Family members charged in death of pregnant woman in Michigan
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(CADILLAC, Mich.) — Two family members have been charged in connection to the death of a pregnant woman in Michigan after authorities allege she was lured to a home and tortured “in an attempt to remove the unborn infant,” according to the Michigan Department of Attorney General.
Cortney Bartholomew, 40, and Bradly Bartholomew, 47 — both from Boon, Michigan — were arraigned on Tuesday in the 84th District Court in Cadillac on multiple felony charges related to the murder of Rebecca Park, 22, of Manton, announced Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Officials allege that on Nov. 3, the couple lured Park — Cortney Bartholomew’s biological daughter who was approximately 38 weeks pregnant at the time — to their Wexford County home in upstate Michigan.
“The couple then allegedly tortured Park in an attempt to remove the unborn infant, resulting in the death of both,” according to the statement from the attorney general’s office. “After an extensive search, Park’s remains were found in the Manistee National Forest on November 25.”
“Rebecca had everything to live for, and our hearts are with her loved ones as they endure this unthinkable loss,” Nessel said. “We are committed to working alongside the Wexford County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to ensure justice is pursued in this tragic case without delay.”
Cortney and Bradly Bartholomew have each been charged by the Wexford County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office with first-degree murder, felony murder, torture and a series of other charges that could land each of them a potential life sentence.
“This case involves a truly horrific homicide in which a young woman and her unborn child endured unimaginable suffering at the hands of the Defendants,” said Wexford County Prosecutor Johanna Carey. “The brutality and disregard for human life displayed here are deeply troubling. While these remain allegations until proven in court, the evidence reflects an extraordinary level of callousness and violence. We look forward to presenting the full facts in court.”
The Wexford County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is handling the prosecution of this case with the assistance of the Department of Attorney General, authorities said.
A screengrab from surveillance footage included in a federal complaint that prosecutors say shows Lawrence Reed on a Chicago Blue Line train holding a lit bottle, Nov. 17, 2025. U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois
(CHICAGO) – A man has been charged with terrorism for allegedly pouring flammable liquid on a woman and setting her on fire on a Chicago L train earlier this week, federal officials said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday it has taken the suspect, Lawrence Reed, into federal custody in connection with the attack.
Reed, 50, of Chicago, has been charged with committing a terrorist attack against a mass transportation system, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said.
“This horrific attack was not just a barbaric assault on an innocent woman riding a train, but an act of terrorism that strikes at the core of our American way of life,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Boutros said in a statement.
The arson attack occurred Monday night near the Clark and Lake station on a Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line train, authorities said.
CTA surveillance footage captured the attack, according to the federal criminal complaint. The footage showed Reed and the victim, who was not identified, were traveling in the same train car when, at approximately 9:24 p.m., the suspect moved from the back of the train while holding a bottle and approached the victim, who was seated with her back toward Reed in the middle of the car, according to the complaint.
“Reed then took the cap off the bottle and poured a liquid from the bottle all over the victim’s head and body,” the complaint stated.
The suspect allegedly tried to ignite the liquid, though the victim fought him off and ran toward the front of the train, according to the complaint. Reed then allegedly lit the bottle, dropped it, then picked up the now flaming bottle and used it to set the victim on fire, according to the complaint.
“Reed then ran to the front of the train car and stood watching Victim A as her body was engulfed in flames,” the complaint stated.
The victim, who was almost fully engulfed in flames, tried to extinguish herself by rolling on the ground of the train car, then exited the train while still on fire when it stopped at the Clark and Lake Street Blue Line platform, according to the complaint.
Reed was observed on the footage leaving the car and walking away, according to the complaint.
Police said the victim, a 26-year-old woman, was transported to a local hospital in critical condition with severe burns. She remains hospitalized with critical injuries, prosecutors said Wednesday.
A partially melted bottle and lighter were recovered from the train car, along with suspected ignitable liquid from the victim’s seat and “the burned remains of what appeared to be some of Victim A’s clothing,” the complaint stated.
Authorities found additional surveillance footage that showed Reed at a gas station 20 minutes prior to the attack filling a bottle at a gas pump, according to the complaint. He was wearing the same clothes as seen in the train car footage, according to the complaint.
Chicago police took Reed into custody on Tuesday, at which time he was still wearing the same clothes as seen in the footage of the attack and had “fire-related injuries to his right hand,” according to the complaint.
While being transported, according to the complaint, he allegedly made “repeated spontaneous and unprompted utterances, specifically yelling, ‘burn b—-‘ and ‘burn alive b—-.'”
Reed is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Chicago, prosecutors said.
If convicted, the charge is punishable by a maximum sentence of life in federal prison.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is seen during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for judicial nominees in Dirksen building, November 19, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — For several years, as U.S. authorities have struggled to stop online extremist networks like “764” from pushing teens to livestream acts of violence or self-harm, including their own suicide, the Justice Department has faced what authorities and victims both say is a vexing challenge: Such coercion is not a federal crime.
That could change if the Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, have their way.
Ahead of a committee hearing Tuesday on the evolving threat of online predators, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, introduced a first-of-its-kind piece of legislation that would explicitly criminalize the intentional coercing of minors to physically harm themselves or others, including animals.
Under their proposal, called the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act, some perpetrators could face life in prison.
“When offenders are eventually caught by law enforcement, prosecutors charge them with the most appropriate charges,” Grassley said in the hearing. “However, there are no specific laws to address the terrible and shocking acts conducted by gore groups such as 764 and those engaged in sextortion.”
Grassley and Durbin’s proposed legislation comes in the wake of several recent reports from ABC News about the growing threat of 764, including an extended interview with the parents of Jay Taylor, a 13-year-old from outside Seattle who in 2022 took his own life — and aired it live on social media — after allegedly being manipulated by a member of 764 in Germany.
“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay’s father, Colby Taylor, said in the ABC News interview. “Ten minutes of murder.”
That’s why the U.S. needs “to have something in our actual laws that allows us to prosecute” cases as “digital homicides,” he said.
The FBI has described 764 as one of the greatest current threats to teens online, with members finding vulnerable victims on popular platforms, eliciting private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then using that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves or taking other violent action — all while streaming it on social media so others can watch and then disseminate recordings of it.
According to authorities, Jay Taylor is just one of many victims pushed to suicide.
German law explicitly criminalizes such coercion, so the young man allegedly behind Jay Taylor’s death — calling himself “White Tiger” online — has been charged in Germany with murder, along with 203 other offenses involving more than 30 other victims.
According to former FBI agent Pat McMonigle, who helped uncover “White Tiger” and what he allegedly did, making online coercion a federal crime in the United States “would be very helpful.”
“This is truly a bipartisan thing that … could effect some change,” he recently told ABC News.
According to Grassley’s office, the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act — or “ECCHO Act” — would “specifically go after” networks like 764, creating a penalty of up to life in prison for those who intentionally coerce someone into even just attempting to die by suicide or who coerce someone into taking action that results in the death or killing of another person.
The bill would also create a 30-year maximum penalty for other harmful conduct that does not involve a death, Grassley’s office said.
“Because of modern technology, child predators from anywhere in the world can target American kids online,” Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate as the Democratic whip, said in a statement. “As technology has evolved, so have online child predators.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it received more than 2,000 reports of abuse tied to 764 or similar networks in the first nine months of this year.
As ABC News has previously reported, the FBI is investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks. And the Justice Department has already publicly charged at least 35 such people in recent years.
Their victims have been as young as nine years old, according to authorities.
FBI Director Kash Patel recently called 764 “modern-day terrorism in America.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Tuesday will include testimony from an executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a former federal prosecutor who retired from the Justice Department earlier this year, and the mother of a teenage son who was victimized by sextortion and then took his own life, unrelated to 764.
Some states have enacted laws aimed at helping to protect children online. And in May, President Donald Trump signed into law the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which prohibits the nonconsensual publication of sexually-explicit images and pushes online platforms to remove violative material.
Several lawmakers — from both sides of the aisle — have introduced additional pieces of legislation in both the House and Senate that could help fight online predators.
But those laws and proposals don’t specifically address the coerced self-harm that is emblematic of 764 and similar online networks.
On Tuesday, Grassley and Durbin are expected to introduce two other pieces of legislation to help protect children online, including the Stop Sextortion Act, which would amend existing laws to address offenders who use threats to distribute sexually-explicit material to extort and coerce minors, according to Grassley’s office.
“I’m proud to introduce these bills to protect children from online abuse, hold dangerous criminals accountable and secure much needed justice for victims and their families,” Grassley said in his statement.
Durbin similarly said he was “proud to join” Grassley’s effort.
At least one other top Democrat in the Senate, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, has previously expressed support for such legislation, recently telling ABC News that online coercion is “a total crime,” even if “it’s through a digital connection.”
Still, it’s unclear how successful Grassley and Durbin’s effort will be.
One high-profile piece of legislation aimed at protecting children online, the Kids Online Safety Act, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate last year — by a vote of 93 to 1 — only to languish in the House, largely due to First Amendment concerns.
“This is a problem that is going to continue to morph, and if we don’t do something, potentially could get worse,” Sen. Warner told ABC News.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah Foley speaks with ABC News, Dec. 19, 2025. ABC News
(BOSTON, Mass.) — It was Thursday morning when investigators definitively determined the same individual opened fire on a study group at Brown University and, two days later, murdered an MIT professor — raising fears among law enforcement officials that the killer may have had other intended targets, according to the top federal law enforcement official in Boston.
“We had no idea if he had a hit list and these were just the first two stops on his tour,” Leah Foley, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, told ABC News on Friday.
Foley said that the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was found dead in the New Hampshire storage unit with two 9mm Glock firearms equipped with green laser sights, five magazines with nearly 200 rounds of ammunition and nearly $900 in cash. In his car, investigators said they found more ammunition and body armor.
“This was highly premeditated and he was definitely equipped for the mission that he sought out to do,” Foley said.
Neves Valente, 48, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
On Friday, an autopsy was underway to determine how long the suspect had been dead by the time his body was found. Ballistics tests and DNA tests were underway.
Investigators were also searching through the contents of three USB thumb drives found in the suspect’s car to see if they contained clues about a motive. It is unclear at this time if the suspect had any other potential targets, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Foley said investigators believe Brown University and the MIT professor — Nuno F.G. Loureiro — were intentional targets, but they do not know why.
“I don’t know that even if he had explained why, that that would be an answer that is satisfactory to anyone,” Foley said. “He was evil.”
The possibility that the killer could have struck again infused the manhunt with new urgency. Federal agents fanned out across four New England states and posted up at airports in Boston and Hartford.
“We had no idea if he was going to act again in New England or try to leave New England,” Foley said.
Neves Valente had already switched license plates once, according to authorities. In the car, investigators said they found another expired plate.
The suspect was a former Brown graduate student who attended the school some 25 years ago, school officials said. He had enrolled as a Ph.D student in Brown’s physics program in 2000 and attended for less than a year, before going on a leave of absence and then withdrawing.
Neves Valente and Loureiro were both Portuguese nationals and had attended the same physics engineering program at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, the school confirmed to ABC News.
