The Bail Post and the Houston Crime Stoppers join together to tell the stories of just some of the victims of Bad Bail Reform. In this episode, we honor the heart breaking story of Rosalie Cook, an 80 year old grandma who went to Walgreens to buy a birthday card. But she never got the birthday card because she was killed by a defendant who was 38 years old at the time. He had been arrested over 70 times and convicted over 60 times. He was released from jail on 2 felony PR (free) bonds. He walked away from his half-way house and no one reported it to the court in the ensuing weeks. He approached Ms. Cook in the parking lot of Walgreens attempting to rob her and steal her car. He ended up killing Mr. Cook in the parking lot.
We also honor Summer Chester who was a college student who was working her way through college when she was brutally run over as she was walking through an intersection by someone who should have never been released from jail in the first place. The defendant had been arrested for capital murder for a home invasion where he killed the homeowner in his sleep and killed another person fleeing. Instead, of denying bond as authorized by the Texas Constiution, the court set the defendant's bond at $250,000.00. Then the defendant was accused of a new crime in the county jail and was charged with a new offense that was a felony. Also, the defendant had over 90 pages of incidents documented while he was in jail. When the defendant could not post a bond, the defendant asked the court to lower the bond and the trial court agreed to lower the bond to $50,000.00. But for the trial court's actions Ms. Chester would be alive today.
To learn more about Houston Crime Stoppers visit their website- https://crime-stoppers.org/. You can also visit them on-
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CrimeStoppersOfHouston
Twitter- https://twitter.com/CrimeStopHOU