By TRAVIS REED
Associated Press Writer
LEESBURG, Fla. (AP) — Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV’s famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: “Where were you? Why aren’t you telling us where you were that day?”
A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.
A couple accused of attacking a reporter pleaded not guilty to assault, battery and other related charges.
Assad “Sam” Suleiman and Rosa Barraza appeared in the San Diego courtroom Tuesday afternoon, in connection to the alleged attack of investigative reporter John Mattes and his cameraman one week ago.
The couple were being investigated by John Mattes as a follow-up to an alleged real estate scam that Mattes uncovered in late July. No charges have been filed related to the alleged scheme.
Deputy District Attorney Allen Brown told Judge David Szumowski that Mattes was interviewing an alleged victim of the couple on a private residence near a Suleiman construction site.
Some of the employees at the site contacted Suleiman about the reporter’s presence on the nearby site. That conversation was overheard by Barraza who allegedly drove to the scene and confronted Mattes and his cameraman.
Lance Armstrong bristled Tuesday at a report that two former teammates admitted using performance-enhancing drugs, calling it “a hatchet job … to link me to doping through somebody else’s admission.”
Frankie Andreu and another former Armstrong teammate who requested anonymity because he still works in cycling told The New York Times they used the endurance-booster EPO to prepare for the 1999 Tour de France, when Armstrong won the first of his seven titles.
Neither rider has ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and both said they never saw Armstrong take any banned substances.
Authorities in the Bahamas said Tuesday that the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith’s son over the weekend could not be attributed to natural causes, but refused to elaborate.
Daniel Smith flew in Saturday to visit his mother and three-day-old sister at the private Doctors Hospital in Nassau. The following morning, the 20-year-old was dead.
An autopsy was performed Monday. On Tuesday, Her Majesty’s Coroner Linda P. Virgill said that based on preliminary findings, “the cause of death is not natural.” But, she said, “we wish to reserve [announcing] the cause of death at this time,” adding that a toxicology results and a full autopsy report will be released by the end of the week.
