“Log in error” is all I saw all weekend when trying to log into Off the Cuff. The blog was inaccessible to me the whole weekend. I had a ton of stuff to say on Saturday, but I have forgot most of it now. I will post some information about this weeks cold case later in [...]

My wife was cleaning out some old boxes and came across this old photo of me riding my brother’s Harley:

Indictments have been handed down in two cases that got a lot of media attention last year for paralleling the Laurean/Lauterbach case. I will let the Associated Press tell it: FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) – A North Carolina grand jury has indicted three Fort Bragg soldiers who police had previously charged with killing two female soldiers [...]

Just the other day on Twitter an upstanding Jacksonville resident was questioning why JPD runs tags and checks insurance constantly. And now we have the answer.Raymond Morrison is accused of trying to kill someone in Florida. He has been hiding in North Carolina. He made the mistake of driving down Bell Fork without being up [...]

Parents recognize their kid on WITN-TV and turn him in for an armed robbery. Hard choice to make. I have spoken to law enforcement officials in the past who said they wouldn’t turn their own family members in for murder, so this is a real surprise to me. Read story here. Now that he is [...]

WCTI weatherman Skip Waters, of Devonshire Drive in Trent Woods, filed a response to a lawsuit saying he had sex with a 16-year-old boy. Read the Freedom ENC story here. Read Waters’ response here. The plaintiff, John Lero, now 21, said in his lawsuit that he attempted suicide. He was admitted to Cherry Hospital after a suicide attempt. “Treatment [...]

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 [...]

WNCT-TV is the first to report on Skip Waters filing a response to a Pitt County lawsuit alleging he got a 16-year-old drunk, smoked marijuana and watched porn with him. WNCT reports Waters, of Devonshire Drive in Trent Woods, denied all of those allegations. Look at their story here.  I am told by a Channel 9 source [...]

The chickens are really coming home to roost in Tabor City. State Sen. R.C. Soles has remained one step ahead of the media (and allegedly the law) for years. Very little about his private dealings with people have been made public – until the last year. And like a snowball effect, things are coming to light [...]

A screenshot of Ravenbone (me) killing a salt flat scavenger bird in the Shimmering Flats. Need its feathers as a reagent that allows me to cast levitation spells. Sunday was a good day. 

Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown in the sky tunnel that links the Onslow County Jail and the District Courthouse.

Readers always comment how they can’t believe the Parole Board let another killer loose. Well this is your opportunity to put up or shut up. An Onslow County family – the family of a woman killed by her husband 18 years ago – is practically begging for your help. All you have to do is [...]

Authorities have classified Sam Jarolim’s death as a police-assisted suicide. Sixty-nine percent of police-assisted suicide cases end with the fatal shooting of the suspect, according to information from the FBI. I have two articles about this situation coming in the newspaper. The first is a story about the investigation and clearing of the JPD officer [...]

The Associated Press reports that the FBI seized five newspapers reporting on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center from a North Carolina resident recently charged with plotting international terrorism. See? That’s what you can do with newspapers that you can’t do with the Web. You can tack them up in your [...]

It is really hard sometimes for reporters to convince editors that they know what they are talking about. Here is WITN’s Chelsea Donovan and WNCT’s Parul Joshi trying to explain over their cell phones earlier today how the Gumbranch gunman could not have shot himself if he was aiming at the police.

Some late night updates in Thursday’s homicide… Read news here, if you haven’t already. The Sheriff’s Department also charged Smith with robbery with a dangerous weapon, saying in warrants he used a shotgun to steal more than $3,000 from his mother. The warrant also states the killing occured on August 12 or 13. Which means he [...]

A ”person of interest” has been arrested in the death of an older female family member. Sources tell me it is either the suspect’s mother or grandmother. Read news here. Here are some pictures of the scene today: CSI stuff: Former SBI agent, now Sheriff’s Sgt. Hans Miller takes notes: Can’t remember this guy’s name, but he [...]

A Jacksonville lawyer known for bending the rules has been arrested for breaking a few. Read news here. I received a call from a woman who was a client of the accused after an article about the lawyer’s pending arrest was published. Being the good citizen I am, I turned the information I received over to [...]

Apparently all Dick McNeil has to do to get a hung jury is be in the courtroom. He served as “standby counsel” for Ramson Jones, a Carteret County man accused of murder who represented himself during his trial. The jury could not make a decision. Prosecutors say they will retry the case.  Read news here.

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 [...]

I’ve heard time and time again that the summer months bring the worst out of people and that more violent crimes happen during that time. That’s certainly proving true. A Jacksonville man is in jail and a Jacksonville woman is in the hospital after an assault Thursday night that police say happened for no apparent [...]

Spent all day at the courthouse today working on weekend articles and keeping an eye on a murder trial quickly coming to an end. Just be being downtown, I picked up a lot of tidbits today, such as: – A local lawyer accused of some legal mischief is out in California on vacation. She has outstanding [...]

No lie, I woke up Wednesday morning thinking that by now I had pretty much seen and heard it all. Wrong. Amanda found a warrant at the magistrates office that turned into this news story about a Marine sergeant handling one of his private’s parts. As we gathered information on that, I received a tip [...]

Undead Priest Ravenbone rides into the Village of Brill after a long sojourn in the Barrens:

The old man who is hanging mannequins in his front yard will not be prosecuted. Read the startling news here. I am more than a corporate hack. And this Web site has always been about bringing you the best crime coverage from the Onslow area. To that end, I want y’all to check out these [...]

A Carteret County nudist accused of snapping nude photos of little boys is out on bail. Read that here. And a huge welcome back to Daily News Carteret County reporter Jannette Pippinwho has been on vacation. She goes away and all hell breaks loose – literally with the Croatan National Forest wildfire. She does a great [...]

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 [...]