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LOS ANGELES -- The mother of a German man accused in a slew of arson attacks that terrorized the Hollywood area appeared in court Tuesday to answer to legal troubles of her own, including accusations that she skipped out on paying for a 2004 breast-augmentation surgery in her native country.
Dorothee Burkhart, the mother of Harry Burkhart, was arrested last week and on Tuesday had a brief extradition hearing in federal court related to a criminal warrant issued against her by the German government. The diminutive and heavy-set woman sat down and proceeded to ask about her son.
"Where is my son?" she asked. "He should come to the court, where is my son?"
When U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle opened the hearing, Dorothee Burkhart said she didn't want to be handcuffed. The judge granted her request.
Her second question was again about her son.
"What did you do to my son?"
The judge responded, "We are not here to do anything or talk about your son."
Burkhart said, "My son has disappeared. Maybe the Nazis know about my address and took him. He is mentally ill."
The judge brushed off her question before granting a continuance of the hearing to Friday.
Dorothee Burkhart was arrested Wednesday on fraud charges from her native Germany. At her initial hearing a day later, her son exploded in an expletive-laced rant against the United States.
The next day, police say, the 24-year-old began a nighttime rampage of arson attacks.
Authorities have yet to disclose why they believe that the pony-tailed Hollywood resident set the fires, but his mother's legal trouble provides one glimpse into the turmoil in his life.
Court documents unsealed Tuesday said Dorothee Burkhart, who is in her 50s, was charged with 19 counts of fraud in Frankfurt, including failing to pay for a 2004 breast-augmentation surgery and pilfering security deposits from renters.
Harry Burkhart was being held without bail after being arrested in the arson case Monday.
Outside his Hollywood apartment, some neighbors described him as a loner who loitered around the busy commercial strip at night and could be heard arguing with his mother.
But Shlomo Elady, a hair stylist who regularly trimmed Burkhart's long hair, recalled someone who spoke three languages, dreamed of visiting Jerusalem and cared for a sickly mother who had trouble walking. Elady said the Burkharts lived above his Sunset Boulevard shop.
Elady said he was stunned that Harry Burkhart is suspected of torching vehicles, some just steps from his home. The fires caused an estimated $3 million in damage.
"He loved his mom, the way every son loves his mom," Elady said. "He's not a creepy guy."
Burkhart was taken into custody after authorities received a tip from federal officials who recognized him in a security video that showed a pony-tailed man emerging from a garage where a car was set ablaze.
"When they saw the security footage, they recognized him and they contacted the arson task force," a State Department official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigations are ongoing.
The official didn't know the mother's status or what type of visas the pair used to enter the country. As German citizens, they would be eligible to come to the U.S. without a visa for 90 days under the Visa Waiver Program.
A federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Harry Burkhart was present when his mother was arrested Dec. 28 on a provisional warrant.
Provisional arrest warrants are normally issued when there are criminal charges pending overseas against someone. Ordinarily, U.S. authorities then obtain an arrest warrant through the State Department and the Justice Department.
At his mother's Thursday court hearing, Harry Burkhart launched into an obscenity-laden tirade, saying "(Expletive) the United States!" said Thom Mrozek, spokesman at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
Mrozek said Burkhart was detained and later escorted out of the courthouse. He said Burkhart did not make any specific threats against anyone or property at his mother's court hearing.
Galina Illarionova, who lives in the same apartment complex as the suspect, said through a Russian translator that an agitated Burkhart visited her Sunday and said his mother was having some kind of legal problems.
He told her his mother was in trouble with authorities and wanted Illarionova to attend a legal hearing with him, but he later said he didn't need her help.
A domain name for a website offering appointment-only sensual massage is registered to Dorothee Burkhart. Her name is not mentioned on the website, which states the service is not prostitution.
The series of fires appeared to have stopped with Burkhart's arrest. The onslaught kept residents anxious over the holiday weekend in some of the most densely populated areas of the city.
One of Saturday's fires occurred at the Hollywood and Highland entertainment complex, a popular tourist destination bordered by the Walk of Fame in a neighborhood that includes Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
Damaged buildings included a former home of Doors singer Jim Morrison.
No serious injuries were reported.
This story contains information from NBC News and The Associated Press.
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NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.
Leave a Comment:
How do you say dis-functional in German?
wahnsinnig
I'm not German..all I did was google 'how to say freaking fruitcakes in German' and that's the way they say it from the google search... wahnsinnig
I don't know. I only know how to say 'brassiere'. It's 'holdemfromfloppen'
Burkhart
actually, wv dawg, it would be "bustenhalter" with an umlaut u and a. (the two dots over the letters). lol
And she's saying that he's mentally ill? Must run in the family...
He's mentally ill? Sounds like she knows exactly what happened to him, and is trying to pave the way for an insanity defense.
Why are we allowing these morons to immigrate willy-nilly?
Send them both packing back to Germany. If you emigrate there and become an 'undesirable alien" you'll be on a plane back to the US so fast your ass will catch fire. As it should be. When you're a guest in another country you are expected to carry yourself with the same level of decorum as expected of the natural citizens. She sounds like a wacko too...REALLY? Sensual massage, and 50-something with a boob job? Freaks.
Yeah, going by the statements the mom made she's clearly got some mental issues of her own.
she wasn't 50 when she got the boob job - - that was about 6 years ago!
Deport the wacky B**ch (she has a criminal warrant for her in Germany) , and place her son in prison for 50 or so years. Case closed!
I agree !! Can we choose his cell mate?
Kimberly - How about Jared Loughner?
They'd make a great pair.
Why should we pay for his existence for 50 years? L.A County will likely spend over $1 million on his prosecution. One well placed bullet will take care of our issues with him. Insanity defense? That should qualify more crimes for capitol punishment.
Nazis? Maybe she's the one with issues.
Dexter! We need you!
Another perfect example of why you should be licensed to procreate!!
Like mother, like son. It's obvious from her comments that he's not the only one who is mentally ill.
Wow, if that is really you in the thumbnail pic you really are HOT! ;)
Crazier than a scheissehaus ratte.
So that's what scheisse means. Damn, Cartman's mom is into some nasty stuff :(
lol @ Eugene....yes, that is what it means....I'm glad I'm not the only one who is mentally scarred from that particular episode of SP lol
Why do the loser wackos end up in Hollywood? It's really got alot of nice people, but serial murderers, prostitutes like th is 50 year old German woman and her wacko son, sigh....do we really want such immigrants here? Maybe it would be better to put them both in a sack and throw them over the border with Canada one dark night. I understand Canada is not near as choosy as the U.S. is about who lands on their shores. If these two are examples of U.S. choosiness I think the standards need to be tighttened here, quite a bit. As in setting a quota and making sure people have a certain amount of $ to support themselves when they enter, also ship them back to wherever,maybe even Mexico, it's cheeper than a one-way ticket to Frankfurt where the bastard claims to be from. And why hate the U.S." Who asked himto come here. Better he should hate his mother for how she's @!$%#ed up his life as well as her own. But if he had that much sense he wouldn't be the nutjob he is.
Debbie, you may want to check into that more....Canada requires a clean background check (thorough one too), you must have a job lined up already and have arranged for a place to live. The US takes hmm, let's see, people from countries known to be hostile to the US, as in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Argentina, Venezuela...Muslims without extensive background checks, who come to learn to fly a plane but not land it??
I am sick of immigrants who don't know how to behave. They need to be deported or destroyed, I don't really care which. As long as they're not getting three hots and a cot on my hard-earned tax dollar.
LilDebbie said:
I think the standards need to be tighttened here, quite a bit. As in setting a quota and making sure people have a certain amount of $ to support themselves when they enter
What about those foreign infants brought to the US for international adoptions? Do you expect an infant to have money to support him/herself when they enter? Of course, the adopters are screened to make sure that their income is enough to support a child of an international adoption, so does that count?
Sonata'a Adela said:
I am sick of immigrants who don't know how to behave. They need to be deported or destroyed, I don't really care which.
Infants brought to the US for purposes of international adoption don't know how to behave. Children who are trafficked into the US so some legal citizen can make child porn doesn't know how to behave. Adults trafficked into the country for manual/domestic slave labor don't know what the 'rules' here are because their traffickers never taught them the language. How is any of that the person's fault?
And some US citizens don't know how to 'behave' either. Look at how many US citizens are siting in jail for drugs, alcohol, murders, armed robberies, rapes, assaults, child molestation and abuse. I also imagine that there are some people in foreign countries say the same thing about American tourists.
They should see if he wets his jail bed for playing with matches.
That's what happens to 'most' arsonists, however, I don't think he was getting his jollies, I just think he was mad at anything American. She's talking about Nazis and he's setting many, many fires....I say we need to deport her as fast as possible, and throw away the key on him! A couple of looney tunes for sure!
The both of them are nut jobs. Period. He knew exactly what he was doing, when he was setting the fires. He needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. As for Mommy, send her German Fat A........ss back to Germany, where she belongs. She may need to book two seats for her extra fat. :-)
I thought he seemed perfectly normal to me. Just another model German citizen. The scary thing is how easy it is for 1-2 people to do all of this. Much like the D.C. sniper back in 2002.
Sounds like the nut did not fall to far from that tree! I agree, she is setting it up for a mental plea.
True, one has to be a nut to set fires, but that does not mean they are insane or even mentally ill in the sense that they do not know right from wrong.
Why are they still in this country? We have no system in place in this country to trace when "visitors" need to leave. It has cost us as a country a lot.
Light his mentally ill ass up.
Mental illness should not be allowed as a valid defense for committing crimes.
I agree 100%. Consider two murderers, one not mentally ill who killed because he had a reason; the other mentally ill and killed for no reason at all. Here in USA we'll treat the insane one and let him go because he was "just sick". If either is going to be released I'd rather have a sane killer on the loose than an insane killer! At least the guy who wasn't insane killed for a known reason and so could be avoided. An insane killer on the other hand is likely to kill anyone at any time for no reason at all.
As for treating an insane killer because they're "sick" - that's just ridiculous. They need to be taken out of society. Here in USA though, the concept is that mental illness is just like the flu. If you have the flu and cough on someone and they get sick and die, you didn't kill them, the flu did. In America the murderously insane are treated like they have "crazy flu" and therefore aren't responsible for killing.
How did they ever make it into the U.S.?
maybe they pretended to be followers of Mohammed and we were afraid to screen them. (go ahead and collapse it, I don't care, it's nothing against any group of people but I know as well as everyone else does that the screening processes in airports and at borders are hell-bent on committing reverse prejudice to keep from pissing off those we're supposed to be screening)
He's mentally ill, he was a bused as a child, he didn't mean it, he wasn't there, you don't know him like I do, he's really a gentle boy..........................enough already, he did a crime, punish him.
Mentally ill! Ya think!!
Ii'll never stop until we get some leaders in Washington with some testicles. As long as we continue to be the politically correct nation of sheepies that our so-called leaders have programed us to be this will continue.
What the son did is a hate crime and should be treated as such:
Mom says he's Mentally Ill? Thanks MOM! What brilliant insight?
I'm glad his wacked out mom provided that insight to everyone because she must think that everyone else thought her kid was "completely normal"?
Just because he's wacked... is that supposed to suggest some type of consideration for "leniency?"
I hope not because all her worthless genetic defect deserves is a BULLET right between his eyes; no jail; no bond; no leniency; no fine; no meals; no nothing... just a bullet; end of story.
The financial burden her son has placed on society is a cost society cannot and should be required to bear. He is WAY over his credit limit here.
There is NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING anyone can or needs to hear from her son.
Shoot him in the head right now and then everyone else can move on with their lives.
The idea that there is ANY DISCUSSION whatsoever is NAUSEATING.
The mental health care to which this system is broken and is lack of funding seldom receives any attention like the general health care.
The suspect may request for psychiatric evaluation like the suspect who killed six people in AZ.
And it is depended upon the court decision.
Thank God his name was not Mohammad nor he was from a Muslim contry otherwise it would be all hell here.
Is any criminal sane these days? of course he did it and meant to.
OH hes insane? oh well i guess we'll let that slide then... dont worry about it buddy :)