by BJW Nashe

No one should be surprised that police conduct in Albuquerque, New Mexico has resulted in angry protests by citizens on the streets and activists online. A recently released video that shows Albuquerque police fatally shooting a homeless man who was “camping illegally” has shocked and outraged viewers across the nation. You’d think Albuquerque city officials would realize that their police officers have been shooting at too many people during the past few years. For now, however, city leaders are patting themselves on the back for “dealing effectively” with the public disturbance caused by the controversy. Using riot cops and tear gas, they have managed to quell last weekend’s “mayhem” and thus “restore order.”

On Sunday, March 30, Albuquerque’s normally peaceful downtown streets were disrupted by hundreds of protesters carrying signs and chanting slogans, blocking traffic, breaking windows, clashing with police, and temporarily trapping officers in a surrounded squad car. Many in the crowd wore the stylized Guy Fawkes masks that serve as the public face of the “hacktivists” called Anonymous. Eventually, the crowd was dispersed by a small army of paramilitary storm troopers wielding clubs and firing gas canisters.

Meanwhile, as the action on the streets intensified, the Albuquerque Police Department’s (APD’s) website was temporarily shut down by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Phone numbers of APD personnel were hacked and released to the public. Anonymous, which has mounted similar high-profile attacks against other organizations, made it clear that they were targeting the city of Albuquerque for civil disobedience. Last week the group posted a video announcement on YouTube  , declaring: “APD you now have the full attention of Anonymous… To the citizens of Albuquerque, it’s time to organize… Anonymous grab your cannons and aim them at Albuquerque police websites.” The “cannon” terminology here is a reference to the software used in DDoS attacks, which is called Low Orbit Ion Cannon.

The reason for the public disturbance is simple. Since 2010, Albuquerque police have opened fire on suspects 37 times, resulting in 23 fatalities. For a jurisdiction of approximately 555,000 people, this is a high number of shooting incidents. The APD is currently the subject of a year-long investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for complaints of civil rights violations and allegations of excessive use of force. Many people in the area are fed up with what they see as routine police violence.

The video of the March 16 shooting of James Boyd in the Sandia foothills near Albuquerque proved to be the tipping point for concerned citizens and activists. An NBC News report describes the incident in detail: [http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fatal-shooting-new-mexico-man-sparks-killer-cops-protest-n67931]

“A police officer’s lapel camera captured footage of the standoff around 7:30 p.m. that day. In the video, Boyd appeared agitated as at least four officers and a police dog closed in on him. At one point, he grabbed his belongings and told the officers he would go with them.

“Then, one of the officers lobbed a flash-bang grenade as a diversion.

“‘Get on the ground! Get on the ground now!’ the officers yelled at Boyd.

“Boyd appeared to turn around when an officer fired at him. Police claimed that Boyd, who was clutching knives when he was shot, had threatened them during the standoff. Police shot six live rounds as well as bean bags and stun guns.”

The disturbing video is a public relations nightmare for Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden. Yet he has been quick to defend the actions of his officers. At a news conference held after the video’s release, Eden stated, “All of the less-than-lethal devices were in fact deployed. It was when the K9 officer was down directing the K9 dog that the suspect pulled out the two knives and directed a threat to the K9 officer who had no weapons drawn.”

Some will agree with the police chief that the use of force in this case was justified. They will point out that the suspect, James Boyd, had a history of mental instability, with numerous prior arrests for assault and disorderly conduct. They will argue that Boyd had previously threatened officers at this same illegal camp site.

For many of us, however, the incident raises a number of serious questions. Why were four or more heavily armed officers dispatched to deal with a man who was merely camping in an “unauthorized area?” Why did the officers have rifles aimed at Boyd, who was clearly distraught, and most likely suffering from mental illness? Why was so much firepower used to subdue him? Even if he did have a small knife in his hand, did he pose a significant threat to the officers who were standing 20-30 feet away from him? Why were shots fired into his back as he appeared to turn and flee? Why was the police dog allowed to gnaw on his lifeless body sprawled out on the ground?

The incident is an ugly reminder of the risks involved when American communities embrace heavy-handed law enforcement tactics as part of an overall tough-on-crime agenda. There is a price to be paid for “total security.” In New Mexico, as in many other U.S. states, many citizens are wondering whether the high price is worth it. At what point does a secure community turn into a police state?

While the uproar over police violence is clearly a public relations disaster for Albuquerque city officials, the opposite seems to be true for the activists whose rallying cry online is delivered in a dry, electronically altered monotone: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.” Since 2003, the people behind the Guy Fawkes masks have disrupted business-as-usual for several organizations — including the Church of Scientology, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, the Westboro Baptist Church, numerous U.S. and foreign government agencies, and intelligence security firms such as HBGary and Stratfor. Anonymous also played a significant role facilitating the Arab Spring uprisings and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many associates of the group — most notably Jeremy Hammond and Barrett Brown — have been arrested during a widespread government crackdown and charged with serious crimes. Their comrades and supporters view them as political prisoners, and refuse to wave the white flag of surrender. In fact, the group insists that its reach and impact will only grow over time, and inspire other groups to build on their example.

The recent protest in Albuquerque demonstrates that the decentralized, digitally connected brand of online activism practiced by Anonymous remains a force to be reckoned with, and will most likely continue to play a significant role in politics and world affairs. Whether or not one agrees with all of Anonymous’s activities, and whether or not the group ultimately succeeds in its goals, it is important to understand that the group has found a unique political methodology that works locally and is linked globally in ways that were heretofore unimaginable. This ingenious model of activism will be receiving more, rather than less, attention in the future.

by Krystal Zara and Patrick H. Moore

In the early hours of September 30, 1888, the rough-and-ready Eastside London town of Whitechapel found itself reeling from the grisly death of a prostitute named Elizabeth Stride. That evening “Lucky Liz,” as the newspapers called her, had been seen making the rounds of Whitechapel with a dark-complexioned, well-dressed gentleman, thought to be in his 30’s. They had kissed, argued and eaten fruit together, and observers had remarked snidely that they seemed mismatched.

In the uncanny manner of the Ripper’s victims, Liz had been observed periodically throughout the evening by various Whitechapel residents; then, suddenly, she passed from view. Minutes later she lay dying, the third, or possibly the fourth, to perish at the hand of Jack the Ripper.

In Liz’s case, however, although the Ripper ripped her throat out, he was unable to fully satiate himself – which in his case meant disemboweling his victims and then arranging their entrails on the ground beside them. In this instance, the Ripper was disturbed in media res by an approaching hansom driver, which apparently led him to skulk off into the darkness leaving his job — in his mind — only half-finished.

Around the time the good folk of Whitechapel were gathering around Liz Stride’s dead body, Catherine Eddowes, a 46-year-old prostitute, had just woken up in a nearby jail cell. She had been carried to the cell hours earlier after a public display of drunkenness and still reeked of alcohol. She had slept it off for much of the evening, but shortly after midnight she stirred and began singing out loud there in her cell.

Catherine’s life had not always been a revolving door of booze, prostitution and prison. She was born on April 14, 1842 to George and Catherine Eddowes of Wolverhampton. Her early formative years were stable, but then her mother passed away suddenly when she was 13. Six years later, she began living with a man named Tom Conway, formerly of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment. They lived in the Birmingham area and Catherine bore Tom children. The couple went their separate ways in 1881 and Catharine gained custody of their daughter Annie.

After that, Catherine found companionship with a man named John Kelly, with whom she lived at 55 Flower and Dean Street. This did not, however, keep her off the streets.

Two days before Liz Stride’s death, Catherine and John Kelly returned from a trip to Kent. They spent the evening in lodgings near Shoe Lane. The next morning, September 29th, they were seen together eating breakfast at about 8:00 a.m.  At around 2:00 that afternoon, John and Catherine parted ways. She promised Kelly she would see him at 4:00, but instead, exercising her typical lack of self-control, she wound up being jailed for drunkenness.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on September 30^th, around the time Liz Stride was unwillingly bidding this world farewell, a policeman named Hutt guided Catherine out of the jail and back out into the street. When asked to identify herself, Catherine responded with the name “Mary Ann Kelly”. When they arrived at the gates near Houndsditch and Miter Square, Catherine bid farewell to the policeman stating: “Alright goodnight, old Co*k” — these were her final recorded words. Hutt departed and Catherine closed to the door to the gate and headed up Houndsditch Street.

Half an hour later, Policeman Edward Watkins passed through the area and saw nothing out of the norm. Four minutes later, at 1:34 a.m., three men — Joseph Hyam, Joseph Lawende and Harry Harris — were walking north of Mitre Square, near a church entrance, when they saw a man and woman talking. The men stated that the woman was wearing a brown dress atop a black skirt, a black straw bonnet, and a black jacket with a fake fur collar and a piece of old apron — the same clothes that Eddowes was reported to have been wearing that night. The clothes, however, were all the men could see; they did not observe the woman nor the man’s face. The man had towered over Catherine; he was easily 5’8” while she was a tiny 5 feet and plump. She was clearly older than her companion by a good ten years; he appeared to be in his early 30’s. The man was sporting a moustache. He was wearing a dark jacket and dark hat and was carrying a red handkerchief. The woman reportedly braced one of her hands against the man’s chest. The three men did not stare for long; rather, they hurried home. The boisterous Whitechapel nightlife made them uneasy.

At about 1:42 that morning, Officer James Harvey passed the church in the middle of Mitre Square; he neither saw nor heard anything suspicious. Two minutes later, policeman Edward Watkins came upon the bloody body of Catherine Eddowes on the south side of the square. Her skirt was pulled up above her waist and her throat had been sliced wide open. Shockingly, her stomach was also torn wide open; her internal organs were exposed. The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder—they were smeared over with some feculent matter. A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design. Watkins rushed from the scene to find help and quickly caught the attention of George Morris, a night watchman. They both returned to the crime scene. The victim’s flesh was still warm, she had been slaughtered no more than 20 to 30 minutes before the gruesome discovery.

The police were painfully aware that this was the first of the Ripper’s disemboweling murders to be committed on “police grounds.” They took this as a “slap on the face” on the part of the killer, as if he were mocking them.

About 2:18, a Dr. Brown arrived. His report noted that the victim was a middle-aged woman who lay on her back with her head turned to one side.  Next to the body lay some black buttons, a thimble, and a mustard tin. Her eyes, nose, mouth and ears were dramatically sliced and quite unrecognizable; her right earlobe was cut clear through. Her bowels were clearly visible stretching clear to her right shoulder. Catherine’s body was identified, examined and then taken to the city mortuary.

About an hour later, policeman Alfred Long passed along Goulston Street. He found a piece of bloody apron on the pavement. Neatly written in chalk was the message:

“ The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing”.

Some officers thought this message had nothing to do with the recent murders, but Alfred Long told his fellow officers that when he had walked the same path an hour before there was no message; therefore, the writing had to be recent.

The apron was examined and was determined to belong to Catherine Eddowes.  It was and still is the only piece of physical evidence that the police can confidently connect to Jack the Ripper. The note left by the mystery writer was thought to be the Ripper’s “calling card”.  Catharine’s friends later reported that she had boasted that she knew who the mysterious killer was and had gone to the newspapers hoping to collect reward money by identifying the killer. Catherine’s explanation as to the  Ripper’s identity occurred on September 28^thjust two days before her final public appearance.

On 1 October, a postcard, dubbed the “Saucy Jacky” postcard and signed “Jack the Ripper”, was received by the Central News Agency. It claimed responsibility for Stride’s and Eddowes’s murders, and described the killing of the two women as the “double event”, a designation which has endured. It has been argued that the postcard was mailed before the murders were publicized, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area. Police officials later claimed to have identified a journalist as the author of the postcard, and dismissed it as a hoax, an assessment shared by most Ripper historians.

Click below to read how Jack the Ripper’s first three victims met their grisly fate:

Jack (the Ripper) and Polly, Victim #1: When Love Is Murder

Jack (the Ripper) and Annie, Victim #2: Birth of a Lengend

Jack the Ripper and Elizabeth Stride, Victim #3:The Ripper Hits His Stride

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In trying to make sense out of the wobbly world of crime, we’re occasionally confronted by a case both gruesome and strange that makes us shake our heads and ask, “What was he/she thinking?” This comes up frequently in cases involving children whether it’s the schoolyard bullying syndrome or teens doing crazy things like locking their parents in their room and setting the house on fire.

Any of us who have experienced the great pleasure of raising a teenager know that it doesn’t matter if they’re boys or girls – either way as a parent you’ve got to be on your guard because sooner or later Jack or Diane will do something that keeps you awake at night. And then of course there’s the problem of the nervous parent who lies awake at night worrying about what Jack or Diane may do even though they haven’t done it yet.

With girls (and sometimes with boys), you may face the best friend gone wrong syndrome. That’s when Diane and Jill who are really close and share everything suddenly inexplicably quarrel —  maybe over a boy, maybe over another friend or even a remark that is taken as explicitly hurtful.

Painful though such a breakup may be, you generally don’t worry that either your daughter or your daughter’s former friend is going to end up a murderess and that the victim is going to be the other party. But that’s exactly what happened in Sinaloa, Mexico a few weeks ago. Andres Jaurequi of the Huffington Post writes:

A Mexican teen is accused of killing her best friend following a dispute over nude photos on Facebook.

Erandy Gutierrez allegedly stabbed Anel Baez 65 times at the victim’s home in Guamuchil, Sinaloa, on March 19, according to Mexican news site Notus.

The girls, both 16, had once been close, but that relationship deteriorated after Baez posted a “humiliating” naked selfie of herself and Gutierrez to Facebook, according to the New York Daily News.

According to the International Business Times, when Baez uploaded a picture of the two girls both naked, Gutierrez became furious and threatened to “bury” Baez before the year was over.

It must be said that the slayer Gutierrez certainly gave Baez fair warning:

“It may seem that I am very calm, but in my head I have killed you at least three times,” Gutierrez reportedly wrote to Baez in her Twitter account, which has since been deleted.

According to Notus, the prosecutors have stated that Gutierrez has admitted slaying Baez as revenge for her posting the naked selfies.

If we are to believe the victim’s family, however, there is some doubt as to whether the photos ever even existed, according to a Huffington Post translation of the website. And Baez’s friends have stated that they never saw the purported photos on Facebook.

These alleged facts, however, do not prove that the offending selfies never existed and could (I realize this sounds callous) merely result from the victim’s family’s natural desire to present poor deceased Baez as completely blameless in this matter.

Furthermore, Gutierrez’s threatening tweets must be in response to something her former friend did.

What is heartbreaking is that Baez would almost certainly be alive if she hadn’t succumbed to her own desire to bury the hatchet with her former best friend. According to a HuffPost translation of Semana, on March 19th, Baez foolishly and fatally invited Gutierrez to her house with the intention that the two teens would resolve their dispute and become friends again.

This is the moment not unlike when Heather Elvis succumbs to Sidney Moorer’s allurements and gets in her car and drives to the boat landing, all the while texting like a madwoman. This is the moment when the viewing audience turns bone-white and entreats the future victim, “No! Nyet! Nein! Ay no! Don’t do it! Don’t you see…”

Tragically, Anel Baez did not see. At some point after Gutierrez arrived at Baez’s house, she allegedly picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed her former best friend in the back with it up to 65 times.

After that Gutierrez fled the scene and reportedly tried to hide her involvement by grieving with friends. At some point, the authorities learned she had been at Baez’s house. They moved in and arrested Gutierrez at the funeral. The purported slayer is expected to be charged with murder this week.

*     *     *     *     *

Since her brutal murder, Anel’s local high school (which was also attended by Erandy) has been hosting lectures and seminars aimed at preventing further similar tragedies, local media reports.

News website Cafe Negro says the ‘therapy’ sessions are being run by rector Juan Eulogio War Liera for a community left ‘sad and outraged’ by the brutal murder.

‘In this community I want to tell you are not alone, we share your pain and anger and can add efforts to overcome the bitter moment,’ the website quotes him as saying.

‘Unity in the family is a way to preserve peace, values​​, tranquility and have a better world.’

If this were a U.S. case, it’s very likely that the 16-year-old Gutierrez would be tried as an adult. In Mexico, however, I think such a barbarism is unlikely. Notus reports that if convicted as a minor, Gutierrez would face a prison term of up to seven years.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Rather shockingly, in January of 2013, Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot and killed outside a courthouse in Kaufman County, southeast of Dallas. Two months after Hasse’s death, District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found shot dead in their home.

At that time, with typical Texas law enforcement misdirection, speculation ran wild as to the identity of the perpetrator(s) of these rather unusual crimes. No less a luminary than Texas Governor Rick Perry opined that the villains were probably (cartel) drug traffickers and that the motive was revenge for the aggressive prosecution of these miscreants in Kaufman county.

The theory that got the most press, however, was the notion that the perpetrators were white supremacists, possibly members of the Aryan Brotherhood. This story, at least, did not come out of left field for the simple reason that Mark Hasse had been involved in the prosecution of the Aryan Brotherhood:

In a statewide bulletin a month before Hasse’s death, the Texas Department of Public Safety had issued a warning that the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas was planning retaliation against law enforcement personnel.” Following Hasse’s assassination, and preceding his own murder, McLelland gave a news conference in which he said, “I hope that the people that did this are watching, because we’re very confident that we’re going to find you. We’re going to pull you out of whatever hole you’re in.”

You know what they say about the best laid plans…

It turned out, of course, that neither the narco-traffickers not the Aryan Brothers had anything to do with the murders of Hasse or McLellan and his wife.

Rather, once the dust had cleared and the investigation proceeded, evidence was uncovered that led to former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife, Kim being arrested on capital murder charges for all three victims. Williams and his wife are currently scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Eric Williams apparently bore a grudge against McLelland and Hasse for successfully prosecuting him for stealing three county-owned computer monitors. That conviction ultimately cost Williams his job as a justice of the peace and his law license.

At that time of their arrest, Ms. Williams — who has been described as a congenial woman but who had the odd habit of riding a big adult size tricycle around the neighborhood — reportedly made a full confession when questioned by the arresting officers.

Asst. DA Mark Hasse

Now, a year after Williams and his wife  were arrested, in a truly amazing development, a law enforcement official familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, informed the AP that a dive team had recovered a weapon earlier this year from Lake Tawakoni, 50 miles east of Dallas, that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of at least one of the prosecutors.

Investigators had previously found several weapons in a storage locker used by Eric Williams, but those weapons had not been linked by testing to the crime before the dive team’s search.

According to the official, two guns were found in the lake, concealed inside a black mask.

WFAA-TV first reported the results of the dive team’s search.

The Texas Department of Public Safety refused to comment on this new development and a message left with the sheriff was not immediately returned.

*     *     *     *     *

Now presumably, unless the authorities are engaging in wholesale fabrication and prevarication, which, as the record shows, is always a possibility in Texas, at least one of the guns that were just recovered must be one of the murder weapons used in the DA assassinations.

DA Mike McLelland

So how in the world did the divers know to look for the guns in the black mask in Lake Tawakoni? And how did they know where in the lake to look? Clearly someone, possibly Ms. Williams, assuming she knew where the weapons had been disposed of, must have sung like a little birdie. Considering Ms. Williams reportedly made a full confession at the time of her arrest, she could have subsequently disclosed this new information as part of an ongoing effort to obtain a “sweet deal” in return for her full cooperation.

If this is what happened, it does not say much for Eric William’s crime savvy. It’s bad enough to let your large, eccentric adult-tricycle riding wife give you a hand with the murders, but it’s completely unacceptable  to let her know where you stash (or in this case drown) the weapons afterwards.

This scenario assumes that Eric Williams hasn’t caved and confessed himself, perhaps in return for a promised life sentence in lieu of the death penalty.

Although Kim Williams may have once been Eric William’s Yellow Rose of Texas, adult tricycle notwithstanding, he may be somewhat disillusioned with her at this point. After all, she has broken the two cardinal rules of pulling off successful murders. First, you don’t confess to the crimes and second, you certainly don’t divulge the location of the murder weapons.

by BJW Nashe

Home burglaries are always upsetting. Having one’s home broken into and one’s belongings stolen is a personal violation. It’s only natural to be angry and sad in this situation. Reasonable people, however, soon accept the fact that they have been the victims of an all-too common and fairly banal crime. They might decide to put better locks on the doors and windows, or invest in a home security system. Maybe they will even move to another neighborhood. In any case, they will get on with their lives. The burglary is not a life-shattering event.

For Philip K. Dick, it was considerably more complicated. When the acclaimed author of numerous mind-bending works of science fiction had his home robbed in late 1971, the event was seen as more than a simple robbery. It was a personal vindication, a political prophecy, a cultural watershed moment. For years Dick speculated and theorized about the break-in — which the local police, incidentally, were not very interested in. This only made Dick’s speculations grow wilder and more elaborate. Surely police indifference must indicate the possibility of a sinister, far-reaching conspiracy. At times, Dick even entertained the notion that he himself had committed the break-in, as an act of self-sabotage.

A Beautiful Mind

Nothing was ever simple or straightforward in the life and work of Philip K. Dick. Indeterminacy was his modus operandi. His legion of fans — known affectionately as “Dickheads” — find his mind-games richly rewarding. In everyday life, such games can grow tiresome. But Dick raised them to the level of an art form. And we can see how the same qualities and themes that made his best novels so fascinating were closely interwoven into Dick’s own personal life. Shifting “realities,” mental illness, drug experiences, political conspiracies, artificial intelligence, divine revelation — Dick didn’t need to concoct this material out of the blue. It was part of his daily existence. He lived and breathed the crazy stuff he put into his fiction. And he tended to analyze events in his life in the same way that he told stories in his books. He was the master of the pseudo-event, or the “what if…” scenario. What if the Roman Empire never declined, and the modern world is an illusion? What if the Nazis actually won World War Two? What if the government has brainwashed us to conduct surveillance on ourselves? What if God is an evil, insane deity? What if Nixon is actually a communist? What if I have a split personality, which leads me to break into my house to commit a “robbery?”

For certain creative or deranged individuals, there are no limits to this sort of thinking. With Dick, it led to plenty of brilliant story-lines. But it was no recipe for a happy, stable home life. Even when Phil was relatively calm and productive, he was still prone to dramatic mood swings and paranoia. At his worst, he was a raving lunatic who would phone up friends in the middle of night to discuss suicide plans. The amphetamines he abused for years to help him churn out novel after novel only exacerbated his tenuous mental condition.

Dick’s personality was many-layered. He was a brilliant conversationalist, a charming and witty raconteur, an intellectual powerhouse who knew all about gnostic philosophy and classical music. He could also be very kind and generous to those he cared about. Yet his relationships with wives, lovers, friends, and colleagues were usually fraught with desperate psychopathology. To enter into his orbit was to risk getting lost in a hall of mirrors. Phil Dick-land was a nice place to visit, for many people. But staying too long might drive one mad. One of his tricks, in fact, was to try and convince others that they were going insane, not him. He might be up for days on end, tormenting his wife with his fears that the CIA and KGB were spying on him. Then he would insist on driving her to the hospital, where he would explain very calmly to the doctors that she was having a nervous breakdown.

The Scene of the Crime

Philip K. Dick’s lasting fame is now guaranteed due to renewed interest in his work and because several successful films — Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report — have been based on his work. During his own lifetime, however, Dick was never a hugely successful author.

In 1971, Dick was 41 years old. After publishing science fiction novels and stories for twenty years, he had managed to achieve some level of recognition and notoriety, with a loyal following among sci-fi readers and counter-culture types. His book The Man in the High Castle won the prestigious Hugo Award in 1963. John Lennon had expressed interest in making a film based on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Harlan Ellison had included Dick in his ground-breakingDangerous Visions anthology in 1967. European theorists and critics were calling Dick a genius — a  postmodern American Borges. Yet financial success continued to elude him, and now, for the first time in his adult life, Dick was not working on any new books.

Dick’s personal life was a shambles. His fourth marriage was ending. He was living in a house at 707 Hacienda Way in San Rafael, California filled with drifters, drug casualties, and assorted hangers-on in various stages of mental duress. Low-level drug dealing was a constant at the house. Phil would sell pills to anyone who happened to drop by. He had a revolving cast of characters as housemates. There was Rick, a speed-freak who kept loaded rifles under his bed and was sure the FBI was after him. Phil kicked Rick out of the house when he sensed Rick was plotting to kill him. Then Phil hired a couple of “Black Panther types” to guard the house from attack. There was Donna, a free-spirited young woman who blew into town on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle and ended up living at Phil’s house. Dick was infatuated with her, but also accused her of being a police informer. One lost soul staying with Phil imagined that aphids were crawling all over his skin, so he doused himself with Raid bug spray. He was rushed to the hospital. A few months later, he killed himself. The bizarre, paranoid lifestyle of the house would be brilliantly captured in Dick’s later novel, A Scanner Darkly.

So Dick’s living situation was chaotic, to say the least. His home might be seen as a microcosm of the post-Sixties crash-and-burn. Everyone was disillusioned and taking mind-altering drugs. Most everyone seemed to be going crazy. Dick’s twenty years of amphetamine use had taken its toll. In 1971, he was taken to psychiatric wards on two separate occasions because of suicide threats. He told doctors he was taking 1000 methedrine tabs per week, which is perhaps an exaggeration (Dick loved hyperbole). Yet there was no doubt he was a serious addict, heading for an inevitable breakdown, and possibly an early death.

The Break-In

In November of 1971, Dick began having premonitions that something momentous was about to happen. Several mishaps with his car as well a series of late night threatening phone calls from anonymous strangers were seen as ominous signs. Phil bought a pistol and began prowling around the house at night, peering out of the blinds on the windows. He was certain that he was under surveillance, and facing some sort of imminent attack from hostile forces. He called the police to demand protection, but they ignored him. They knew all about the whacked-out writer on Hacienda Way. He frequently rang them up to share his outlandish “concerns.”

On November 17, Dick returned home from shopping to find his windows smashed in, the house torn apart, his stereo system gone, and the steel-plated fireproof cabinet for his papers and manuscripts blown apart as if by explosives. Phil may have been shocked. But above all, he felt vindicated. In a state of near euphoria, he immediately called the police. “You see, I’m not so paranoid after all.” Two detectives grudgingly paid a visit to the house. One of them asked Phil, “Why did you do all this?” The next day, when Phil went down to the police station with a list of stolen items, he was brushed off, and told he would be better off leaving town. No one wanted to investigate the break-in at the loony bin on Hacienda Way.

Phil Dick, however, was very interested in investigating the break-in. In fact he was obsessed with it. He may have lost personal items during the burglary, but he had also received a tremendous gift. For one thing, his paranoia was confirmed.  All of his fears and suspicions were now justified. Even more important, he now had new material to serve as grist for the great Phil Dickian mill. He would spend the next three years feverishly spinning his wheels around and around the mysterious break-in. The crime was tailor made for his unique imagination.

Shooting for the Baroque

Dick rejected most simple explanations of the break-in. Surely this was no “normal” crime based on random greed. It had to be related to the dark forces that Dick was so attuned to, which he saw at work wherever he cast his gaze, but which most people were somehow blind to. Just read the news, take a look around at what was happening. There was no such thing as a simple crime, in this context. As Dick himself wrote in his novel Valis: “The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.”

When pop culture journalist Paul Williams showed up to interview Dick in 1974 for aRolling Stone article, they spent considerable time discussing Phil’s various theories on the break-in. These speculations were so weird and yet so well-suited to thezeitgeist of the Watergate era, that when the article was published in 1975, the Phil Dick home burglary became a cause celebre among dope-smoking hipsters all across the nation. That was part of Phil’s genius. He was a lightening rod. He had a knack for tapping right into the deeper currents running though society.

In keeping with his baroque imagination, Dick entertained the following theories of the break-in:

• Religious fanatics: Phil’s association with leftist Bishop James Pike had led a group of zealots to ransack Phil’s files for damaging information on Pike. This is not as far-fetched as it might initially appear, given Bishop Pike’s controversial stance at the time on a number of issues. And Dick was fairly close with Pike, on a personal level.

• Black militants: African Americans in Phil’s neighborhood — who may have had Black Panther sympathies — had thrashed his home in order to frighten him away. Most consider this to be a fairly ludicrous, since it is highly unlikely that any Black Panthers had strong feelings about Phil Dick at the time.

• Right-Wing Militants: Phil was opposed to the Vietnam War, so he thought he was a target for reactionaries. One hanger-on at the house, “Peter,” was suspected of belonging to a group such as the Minutemen. Peter tried to persuade Phil to insert “secret coded information” about biological warfare — in particular, a virulent strain of syphilis Peter claimed was being used against the U.S. Peter supposedly threatened to kill Dick if he refused to cooperate. This is the kind of scenario that would easily find its way into Phil’s fiction.

• Local police or narcs: Phil suspected that cops were interested in his house because of drug dealing that went on there. Cops may have broken in as part of a raid, or simply to intimidate him. Or narcs may have broken in to gather information on the house’s residents. This may be remotely possible. Yet local police could have busted Phil any time they liked. Why conduct a break-in?

• Federal agents: The FBI or CIA may have been responsible for the break-in as part of their wide-ranging surveillance and counter-insurgency activities. This was an ongoing concern of Phil’s, which seemed less far-fetched after Watergate, when the details of COINTELPRO were publicized. Here Dick’s paranoia turned out to be justified. In fact, reality was even worse than what he was thinking.

• Drug-crazed thieves: Phil told Rolling Stone that there were so many feuding drug addicts hanging around in his circle of acquaintances that most of his friends thought he had been ripped off by some of these characters. Phil himself tended to prefer the more conspiratorial theories, since his safe had been destroyed and his files ransacked. Why would junkies steal his tax forms and canceled checks? Still, it is difficult to view the break-in as not being somehow drug-related. But who knows?

• Phil Dick himself: Local police thought he had staged the robbery as a stunt. At times, Phil entertained the notion as an interesting possibility. He was willing to toy with the idea, but never took it too seriously. It was a good way to mess with people’s heads, especially during interviews with journalists.

• Military intelligence: Phil wondered whether some of his sci-fi ideas — for instance, about mind control — had struck a little too close to home. Phil noted that a disorientation  drug with the code name “mello jello” had been stolen from the U.S. Army. They were checking for leads on this theft, and hoping to recover the drug. Phil thought “Peter” — the guy with the syphilis theory — may have been an intelligence agent. Who knows?

More significant than the truth or accuracy of any of these conjectures was the fervor with which Dick analyzed them and discussed them with anyone who would listen. He spelled out each of his theories in vast detail in letters, notes, conversations, and interviews. All of this provides us with a window into how his mind worked, and how his fiction was created. Welcome to Phil Dick-land. In true Dick fashion, the mystery of the break-in was never solved. But the stories of confusion and obfuscation that spun out from the event were fascinating. They fit right into the rampant paranoia of the times. Dickheads love them.

Aftermath

The break-in marked the end of Phil Dick’s amphetamine “animal house” on Hacienda Way. Fate intervened when he was invited to attend the Vancouver SF Con in February 1972 as a guest of honor. He set to work on a speech to deliver at the convention. The text for the speech, called “The Android and the Human,” marked his return to serious, sustained writing. It is filled with all of his customary wit and brilliance, and seasoned with more than a dash of baroque madness and paranoia.

Dick bought a plane ticket for his pal Donna, hoping she would accompany him on the trip. But she backed out at the last minute. So Dick left for Canada alone, taking along with him his new speech, a battered suitcase with two changes of clothes, an old overcoat, and a Bible.

At the convention in Vancouver, Dick’s appearance and speech went well. He was interviewed and photographed and taken out on the town. Afterwards, with nothing left for him in San Rafael, he decided to stay on in Vancouver. He spent a few weeks wandering around the city in a daze, popping pills and losing his grip on reality. On March 23, 1972, lying in bed in his fleabag hotel room, Dick tried to kill himself with an overdose of potassium bromide. Later on he somehow emerged from his stupor and called for emergency assistance. He spent some time in the hospital, and was then transferred to a drug rehabilitation center called X-Kalay, which only treated heroin addicts. In order to gain admittance, Dick lied and said he was addicted to heroin.

Dick never returned to the house on Hacienda Way, which soon went into foreclosure. He stayed at X-Kalay for a couple of months, detoxed from the drugs, then flew back to California — this time to Fullerton, where some writers and professors agreed to help him relocate and get settled. Dick never went back to regularly using amphetamines. His life only grew stranger, however, when in 1974 he began having a series of mystical experiences which he spent the remainder of his life attempting to figure out — in typical baroque fashion. These experiences would inspire the trilogy of books that many of us Dickheads consider to be his greatest work — Valis, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Philip K. Dick died of a stroke in 1982. He was just 53 years old. The home burglary remains a mystery. The mystical experiences are still open to interpretation. One thing is certain: Phil Dick is now considered one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Laurel Michelle Schlemmer, 40, of McCandless, PA (located 10 miles north of Pittsburgh) lived in a lovely home in what has been described as a quiet upscale neighborhood. A religious woman, she was a stay-at-home mother which gave her the opportunity to focus her attention on her three sons, who were 3, 6 and 7 years of age.

Unfortunately, Ms. Schlemmer has reportedly struggled with mental illness and/or instability for some time now. Things came to a head on Tuesday morning when, responding to what she called “crazy voices”, after packing her 7-year-old off to school on the school bus at around 8:40 am, she ordered her two younger boys, 3-year-old Luke and 6-year-old Daniel, to take off their pajamas and get in the bathtub.

According to an Allegheny County criminal complaint, “Schlemmer said after the boys got into the tub, she got into the tub ‘fully clothed’ and ‘crazy voices’ were telling her to push the boys into the water. Schlemmer explained that at one point she [was] sitting on top of the boys while they were under the water in the tub.”

By her convoluted logic, the woman apparently “thought she could be a better mother” to her oldest son “if the other two boys weren’t around,” at least that’s what she told the detectives.

She also believed the two younger boys “would be better off in heaven,” a point few would quibble with given the quality of Ms. Schlemmer’s mothering.

What is curious is that at some point in the midst of the drowning, a sliver of sanity returned and Ms. Schlemmer got off of her boys and pulled them from the water. She told the police, however, that she didn’t attempt CPR because she didn’t know how to perform the procedure.

She also was cognizant of the need to conceal what she had done and allegedly tried to hide her wet clothes in a trash bag before the paramedics, who she called after pulling her boys from the tub, arrived at the scene.

Once they were apprised of the situation, the rescue workers rushed the two boys to UPMC Passavant Hospital, where Luke died. His older brother Daniel was transferred to a pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where he remained in critical condition as of Wednesday.

Ms. Schlemmer is being held without bail. Her charges include criminal homicide, aggravated assault, child endangerment and tampering with physical evidence. She has a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 11th.

*     *     *     *     *

Neighbors said they were stunned to hear the woman killed her child.

“I said hello to her and she seemed fine,” Jennie Leonard, who saw Schlemmer at the bus stop just moments before the tragic incident, told WPXI-TV.

“When the kids got on the bus, everybody waved as we always do.”

The neighbors explained that Ms. Schlemmer’s husband, Mark, was at work when the assault occurred.

A neighbor who did not wish to be identified and who broke down in tears, stated that the family did everything together and seemed very happy. Two bouquets of flowers were tucked Wednesday into a bush at the front of the family’s home on their winding street of split-level houses and well-kept yards. Mourners also left a small stuffed leopard and a burning votive candle.

*     *     *     *     *

Although it’s always touching when goodhearted neighbors turn out to support neighbors who are grieving or who are in trouble, the record shows that there were earlier indications that Ms. Schlemmer was either not “quite right” or, alternatively, was an accident waiting to happen. In September 2009, she was given a citation for leaving one of her boys unattended in a parked car. According to the police, the interior of the vehicle reached a sweltering 112 degrees.

Fortunately, the child was not injured and Ms. Schlemmer was ordered to pay a small fine.

According to Joe Mandak of the Associated Press, the prosecutors are reviewing yet a third incident involving Ms. Schlemmer and her children.

Although the prosecutors were not willing to discuss what they were investigating, Ms. Schlemmer’s pastor, Dan Hendley of North Park Church, explained that she had backed into the same two victims (her two little boys) with her van 10 months ago in the driveway of the boys’ grandparents’ house in a nearby town. Pastor Hendley had counseled the family after the incident.

The pastor is convinced that the van encounter was an accident. “What was shared with me is she was in the van and the boys were behind her and she didn’t see them,” he said. “She thought the boys had run inside and, instead, they were in back of the van.”

At the time, the van accident did not result in any charges.

Pastor Hendley felt that the family had recovered from the van accident, which caused internal injuries to Daniel and left Luke unable to walk for a time.

“They seemed to be doing well from the distance from which I observed them,” said the pastor carefully.

The pastor did admit that there were some concerns about Schlemmer’s mental state as a result of the accident, but not because anyone had any suspicions about what happened.

At present, Pastor Hendley and other friends at his evangelical Presbyterian congregation are working to help support the father, Mark Schlemmer, and his 7-year-old son.

*     *     *     *     *

One fact sticks out like a very sore thumb. Given her mental instability, Ms. Schlemmer was probably not the best candidate to pop out three babies within a four year span. Even the most stable of women will struggle at times with the pressures of motherhood. For an unstable person like Ms. Schlemmer to have two boys in a 2-year period followed by a third boy three years later  just doesn’t make sense.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Our nation was shocked in February of 2007 when it learned that Rian James Wittman, a resident of the quaint old Oregon city of Albany, had gone on a 3-week stun-gun rampage in which he zapped his 18-month-old son repeatedly with a 100,000 volt stun gun. Wittman’s hideous crime was revealed to the authorities when the child’s mother, who was 21 at the time, went to the Albany Police Department and turned him in.

Wittman was arrested without incident later that same night just after 10 pm at the family’s residence in the 1900 block of SE Hill Street and taken to the Linn County Jail. The child was taken to Samaritan Albany General Hospital where he was examined and treated for numerous wounds conforming to the stun gun’s electrode pattern on his arms, back, chest and left leg.

The child was later taken into protective custody by the Department of Human Services.

Considering what he had done, Wittman was probably pretty lucky to be offered a plea deal calling for four years in prison based on two counts of third-degree assault.

*     *     *     *     *

End of story, we would think (if there is ever an end to the story when dealing with this type of rebroabate). Creep goes to prison, does his time and gets out. God only knows what happens then? We would hope that the conditions of his post-release supervision would carefully monitor and limit his interactions with young children (or any children for that matter).

Sad to say, it was already too late. Today, we learned that Wittman had already committed a series of serious sexual crimes prior to his stun-gun rampage. The wheels of justice, although maddeningly slow much of the time, sometimes turn in the right direction…

Kyle Odegard of the Albany Democrat-Herald writes:

A man who made national news in 2007 for zapping his 18-month old son with a stun gun was arrested on sex crime charges by Albany police on Wednesday.

Rian James Wittman, 30, of Keizer, was charged in Linn County Circuit Court on Thursday with five counts of first-degree sex abuse and three counts of first-degree sodomy.

Judge Thomas McHill set Wittman’s bail at $100,000.

Prosecutor George Eder asked for bail of $200,000, citing Wittman’s criminal history and saying that Wittman faced 25 years in prison if convicted on a specific charge because of the age of the victim at the time.

Wittman’s lawyer, Salem defense attorney Robert Gunn, countered by pointing  out that Wittman had voluntarily turned himself in to the Albany Police Department, which as an act of good faith, according to Gunn, supported setting bail at $50,000.

The judge appears to have compromised by coming up with the figure somewhere in between the two requests. (I note that if this was a Federal case here in LA, it would be a foregone conclusion that Wittman would be denied bail under the theory that he is a danger to the community.)

The alleged victim in the new sex case is an adolescent male who Wittman knew during the 2006 to 2007 time frame.

The defendant’s next hearing is scheduled for 8:30 am on April 28.

All of the charges Wittman faces are Measure 11 offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. For example, the minimum sentence for first-degree sodomy under Measure 11 is 8 years and four months. I’m uncertain whether Oregon judges have the discretion to run multiple counts concurrently. If not, three counts of first-degree sodomy equals 25 years with no chance of early release.

*     *     *     *     *

There’s an important and frightening lesson embedded in this cruel story. When you consider just how horrible Wittman’s stun-gun rampage was, especially since it was directed at a toddler, doesn’t it stand to reason that this black-hearted miscreant could very well have also been doing other terrible things? Of course. The little light bulb comes on. Creeps of this sort are not like your garden variety white-collar fraudsters who more often than not limit their serious misdeeds to monetary matters. Hell no! A guy who would repeatedly give his son 100,000 volts is probably capable of anything, don’t you think?

Texas death row inmate Ray Jasper was executed by lethal injection last month, on March 19. Jasper was convicted of participating in the 1998 robbery and murder of recording studio owner David Alejandro. A teenager at the time of the crime, Jasper was sentenced to death.

During his time in prison, Jasper contributed to Gawker Media’s “Letters from Death Row” series. In the days leading up to his execution, he submitted his last letter to Hamilton Nolan at Gawker, acknowledging that this “could be his final statement on earth.” Jasper’s letter is a lucid, thoughtful, humane, and ultimately heartrending document. It is well worth the time of everyone who is concerned about crime and punishment, both here in America and throughout the world.

We would like to thank Gawker for sharing this material, as we take the liberty of re-posting Ray Jasper’s final words to all of us.

Mr. Nolan,

When I first responded to you, I didn’t think that it would cause people to reach out to me and voice their opinions. I’ve never been on the internet in my life and I’m not fully aware of the social circles on the internet, so it was a surprise to receive reactions so quickly.

I learned that some of the responses on your website were positive and some negative. I can only appreciate the conversation. Osho once said that one person considered him like an angel and another person considered him like a devil, he didn’t attempt to refute neither perspective because he said that man does not judge based on the truth of who you are, but on the truth of who they are.

Your words struck a chord with me. You said that my perspective is different and therefore my words have a sort of value. Yet, you’re talking to a young man that’s been judged unworthy to breathe the same air you breathe. That’s like a hobo on the street walking up to you and you ask him for spare change.

Without any questions, you’ve given me a blank canvas. I’ll only address what’s on my heart. Next month, the State of Texas has resolved to kill me like some kind of rabid dog, so indirectly, I guess my intention is to use this as some type of platform because this could be my final statement on earth.

I think ‘empathy’ is one of the most powerful words in this world that is expressed in all cultures. This is my underlining theme. I do not own a dictionary, so I can’t give you the Oxford or Webster definition of the word, but in my own words, empathy means ‘putting the shoe on the other foot.’

Empathy. A rich man would look at a poor man, not with sympathy, feeling sorrow for the unfortunate poverty, but also not with contempt, feeling disdain for the man’s poverish state, but with empathy, which means the rich man would put himself in the poor man’s shoes, feel what the poor man is feeling, and understand what it is to be the poor man.

Empathy breeds proper judgement. Sympathy breeds sorrow. Contempt breeds arrogance. Neither are proper judgements because they’re based on emotions. That’s why two people can look at the same situation and have totally different views. We all feel differently about a lot of things. Empathy gives you an inside view. It doesn’t say ‘If that was me…’, empathy says, ‘That is me.’

What that does is it takes the emotions out of situations and forces us to be honest with ourselves. Honesty has no hidden agenda. Thoreau proposed that ‘one honest man’ could morally regenerate an entire society.

Looking through the eyes of empathy & honesty, I’ll address some of the topics you mentioned. It’s only my perspective.

The Justice system is truly broken beyond repair and the sad part is there is no way to start over. Improvements can be made. If honest people stand up, I think they will be made over time. I know the average person isn’t paying attention to all the laws constantly being passed by state & federal legislation. People are more focused on their jobs, raising kids and trying to find entertainment in between time. The thing is, laws are being changed right and left.

A man once said that revolution comes when you inform people of their rights. Martin Luther King said a revolution comes by social action and legal action working hand in hand. I’m not presenting any radical revolutionary view, the word revolution just means change. America changes as the law changes.

Under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution all prisoners in America are considered slaves. We look at slavery like its a thing of the past, but you can go to any penitentiary in this nation and you will see slavery. That was the reason for the protests by prisoners in Georgia in 2010. They said they were tired of being treated like slaves. People need to know that when they sit on trial juries and sentence people to prison time that they are sentencing them to slavery.

If a prisoner refuses to work and be a slave, they will do their time in isolation as a punishment. You have thousands of people with a lot of prison time that have no choice but to make money for the government or live in isolation. The affects of prison isolation literally drive people crazy. Who can be isolated from human contact and not lose their mind? That was the reason California had an uproar last year behind Pelican Bay. 33,000 inmates across California protested refusing to work or refusing to eat on hunger-strikes because of those being tortured in isolation in Pelican Bay.

I think prison sentences have gotten way out of hand. People are getting life sentences for aggravated crimes where no violence had occurred. I know a man who was 24 years old and received 160 years in prison for two aggravated robberies where less that $500 was stole and no violence took place. There are guys walking around with 200 year sentences and they’re not even 30 years old. Its outrageous. Giving a first time felon a sentence beyond their life span is pure oppression. Multitudes of young people have been thrown away in this generation.

The other side of the coin is there are those in the corporate world making money off prisoners, so the longer they’re in prison, the more money is being made. It’s not about crime & punishment, it’s about crime & profit. Prison is a billion dollar industry. In 1996, there were 122 prisons opened across America. Companies were holding expos in small towns showing how more prisons would boost the economy by providing more jobs.

How can those that invest in prisons make money if people have sentences that will allow them to return to free society? If people were being rehabilitated and sent back into the cities, who would work for these corporations? That would be a bad investment. In order for them to make money, people have to stay in prison and keep working. So the political move is to tell the people they’re tough on crime and give people longer sentences.

Chuck Colson, former advisor to the President once said that they were passing laws to be tough on crime, but they didn’t even know who the laws were affecting. It wasn’t until the Watergate scandal and Colson himself going to prison that he learned who the laws were affecting. Colson ended up forming the largest prison ministry in America. He also foreseen in his book THE GOD OF SPIDERS & STONES that America was forming a new society within its prisons. Basically, that prison would become a nation inside this nation. He predicted that over a million people would be locked up by the year 2000. The book was written in the 8O’s. Now, its 2014 and almost two million people are locked up. It’s not that crime is the issue. Crime still goes on daily. It’s that the politics surrounding crime have changed and it has become a numbers game. Dollars & Cents. You have people like Michael Jordan who invest millions of dollars in the prison system. Any shrewed businessman would if you have no empathy for people locked up and you just want to make some money.

I don’t agree with the death penalty. It’s a very Southern practice from that old lynching mentality. Almost all executions take place in the South with a few exceptions here and there. Texas is the leading State by far. I’m not from Texas. I was raised in California. Coming from the West Coast to the South was like going back in time. I didn’t even think real cowboys existed. Texas is a very ‘country’ state, aside a few major cities. There are still small towns that a black person would not be welcomed. California is more of a melting pot. I grew up in the Bay Area where its very diverse.

The death penalty needs to be abolished. Life without parole is still a death sentence. The only difference is time. To say you need to kill a person in a shorter amount of time is just seeking revenge on that person.

If the death penalty must exist, I think it should only be for cases where more than one person is killed like these rampant shootings that have taken place around the country the last few years. Also, in a situation of terrorism.

If you’re not giving the death penalty for murder, then the government is already saying that the taking of one’s life is not worth the death penalty. Capital murder is if you take someone’s life and commit another felony at the same time. That’s Texas law. That makes a person eligible for the death penalty The problem is, you’re not getting the death penalty for murder, you’re actually getting it for the other felony. That doesn’t make common sense. You can kill a man but you will not get the death penalty……if you kill a man and take money out his wallet, now you can get the death penalty.

I’m on death row and yet I didn’t commit the act of murder. I was convicted under the law of parties. When people read about the case, they assume I killed the victim, but the facts are undisputed that I did not kill the victim. The one who killed him plead guilty to capital murder for a life sentence. He admitted to the murder and has never denied it. Under the Texas law of parties, they say it doesn’t matter whether I killed the victim or not, I’m criminally responsible for someone else’s conduct. But I was the only one given the death penalty.

The law of parties is a very controversial law in Texas. Most Democrats stand against it. It allows the state to execute someone who did not commit the actual act of murder. There are around 50 guys on death row in Texas who didn’t kill anybody, but were convicted as a party.

The lethal injection has become a real controversial issue here of late because states are using drugs that they’re not authorize to use to execute people. The lethal injection is an old Nazi practice deriving from the Jewish Holocaust. To use that method to kill people today, when it’s unconstitutional to use it on dogs, is saying something very cruel and inhumane. People don’t care because they think they’re killing horrible people. No empathy. Just contempt.

I understand that it’s not popular to talk about race issues these days, but I speak on the subject of race because I hold a burden in my heart for all the young blacks who are locked up or who see the street life as the only means to make something of themselves. When I walked into prison at 19 years old, I said to myself ‘Damn, I have never seen so many black dudes in my life’. I mean, it looked like I went to Africa. I couldn’t believe it. The lyrics of 2Pac echoed in my head, ‘The penitentiary is packed/ and its filled with blacks’.

It’s really an epidemic, the number of blacks locked up in this country. That’s why I look, not only at my own situation, but why all of us young blacks are in prison. I’ve come to see, it’s largely due to an indentity crisis. We don’t know our history. We don’t know how to really indentify with white people. We are really of a different culture, but by being slaves, we lost ourselves.

When you have a black man name John Williams and a white man name John Williams, the black man got his name from the white man. Within that lies a lost of identity. There are blacks in this country that don’t even consider themselves African. Well, what are we? When did we stop being African? If you ask a young black person if they’re African, they will say ‘No, I’m American’. They’ve lost their roots. They think slavery is their roots. Again, its a strong identity crisis.

You take the identity crisis, mix it with capitalism, where money comes before empathy, and you’ll have a lot of young blacks trying to get money by any means because they’re trying to get out of poverty or stay out of poverty. Now, money is what they try to find an identity in. They feel like if they get rich, legal or illegal, they’ve become somebody. Which in America is partly true because superficially we hail the rich and despise the poor. We give Jay-Z more credit than we do Al Sharpton. What has Jay-Z done besides get rich? Yet we see dollar signs and somehow give more respect to the man with the money.

A French woman who moved to America asked me one day, ‘Why don’t black kids want to learn?’ Her husband was a high school teacher. She said the white and asian kids excel in school, but the black and hispanic kids don’t. I said that all kids want to learn, it’s just a matter of what you’re trying to teach them. Cutting a frog open is not helping a black kid in the ghetto who has to listen to police sirens all night and worry about getting shot. Those kids need life lessons. They need direction. When you have black kids learning more about the Boston Tea Party than the Black Panther Party, I guarantee you won’t keep their attention. But it was the Black Panther Party that got them free lunch.

People point their fingers at young blacks, call them thugs and say they need to pull up their pants. That’s fine, but you’re not feeding them any knowledge. You’re not giving them a vision. All you’re saying is be a square like me. They’re not going to listen to you because you have guys like Jay-Z and Rick Ross who are millionaires and sag their pants. Changing the way they dress isn’t changing the way they think. As the Bible says, ‘Where there’s no vision the people perish’. Young blacks need to learn their identity so they can have more respect for the blacks that suffered for their liberties than they have for someone talking about selling drugs over a rap beat who really isn’t selling drugs.

They have to be exposed to something new. Their minds have to be challenged, not dulled. They know the history of the Crips & Bloods, but they can’t tell you who Garvey or Robeson is. They can quote Drake & Lil Wayne but they can’t tell you what Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton has done. Across the nation, they gravitate to Crips & Bloods. I tell those I know the same thing, not to put blue & red before black. They were black first. It’s senseless, but they are trying to find a purpose to live for and if a gang gives them a sense of purpose that’s what they will gravitate to. They aren’t being taught to live and die for something greater. They’re not being challenged to do better.

Black history shouldn’t be a month, it should be a course, an elective taught year around. I guarantee black kids would take that course if it was available to them. How many black kids would change their outlook if they knew that they were only considered 3/5′s of a human being according to the U.S Constitution? That black people were considered part animal in this country. They don’t know that. When you learn that, you carry yourself with a different level of dignity for all we’ve overcome.

Before Martin Luther King was killed he drafted a bill called ‘The Bill for the Disadvantaged’. It was for blacks and poor whites. King understood that in order to have a successful life, you have to decrease the odds of failure. You have to change the playing field. I’m not saying there’s no personal responsibility for success, that goes without saying, but there’s also a corporate responsibility. As the saying goes, when you see someone who has failed, you see someone who was failed.

Neither am I saying that advantages are always circumstantial. Sometimes its knowledge or opportunity that gives an advantage. A lot of times it is the circumstances. Flowers grow in gardens, not in hard places. Using myself as an example, I was 15 when my first love got shot 9 times in Oakland. Do you think I m going to care about book reports when my girlfriend was shot in the face? I understand Barack Obama saying there is no excuse for blacks or anyone else because generations past had it harder than us. That’s true. However, success is based on probabilities and the odds. Everyone is not on a level playing field. For some, the odds are really stacked against them. I’m not saying they can’t be overcome, but it’s not likely.

I’m not trying to play the race card, I’m looking at the roots of why so many young blacks are locked up. The odds are stacked against us, we suffer from an identity crisis, and we’re being targeted more, instead of taught better. Ask any young black person their views on the Police, I assure you their response will not be positive. Yet if you have something against the Police, who represent the government, you cannot sit on a trial jury. A young black woman was struck from the jury in my case because she said she sees the Police as ‘intimidators’. She never had a good experience with the Police like most young blacks, but even though she’s just being true to her experience, she’s not worthy to take part as a juror in a trial.

White people really don’t understand how extreme it is to be judged by others outside your race. In the book TRIAL & ERROR: THE TEXAS DEATH PENALTY Lisa Maxwell paints this picture to get the point across and if any white person reading this is honest with themselves, they will clearly understand the point. I cannot quote it word for word, but this was the gist of it…

Imagine you’re a young white guy facing capital murder charges where you can receive the death penalty… the victim in the case is a black man… when you go to trial and step into the courtroom… the judge is a black man… the two State prosecutors seeking the death penalty on you… are also black men… you couldn’t afford an attorney, so the Judge appointed you two defense lawyers who are also black men… you look in the jury box… there’s 8 more black people and 4 hispanics… the only white person in the courtroom is you… How would you feel facing the death penalty? Do you believe you’ll receive justice?

As outside of the box as that scene is, those were the exact circumstances of my trial. I was the only black person in the courtroom.

Again, I’m not playing the race card, but empathy is putting the shoe on the other foot.

The last thing on my heart is about religion and the death penalty. There are several well-known preachers in Texas and across the South that teach their congregations that the death penalty is right by God and backed by the Bible. The death penalty is a governmental issue not a spiritual issue. Southern preachers who advocate the death penalty are condoning evil. They need to learn the legalities of capital punishment. The State may have the power to put people to death, but don’t preach to the public that it’s God’s will. It’s the State’s will.

If God wanted me to die for anything, I would be dead already. I talk to God everday. He’s not telling me I’m some kind of menace that He can’t wait to see executed. God is blessing me daily. God is showing me His favor & grace on my life. Like Paul said, I was the chief of sinners, but God had mercy on me because He knew I was ignorant. The blood of Abel cryed vengeance, the blood of Jesus cryed mercy.

There are preachers like John Hagee in San Antonio who have influence over thousands of people, who not only attend his church, but also watch his TV program, and hear him condoning the death penalty. Hagee doesn’t see his Southern mentality condones the death penalty, not the scriptures. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that condones the way Texas executes people today.

Southern preachers use scriptures like God telling Noah, ‘Whoever shed’s man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed’. ‘That’s murder. Under Texas law, you cannot receive the death penalty for murder. There is no such thing as capital murder in the Bible, where murder must be in the course of another felony. Yet, they preach capital punishment is God’s will. Even if you’re guilty of capital murder in Texas, it doesn’t mean you’ll receive the death penalty. People get the death penalty when a jury has judged them to be a ‘continuing threat to society’. ‘That means they are deemed so bad that they have no hope of redemption or change in their behavior. That is the only reason a person gets the death penalty. They are suppose to be the absolute worse of the worse, so terrible that they cannot live in prison with other murderers.

That in itself is contrary to the whole Christian faith that believes no one is beyond redemption if they repent for their sins and put their faith in Jesus Christ. For a Christian to advocate the death penalty is a complete contradiction.

As easy as it is for a preacher to stand up in the pulpit with a Bible and tell thousands of people the death penalty is right, I challenge any preacher in Texas, John Hagee or any others to come visit me and tell me that God wants me to die. Martin Luther King said, ‘Capital punishment shows that America is a merciless nation that will not forgive.’

Again, Mr. Nolan, this is only my perspective. I’m just the hobo on the street giving away my pennies. A doctor can’t look at a person and see cancer, they have to look beyond the surface. When you look at the Justice system, the Death Penalty, or anything else, it takes one to go beyond the surface. Proper diagnosis is half the cure.

I’m a father. My daughter was six weeks old when I got locked up and now she’s 15 in high school. Despite the circumstances, I’ve tryed to be the best father in the world. But I knew that her course in life is largely determine by what I teach her. It’s the same with any young person, their course is determined by what we are teaching them. In the words of Aristotle, ‘All improvement in society begins with the education of the young.’

Sincerely,

Ray L. Jasper

PS: Forgive me for being longwinded, but I was speaking from the heart. Thanks for the opportunity.

by Bob Couttie

Former U.S. Marine and security and intelligence contractor Timothy Kaufman’s attempts to avoid facing trial for a double murder in Angeles City in the Philippines came to an end this week when a U.S. federal magistrate ruled that there was enough evidence to agree to a request from the Philippine government for his extradition. Given the glacial progress of the Philippine legal system, the final verdict may take years.

On 2 September 2011 two men broke into a home occupied by David Balmer, a former Northern Ireland policeman, and his girlfriend Elma de Guia, and pumped 18 shots from silenced pistols into their heads. Kaufman, another American Joseph Tramontano, and Filipino Jesus Santos Jr., are accused of involvement — Kaufman and Tramontano firing the guns, Santos acting as the getaway driver.

Kaufman’s housekeeper, Arceli Garcia, gave police the two Beretta 92DS with suppressors used in the crime and the jacket and jeans worn by the suspects during the killing. She has agreed to turn state’s witness.

A third man, Australian Les Nelson, is alleged to have acted as a lookout but has not been charged.

It is more than a decade since the U.S. Air Force abandoned its base at Clark Field next to Angeles City in the Philippines following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, but its legacy of a economy based on bars and prostitution remains. The former airbase has become a special economic zone and the site of Manila’s second airport, and the notorious girly bars of Angeles have burgeoned. The growth of the sex industry, easy money and drugs have brought the inevitable growth in crime, and a murder rate some 20 percent higher than the rest of the country.

The new establishments include the vast Egyptian-themed Golden Nile bar which delivers girls to the dance floor by an elevated platform a dozen at a time. Just opposite, the Blue Nile hotel provides “sexual shoppers” with fantasy rooms redolent of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Tramontano and a former Northern Irish policeman,  Richard Agnew, were co-owners of both businesses.

It can be a rough town. Richard Agnew, who owned the house where David Balmer and his girlfriend were killed and discovered their bodies, was subject to an assassination attempt in 2012, believed to be the work of a business rival.

Drugs appear to be at heart of the double murder.  Balmer and his live-in girlfriend are said to have been users of cocaine and crystal meth, known in the Philippines as ‘shabu’ and the drug of choice for many foreigners and Filipinos.

Jesus Santos Jr. was arrested in Manila in March 2013. Kaufman, who had left the Philippines on 25 September, three weeks after the double murder, was arrested in Saratoga, New York in April 2013. Tramontano is in hiding somewhere in Asia, whereabouts unknown. He left the Philippines three days after Kaufman.

The Australian getaway driver Les Nelson, who departed for Queensland, Australia on 5 September has apparently not been traced.

Kaufman protests his innocence, claiming he has been framed and that he will be killed if returned to the Philippines. However, the Times Union newspaper quotes U.S. federal magistrate Randolph Treece as saying:

“The tight noose of circumstantial evidence, eyewitnesses’ accounts placing Kaufman and another at the crime scene on or about the time of the murders, the connective forensic thread of the evidence relative to the guns seized by police and the discarded bullet shells found at the crime scene, and Ms. Garcia’s linchpin testimony compel a finding that there is sufficient proof to charge Kaufman with two counts of murder in the Philippines”.

Richard Agnew, who believes drugs were involved, issued an open letter to Tramontano in April, appealing for him to surrender  to U.S. authorities:

“I’m sure had you and Kaufman been drug free the murders would not have taken place, therefore you need to come clean on that, as i see it the drug biz is partly to blame for what happened… The mastermind, the paymaster, the protectors of the drug biz all need to be named for you to get a break in this mess you find yourself in. The ambush on me must also be explained should you or any of the co-accused be involved in that….  Its time to step up to the plate Joe, time is running out for you.”

The appeal was personal.

Click here to see other posts by Bob Couttie:

The Day I Said No to the French Connection

My First Murder – The Blue Anchor Scandal

Dispatch From Cambodia: Murder In A Sleepy Town

U.S. Navy Cold Case : A Sister’s Persistence Restores the Honor of Murdered Ensign Andrew Lee Muns

The Moors Murderers: Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

compiled by All Things Crime Blog Staff

Although the so-called “experts” don’t seem to be able to agree completely on the psychological underpinnings of that frightening man/beast known as the Serial Killer, many serial killers do seem to share certain traits including alcohol and substance abuse, psychological and sexual abuse during childhood, and a tendency toward an active fantasy life while living an essentially anti-social existence. Throw in an preference for auto-eroticism over normal sex with a partner, a childhood propensity for bed-wetting, a love of voyeurism or fetishism, a tendency to abuse and/or kill animals, and a history of head injuries and the profile begins to emerge. This certainly does not mean that anyone who manifests  four or five of these traits is or will become a serial killer, but if your boyfriend or girlfriend seems to fit this bill, you should maybe consider “getting out of Dodge”.

The following analysis of the 10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers comes to us courtesy of Hestie Bernard Gerber at ListVerse.

Alcohol and substance abuse

Children who are exposed to alcohol and substance abuse in the womb may suffer from serious birth defects including small eye openings, mental retardation and brain and central nervous system issues. Growing up in a home where substances are abused can be even worse. ADHD, attachment disorders, feelings of inadequacy, depression and behavioral problems are common. According to the FBI, the childhood homes of more than 70 per cent of serial killers experienced problems related to substance abuse. Oddly, there have actually been very few serial killers who were actually addicted to alcohol and substances – but many of them are known to have encountered such things in their youth.

Psychological abuse during childhood

According to interviews with known serial killers, 50 per cent of them suffered emotional abuse and neglect during their childhood. Discipline generally took the form of humiliation and was characterized by its arbitrary and destructive nature. Even a child who is merely neglected is likely to suffer substantial developmental failures. The child often becomes desensitized and comes to believe that the emotionally barren world that surrounds it is normal. Thus, the child grows up devoid of empathy for others. Emotional abuse naturally impairs a child’s self-esteem, and interferes with his ability to function adequately, succeed academically, and form healthy, intimate relationships. This is why serial killers tend to drift from job to job and rarely have successful relationships.

Sexually stressful events in childhood

This is a big one. Violent sexual events during childhood have serious adverse affects on an individual’s development. More than one known serial killer was forced to dress up as a girl as a form of punishment. Witnessing violent sexual acts between family members and/or parents was also common. Many were sexually abused, most often by parents or family members. Some contracted venereal diseases as teenagers or were punished for masturbating as children. Experiences of this ilk often lead to violent fantasies that continue into adulthood. The childhood abuse pattern leads to social isolation, learning difficulties (46% of serial killers never finished high-school), self-control issues and even seizures. This research into child abuse serves as compelling confirmation that serial killers are made – not born.

Bed-wetting

Even though bed-wetting in itself has been discredited as a predictor of later violent tendencies, it is thought to be related to arson and animal cruelty in some way. Research indicates that persistent bed-wetting past the age of five is demeaning for a child, especially if parents or other authority figures or school children tease or belittle them about it. The child may then act out against animals or use arson to channel their anger and frustration. Over 57 per cent of serial killers were bed-wetters until an unusually advanced age.

Growing up lonely and isolated

Serial killers often grow up in highly dysfunctional families. These families often move around a lot move resulting in the child being constantly uprooted which makes it hard to develop meaningful relationships with peers. Thus, the child often ends up a “loner.”  Serial killers are rarely remembered by classmates, almost  as if they weren’t even there. This is the price of having no real friends. As they are frequently bullied by other kids, anti-social tendencies fester and develop at an early age. A careful observer will note that this child soon starts dabbling in arson and theft and the use of dangerous weapons, and displays hostility and aggression, and a complete disregard for the rights of others.

Fantasies

Serial killers’ fantasies focus on violation and control. In fact, the research suggests that serial killers could remember NO positive fantasies they had as children. Some would fantasize about mutilating themselves or their genitals. At some point the fantasy shifts from themselves to others – they begin to fantasize about mutilating victims rather than self. Serial killers in the making do not broadcast these horrible fantasies to others; rather, they dwell on them privately. At some point before the first murder is committed, the fantasies moves from mere mutilation to the actual taking of life. Afterwards, the fantasies take on an anal quality; the serial killer needs to commit each successive murder with increased skill and efficiency.

Preferring auto-erotic activities

Serial killers did not “party” during their teenage years. No normal sexual experimentation with members of their peer group; rather, they preferrred masturbation and other auto-erotic activities such as pornography. Often, there was obsessive masturbation – as in the case of Andrei Chikatilo, who had profound scarring on his penis due to the violence that accompanied his masturbation.Without any positive social structure in his life, the killer is unable to take part in a normal sexual relationship, and thus is forced into solo sexual activities. These future killers often find titillation in lurid tales of sex and murder that can also serve as an extra form of arousal – linking sex, murder and death.

Developing voyeurism and fetishism in adulthood

From an early age, many serial killers are intensely interested in voyeurism and fetishism as well as other paraphilias. This often starts with the relatively harmless peeping-tom syndrome, before moving on to house-breaking, rape, and murder. Given that elements of bondage and dominance feature so strongly in most paraphilias, it is no surprise that this is often the route followed after adolescence.

Acting out fantasies on animals

99 per cent of serial killers admitted that they initially acted out their violent fantasies on animals before graduating to human beings. Given the dysfunctional families that give rise to most serial killers, such pathological and abnormal behavior may be ignored or completely missed – as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, whose father was unperturbed by the fact that his son was dissecting animals. These acts of animal cruelty are a great source of pleasure to young killers, and they manage to perfect the art completely – before moving on to their human victims.

Physical injuries

Head injuries from accidents, repeated head trauma suffered during physical abuse or  birth injuries have been suggested as a very important link to aggressive and violent behavior. Damage to the limbic brain, hypothalamus or temporal lobe — areas involved with hormones, aggression, emotion and motivation – may cause bouts of spontaneous aggression. These injuries may also result in seizures and forms of amnesia. 70 per cent of serial killers received extensive head injuries as children or adolescents. Some researchers believe that the pre-frontal cortex (the area involved in planning and judgement) does not function properly in psychopaths.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It was in another lifetime when I worked in Silicon Valley as an estimator in the box-building industry. One day I was engaging in desultory conversation with a fellow estimator, as we were prone to do to while away the weary hours. To my surprise, J____ told me that when he was little (and probably a bit hyperactive), his long-suffering mother (he was one of seven kids) used to tie him to his bed at night to keep him from scampering around and bouncing off the walls.

J____ loved both of his parents dearly and never seemed to resent the fact he was tied up on a nightly basis.

Although J____’s mother appears to have had a least the semblance of a valid reason for tying up her lively son, a couple of swinging dicks in Utah now find themselves in fairly serious trouble for tying up a 4-year-old to a tree to smoke weed in peace without the kid bothering them.

Sebastian Murdoch of the Huffington Post writes:

Two Utah men have been arrested after one of the men allegedly dragged his friend’s child across a street by a leash before tying the boy to a tree and smoking weed.

The 4-year-old boy’s father, 29-year-old Richard Marsh, and his friend Paul Rapp, 35, are now facing child abuse and drug possession charges, according to the Deseret News.

“The child was wearing one of those backpack harnesses, the kind you can attach a leash to,” Detective Greg Wilking of the Salt Lake City Police Department told the New York Daily News.

Apparently, our two Neanderthals were in such a hurry to catch a buzz that Rapp (the child dragger in this instance) yanked the boy so hard while dragging him across the street that the lad tripped and fell on the ground. Unphased, Rapp then apparently yanked the boy to his feet and continued dragging him across the street, over a curb and through about 20 feet of wood chips before coming to a tree to which he tied the boy with the leash.

The joke was on Rapp & Marsh, however. Witnesses watched the boy stumble and fall and called the police to report the abuse. Once the 4-year-old was securely fettered, Rapp rejoined his friend Marsh. One of them produced a glass pipe and a bag of marijuana and they began to inhale.

According to the arrest report, the men tried to throw away the pipe after officers arrived.

According to the complaint, the boy had abrasions and scratches on his back above his waistline, which could be from the straps of the backpack cutting into him while he was led around like a dog.

*     *     *     *     *

Smelling a pretty good story, KUTV News went to Marsh’s home to speak to family members about the case. When the news geeks arrived, Marsh’s brother, Johnny Smith, answered the door wearing what appeared to be women’s undergarments. Mr. Smith of the fine women’s lingerie explained to the news folk that this isn’t the first time the child had been tied up. Not only that, but Smith actually appears to have provided a fairly decent rationale defending Rapp & Marsh’s rope tricks.

“I know why he chained him to the tree,” Smith told the station. “It’s something he does when we go fishing and stuff, because the kid has a tendency of going all over the place. Last time I had to save [the child] from going into the river.” (I love the idea of Mr. Smith going fishing while decked out in his leather lingerie.)

In other words, not unlike my old friend, the stalwart estimator J____, tying up the 4-year-old may have not only been necessary with this kid at times, but may have even been advisable in certain situations. You don’t want your child wandering into some mythical river and being carried off by the whitewater.

Smith, who does not appear to have equivocated, admitted to the news guys/gals that it was likely his brother had been smoking weed. He flatly denied, however, that the boy had been dragged. Furthermore, Smith made it crystal clear that his brother is a caring father.

“He’s a damn good dad,” he said. “He cares about his kids.”

*     *     *     *     *

So just to make sure that we’re clear about things, let’s review briefly. Rapp & Marsh, who seem to go together like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern or Tweedledum and Tweedledee or any other diehard duo, did not only tie the kid up when they wanted to smoke weed; they tied him up whenever they were doing something where they didn’t want him to wander off into danger or mischief. Thus, their intentions were not reprehensible. Sure, they were a bit barbaric perhaps, but hell, these are old school boys. We would expect a bit of the rough and tumble… On the other hand, yanking the kid so hard that he takes a tumble and then yanking him back to his feet is not the sort of thing that is likely to impress a judge.

I would be interested in knowing whether Marsh and the purported Mrs. Marsh (assuming she is in the picture) tie the lively lad up at night…

Meanwhile, Utah is one of the states where simple possession of less than an ounce of marijuana can result in up to six months in county jail. The same goes for possession of drug paraphernalia. Then toss in the child abuse charge and we see the months are adding up quickly. Next time, perhaps Rapp will not yank so hard.

by BJW Nashe

As we struggle to digest the terrible news of yet another mass shooting in America — this time occurring once again at Fort Hood in Texas — we simultaneously find ourselves recoiling from the overwhelming stench of corruption emanating from the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

A strange coincidence? I don’t think so. The stench and the shooting bear some unholy connection to each other. That rotten smell coming from Washington, D.C. is the same foul odor now hovering over Fort Hood. It is the stench of corruption in our politics that stands in the way of any serious effort to try and stop these senseless shootings.

We need to be crystal clear about this fact: the corrupting influence of big money in American politics is leading to paralysis in the face of gun violence. I can’t think of any simpler or more direct way to phrase it. And this is more than simply a matter of concern, or a topic of polite discussion. It is a state of affairs we must conclude is evil, disgusting, and perverse. How else should we describe a situation in which politicians are paid to do nothing to stop the slaughter of innocent citizens who are being gunned down at work, school, the mall, the military base, and the movie theater? PAID TO DO NOTHING. To sit on their hands and steadfastly refuse to seek solutions, and to stonewall the efforts of anyone trying to make a difference. It’s sick, depraved, and insane.

Let’s hold our noses and take an honest look at a big source of the awful stench these days.

The five conservative judges who hold sway over the U.S. Supreme Court think that money is equivalent to speech, and that campaign contributions are thus protected by the First Amendment. They are committed to eliminating all restrictions on money flowing into political campaigns. The Citizens United ruling in 2010 opened the floodgates for a tsunami of corporate cash to start filling the coffers of a growing number of shadowy PACs and SuperPACs. Now, in a nifty follow-up to Citizens United, the Court has ruled in the case of McCutcheon v. FEC that certain limitations on individual contributions to political campaigns are unconstitutional. This will allow a small number of billionaire tycoons such as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers to spread even more money around in our electoral process, buying influence in congressional districts across the nation.

Chief Justice Roberts — along with Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy — would like us to believe that this tidal wave of money will lead to no corruption and will have no damaging effect on American democracy. Who do they think they are fooling? Their argument insults the intelligence of American voters and slams the door in the face of American workers. It is a brazen act of class warfare, designed to render the votes of ordinary citizens meaningless and hand control over the country to an elite group of wealthy donors.

I’d call these conservative justices swine, but that would be unfair to pigs. They might be seated on the highest court in the land, but they don’t deserve the respect implied by cordial discourse. Their view of politics is a shameful perversion that has no place in any legitimate democracy. They have no guiding principles; all they care about is money and power. They will go down in history as some of the sleaziest, most amoral characters to ever slither into prominent roles in government. Leadership? No, these are political hacks armed with law degrees, eager to kiss the asses of a cabal of fat cats who think their wealth entitles them to omnipotence. Listening to Supreme Court justices mangle concepts such as “freedom” and “liberty” as they put our democracy up for sale to the highest bidder is a sickening, vomit-inducing experience, at best.

Many of us were furious over the Court’s foul McCutcheon ruling. Then we received news of the Fort Hood shooting, which only reminded us just how far the stench of corruption tends to travel. Synchronicity is a strange phenomenon that is worth paying attention to. I doubt whether Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia were thinking about gun violence as they modified their “corporations are people” riff to come up with a brand new jingle: “money is speech.” Gun violence is highly relevant in this context, though — at least for those of us who are paying attention. We may as well connect the dots here, if Chief Justice Roberts is unwilling to do so.

We don’t have to look too hard to find evidence of problems caused by big money in politics. Gun violence is just one example out of many. Pick an area of contemporary concern, and most likely you will find corporate interests standing in the way of progress. Health care, education, energy, the environment, our criminal justice system — big money has a negative political impact in all of these areas. Corporations are willing to shell out mucho dinero to make sure that politicians don’t pass laws that might — heaven forbid — cut into their profits. In fact, corporations are eager to pay lobbyists and lawmakers to pass laws designed for no purpose other than enhancing their bottom line. (See the federal tax code, for example.)

Gun violence, however, is one of the most troubling areas in which payola — in the form of campaign contributions — is used to earn favors from politicians, and take revenge on opponents, to the detriment of the public good. If you’re putting together a Powerpoint presentation on the corrupting influence of money in politics, go ahead and use gun violence for the first slide in your show. Nowhere else is the sheer human toll quite so shocking and visceral.

Few will deny that gun violence is a plague that threatens the safety of all Americans. Even most gun rights advocates have to admit this is true. Their “solution,” however, is just more guns. “The only solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Sane, reasonable people understand this is no solution at all. It only compounds the problem — like battling skin cancer with leukemia. Americans together now own over 300 million firearms. That’s nearly as many guns in our nation as there are people. We must have the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet. Yet this has not made us safer. On the contrary, it has turned the country into an armed madhouse. Approximately 100,000 people are shot in the U.S. each year. Thirty thousand or so die annually from gunshot wounds. Because of rampant gun violence, the U.S. is statistically a more dangerous place to live than any other modern Western democracy. With so many guns around, should this be any great surprise?

The worst incidents are the mass shootings that keep recurring with alarming frequency. Mother Jones just published a detailed timeline of 62 mass shootings in America during the years 1982-2012. This report is a horrifying reminder that our predicament will continue to get worse, unless we take concrete steps to address the problem. For now, we are stuck in a predictable holding pattern. As each incident occurs, we are inundated with wall-to-wall media coverage. We express our shock and our outrage. The President makes a heartfelt speech on TV. We cry at funerals and discuss possible solutions to the problem. We say “never again should this be allowed to happen.” Then we eventually move on. Human nature allows us to forget much of the pain associated with these events — unless we were personally involved, in which case we are far less likely to be rid of the traumatic memories. Before too long, another mass shooting disrupts the nation once again, and we repeat the whole damn process. It’s an insane spiral of grief and despair and hopelessness. And somehow nothing changes. Our government seems to be unwilling or incapable of doing anything to address the problem. Why is this so?

The reason for the paralysis is simple. It’s caused by the corrupting influence of big money in politics — which is the stench emanating from the Supreme Court right now. When it comes to fighting progress on gun laws, the big money comes from the good old boys of the gun lobby, which is led by the good old National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA and their allies have enough money and clout to stifle most serious attempts at reform, and they are motivated by a single driving concern: increasing profits from gun sales. Public safety? Not a big priority, but useful as a marketing ploy. The NRA likes to pretend they represent gun owners who want to protect their families, but it’s gun businesses who they’re truly looking out for. To do this, the NRA runs a protection racket. By throwing money and threats in the faces of politicians, the NRA protects the interests of the gun industry, allowing them to keep making profits by selling harmful products.

The NRA is good at what they do. Elected officials who dare to vote for legislation that could cut into the profits of gun manufacturers and dealers promptly find their names highlighted in big bold letters high on the NRA’s vaunted shit list. That means a “negative score” from NRA on gun rights issues. It means no more campaign contributions. It means funding goes to rival candidates. It means attack ads will be aired on TV. Most likely, the offending politician’s career is toast. The NRA is particularly feared in red states and conservative districts where the group has demonstrated that it can make or break candidates at will. Look at what happened to the state senators in Colorado who worked on gun reform. They’re history. In some districts it’s impossible to get elected without publicly embracing the NRA, and doing so with plenty of fanfare. In other words, pull your pants down and bend over. Much better to tow the party line and watch the big dollar contributions come rolling in, than to fall out of favor by doing something foolish — like working across the aisle to reduce gun violence.

The burning debate about the Second Amendment — originally conceived to account for militia men scampering around the colonies with muskets, not online shoppers stocking up on semi-automatic handguns and rifles — these heated discussions are just a smokescreen, a big distraction. Between the two extremes of outlawing guns on one hand, and maintaining a gun market free-for-all on the other hand, there’s a whole range of measures that can effectively regulate guns and reduce gun violence without eroding Second Amendment rights. Let’s think outside the box for a minute. Consider that owning a gun could be treated similarly to obtaining a driver’s license — with some added precautions thrown in for good measure. Before you can be declared a legal gun owner, in other words, you would need to jump through certain hoops to demonstrate that you don’t pose a significant risk. To own a gun, you would undergo a process of licensing or certification. This might involve attending some classes, passing safety/proficiency tests, submitting to a background check, and perhaps even undergoing a psychiatric evaluation (bad news for Ted Nugent, but probably just as well). Maybe your family members are interviewed (if you have a schizophrenic teenager holed up in the basement playing violent video games, you probably won’t qualify for gun ownership). Once you are certified, alas, you will not be able to get your hands on certain types of paramilitary, assault-style weapons. These have no place in civilized society. Plus there will be no more “gun show loopholes” or shady internet sales. The amount of ammunition you can purchase will be limited. You will need to comply with laws pertaining to proper use and storage of guns. You and your guns will be registered in a national database. Congratulations: you are now part of the well-armed militia specified in the Second Amendment — and you still have way more firepower than the Founding Fathers ever dreamed of.

None of these are radical measures that would infringe on the constitutional rights of responsible hunters or sportsmen/women.

Well, good luck trying to get anything close to this even debated in Congress, let alone passed into law and implemented. Despite the outrage caused by our current gun violence epidemic, we have very few protections in place. In many states we have the equivalent of a laissez-faire gun-freak bonanza. Why this is so? Because the gun lobby has enough politicians in their pockets — or simply bullied into submission — to stifle all attempts at meaningful reform. If you dare to introduce meaningful gun legislation through Congress, you will have a serious war on your hands with the NRA. And while the NRA does not have the Koch brothers’ level of “f— you” money at their disposal, their pockets are still pretty deep. After elementary school children were massacred at Newtown, the NRA fought tooth and nail to kill all proposed reforms — including a simple background check amendment (which the NRA once upon a time supported). They won. Reformers lost. The end result is that Americans are buying more guns than ever before, gun-related profits are flying high, and lunatics nationwide can go online or head over to a gun show and buy enough firepower to kill scores of people with no questions asked. They can arm themselves so heavily that during their ensuing rampage they won’t even have to pause to reload. This is insane. It makes about as much sense as the phrase “money is speech.”

Now, as the Supreme Court continues on their epic quest to let big money run roughshod over our political system, I imagine there is a select group of around 200 economic royalists (as FDR called them) and wealthy robber baron-types who can’t wait to get a bigger, juicier piece of the action. Wayne LaPierre’s rich pals are no doubt licking their chops. We know Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers are bathed in a state of euphoric bliss. As for the rest of us, we have to ask ourselves, is this any way for our democracy to move forward and address serious issues such as gun violence? Or mental illness? Or climate change? Or income inequality? The obvious answer is no, of course not. This is an unfolding disaster — a political train wreck.

I am not arguing that the Supreme Court or the NRA directly caused the tragedy at Fort Hood — or any other mass shooting. I’ll leave the crude, simplistic arguments to Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia, who are quite fond of sophistry. I just want to stress that we need to be aware of certain grim connections. And when we keep seeing gun violence in the news — when we see mass shootings tearing our communities apart — we can be sure that the stench of big money and political corruption will be hovering over the scene of every crime.

by Yalonda Laugh and Patrick H. Moore

The Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo rape-and-school-girl serial murder case has drawn great attention both in Canada and the United States since the young husband and wife team shocked Canada by the brutal and callous manner in which they systematically raped and murdered Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The horrified followers of these heinous crimes were particularly incensed for two reasons:

First, Homolka and Bernardo were attractive and seemingly intelligent young married people. The thought of them raping and murdering schoolgirls — apparently just for kicks — seemed both gratuitous and despicable. Yet, they clearly committed these awful crimes. (There is, of course, controversy regarding the degree to which Homolka took part in the actual murders. At the least, she was obviously complicit.) In early 1993, after enduring a brutal beating at the hands of Bernardo, Karla Homolka — at the urging of her family — escaped from the shadow of his bizarrely domineering personality, went to the Canadian authorities, and gradually “came clean.” In return for her agreeing to testify against Bernardo at trial (and keep in mind that without Homolka the Crown had no case against Bernardo), Karla received the infamous “Sweetheart Plea Deal,” a mere 12 years in prison on each of two counts of manslaughter to be run concurrently.

While recovering from the abuse she’d endured at Bernardo’s hands, Karla — at the advice of her attorney George Walker — was hospitalized at Northwestern General Hospital for seven weeks beginning in March of 1993.  During this period she’d underwent a series of psychiatric examinations conducted by a team of Canadian doctors.

In this, Part One of our Psychological Evaluation of Karla Homolka, we will revisit Karla’s peculiar seven weeks at Northwestern General Hospital and the even more peculiar evaluations provided by her three doctors. (Note: Part Two of our Evaluation will address the subsequent, and far less forgiving, Psychological Assessments Homolka received from other doctors while imprisoned at Kingston Prison for Women.)

Seven Weeks at Northwestern General Hospital

According to Stephen Williams, author of Invisible Darkness: The Horrifying Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, Karla’s mother, Dorothy, dropped her off at Northwestern General Hospital on March 4 at 11:30 a.m. On the admission form Karla was described as a “twenty-two-year-old female patient with diagnosis of depression.”

Dr. Hans Arndt was the senior staff psychiatrist at Northwestern General and the leader of Karla’s battery of doctors. He was a firm believer in electro-convulsive therapy (shock treatment), also known as “buzzing,” and “he was also one of those modern, pharmaceutical alchemists who concocted drug-induced “sleep therapies” that put patients out for at least three days at a stretch.” Dr. Arndt treated Karla with plenty of electro-convulsive therapy and at least some sleep therapy.

Karla’s roommate was a nun named Sister Josephine, who served as a source of information to Stephen Williams.  According to Sister Josephine, while at Northwestern General, Karla seemed to employ various personas, some of which were outrageous and all of which seemed more or less strange.

Stephen Williams describes Karla as: “Wandering the halls in thigh-high baby dolls, wearing push-up bras, clutching Bunky as if it were the Christ child – pleasant when stoned, obstreperous when straight.” Bunky was Karla’s stuffed bear, the same stuffed bear that she had given to Leslie Mahaffy shortly before she was killed.

In an earlier post, we noted that while in the hospital, Karla was supplied with copious amounts of alcohol smuggled in by her family and friends. According to Stephen Williams, she was also supplied with copious amounts of Demerol, a second cousin to heroin and a powerful opiate-like drug in its own right. Although this seems counterintuitive (Why in the world would Karla’s doctors prescribe a powerful narcotic?), if Williams is to be trusted, Karla quickly developed a Demerol habit and was soon demanding the she receive it in injectable form rather than orally.

Stephen Williams writes:

“Do you want me to have a nervous breakdown?” Karla once yelled. “I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.” Then  she had demanded more Demerol. Not only that, she insisted the drug be administered i.v. push. Up until then, all of her medication had been taken orally. Where did this patient get the idea of the needle? How did she know the medical lingo? The nurses were nervous, to say the least. At one point Karla fixed a night nurse with her strangely ambivalent eyes and demanded, “If I don’t get the drugs I want, the way I want them, you and Dr. Arndt will regret it. I’m telling you – you’ll all regret it!” The nurse was so angry she called Dr. Arndt in the middle of the night to complain – to no avail. The next day he came in and increased her medication and negotiated a compromise – instead of an i.v. push he would concede to administer certain drugs intermuscularly. “All right,” Karla said petulantly. “i.m. – better than nothing.”

Thus, it appears that Karla was simultaneously receiving powerful doses of electro-convulsive therapy, plenty of wine, and regular doses of Demoral delivered intra-muscularly. While all of this was transpiring, she also was given a battery of psychological tests designed to help her doctors unpack her marvelously convoluted psyche.

* * * * * * *

Karla Homolka’s Doctors and Their Diagnoses

During her stay in hospital, in addition to being under the care under the care of her supervising physician Dr. Hans Arndt, Karla was seen by Dr. Andrew Malcolm, a psychiatrist with extensive forensic experience, and a clinical psychologist, Dr. Andrew Long, who administered the time-honored MMPI exam along with other psychological tests. The three doctors were reportedly unanimous in their diagnosis.

When admitted to Northwest General, Karla Homolka was suffering from dysthymia, also known as reactive depression, and a serious post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Manual, D.S.M. 111-R.

Near the end of his report, Dr. Arndt made the following observation in rather convoluted English:

“Indeed Karla’s experience since her age 17, could be to some degree, compared to the experiences of concentration camp survivors who as well experience horrendous tragedies and had to go through and perform actions in order to survive that under normal circumstances they would clearly have stayed away from, but in the interest of self-preservation or in the interest of preserving other people’s lives, did see themselves helpless and went through the actions as had been required of them.”

Thus, Dr. Arndt – the master of modern electro-convulsive therapy, not to mention sleep therapy, seems to view Karla primarily as a victim of years of severe abuse at the hands of Paul Bernardo.

Dr. Andrew Long’s Diagnosis

Dr. Long also viewed Karla as more of a victim than a victimizer. He writes in his report:

“Personality testing indicates a very depressed and emotionally withdrawn person suffering severe remorse for her participation in the illegal acts referred to. Furthermore, this woman suffers from and requires treatment for the effects of extremely severe prolonged exposure to her husband’s sadistic acts and the ominous atmosphere he created. The latter culminating in a deep belief that she too would someday become the victim of his murderous behaviour.

Her submissiveness results from deep psychological conflicts with hostile wishes which she had learned early in life to counter through the adoption of submissive and rather passive behaviour and coping techniques. This is not to indicate that she would give form to these aggressive impulses through aggressive behaviour.

Neither was there evidence of masochistic tendencies in terms of finding pleasure by being hurt herself nor her observing the suffering of others.”

Now this is not very convincing. In our post, “Was Karla Homolka a Normal Child? The Answer Is A Resounding No,” based on numerous interviews with those that knew her best throughout her formative years, we established that Karla was hardly a “submissive and passive” child. Rather, although she certainly showed some signs of conformity, for example, her early love affair with Barbie dolls, she was for the most part a strikingly assertive and often rebellious child who seemed to delight in bucking the admonitions of standard middle-class morality and “going against the flow” much of the time. Furthermore, she appears to have had at least some masochistic tendencies, as is evidenced by her insistence on anal sex.

Although Dr. Long doesn’t go so far as to excuse Karla her heinous actions during her years with Bernardo, he sees her as being:

“Sufficiently hoodwinked and intimidated by Paul Bernardo that she found herself in a compromising position as a result of a sequence of experiences with him that escalated in the intensity of their deviousness and severity. This reached a climax with the death of her sister and, from that point on, she believed that she was trapped in the same manner that an abused wife considers herself to be trapped and then having to fend for her life.”

So, in effect, Dr. Long views Karla as an extreme example of the “abused spouse syndrome” and as someone “in serious need of continued psychiatric care.”

Dr. Andrew Malcolm’s Diagnosis:

Dr. Malcolm also views Karla as an extreme example of the “abused spouse syndrome.” He writes in an interesting passage:

“In addition there are all of the factors that constitute psychological torture as defined by Amnesty International. There was social isolation, exhaustion stemming from deprivation of sleep, monopolization of perception through the exhibition of intensely possessive behaviour, threats of death against the person or the person’s relatives, humiliation and denial of power, and the administration of drugs or alcohol to diminish self- control. Karla was systematically subjected to all of these things.”

Dr. Malcolm continued:

“Karla was subjected to repeated sadistic sexual attacks. She was humiliated, beaten, tied up and raped over a period of years. She was manipulated into being a participant in what eventuated in the death of a much loved sister. She was advised on her wedding night that her new husband was a rapist. She was told that if she ever tried to leave her husband he would track her down and kill her. Or else he would kill her remaining sister and her parents. She was living with a sexual sadist and she was convinced that from this bewildering fate there was no escape.”

Brief Commentary on the Three Evaluations

Thus, like Dr. Arndt and Dr. Long, Dr. Malcolm appears to view Karla largely as a victim of Paul Bernardo’s abuse. This is the attitude that makes the Karla “haters” see red. It may be convincing as far as it goes, but it largely ignores the great and obvious evil that Karla perpetrated. We must ask ourselves, how could these intelligent and well-meaning doctors be so wrong? Did Karla simply manipulate and fool them? Did she use her considerable feminine charms to wrap them around her little finger, metaphorically speaking?

I believe that it was partly this but I believe there was a second important factor. At the time of Karla’s admission to Northwestern General Hospital, she was in extremely bad shape. She was suffering from PTSD and Dysthymia. She had been through an incredibly harrowing experience living with Paul Bernardo, a nightmare that lasted for years. I think the doctors felt pity for her. She had just escaped ultimate doom by the skin of her teeth and she was very shaken by the experience. The doctors were somehow unable to “hit her when she was down.” Plus, it was discovered several years later that Dr. Long had used an outmoded scoring mechanism when he analyzed the results of Karla’s MMPI. As University of Toronto psychiatrist, Dr. Nathan Pollock, was to discover a few years later, he basically got it all wrong. The doctors’ view of Karla as passive, inhibited and withdrawn seems so far from the truth that one want’s to scratch one’s head in wonder, even though she may have superficially seemed that way while at Northwestern General Hospital.

In any event, Karla still faced several Psych Evaluations further down the road while serving time at Kingston Prison for Women, and this time the doctors would not be nearly so kind, and Karla was certainly less successful in manipulating them. But that’s a topic for Part Two of our Evaluation as we try to determine whether Karla Homolka was primarily an abuse victim or primarily a cruel and despicable woman, or somewhere in between. Stay tuned!

Click on the following links to read previous Karla posts:

Watching Karla Homolka: The Game Gets Real

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Stacks the Deck

Karla Homolka Psychological Evaluation, Part One: Abuse Victim or Just Plain Evil?

Watching Karla Homolka: It’s a Family Affair

Was Karla Homolka a Normal Child? The Answer Is a Resounding No

Is Karla Homolka the Most Hated Woman in North America?

The Karla Homolka Files: A U.S. Perspective on Karla Homolka’s Plea Bargain

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo: Canada’s Most Notorious Serial Killer Case

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We know that certain things can go wrong with the bodies of the deceased. In rare (but real) cases, innocent uncomprehending corpses are sexually violated by desiring morgue workers. In the old days, it was not uncommon for a particular brand of specialized thief to perform what were euphemistically referred to as “excavations”, i.e., the thieves robbed graves for a price selling the “stiffs” to medical schools so that budding surgeons would have something (someone) to practice on.

But the fear that many of us harbor (for good reason, it turns out) is that we will be buried alive only to wake up in a cold, dark, confined and horribly frightening place otherwise known as a coffin. When I was a kid, film director Roger Corman made a film called “The Premature Burial” based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story that Wikipedia describes as follows:

Set in the early dark Victorian-era 1830s or ’40s (also similar to Charles Dickens’ fiction of rain-soaked London streets), it follows Guy Carrell, who is obsessed with the fear of death. He is most obsessed with the fear of being buried alive. Though his fiancee Emily says he has nothing to be afraid of, he still thinks he will be buried alive (a common fear and in reality an occasional occurrence with the primitive and happen-stance character of the practice of early surgical and medicine science then, with bodies being raided from morgues to do educational autopsies…) So deluded, he seeks help from a few people, including his sister, but he still is haunted by the fear of death and the sense that someone close wants him dead…

Now, of course, the exhumation of corpses is no longer required for medical training purposes, although there are situations such as the Kendrick Johnson gym mat roll death case, in which the corpse is exhumed and reexamined in hopes of obtaining more accurate autopsy results. Of course, Kendrick Johnson is dead and is hardly aware that his final resting place has been violently disturbed.

No, the real (and relevant fear) is that one will be declared legally dead only to wake up imprisoned in a mute and unyielding coffin.

David Lohr at Huffington Post writes:

A California family who claims a loved one was prematurely declared dead, and then “frozen alive” while trying to escape a morgue freezer, has filed a (wrongful death) lawsuit against the hospital.

According to the lawsuit, Maria de Jesus Arroyo, 80, suffered a heart attack on July 26, 2010, and was pronounced dead by a doctor at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, Calif. Arroyo’s body was laid out so that her family could pay their respects before it was taken to the hospital’s morgue, where it was placed inside a refrigerated compartment, pending pickup by a mortician.

It was during Arroyo’s time in the refrigerated compartment, the lawsuit alleges, that something — which under different circumstances might have been viewed as a miracle — turned into a nightmare.

“She was put into that body bag while she was alive,” the family’s attorney, Scott Schutzman, alleged to The Huffington Post. “The cold from the hospital morgue woke her up, and she was fighting her way out when she died.”

According to the lawsuit, when morticians later received Ms. Arroyo’s body from the morgue, they discovered that she was face-down rather than face-up. (In other words, although “dead”, she had managed to turn over.) Her nose was broken, and she had cuts and bruises on her face, according to the court papers.

At first, Ms. Arroyo’s family attributed the injuries to mishandling of her remains, presumably by hospital personnel while moving her from the hospital wake to the “refrigerated compartment”.  (This would suggest she was dropped on her head or maybe even that some jaded hospital orderlies used her as a punching bag, which seems unlikely.) The problem was, the injuries — however they were caused — were so severe that that the mortuary was unable to mask them. As a result, the family was apparently informed that something was drastically wrong, which in turn led them to consider filing a suit accusing the hospital of negligence.

At this point, the family’s attorney, Scott Schutzman, hired a medical expert to review depositions and declarations by hospital staff. After scrutinizing the documents, the medical expert came to the following surprising conclusions:

• Arroyo had received her injuries pre-mortem (pre-mortem technically means prior to the autopsy, in other words, before the morticians picked up, transported and examined the deceased).

• Thus, she was literally “frozen alive” in the hospital morgue.

“She must of got the wounds while she was fighting, while she was on her way out, and that’s why they found her upside down,” Schutzman said.

Based on the medical expert’s review, Schutzman withdrew the original negligence lawsuit and filed the current case which alleges wrongful death.

“Even if we win, it’s bittersweet because they relive this whole thing,” Schutzman said, referring to Arroyo’s husband and their eight children.

Naturally, White Memorial Medical Center has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

“We followed all proper protocols in this matter and are confident that once the facts of the case are reviewed, we will prevail in court,” hospital officials said in a statement.

*     *     *     *     *

I suspect that the hospital officials are correct and that they probably “will prevail in court”. Even if they do not prevail, the physician who wrongly pronounced Ms. Arroyo dead (as well as the hospital), will presumably be protected by their medical insurance.

White Memorial Medical Center is a Los Angeles County Hospital and is probably not where many doctors would choose to work if they could wrangle better gigs at places like Kaiser Permanente or Cedars Sinai or UCLA Medical Center. That does not mean, however, that its doctors are in any way incompetent or that we should assume that there was any real wrongdoing on the part of Ms. Arroyo’s physician(s) or the hospital staff.

What this situation does strongly suggest, however, is that the common fear of being wrongly pronounced dead and then buried alive is more than just an idle fear and may, in rare cases, actually manifest.

So if you turn out to be one of the unlucky ones (the few, the unfortunate, the still barely breathing), you have my most heartfelt condolences. And should I be the victim of a premature burial, I hope no one ever finds out, unless of course I manage to claw my way out of whatever crypt I am encaged in.

by John Nardizzi

A summer film, “The Iceman”, claims that the film is “based on a true story,” namely the sordid, violent life of Richard Kuklinksi, a New Jersey man who claimed to have murdered over 100 men using almost every means imaginable: guns, knives, bow and arrow, cyanide, and even rats. He earned his nickname for his experiments involving deep-freezing corpses in order to throw off the time of death estimates during the police investigations. Some of Kuklinski’s murders were contract killings for La Cosa Nostra crime families; others were spontaneous spasms of rage that saw the powerfully built, 6’5” behemoth, kill people who looked at him cross-eyed. Hollywood directors stoop only to a mud-level standard of proof in films “based on a true story”, and “The Iceman” contains glaring errors in the telling (the film is based on one biography in particular, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer by Anthony Bruno). Glossing over Kuklinski’s decades-long abuse of his wife to focus on his role as a (surprisingly caring) father to his children, many of the Iceman’s killings remain undocumented to this day (he was convicted on just 5 counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison). Several of the most prominent murders Kuklinski claimed credit for — Jimmy Hoffa, mob boss Roy DeMeo, and even the godfather of the Gambino crime family, Paul Castellano — have been called into question as other details have emerged from trials of other mobsters.

Kuklinski’s mother, Anna, grew up in tough Jersey City in the 1900s. His father, Stanley, was a Polish immigrant. Kuklinski’s childhood was a horror of endless beatings by his father, and cold neglect by his distant mother. He himself was knocked unconscious several times by his father, who later abandoned the family. Kuklinksi claims his father killed his baby brother by smashing his skull in a drunken rage and then made his wife lie about the death by claiming the boy fell down the stairs (how Kuklinski came to learn this is not clear). What followed was a sadly predictable pattern too familiar to those in the criminal justice system: the abuse led to the angry young man experimenting with lashing out against animals, torturing cats, classic serial killer behavior. Finally, Kuklinksi graduated to his first murder, the bludgeoning of a housing project bully. He then led a small gang, Coming Up Roses, in a series of heists until they stupidly robbed a Mafia card game, leading to Kuklinksi (who was not aware of the robbery) being ordered to kill his associates. He does so and later moves on to working in a mob-owned lab pirating pornographic films. Soon he takes on jobs, including contract murders, for Roy DeMeo of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family.

Much of Kuklinski’s infamy was solidified in a series of HBO interviews as well as another biography, Philip Carlo ’s The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer. There are entire passages in Carlo’s book where inexplicable gaps in details about certain murders simply go unexplained. In 1954, Kuklinksi allegedly began to experiment and perfect murder techniques by hunting down victims along the rotting, desolate piers off West Street in New York City. According to Carlo, the underbelly of the city became kind of a personal killing laboratory for Kuklinski. During my work as a private investigator on defense cases, I am always wary when a witness fails to provide the kind of visceral specific details of an event, or has unexplained gaps in time. Here, Carlo simply reports that Kuklinski murdered dozens of men in this era in spectacular fashion with a morbid gallery of weapons: ice picks, knives, rope (hanging one man by the neck by bracing the rope over his shoulder; Kuklinski bragged: “I was the tree”). Not once does Kuklinski provide a single name of even one victim, or a specific description of the locale. Carlo explains that these were “throwaway people”, street people without address or anyone to care. It seems an overly convenient notion that Kuklinski got off to a roaring start in his murder career by bagging dozens of corpses — all before before turning twenty years old.

Kuklinski’s recollection of other murders come off as absurd, if entertaining theater. Kuklinski tells of binding men with duct tape to the floor of a cave in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As he withdrew from the darkness, rats would emerge and eat the men alive as they screamed in agony. For a man who bragged about the painstaking procedures he took to facilitate a hit, Kuklinski took awful risks (according to Carlo) as he bound a mark in duct tape and left him for the rats  onthe cave floor:

“Richard calmly went back to his car. He retrieved the camera and tripod and a light and motion detector that would trigger both the light and camera when the rats came out. Richard carefully set up the camera, the light and motion detector just so. Satisfied he cut the mans clothes off—he had dirtied himself—and left him there like that.”

Good thing no one stumbled on the backlit cave replete with a camera (and with finger prints probably, and maybe a tag that identified the porn lab where Kuklinksi worked). Perhaps the film footage could confirm this murder by rats? No one has ever seen a copy of it. No one has reported finding these rat-infested caves either. Could the bones of some of Kuklinski’s victims remain hidden in a cave in Bucks County? That question has come up to more than a few detectives.

“Richard Kranzel, who wrote about the county’s caves for the National Speleological Society, was interviewed about the long-closed Durham Mine, the only place large enough to hide human remains. The mine opened during the Revolutionary War before closing in 1908. The thing is, Kranzel said, a lot of people have trekked inside the mine since Kuklinski’s time. And no one has reported coming across human bones. Durham Mine, which sits on private property in upper Bucks, has played informal host to spelunkers and party-goers. … Kranzel said he’s skeptical of Kuklinski’s claims, especially those of flesh-eating rats. The only rats I have encountered in caves are ‘cave rats,’ and they are reclusive and shy creatures, and definitely not fierce as Kuklinski claims,” Kranzel said. “The fact that he states that his cave was in granite does place it on the hills though, as the valley floor is limestone.”

Among the most notorious killings Kuklinksi claimed responsibility for involve those of Gambino godfather Paul Castellano. As recounted on the Swallowing The Camel website, which challenges popularly held assumptions:

It would not be possible to overestimate the importance of this assassination in Mafia history. …It was a seismic event, and once the dust settled, the terrain of the Gambino family was never the same.

The plan was cooked up by Gotti, Robert DiBernardo, Joseph Armone, and Sammy Gravano. Their people allegedly broached the idea with three of the five New York families, and received unofficial sanction for their hostile takeover. Frank DeCicco provided vital inside information; Castellano would be meeting with a trusted group of capos – himself included – at Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan at 5:00 PM on December 16, 1985. Gotti chose eleven assassins for the job. Four of them would wait near the entrance to Sparks and take out Castellano and Bilotti as they approached.

The hit went off precisely as planned. The four gunmen swarmed Castellano’s Lincoln Town Car and fired a hail of bullets into the two men. All team members escaped in getaway cars. (8)

Again, Kuklinski’s account deviates significantly from the known details of the event.

His claims are in bold:

- Gravano told him straight out that Bilotti was his target. The eleven guys handpicked by Gotti were not given their targets until just hours before the hit.

- He walked to Sparks by himself, window-shopping along the way. He did not know who the other assassins were, or where they were. The assassins met in a nearby park for a “dress rehearsal” shortly before 5:00.

- He chose a spot across the street from Sparks. The gunmen had already selected their positions by the time they arrived. This would not have been left to chance; it was a tightly coordinated hit.

- He fled on foot and hailed a cab. The assassins had getaway cars waiting for them on Second Avenue. What kind of hit man hails a cab from a crime scene, anyway?

Kuklinski claimed a part in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance  as well (although he never mentioned his involvement with Hoffa until years after a series of interviews on HBO made him a homicide superstar). Kuklinski said he gutted Hoffa in the back of the neck with a hunting knife and then drove back to New Jersey with the body.

Though he had talked about his work at great length with the HBO crew years earlier, Kuklinski waited over 20 years to publicly confess his role in Hoffa’s disappearance. I don’t know how you feel about all this, but my response was basically skeptical.

The thing with Hoffa’s disappearance is that isn’t as mysterious as the average person thinks it is. ….the feds had a pretty good idea who was involved, and who was connected to those guys. Kuklinski’s name did not come up once. Former FBI agent Robert Garrity, one of the investigators of Hoffa’s disappearance said, “I’ve never heard of him, and I’ve never heard of the writer [Carlo].” Bob Buccino, the former head of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice’s organized crime division and a member of the task force who ultimately brought Kuklinski down, was reportedly also skeptical of the claims in Carlo’s book.

Other gangsters have mocked the idea that Kuklinski was making up to $50,000 per hit, noting that younger members of the Italian Mafia take on contract murders to cultivate a reputation and “make their bones” so they progress up the hierarchy. No mobster would subcontract out work to one man for 50 grand when he can order three young men, fiercely loyal, to do the job for free.

No one doubts that Kuklinski was killer who thrilled at hunting down his victims, all the while maintaining a real family life and trying to be a solid father to his children (but paradoxically, assaulting his wife repeatedly over decades of marriage). As the aging murderer rotted in a New Jersey prison in the late 1990s, a cable TV show about a New Jersey mobster calledThe Sopranos began its epic run into pop culture mythology. To pass the gray years, was Kuklinski tempted to grossly exaggerate his murderous impulses to paint an Impressionist view of a real life Mafia hitman, full of whirl and color but impossible to pinpoint any hard lines? If you have ever entered a prison, the sense of marking time is unlike anything on the outside. Kuklinski flashed a weird upturned grin to that outside world, smirking at his final hit—the tragic truth of the Iceman, who left a legacy of wasted time, senseless violence and the terrible deception of his family.

John Nardizzi is an investigator, lawyer, and writer. His writings have appeared in numerous professional and literary journals, including San Diego Writers Monthly, Oxygen, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Lawyers Weekly USA, and PI Magazine. His fictional detective, Ray Infantino, first appeared in print in the spring 2007 edition of Austin Layman’s Crimestalker Casebook. In May 2003, John founded Nardizzi & Associates, Inc., an investigations firm that has garnered a national reputation for excellence in investigating business fraud and trial work. His investigations on behalf of people wrongfully convicted of crimes led to several million dollar settlements for clients like Dennis Maher, Scott Hornoff and Kenneth Waters, whose story was featured in the 2010 film Conviction. He lives in the Boston area and supports AS Roma and Barcelona.

Please click here to read All Things Crime Blog’s review of John’s crime novel, Telegraph Hill.

by Bob Couttie

Many years ago, on another planet, I drank champagne on the French Riviera and bedded a princess. Outside the shuttered windows a clear blue Mediterranean Sea sparkled below the stuccoed wealthy villas of Cap Ferrat and the decaying remains of Victorian grandeur in the backwaters of Antibes. It was here I said ‘No’ to the French Connection.

It would be indelicate to say much about the Princess. She was very tall and English, I was relatively short and English. When we went out she wore high heels and I wore the lowest heeled shoes I could find. We’d go to the Algerian quarter, where the law allowed only the weakest beer, and eat authentic cous-cous surrounded by swarthy, and initially suspicious, North Africans.

It’s unwise to venture into Algerian quarters. They can be dangerous places so our sojourns had much the same thrill for us as that experienced by a Japanese diner tucking into a plate of globefish. It certainly gave extra piquancy to the cous-cous.

The princess helped bring about my fall. She was a secret alcoholic, getting up in the mornings to throw down several “eye-openers” before I woke up. She hid it well.  A bill was quietly growing.

We lived in a modest place called the Taverne Nicoise in the Place du Safranier, main square of the Commune Libre Du Safranier – the free commune of the saffron sellers. It was nestled within the larger town of Antibes where in centuries past saffron traders bought and sold their delicate dried flower stigmas to merchants from the nearby port. It remains, nominally at least, an independent town within a town.

It was a place of cobble-stones and maze-like streets lined with the homes of fishermen, artists, sculptors and the occasional writer like Paul Gallico, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote Zorba The Greek. With every step one breathed art and literature.

Awakened by the sound of a carpenter’s buzz saw and the smell of new-cut wood from the shop next to the hotel, I would take coffee and croissants and then make my way up the short tarmacadamed road to the ancient thick stone walls of the ramparts. If I turned right I faced an art gallery, if I turned left I faced the Chateau Grimaldi with its fine collection of Picassos.

It was that sort of place.

A friend and I had started a company selling English specialty beer to sceptical Frenchmen. We had an investor and I was point-man. Things went wrong in short order. The princess’s second ex-husband arrived from Paris and spirited her away to a rather pleasant cottage in Biot up in the mountains behind Antibes. The investor bailed without warning. That left me down and out in a beautiful town on the Riviera.

I wrote a letter to a friend in the UK telling him I needed 50 pounds to get back to what I then still called home. In those pre-electronic days, I would be lucky to receive the money in less than 90 days.

Having pushed my credit as far it would go, and weighted down with the bills from my life with the Princess, I packed my clothes and snuck out of the hotel. These were desperate times requiring desperate measures.

During the days that followed I tried sleeping in the deepset windows of the ramparts. The cockroaches disturbed me.

I moved to the beach below the ramparts. My bag became a pillow but the warm Mediterranean air grew chill at night and the sounds of enthusiastic lovers cavorting on the sands disturbed what little shivering sleep I could get. Antibes, after all, is a place of romance.

There was a public shower on the beach and, within the old town, an ancient public washing shed which I used gratefully.

I coralled what little money I had left, a pitifully small amount but at least enough for food for a few days. I knew it wouldn’t last.

So it was that I became a bar entertainer, doing cards tricks for a few francs and sometimes a beer and the occasional snack. It wasn’t much but it was survival.

Over the course of several days a man I’ll call Frank made my acquaintance. He said he was an engineer and claimed to have worked on Donald Campbell’s final and ill-fated attempt to break the water speed record in his boat Bluebird. He claimed to know why the boat suddenly flipped and tore itself and Donald Campbell into pieces.

Frank had that frayed-at-the-edges-too-much-booze look that one finds among the world’s ex-pats who live on the edge of the illegal and sometimes cross the line.

One day Frank said:

“There’s someone in Nice I think you should meet. He might have some work for you”.

Cabaret, I thought, I can handle that.

In Frank’s clapped out car with its windows missing from its doors we drove through darkness along the coast to the hinterlands of Nice and through a maze of ill-lit back alleys.

This is French Connection country. Starting at Marseille and stretching across the Riviera to the Italian border lives a “fingers-in-every-pie” organised crime syndicate, lesser known than the Mafia, with its roots in Corsica. This is the true-life Union Corse of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Finally we stopped, got out of the car and Frank led me through winding streets, counter-surveillance as if we were trying to avoid a tail. At the bottom of a hill he said: “We have to wait here”.

All I could see were the coloured lights of what looked like a cafe at the top of the hill and the dark shape of a car in front of it.

Minutes later the headlights of the car flashed. It was our signal. Frank said “Let’s go”.

At the top of the hill was, indeed, a cafe, rather rustic, with checkered cloths on the tables. Parked outside it was a white Jaguar, which Frank claimed was the only one in France at the time.

The interior of the cafe was nothing special except for the two large, casually-dressed heavies on either side of the door and a several more lounging along the walls inside.

Sitting at a table, lieutenants on either side of him, was a man I’ll call Jean-Marc. He was not tall but he was heavyset with short curly hair and broad peasant’s shoulders. He wore a white polo shirt and looked as if he’d just consumed an excellent meal, or made someone an offer they could not refuse.

Truly powerful men speak little, are soft-spoken when they do speak, and are very polite. Jean-Marc spoke little, spoke softly and was very polite.

He waved me towards a chair in front of him and I sat down. Frank said: “Show him your stuff.”

I went through my paces, pulling aces out of the deck at will, calling out cards before I displayed them, and on it went. At one point Jean-Marc stopped me and tossed me a fresh deck of his own to me to use. Since I wasn’t using a special deck I completed my routine without difficulty.

When I was finished there was a pause. Jean-Marc was thinking, his fingers rubbed his chin. He nodded at me. Frank said: “Do it again.”

Normally I refuse to repeat a trick but this time obedience seemed the better part of valour. I went back through my stuff routine, throwing in a stunning Paul Curry routine of which I’m very fond and knew was a baffler.

At the end there was a pause. Everyone was silent, their attention on Jean-Marc.

He leaned towards me and spoke. Here was the deal: I would play high stakes poker for him using the skills I’d demonstrated. He would put up 10,000 francs and we’d split the takings 50:50.

10,000 francs was what I owed the Taverne Nicoise.

I thought about the sort of people he’d play poker with. Two immediate thoughts came to mind. First, I had a vision of my dead left hand poking out of the sand holding five forlorn aces. Or possibly a dismembered head with the ace and queen of spades artfully arranged in its mouth.

My second thought was: I don’t know how to play poker. I’d found out early on that a magician playing cards was a lose-lose situation. If I won it was because I’d cheated. If I lost I was a fool. So I’d always stayed away from card games.

But I couldn’t tell him that.

So I explained, in a businesslike way, that the techniques I’d used were convincing in a casual environment but would not stand close scrutiny over long periods of time. If I was caught, or even suspected, it would put him and his reputation at risk, it wouldn’t be fair to him for me to to take him up on his very attractive offer

We shook hands and separated. I made my way back to Antibes, with feelings of relief and regret. I’d said no to the French Connection.

Eventually I got a job as a gardener and cook for a lady who’d been the mistress of the Aga Khan which saw me through until the money arrived three months later. I never saw Jean-Marc or Frank again.

As for the Princess, after I returned to England I had lunch with her first ex-husband. She had given up the booze and had fallen in love with a British sea captain. At the age of 33 she died of heart failure aboard ship on her way to marry him.

Click here to see other posts by Bob Couttie:

My First Murder – The Blue Anchor Scandal

Dispatch From Cambodia: Murder In A Sleepy Town

U.S. Navy Cold Case : A Sister’s Persistence Restores the Honor of Murdered Ensign Andrew Lee Muns

The Moors Murderers: Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

by BJW Nashe

“Getting away with murder” now serves as a euphemism for avoiding the consequences of just about any kind of bad behavior. In its most literal sense, however, the phrase points to an especially troubling phenomenon — serial killings committed by psychopaths who somehow manage to avoid being caught and convicted of their crimes. The Zodiac Killer, who terrified the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a string of murders accompanied by bizarre cryptograms and letters to the press, is probably the most famous murderer who was never captured. The Zodiac is not alone, however.  Our recent history is littered with unsolved mass murders. The following rogue’s gallery — presented in no particular order, since they are all equally hideous — lists some of the ones who got away with the worst crimes imaginable.

The Bone Collector is an unidentified serial killer from the area known as the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2009, the chance discovery of a human bone by a dog-walker led police into something closer to an archaeological dig than a typical crime scene. The remains of eleven women, later determined to have been prostitutes, were slowly excavated from the area — which turned into the largest crime scene in U.S. history. Yet not a shred of promising evidence was ever unearthed from this macabre dumping ground — no DNA, no potential murder weapons, no personal clues, nothing at all. Sex workers in the area still live in fear of the killer, even though no murders associated with him have been reported for several years. To this day, the Bone Collector’s identity remains a complete mystery.

The Axe Man of New Orleans was responsible for at least eight killings in New Orleans, Louisiana (and surrounding communities) from May 1918 to October 1919. Typically, the back door of a home was smashed, followed by an attack on one or more of the residents with either an axe or a straight razor. The crimes were not considered linked to robbery, since no items were removed from the victims’ homes. The Axe Man was never caught or identified, and his crime spree stopped as mysteriously as it had started. He wrote a notorious letter to address the public, which was printed in the newspapers. Beneath the heading, “Hell, March 13, 1919,” the Axe Man explained that he was a non-human spirit, something close to the “Angel of Death,” and he vowed to take more victims before he departed earth for his native “Tartarus.” He also made it clear that music was of crucial importance:

“I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.”

Charlie Chop-Off was active in Manhattan between 1972 and 1974. He killed five black children, and attacked another who he left for dead. The nickname comes from the genital mutilation inflicted on the male victims. A principal suspect, Erno Soto, was arrested and did end up confessing to one of the murders. But Soto was considered unfit for trial and sent to a mental institution instead. The case is still considered open.

The Grim Sleeper of Southern California is thought to be responsible for at least ten murders, plus an additional attempted murder, in Los Angeles from 1985 to roughly 2007. His nickname derives from the fact that he appeared to take a Rip Van Winkle style nap, in the form of a 14-year hiatus from crime, during the years 1988-2002. When he was active, there was so much killing going on in L.A. at the time that it was hard to distinguish one murderer’s work from that of another. Thus, the Grim Sleeper was initially confused with the Southside Slayer. In any case, when the May 2007  murder of 25 year-old Janecia Peters was linked through DNA analysis to as many as twelve unsolved murders in L.A. dating back to 1985, a special task force was formed. The Grim Sleeper’s profile emerged as an African-American man who had sexual contact with his victims before strangling or shooting them with a .25 caliber handgun. On July 7, 2010, a suspect was arrested. Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, was charged with ten counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and special circumstance allegations of multiple murders. We still don’t know if Franklin is guilty, though. He has not yet been put on trial for what amounts to a quarter century of killing — with plenty of time off for sleep.

The Cleveland Torso Murderer (also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) was an unidentified serial killer who killed and dismembered at least 12 victims in the Cleveland, Ohio area in the 1930s. The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered his victims, sometimes also cutting the torso in half — in the style of the Black Dahlia corpse. Most of the male victims were castrated, and there was also evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies. Although two suspects were investigated for these horrifying crimes, with Elliot Ness in charge of Cleveland police at the time, no one was ever convicted of the murders.

Jack the Stripper was responsible for the London “nude murders” of 1964 and 1965 (also known as the “Hammersmith murders” or “Hammersmith nudes” case). The similarities with the nineteenth century Ripper murders are obvious. The Stripper murdered at least six prostitutes, whose nude bodies were discovered around London or found dumped into the River Thames. Two additional victims are often attributed to him, although these do not appear to fit his modus operandi. The Stripper’s third and seventh victims were allegedly connected to the 1963 Profumo Affair. Also, some victims were known to be involved in London’s underground party and pornographic movie scene. Scotland Yard’s initial investigation included nearly 7000 suspects, which was supposedly narrowed down to just 20 men, then 10, and eventually only three. No one was ever convicted of the crimes, and the Stripper, for whatever reason, ceased his killing spree.

The Doodler was responsible for slaying 14 men and assaulting three others in San Francisco between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname derived from the perpetrator’s habit of sketching his victims prior to having sex with them and then stabbing them to death. (One wonders whether the sketches ever made it onto the murderabilia market.) The perpetrator met his victims at after-hours gay clubs, bars and restaurants. Police zeroed in on a prime suspect in the case, who was identified by two of his surviving victims. Yet the cops were unable to proceed with an arrest, since the survivors (an entertainer, and a diplomat) refused to “out” themselves by way of testifying. The suspect, who never admitted his guilt, has never been publicly named, and the murders have faded into obscurity.

Bible John reportedly murdered three young women after meeting them at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, Scotland between 1968 and 1969. All three women were raped, strangled, and beaten to death. Just prior to the third murder, the killer supposedly took a taxi ride with the the victim and her sister. The sister said the man, who was named John, was soft-spoken and liked to quote from the Bible. As of 2013, the killer has never been identified, although the location and activities of known Glaswegian serial killer Peter Tobin strongly suggests that he may have been behind the killings. No proof of this has ever been established, however, and the case remains unsolved.

The Phantom Killer is responsible for the “moonlight murders” committed in and around the twin cities of Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas in 1946. The Phantom Killer is credited with attacking eight people, and killing five of them. The attacks occurred on weekend nights, nearly always three weeks apart, and always involved a .32 caliber pistol. The case terrified the entire area, and eventually inspired the 1976 horror film, The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Two of the earliest victims were able to give a description of their attacker — and it only served to heighten the sense of terror. They described a six-foot tall man with a plain white sack worn as a hood over his head, with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. One suspect, a man named Youell Swinney, was imprisoned as a repeat car theft offender in 1947, and released in 1973. He was never charged with the crimes. Due to the killer’s hooded disguise, some in law enforcement and the press have speculated that the murders may have been the early work of the Zodiac Killer, but this has never been proven.

The Babysitter Killer of Oakland County, Michigan was responsible for the murders of four or more children — at least two girls and two boys — in the years 1976-77. The children were abducted and then held for time periods ranging from 4-19 days, before they were killed by either strangling, suffocation, or shooting. Two of the victims were also sexually assaulted with an object. These atrocious deaths caused extreme public fear bordering on mass hysteria, and triggered a murder investigation which was the largest in U.S. history at the time. The Detroit News offered a $100,000 reward for the killer’s apprehension. A number of suspects were investigated — some authorities even considered John Wayne Gacy to be a likely perpetrator. However, the murders remain unsolved.

A more deranged bunch than this is difficult to imagine. How did they get away with it? Dumb luck? Skillful evasion? Police incompetence? Or all of the above? The truth probably resides in the simple fact that it is often just plain difficult — and very time-consuming – to solve murder cases. We tend to take homicide investigations for granted, and assume that justice will be served. However, given the sheer number of homicides, and the complexities involved in most cases, we shouldn’t be surprised that some of our worst psychopaths are able to slip through the cracks, and get away with murder.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

“Big Sam” Parker has been a South Carolina lawman for a solid forty years.  In 2002, he was elected sheriff of bucolic Chesterfield County, a rural area of South Carolina nestled between Charlotte, NC to the north and Columbia, SC to the south.  According to a Chesterfield County website, the “county’s rural atmosphere evokes family farms and gentle country living.”

Based on the fact that Chesterfield County, which is about two-thirds white and one-third black, appears to epitomize low-key country life, it seems a bit strange that one of the first things Big Sam did upon being elected sheriff was to raise money to train and equip one of the best SWAT teams in the state and some of the best tracking dogs.  Nonetheless, the good folk of Chesterfield County have no doubt been sleeping easier for the past twelve years knowing that if the bad guys are dumb enough to run amuck on their home turf, Big Sam’s SWAT team will not hesitate to march in and kick some serious ass.

In fact, more than likely, Big Sam, who is the essence of a working sheriff, will be right alongside his team, either that or he’ll be keeping his weather eye open from his favorite vantage point hanging out the window of the refurbished military surplus helicopter that he wrangled for the county at some point after being elected.  (Given his approximate age, it’s entirely possible that Big Sam was a tail gunner back in Vietnam.)

It would be a mistake to think that Big Sam’s focus has been primarily on hardware as opposed to people, for the simple reason that he is first and foremost a people person who according to those who know him best, has dedicated his life to serving and protecting the people of Chesterfield County. Big Sam’s approach has always been to get and keep the people involved.  For example, shortly after assuming office, Big Sam began recruiting folks to help his deputies out at big events such as high school football games.  (I hardly need mention that high school football is king in SC.)  According to the indictment, Big Sam also encouraged people whom he referred to as “reserve deputies” to wear police uniforms and carry badges even though they had no training in law enforcement.

All of this would probably have been quite acceptable to the powers that be in Chesterfield County if Big Sam had managed to hold it at that. At some point, however, along with doing favors for the law abiding folks, People Pleaser Sam allegedly allowed himself to be compromised by doing favors for those inmates at the county jail who earned his trust, which is what has led to the criminal charges against him.  The incident that apparently caught the eye of the local prosecutors was the time Big Sam flew one of the county jail inmates in his plane (or helicopter) to visit his sick mother.

Unfortunately for Sheriff Parker, this same ungrateful inmate turned on Sam and began singing like a canary after the sheriff disciplined him for an unspecified rule violation.  Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press writes:

“The prisoner, who was serving 15 years for arson and was sent to Chesterfield County to help with tasks like fixing cars and maintaining county property, told investigators he was allowed to drink alcohol, sleep outside the jail, use an iPad and have unsupervised visits with women, according to an indictment against Parker.”

According to the prosecutors, Sheriff Parker also gave away confiscated weapons, including an M-14 semi-automatic rifle, to friends who were not deputies.

Even though Big Sam is one of 7 sheriffs out of South Carolina’s 46 counties to face charges or criminal investigations in the past four years, according to Jeffrey Collins, the allegations against him stunned his fellow sheriffs, who, sociable folks that they are, are in the habit of meeting several times a year for training and to swap stories.

“I’ve never known him to drink; I’ve never known him to smoke. I’ve always known him to be in church and I’ve always known him to be straight down the line. That’s why I’m interested to see what happens next week and whether all this stuff in the paper really happened,” said Fred Knight, sheriff of neighboring Marlboro County.

During his time in office, Big Sam built up plenty of good will among his fellow lawmen by sharing his substantial resources with neighboring counties any time he needed help. For example, Marlboro County deputies said any time there was trouble afoot necessitating an extensive investigation in one of their neighborhoods, Sheriff Parker never hesitated to send over as many officers as necessary to help out.

“He’d be right there with his SWAT team suited up,” said Marlboro County Sheriff’s Lt. Jamie Scales.

In a general sense, sheriffs all across the state are none too pleased that over the past few years, their conduct has been scrutinized a bit more closely than they are used to or comfortable with. Allegedly, the prosecutors have used a vague law to criminalize policy violations. Parker’s own lawyer suggested after his arrest in March 2013, that sheriffs in rural areas have been operating in a similar manner for decades, but that Sheriff Parker was being singled out for unknown reasons.

What sets Big Sam apart from his brother sheriffs is that while most of them did the expeditious thing and pleaded guilty, thus avoiding jail time prior to quietly fading away, Parker has taken the manly step of utilizing his constitutional rights by fighting back and going to trial, thus risking the possibility that he may soon be spending time behind bars in the company of his inmate friends.

“Sam is looking forward to getting his side of the story in front of an objective jury,” said his defense attorney, Johnny Gasser.

Like many criminal defense attorneys, Mr. Gasser appears to be a bit of a dreamer. Technically speaking, Big Sam is almost undoubtedly guilty of at least some of the charges against him which include “five counts of misconduct in office, two counts of furnishing contraband to inmates and one count of embezzlement. The misconduct and contraband charges each carry up to 10 years in prison and the embezzlement charge has a maximum five-year punishment.”

Ironically, the same State Law Enforcement Division, for whom Parker worked for 12 years as an agent prior to being elected Sheriff, is the body that initiated the wide-ranging probe that resulted in a grand jury indictment and charges being lodged against him.

According to Jeffrey Collins, Parker voluntarily stepped aside when he was indicted so the governor wouldn’t have to suspend him. But he wants his job back. If he is found not guilty, he will ask Gov. Nikki Haley to put him right back in office.

And last month, he walked into the county election offices and paid $2,700 to file as the only Republican seeking a four-year term as sheriff.

Parker explains his motivation in the following manner:

“I’m a working sheriff. I’m here for the people and not for the power.”

*     *     *     *     *

Aside from the corruption and his childish desire for Chesterfield County to possess the finest SWAT team in the entire state, Sheriff Parker may not be a bad fellow. He reminds me of a South Carolina sheriff that I observed nearly 35 years ago when I was traveling through South Carolina on my way to New York. After a night in a dreamy Comfort Inn, I was having breakfast with my girlfriend in a coffee shop and as we were eagerly awaiting our delicious “heart attack” food, the local Sheriff and his crew of close to a dozen locals entered the coffee shop, commandeered what I assume was their regular table, and began an extended Sunday morning coffee klatsch. The sheriff was a big robust man like Big Sam, and boy, did he like to talk. As I slowly devoured my bacon and eggs, I listened in mounting awe as the sheriff regaled his cronies with amusing tales of staking out and ultimately arresting local dope dealers way out in the woods. I suppose the deputies involved in the stakeouts were not outfitted in full Swat team regalia back in those days, but a dope dealer is a dope dealer and this sheriff took real pleasure in tracking them down and arresting them. Perhaps he too dipped into the contraband from time to time using it for illicit purposes but hey, you’ve got to do something with all of those perfectly good drugs, don’t you?

In any event, I think I have some insight into Sheriff Parker and what floats his boat. He wheels, he deals, but he doesn’t like it when his cronies squeal. Big Sam’s trial begins today.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Well known fact: Texas is the largest of the 50 states.

Little known fact(s): In a recent year, Texas jailed 120 school kids for missing school (truancy). The Dallas County truancy court collected nearly $3 million in fines. 67 students age 17 and older were sent to jail because of truancy violations; 53 students younger than age 17 were remanded to juvenile detention centers.

As has become a trend in recent years in several of our more heavy-handed states, students who have missed too much school have frequently been hauled out of class in handcuffs. This is ironic since the problem has been getting them to come to school in the first place. In many instances, the kids were held in jail for days at a time. Individual students have been fined more than $1,000 for missing more than 10 days of school.

This seeming abuse of power on the part of the authorities was made possible by a revamping and strengthening of the state’s truancy laws in 2003. It has also led to a range of abuses, according to a complaint filed Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The complaint, filed by a coalition of advocacy groups for young people and the disabled, targets the Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, and Richardson school districts in Texas and urges the Justice Department to force reforms and “declare the practice of criminally prosecuting children as adults for truancy” a violation of their constitutional rights.

Naturally, some school officials, lawmakers, and judges think that the rigid enforcement system is just “jim-dandy” and has led to improved attendance.

A Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins defended the program in a recent statement:

“The Dallas County system offers the best chance for truant students to get back in class and graduate,” said Jenkins, adding that the courts are staffed by attorneys who specialize in juvenile justice issues, and make use of agencies who work to solve the underlying issues behind the truancy of students.

In one recent year, the Texas adult courts handled 113,000 truancy cases.

Naturally, when hauled into court to face truancy or lateness charges, the offending students are not provided with legal counsel. There are lawyers in the courtroom, however. The judge is a lawyer as is the presiding member of the district attorney’s office. The student being charged is only represented if his or her family can afford to hire a lawyer.

Naturally, the defendants (students) are required to pay court fees “even if they prevail in fighting the accusations,” which, it can be argued, discourages the students and their families “from exercising their right to a full hearing.”

Naturally, “the complaint asserts that the program unfairly targets minorities and underprivileged students, and routinely puts youngsters in jail rather than keeping them in school.”

This is not to say that truancy among juveniles is not a problem. The question becomes how to solve the problem. In the 1990s, the Texas state legislature made “failure to attend school” a Class C misdemeanor, “which meant that children could be tried as adults for missing school.”

The law requires Texas schools to report students to the truancy court if he or she has 10 or more unexcused absences within a six-month period. Although, as stated above, these laws have resulted in up to 120 students being jailed in a single school year, what usually happens, according to the complaint, is that when the students appear in court, “they are often pressured to plead guilty and accept fines of anywhere from $80 to $500 rather than go to trial, pay additional court fees, and risk jail time.” And should a student fail to make a court appearance or pay their fines on time, they then face being arrested and jailed. Among the 50 states, only Wyoming has similar statutes.

Commentary

In passing, I would like to note how much things have changed. Things weren’t nearly so heavy-handed back in the day. When I was a child in school in rural Wisconsin back in the old cold war days when air raid drills were a simple fact of life and we still had ink wells in our desks, I would typically miss around 30 days of school each year up through at least the 6th grade. I remember looking at old report cards and noting that for some unknown reason, I only missed 13 days of school in the 2nd grade. For me, that was shockingly good attendance — an unprecedented display of my sober commitment to education. What did the authorities do about my appallingly bad attendance and clear disrespect for THE LAW? They did nothing. They didn’t even seem to notice. We all got along just fine.

How did I turn out education-wise? Well, truthfully, it did take me a while to climb firmly atop the college bandwagon. I didn’t even go to college until I’d turned 30. But in the long run, I took full advantage of the glorious educational opportunity provided by our great American universities. I graduated summa cum laude and won my share of awards. Later, I even taught community college for several years.

So, viewed objectively, missing a great deal of school didn’t seem to hurt me one bit. In fact, it probably helped me. I had a hella good time being a truant out there on our farm roaming our fields, herding our geese, and generally being an All-American schoolboy on a holiday.

To read the entire article, which appeared in Alter Net via Pro Publica, click on this link:

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Immediately on the heels of her most recent conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox stated that under no circumstances would she willingly return to Italy. I believe she said something to the effect that “they would have to drag her kicking and screaming.” 

Now, however, M. Cherif Bassiouni, an Emeritus Professor of Law at DePaul, and a founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute, has stated in writing in an article that appears in Oxford University’s blog, OUP, that based on the 1983 U.S.–Italy Extradition Treaty, Amanda Knox’s extradition from the United States to Italy is not likely under existing jurisprudence.

As anyone who has not been doing a Rip Van Winkle knows, on January 30, 2014, the Appeals Court of Assizes of Florence, Italy overturned the acquittals of Ms. Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito that were rendered by the Perugia Assizes Court of Appeal in October of 2011. The Florence court convicted Knox in absentia and sentenced her to 28 years and six months in prison and sentenced Sollecito to 25 years. The Presiding Judge of the Florence Court has until the end of April to write his judgment (with rationale) on the ruling. Knox and Sollecito’s lawyers have stated that as soon as the judgment is filed, they will appeal it to the Court of Cassation. Then, the Florence court’s judgment is not final until the Court of Cassation makes yet another ruling.

Why Ms. Knox Will Not  Be Extradited from the United States to Italy

Strangely, Italy does not consider it’s complex and seemingly endless;y repetitive approach to adjudicating serious crimes to be in violation of the constitutional prohibition of ne bis in idem (double jeopardy) reflected in article 649 of the Italian Code of Criminal procedure. The prohibition of ne bis in idem is included in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. To this point, however, the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) has failed to interpret Italian law as being in violation of ne bis in idem.

Therefore, if the extradition decision was in the hands of ECHR, Knox would no doubt be fair game for the Great Extradition Cannon (Canon) in the Sky. Fortunately for Knox, however, the U.S. Extradition Treaty with Italy would seem to protect her. Professor Emeritus Bassiouni writes:

The 1983 U.S.–Italy Extradition Treaty states in article VI that extradition is not available in cases where the requested person has been acquitted or convicted of the “same acts” (in the English text) and the “same facts” (in the Italian text)… Italy’s law prohibiting ne bis in idem specifically uses the words stessi fatti, which are the same words used in the Italian version of article VI, meaning “same facts.” Because fatti, or “facts,” may include multiple acts, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals applied the test of “same conduct” in Sindona v. Grant, 461 F.Supp. 199 (S.D.N.Y. Nov 15, 1978) (NO. 78 CIV 2472(HFW)), citing international extradition in US law and practice, based on this writer’s analysis.

Based on this interpretation of article VI, Amanda Knox would not face extradition to Italy should Italy seek it because she was retried for the same acts, the same facts, and the same conduct. Her case was reviewed three times with different outcomes even though she was not actually tried three times. Thus, in light of the jurisprudence of the various US circuits on this issue, it is unlikely that extradition would be granted.

Professor Emeritus Bassiouni goes on to state that the US Supreme Court can also make a constitutional determination under the Fifth Amendment of the applicability of double jeopardy to extradition cases, in order to measure the requesting state’s right to keep on reviewing the same acts or facts in the hope of obtaining a conviction. Bassiouni  explains, however, that to date no such interpretation of the Fifth Amendment has been rendered by US courts in any previous extradition case. This, of course, does not mean that such an interpretation could not occur. Thus far, however, double jeopardy defenses with respect to extradition requests have been dealt with as they arise under the applicable treaty as opposed to being treated constitutionally.

The professor concludes by stating that Amanda Knox’s extradition from the United States to Italy under existing jurisprudence is unlikely.

What this appears to mean in simple layman’s terms is that we will not extradite a US citizen if his or her set of facts is first tried in a foreign court of law and then endlessly revisited with varying outcomes.

Rick Stack In-House Legal Expert

It is, of course, quite possible that other legal experts (including our in-house legal sage Rick Stack) might disagree with Professor Bassiouni’s interpretation of Article VI of the U.S. Extradition Treaty with Italy. Nonetheless, I think that for the time being, Amanda Knox can afford to breathe a few quick sighs of relief as she strives to complete her Creative Writing degree at the University of Washington in Seattle.

M. Cherif Bassiouni’s credentials are nothing to be sneezed at. He was a Professor of Law at DePaul University in Chicago where he taught from 1964-2012 before retiring to Emeritus status. A founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute (established in 1990), he served as President of the Institute from 1990-2007, and then President Emeritus. He has also been President of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences, Siracusa, Italy since 1989 and he is the author of International Extradition: United States Law and Practice, Sixth Edition.

The good professor is one busy fellow and is obviously a legal heavyweight, not only here in the US but also in Italy, where given his lofty stature, I would imagine the Italian powers might well consult with him before doing anything as foolish as demanding — in the event the Italian Court of Cassation affirms Knox’s recent conviction — that the US turn her over to the Italian authorities.

This should not bother many of the anti-Knox folks, however, inasmuch as they’ve repeatedly claimed that they have no real interest in seeing Knox returned to Italy to serve another 20 years or so in an Italian penitentiary, but merely desire justice in the form of a permanent conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Of course, people’s opinions change and these same folks may do an about face and object vociferously if the Court of Cassation affirms Knox’s conviction and the US chooses not to extradite her.