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This from Jan Williams:

September 25, 2008 is the USA's annual observance of the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. ...

I noted on an FBI website that a study in 2005 estimated the number of Americans who lost their lives to murder that year alone (not manslaughter, but murder) was more than 16,000! That's an average of nearly 2 per minute! This is not acceptable, it's outrageous, and people should be talking about it!

Even one murder per year is too many, and can be utterly devastating to the families and friends of the victim. I know that many people assume that these are gang members and others who live a dangerous lifestyle, but you and I know that murder takes the innocent as well - even small children like Devon and Ian.

So, please, when September 25 comes around, remember them and all the others who have had their lives and futures stolen by murder.

Jan Williams Mother of Neal Williams (27), Oma of Devon (7) and Ian (3) Williams murdered August 8, 2007

I received this letter from Jan Williams. As you may remember Williams lost her son and grandsons last summer. Neal, Ian and Devon Williams were all killed. Neal's wife and the boys' mother Manling Williams was arrested on suspicion of murder and could face teh death penalty. A preliminary hearing in the case, scheduled for last Wednesday was postponed until Sept. 11.

Letter on the jump

Over the weekend there were five homicides and one suicide recorded in local cities. The first incident involved a man who shot and killed his girlfriend before killing himself on the 605 near Telegraph Road Saturday afternoon.

Later on, four San Gabriel Valley homicides occurred within a six-hour window.

Here's a timeline and brief description of each:

VIOLENCE TIMELINE:

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed Tuesday to postpone a preliminary hearing for a woman accused of killing her husband and two children.

The move is one of several delays in the case since Man-ling Williams was arrested in connection with slaying of her husband Neal and children Ian and Devon. 

This small note comes from Jan WIlliams, mother of Neal grandmother of Ian and Devon. Jan attends each hearing in the case and reports to Crime Scene readers on the state of the case:

At a hearing today it was determined that they need to set another date in order to set a date for the preliminary.  Next check in hearing date is June 26.  Jan

My comment: Sounds like something from the court of the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland.

Jan WIlliams recalls her son Neal in an email I received this morning.

Neal, 27, and Jan's grandsons Ian and Devon were slain last August at their apartment in Rowland Heights. Neal's wife Manling has been charged in the killings and has yet to face a preliminary hearing in the case. Neal was apparently stabbed to death. The children were suffocated.

Here's Jan's letter:

May 19, 2008 - Neal's 28th birthday.  More than any other holiday or anniversary that I have faced in the last nine months, this is the one that is the most difficult.  This is the day my only son was born.  He should be here to eat his grandmother's key lime pie, the one she only makes for him.  It isn't fair.  It isn't right.  He had so many things to look forward to and he didn't deserve to die.  How hard it is as a parent to think of your child bleeding out his life in fear and pain.  There are times when I think that my heart is too wounded to beat even one beat more.

I have spoken and written about the little boys, but until now I have been unable to write about Neal.  That isn't because I loved my grandchildren more than I loved my son.  I think it is because the hurt is too close.  And because so many parts of our personalities were similar, holding a magnifying glass up to examine Neal means that I must examine myself as well.  To help you see Neal  I must expose a bit of me.  That isn't easy or comfortable, so let me take a couple of deep breaths.

Neal and I are both peacemakers.  We hate to see anyone angry, in pain or humiliated.  We want to fix it.  I've seen Neal get up and leave the room when he could tell that a character in a television show was about to be embarrassed.   His eyes teared up when the barracuda ate the clown fish's eggs in Finding Nemo, and he was bothered when the T-Rex ate the dog in Jurassic Park II.  He could always see the other side in almost every argument.  It didn't necessarily make him change his mind, because he could be very stubborn about his own conclusions, but he could understand and empathize.  I am the same way myself.  Perhaps that is why we could discuss so many issues - even volatile ones.  We both knew that it was safe to air our opinions, but that we shouldn't expect any sudden about face, no matter how eloquent our arguments.

We are voracious readers who can lose all sense of time with a book in our hands.  It is known to be  dangerous to let us loose in a book store, especially if it also sells coffee.  We are interested in many of the same things - history and archaeology, space travel and ecology, philosophy and volcanoes.  We are fans of Monty Python and Shakespeare, Star Wars and Gilbert and Sullivan.  We like to cook but detest washing dishes.  We procrastinate.  We like to walk in the rain.  We sing in the car.  Devon once asked me in confusion how I knew all of his daddy's songs.  I can't begin to tell you how it felt to see my son sing my songs and play my games and tell my stories with his own children.  It was almost like being handed a glimpse of immortality, real and down to earth.

Neal and I are good with animals and children.  We can make friends with mean old alley cats and can put babies to sleep.  When Neal was in middle school, he was a volunteer aide at a daycare center.  I would come to pick him up and see him walking calmly across a play yard with four-year-olds stuck like glue to every limb.  The last time I went to the park with Neal and the boys, he started in pushing the merry-go-round, and kept right on pushing, even when his own children had lost interest and gone on with me to other amusements.  As long as there was a single child to say "Again!" he was there to push, even red faced and out of breath.  He was a great father who treated every child he met as though it was one of his own boys.

Neal liked to tease, with a roguish twinkle in his eyes, and he had a wonderful, infectious laugh. He was a trustworthy and loyal friend, the kind who would show up with a truck on moving day. He was an amazing strategist, who thought many moves ahead, and when he played games he usually won.  He also had the infinite patience to teach hyperactive little boys how to play chess or baseball or video games or (Devon's favorite) the German card game Bohnanza.  He answered endless questions, and laughed with good humor at whatever jokes were popular in the first grade, even the ones he had heard many times before.

Neal didn't have a lot of ambition for material things.  He was raised by a single parent from the time he was two, and we never had a lot of money.  It didn't matter.  We were rich in many other things, and I know he felt the same about his own adult life.  We often talked about it.  Devon and Ian were his treasure, and he had no need of fancy cars or a big house.  I am proud of that.  Neal was a man of heart and integrity, and that means more to me than if he had become the world's youngest multimillionaire.  He would often quote the character  Merlin from the movie Excaliber , saying, "When a man lies he murders part of the world."  He believed that and made it his personal code of honor.  How many people even have a code of honor in this busy and competitive world? .  He wasn't a perfect man.  He was a good man.  That was Neal - a genuinely good man.

This comes from Jan Williams in an email.

Williams' son Neal and grandsons Ian and Devon were killed in August at their home in Rowland Heights. Police arrested Neal's wife Manling Tsang Williams on suspicion of murder in the case. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

Here's Jan's letter:

I've been thinking a lot about my littlest guy today.  I was sitting on my front porch this morning with a cup of tea and heard the chattering of little voices.  I looked down the street to see a double line of preschoolers - about 25 of them- being led on a walk by 3 adult women.  My street doesn't have a sidewalk, and the adults struggled to hold the little ones in formation and keep them to the side of the street.  They had quite a bit of difficulty as they passed my house as the mailbox drew a lot of attention and the children kept reaching out to touch the evergreen hedge.  As they came back down the other side of the street, one little boy broke away and went whirling through the tall, unmown grass across the street.  That would have been Ian.

This was going to be Ian's year, when he would finally get to go to preschool like the "big guys."  He was very excited about it.  He would have been quite a handful, because he had insatiable curiosity, boundless energy and not an ounce of fear.  He blew through life like a hurricane, mercurially jumping from one thing to the next without thought.  When he broke something or got into trouble as was inevitable, he was usually genuinely surprised.  It never occurred to him that anything could possibly go wrong, or that you would actually get mad at him, even though you had told him repeatedly not to continue with what he was doing.  There were no half measures with Ian.  He threw himself into life with great abandon, and lived totally in the moment.  It might not be a good idea to build a ladder out of chairs and climb to the top, but once imagined, the deed had to be carried through to fruition immediately, no matter the consequences.

So yes, Ian would have been learning to walk in a line holding hands with a partner.  (Probably a girl, because Ian just loved little girls).  But he couldn't have resisted opening and closing the mailbox several times, and pulling needles off the hedge, even if it pricked his fingers.  And as for the yard of unmown grass, waving knee high in the gentle breeze... absolutely irresistable.  Just like Ian.  I miss him.  Jan

A hearing in the Man-Ling Williams case, scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed to a date in the future that has yet to be determined.

Eventually there will be a preliminary hearing in the case. When that will take place is anybody's guess.

Williams is accused of killing her husband by slashing him to death with a ninja sword last August. She is also accused of killing the couple's two children by smothering them to death in their beds.

The family lived in an apartment/condo in Rowland Heights.

This letter comes from the mother of Ondrea Alvarez, who was killed in a fatal traffic accident on Pathfinder Road in Rowland Heights. The family, and police are still seeking answers in the case. THe top photo is from the family's Bellflower backyard. The bottom from a memorial at the site of the accident. Here's the letter:

 Thank you for following up on the story of our wonderful daughter/sister. We thought we would send you some pictures of Ondrea and of the memorial which is at the site of the accident and of the one at her home in Bellflower. If you could please post one or two of them with your "Trace" artical as well as any future updates we would be very greatful.

We know very little about what happend on the night of the accident and the CHP have said that no information would be available until they complete their investigation (which we were told could take up to 3 or more months) so we are thankful to you and the crimescene site for the comfort we have found in the information you have porvided us.

Thank you so very much!

Ondrea's Mother - Robin Hoskins

A trio of men suspected of being the WWF bandits have been captured by police in Orange County following a bank robbery, officials said.

Here's a snippet from Brian Day's story on the arrests:

The suspects are Gary Edward Caruthers, 50, of Los Angeles, Jay Chandler Flott, 51, of Los Angeles, and Andre Williamson, 50, of Inglewood, police said.

All of the alleged crimes were takeover-style robberies in which the masked suspects brandished shotguns, officials said.

When the crime spree began at banks in Rowland Heights and Industry, we took to calling these guys the Lucha Libre Bandits. The FBI, not realizing the WWF is now the WWE stuck with their moniker.

The arrests come just in time for this weekend's Wrestlemania festivities.where apparently there will be a "Money in the Bank Ladder Match"  No masked wrestlers have entered the event this year though there's still time.

The state's ABC TRACE team is investigating the traffic collision that killed 20-year-old Ondrea Alvarez of Bellflower in Rowland Heights on Pathfinder Road March 2.

The team does back track investigations whenever there is a major incident involving an underage drinker.

"They are going to find where the kid who was driving got the booze," says reporter Brian Day who is following this story.

There's been several blog comments on the case. There is also an Internet guest book for grieving friends of Ondrea to recall her life.

According to ace night cop reporter Brian Day, the Lucha Libre banditos, who the FBI likes to call the WWF Shotgun Bandits, have struck again. This time at a UCB on Colima in Rowland Heights. Friday afternoon to be exact.

No Melina wasn't there, but she's here as a reminder that Wrestlemania is just a few short days away.

Attention Aaron Proctor:

The tag team duo hitting area banks wearing luchador masks reminescent of Rey Mysterio have now been named by the FBI (they liked our suggestion, but chose to stick with something a little more English sounding).

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the WWF Shotgun Bandits, whom the FBI describes as Black Males, Mid 20s to Late 30s, Robbed in City of Industry and Rowland Heights:

We're not sure why the FBI chose WWF as opposed to WWE, WCW or ECW, but they did.

BTW we're only 23 days away from Wrestlemania. This year it's in Vega$. I've got the Undertaker beating Edge.

 I also like Floyd Mayweather over the Big Show...