Byers

A Rosedale man fatally shot in front of his home in July had been ordered killed to silence his testimony in a Baltimore murder trial, police said yesterday. Carl Stanley Lackl, 38, was the target of a plot launched by jailed murder suspect Patrick Albert Byers, 22, according to Baltimore County police. Lackl was killed eight days before he was to testify as a key witness in Byers' trial. Police accused Byers of sending a text message to an associate's BlackBerry giving Lackl's name and address and offering $1,000 for his death.

16-year-old to be tried as adult in homicide A 16-year-old boy accused of shooting a man who was scheduled to testify in a Baltimore City murder case will be tried as an adult. Attorneys for Johnathan R. Cornish withdrew their request yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court to have the teenager transferred to juvenile court. He and several codefendants are scheduled to go to trial in February. Cornish, of West Baltimore, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and two handgun offenses in the fatal shooting of Carl Stanley Lackl Jr. The 38-year-old victim, killed July 2 in front of his Rosedale home, was a key prosecution witness in a city murder case against Patrick Byers.

In New York, a cruel city, I knew a woman, now long dead, whose hobby was funerals. I hate funerals. I told her so. She argued that they were the most cheering experiences she knew, rich with hope, with affirmation of an afterlife or with purpose in a life well spent."

Early in the afternoon of Sept. 23, 1930, Patrolman Walter P. Kohler was standing at Calvert and Franklin streets when suddenly he heard a volley of shots coming from a fifth-floor office in the Standard Oil Building at 501 St. Paul St.Racing into the building, past stunned office workers, the policeman broke into the office of Maxwell C. Byers, 52, president of the Western Maryland Railway, and made a startling discovery.Byers had been shot to death and was lying on his back near the door with his hands flung over his head.

The dancers leap like deer across the studio at Slayton House, the community arts center in Columbia's Wilde Lake Village Center, refreshing the repertory they performed on a September trip to France for a performance this weekend.These are the members of Dance Dimension, an experiment in intensive dance education devised by Marilyn Byers, a resident of Laurel.Though just teen-agers, these dancers meet five times a week, a regimen that would not be unusual for full-time adult professionals.

A Reisterstown man suffered severe burns to his back and legs yesterday after he was shocked at a Baltimore Gas and Electric substation while deer hunting in Owings Mills, authorities said.Jim Byers, 34, of the 700 block of Main St., who was bow-hunting, had climbed an electrical tower near Owings Mills Boulevard and Crondall Lane shortly before 5 p.m. when he was hit by 110,000 volts of electricity.Byers was being treated last night at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center burn unit.Pub Date: 10/06/96

While her convicted co-defendant remains at large after jumping bail, a second woman is scheduled for trial today in the fatal stabbing of a Baltimore nurse in February in a car traveling north on Interstate 83.Jury selection is to begin this morning in Baltimore County Circuit Court for the trial of Bronwyn Byers, 26, accused of robbing and killing Myra Elaine Harrison, 30.The victim was stabbed several times in the chest Feb. 10 in a dispute over a...

Al Byers wants everyone to know the life of an astronaut is not easy or glamorous.That's why the NASA education specialist told about 300 eighth-graders at George Fox Middle School yesterday that astronauts, while in space, have to wear adult-sized diapers before they put on spacesuits, strap themselves down before they fall asleep, and eat their food by flicking it up into the air."Or they can stuff their faces like pigs," Mr. Byers reasoned.Mr. Byers also invited 13-year-old Sarah Bushman to experience wearing an oversized spacesuit and helmet.

Bronwyn Byers told a Baltimore County jury yesterday that she had planned to spend her birthday with a college friend in New York last February, but first gave her roommate a lift -- and wound up in what prosecutors called "a slaughterhouse on wheels" on Interstate 83.So on her 25th birthday, Ms. Byers found herself charged with murder and robbery, along with her roommate, in the Feb. 10 stabbing of Myra Elaine Harrison, 30, a Johns Hopkins Hospital nurse.The...

Latina Rose Smith was back in the Baltimore County Detention Center last night -- 2 1/2 months after jumping bail on the eve of her murder conviction in the fatal stabbing of a nurse last February.Despite her absence, a Baltimore County jury convicted Smith on Dec. 13 of robbery and first-degree murder in the killing of Myra Elaine Harrison, 30, a Johns Hopkins Hospital nurse.Smith, 24, of Baltimore faces a possible sentence of life without parole.When she failed to return to his courtroom in December, Circuit Judge John Grason Turnbull II is sued a bench warrant and ordered Smith's $100,000 bail forfeited.

After the first robbery at Killer Trash, a kitschy vintage clothing store on Broadway in Fells Point, clerk Brittany Byers was shaken. The second time, she and other employees were told to lock the door behind customers. When the same man came back a third time, Byers' boyfriend whacked him about a dozen times in the head and arms with a baseball bat before the robber scurried away. But the man was not easily deterred. He had struck earlier that day and was in the middle of a string of 17 robberies of city business in 22 days, police say. Six blocks away at Tuxedo Zone, Rod Thompson, a former police officer, was held up after measuring the same man and allowing him to try on pants.

What exactly happened to Maxwell C. Byers, president of the Western Maryland Railway, who was gunned down in a spectacular noontime murder on Sept. 23, 1930, in his fifth-floor office in the Standard Oil Building on St. Paul Place? His murder, nearly eight decades later, still haunts his family. "It's unbelievable. It's like his entire family was placed under a gag order," said a grandson, Dr. Robert Maxwell Byers, 72, a retired Houston surgeon, who is determined to get to the bottom of the case.

On Friday, the same day two more people were sentenced for the contract killing of her son, Margaret Shipley was given the first of what's to be an annual award named after him. The Lackl Award honors victims or witnesses whose "extraordinary fortitude and perseverance ensures that justice prevails," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said in a statement. Shipley's son, Carl Stanley Lackl, agreed to testify in a murder case despite grave personal risks, and he was killed for it two years ago. Eight people have been convicted in Lackl's death, and seven of them sentenced, including Patrick Byers, who used a contraband cell phone in prison to order Lackl's murder.

Two more young Baltimore men were sentenced to decades in federal prison Thursday for their roles in the 2007 contract killing of murder witness Carl Lackl, who was shot repeatedly in front of his Baltimore County home. Marcus Pearson, who was paid to mastermind the murder, was sentenced to 35 years in a plea agreement. Ronald Williams, who provided a gun to the teenage shooter and drove him to Lackl's home, received 25 years. Each had faced potential life terms, though U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett accepted a recommendation for the lower sentencing ranges based on the defendants' "substantial cooperation" with prosecutors.

A federal jury on Monday spared the life of drug dealer Patrick Albert Byers Jr. for the 2007 contract killing of a murder witness, delivering instead a sentence of four consecutive life terms for a man whose criminal activities continued even while he was behind bars. The case brought renewed attention to two major obstacles to justice in Baltimore - witness intimidation and contraband cell phones. From prison, Byers, 24, used a cell phone to order the hit on Carl Stanley Lackl, a 38-year-old Rosedale man who was fatally shot in front of his children as he waited outside his home to meet a potential buyer for a car. Even as the trial was about to begin, prosecutors said Byers had again gained access to a phone and intimidated a second witness into recanting his testimony.

A federal jury will resume deliberations Monday in the life-or-death sentencing of Patrick Albert Byers Jr., who was convicted last month of using a contraband cell phone in jail to arrange the 2007 murder of a Baltimore witness. Members began deliberations late Friday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court, but the judge dismissed them for the weekend after two hours. Jurors had already found Byers guilty of two murders: the death of a Baltimore drug dealer in March 2006 and, a year later, the hired killing of Carl Stanley Lackl, who witnessed the first murder and was planning to testify in city court.

Anyone looking for Marcus Antwan Pearson knew to find him on the edge of Normal Avenue, a small, hopeless stretch of one-way street pointing toward Harford Road in North Baltimore. Here, he dealt crack cocaine alongside other young men in T-shirts and baggy jeans, red bandannas hanging like flags from their back pockets. In a day, he could make $1,700, which he spent on cheap hotels and feel-good highs from Ecstasy, marijuana and women. Pearson had grown up tall - 6-foot-2 - and narrow in East Baltimore, where he was born.

A federal jury found two Baltimore men guilty Friday in the contract killing of witness Carl Stanley Lackl, bringing to justice the last of eight people - drug dealers, gang members and one nursing assistant - charged in the conspiracy, which began nearly two years ago with a text message sent from a Baltimore jail. The jury will next decide whether to sentence Patrick Albert Byers Jr., who ordered the hit while incarcerated on murder charges, to death. His co-defendant, Frank Keith Goodman, acted as Byers' agent on the outside and faces life in prison; he will be sentenced July 17. Both men are 23. Lackl's mother and longtime girlfriend sobbed as the guilty verdict was read.

A case against a Baltimore man accused of ordering a witness killing from jail using a contraband cell phone is expected to go to the jury Thursday after prosecutors have their final say in the morning. It is a last chance to address defense claims that the government's star witness - the "glue" holding the case together - is a lying "snake." Patrick Albert Byers Jr. is accused of ordering Carl Lackl's death to prevent the Rosedale man from testifying against him in a 2006 city murder case.

The only surviving eyewitness to have claimed to see Patrick Byers kill a man on a Baltimore street corner in 2006 recanted his story before a federal jury Wednesday as Byers, who is on trial in the killing of another witness, looked on. Joseph D. Parham Jr., 37, was arrested at his grandmother's home and forced to testify, after he failed to apear Tuesday. He was granted a promise of immunity if he told the truth. Parham said Wednesday that he had lied about seeing Byers to avoid punishment in a 2006 drug arrest.