued a warrant for her arrest in 2019.

Sometime after that, Spain transitioned to identifying as a woman and going by the name Celena.

She moved to Pennsylvania and started volunteering at two area churches while never disclosing her past.

Since she didn’t register as a sex offender in Pennsylvania, as she was supposed to, no one at the churches would have known of her sex offender status.

“It’s alarming to the community that she was out there in plain view,” said Robert Clark, supervisory deputy of the Eastern District Pennsylvania Office of the U.S. Marshals. 

Cumberland County referred Spain’s case to the U.S. Marshals last year after a detective there found evidence of her living in Philadelphia.

The Marshals found Spain and arrested her last summer at her Philadelphia home. She was charged with failure to register, which is a federal felony offense.

“I think she was able to avoid authorities because she had crossed state lines and no one had brought it to the more serious attention,” Clark said.

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Spain is not the only person who went missing for years from the required sex offender registries.

As of Feb. 1, more than 1,000 sex offenders in our tri-state region were in violation of state registry laws.

Of those, at least 320 had active warrants for their arrest for failure to register as a sex offender. They are known as absconding sex offenders.

“It is an emerging area that we’re starting to prosecute and that we’re seeing more and more violations of,” said Michelle Rotella, Assistant U.S. Attorney with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She oversees the district’s child sexual exploitation cases. 

Rotella says part of the issue is that each state has its own sex offender registry with its own rules.

“There’s not always sharing among different states in terms of registration information,” she said. 

The NBC10 Investigators found one example of a man who has been listed as an absconder in Pennsylvania since 2021, but is registered and in compliance in Florida.

We called the Florida sex offender registry and an official there told us that a sheriff’s deputy had just done a site visit a few weeks prior and confirmed the man was living there and did not have a warrant for his arrest.

When we checked with the Pennsylvania State Police, they said otherwise.

“Just because they absconded up here and properly registered elsewhere, they would still be considered absconded,” said Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson Lt. Adam Reed.

But, when we checked with police in Philadelphia and the District Attorney’s Office they said no such warrant exists for the man.

“There’s no one blanket registration that covers the United States, so it does present difficulties,” Rotella said. 

So, when sex offenders go missing from registries, Rotella says it takes good old-fashioned police work.

“A lot of times they’re moving to another jurisdiction. There are people who have changed their names. Maybe they’re not working,” she said. “It takes investigation to be able to locate somebody.”

Clark says as the number of absconder cases keeps rising, it’s getting harder for law enforcement to keep up.

“There’s hundreds of non-compliant sex offenders and there’s not as many investigators to go after them,” he said. 

Absconding sex offender cases only go to the U.S. Marshals if there is some belief or evidence that a sex offender has crossed state lines. Otherwise, the local jurisdictions would investigate the cases and try to find the person.

Since Spain was arrested and charged with failing to register, she now appears on Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law list.

Failing to register usually carries mandatory prison time, but Spain received four years probation for her violation.

Rotella said investigators didn’t find any evidence of other criminal activity or any child sexual exploitation in Spain’s case, hence the lack of prison time.

Spain declined to speak with us.

During her sentencing, she apologized to the judge and said, “I made a mistake. It doesn’t define who I am.”

She said she will continue to be “a better person for myself and my children.”

Parker not only inherited dozens of municipal electric vehicle chargers lacking permits and inspections but she will also now have to respond to a Licenses and Inspections audit that looks at the department’s loss of productivity as a result of its EV charging policy.

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City Controller Christy Brady launched an audit into L&I earlier this year and quickly realized the department’s use of public fast chargers is an issue.

“I wasn’t even thinking I was going to look in this direction…the lack of infrastructure in the city being a problem for the inspectors to do their jobs,” Brady said in an interview.

But when she kept hearing from inspectors about how they spend up to 20% of their working hours charging their vehicles, she said she had to look into it.

The NBC10 Investigators heard and saw the same.

Our investigation found none of L&I’s buildings are equipped with EV chargers. Yet, L&I has more than 100 cars of the city’s electric vehicle fleet assigned to its inspectors.

That’s the most of any department.

So, inspectors have to drive to certain public fast charging stations during their workday to charge.

Those stations sometimes get backed up with people waiting and Brady said inspectors have raised public safety concerns.

“Inspectors have come forth talking about safety issues with people cutting lines and then having altercations at these charging stations,” she said.

L&I’s audit could take a year to complete, Brady said.

She said “it’s a shame” for the city to buy EVs and then not have proper infrastructure.

“It’s a great initiative to be greener and cleaner. But, not having the infrastructure in places is definitely a problem,” she said.

The city does have chargers placed at buildings and parking lots for other departments with EVs, such as the Free Library, Water and Health departments.

However, the NBC10 Investigators found that none of those chargers were installed with the required permits and inspections.

Following our reporting in December, L&I issued violations to the city’s 54 EV charger sites.

According to an L&I spokesperson, each violation comes with a $300 fine which is not much considering the city’s more than $6 billion budget.

But, it is something the city’s new Managing Director Adam Thiel says will now be addressed by the Parker administration.

We’re looking into it, dealing with it,” Thiel said following a news conference this week announcing a pilot program to train people in EV supplies and infrastructure. “I think going forward we want to make sure that any of those installations are done 100% properly according to all the rules, regulations and codes.”

L&I records show that the city’s EV chargers failed a second round of inspections in late January.

Thiel says the administration has not yet determined who installed the city chargers.

“We have not gotten to the bottom of it. Like I said, this is day 40-whatever. We’re dealing with a whole range of issues,” he said.

The city currently has 107 charges installed – with more to come.

Records obtained by the NBC10 Investigators through a public record request show that the city purchased 170 EV chargers.

Thiel said the city doesn’t have a date yet for when more chargers will be put into service.

“We need to have more qualified workers to install this type of infrastructure,” according to Thiel.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

The often used line is: “There is a $20,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction” of a suspect. 

That goes for every homicide case. 

Since 2017, the city has experienced more than 2,600 homicides. 

If a tip had led to the arrest and conviction of every suspect in those cases, the city would be out $52 million. 

But a review of the city’s payouts by the NBC10 Investigators show that tips in just 1 percent of the cases — 29 homicides — have led to rewards. 

Taxpayers have paid $560,000 in rewards in the last seven years. 

That’s despite Philly having one of the most generous reward programs in the country, according to University of Loyola-Chicago criminology professor Arthur Lurigio. 

“$20,000, this is a sizable reward amount and it would make a difference in a family’s life,” he said.  

But it’s not always easy for witnesses or informants to come forward. They may distrust police or fear being labeled a rat.

“There’s a great fear of retaliation among residents,” Lurigio said.

Lurigio says $20,000 may incentivize people to come forward. 

“It should overcome a lot of hesitancy,” he said. 

It’s unclear how many tips police did receive because of the reward incentive. 

Philadelphia Police don’t track how police decide whether a tip is “essential” in arresting a suspected– and ultimately a conviction.    

“That information has to help us develop probable cause to make the arrest. That information has to be information that’s new to us,” said interim First Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore. 

Once someone has submitted a tip, it can take a while to be paid. First, the case has to go through the court system and end in a conviction. Then, there are multiple checkpoints in the Police Department’s bureaucracy to verify the information was legit and served its purpose. 

“Whatever piece of information they provide, it has to be documented with that memorandum that that detective will submit that to their sergeant eventually,” Vanore said. 

It continues up the chain of command until reaching the deputy commissioners– and the city’s managing director, who has final say. 

Vanore says some of the tips they do get don’t always qualify for a reward.

“We are glad they came forward because they may have corroborated something, but they weren’t really the essential information that led to the arrest of the individual,” he said. 

An informant whose identity we are concealing to protect their safety, told us that the process needs more transparency. 

“Communication would be the key to how things are dispersed or how things are done,” the informant said. 

The informant provided police information that led to the arrest of a homicide suspect in 2020. The suspect was convicted of murder earlier this year. 

“I myself reached out to the detective inquiring about the paperwork and was informed that he submitted the paperwork right after the trial,” the informant said. 

But the informant says it’s been months without hearing from police regarding the reward.

“It’s like they got the information they needed and they just forgot about me,” the informant said. 

Vanore said that person’s reward case is still pending. 

“There’s other cooperation we need to get back through to, you know, ensure that the person did provide essential information,” he said, adding that everything needs to be vetted. 

But the informant says they believed that the tip they provided that led to an arrest had already been vetted. 

“I thought it would be cut and dry. They don’t advertise that. That here’s a whole review board or commissioners board that you have to go in front of or be subjected to,” the informant said. 

Lurigio says police could post decisions on rewards online so the public can see. But providing transparency in the actual process is a balancing act that ultimately weighs more towards public trust.   

“They’d have to believe in the integrity of the police department,” he said. “They’d have to believe that that’s credible information because the police are credible.”

The city of Philadelphia will pay more than $9 million to a man who spent 28 years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of murdering 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn.

On July 12, 1988, Horn disappeared from her front yard in Philadelphia’s Castor Gardens neighborhood. A few hours later, her body was found stuffed in a cardboard TV box only a few blocks away from her home.

Walter Ogrod lived across the street from Horn’s family at the time of her murder. He was arrested four years later in 1992 after police said he confessed to killing her. Ogrod’s first trial ended in a mistrial in 1993 while he was convicted and sentenced to death in a second trial in 1996.

In 2018, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit took another look at Ogrod’s case. They determined Ogrod was not the killer and instead came up with two potential suspects.

In 2020, Ogrod was released from prison after his conviction was overturned.

The murder of Barbara Jean Horn

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Philly Police Reopen Case into 1988 Murder of Barbara Jean Horn

Ogrod then filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Philadelphia in 2021, accusing the city of wrongful prosecution and the detectives involved in his case of framing him.

On Thursday, the city reached a settlement in which they denied all wrongdoing while Ogrod, now 59-years-old, received $9.1 million from Philadelphia taxpayers.

“This litigation was a long and hard-fought battle that resulted in a significant settlement that will give Walter Ogrod the economic support he needs as he continues re-establishing his life,” Ogrod’s lawyer, Joe Marrone, wrote in a statement. “He remains optimistic about his future and is committed to fighting for his fellow inmates who have also been wrongfully convicted.”

A spokesperson for the city also issued a statement on the settlement.

“The City remains committed to transparency in the pursuit of justice,” the spokesperson wrote. “Although the City’s settlement is not a finding of wrongdoing by any party, the City recognizes the pain and burden to all parties that continued litigation of this lawsuit would bring. The City hopes that this resolution can be a just result for all those affected, and our hearts remain with the family of Barbara Jean Horn as they continue to seek justice for their loved one.”

Judy Rubino, the prosecutor in Ogrod’s second trial, told NBC10 that she was not happy the city settled and hoped the case would go to trial.

Ogrod was surrounded by other exonerees on Monday as he spoke about the settlement.

“So many innocent people in jail right now,” Ogrod said.

Ogrod said he wants to help other wrongfully convicted people recover once they’re released from prison.

“I’d also like to, with this money, help people when they come out to buy a building fixed up and have a place for them to stay,” he said. “Because most of the people after 20, 30, 40 years have no family left. They got no place to go.”

Ogrod’s settlement is the third highest in the city’s history, behind the $9.8 million that Anthony Wright and Chester Hollman were both rewarded in their settlements.

Philadelphia police reopened their investigation of the murder of Barbara Jean Horn following NBC10’s true crime docuseries about the case, which premiered in 2021.

Yobranny Martínez-Fernández, 18, of Camden, New Jersey, Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, also of Camden, and Hendrick Peña-Fernández, 21, of Pennsauken, New Jersey, were all arrested in connection to Mendez’s murder.

Léelo en español aquí

Martinez-Fernández and Batista-Polanco are both charged with murder, attempt to commit criminal homicide of law enforcement officer, criminal homicide of law enforcement officer, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, assault of law enforcement officer, robbery, theft-unlawful taking, theft-receiving stolen property, VUFA-no license, VUFA-on streets, use of communication facility, possession of instrument of crime, simple assault, obstruction of justice, recklessly endangering another person and tampering with evidence.

Peña-Fernández is expected to be charged with the same offenses later on Friday.

The affidavits of probable cause for Martinez-Fernández and Batista-Polanco reveal a more detailed timeline of the deadly shooting and what led to their arrests. 

On Thursday, Oct. 12, shortly after 11 p.m., Philadelphia Police officers Richard Mendez and Raul Ortiz – both assigned to the Airport Unit – were parking their personal vehicles in the parking lot at Philadelphia International Airport on 12 Arrivals Road in Philadelphia to begin their shifts.

Mendez was dressed in his police uniform, minus his duty rig, and was also wearing a holster on his belt at the time. The officers then spotted a man breaking into a Dodge Charger that was parked inside of the parking lot, according to the affidavit. When Officer Ortiz approached the man, a struggle ensued, investigators said. 

Officer Ortiz said he heard several gunshots and then spotted Officer Mendez on the ground, suffering from gunshot wounds. Officer Ortiz also noticed that he himself had been shot in the left arm and that Officer Mendez’s gun was missing from his holster. 

Responding police officers took Officer Mendez to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m. that night. Officer Ortiz was taken to Jefferson Hospital and listed in stable condition. He was released from the hospital a few days later. 

The responding officers secured a crime scene on the first level of garage D at Philly International Airport. They collected evidence, including blood, a black cellphone, eyeglasses, a black key fob in a Ziploc packet, a punch tool commonly used to break glass and a black Dodge Charger with a broken driver side rear window. All of the evidence was processed by officers in the Crime Scene Unit and the Dodge Charger was towed pending a search warrant.

That same night, at 11:12 p.m., an 18-year-old man, later identified as Jesús Hernán Madera Durán, was dropped off at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Durán was suffering from gunshot wounds to the torso and was dropped off by at least one person inside a black Dodge Durango with tinted windows, investigators said.

Durán was pronounced dead at CHOP at 11:37 p.m. Surveillance video which showed Durán being dropped off at the hospital was later obtained by investigators. 

After further investigation, police determined Durán was involved in the initial vehicle break-in at the airport parking garage that Officer Mendez and Officer Ortiz responded to. They also determined that Durán had been shot by his accomplices while they were shooting at the officers. 

On Thursday, Oct. 13, shortly before 1:30 a.m., South Brunswick Police officers responded to Commerce Drive in Cranbury, New Jersey, for a reported fire. When they arrived they found an SUV that was fully engulfed in flames. After firefighters put out the flames and investigators checked the vehicle’s VIN number, they determined it was the same vehicle that was used by the suspects in Officer Mendez’s murder. 

Detectives in New Jersey later obtained surveillance video showing a black Dodge Durango following a black Dodge Charger. An unidentified man then exits the Dodge Charger holding a gas can. More men then exit the Dodge Durango and enter the Dodge Charger. One of the men then uses the gas can to ignite the Dodge Durango in flames before entering the Dodge Charger and leaving the scene. Investigators said the Dodge Charger that the suspects fled in was a different vehicle than the Dodge Charger that had been found at the scene of the shooting.

Investigators then analyzed phone records from Durán’s cell phone and identified three other phones that had been used at the crime scene when Officer Mendez was shot, the Children’s Hospital when Durán had been dropped off and in New Jersey when the Dodge Durango had been burned. Investigators later determined that those phones belonged to Martínez-Fernández, Batista-Polanco, and Hendrick Peña-Fernández.

Martinez-Fernandez was arrested in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on Oct. 16.

During the early morning hours of Oct. 17, U.S. Marshals took Batista-Polanco into custody in New Jersey and brought him in for processing.

At some point between the night of Oct. 17 and the morning of Oct. 18, Batista-Polanco was then taken to Scranton where he faced unrelated burglary charges.

The District Attorney’s Office then approved murder charges for Batista-Polanco in connection to Officer Mendez’s death. He was then transported to the Philadelphia Police Homicide Division on Wednesday.

On the morning of Oct. 19, Batista-Polanco was arraigned in Philadelphia on murder charges and held without bail. Online court records don’t list an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

Police also executed a search warrant at Peña-Fernández’s home in Pennsauken on the morning of Oct. 18, but he wasn’t there at the time, according to investigators. 

Investigators then learned of Peña-Fernández’s location after speaking with other people in the area, police said. Peña-Fernández was located and taken into custody by New Jersey State Police and homicide investigators.

He is currently in custody in Bellmawr, New Jersey, and will be extradited back to Philadelphia to face murder charges.

Police believe one of the three suspects was responsible for shooting Officer Mendez, Officer Ortiz and Duran. They have not yet revealed which suspect pulled the trigger however. 

Police also have not yet recovered Officer Mendez’s missing service weapon, described as a black Glock 9MM semi-automatic handgun.

Finally, while police believe all of the suspects in Officer Mendez’s murder are in custody, they are working to determine if anyone helped the suspects or obstructed the investigation, officials said.

Neftali Velasquez, 38, was released from jail Monday after it was ruled his constitutional rights were violated by the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia during his trial back in 2016.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania submitted the request to dismiss the charges against Velasquez due to a lack of reliable evidence.

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All three witnesses involved in the original case dropped their accusations against Velasquez.

“When you have a prosecution that relies on hiding exculpatory evidence and misleading evidence presented to the jury, the result is innocent people being convicted, and there is a strong belief that is what happened in this case,” Karl Schwartz, Velasquez’s lawyer, said.

Velasquez had been convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole in 2012 in connection to the death of Domingo Rivera.

His lawyers told NBC10 that Velasquez is a family man who is looking forward to getting back to his life outside of a prison cell.

Velasquez’s case is among the 75 in connection to disgraced former Philadelphia homicide detective Philip Nordo that are under investigation by the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.

How the detective’s misconduct set Velasquez free

Nordo was found guilty on a slew of charges, including sexually assaulting witnesses and informants by a grand jury in 2019.

Nordo, 56, was sentenced to up to 49 years in prison.

For Velasquez’s case, Nordo’s misconduct while getting and interviewing a key witness was not shared with the defense team properly.

A second witness had admitted that she did not see the alleged shooter’s face during the 2012 murder of Rivera.

So far there have been seven exonerations, three re-sentencings and more new trials underway for cases connected to Nordo due to the efforts of the District Attorney’s Office.

The lawyers representing a man who was wrongfully convicted of killing 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn in 1988 are asking the city of Philadelphia to test an existing DNA sample.

In a letter to the judge overseeing Walter Ogrod’s civil lawsuit against the city for wrongful prosecution, Ogrod’s lawyer says that they hired a forensic scientist to review the DNA evidence in the case. During that review, the letter says, the scientist found a DNA sample from the plastic bag that was covering the girl’s body when she was found.

“There has never been any analysis of this ‘touch DNA’ from the plastic bag, but the partial sample has been confirmed to be that of a male who is not Walter Ogrod,” the letter said. 

Barbara Jean was killed just a few hours after going missing from her front lawn in broad daylight. She was found two blocks from her home in the city’s Castor Garden section. Her body was wrapped in a plastic bag and placed inside a cardboard TV box.

Walter Ogrod was convicted of the murder in 1996 following two trials. At the time of the murder, he lived across the street from where Barbara Jean Horn and her family lived.

Ogrod was exonerated and released from prison in 2020 following an investigation by the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit. 

Since then, he has sued the city in an attempt to get compensated for the 28 years he served behind bars. 

It was part of that lawsuit that Ogrod’s lawyers sought to look at the DNA in the case.

“There should be additional testing on any DNA that exists,” said Ogrod’s lawyer, Joseph Marrone, outside of court Tuesday. “Technology has come a long way in DNA investigations.” 

Marrone said that no decision was made during Tuesdays’ court hearing. 

The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment, citing pending litigation. 

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

Amanda Jonas Lorentson, a lawyer representing the six women, filed civil complaints this week on their behalf against former Temple assistant coach Antoine Smith, Temple University, and the dog walking app Rover. 

“We feel confident in the basis of our complaints because of the communications that he had with these women during the time that they were in his home,” Lorentson told NBC10. 

According to the complaints, Smith had hired the women to watch his dogs, either through the Rover app or his position at Temple. Lorentson told NBC10 Smith paid the women through Venmo. 

Lorentson said Smith used hidden cameras to record the women while they were in the shower and bedroom. 

“The equipment was disguised as various household objects,” Lorentson said. “Bluetooth speakers, digital alarm clock, AC adapters, and a wall clock.” 

Lorentson said the alleged recording devices violated the wiretapping act. 

“In order for you to record someone, you have to have their permission to record audio,” she said.

Lorentson also said Pennsylvania law goes a step further with video. 

 “That you are not permitted to record someone in a place where they would have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” she said. “Clearly in a place where you’re sleeping, reasonable expectation of privacy, in a bathroom.” 

Lorentson said Smith sent one of the women a text message at the same time she unplugged one of the alleged cameras in the bathroom. 

“That same minute, 5:56 p.m., Antoine Smith, alerted to something we assume, texted her right away, ‘Oh my plans have changed. I can come home,’” Lorentson said. 

Smith denied that the AC adapter was a camera and instead said it was a Bluetooth device, according to text messages provided by Lorentson. 

Lorentson said her client filed a complaint with Philadelphia Police. Police told NBC10 they are investigating the case.  

NBC10 went to Smith’s home for a response to the allegations. He declined to speak with us. His lawyer, Fortunato Perri Jr., issued a statement on his behalf. 

“The allegations being made are false and without merit,” Perri Jr. wrote. “There is no evidence that anyone was observed or recorded in a bathroom or bedroom.” 

Temple University also issued a statement. 

“While Temple University does not comment on personnel matters or pending litigation, we can confirm that Mr. Smith is no longer employed by the university,” a spokesperson wrote. “Temple is currently reviewing the complaint and will respond in the appropriate forum.”

A spokesperson for Rover issued a statement as well. 

“There is no place in our community for people who knowingly violate the privacy of others,” a Rover spokesperson wrote. “After learning of allegations of wrongdoing in April 2022, our 24/7 Trust and Safety team conducted an investigation and removed Mr. Smith from our platform. Although he never booked a pet service through the Rover platform, we take all allegations seriously.”

As for Rover’s response that they canceled Smith’s account more than a year ago, Lorentson told NBC10 Smith had at least two accounts, one of which was active until March of this year. A Rover spokesperson declined to comment on that statement.

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NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

To help the department combat those car thefts, a state task force gifted Philly police 25 automatic license plate readers. They are cameras mounted on top of police cars that take pictures of every license plate they pass and automatically cross reference with a database of stolen and wanted vehicles.

The primary purpose according to the department’s directive was “reducing stolen vehicles, stolen license tags, increasing the recovery of stolen vehicles and increasing the apprehension of offenders in Philadelphia.” 

Fast-forward 10 years and the city has seen a surge of vehicle thefts. More than 6,400 cars were stolen as of the end of April. In 2022, more than 12,000 vehicles were stolen. 

Carjackings have also increased and police have been dealing with the issue of paper license plates. 

All of which, Philadelphia Police Captain Shawn Thrush says, could be addressed with the use of automatic license plate readers.

“That tag will be picked up on our cameras and tracked. So sometimes it does work to our advantage. We can say that this paper tag has been used in these four particular incidents,” Thrush said. 

But the NBC10 Investigators found that Philadelphia is down to one operating automatic license plate reader. We also found no evidence of any arrests or vehicle recoveries happening as a result of the automatic license plate readers — even when more than one was functioning. 

Copies of the last two years of plate reader quarterly reports show 12 million license plates were photographed during that time but zeros are listed all up and down the reports when it came to noting the number of arrests and recoveries or terror watch hits. 

In interviews with several officials within the police department, they said that automatic license plate readers do work and have led to arrests. But there was confusion among top brass as to who keeps track of the data — and if any of it even exists. 

“I would find it hard to believe that they didn’t have any hits that would lead to the recovery of the vehicle. But I’d have to look into it more,” Krista Dahl-Campbell, Deputy Commissioner for Organizational Services, said. 

Dahl-Campbell is in charge of reviewing the quarterly reports compiled by the Real-Time Crime Center. She said she didn’t recall seeing the reports before we showed them to her. 

Following our interview, a department spokesperson, said no other reports exist that track Philly’s license plate readers effectiveness.

“It is safe to say that the reporting mechanisms in place do not accurately capture what ALPRs can do,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail.

The commanding officer for the Real-Time Crime Center, Captain Edward Thompson, signed off on some of the recent quarterly reports that showed zeros all throughout. He compiles those reports based on what the district captain sends up the chain of command. 

“Whatever the captains of the districts are doing with ALPRs and what they’re documenting there, we’re not getting here. We do not get here,” Thompson said in an interview.

He then e-mailed citywide statistics for vehicle recoveries and arrests. But said: “Parsing those by recoveries/arrests because of ALPR isn’t possible with the data we have available.”

Although not listed in any of the quarterly reports, PPD’s major crimes unit had one license plate reader they used until earlier this year. According to a department spokesperson, the officers in that unit kept their own statistics for that plate reader. They show that since 2019, more than 500 vehicles have been recovered and 23 people were arrested.

But the spokesperson told us those numbers are “considered unofficial numbers.”

Meanwhile, the department is expected to receive 200 new license plate readers in the new year. The new batch will also be funded through a state grant using federal dollars. It is in partnership with the District Attorney’s Office. 

The new cameras will be connected with the city’s existing software and so record keeping should be better, Dahl-Campbell said.

“It’s definitely something that I want to pay closer attention to, especially now that we’re going to have the ability to have these in a lot more locations,” she said.

Dahl-Campbell and Thompson said that the city ended up with just one license plate reader from the initial 25 because the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force which funded them stopped paying for maintenance in 2020.

“There were a lot of maintenance problems. A lot of the cars got condemned and they were taken out of the vehicles. So we started losing them,” Thompson said.

By the start of 2021, the department was down to 13 working readers. Officers were still using them for thousands of hours each quarter. 

Then by the last quarter of 2022, five were listed as operational but were used for 467 hours total. 

“They were working for a week. They’re not working. So it wasn’t a full month that they worked,” Thompson said. 

And apparently zero arrests or cars or tags recovered.

Following his murder, Philadelphia police posted surveillance videos on the department’s YouTube page asking for any information on the killers or killing. The video showed the shooters walking away and then leaving in a gray Ford Fusion with a paper license plate. 

“I looked at it over and over and over,” Geneva Hunter, Ravenell’s mom, said. “And I went over and over in my head.”

Hunter didn’t recognize the killers or the car. The case remains unsolved. 

At that time, the paper plate seemed like a unique feature. 

Now, Philadelphia police say they are seeing a trend in the use of paper tags — which can sometimes be legitimate temporary tags — but other times they are fraudulent tags made to look like a temporary tag.

“In the last two years, there’s been a major increase in the use of paper tags,” Philadelphia Police Captain Shawn Trush said. 

Philly police don’t track the number of paper tags used in crimes, but the NBC10 Investigators went to homicides scenes, scoured police surveillance videos and went through court documents to determine how often paper tags were being used in crimes in Philly.

They found that several shootings and unsolved homicides had getaway cars with paper tags such as, the U.S. Mint trailer dime heist, April’s road rage murder in South Philly and the Roxborough High School shooting.

Nov 8, 2021

How Texas Paper License Tags Became a $200M Criminal Enterprise

Some of the teens arrested in the Roxborough shooting were also charged with a homicide from the day before that had a different car involved but it too had a paper tag. And that same car with the paper tag is believed to have been used in another shooting days earlier that left an 8-year-old girl injured. 

The Philly police department’s YouTube page shows suspects driving cars with paper tags in several of the crimes highlighted.

“They don’t want their car identified. So they have a tag on there that makes it less noticeable, but it’s fraudulent and won’t come back to that person,” Thrush said, adding that the paper tags make it more difficult for police to solve the crimes. “It adds another layer of investigation.”

Until earlier this year, Trush oversaw major crimes and the auto squad lot, where vehicles used in crimes are taken for processing. He showed the NBC10 Investigators a number of cars in the lot with paper tags — usually from Delaware. 

“This is a Delaware paper tag here,” he said looking at a van taken by the Narcotics unit, which had a mostly blank paper license plate. “You can see it’s not even filled in. It’s just paper. It’s literally a paper tag.”

Trush said the paper tags issue is not just a Philly thing.

“It’s all up and down the East Coast, I would say across the country at this time,” he said. 

Texas paper plates, for example, have been linked to crimes across the country. And dealerships in Texas were caught selling fraudulent plates. 

The NBC10 Investigators went to the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles to see why Delaware paper plates seems to be showing up at Philly crime scenes. 

The Delaware DMV’s head of Compliance and Investigations Karen Carson said it’s not her agency’s responsibility to figure out the authenticity of Delaware tags used in crimes. 

“We just don’t have the authority there. So that would be up to law enforcement to investigate,” she said. 

But she added it makes sense why we are seeing Delaware tags in our area.

“You’re most likely to see Delaware counterfeit Delaware temporary tags outside of Delaware, obviously, because, you know, the folks in Delaware would be able to recognize them more easily,” Carson said.

We showed her some Delaware tags seen in our area and she noted some were counterfeit. She said real temporary tags are fully printed by the car dealer of the DMV.

“They’re not issued blank and they’re not issued without the information on it,” Carson said.

In Pennsylvania, having a fraudulent tag can range from a summary offense to a misdemeanor crime.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office couldn’t give us an exact number of misdemeanors charged in relation to fraudulent tags. But they say it’s at least 10 since 2021.  

Ravenell’s mom and stepdad said they want law enforcement to do more about paper tags.

“With fake tags you can do all sorts of stuff and get away with it,” Ravenell’s stepdad George Hunter said.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

But even before Sgt. Christopher Fitzgerald was shot and killed, the Temple area was already struggling with increased crime.

An NBC10 Investigators analysis of crime in the Temple Police patrol zone shows that motor vehicle theft went from 5 in 2018 to 118 in 2022. 

Non-fatal shootings rose from 6 to 32 during that time frame. Homicides stayed relatively flat over the last five years.

And there was a decrease in some crimes such as residential burglary and aggravated assault without a firearm.

The changes in crime occurred while Temple and Philadelphia Police had a supplemental patrol agreement in place. Four officers and a supervisor from the 22^nd District were stationed at four different corners within the patrol zone on certain nights. 

“We need significant change, it’s not just one or two more police officers – we need 40 additional,” said Alec Shaffer, a Temple Police officer who also serves as the president of the Temple University Police Association.

Jennifer Griffin was hired as the university’s vice president of public safety in August and oversees Temple Police.

She says the prior agreement with Philadelphia Police was not working. 

“It was only being run out of the 22^nd District and as you know Philadelphia is also down a significant number of police officers,” she said. “By only having it run out of one district you only have those eligible officers so when they are short on staffing that takes priority over any supplemental patrols. So the (Temple) patrols were not being filled.”

Griffin put a pause to the agreement at the end of last year. She told NBC10 she was working on a better model.

Five days after Fitzgerald’s funeral, the partnership between the two agencies was relaunched.

“Since we initiated the modified supplemental patrol, it’s been filled every night,” Griffin said.

While the detail is still the same with four officers and one supervisor, they are now being pulled from districts all over the city rather than only the 22nd. The officers are also on patrol rather than static. 

NBC10 asked Griffin how she would measure the success of the new agreement. 

“A couple of different things. One is just making sure it’s filled,” Griffin replied. “That’s extremely important.” 

Griffin also told NBC10 they would be tracking crime. 

“See if there’s decreases in some of the thefts from vehicles, vandalisms, car jackings, violent crime,” Griffin said. 

Griffin told NBC10 she’s still working on an official plan. She highlighted some of her crime-fighting strategy in a memo earlier this month however.  

It includes creating a dozen strategic and leadership positions from accreditation to training to event operations.

“To align Temple University with best practices and also build the foundation, those positions are important,” she said.

Temple’s public safety budget is $31.5 million. That includes 111 sworn officers, detectives and supervisors as well as 360 security personnel. 

Griffin told NBC10 she wants to hire more police but wouldn’t say how many more.

Like many other police agencies, she says they are having trouble recruiting qualified candidates.

“The good thing is we actually, there’s no cap,” she said. “I’ve been given the affirmative that we can continue to hire as we need.”

Eight Temple Police recruits just graduated last week from the police academy and two more started in the new academy this week. 

The number of total shootings fatal and non-fatal citywide peaked in 2021 and came down slightly in 2022. But the number of shootings in the radius where Temple Police patrols increased in 2022.

Gun Violence in Philadelphia

Click or hover over each point below to see instances of gun violence around Temple University’s police patrol area from 2018 to 2023.

Note: Data is current as of Feb. 16, 2023

Data: Philadelphia Office of the Controller, Temple University • Nina Lin / NBC

The NBC10 Investigators took a look at both fatal and non-fatal shooting data from Philadelphia police and the City Controller. We found that since 2018, the number of shootings within the Temple campus patrol area nearly tripled going from 11 shootings in 2018 to 26 shootings in 2022.

And in 2023, there’s already been at least two shootings, including the fatal one that killed officer Fitzgerald. 

Jason Gravel is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Temple and has studied city crime. He says police — both Philadelphia police and Temple police– are doing all they can.

“They are patrolling, they are out and about, especially given the violence that has been occurring around campus,” Gravel said. “But it’s very hard to prevent these crimes from occurring,” Gravel said.

Still fresh in the minds of people around Temple is the 2021 murder of Temple University Sam Collington. He was killed during an attempted carjacking just one block north of Temple’s campus. 

And the violence continued with brazen, daylight shootings, homicides, carjacking and even home invasions. 

“This is the same trend we are seeing throughout the city,” Gravel said. 

To stop, or stem it, around campus, he said, “would require incredible manpower to be able to do so.”

A Temple spokesperson declined to comment for this story, noting that “today is a day of mourning.”

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A man who has spent a decade in jail for a murder officials say he likely did not commit, is set to be exonerated after a former Philadelphia detective involved in his case was convicted for grooming and sexually assaulting witnesses and informants. 

In December, former Philadelphia Police Detective Philip Nordo, 56, was sentenced to 24.5 to 49 years in prison after being found guilty in June of rape, sexual assault, stalking, official oppression, theft by deception and related crimes. The theft charges relate to him stealing crime reward money in the murder of an off-duty officer and sending it to one of his victims.

A 2019 grand jury report alleged Nordo “groomed” his male victims during ongoing investigations and engaged in conduct to make the men “more susceptible to his sexually assaultive and/ or coercive behavior.”

Nordo was a 20-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department before he was fired in 2017. 

Following the grand jury report, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office began reviewing more than 100 cases Nordo was involved in. 

“We became aware of the misconduct related to Philip Nordo,” Michael Garmisa of the Supervisor of Conviction Integrity Unit, told NBC10. “We launched a sentinel review of every case he was involved in investigating. And the results of that so far have been 12 defendants have received some kind of relief.” 

One of the cases Nordo investigated was the 2010 murder of Stacey Sharpe. Marvin Hill of Philadelphia was ultimately convicted of third-degree murder in that case. 

On Thursday, the same Common Pleas Court judge who convicted Hill in 2013 agreed to release him from SCI Somerset Prison, pending a hearing next month. 

“Evidence that was presented in court showed that he was likely innocent,” Garmisa said. 

Hill is expected to be the 12th person to have their homicide conviction overturned in connection with the investigation into Nordo’s homicide cases. 

“There’s some legal issues that prevented us from formally moving to dismiss the case today,” Garmisa said on Thursday. “It is our intention to do so.” 

Despite the correlation, Hill’s pending release is not because of Nordo’s actions but instead the result of a Pennsylvania superior court determining that Hill’s defense lawyer at his initial trial was ineffective. However, Nordo’s role in the case is also why Hill’s conviction was reviewed in the first place. 

The NBC10 Investigators reached out to that defense attorney for comment. We have not yet heard back.

Marissa Bluestine, the assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania, told NBC10 an exoneration like Hill’s is normally the result of a cascade of errors. 

“If that’s happened in 12 cases, it means yes, there’s an individual who’s involved in all those, but it also means that the system itself, the criminal legal system itself, failed catastrophically to prevent those errors,” she said. 

Bluestine hopes all parties involved will get together to prevent anything similar from happening again. 

“How do we fix our system so that it doesn’t make those errors happen again?” she asked. 

Hill is expected to appear in court in late February. At that point he will be officially exonerated, according to the District Attorney’s Office. He will be the 27th exoneration under Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. 

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

And State Rep. Jim Rigby (R., Cambria, Somerset) is looking into reducing the number of public housing units in Johnstown. 

This comes following an NBC10 investigators report that found people from Philly were moving to Johnstown, into public housing there, and becoming a resident, which qualified them for a Housing Choice Voucher. 

They then can take that voucher anywhere in the country and move into government-subsidized housing. That process is called “Portability.” Hundreds of people have used it to move into Philly subsidized housing, avoiding the years-long and closed waitlist. 

 “The story that you ran first, you know, this portability, they’re finding a loophole that’s enabling them to essentially game the system,” Langerholc said. 

Langerholc, who is a former assistant district attorney, said some of the Philadelphians moving to Johnstown for the public housing and voucher have criminal records. He thinks he can change that via state law. 

“How they deal with certain individuals with respect to criminal violations,” Langerholc said. “Those are things that we can work on in conjunction with our county district attorney as well as on the state level.” 

But Mike Alberts, who heads the Johnstown Housing Authority, said he would rather have state help on the funding side. 

Since the NBC10 Investigators started working on the housing loophole story, the Philadelphia Housing Authority has gone from paying for the people moving from Johnstown to Philly — to now billing Johnstown for those vouchers. 

“We’re paying two to three times more than what it would cost us to pay for the rental assistance payment for a family here in Cambria County,” Alberts said. 

But the state legislators in his area said his agency has too many vouchers and too many public housing units for a declining population. 

As for what HUD plans to do, if anything, it remains unclear. The agency didn’t respond to a request seeking comment. 

Alberts did say that the regional office for HUD reached out to him following the story to learn more about his agency’s particular challenges when it comes to porting. 

“Even though they are aware of this, they’re using the published report as a springboard to have further discussions with headquarters in D.C.,” he said.

“It’s panicking! You’re scared, you don’t know what to do,” she said outside Edward Gideon School, where her son is a kindergartener.

But once the lockdown ends, Jessica’s worry doesn’t stop.

“It’s a distraction. It’s hard to pick [learning] back up after that happens, so I think it does affect the school,” she explained. “I think it affects the children, and if it’s affecting the school, the parent.”

School safety experts and the School District of Philadelphia agree that frequent school lockdowns can be traumatic for some students and can result in learning loss. But the trauma can be reduced by practicing the lockdowns — essentially having lockdown drills. 

Through a public records request, the NBC10 Investigators obtained school lockdown logs kept by the district — as well as school security, or lockdown, drills. 

The records showed that between 2018 and September 2022, there were 342 lockdowns for reasons ranging from gunshots and police activity in the area, to fights and intruders inside school buildings.

“Frankly if you’re a school right now in 2022, you’re probably going to face a lockdown situation,” said Amy Klinger, a school safety expert with the non-profit Educator’s School Safety Network. “It’s just a question of how severe it’s going to be.”

The number of yearly lockdowns in Philadelphia decreased after the pandemic, but according to Klinger, lockdowns are increasing across the country

Klinger explained frequent lockdowns can be traumatic, but don’t have to be if schools are prepared through proper drilling.

“Because the anxiety comes from, ‘I don’t know what to do. No one knows what they’re doing.’ That’s where the anxiety comes from,” she said.

Above is a map of school lockdown drills in the School District of Philadelphia during the 2021-22 school year. The light orange dots represent shooting incidents. Red dots marked with an asterisk represent schools where a lockdown drill was not completed, according to district data, but district officials say were completed and either not uploaded into the city’s system or completed too late for the data to be loaded into the system.

The NBC10 Investigators also requested the School District of Philadelphia’s security drill logs. 

Security drills, which are usually referred to as lockdown drills, have been mandated by the state since 2018. Each school is supposed to have a lockdown drill within the first 90 days of the school year. 

According to data provided by the district and filed with the state, 22 schools in Philly did not have a security drill in the 2021-22 school year. 

The district’s Chief Safety Executive Kevin Bethel said he wasn’t aware  of schools not having done their drills until the NBC10 Investigators asked about it. 

“It ultimately would lead to me being made aware,” Bethel said.

But he added that after doing an internal review of the data, his office determined that it was five schools that missed the drills. The rest of the schools, he said, did the drills but either did not input in the system or did the drills past the state-mandated deadline.  

“I’ve been dealing with kids being killed at my school. Two homicides at my school. Guns coming into my school. Shootings at my school. Violence at my school,” Bethel said. “My world doesn’t just sit around these drills and sitting here looking at a sheet of paper to see if they drill. So, that’s not to diminish those, but also put it into the reality of the world that I deal with.”

The state Department of Education is supposed to keep tabs on each district certifying that they did the drills. 

Officials at the department, however, declined our numerous requests for an interview. In an e-mailed statement, a department spokesperson says, part:

“PDE could initiate the educator discipline process if it there was a situation where that was warranted, but we’re not aware of that being done in the past.” 

Pennsylvania Rep. Gary Day (R., Lehigh, Berks) was the main sponsor of the bill that led to the drilling mandate. He says the state should be making sure districts are complying with the law. 

“I would hope the first step would be to reach out to the school district, aid them in whatever is, keeping them from being able to do that and then, you know, and progressively move towards different types of discipline,” Day said. 

The punishment for not completing a security drill is a misdemeanor crime. 

“Man, I didn’t think we would need legislation to tell people to do this. I thought this would be obvious,” Day said. 

As for the lockdowns themselves, Chief Bethel acknowledged the trauma to students can be “significant.”

But he explained the district has implemented changes in recent years to limit the anxiety and learning loss.

There are now three tiers of lockdowns in district schools: Hold, Secure, and Full Lockdown.

A hold status means students can continue learning—they’re just kept in classrooms during an emergency inside a school building like a fight.

A secure status means no one is allowed in or out of the building in the case of a danger outside the school—like gunshots in the area.

A full lockdown means there is a direct threat to the school, and only a full lockdown requires stopping teaching, locking doors, and sheltering in place.

“I think that breaking [these tiers] apart enables us to lower the trauma that impacts our children…[and] the staff as well and the school leaders as well. I think it’s a combined community,” said Bethel.

While lockdowns are nerve-wracking, Jessica still believes the best place for her son AJ is at school.

“I like to think they have my best interests, and my son’s best interests at heart,” she said.

“[West Philly] represents so much culture, so much promise, so much future, and new beginnings,” Honore told NBC 10.

But falling asleep in her neighborhood can be a challenge sometimes.

“Some of the issues that have to do with safety, some of the things that have to do with family dynamics, and finances — all of these make a great recipe for stress,” explained Honore.

“And stress is what keeps you up. That’s what really affects the quality of rest you’re getting.”

Sleep experts argue the less sleep people get, the more susceptible they will be to poor health.

And how much you sleep can vary drastically just based on where you live. 

The Centers for Disease Control measures sleep quality by counting the percentage of adults in an area, who report getting less than seven hours of sleep a day.

The NBC Investigators analyzed CDC sleep quality data for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and learned 45% of all residents in Rachel’s West Philly zip code get less than seven hours of sleep a night.

But just one zip code over in Rittenhouse Square that sleep quality number drops to 35 percent.

Many of the Philadelphia zip codes with the worst sleep quality, also were lower income zip codes. CDC data showed many of these neighborhoods also had high rates of asthma, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Some of the zip codes with the best sleep quality were the most affluent in the city and had some of the lowest instances of high blood pressure asthma and diabetes.

“The surrounding environment is critically important in either promoting healthy sleep or leading to poor sleep,” said Ariel Williamson PH. D., a clinical psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who researches sleep disparities.

In 2020, Williamson co-published an article showing how much sleep you get can depend on socioeconomic status, racism, neighborhood segregation, and geography.

The study says factors like light and noise pollution, crime, and employment traits like shift work can all contribute to lack of sleep.

“All of this is connected, so promoting sleep health is also that can promote broader health. And the attention should really be on the communities that have been under-resourced,” argued Williamson.

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Dr. Maria Elena Vega Sanchez from Temple University Hospital added that lack of access to health care or a sleep doctor can also lead to poor sleep.

“You may have an underlying sleep problem that you don’t even know that you have, and you’re not seeking treatment because you don’t think there’s a problem,” said Dr. Vega.

The sleep doctor explained you no longer have to come in to a hospital or sleep clinic to get diagnosed.

There are new technologies the size of a smartwatch that patients can take home and wear to identify sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.

In many cases, once a disorder is diagnosed, it can be fixed easily.

“It will improve your quality of life — of sleep — you’ll have more energy, and it will reduce your risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality so there is a big impact there,” said Dr. Vega. 

While the City of Philadelphia doesn’t have any specific programs dedicated specifically to sleep inequality, the city is working on other contributing factors such as tree cover and crime reduction.

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NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

That is, she did until a night in February during a delivery in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia.

“When I turned around, I see him getting in my car as I ran down the steps like this,” Dorsey said, describing an incident in which she was carjacked. “I opened my passenger door and tried to push him out the car, and when I was pushing him out, he put he gun in my face and was like get out get out.”

She is one of 768 carjacking victims in 2022 through July 25, a total that is on pace to smash the record set in 2021. NBC10 Investigators analyzed police department data for more than 2,100 carjacking incidents that occurred between the start of 2018 and mid-2022. What the analysis revealed is the months and times of day when carjackings are happening most often, and where in the city the incidents have occurred.

City police officials say the meteoric rise can be attributed mostly to young people who aren't acting in coordination with any large-scale rings or organized crime groups.

"The organized rings are few and far between," Philadelphia Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said. "I think most of the stuff we’re seeing are kids using it for a variety of reasons, whether it’s to commit another crime, to joyride, to try and get the car for some kind of profit and sell the car."

Why carjackings are happening more since 2020, Vanore couldn't say. One thing that's for sure is that the crime is occurring in many neighborhoods.

Here's Where Carjackings are Taking Place in Philadelphia

Source: Philadelphia Police Department
Credit: Andrew Williams / NBC

Three vehicle brands make up nearly one-third of all carjackings, according to the incident data.

Toyotas, Hondas and Chevys Top the List of the Most Carjacked Vehicles in Philadelphia

Nearly 30% of the cars carjacked since 2018 were of a Toyota, Honda or Chevrolet make. Some of the most popular models to carjack were the Accord and Civic from Honda and the RAV4, Camry and Corolla from Toyota.

Note: Some incidents don't list make or model
Source: Philadelphia Police Department
Credit: Andrew Williams / NBC

One of the more unexpected findings from the four-plus years of data is that colder months -- when there are less daylight hours -- have the most carjackings.

Carjackings Rise Sharply as the Weather Cools

Most carjackings in recent years have happened during colder months like December, October and November. Despite the warmer weather, summer months like June and July have lower rates of carjackings.

Note: This chart does not include 2022
Source: Philadelphia Police Department
Credit: Andrew Williams / NBC

After nightfall is when most carjackings occur, particularly between 8 p.m. and midnight.

Philadelphia police have some tips for making yourself less of a target of would-be carjackers:

“We’re noticing after we do our interviews, a lot of people that are sitting on their cars are on their phones. So they’re not paying attention to their surroundings—not seeing what’s going on—and they’re getting surprised by the offenders," Vanore said. "Out of our carjackings this year especially, 65% or more have been parked, meaning either the owner standing outside their car or they’re sitting in their car, or they just parked and are walking away from their car, because that [carjacker] needs the keys."

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Tips for Avoiding Carjackings

Be extra aware when:

• Getting in and out of your car while the car is on
• At gas stations
• In parking lots and garages
• Near ATMs
• On streets with poor lighting

And whether you’re a delivery driver or unloading your car, don’t leave your car idling.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

After former President Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney vowed that his city would honor the accord.

Part of the plan Philly released then was that by 2030 all city government buildings would be powered by renewable energy. Solar energy would play a big role. 

And so, in 2019, the Philadelphia Energy Authority signed a contract to build a 70-megawatt solar farm in Straban Township, Adams County — a rural part of South-Central Pennsylvania. The array would produce 22% of the energy the city needs to power all of its facilities. 

“More available land in the right amount of space,” said Dominic McCraw, the city’s energy manager, on the city’s choice of location for the project. 

The project was to be operational by October 31, 2020. 

But when the NBC10 Investigators drove out last month to Straban Township, all we found were empty farm fields with tall grass growing on them — not a solar panel in sight. 

McCraw said the pandemic is to blame for the years-long delay of the project. 

“There was a state mandate to, like, not even have construction projects move forward,” he said, referencing Governor Wolf’s six-week construction moratorium in the spring of 2020. “Then also, you know, the supply chain issues which ended up causing issues as well.”

An NBC10 investigation found that Philly’s project has been sold three times with none of the developers putting a shovel in the ground. The project has been at a standstill since Straban Township gave the project preliminary approval in 2019. Meanwhile, the developers of the project have built other solar farms. And SEPTA — which also signed a solar farm project in 2019, but with a different developer– was able to build its solar farm and is already seeing revenue come from it. 

Philly has since signed a new contract for the same solar farm with a new date of operation: May 31, 2025. 

“When we can see panels start rising, I’m not exactly sure,” McCraw said. 

Three Developers, Three Years, No Solar Farm

The city’s solar farm is a scattered site plan, meaning solar panels will be arranged on 16 different farm lots, and then connected by cables both underground and above ground to each other and the regional power grid. 

And that was always the plan, starting with the first contract the city signed in 2019 with Community Energy, a Radnor, Pa.-based solar developer.

The company’s founder and CEO Brent Alderfer said that their job was to get all the land leases and permitting done for the project. They sold the project to Engie, a utility company headquartered in France, which was supposed to move forward with the construction. 

Philly ‘s contract with Engie started in December 2019. Seven months later, Engie officials sent a letter to the city saying it wouldn’t be able to meet the operational deadline. The company said that due to a delay in the delivery of its solar panels parts, it had to switch vendors — but that too would cause a further delay. 

“This has required a redesign of portions of the PV solar facility in order to accommodate a different PV Module type along with the further time to select a new module supplier,” the company wrote in the letter. 

Penn State University energy professor Seth Blumsack said that some solar projects were delayed during the height of the pandemic because of supply chain issues. 

“There were big disruptions to manufacturing,” he said. 

But he added that once supply chain issues are resolved, solar farms can be installed “very quick.”  

“It would be a matter of months before those panels would start producing energy,” he said. 

It’s unclear whether Engie was able to resolve its supply chain issues. The company declined a request for an interview. 

Engie, however, completed several other solar projects during the time that Philly’s project stalled. The company constructed two slightly smaller solar farms (50 megawatts each) in Virginia and two much larger solar farms in Texas (200 megawatts each).

When asked about that, a company spokesman said that the company had to “delay and shift projects to respond to a multitude of factors.” 

But added that: “These details are distinctive to each project and we do not share that information.”

Engie eventually sold the project in April to another company, Energix. A spokesman for that company, which is headquartered in Israel, also declined a request for an interview. 

We stopped by the Straban Township municipal building and looked through the plans that the township Board of Supervisors preliminarily approved in December 2019. The plans showed exactly where the panels would go, how they would be interconnected and even the type of landscaping surrounding the solar fields. 

In order to get final approval and move to the construction phase, the developer had to establish a decommissioning agreement, have a signage plan that would meet the township’s criteria, along with other township and county requirements. 

The township office manager said that Engie didn’t come before the township for any follow up permitting or approvals — and so far neither had Energix. 

SEPTA’s Solar Farm ‘a Revenue Stream’

While the grass in Philly’s solar fields keeps growing, SEPTA’s solar project in Franklin County is humming along pumping solar energy into the grid and giving the transit agency revenue. So far to date: $360,000. 

“It’s not just cost effective. It’s actually a revenue stream for us,” said Meghan Schultz, SEPTA’s sustainability manager.

SEPTA’s solar farm is about half the size of Philly’s planned solar project. And just one of the two solar fields SEPTA has is currently operating. The second field is expected to be completed in the coming months. 

We met Alyssa Edwards, a spokesperson for Lightsource BP — the company that developed SEPTA’s solar project, at the Franklin County site. We asked if they too faced construction delays due to the statewide moratorium early in the pandemic. 

“You know, [we] didn’t. This is a different kind of construction. It’s outside,” she said. 

Once the second field is done, the entire solar project will deliver 20% of SEPTA’s electricity. The savings are expected to grow even more, officials said. 

SEPTA negotiated a rate that is nearly 40% cheaper than the rate that the city locked in for its eventual solar farm.

McCraw said he wasn’t familiar with SEPTA’s project to comment on why there is a difference between the two. But he did say that the city’s plan is a little more complex because of the scattered site. 

“Because of the size of ours and the different land areas that have to be involved, that brought the price, a little most likely, higher, comparatively,” he said. 

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Even so, the city’s solar energy rate, which will kick in once the solar farm is in operation, is less expensive – by more than $3 a megawatt hour — than what the city paid this past fiscal year for a standard energy rate. That could eventually mean a big savings for municipal energy costs that totaled $30 million last year.

When asked exactly how much taxpayers are losing out on by not having the solar farm operating already, as was expected when the agreement was first signed in 2019, McCraw declined to give a number. The city does currently receive about 9% of its energy from renewable power sources, officials said.

“The lock would have definitely been helpful,” he said, referencing the fixed rate that the city will have for 20 years.  But the fixed rate only happens once the solar farm is operational— and the city doesn’t expect that to happen until May 2024 at the earliest. 

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced nearly 300 firearms purchased in Georgia from dozens of gun retailers to Fredrick Norman — aka “Slowkey Fred” — and three other suspects, after some were found at crime scenes and in the possession of convicted felons in Philadelphia, according to records and interviews with federal law enforcement.

In an interview with ATF agents in 2020, one of the suspects, Brianna Walker, admitted to buying 50 to 60 guns in order to sell them without a dealer’s license, according to a search warrant affidavit — a violation of federal law. Norman allegedly admitted to buying more than 100, according to federal records.

The federal investigation expanded to include 11 suspects in Georgia and Pennsylvania, all of whom face a conspiracy charge. Kenneth Burgos, 23, and Edwin Burgos, 29 — brothers accused of brokering sales in Pennsylvania — are also charged with dealing firearms without a license, officials said.

As of Friday, there was no attorney listed for nine defendants named in the indictment, most of whom court records listed as in federal custody pending arraignment and who could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for Edwin Burgos declined to comment. A lawyer for another defendant, Roselmy Rodriguez, did not respond to requests for comment. Both Burgos and Rodriguez have pleaded not guilty to all charges. 

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here. 

Philadelphia has waived a rule that required new police and correctional officers to live in the city for at least a year, Mayor Jim Kenney announced Thursday. 

In June 2020, city council passed legislation that mandated Philadelphia only hire people – including aspiring police officers – who have lived in the city for at least one year prior to the job appointment.

The rule was one of several police reform bills that the council approved in the wake of the George Floyd protests that year. While the legislation passed in a 16 to 1 vote, Mayor Kenney at the time expressed reservations with the bill, believing that limiting the applicant pool to only city residents would negatively impact recruitment of top talent and diversity in the police department and other city offices. 

Kenney reiterated his disapproval of the bill last week when he stated it was hurting law enforcement.

“It’s basically like saying you can only play for the Phillies if you grew up in Philadelphia,” Kenney said. 

Kenney sent a letter to the civil service commission last week asking for a waiver of the residency requirement specifically for incoming police officers and correctional officers. In the letter, Kenney wrote both agencies were experiencing “significant challenges obtaining qualified candidates” and “significant staff shortages” and that waiving the residency requirement could help. 

“If councilmembers are requesting that we increase our police force, they’ve got to take the handcuffs, so to speak, off our ability to recruit,” Kenney said. 

Now, instead of police recruits needing to live in the city for a year before getting the job, new officers have to move to the city within six months of getting hired. John McNesby, leader of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, praised Kenney’s decision. 

“The candidate pool in the city is very slim,” he said. “We need to be outside. We can see that this ordinance hurt us that they put in two years ago under the guise of reform.” 

Drexel University criminology professor Robert Kane told NBC10 that the waiver didn’t change the law however. 

“Once the job becomes a little more desirable, once they think they can generate a higher quality and larger applicant pool, in many cases a lot of cities will rescind the waivers,” Kane said. 

Council President Darrell Clarke meanwhile said the city council continues to support the one-year residency requirement law.   

“The purpose of the residency requirement is to change and improve the diversity of the Philadelphia Police Department, and create a force that better reflects the culture of the city it is sworn to protect and serve,” Clarke wrote in a statement. 

Clarke also pointed to the city’s demographics compared to the police force. 

“Philadelphia is a “minority majority” city, where about two-thirds of residents are non-white,” he wrote. “Over the past three fiscal years (2019-2021), the city’s police force was on average, about 45 percent minority. This is not only significantly below city demographics, it is woefully short of the Department’s goal of 58 percent.” 

Clarke also addressed concerns that the residency requirement was hindering the police department’s efforts to recruit new candidates. 

“However, the Department’s own statistics indicate that more than 2,500 active applicants have applied to join the police force,” he wrote. “Is it too much to expect that Department leaders can find 100 candidates per recruiting class who are qualified residents of Philadelphia to join the force?” 

City officials said there is no end date for the waiver but they will “regularly review” the waiver to see if it’s still necessary.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 is conducting a survey that looks at the current state of affairs on SEPTA, southeastern Pennsylvania’s main public transportation system. Our quick and easy-to-take poll CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE.

The NBC10 Investigators are interested in how former and current part-time and full-time SEPTA riders view the public transit system from three perspectives: crime, cleanliness and COVID-19.

The Investigators previously surveyed riders in the spring 2021 and in the winter of 2020.

SEPTA Survey

SEPTA Feb 20, 2020

What SEPTA Riders Think About Their Commute: Foul Smells, Key Cards and Safety

Matt DeLucia Apr 5, 2021

SEPTA Riders Say Trash, Smells, Safety Has Them Concerned About Riding

Thanks for your participation and taking a few minutes to give your perspective on public transit in the greater Philadelphia region and SEPTA’s performance. The results will be published as part of a news story to air on NBC10 and posted online at NBCPhiladelphia.com in February.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

All episodes are now available on the NBC10 Philadelphia App on Roku.

Timeline

Spanning more than 30 years, here are key events in the case.

Related Documents

Take a deeper dive into documents that were referenced in the episodes.

About this series

The NBC10 Investigators developed, reported, shot and edited this series over several months in 2021. Our original reporting benefited tremendously from the help of the Fahy family, many of the police and court officials that worked on Barbara Jean’s case, Walter Ogrod and our other subjects. 

This series was developed, reported, shot and edited by the NBC10 Investigators: Photojournalist Dan Lee, Senior Producer Jim O’Donnell, Photojournalist Reese Rosario and Investigative Reporter Claudia Vargas. Original animated illustrations by Erin Panell of the NBC Digital Innovation Team. Digital design by Nelson Hsu and Brian McCrone. 

Archive video comes from NBC10; news clippings come from The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News via Newspapers.com.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.

A man accused of killing his co-worker inside a hospital and then shooting two police officers had his guns taken away from him months prior to the shooting spree but was able to get them back after asking a Philadelphia judge, according to court records obtained by the NBC10 Investigators. 

Stacey Hayes, 55, of Philadelphia, is charged with murder, attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault, assault on law enforcement and other related offenses after he allegedly shot and killed his co-worker, Anrae James, 43, of Elkins Park. 

Investigators said Hayes was armed with a gun when he killed James inside Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and later had an AR-15 rifle when he shot two officers near a Philadelphia school early Monday morning. 

Hayes was eventually captured during the shootout with police and remains in the hospital. Police have not yet released his mugshot. The two officers who were shot are in stable condition and expected to recover. 

Court documents show that Hayes filed a motion in April asking a Philadelphia judge to order police to return his property. In the document, Hayes wrote, “because the property was purchased legally by me, I didn’t commit any crime and I feel like the property should be returned to me because I am not a threat to anyone. I just want to be able to protect myself and my family if needed.”

In June, Philadelphia police were ordered by a judge to return a 12-gauge shotgun with 12 rounds, a Panther AR-15 rifle and a Smith & Wesson pistol with three mags and 39 rounds to Hayes. 

The NBC10 Investigators reached out to Philadelphia Police to find out why they had confiscated Hayes’ weapons in the first place. They have not yet responded. The court records do not include any reason regarding why Hayes’ weapons were initially taken away. 

The NBC10 Investigators also looked into Hayes’ prior criminal charges but found nothing that may have restricted his gun ownership. Hayes had been charged with DUI back in 2003. Four other court records traced back to Hayes are marked “limited access” and protected under Pennsylvania law from public viewing. 

It’s unclear at this point if the judge who allowed Hayes to get his weapons back reviewed those four prior cases, what he was charged or convicted of or why the cases have a “limited access” designation. 

The NBC10 Investigators will continue to provide more information on Hayes’ criminal history as it becomes available. 

After six years with the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, Stosh is at the height of his career — he’s busted drug dealers and found large amounts of narcotics in cars. 

But because the German Shepard was trained on detecting marijuana and small amounts of the drug are now legal in New Jersey, Stosh got the pink slip. 

He and three other K-9s in the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office were fired– or sent to early retirement.

“They all have marijuana in them. So they’re pretty much very limited in their capacity right now,” Investigator James Riley told NBC10 as he stood next to Brutus, a 9-year-old German Shepard narcotics dog.

That’s happening all across New Jersey and the nation. Police and sheriff departments are deciding what to do about their marijuana-trained dogs. Some are retiring the dogs, others are keeping them and using them for patrol, search and rescue. 

The bread and butter of Ocean County’s narcotic K-9 dogs is establishing probable cause with vehicle stops– meaning that officers can search a car without a search warrant. The dog’s scent is enough to run a search of the vehicle. 

“We do a lot of residences or building searches, but a bulk of it is the motor vehicle stops,” Riley said. 

But those searches are completely off limits now. 

“If he was to indicate a car had marijuana in it… it would be an illegal search,” Riley said.

And the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office agrees.

“A dog trained to alert officers to marijuana can no longer be used to establish probable cause for a search because it will react and alert officers in circumstances where there is not, in fact, a crime being committed, i.e., where there is marijuana, which has been decriminalized,” the office wrote in an emailed statement.

Narcotic dogs are trained to detect the smell of certain narcotics– usually marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine– but they aren’t able to tell their handler which of the drugs they are smelling. Just that they smell an illegal substance.  

Once a dog has been trained to smell marijuana, it can’t be retrained to not smell it anymore. 

The AG’s Office has not issued official guidance but told NBC10 in an email that marijuana-trained dogs may still be used in searches where a search warrant has been issued and the dog is not establishing probable cause.  

The Camden County Sheriff’s Office is using two of its marijuana-trained dogs for those types of court-approved searches, and not retiring the dogs. In addition, their dogs are cross-trained in patrol so they can be used to help.

The New Jersey State Police has nine dogs that were also trained on marijuana and are keeping them for patrol and other duties. 

But Don Slavik, executive director of the U.S. Police Canine Association, believes that keeping the marijuana-trained dogs is risky. 

“They may run across some marijuana and go over there and sniff and actually go on to a final position, which is what they’re trained to do. And I think that’s the problem,” Slavik said. “Their noses are always sniffing.”

Slavik said police departments he’s spoken to in other states where marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized are simply retiring the dogs and getting new ones. 

“They get rewarded for sniffing and doing what they’re supposed to do. And… they don’t just stop. They don’t realize that they can’t stop. They can’t. They aren’t supposed to,” he said. 

Washington Township Police Chief Patrick Gurcsik says he’s no longer using his five marijuana-trained dogs for any narcotics work. The dogs were cross-trained in tracking so he is using them for just that. But tracking consists of 25 percent of their job, so they won’t be as busy as before. 

His department’s K-9 unit is funded through donations, including what he called a state of the art K-9 kennel built in 2015. He’s not sure if the community will want the department to purchase new narcotics dogs that aren’t imprinted on marijuana. 

 “We’re considering all options,” he said. “But we may not be replacing them.”

 A police dog can cost about $5,000 untrained, according to the Police Canine Association President. And then several thousand dollars for training if the training isn’t done in-house. 

But the real cost is the handler’s salary.

“You’re assigning an officer for three quarters of a year,” Riley said. “You’re going to lose them off the road for a considerable amount of time.”

Riley told NBC10 that training can take up to nine months. 

Like other departments in the state, Ocean County had seen the writing on the wall with the decriminalization of marijuana and they made sure that their most recent police K-9 purchase was a dog not trained in detecting it.

But that’s just one dog for the whole county- and municipalities it serves– to search for drugs. Some of the township police departments have newer dogs. But Riley says it’s probably a total of eight or nine dogs, compared to the 24 county-wide total that used to be available. 

“It’s hampered drug investigations,” he said. 

And the dogs miss the work, according to Stosh’s handler, Officer Kevin Fennessy. 

Stosh had at least four years left in him to work. 

“They’re in the prime of their career right now. And we’re just kind of having to shut them down,” Riley said. 

As for the retiring dogs, their handlers will usually adopt them as family pets. And for handlers who can’t adopt their K-9 partner, some non-profit organizations will help find the dogs new homes. 

Luckily for Stosh and Brutus, each of their handlers plan to keep them as pets.

And even though the police dogs are retired, Ocean County taxpayers will continue to pay for their healthcare for the rest of their lives, according to Fennessy. 

“He could be off the road for two years, if something happens,” he said. “And he needs a major surgery or something, the county will pay for it.”