Music teacher asked sister-in-law for help moving a piano, then strangled her: Police
Background: News footage of Joseph Horner (in blue) being escorted to court on June 30 (WNBC). Inset: Victoria Castle (Instagram).
A New York man who worked as a music teacher at an elementary school has been charged with the murder of his sister-in-law.
Joseph Horner, 27, is being held without bond after prosecutors said he strangled his sister-in-law, 25-year-old Victoria Castle. The Nassau County Police Department said in a press release that officers responded to a home in North Massapequa, New York, at 8:44 a.m. on Monday after receiving a call about an unresponsive woman. When they arrived at the home, they found Castle and transported her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Prosecutors said Horner, who placed the 911 call himself, was waiting for officers on the front porch of the home.
Sign up for the Law&Crime Daily Newsletter for more breaking news and updatesLocal NBC affiliate WNBC was in the courtroom for Horner's arraignment on Tuesday, when he pleaded not guilty to intentional murder. Prosecutors said that before Horner called 911 to report that Castle was not breathing, he allegedly strangled her and sexually assaulted her after she was unconscious. According to WNBC's reporting, Horner and Castle lived in the same multifamily house in adjoining apartments. Horner is married to Castle's sister.
Prosecutors said that after Horner allegedly assaulted Castle, he changed his clothes, called 911, and waited for police to arrive on the stoop. Horner allegedly told police that he lured Castle to his apartment by telling her he needed help moving a piano. After she came upstairs to his apartment, he came up behind her and allegedly held her in a chokehold until she went limp.
According to prosecutors, Horner told police that he had been interested in Castle since 2017, a year after he met her sister. Horner said that his wife, whom he married three years ago, was out of town at a bachelorette party on the day he allegedly killed Castle.
Horner was employed as a music teacher in the Oceanside School District. In a statement provided to local ABC affiliate WABC, a spokesperson from the district said Horner had been "placed on administrative leave effective immediately, pending further review. We have no further information at this time."
Horner is due back in court on July 2.
Tags: domestic violenceLong IslandmurderNew YorkstrangulationteacherFollow Law&Crime:
Messika’s New One-of-a-Kind Necklace Is Set With a 20.46-Carat Blue Diamond From Botswana
By Paige ReddingerPaige Reddinger
Deputy Editor, Watch & Jewelry Editor
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Messika
Today, Messika unveils a spectacular new high jewelry creation with a massive blue diamond as its centerpiece. The jaw-dropping stone is the largest and rarest blue diamond ever to be uncovered in Botswana. It was discovered as a 41.11-carat rough in 2019 when it emerged from the Orapa mine. After cutting and polishing it revealed a Fancy Deep Blue VVS2 Type IIb 20.46-carat stone.
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The government of Botswana, which still owns the gem, tapped Valérie Messika, founder of her namesake company, to design a jewelry piece to highlight the stone. The result? A pendant necklace set with more that 500 diamonds on the collar and surrouning the oval-cut Okavango Blue Diamond. “I tried to let the diamond speak by itself,” Messika told Robb Report. “I had so much respect of the beauty of the stones that I wanted it to be the central part…it reminds me something vintage with this medallion surrounded by white diamonds. I want the blue to pop, the more it’s surrounded by white, the blue is stronger.”
It’s no wonder the jeweler was Botwana’s top choice. Messika founded her eponymous company in 2005, drawing on the expertise of her father, André Messika—a renowned diamond dealer whose family has been in the diamond trade for generations and who has been known to supply some of the world’s best stones to the top houses. Following in her family’s footsteps, Valérie Messika has since made a name for herself on the Place Vendôme, Paris’ premiere destination for the best jewelry in the world. Her designs have catapulted her family’s name into the spotlight with popular designs like the Move collection, known for floating mobile diamonds in oval diamond-accented shapes. Collaborations with Kate Moss and Gigi Hadid further solidified the house the new must-have jewelry amongst younger, hipper clientele.
WATCHThe jewelry piece and the stone, however, are not for sale. “This project is, for me, a tribute to natural diamonds,” she says. “It’s one of a kind and it’s a time in my career that I can work with such an amazing rare stone, so for me it’s, of course, a big honor to be the first, and for the moment, the only one to create a jewelry piece with the stone.” When asked why she would devote so much of her resources and time—it took a year to produce—to design a necklace never to be sold she says the thought never occurred to her. “Everybody focused on this stone for such a long time—all the craftsmanship, all the design people—but for me, I saw it also like a kind of tribute also to my expertise as a diamond jeweler.”
It’s not the first time she’s created a masterpiece around a rare African stone. Four years ago, she designed a jewelry piece around a cushion-shaped D-flawless 33-carat diamond from the Lucara mine in north-central Botswana. “I started the relationship with Botswana to promote the beauty of their land, creating natural diamonds, so for me it’s to be continued our relationship, and it’s important to put in light the magic of natural diamonds.” She adds that the piece is meant to celebrate the extraordinary creations from the earth, because as she puts it, “lab-born diamond are kind of like a photocopy from a laboratory.”
What is unprecedented is the diamond itself. “It’s the first time in my whole life [to see a diamond like this], and I’m not sure I will see a second…it’s very, very, very rare,” Messika emphasizes. “I think only 0.01% of the world’s diamonds can be blue.”
For now, the necklace remains a singular creation rather than an acquisition. In a luxury world obsessed with the next big thing, the Okavango Blue is a reminder that some treasures simply cannot be replicated—or bought.
Authors
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Paige Reddinger
Deputy Editor, Watch & Jewelry Editor
As Robb Report's deputy editor and watch editor, Reddinger is immersed in all things horological. She has visited the top manufacturers in Switzerland and Germany, attended high-profile auctions and…
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Trump gets ‘fantastic’ advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library
Trump gets 'fantastic' advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library- US News
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Trump gets ‘fantastic’ advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library
By Victor Nava Published July 1, 2026, 5:33 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on GooglePresident Trump on Wednesday talked with an AI-powered hologram of former President Theodore Roosevelt.
“Do you consider the Panama Canal your greatest achievement?” Trump asked the ghostly image at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.
“The canal stands as one of my proudest battles, no question. But greatness is a strange thing,” the AI Teddy.
President Trump asks AI President Roosevelt…“Do you consider the Panama Canal your greatest achievement?” pic.twitter.com/zvfDCL2sKS
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) July 1, 2026
“I measure my greatest work by the lives improved, parks set aside, food and drugs made safe, the square deal given to all, not just to a few …Still, when I stood in the mud, watching those steam shovels, knowing ships would pass through, changing the world’s map forever, I felt I’d left a mark that would last,” the long-dead former president added.
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Trump responded, “OK, you did. Thank you.”
In another interaction, posted by White House aide Margo Martin, AI Teddy offered Trump some words of advice and encouragement.
“Everyday a president faces storms people never see. Keep your nerve and remember the nation comes first and you get through it. I know you know that feeling yourself,” the hologram said.
Trump told AI Teddy that he “appreciated” the “fantastic” words.
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“It’s an honor to be with you today,” the president added.
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Iran trying to evict Christians from oldest Protestant church in Tehran — as Islamist regime cracks down
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Iran trying to evict Christians from oldest Protestant church in Tehran — as Islamist regime cracks down
By Ronny Reyes Published July 1, 2026, 5:24 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on GoogleIran has threatened to seize Tehran’s historic St. Peter Evangelical Church and evict the 20 families who call the temple their home, according to multiple reports.
The move against the church, which has already had part of its property taken by the regime, appears to be in direct retaliation over the war with the US and Israel, said Sasan Tavassoli, an Iranian Presbyterian pastor in the US with direct contacts at St. Peter.
“I will tell you the literal words they used, ‘We were concerned about America all these years. America came. They slapped us on the face. We slapped them on the face back. And then America withdrew. So we are no longer afraid of America,'” Tavassoli told The Free Press.
It’s the Islamist regime’s latest crackdown on other faiths in the nation of 93 million people following the mass street protests and the war with the US and Israel.
St. Peter was founded by American Presbyterian missionaries in 1872, with the compound serving as a home for low-income Christian families who have lived there for years.
The orders to take the church came under the state-affiliated Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order group, which is issuing a new deed for the church through the regime, according to a letter by Sargez Benyamin, executive secretary of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Iran in Diaspora.
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Authorities have allegedly already seized a 2.5-square-acre garden from the church, which is being occupied by four officials with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Benyamin, a former pastor at the temple who now lives in exile, said the church has no legal recourse against the regime, which has refused to renew their operating license.
“In Iran, you don’t have an independent court. So it would not be possible for us to fight back, to start a legal fight and bring back our documents because they confiscated our documents, our properties, and they issued new documents in the name of this organization under supreme leader,” he told The Free Press.
Tavassoli said that given the church’s American origins, it has become the perfect target for the regime, adding that the property itself is worth “tens of millions of dollars.”
The outcome is just what church officials feared when Iran judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i hailed a court ruling allowing the regime to seize American assets in the country, diaspora site Iran International reported.
Tavassoli added that members of Tehran’s security forces have already gone into the church to “identify” people in a lead-up to the eventual eviction of its residents.
“They said they’ll return later to evacuate those living on the premises and take over,” he told Iran International.
Benyamin warned that the 20 families living in the church have no chance of survival without the temple’s support, adding that the worshippers face arrest if they do not leave St. Peter.
Church leaders and allies abroad are calling for international aid and pressure to save the temple and the families living inside.
Iran has repeatedly launched crackdowns on religious minorities within the Islamic republic, with the Center for Human Rights in Iran group recording more than 300 arrests of Christians in 2024.
Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of CHRI, warned that Christians were hit with national security charges that he dubbed “absurd” for the sole reason to stop them from practicing their father.
At least 96 Christians prosecuted that year were hit with sentences of a combined 263 years in prison, according to CHRI.
Iran had stepped up its repression of minority groups, including Baha’i, Christians, and Jews, last year.
Amnesty International recorded dozens of cases against individuals from these communities being hit with bogus charges and having their properties raided and seized in 2025.
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