Neighbors Who See Stabbing Kick Ass
What Wouldn't Jesus Do?: Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Belgian Archbishop, Had Ties To Serial Killer
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 9:00 am
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As pastor of the Jesus Christ Living Stone Church in Manila, one would think that Vicente Tabal was most interested with saving the souls at his modest congregation.
But that's the furthest thing from the truth.
When Tabal wasn't too busy preaching "the Word," he was taking part in an extensive ring of counterfeiters, which also included a retired Army sergeant.
The group manufactured fake United States currency and then sold it on the streets of Quezon City.
Last week, however, Tabal's fraud machine stopped when he and three others were arrested with 42 bundles of fake cash totaling $153,456.
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4. Stephen Burke
Here's a tip: if your computer shits out on you and you know you've got a giant stash of kiddie porn on your hard drive, best to cut your losses and NOT take it into a technician for repair.
Unfortunately, aside from being a creepy pedophile, 57-year-old Stephen Burke isn't much of a genius either.
A priest at St. Anthony's Church in Spring, Texas, Burke was bummed when his church-issued laptop stopped working. And now we know why.
He took his computer in for repairs in January, and that's when a technician discovered a heap of child pornography on his hard drive.
Of course, police were called. As they conducted their investigation, Burke also stepped down from his position at St. Anthony.
Last week, he was finally arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.
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3. Delbert Thigpen
Usually, pedophile priests and ministers don't have to go much out of their way when looking for their prey. They've usually got an entire congregation stocked with vulnerable young things just waiting to be taken advantage of.
But it appears that 76-year-old Delbert Thigpen, pastor of St. George Pentecostal Holiness Church, wanted more of a challenge.
That's when he was wandering the streets of St. George, South Carolina and came across two teenage girls coming out of a shop.
He approached the girls and offered them money to clean his house. When they turned him down, Thigpen must have realized that his window for molestation was closing quickly. That's when he grabbed one of the 15-year-olds in a not so friendly manner.
Thigpen was arrested shortly after giving police a recorded confession.
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2. Iran
Here on What Wouldn't Jesus Do?, we usually don't make a habit out of calling out an entire nation -- or rubbing Judeo-Christian values in the faces of other religions. But we just couldn't resist reminding Iran that Jesus was probably right on this next one.
In 2006, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was arrested on suspicion that she had cheated on her husband and then murdered him.
While the murder charges were dropped, 43-year-old Ashtiani was still convicted of adultery and sentenced to not only 99 lashes, but also death by stoning.
She received the first part of her punishment in 2007. Her children were even there to witness the corporal punishment.
Now, after serving three years in prison, the Iranian government has decided she's ready to be stoned to death, too.
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In Iran, adultery committed by women is punishable by death. In the case of stonings, women are buried up to their necks while men are invited to throw stones at their head. If they manage to escape from the hole, their death sentence is commuted.
Thankfully, her children have been fighting for her life and have enlisted international support to have their mother freed from prison and her sentence dropped.
Despite the fact that they claim that their mother is entirely innocent, the Iranian government, embarrassed by the case, is now claiming that Ashtiani isn't simply being stoned for adultery, but did in fact murder her husband.
This comes as surprising information to most major news outlets, from The Los Angeles Times to The Guardian, who hadn't heard of her "murder conviction" until just this week.
Iranian officials are now saying that Ashtiani's crimes were "various and very serious." Still, her sentence of "death by stoning" is strictly related to her "illicit" affair with two men who weren't her husband and was handed down by a judge through a loophole in Iran that allows for subjective judgement. They claim that she received a 10-year prison sentence for murder because her children had decided to forgive her for trespass.
For now, Iran has responded by suspending her sentence, though she hasn't been released and their ruling only means that she'll now be stoned at a later date.
There are another 12 women who are currently awaiting stoning sentences in Iran.
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1. Godfried Cardinal Danneels
When Belgian police raided the archdiocese in Brussels last month as part of a sweeping investigation into the church's cover-ups of sex abuse within the country, the Catholic Church was up in arms.
Pope Benedict, himself, lashed out against the Belgian government for disrespecting the privacy and authority of the Church.
But thank God they did.
This week, Belgian officials have revealed that, as part of that raid, they uncovered a treasure trove of documents that link the former archbishop of Belgium, Godfried Cardinal Danneels, to the notorious serial killer, Marc Dutroux, who kidnapped, tortured, and sexually abused six girls between 1995 and 1996, while killing four others and burying at least two of victims alive.
Belgian officials say that they were ultimately trying to find documents revealing the involvement and subsequent cover-ups by Belgian bishops in the sexual abuse of minors.
But while searching the home of Danneels, they discovered a huge cache of documents and photographs related to the case of Dutroux -- documents that Danneels wasn't supposed to have.
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Apparently, Danneels was holding onto hundreds of photographs of two of Dutroux's victims as well as evidence taken from the makeshift cells in which Dutroux kept his victims.
Police have no idea how or why Danneels got his hand on these classified documents.
However, the fact that he has them makes many in Belgium quite antsy. After all, Dutroux still looms large in the Belgian public consciousness.
At the time of his trial in 1996, there was widespread public outrage over the "mishandling" of Dutroux's case, culminating in a protest 300,000 people strong.
Many aspects of Dutroux's case remain unresolved and people are still concerned that a great deal of the investigation was somehow blocked.
During his trial, Dutroux claimed that he was simply acting in conjunction with a pan-European pedophile ring that involved high-level officials. However, those allegations were never investigated or followed-up.
Now people want to know why Danneels was holding heaps of evidence from a 14-year-old serial murder case. And so do we.
Aside from this shocking discovery, Belgian officials also say that they have found Danneels name on at least 50 complaints filed by church members regarding sexual abuse within the church, thanks to the raid.
Read last Tuesday's What Wouldn't Jesus Do?: Father Kevin Gray Stole $1.3 Million From Church, Used It On Male Escorts.
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