![]() ![]() Could a Chinese tribute ship, as Gavin Menzies proposed in 2002, have departed from the rest of the Ming fleet in East Africa in 1421 and sailed to North and South America, Australia and the Arctic? Could fishing vessels from the British port of Bristol, as David Beers Quinn suggested in 1974, have followed schools of cod across the north Atlantic and reached the fishing grounds off the Canadian shore in 1480 or 1481? No persuasive evidence supports the claim about the 15th-century Chinese. "It just can't happen."īonsib, the defense attorney, said he expects Beckwitt to be released from prison within a couple of months "at most.Who, besides the indigenous peoples from Asia who crossed the Alaskan land bridge in prehistory, arrived in the Americas before Columbus? The question has fascinated generations of scholars. "Please do not equate the number of years (in prison) to the value of the victim's life in this case," Schweitzer said. She expressed sympathy for Khafra's family and said she understood why his father is frustrated. The judge said she believes that Beckwitt's "intellectual arrogance" misled him to believe that everything would go as he planned at the house. ![]() Investigators concluded the blaze was ignited by a defective electrical outlet in the basement. The tunnels had lights, an air circulation system and a heater.Ī hole in the concrete basement floor led to a shaft that dropped down 20 feet into tunnels that branched out roughly 200 feet (60 meters) in length. Khafra worked in the tunnels for days at a time, eating and sleeping there and urinating and defecating into a bucket that Beckwitt lowered down to him. 18, 2018, photo, police tape surrounds the house where Askia Khafra died in a fire while digging underground tunnels for a secretive campaign to build a nuclear bunker in Bethesda, Md. Beckwitt also used internet "spoofing" to make it appear they were digging in Virginia, according to prosecutors. He tried to trick Khafra into thinking they were digging the tunnels in Virginia instead of Maryland by having him don "blackout glasses" before taking him on a long drive. A prosecutor described Beckwitt as a skilled computer hacker who had a paranoid fixation on a possible nuclear attack by North Korea.īeckwitt went to elaborate lengths to keep the project a secret, prosecutors said. Beckwitt had invested money in a company Khafra was trying to launch as he helped Beckwitt dig the network of tunnels. "I feel that as a victim, all that mattered to the system were rules, procedures, legalese - not the overarching fact that my son, my dear son's life, had been deliberately terminated," he told the judge before she handed down Beckwitt's new sentence. 5, 2018 file photo, Dia Khafra, father of Askia Khafra, holds a photo of his son in his Silver Springs, Md., home. "The world needs more people like Askia Khafra, not fewer."ĭia Khafra, Askia's father, expressed frustration with Beckwitt's "light" sentence and said he feels as if his family has been "stabbed with the knife of victimization all over again." In this Sept. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about all the great things Askia should have gone on to do," he said. On Tuesday, Beckwitt described Khafra as a good friend and said he still mourns him "to this day." He didn't testify at his trial, but he apologized to Khafra's parents before Schweitzer sentenced him in June 2019. "I hope you do what you can do, which is use your intelligence for good." Askia Khafra (left) died beneath the home of Daniel Beckwitt (right)īeckwitt, 30, initially was sentenced in 2019 to nine years in prison after a jury convicted him of second-degree "depraved heart" murder and involuntary manslaughter in the September 2017 death of 21-year-old Askia Khafra.īeckwitt has been imprisoned since his April 2019 trial conviction. "I hope this is your opportunity to give back to our community," she said. ![]() Noting that Beckwitt could be released soon, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Margaret Schweitzer also sentenced him to five years of supervised probation after his release and ordered him to perform 250 hours of community service. A wealthy stock trader was resentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison for his role in the fiery death of a man who was helping him secretly dig tunnels for a nuclear bunker under a home in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.ĭaniel Beckwitt already has been incarcerated for nearly three years and is statutorily eligible for parole because he has served more than a quarter of his sentence. ![]()
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