Two men in Florida are heading to prison — with each of them getting hit with a life sentence last week — for a horrific 2020 kidnapping in which they abducted three people and “tortured” them in the back of a U-Haul rental van before executing two of them, while one of the victims “miraculously survived,” according to prosecutors.

James Edward Daniels, 59, and Frederick Eugene Rudolph, 69, both of Miami, were sentenced to life in prison last Tuesday for the shooting deaths of Osmar Oliva, 50, and Johan Gonzalez Quesada, 26, in December 2020. The pair was convicted last year of conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death, multiple counts of kidnapping resulting in death, and kidnapping, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. A third defendant, Herbert Barr, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

“On Dec. 5, 2020, Daniels, Rudolph, Barr and other co-conspirators kidnapped three victims from a truck yard in Opa-locka, Fla.,” the attorney’s office said in a press release last week. “They bound and tortured the victims, duct-taped their eyes and threw them in the back of a rented van after stealing the victims’ drugs. They drove around the city for hours before taking the victims to an abandoned house in Opa-locka and attempting to execute them by shooting the three victims. Two of the victims died, while one miraculously survived.”

The victim who lived was airlifted to the hospital and made a full recovery, according to prosecutors. In addition to attacking and torturing them, Miami-Dade police reported that the trio had also been robbed.

“Daniels stole jewelry from one of the murdered victims,” prosecutors explained. “And all defendants benefitted by receiving drugs, money, or both, in exchange for their participation in the conspiracy.”

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Records show Daniels and Rudolph were also indicted on unrelated drug distribution charges in July 2022. In that case, a judge sentenced Rudolph to 11 years in prison and Daniels to 35 months in prison, or just under three years. The men were indicted for the kidnapping case in November 2023. Neither is a stranger to the criminal justice system, with Daniels’ Florida Department of Corrections incarceration history dating back 40 years. Rudolph was on probation for a drug-related charge at the time of the murders, records show.

The investigation into the 2020 kidnapping and shootings was conducted by the South Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force.

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David Harris contributed to this report. 

A mother in Florida is accused of terrorizing her son and a 65-year-old man who took the pair into his home to let them live with various forms of torture and abuse, like making her child “sit in a squatted position for hours on end” and striking the man with random objects, including a knife and “sharpening tool” on one occasion, cops say.

“She is f—ing strong,” the man allegedly told investigators after being questioned about the abuse, according to Miami ABC affiliate WPLG.

Jasmine Jean-Baptiste, 31, is accused of beating and pummeling the sexagenarian so badly that police say he is now blind in one eye. She allegedly “exploit(ed) his compassion and concern for her children,” according to the Miami Shores Police Department, and tortured her son behind closed doors in the process.

“A witness reported observing a significant and consistent pattern of abuse, including multiple instances of battery on various occasions,” the police report states, per WPLG. “The victim further provided photographs from various incidents, which depicted bruising, contusions and facial lacerations consistent with his account of abuse.”

One of the seven people accused of torturing and killing a missing man in New York for months — simply because “they enjoyed it,” according to prosecutors — is also facing coercion charges for allegedly forcing two children, ages 7 and 12, to take part in hurting and treating the victim “like a dog,” officials say.

“To have two children have to participate in the beating of another human being, it’s deeply disturbing,” Ontario County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Wolford said at a press conference Wednesday. “It has, I can speak for myself and everyone involved in this investigation, been one of the most troubling parts of this. It’s heartbreaking.”

According to prosecutors and police, Minnesota resident Sam Nordquist was lured by his online girlfriend Precious Arzuaga to the Empire State in September and taken captive at a hotel in Ontario County by Arzuaga and six others in December. The group physically and sexually assaulted Nordquist; prevented him from eating food and hyrdrating; forced him to eat feces and drink urine; and other grotesque forms of torture, according to prosecutors.

“They forced him to obey their commands, treating him like a dog,” Wolford said Wednesday. “We have a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old who are also victims. They may have been forced to participate, but their lives are forever changed by what they saw and endured there.”

A 41-year-old woman in Michigan is facing a possible life sentence for allegedly torturing her boyfriend’s elderly mother while he was on vacation with his children, tying the 80-year-old woman to the bed and “severely” beating her until she was eventually found unresponsive in a pool of her own waste.

Judge Kimberly Wiegand on Wednesday ordered Laura Catherine Tisdelle to be bound over to Macomb County Circuit Court to stand trial on one count each of torture, first-degree abuse of a vulnerable adult, unlawful imprisonment, and third-degree domestic violence, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Under Michigan state law, a person convicted of torture faces a maximum sentence of life in a state correctional facility. On the remaining charges, Tisdelle faces an additional 35 years behind bars.

According to a press release from the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office, Tisdelle’s boyfriend on June 21, 2023, returned home from a five-day trip with his kids and discovered his mother “with her hands tied together, restrained to the bed, severely beaten and laying in her own urine and feces.”

The Macomb Daily reported that Tisdelle used yellow twine to bind the elderly woman’s hands to her bed.

“The defendant’s boyfriend left his mother in her care and when he came home from his trip, the defendant was intoxicated and he found his mother non-responsive,” Wiegand said, per The Macomb Daily.

The victim was rushed to a hospital where she was admitted and placed into the intensive care unit in critical condition, prosecutors said. During the boyfriend’s trip, authorities claim that Tisdelle was the only person charged with caring for his mother.