Eastern District of California Blog

Feds Charge Murder-For-Hire Case

A Hanford man was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday for hiring a hit man to kill another man over a labor dispute, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.

Johnny Jaramillo, 50, met with and texted an undercover agent in December and January to arrange the killing in exchange for guns, according to a criminal complaint filed in the eastern district of federal court.

The undercover agent first met with Jaramillo on Dec. 15 in the Food 4 Less parking lot in Selma, where the agent bought three guns for $6,000, the complaint says. During the meeting, Jaramillo, a nurse, asked the undercover agent to kill a man by injecting him with 300 units of insulin to put the intended victim in a coma.

Fresno Bee, 1/26/18

 

High-Seas Double Murder Suspect Dies In Custody

The Sacramento Bee reports that the high-seas double murder suspect, Silas Duane Boston, died in custody on Monday.

High-Seas Double Murder Suspect May Be Too Sick To Stand Trial

Silas Duane Boston, a former Sacramento man charged with killing two British tourists in the Caribbean nearly four decades ago, has been rehospitalized and may be gravely ill and unable to face trial, his lawyers told a federal judge Wednesday.

Boston, who turned 76 last month, has drawn international media attention since he was arrested in December at a nursing home in the rural Northern California community of Paradise and later charged with two counts of maritime murder in an unsolved case involving two tourists.

. . . 

The defense filed a “declaration of doubt” that Boston was competent to face trial and Negin suggested in court that his health is fast deteriorating, impairing him both physically and mentally.

“The law requires him to be mentally present” during court proceedings, Mendez responded. “If he is in and out” of awareness “in terms of his medication, he may be physically present but mentally he is not there.”

Mendez said he is prepared to consider a defense motion to order a medical competency evaluation for Boston. But the challenge is that the defendant may have to be airlifted to a medical facility in the federal prison system as far away as Illinois or North Carolina for an appropriate evaluation.

Negin said Boston is in no shape for such an excursion.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutor Matthew Segal said he is telling witnesses who were due to travel out from the United Kingdom to hold off for now.

Sac Bee, 4/19/17

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article145605394.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article145605394.html#storylink=cpy

 

Victim's Mother Seeks Speedy Trial for High-Seas Murder Suspect

Thirty-eight years after the bodies of two British tourists were found in the Caribbean Sea, the elderly mother of one of the victims is asking a federal district judge to speed up the trial of a Sacramento man accused of murdering the couple on a boating excursion from Belize.

The written appeal from 92-year-old Audrey Farmer, the mother of medical-school graduate Christopher Farmer, added a new element to the bizarre, unfolding criminal case of Silas Duane Boston, 75.

Boston, a former Sacramento resident who was living in a nursing home, was arrested Dec. 2 in the rural town of Paradise and later indicted on two counts of first-degree maritime murder in the 1978 killings of Farmer and the physician’s girlfriend, Peta Frampton, both in their mid-20s. He has pleaded not guilty.

Sacramento Bee, 1/10/17

EDCA Indictment Charges 75-Year Old Man with Killing Two at Sea in 1978; No Death Penalty Sought

A federal judge announced a double murder indictment Thursday against a 75-year-old former Sacramento resident, 38 years after the hog-tied bodies of two British tourists were found following a boating excursion from Belize.

Silas Duane Boston, who was arrested last week in the rural town of Paradise, was charged with two counts of first degree maritime murder in the killing of Christopher Farmer and his girlfriend, Peta Frampton. The tourists from Cheshire, England, recent graduates of medical and law schools who were both in their mid-20s, had taken an excursion on a boat that Boston was operating in Belize, earning money by taking tourists on scuba diving or snorkling expeditions.

 

Boston was brought into the courtroom Thursday in a wheelchair and fitted with audio headphones for the proceedings. He did not speak. His defense attorney, Douglas Beevers, said his client, who was living in a convalescent home when he was arrested, suffers from arthritis and has difficulty hearing.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article119772153.html#storylink=cpy

Sac Bee, 12/8/16