In my weekly column this week I talk about how news derived locally is usually better than national news, which is a lot of talking heads doing commentary and news analysis, which looks and sounds like news, but isn’t. An excerpt: We should all practice common sense discernment. My practiced method is to seek out [...]

I grew up in a Christian home. I still hold onto many of those beliefs. I support the death penalty. I don’t like crime. I believe the Second Amendment isn’t about personal protection or hunting and sporting rights. It is, and always was, about an armed citizenry keeping its government in check. As such, I [...]

In this column I talk a lot about Weldon Ferrell who deserves every accolade he receives. The other deputy who responded with Ferrell and tried to get the kids out of the burning house was Mike Hardison. He is also a good example of the character it takes to be a law enforcement officer everyday. [...]

Just posted this to my Facebook page: Holy smokes. I can’t take the innuendos anymore. It’s funny how many people think it’s a big deal who I go to the gym with. It’s never been a secret. I’ve seen court officials and cops there several times. I’m not hiding anything. Guess if we were playing [...]

Maria Lauterbach was murdered four years ago this month. Just imagine, she was killed on Dec. 14, and most likely buried the following day. Her body was not discovered until mid-January while her killer went on with his life. I have written a column about people associated with the case moving on. Read it here. [...]

A former high-ranking Pender County Sheriff’s deputy who picked up a young man earlier this year in Wilmington and was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of crimes against nature and johning for a prostitute was found guilty in court Thursday of the former and walked on the latter count. Mark Sloan was sentenced to serve 18 months of unsupervised [...]

A Jacksonville man – who hasn’t lived here in a while because he’s been on the lam – is accused of killing a Virginia man by running him off the interstate in a road rage incident. Read the news. Sessoms and his girlfriend (accussed of hiding pills in her bra): The real question authorities should [...]

While it has the same address, jdnews.com looks 100 percent better. Check it out. The website’s content has been steadily expanding and improving since Amanda Hickey took the job a couple of years ago. Now it looks great too. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it today. The Peanut Gallery’s comments on the [...]

I had no way of knowing that when City Editor Timmi Tolar called me at around 7 p.m. Sunday asking about Camp Lejeune stepping up security that it meant U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden. Read the updates and news here. I don’t call Bin Laden a bastard because he was ideologically, theologically, politically, [...]

I had an opinion piece about looters in Monday’s edition of The Daily News that is now online. Here are the first two paragraphs: Imagine rushing out into a dark street after a tornado has torn through your neighborhood. You chase looters away from the rubble that used to be a friend’s house only to [...]

Jeff Vavla, a convicted murderer suspected in at least one other homicide, was arrested this weekend and charged with stealing dogfood. I don’t know much about the guy arrested with Vavla, Archie Dale Lester, but he is well known to law enforcement. Vavla escaped justice in the death of Karen Sue Lanham - a woman who was [...]

Remember the woman recently caught on video stealing a stack of newspapers? Here she is in action. After talking with the cops, she came into the newspaper Thursday and paid for the newspapers. Guess it was all a big misunderstanding and she just happened to accidentally pick up the stack of papers by mistake. I [...]

I’m long removed from my seminary days. But even after escaping the trappings of organized religion, I still remember of few Bible passages. One verse that kept me going through years of hardship as I put myself through college while working a full time job to provide for my family was Psalms 37:25. It sounds [...]

This is my blog where I sometimes offer my opinion. Sometimes it is a popular opinion. Sometimes it is not. I don’t know or care which this will be. In the last four years, after each of the shooting incidents involving local law enforcement that I have covered for the newspaper, I have offered the [...]

In what can be considered a grand slam for Jacksonville, The Rock has lost its liquor license and will soon be serving breakfast at Denny’s. The Rock:                                                 Denny’s:                 Read the story here. And Hope Hodge’s excellent article detailing the club’s history. Police reports I obtained and affidavits attached to the state ABC Commission’s Last Call [...]

Cody Richardson creeps me out. He pleaded guilty Wednesday to strangling his wife and sleeping in the bed with her for two days. Click the above article link to read his five-page confession, two suicide notes and a letter from his victim’s mother to the court asking for leniency (no, seriously). I did not include [...]

My journey as crime reporter for the The Daily News is coming to the end of the road… Don’t celebrate yet. I’ll still be around. I will be assuming the government beat Monday. And while a final decision about my replacement has not been made by my bosses, one of the possible choices is someone [...]

A stay-at-home Maple Hill mother is in jail accused of breaking her months-old child’s leg and shaking him cause real damage to the child’s brain. Read news here. These cases just keep stacking up… The jury is still out (actually not even seated) in this case, but for convicted child abusers, there is a special place reserved for [...]

Since talking to the appearant owners of a group of unleashed dogs running amok in my otherwise quiet neighborhood hasn’t helped and calling the dog catcher and 911 has proved fruitless, I thought I’d post some photos on here and see what shakes loose. Here are the three large dogs running loose – despite the countywide leash [...]

While who shot John D. Smallwood remains a mystery, one thing is for sure: the people in the community he called home love him. Or are too intimidated to say otherwise… Mike McHugh and I were in a Hubert bar Monday asking people to tell us about Smallwood. I knew we would be printing his prison record [...]

I normally read letters to the editor, wince or chuckle at others stupidity and then move on, but I couldn’t let this one go. This letter is from a guy who claims to know a lot about the newspaper business then questions why the media uses terms like “alleged shooter.” Well, Mr. armchair media man, you [...]

As a member of Onslow County Crime Stoppers board of directors, I do not like this news and what it could mean to anonymous tipsters. Defendants have the right to face their accusers in court, but a tip that comes in from an anonymous source that leads authorities in the right direction should stay anonymous. [...]

I have said goodbye to a lot of people in this business in the last three years. Several reporters and editors and others at the newspaper have moved on. TV news people like Laura Vesco have also left, leaving the area a little less bright. But today the people of Southeastern North Carolina have lost [...]

Whenever my kids ask me what my favorite holiday is, I tell them Veterans Day. It makes little sense to them. As one of my sons recently put it, “you get presents at Christmas and presents for your birthday, what do you get for Veterans day?” To press the point – we eat really well [...]

A Raleigh teenager convicted of armed robbery Wednesday in Duplin County was sentenced to four to five and a half years in prison, but walked away from the jail the same day. How? N.C. Superior Court Judge Russell J. Lanier Jr. gave 18-year-old Jamar Marquez Goodman bond until his appeal. According to the N.C. Department [...]

Travis Tritt had a song several years ago bemoaning the death of true Southern Rock with the line -”Damn, I miss Dwayne Almond. I wish he were still around.” That line has been sticking in my head lately, but it keeps rattling around something like this – “Damn, I miss Earl Taylor. I wish he [...]

Wesley Platt died a year ago today. I never met him, but I have spoken to his mother, Connie Aikens. She loved her openly gay son very much. He shot himself with a .22-caliber pistol shortly after moving back to live with her in Jacksonville. Platt was a brief employee of WCTI-TV and lived on [...]

N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue rang the death knell for the death penalty today when she signed the “Racial Justice Act” into law. Read a previous story about what prosecutors thought about the law. Here is the early version of the Associated Press article straight off the wire. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s governor has signed [...]

An article I wrote about state prosecutors raising objections to the Racial Justice Act is now online. Read it here. A few thoughts: The last person executed from Onslow County was Edward Lee Mattocks on May 26, 1939. Why pay tax money to try and fix something so broke it already accomplishes the thing you are [...]

Mike McHugh and I were talking the other day after a meeting with a lawyer (about that top secret story we’ve been working on) that either one of us could have been a lawyer. Well, I wouldn’t lasted a year as a lawyer. Too many rules and ethics involved… Read about a local lawyer’s alleged [...]

The wife of a cold case homicide suspect is asking the public for donations to help bail him out of jail. Read news here. I know there are a lot of strong emotions in this case. I also know that bail is not supposed to be form a punishment. Bond amounts are to ensure a [...]

Read news here. The Daily News does not usually identify the alleged victims of sexual assault (a long-standing policy I do not totally agree with). But in this case, the wife had an interview with a New Jersey newspaper which identified her as the wife and then had an interview with her father. The newspaper [...]

I have read on this blog and heard it elsewhere that Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown was laughing at the horrible smell coming from a Deerfield home last week where a woman was charged with allowing her children and animals to live in the same area.   I have something to say about this and [...]

This is my blog. It is opinionated. It is not a fair and balanced reporting medium. Therefor, I say that this man deserves to stay in prison for the rest of the life. Read the news about him here. I contacted the family of the victim, but did hear back from them in time to [...]

Tracy Lawrence had a song a few years ago about being down on your luck and finding out which of those friends that are around when times are good will help you when things go really bad. My father used to always tell me to surround with myself equals and I would be a happy [...]

Monday marks the one year anniversary of Off the Cuff. For the last 365 days this blog has seemed both blessing and curse, eagle and albatross. People have been able to express themselves and tear other people down. People have treated others with respect and operated outside the designed perimeters to insult third parties. I [...]

The trigger man in a 2007 homicide decided 19 years in prison was better than life. Too bad the wheel man in that murder didn’t arrive at that destination because now he is doing life without parole. Read news here. Authorities thought there would be gang interferance in the trial, but all it had was two broken-hearted [...]

by William Gheen President, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC From the New York Times to the Raleigh News and Observer, there are For Sale signs hanging on the doors of prominent newspapers across America with only a few buyers at hand. While this must be very stressful for newspaper employees, editors and reporters alike, a [...]

A Camp Lejeune Marine is in jail in Wilmington accused of threatening to blow up a plane. Um… Between the threats against the president and the Molotov cocktails, some military-type bigwig should really address this. Someone is going to get really hurt or dead when the threats shift gears into action. 

A Navy corpsman in trouble with the law last week for threatening his wife and having a military explosive device is in jail again for stalking. Read news story here. The Hubert VFD – wanting to distance themselves as much as possible from this story (and understandably so) – sent me a statement saying Gregory [...]

This is just my personal opinion and should not be given any weight, but after reading all of the court documents, incident reports and arrest warrants, I think the Onslow County Sheriff’s Department stopped what was about to be a very serious situation. Read the news here. This situation was about to erupt and all [...]

Amazed at what’s front-page news To the editor: Your judgment and discretion continue to amaze me. The Feb. 27 front-page coverage of President Barack Obama’s first-ever visit to our community includes an article about some incarcerated half-wit whose ”Dear Diary” fantasies are a true credit to his upbringing. What’s that all about, balanced coverage? The article on page [...]

Sheriff’s Sgt. John Getty has been nominated as an “America’s Most Wanted” All Star. Read the news here. To vote for Sgt. Getty go to AMW.com by clicking here. John and other juvenile detectives have the tough, unglamorous job of protecting our children from sex predators. On behalf of my five children, I thank him and all the others [...]

Sounds almost unbelievable, doesn’t it? That a school would dismiss a 10-year substitute teacher because he turned in a student for assaulting him. Well, that is what Charles Miracle says happened to him. Read Amanda Hickey’s report. One poster to that story has already brought up a former Onslow County School principal who had a reputation [...]

Under the gun since the D.A.’s Office questioned why the Jones County Sheriff’s Department didn’t relay information about alleged sexual misconduct at Jones High School, Sheriff John Hall is firing back. In a letter to the Kinston Free Press (a sister paper of ours), Hall defends his department and offers an explanation as to why [...]

I called this one wrong. I was going off of the Court Street reverberations of last week, but somewhere along the line, the sentiment changed and caught me unaware. Read news here. In a very human, vulnerable moment after the noon press conference, D.A. Dewey Hudson told me he expected to feel a lot of [...]

He may not ever be a menace to society again, but gang-banger Brandon Rice will be a burden to the state the rest of his life. Read news here. Rice used a potato as a silencer when he shot a 63-year-old cabbie in the head and stole his money. He had a couple of friends [...]

I have been up in Raleigh accepting my award for investigative journalism. Tell you about that Friday. Bumped into Kinston Free Press content editor Bryan Hanks and he told me to check out his blog (which I do often, mostly for the eye candy). Anyway, he slams what he sees as sloppy journalism by a [...]

An Onslow County man who is accused of killing his sister in the summer of 2007 will not get the needle if he is convicted. Read news article. While my Libertarian bosses might dig it, I think it is a shame a person can shoot another person, be caught red-handed and not at least face [...]

A former local school teacher due in court next week on sex charges involving his students is dead instead. Read the news here. Read about his arrest here. And his dismisal from Swansboro High for “personal reasons.” Comments to this blog are unmoderated. Any questionable comments should be reported to localdesk@freedomenc.com or the newsroom at 910-219-8451. Those [...]