Northeast
Illegal immigrant admitted to killing woman on her 21st birthday
An illegal immigrant admitted to strangling a woman on her 21st birthday, then dragging her body past a police cruiser and burying her in the woods.
Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis, 21, pleaded guilty in a Syracuse court Tuesday to second-degree murder in the June 18 slaying of Joselyn Jhoana Toaquiza, Onondaga County Assistant District Attorney Rob Moran told WSYR.
In exchange for a guilty plea, Judge Ted Limpert agreed to sentence the killer to no more than 25 years to life behind bars, the outlet reported.
A source from the Department of Homeland Security recently told the New York Post both Chacaguasay-Ilbis and Toaquiza were in the U.S. illegally. Both are from Ecuador and had known each other since primary school, according to the outlet.
ILLEGAL MIGRANT CHARGED WITH SUFFOCATING, KILLING YOUNG WOMAN ON HER BIRTHDAY: REPORT
Prosecutor Alphonse Williams told The Post-Standard of Syracuse the suspect was staying at an Airbnb at the time of the murder. He reportedly traveled to see Toaquiza on her 21st birthday.
Eerie surveillance footage shows the pair walking into the Airbnb around 4:30 p.m. on June 18. A few hours later, Chacaguasay-Ilbis was recorded carrying a slumped-over Toaquiza on his back. He reportedly used a ligature to strangle the woman.
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Williams alleged Chacaguasay-Ilbis buried Toaquiza’s body in a shallow grave in Lincoln Park before taking a Greyhound bus to New York City. He later turned himself in to the authorities.
Toaquiza’s corpse was found on June 22, WSYR reported.
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Chacaguasay-Ilbis crossed the U.S. border into El Paso, Texas, in January 2023 and was captured, then released because there was no space to hold him, according to the Post.
Toaquiza crossed into the country in Lukeville, Arizona, a few months later on June 19, 2023, the outlet reported. She told border agents that she was fleeing an abusive partner; it is unclear whether that was her killer.
Chacaguasay’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 14, according to online court records.
Fox News Digital’s Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
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Northeast
Connecticut lawmaker introduces bill that would legalize sports betting on flights to, from state
A bill in Connecticut has been introduced that would allow sports gambling on flights that are set to depart or arrive in the state, despite other state’s laws on betting.
State Rep. Christopher Rosario introduced the bill on Wednesday. Federal laws, however, could keep the bill from advancing, including the Gambling Devices Act of 1962, which prohibits the use of gambling devices on commercial flights.
However, with bets being able to be placed at the tap of a finger, attorney Daniel Wallach does not see that as much of a hurdle.
“A cell phone is not a gambling device,” Wallach told Front Office Sports. “A cell phone doesn’t determine winners or losers; it’s just a means of communication. No different than a pencil writing your name on a betting slip and handing it to an agent. [The act] doesn’t prohibit monetary gambling; it prohibits gambling devices.”
The largest issue, perhaps, is the fact that there are a dozen states that have kept sports gambling illegal. Thirty-seven states have made it legal in some capacity within the last decade. The Federal Wire Act of 1961 states that interstate gambling is prohibited.
Delta Air Lines appears to be close to partnering with DraftKings, which has become a sports gambling powerhouse after starting off as a daily fantasy company.
DEREK JETER SAYS VOTERS SHOULD BE ‘ACCOUNTABLE’ AFTER ICHIRO FALLS 1 VOTE SHY OF UNANIMOUS HALL OF FAME NOD
Eilers & Krejcik, an independent research firm, conducted a new study showing sports betting would pay off for the state of Texas, where sports betting remains illegal.
The study, “Legal Online Sports Betting In Texas: Revenue Forecast And Economic Impact Analysis,” estimates the market could generate over $360 million in direct tax revenue for the state, while adding over 8,000 jobs.
The report estimated Texas would benefit from over $2.6 billion annually in economic output, adding that non-gaming tax revenues generated from legal sports betting are expected to total $24.3 million per year.
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Read the full article from Here
New York
An Anne Frank Exhibition in New York
Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at a new Anne Frank exhibition opening in the city today, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A new Anne Frank exhibition will open at the Center for Jewish History in New York today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and will remain there for three months before moving on to other cities.
“Anne Frank the Exhibition” is a full-scale re-creation of the annex where Anne and her family hid from the Nazis from July 1942 to August 1944 in Amsterdam, and where she wrote her diary. The show has more than 100 original artifacts and examines Anne’s life and death. This is the first time the annex has been completely reconstructed outside Amsterdam, my colleague Laurel Graeber reported.
The exhibition aims to show “how this history, how this memory will go into the 21st century,” Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, said in an interview with Laurel. It comes to New York as antisemitism is rising in the United States and abroad.
The reconstructed annex has five rooms. Each room has the exact details and dimensions as its counterpart at the Anne Frank House, which more than 1.2 million people visit each year. Unlike the original space, which has been intentionally left empty, each room in the exhibition is filled with furniture and possessions, including books and a board game. It also has a facsimile of the diary; the original is in Amsterdam.
The presence of furniture and other possessions in the exhibition could stir controversy. Agnes Mueller, a professor and fellow in Jewish Studies at the University of South Carolina and a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, said her instinct told her that when Otto Frank, Anne’s father, decided to keep the original annex empty, he was worried about commercialization and universalization of her persona.
“He actually emphasized absence as a way to represent that which is not representable,” Mueller told Laurel. The sight of an annex room filled with possessions, she said, “might induce us to feel way too good about things that we should not feel good about.”
Anne was 13 when she went into hiding, and the installation follows a chronological path, tracing her family’s life in Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1920s through their flight to Amsterdam. One of its introductory rooms uses a montage of film and photos to recreate the atmosphere of Amsterdam in the early 1940s. After that, visitors enter the annex.
“We all know that the diary is about the two years in hiding,” said Tom Brink, the head of collections and presentations at the Amsterdam house and the traveling exhibition’s curator. “But of course, the story is much bigger than that. It starts earlier, it ends later, and that entire story and entire journey deserves to be told.”
The exhibition also chronicles Anne’s father’s return from Auschwitz. He was the sole survivor of the eight Jews who hid in the annex, and pursued the publication of Anne’s diary. In the New York installation, 79 editions of it in different languages are on display, along with memorabilia from theatrical and film adaptations.
Leopold said the immersive elements of the show were meant to take people, especially youths, back in time. The Center for Jewish History has already booked more than 250 school tours of the show, and weekday tickets for visitors under 18 years old are available for $16. The exhibition, a nonprofit venture whose revenues support the missions of its two presenting partners, also provides curriculum materials to classes and free admission to students attending as part of New York City public-school field trips and to those from schools nationwide receiving federal education funding.
There will be programming for adults as well. Tomorrow evening, the author Ruth Franklin (“The Many Lives of Anne Frank”) will be interviewed at the center. On Feb. 9, the novelist Alice Hoffman (“When We Flew Away”) will appear there, and the center will also host a film series. (An extension of the show in New York is under consideration; more venues will be announced in the spring.)
Leopold said that he hoped the show would inspire engagement as well as reflection.
“If this exhibition is doing anything, it’s not just teaching history,” he said. “It is also teaching about ourselves.”
Weather
Expect sunny skies with a high near 39; the wind will make it feel colder. Tonight, there will be high winds with a cloudy sky and a low near 32.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Tuesday (Lunar New Year’s Eve).
The latest New York news
Dear Diary:
Now he’s sleeping the sleep of a dead man,
In a flat on the Lower East Side.
Oh, we tussled and wrestled,
Then we spooned and we nestled.
He’s a master of love, and I’m satisfied.But I’m leavin’ that boy on 10th Street,
There is something that I cannot ignore
Much too glaring and numbing,
Has to do with the plumbing.
Turns out it’s an undeniable flaw.He’s got best sellers and electronic toys,
He likes clean fun and connubial joys.
Now I don’t care he’s not rich an’ —
Still it breaks my heart.
He’s got a bathtub in the kitchen.
(I have to wash my back with a roasting rack.)What a daunting dilemma,
After scarfing up the lamb vindaloo.
It just isn’t nice ’cause when I scrape off the rice,
Gotta move all the sponges and the Prell shampoo.
Yeah, we like our sushi and our bagels and lox,
Our steaming pizza fresh right outta the box.
All of our dinners are quite bewitchin’
But it tears me up —
He’s got a bathtub in the kitchen.
(Gotta wash my toes with a rinsing hose.)It doesn’t matter that he’s great in the sack,
I know for sure that I won’t ever be back.
He’s intelligent and kind, but I still have my gripes,
Don’t want bathroom water in the kitchen pipes.Now, I’m no stranger to heartache,
Trouble has knocked at my door.
But I’ll go it alone and I won’t answer the phone,
Leave his gritty Ajax and his strange décor.Adios my man, keep your fryin’ pan.
Later for you bachelor and your ladle and your spatula.
You’ve got a bathtub in the kitchen.— Lou Craft
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. James Barron is back tomorrow. L.F.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Boston, MA
Martin Sexton brings solo Abbey Road Show to Boston: ‘I try to make the guitar be the band’
It was the green apple on the record’s label that caught Martin Sexton’s eye. Before Sexton had written the ’90s gem “Diner,” the deeply underrated LP “The American,” or any of the aces in his catalog, the singer songwriter was a sixth grader raiding his older siblings’ album collections. One day he came across “Abbey Road” and that green apple label in the basement.
“Having heard of the Beatles, I thought I’d give this one a play on the old Sears turntable,” Sexton told the Herald. “Though it was badly damaged, scratched, skipping, popping, and dusty, there was no hiding the brilliance. The songs reached out and grabbed me.”
“‘Abbey Road’ is the album that lit my fire as a kid,” he added. “Today it remains the most influential album that informs my writing, performing and recording style.”
Sexton recently decided to celebrate his old favorite with a tour devoted to the album — the Martin Sexton Abbey Road Show comes to City Winery Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 (tickets still remain for Jan. 31). For many locals, it’s a welcome return for an artist who got his start busking in Boston and went on to headline the Orpheum.
“The Beatles in general have always been my favorite band,” he said. “From the early days to ‘Revolver’ to ‘Sgt. Pepper’ to the ‘White Album,’ their range is incomparable. I always wanted to put my own spin on ‘Abbey Road’ specifically. It’s basically what I was doing as a 16-year old sitting by the hi-fi with a guitar dreaming of the day I could perform to an audience.”
If you haven’t spun the record in a while, you might forget how deep and dynamic it is. “Abbey Road” is a masterpiece by three master songwriters spanning a dozen rock and pop styles over 17 tracks. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is an eight-minute epic that nods to acid rock, heavy metal, and jazz fusion. “Her Majesty” clocks in at under half a minute (although Sexton points out it has “16 chords crammed into this 23-second gem”).
“I was surprised at the simplicity of some of the chord changes and also at how complex others were,” he said. “The arpeggiated E7 flat 9 in ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ is a chord I’d never heard of and the hardest one I’ve ever learned to play, and it’s just freakin’ brilliant. I spent the summer in the Adirondacks leading up to the tour wood-shedding these tunes. ‘Sun King’ was the easiest and ‘Because’ was probably the hardest.”
Oh, by the way, Sexton is doing the whole album solo. It will be just him and his acoustic guitar.
“I try to make the guitar be the band, using it as a drum kit, a bass, etc., and using my voice as other things as well,” he said. “For example, I focused on George’s guitar solo on ‘Something’ by whistling it note for note to pay it homage.”
Next up might be a covers album, which he’s never done. But he is writing fresh originals. In fact, working on this project pushed him to write more of his own stuff. Hopefully that means Sexton will be back in town — his hometown, if you talk to many of his fans — soon doing his own songs.
“Wherever I’m playing in the world I always hear from someone who first saw me in Harvard Square,” he said.
For tickets and details, visit martinsexton.com
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