commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We probably all have certain secrets that we would probably not want to see the light of day. Extra-marital affairs, financial crimes (including tax evasion), skeletons in the family closet, cowardice (or even worse atrocities) while serving in the military, these are but a few of the guilty secrets we might try to suppress. One guilty secret most of us probably do not harbor, however, is infanticide, unless of course we lump therapeutic abortion within the general category of baby-killing.

Abortion may not be that popular in the great state of Utah where Mormon families, which constitute a large percentage of the state’s population, are encouraged to be fruitful and to multiply. Of course, this can result in a thorny new problem. What the heck do you do with all those extra babies, you know, the ones you don’t want? You can’t very well feed them to your Rottweilers…

Megan Huntsman is only 39 years old. Until three years ago, she lived with her husband Darren West (some of the time) and her children in what has been described as a nondescript, newer home with a brick facade and a star ornament hanging by the door in a middle-class neighborhood of mostly older homes in Pleasant Grove, a community of  35,000, 35 miles South of Salt Lake City.

At present, Megan has three surviving daughters in their teens and early twenties who still live in that same house which belongs to Megan’s ex-husband’s parents. It turns out, however, that while living with her ex, Megan – who apparently eschewed birth control – became pregnant with what could be described as disheartening regularity.

For unknown reasons, Megan apparently hid the fact of her frequent, virtually yearly, pregnancies. Maybe she thought raising three girls was enough. This of course doesn’t explain how she hid the fact she was pregnant from her husband and daughters or the process by which she killed her unwelcome babies after surreptitiously ushering them into the world? One solution would be to kill them and hide their bodies in cardboard boxes in the garage, which apparently is precisely what Megan Huntsman did. Brady McCombs and Martin Griffith of the AP write:

A Utah woman accused of killing seven babies she gave birth to over 10 years was arrested Sunday after police discovered the tiny bodies stuffed in separate cardboard boxes in the garage of her former home.

According to investigators, Megan Huntsman had the infants between 1996 and 2006.

This macabre truth came to light on Saturday when officers responded to a call Saturday from Huntsman’s estranged husband Darren about a dead infant at the home, police Capt. Michael Roberts said. Upon investigation, officers then discovered the six other bodies.

Police say Darren was cleaning out the garage when he made the grisly discovery at the house owned by his parents… Several police cars blocked the entrance to the house Sunday evening as officers milled about with the contents of the garage strewn across the front lawn.

Neighbors of the Huntsmans are shocked by the accusations and perplexed that the woman’s three older daughters never realized their mother was pregnant or notice anything suspicious.

Captain Roberts declined to comment on a motive or disclose what Huntsman said while interviewed by investigators. She was booked Sunday into the Utah County Jail on six counts of murder.

The Captain did say that the estranged husband lived with Huntsman when the babies were born but is not a person of interest at this time.

“We don’t believe he had any knowledge of the situation,” Roberts told The Associated Press.

When asked how the man could not have known when he lived in the house with Megan, Roberts replied, “That’s the million-dollar question. Amazing.”

The babies’ bodies have been shipped to the Utah M.E.’s office for tests, including one to determine the cause of death. DNA samples have been taken and will determine definitively whether Megan and her ex-husband are the parents.

Although the Huntsmans’ neighbors were uniformly shocked and horrified by the accusations, many of them were eager to talk, although they were all unaware that Megan was pregnant repeatedly during the period in question.

According to Aaron and Kathie Hawker, who live next door, the Huntsmans seemed like good people and nice neighbors. One of the Huntsman’s daughters used to babysit the Hawker grandchildren.

“It makes us so sad, we want to cry,” Kathie Hawker said. “We enjoyed having them as a neighbor. This has just blown us away.”

Aaron Hawker revealed that he had talked with Megan’s ex on Saturday morning who told him that he was cleaning out the mess in the garage.

“Two hours later, suddenly we had all these policemen here.”

Fred Newman’s cousin is the ex’s mother. Newman said he’s perplexed how the three older daughters reportedly had no knowledge of Megan’s machinations. He mentioned that the girls sometimes parked their cars in the garage in the cold winter months.

“What’s shocking is the three older ones living there and not noticing that their mother was pregnant,” Newman said.

Like a good neighbor, Newman used to go to the trouble of using his snow-blower to clean off the driveway of the Huntsman’s home, and the three daughters would always thank him.

According to neighbor Vickie Nelson, the girls were normal youngsters, coming and going often.

“It’s shocking and kind of morbid and strange,” Nelson said as she gazed across the street at the garage.

Captain Roberts admitted that the case has been “emotionally draining” to him and the investigators.

“My personal reaction? Just shocked. Couldn’t believe it. The other officers felt the same,” the 19-year police veteran said.

*     *     *     *     *

Well, I must object and I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels that way. How could nobody have known anything? We have the daughters, who as little girls living with an extremely fecund mother would have presumably become increasingly tuned in to female issues as the years passed. We have the ex who as Megan’s stalwart impregnator (and meth user according to some reports) must have realized that she was in a family way with conspicuous regularity. Perhaps during the course of the first few unwanted pregnancies, Megan told him that she had miscarried and in time, he assumed, that such was the case in each of the seven pregnancies. But that does not account for the obvious physical changes in a woman’s body that accompany pregnancy.

And what about the neighbors? What about the other mothers in the neighborhood? Surely, they must have noticed something? Didn’t they? Wouldn’t you if you were living next door?

And what about Megan herself? Did she really think that she would get away with this forever? The punishment-oriented crime fans of America are not going to go easy on Megan Huntsman, and in a sense, why should they? She should have used birth control or if not that, she should have put the babies up for adoption after carrying them to full term. But she did not. Instead, she killed her babies and put them in cardboard boxes out in the garage…

by Patrick H. Moore

Here at All Things Crime Blog we come across some very weird cases — some of which, of course, are very disturbing. There’s nothing funny, for example, about a 250 pound sadist plotting to sexually molest and cannibalize a young boy. Once in a while, however, we discover a case which — while undeniably disturbing — can also be viewed as darkly amusing, at least to one of jaundiced sensibility. The case of Meloney and Michael Selleneit of Centerville, Utah fits into this category and is unlike any case I have ever encountered, reading more like a Philip K. Dick novel than a true crime story.

It seems that Meloney, who is 55 and mentally ill, became convinced that her next store neighbor, Tony Pierce, was “telepathically raping” her. Notwithstanding her illness, Meloney found this in no way acceptable — and being a woman of pride and honor — she ordered her husband Michael Selleneit, also 55, to go next door and shoot the bastard.

Don’t think for a minute, though, that Michael was simply a member of the infamous “Honey Do” club and said to Meloney, “Yes, honey. I’ll do it. I’ll take care of it right away.” Instead of jumping the gun and going off half-cocked, he and Meloney sat down and discussed the matter carefully and conscientiously. According to the arrest warrant, Michael Selleneit was convinced that Pierce had been “telepathically raping” his wife for years, and was using crack cocaine to control her mind, which I assume means the purpose of the crack was to soften Meloney up so that she would be receptive to the “telepathic rape.” I realize this is a rather an odd concept, but like I said, this is a very weird case. In any event, according to the arrest affidavit, the couple discussed the matter and came to the conclusion that the only honorable solution would be for Michael to “go for it,” to use Meloney’s phrase, i.e., march over to Tom’s house and plug him. Meloney informed the police that she was not absolutely certain that Michael would actually go through with the attack. What she knew for sure, though, was that Michael would not have shot Tom without her encouragement. 

Without further ado, Michael — doubly fortified by his belief that Tony had been committing the heinous act for years and his wife’s encouragement — took the bull by the horns and marched over to Tony’s house where he found him gardening in his backyard. Michael came up behind Tony and shot him twice in the back with a handgun. Witnesses say that after the shooting Michael walked calmly back to his trailer. Fortunately, Tony received medical attention promptly and lived through the attack.

This is not a new case; the shooting occurred on Nov. 10, 2011. For the past two years, Meloney has been in a Utah state mental hospital receiving care for a variety of mental illnesses including schizophrenia. She had been previously found unfit to stand trial but the presiding judge, Thomas Kay, recently reversed his decision. Thus, since she had long since incriminated herself, not to mention the fact that there were apparently witnesses, Meloney pleaded guilty on Sept. 19, 2013 to illegally possessing a weapon, and criminal solicitation.

Michael Selleneit had already pleaded guilty in January of 2012 to attempted manslaughter and illegally owning a weapon. He was sentenced to two consecutive one-to-fifteen year prison sentences and is serving his time at a Utah mental institution. Michael had also been previously arrested in 1990 for sexual contact with a child.

Meloney Selleneit is current being held in Utah state custody. Although she was scheduled to be sentenced on October 31st, the date has apparently been continued.

by Thomas Davidson

Literary genius supports aggrieved gorilla?

 “Many years later, as he faced a firing squad of military biplanes, King Kong was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover the unpolluted beaches of Skull Island.”

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, New York Times, 1933 (Op/Ed letter from Marquez, a five-year-old Columbian boy)

Tomb of the Unknown Mojo

 Across the street from Arlington National Cemetery is a plot of land roughly the size of a parking spot at a supermarket lot. Here, weeds surround a small, stone obelisk. This may be the least-visited national monument in America. This is the Tomb of the Unknown Mojo. These words are chiseled onto its plaque: What were you thinking? The inscription refers to any entitled, aggrieved sphincter whose inner mojo is so batshit, it defies human comprehension, except in court. Even God doesn’t know what makes these people tick.

Here’s a recent showcase of Unknown Mojo mayhem, compliments of The Huffington Post:

15 Shocking Florida Stand Your Ground Cases

Cases include: “Man Retreating From Fight Shot In Back Of Head, 2007; Man Kills Robber Who Stole Car Radios, Then Sells Radios, 2012; Neighbor Shoots Man In Stomach Over Trash Bags, 2006; Neighbor Kills Man In Front Of His Children In Dog Dispute, 2009; Man Fires At Utility Workers Collecting Unpaid Bills, 2009.”

Here’s a sample.

Man Kills Lover Having Sex With Wife, 2012

“In Brandon, 70-year-old Ralph Wald walked in on former neighbor Walter Conley having sex with Wald’s wife. After fatally shooting Conley, Wald claimed that although Conley had lived nearby, he did not recognize him and thought a stranger was raping his wife. Wald was acquitted after a two-hour deliberation.”

Visitors at the Tomb of the Unknown Mojo wonder if Walter would still be with us if, say, Mrs. Ralph Wald looked up from the pillow and said to her husband, “Ralphie, look who’s here.” If you’re in the neighborhood and don’t have time to stop at the Tomb, feel free to drive by and toot your horn. A quick beep is your way of saying, “Ralphie, get some glasses.” Or, “A neighbor who shoots a man in the stomach over trash bags has gone totally apeshit.” Speaking of apes…

On a summer night in 1933, Mr. Kong stood on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, staring, eye-level, through a set of windows on the tenth floor of the Empire State Building. He hugged the skyscraper. Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) was in his hand. Her throat was sore from screaming. What followed should have sent a shock wave through American jurisprudence, and set a sane precedent for Stand Your Ground. But it was ignored. And now, eight decades later, the Huffington Post reports: Man Fires At Utility Workers Collecting Unpaid Bills.

We have gone from noble victim, King Kong, to…

“Miami’s Ernesto Che Vino fired at two Florida Power & Light workers who had entered his yard to cut power due to unpaid bills. A judge tossed out two counts of armed assault and one count of improper exhibition of a firearm, saying that under Stand Your Ground, Vino had a reasonable fear for his life.”

Ask yourself: Would Mr. Kong lose it over an unpaid bill and cap a utility worker? Unlikely.

How small we’ve become. Is the universe shrinking? In his paper: A Universe Without Expansion, Christof Wetterich, a theoretical physicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, discusses a cosmological model “where the universe shrinks rather than expands during the radiation and matter dominated periods.”

Imagine Wetterich, hired as an expert witness for the defense, testifying in court: “In a collapsing universe, mass increases, thus trash bags increase in value exponentially, and must be defended at gunpoint. Without trash bags, uncontained trash swells. America will be on the brink of a trashapocalypse. Trashageddon awaits. Should rubbish get into the wrong hands …”

Meanwhile, back in Midtown Manhattan, Kong put Ann Darrow on his shoulder, and began scaling the skyscraper. Floor by floor. A growing crowd gathered below. Shouts and sirens filled the air. Someone with a bullhorn said, “You’re under arrest, Kong. Stop right there. Let go of the building, and put your hands behind your head. Set your chin on a window sill to keep from falling. And spread your legs, don’t ask me how. I repeat—put your hands behind your head.”

Screw that, Kong kept going. Who wouldn’t? Kong had been gas bombed and abducted from Skull Island, shipped to New York, and shackled on a Vaudeville stage with no cut of the action. Who wouldn’t pop chains, haul ass, and shimmy up a skyscraper?

 The decline of labor unions at the worksite leads to this.

 On 12/18/12, the Huffington Post reported:

Man Shot After Complaining About Little Caesars Pizza Service, 2012

“Randall White ordered a thin-crust veggie pie at a Little Caesars restaurant in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Sunday and complained about the slow service. He didn’t get his pizza faster, but he did get two bullets in the gut, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

According to the paper, Michael Jock, another customer, told White to pipe down. That led to shoving, and when White, 49, raised his fist, Jock, 52, allegedly pulled out a legally concealed .38 revolver and shot White in the stomach. The two men wrestled and Jock allegedly shot White again. According to the Sun-Sentinel, Jock told police the shooting was justified under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, but he was arrested for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.”

Kong kept climbing. Ann Darrow kept screaming. On the 41st floor, a man with a brown bottle stuck his head out an open window and said the magic words, “Pipe down!” He staggered back when he saw the mountaineer.

Floyd spots a really big voyeur

 Kong paused. Through the window, he saw a man dressed in a double-breasted suit coat and no pants. Urine ran down his pink legs. A woman behind him said, “Holy crap, my husband knows. He sent a gorilla to check up on us. Don’t just stand there, Floyd, do something. Stand your ground!”

 Floyd grabbed her arm, twirled, and launched her toward the window, creating a distraction. Then he ran for the elevator. The authorities needed to be alerted.

Floyd alerts the authorities

Kong continued his ascent. Far below, the mob in the Midtown streets looked like the trashapocalypse. Meanwhile, 23-year-old Eve McHale attempted to leap to her death from the 86th floor observation deck. She fell through the air, heading for a limousine parked at the curb.

A second chance awaits

Kong’s furry shoulder got in the way, saving her life. Her suicide note fell from her pocket and drifted downward toward the upraised faces in the horde. Kong reached for McHale and dropped her through an open window on the 45th floor. In a show of support, Ann Darrow flashed a fist pump by the window. Then the beauty and the beast ascended out of sight.

Everyone knows what happened next. Kong put Ann Darrow on a lower ledge, then STOOD HIS GROUND atop the Empire State Building. A squadron of military biplanes swooped on Kong. He swatted one plane out of the sky, but the others raked him with machine gun fire. Wounded, Kong fell through the air, 103 stories. In the final scene, a policeman said the airplanes got him. “It wasn’t the airplanes,” the movie’s filmmaker famously replied. “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Or Kong died because his inner mojo wasn’t totally messed up. Cause of death: incurable level-headedness.

Let’s end the story where we began—with the words of little Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his letter to the New York Times: “The skyscraper has over 100 floors. Each story has people. Some are alone, peeved, super-antsy. The Empire State Building is like, well, 100 floors of solitude. As King Kong fell, seeing each floor flashing by, I wonder if some putz stuck his head out a window and yelled, ‘Pipe down—or else!’ I wonder if those were the last words Kong heard as he zoomed toward history. Who knows? Rest in peace, King Kong.”

WARNING

Thomas Davidson is the author of two quirky thrillers, THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES and PAST IS PRESENT, and a collection of humor, BOTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDUNCE KID. He’s never used a plastic fork to attack customers inside a pizzeria, even when they’re loud and try to hog all the paper napkins from the napkin dispenser.

Click below for his recent posts for ALL THINGS CRIME BLOG.

Bermuda Triangle Spawns the George Washington Bridge Scandal?

The Mega Mack-Daddy of Illegitimate Daddies

The Art of Telephone Ju-Jitsu

Up – astral crime fiction

Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army Meet Paul McCartney — The Secret Link?

Botch Cassidy & the SunDunce Kid Hit the Home Depot

How the Little Drummer Boy Saved Christmas

website — www.thomas-davidson.com

blog — www.jurassicjim.blogspot.com

twitter litter — @TomDavidson99

In a rare move a Cambodia appeal court has released Olivier Van Den Bogaert, main suspect in the brutal murder of a young French tourist in February 2013, on bail after almost a year in detention. Under Cambodian law Van Den Bogaert could have been held for another six months before going to trial. The prosecuting judge has 15 days to appeal the decision.

The naked body of 25-year old Ophelia Begnis was pulled from the Kampot River on 10 February last year. Her face had been devastated with a heavy sharp instrument like a machete or chopper. She had left the guesthouse she was staying in, Les Manguiers, the previous afternoon on a rented bicycle and was not seen alive again. She was reported missing the next morning when she was due to leave Kampot by bus but did not appear.

Kampot is a quiet, pretty, historic town popular with backpackers and known for its famous pepper and resounding natural beauty. Violent crime against tourists is almost unheard of; the murder of Ms Begnis had an enormous impact on the local community.

From the start of the investigation police focused on the foreign community. Belgian guesthouse owner, Van Den Bogaert, 41, was arrested on 26 April, 10 weeks after Ms. Begnis’ death based on an eyewitness who allegedly saw him dumping a bicycle in the river. A bicycle was recovered but could not be positively identified as the one ridden by Ms. Begnis.

A French forensics team visited the town in March 2013 and gathered evidence from boats used for tourist trips and took DNA samples from a number of foreign residents. Cambodia does not have a criminal forensics laboratory capable of DNA assays so samples were sent to one of six laboratories in France.

The French examination showed that Ms. Begnis had not been raped and there was no evidence linking her to Van Den Bogaert.

Local press quote Seng Sivutha, deputy director of the Appeal Cour:

“We did not have sufficient evidence to inculpate him, so Appeal Court Judge  Meng Khun Leang ordered his release.”

Although Van Den Bogaert is said to have been treated well, with friends sending food and a mattress, and despite being housed separately from Cambodian prisoners, his life for the last year has been intensely difficult in the country’s second most overcrowded prison.

A member of Van Den Bogaert’s family tells All Things Crime Blog “(His release) is a relief. His health and mental state is at the moment the biggest worry”.

Unless the prosecuting judge drops the charges in the face of the appeal court decision it may be many more months before a trial takes place.

Click here for more on the Kampot murder case.

More stories from Bob Couttie

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Based on the photographic evidence, 18-year-old Isabella Guzman of Aurora, Colorado is quite an attractive young lady. Her Facebook page contains selfies which seem to combine poise and a natural loveliness that are striking. Nonetheless, Isabella now stands charged with 1st-degree murder for slashing her mother, 47-year-old Yun-Mi Hoy’s, throat and stabbing her a total of 79 times in the upstairs bathroom of their suburban home on the evening of August 28, 2013.

It’s not yet clear what specifically caused Isabella to go berserk as if she were a psychopathic monster. Yet she did.

There had been signs since Isabella’s early childhood — when she was sent for a period of time to live with her biological father after her parents separated — that all was not right between her and her mother, but no one expected matters to deteriorate to this point of no return. After Isabella’s arrest in a parking garage the following day 16 hours after the slaying, homicide detectives were unable to offer any clues as to a motive for the brutal act. Isabella’s stepfather, Ryan Hoy, however, informed them that raising the teenager had been a challenge.

In fact, Ryan Hoy told the detectives that on the day of the murder, Isabella’s mother had called the police because of the ongoing strife between Isabella and her mother. Hoy stated his step-daughter had become “more threatening and disrespectful” toward Yun-Mi Hoy in recent days. In fact, according to the arrest affidavit, Isabella Guzman had allegedly threatened Yun-Mi Hoy in an email telling her, “You will pay.” The police had reportedly told Isabella that her mother could kick her out of their home if she did not shape up.

In an attempt to ameliorate the situation, Isabella’s father, Robert Guzman, had spoken to her about her “teen rebelliousness” about three hours before the 911 call.

“I went to talk to her because her mother was worried and wanted me to talk to Isabella,” Guzman told 7News. “So, I went to talk to Isabella and we sat down in the backyard looking at the trees and the animals and I started to talk to her about the respect that people should have for their parents. And I was trying to let her know that she should be obedient to her parents, not rebellious, that she should try to listen more and everything was going fine.”

“In the conversation, I thought that I made progress,” he added. “But obviously it didn’t do nothing, because hours later, this thing happened.”

*     *     *     *     *

The police report states that Aurora police dispatch received a 911 call just past 10 p.m. on August 28 from Ryan Hoy. Hoy told dispatch that Yun-Mi Hoy had come home from work about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and had taken a shower. Soon after, he heard a “thumping” and his wife calling his name. Hoy moved quickly to investigate but he couldn’t get in the bathroom, because — according to the affidavit — Guzman was holding the door closed from the inside. A separate report states that Hoy could not get in the bathroom because the door was locked.

In any event, Hoy could see blood seeping out from under the door. Hoy raced downstairs to call the police, and when he returned he said he saw Isabella — dressed in a pink sports bra and turquoise shorts — standing in the bathroom doorway holding a knife. His wife on the floor, covered in blood. There was a baseball bat beneath her.

“He never heard Guzman say anything, and she didn’t speak to him as she exited the bathroom,” the affidavit says. “Guzman was just staring straight ahead when she walked past him.”

After Isabella fled, Ryan attempted to revive his wife, but to no avail. Her throat had been slashed and by the coroner’s count, she suffered 31 stab wounds to the face and an additional 48 to her neck.

*     *     *     *     *

Although Isabella may still have been in the area when the police arrived, she managed to elude capture. At 11:30 a.m. the next day, officers were called to a parking garage at 2851 South Parker Road based on a report that a body had been spotted inside a car. That proved to be a false alarm, but the police did detect items that they linked to the previous evening’s violence.

More cops arrived and began to canvass the area. Eventually, someone spotted Guzman trying to walk out of the garage. She was then taken into custody, and on Friday, she was formally charged with first-degree murder, appearing before Arapahoe County Judge Stephen F. Collins, who ordered her to remain in custody without bond on suspicion of first-degree murder. During the proceedings, Isabella sat there silently in an orange jumpsuit, a bandage on her right wrist.

*     *     *     *     *

Isabella Guzman looks neither poised nor particularly attractive in her mug shot. Rather, she looks like someone who may just be starting to catch on to the enormity of what she has done — now that it is too late.

by The Starks Shrink

There is a drastic problem in our society with charging and incarcerating juveniles as adults. When we look at our society as a whole, we do not classify children as adults for a number of critical adult matters; they cannot drive until 16 in most states, they cannot vote until 18 and they cannot drink until 21.  Why is that?  It’s because we do not deem them responsible enough to take on tasks that could adversely affect society as a whole.  So when they act in a manner that is criminal, why do we then flip-flop and hold them to adult standards with accompanying draconian punishments?

In 2010, in the US, 12-15 year olds made up over 50% of juveniles formally detained for crimes against another person (not necessarily violent), and in that same year, 53% of violent youth crimes (those processed in juvenile court) were committed by juveniles under 16 years of age.  But each year, 250,000 juveniles in the US are charged as adults in criminal proceedings.

The Supreme Court held that juveniles could not be subjected to the death penalty and more recently, in 2012, struck down as unconstitutional an Alabama law that allowed courts to subject juveniles to mandatory life imprisonment without parole.  They stated:

“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features—among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”   

The arguments were, in a nutshell, that children lack the ability of adults to resist impulses of their own or the influences of others, and to fully comprehend the consequences and risks of those behaviors. More often than ever we prosecute juveniles as adults because of a public outcry based on the nature of the crimes. The problem with this is that we perceive not only the nature of the crime from an adult perspective but the nature of the child’s ability to grasp the anti-social, and oftentimes disturbing, nature of his or her actions as manifested in the crimes he or she commits.

Let me elaborate. We, the public, watch the news about a juvenile who has committed a murder and we see the child on the news laughing or smirking as they are taken into custody. We, the public, are outraged at the lack of remorse that we think we see played out on the television screen. In reality, what we may be witnessing is the adolescent, confronted with media and cameras for the first time, who feels amazed to be on television. The reality of the crime and its ramifications are entirely separate from the fact that they are suddenly noteworthy. That is the reality of youth. I’m not trying to say that children don’t commit horrific crimes. They do. But we have to ask ourselves why, and we have to ask ourselves; do we throw these kids away or do we rescue them? Because when we make choices about incarceration, those are the choices we ultimately make. If we remand a child to adult custody we guarantee that at least 32% of them will reoffend when they hit the streets again.  In fact, we train them to reoffend.

Juveniles that commit crimes are often in dire need of psychological and emotional counseling. Somewhere along the way in their short lives, perhaps through a combination of genetics and experience, they have developed behaviors that do not allow them to function well in civilized society. The nature of the juvenile brain gives us the opportunity to correct those behaviors and thought patterns which may not be possible once they are adults and their brains have “matured”. Science has discovered that the juvenile brain is physically quite different from the adult brain and continues to change and develop until about age 20. Psychologically, the same can be said. In fact, criteria in the DSM even preclude diagnosing children under 18 with several of the more serious illnesses for the same reason; the brain and personality are still in development and the child could grow out of certain symptoms on his own. However, if a child is incarcerated for punishment and we attempt to correct aberrant behavior through psychotherapy the results are not likely to be successful.  The child may respond well in therapeutic sessions but then is placed into a prison population where behaviors diametrically opposed to what we desire are actually rewarded through positive “jailhouse reinforcement”. Neural pathways are established through patterns of thought and behavior, especially in a developing juvenile brain.  When patterns are rewarded, they become established and are reused like a well-worn path, and they become increasingly difficult to change. With the juvenile brain, we have a unique opportunity to identify and alter neural pathways to affect real results in youths that we may be unable to achieve when they reach full maturity.

Take, for example; Rachel Shaof and Shelia Eddy, a pair of teenage girls who murdered their best friend, Skylar Neese, seemingly in cold blood. I am not attempting to label them with a diagnosis, I am simply using their observed behavior as an example in a hypothetical situation. Rachel could have been a teen that was evolving towards a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). She had a great fear of abandonment and lacked a strong sense of self. She did exhibit remorse but we have no way of knowing whether that was regret for her actions and its effects, or for the resulting situation in which she found herself, which is a classic trait of BPD. Shelia, on the other hand, could be said to have narcissistic and antisocial traits along with a history of manipulation and little regard for those around her. The two of them made a perfect abnormal pair and fed off each other’s psychological symptoms. No amount of therapy, when combined with placing the two of them together for extended periods, would be successful since their behavior together rewards the very thoughts we are attempting to alter. While Shelia’s narcissism is rewarded through erosion of Rachel’s sense of self, Rachel is comforted in her emotional neediness by the attention Shelia is giving her.

In addition to our inability to psychologically treat disorders in a prison-like environment, we also lose the ability to teach patterns of normal social interaction. Normal juvenile social situations such as school, sports, jobs, etc., teach children how to behave in the world as their brains mature. They learn that there are consequences for antisocial behavior, they learn that there are rewards for generous behavior or hard work and the neural networks that affect these patterns are developed. These are patterns that cannot be taught through academics or through parenting, they must be developed within their own peer groups. When we remove these beneficial growth environs, the child becomes emotionally incapable of dealing with normal social situations. Instead, they learn from their current surroundings. Since the brain is still in development, they will have no positive social patterns to rely on when they are finally released back into society because those neural networks have never been established. As in the example of Eddy and Shoaf, they will be transferred to adult prison when they reach 18 years of age, at which time, all attempts to rescue them from a psychological standpoint will cease. They will be released at some point in their 30s having learned patterns of thought and behavior that only lend themselves to their own survival with no thought of how those behaviors may impact others, since in prison, those thoughts are of no consequence. And their juvenile brains will have adapted their neural pathways to perfectly suit the dog-eat-dog environment of adult prison.

We need to collectively devise a system in which youth offenders can be treated, coached and developed into healthy productive adults. I am not suggesting that we turn a blind eye to their criminal activities and turn them loose in society, quite the opposite. It is precisely those types of actions that have led to their involvement in the judicial system. We need to recognize that children are not disposable, and that transferring children to adult facilities or charging them as adults, does exactly that – it tosses them onto the dung heap of lost opportunity. I suspect that as a whole, we are unwilling to admit our own partial culpability in their actions or psychological distress, and so we hide them away and label them as bad seeds, so that we don’t have to face ourselves and come to grips with our own shortcomings and how these flaws may have helped create an overall social environment in which those lost souls were unable to flourish.

Please click here to view The Starks Shrink’s Previous Post on Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

by Mike Roche

Last Wednesday, Alex Hribal, age 16, entered Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, PA. He was armed with two kitchen knives and began indiscriminately stabbing other students prior to the start of the school day. By the time Hribal was subdued, twenty-one students and one security guard were injured. A knife?

It is not the first time that a knife or some weapon other than a gun was used in a school attack. In November 2012, a suspect entered a classroom at Casper Community College in Casper, Wyoming. The suspect was armed with a crossbow. A teacher was killed at the hands of his own son, who then took his own life. In December 2012, in Chenpeng, China, a 36-year-old armed with a machete stabbed 23 children and an elderly woman. Fortunately, all of the victims survived. In April 2013, Dylan Quick, a student at Lone Star College in Cyprus, Texas, used a razor edged weapon to wound 14 students. Quick, who is hearing-impaired, was described by neighbors as being a nice, quiet boy. He apparently also harbored visions of committing mass murder for many years.

In the case of Alex Hribal, some students dismissed initial reports of bullying being a factor. Hribal’s attorney also initially denied such concerns. The attorney, Patrick Thomassey, described the suspect, “He’s a typical young kid. He’s a B+ student. The family is like Ozzie and Harriet. They have dinner together every night. All the students liked him. He wasn’t a loner. He worked well in groups, and this happened. So there’s a reason for it. And we have to get to the bottom of that.” As the investigation continues, we will learn more of the mindset of Hribal, and what was hidden behind his public façade. It was reported that he did not have a cellphone and had minimal activity on Facebook. For a teenager, this abnormal behavior is similar to being a digital hermit.

Another student, Alicia Graham, told reporters that a screen shot of a disturbing Facebook posting by another student calling Alex Hribal a “rat face” was turned over to police. The degrading statement was posted the night before the stabbing and quickly removed after the attack.

Bullying has long been an issue in schools. Today, bullying has expanded to cyberspace and impacts the victims being tormented in social media and through direct access on their cell phones. Victims of bullying suffer tremendous humiliation and a lowering of self-esteem. Depression is closely correlated with those who are victims of ongoing bullying campaigns. In the Secret Service study of school shooters, 71% of the suspects claimed that they had been the victims of bullying.

Dr. William Pollock of Harvard University has extensively studied the impact of bullying specifically on boys. His studies have led him to coin the term “boy code” which describes the inherent tendency of most boys to internalize their emotions. Many boys are sad, lonely, and confused, although they may appear tough on the exterior. In interviews with previous school shooters, they often shared the feeling that they had no other choice and that they had no one to talk to about their feelings.

Murrysville Police Chief Thomas Seefield, told reported that as Hribal was being apprehended he indicated, “He wanted someone to kill him.” Many previous mass killers have a history of failed suicide attempts. Although many of the attackers will commit the ultimate act of taking their own life, others have professed their willingness to be eliminated in the process of them executing their dark and destructive mission. In examining the lives of those involved in targeted violence, the Secret Service found that approximately two-thirds exhibited a history of at least one previous suicide attempt, and many were veterans of multiple attempts.

It appears that most of these individuals had no expectation to live beyond their day of recloning. Kip Kinkel, the Thurston High School shooter, taped two bullets to his chest and a knife to his leg to ensure his death at the end of his rampage. Kinkel was concerned that during his murderous spree, he would run out of bullets and would not be able to end his own life, so he had one bullet for each gun taped to his chest. However, he was subdued before he could finish his the job. While in custody, he pleaded with the detective to kill him. The recent Fort Hood shooter took his own life as police confronted him.

Are active shooter training sessions by police, more armed guards and enhanced security systems the most effective tools to combat school shooters? In a study conducted by Texas State University of 84 active shooter cases, nearly 50% of the active shooter incidents were resolved before the police arrived on scene. In 50% of those cases, the assailant committed suicide.

It is noteworthy that in 31% of the cases that were resolved prior to the arrival of law enforcement, the assailant was subdued by others. In the stabbing assault by Hribal, the vice-principal and a school security guard subdued him some five minutes after the attack began. Ironically, the vice-principal was also a neighbor of Hribal’s, living on the same street.

Annual spending on school security systems is projected to increase to nearly 5 billion dollars by 2017 according to HIS, a research firm. Almost every school district is spending huge amounts of tax dollars on improving school security, alert systems, employing more armed officers, and staging active shooter drills with tactically trained officers laying siege in practice scenarios. Despite these efforts, we are still seeing our children die as a result of school mass killers.

According to National School Safety and Security Services, there have been 120 prevented school attacks between 2000 and 2010. Many schools have successfully focused on behavioral threat assessments of students who have displayed worrisome behaviors. Early intervention is essential to preventing violence through training, anti-bullying programs and proactive mental health counseling.

Hribal’s attorney has asked for mental health evaluations and it is too early to speculate if this was a factor. In three-quarters of the school shootings, the shooters were identified as suffering from despair and had experienced a major failure leading to depression. For high school students, this period can be the most difficult time of their entire lives. Stephen King wrote in Guns, “…high school sucked when I went, probably sucks now. I tend to regard people who remember it as the best four years of their lives with caution and a degree of pity.”

Hribal did not “snap.” He removed two kitchen knives from his home and traveled the seven-and-a-half miles to his school with the intent of killing. Once there, he began his assault. In studies of members of the military who are required to kill, the farther soldiers are from their target, the easier they find the task of killing. Coming face-to-face with the victim, who may have not have demonstrated any malice towards the attacker, is the most difficult. Plunging the knife into the human body is not an easy task and is not unlike that of cutting through the skin of a fish or an uncooked roast while also coming into contact with bone. Hearing the screams of his victims, Hribal will no doubt be haunted by those images for the rest of his life, as will his victims and the witnesses to the carnage.

Please click here to view Mike Roche’s previous posts:

Columbia Mall Shooter Darion Aguilar Followed the Model of Notorious Mass Murderers

Peter Lanza Speaks: The Lethal and Unvarnished Truth about His Son Adam

FHP Officer Jimmy Fulford Fields Pipe Bomb Intended for Young Mother with His Bare Hands and Dies Instantly

Fire Department and California Highway Patrol Go 9 Rounds: Win, Lose or Draw?

The Boston Bombers: A Tale of Two Troubled Brothers

Don’t Text at the Movies, The Life You Lose May Be Your Own!

Killers and the Catcher in the Rye

Mike Roche has over three decades of law enforcement experience. He began his career with the Little Rock Police Department, and spent twenty-two years with the U.S. Secret Service. The last fifteen years of his career were focused on conducting behavioral threat assessments of those threatening to engage in targeted violence. He is the author of three novels and two nonfiction works on mass murder and also rapport building. Retired, Mike is currently a security consultant at Protective Threat LLC, and an adjunct instructor at Saint Leo University. He resides in Florida with his family.

Mass Killers: How you Can Identify, Workplace, School, or Public Killers Before They Strikehttp://www.amazon.com/Mass-Killers-Identify-Workplace-School-ebook/dp/B00GHZWC1M/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389112969&sr=1-2&keywords=mass+killers

Face 2 Face: Observation, Interviewing and Rapport Building Skills: an Ex-Secret Service Agent’s Guidehttp://www.amazon.com/Face-2-ebook/dp/B009991BII/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354630000&sr=1-6

The Blue Monster  http://www.amazon.com/The-Blue-Monster-ebook/dp/B0054H8TMA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1312641741&sr=1-1

Coins of Death http://www.amazon.com/Coins-Of-Death-ebook/dp/B005RPZ256/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317860179&sr=1-3

Karma! http://www.amazon.com/Karma-Mike-Roche-ebook/dp/B0054H4OAG/ref=la_B00BHEIF78_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389724285&sr=1-4

by Pamela Stewart

“It’s difficult to accept that Tim was just a guy, a regular average guy who loved his family and his friends, who worked hard. It is difficult to accept that this regular average guy did a regular average thing, which so many do on a daily basis, and it tragically cost him his life. ”

Tim Bosma’s wife, Sharlene felt compelled to give this explanation at her husband’s memorial service because people had been speculating that Tim must have done something or known something that got him killed. As Sharlene said at the service, this type of thing doesn’t happen in Canada and it doesn’t happen to regular people like Tim

What Tim Bosma did, was post his 2007 black Dodge Ram 3500 pickup truck for sale on the online classified websites, Kijiji and Autotrader.

On May 6, 2013, at approximately 9:20pm, the 32-year-old Ancaster, Ontario man left his wife and two-year-old daughter at home to take two men on a test drive. He never came back.

Four days later, Hamilton Police Services found his cellphone in the town of Brantford, approximately 16 miles (26kms) from the Hamilton suburb where Tim resided. Police were able to track the cellphone of the individual who had made the call about the vehicle. They also contacted another man who was selling his truck and had taken the two men for a test drive a day before Tim went missing. He provided a description of the men. One of them had a tattoo on his wrist of the word “ambition” framed in a box.

That same day, police arrested a Toronto man with this same tattoo. Dellen Millard, 27, was charged with forcible confinement and theft over $5,000.

Millard had no previous criminal record.  He came from a well-known aviation family.  In 1963, Millard’s grandfather, Carl founded chartered airline Millardair Ltd. When Carl died, his son Wayne, a former Air Canada pilot took over and transitioned the business to aircraft maintenance and servicing, now known as Millard Air Incorporated.

Wayne died in December, 2012. His death was ruled a suicide.  Dellen wrote his father’s obituary. It’s a compelling tribute if you don’t read between the lines, or you haven’t heard the latest news in the tragic Millard saga.

Dellen Millard seemed like the perfect choice to revive the family business after his father’s death. The younger Millard made news when he was 14-years-old by becoming the youngest Canadian to fly both an airplane and helicopter solo on the same day.

Millard lived in a wealthy Toronto suburb in the family home that sold for $1.2 million last July. He owned a number of other properties, including a downtown Toronto condo, a six-unit apartment building and a farm property in Ayr, near Kitchener-Waterloo. Millard had fast cars, and he could afford to buy a new Dodge Ram pickup truck, but this wasn’t about a truck.

On May 12, Tim’s vehicle was located inside a trailer parked outside the home of Dellen Millard’s mother, Madeleine Millard, in Kleinburg. The trailer was registered to Dellen Millard’s business.

It was on Millard’s farm that Tim’s burnt body was found on May 14. Millard was charged with first-degree murder. An incinerator was found on the farm property and seized by police.

Millard’s accomplice, Mark Smich, 25, was charged with first-degree murder on May 15.  Smich had previous convictions for drug possession, impaired driving and a charge for mischief related to some graffiti.

The police believed that there was a third suspect who had followed them as they rode in Bosma’s vehicle, but there were no further arrests.

Shortly after the arrests, police took another look into Wayne Millard’s death. They also reopened an investigation into the disappearance of Laura Babcock. Laura had been a former girlfriend of Dellen’s. She was last seen in Toronto’s west end on June 26, 2012 by her ex-boyfriend, Shawn Lerner.

Babcock was reported missing on July 14, but police have reason to believe she was murdered around July 3, 2012. Police aren’t saying what evidence they have, or if they found her remains.

On April 10, 2014, Toronto and Hamilton Police Services announced that they were laying new charges in the death of Laura Babcock. Millard and Smich have been charged with first-degree murder. Millard has been charged with the first-degree murder of his father, Wayne. Millard’s current girlfriend, Christina Noudga has been charged with being an accessory after the fact in Tim Bosma’s murder. The investigation, called Project Capella is ongoing. Police refused to take questions at the press conference.

Millard’s crimes came to light because of a family man’s attempt to sell his truck online.  Tim’s widow, Sharlene is left mourning her husband and she doesn’t understand the motivation behind his death. No one knows why someone with such potential would allegedly kill for thrills or to get rid of people he didn’t want around anymore.

Last month, some of Millard’s possessions started showing up on Kijiji. The contact listed on the ads is Shane Schlatman, who had appeared in some of Millard’s Facebook photos. There was a 1975 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight Royale Convertible, a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, a Jeep Dana 35 rear axle and a 1997 Tigershark Monte Carlo.  Those look like some sweet rides, but Millard is going to spend the rest of his life looking in the rear view mirror.

Click here for Pamela Stewart’s previous post exposing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford:

Calling Rob Ford: Where’s the Humor in Mayoral Malfeasance?

Pamela Stewart is a freelance writer and former private investigator. She lives north of Toronto in Jackson’s Point. This lakeside town is the kind of place where people don’t lock their doors. It’s a safe space for Pamela to explore the dark side of life in her fiction and nonfiction. She also writes about more pleasant things when the sun is shining.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We really have a “state of things” in Gold Butte, Nevada. In a sense, this is what many members of the “rugged individualist” anti-Fed contingent have been hoping for — an armed standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights.

Nothing these boys like better  than to hunker down with the long rifle pointed meaningfully in the direction of the Feds. This is the Lone Cowboy versus Washington, D.C. writ large. And the cowboy has to be the good guy shepherding his cattle, the representative of a fading order fighting the bureaucrats. And like every good-guy cowboy who wants to get over on the system, Cliven Bundy has a bona-fide former Arizona Sheriff named Richard Mack on his side. Richard was sheriff of Graham County, Ariz. from 1988 to 1997. That’s a respectable amount of time the hold down the County fort and although I know nothing about how Mack handled the job, I have no reservations about giving him the benefit of the doubt pending information to the contrary.

What concerns me, though, is that in strategizing about how to handle the Feds in the event they produced a couple of rogue (oh it’s so cool to be a rogue) riflemen who started blasting away, Mack displayed a most unmanly brand of cravenness combined with a startling sexism.

David Moye of the Huffington post writes:

A former Arizona sheriff who supported a Nevada rancher in his land dispute with the federal government says he would have put women in the frontline if officers started shooting.

An armed standoff between Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights ended with the federal government abandoning its plans on Saturday to impound Bundy’s cows that roamed public lands.

Richard Mack, a Bundy supporter who served as sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., between 1988-1997, told Fox News on Monday about a planned strategy if “rogue federal agents” had opened fire.

“We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front,” he said on Fox News, according to TheBlaze.com. “If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.”

What makes this a bit scary is the fact that this is not necessarily a small matter. According to some reports, Mack was one of nearly 1,000 people, many of them armed, who mustered in support of Cliven Bundy’s battle with the BLM.

Mack is fully aware that his plan to put women in the line of fire “sounds horrible,” but told radio host Ben Swann it was the only way to get the world to recognize “how ruthless” the federal agents are. That’s not all he said, speaking with fervor and conviction.

“If they’re going to start killing people, I’m sorry, but to show the world how ruthless these people are, women needed to be the first ones shot. I’m sorry, that sounds horrible. I would have put my own wife or daughters there, and I would have been screaming bloody murder to watch them die. I would’ve gone next, I would have been the next one to be killed. I’m not afraid to die here. I’m willing to die here.

“But the best ploy would be to have had women at the front. Because, one, I don’t think they would have shot them. And, two, if they had, it would have been the worst thing that we could have shown to the rest of the world, that these ruthless cowards hired by the federal government will do anything.”

For those of you who may not be aware, the BLM contends that the Bundys have used federally managed public lands for their cattle and have refused to pay the appropriate grazing fees for the past 20 years. The bill adds up to more than $1 million.

Cliven has flatly refused to remove his cattle contending their water and livestock rights were recognized by the state of Nevada long before the federal government took over management of the land in the 1940s.

They also said the government’s action constitutes harassment.

There appears to be strong evidence that the land has been technically been under Federal control since Nevada became a state in 1864. Robert Emmett Murphy Jr., the author of a much-read post on All Things Crime Blog called  Nevada Squatter Cliven Barker Says His Battle for Freedom May Escalate into the Next Ruby Ridge, sums up the issue of who has stewardship of the land nicely:

The Federal Authority over the land in question was established when the state officially entered the Union, and this was done by open, and either wholly or largely, Democratic process.

“It appears that the disposition of these open lands was not a controversial issue at the time of statehood. The state accepted from Congress the stipulation in its enabling act that ‘the Constitutional Convention must disclaim all rights to unappropriated public land in Nevada.’ The state constitution accordingly ordained: ‘That the people inhabiting said territory do agree and declare, that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands . . .’”

That was 1864, only a generation after Bundy’s family started grazing in that region.

The ranches were not answerable to an oversight authority until the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which ended the free-for-all, get-all-you-can-while-you-can, uncontrolled grazing which had destroyed the range resource on the public domain. Cattle grazing is still permitted on public land, but the land use must be paid for, and the proceeds from those fees goes the maintenance for that same land. Moreover, the grazing is regulated to assure the long-time stewardship of the land.

*     *     *     *     *

Last night I caught an episode of The Young Turks in which Cenk bemoans the fact the Feds not only walked away from the confrontation but returned, or rather did not impound Cliven’s cows. I don’t believe his viewpoint stems from any great love for the Feds but rather from his clear distaste for Bundy and his crew’s strong-arm tactics.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) isn’t very pleased either, stating that the confrontation may have ended peacefully, but the conflict isn’t over.

“We can’t have an American people that violate the law and just walk away from it,” he said on KRNV-TV. “So it’s not over.”

As of Monday, some protesters were still at Bundy’s ranch .

*     *     *     *     *

What Cliven is pulling is a little (or a lot) like not paying your taxes. The typical tax evader in this nation of tax evaders (not you or me, of course), however, will not resort to an armed confrontation while declaiming that he doesn’t have to pay his taxes and that the Feds have no right to force him.

The scary thing to me is the deep hatred and contempt Mack, Cliven and much of their crew feel for the Federal government combined with the primitive sexism of being willing to put their womenfolk at the forefront of the line of fire. Sad to say, men/children/sexists of this order need an effective Federal authority to whip them into shape when they step too far over the line.

But that’s certainly not what has happened at Gold Butte. Not yet. At this point it appears the Feds have beat a strategic retreat to ponder their next move. They may be laying odds in Vegas on who shoots first in the event there is another armed confrontation, and Mack has stated in no uncertain terms that he’s certain the Feds are planning to attack.

The Feds, however, like lawmen everywhere, have a deep and abiding love for something known as a Grand Jury indictment. Potential criminal charges Bundy and crew could include Contempt of Court, Making Criminal Threats Against Federal Officers, and potential criminal charges against some of the militiamen who may have illegally transported weapons across state lines To Use in a Civil Disturbance.

Trust me (never trust a man who says ‘trust me’), the Feds are no slouch when it comes to finding ingenious ways to charge folks with felonies and misdemeanors. And in this case they may not even have to look very hard.

Click here to view Robert Emmett Murphy Jr.’s earlier post on the Cliven Bundy standoff:

Nevada Squatter Cliven Bundy Says His Battle for Freedom May Escalate into the Next Ruby Ridge

After his arrest and while waiting to go to the electric chair, Ted Bundy, who was apparently somewhat intelligent in addition to being absolutely lethal, uncorked quite a few pithy one-liners. Here we present 14 of them courtesy of BuzzFeed along with our brief responses to Bundy’s “wit and wisdom.”

“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” (Probably an exaggeration. Although there are certainly plenty of serial killers, I feel confident they are still a very small segment of the population).

“You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!” (God? Or the Devil? Or just a demented sicko?)

“Sometimes I feel like a vampire.” (Figure of speech or did Bundy actually feel this way?)

“Murder is not about lust and it’s not about violence. It’s about possession.” (Possession equals absolute control.)

“There lots of other kids playing in streets around this country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and month, because other young people are reading the kinds of things and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.” (Bundy liked to blame society for his problems. This is a cop-out of the first order.)

“I’m the most cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch you’ll ever meet.” (This may well be true.)

“I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, without question, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. “ (Probably an exaggeration but another good example of Bundy blaming his murderous ways on society and outside factors.)

“I didn’t know what made people want to be friends. I didn’t know what made people attractive to one another. I didn’t know what underlay social interactions.” (Ted was apparently not an advanced student of the “rules of attaction”.)

“What’s one less person on the face of the earth, anyway?” (Bundy was in a flippant mood, either that or he was a firm believer in population control.)

“I don’t feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt.” (I too feel sorry for people who are obsessed with their feelings of guilt; however, there are some things that one should feel guilty about.)

“I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill.” (Speaks for itself.)

“… I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has and society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me, that’s for sure.” (A rare moment of honesty.)

“Well-meaning, decent people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy, while they’re walking past a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to be Ted Bundys.” (Once again, Bundy is making excuses for his aberrant behavior.)

“I’m as cold a motherfucker as you’ve ever put your fucking eyes on. I don’t give a shit about those people.” (Another moment of lucidity.)

by Lise LaSalle

Disclaimer : Before I delve into my narrative about serial killer Robert Pickton, I would like to apologize to all the innocent pigs that were hurt and used in the commission of his crimes and whose reputation and memory I am about to tarnish. I am sure that they never intended to roll in the mud with him or hoink 3 times for a street worker.

This sordid story started in the 1980’s in Vancouver, BC, a gorgeous city on the Canadian pacific coast, where I have the privilege to now reside. The Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver has always been plagued by poverty, transiency, drugs, prostitution and general disarray. It is a known fact that after the closing of several mental institutions, the former patients moved into this area where they could find cheap rooms, drugs and a sense of belonging.

In Downtown Eastside, the main street is called East Hastings. You only have to pronounce this name to get a reaction of horror from most of the city residents. For many, it’s a lurid area that they avoid and choose to ignore. For others like me, it’s a place where you volunteer to try to alleviate misery and maybe our own feelings of guilt, if only for a short while, with mostly band aid solutions like blankets or food. There is a police presence and a few clinics devoted to the locals, and I must concede that they do an amazing job, considering what they are faced with.

The Hastings prostitutes are in a category of their own. They are not escort material. In fact, they are the cheapest on the market and will probably do anything and everything to pay for their next fix. Every single one of them is a drug addict and to say that they do not discriminate, is the understatement of the year. Any schmuck driving, walking or staggering by, will get their favors for a price.

So it is no surprise that when some of them started to disappear, it was not considered a big deal. They were falling like flies and even if their lives were not regular or organized, some of their family members and friends were noticing their absence. But every time they would try to contact the police about their disappearance, they were given the same answer: we will look into it or do not call us, we will call you. There came a time when 69 of them were considered missing. You can only imagine that when it comes to prostitution with its built-in prejudices, having 69 women missing can become a farce. They were the ‘butt’ of many jokes. Who is going to look for drug addicted women who spend their time on East Hastings, offering their bodies for money? Obviously, no one.

In the meantime, in a suburb of Vancouver called Coquitlam, there lived a farmer called Robert Pickton who owned a pig farm his parents left him and his brother Dave. They ran the establishment and sold the animals that Robert butchered himself in their own abattoir. As a young boy, little Robbie Pickton did not show any interest in the butchering of pigs. He was more interested in going fishing but was encouraged by his mother to go watch the pigs being slaughtered.

We often hear that psychopath killers were cruel towards animals as children. In this case, it is tricky as he did not show any inclination for this activity but was literally forced into it. It makes you wonder what impact it can have on a young child’s psyche to be introduced to such powerful bloody imagery. It probably did not help any that Pickton failed grade 2, was in a special class and plateaued at grade 5 level. His IQ of 86 and his pitiful verbal skills made him the ideal candidate to become a lifelong butcher.

He apparently did very well later on as a butcher. First he would shoot the pig between the eyes and then proceed to cut it in half with his specialized instruments. So what did Pickton do for fun, you might ask? As an awkward and not easy on the eyes fellow, this little piggy found his niche in the Downtown Eastside where the ladies were easy and starving for a mediocre prince coming to call in his dirty white van.

Pickton worked hard and when he was not partying with his brother and friends on their property, he would troll Hastings to lure hookers to his lair. He was very well known by some of the women on the street. He was generous with his money and drugs so they would ride in his van and end up at his farmhouse. He would take them to his trailer for fun and games and some would make it back, some would not. Once, he attacked a victim who defended herself and ended up stabbing him. She managed to escape and told the police the whole sordid story. They picked up Pickton who had knife injuries but he talked his way out of this pickle. Who would take the word of a prostitute over that of a respectable farmer? The Pickton brothers were not classy but they had loads of cash coming from the sale of land they inherited.

A storm of concern was brewing behind the scenes, as some friends of the missing women could smell foul play — in particular, Wayne Leng, who was a good friend and former client of Sarah De Vries, a beautiful girl who also ended up being gone with the wind and whose absence Leng was not going to ignore. Leng started actively contacting the police and even started a website to expose the case of the missing women. A network was forming and East Hastings was buzzing about the killer who was taking away their workers.

Like in any tragedy, Sarah De Vries became somewhat of an emblem — the heroine of the story. She was a beautiful girl who was adopted and raised in a wealthy neighborhood of the city by loving and kind parents. They later found out, that as the only child of color at school, she had suffered from discrimination and was a wounded soul. She wrote books of poetry and displayed great intelligence and sensitivity. She was one of the Hastings Heroines of Lincoln Clarkes, a famous Vancouver photographer who created a bond with the poor girls and published a book of Heroines that he sold and gave some of the proceeds to the Downtown Eastside foundations.

The years were flying by and the ladies of the night were afraid. You often hear that you know how important you are by how long they look for you if you are missing. Well in this case, the ladies had no importance whatsoever because the search efforts were nonexistent. But the media and some concerned citizens were starting to make noise. The police could not ignore their voices anymore and had to put more effort into their investigation.

Even if it sounds like a cliché, the dam broke when the American show America’s Most Wanted decided to do a special broadcast on the missing ladies of Downtown Eastside. That’s all it took for the police department to serve a warrant on Robert Pickton’s farm. It turns out he was hiding in plain view. He had been named by many people as a person of interest and not searching his property was pure procrastination and negligence.

The minute the police searched the property, which by the way was a real pigsty, they came across women’s purses, clothing, an asthma pump and some accessories. A little digging and the women started to reappear but not in one piece. They found body parts all over the farm and spent months digging and searching with the help of volunteer archeology students and law enforcement personnel. It was a humongous task to dig up the fragments of bone and to identify them by comparing them to the DNA of the victims. There were so many parts that the work involved turned out to be monumental. Sarah DeVries was positively identified as one of the victims.

Some body parts were also found in freezers, but not one body was found intact. Pickton’s wood chipper and his pigs are believed to have swallowed most of the evidence. And as if it could not get any worse, they realized that Pickton often gave ground pork to his friends and neighbors. So, it was logical to jump to the conclusion that some of it was ‘ladies of the night meat’ that he was probably anxious to get rid of.

Even though there was a violent incident with Pickton in 1997, and the police knew about the activities at his farm in 1998, nothing was done until 2002. A detective was even fired for insisting that there was a serial killer in the Downtown Eastside. The street workers all knew Pickton was a ‘bad date’ and told everyone who would listen, but no one acted on it.

In December 2007, Pickton was finally convicted of murdering 6 women. He will not be prosecuted on the remaining 20 murder charges he was facing because he’s already serving 6 consecutive life sentences, and it would be a waste of time and money for the system to extend these procedures. He was not charged for all the missing women he probably murdered due to lack of evidence or a proper DNA match.

Pickton pled not guilty to the murders and used most of his fortune to buy the best defense a man in his situation could find. The way he handled his defense led many to believe that he might not have been the soft-spoken dumb slob everyone had imagined. Instead, we saw a glimpse of a Hells Angel wannabe who wanted to impress with his money and the orgies he threw regularly at his farm that a lot of bikers and even cops were known to attend. Unfortunately for his already battered ego, he never was part of the wild crowd and was perceived instead as the meek loser or the farm idiot. He sure showed them he could be tough though, by attacking women who were the weakest links on his food chain. We will never know if some of them knew and participated in Pickton’s sordid activities.

For many of the victims’ friends and families, the trial was not cathartic because he did not have to answer for all his crimes, hired good defense lawyers, and played cat-and- mouse with the system. He never admitted his bad deeds or apologized for his actions. But at least, the serial killer’s reign of terror had ended on Hastings Street. The street workers could get some peace now, to whatever degree possible.

Hastings Street remains the same, except that during the 2010 Olympics, they found forcible ways to move this ragtag crew to temporary shelters or to other areas, so that the happy tourists could walk the streets without seeing this pitiful sight. The ones who knew took a minute to either engage in a prayer or even laugh at the joke in very bad taste going around: “Hoink 3 times if you want me’’.  Building promoters are now taking over the area one building at a time, and eventually, rich condo owners will be the new residents of this haunted neighborhood.

In 2013, the children of 3 women who were murdered by Pickton have filed lawsuits against the police and the serial killer. So the story is not quite over. It may never be.

Poem written by Sarah De Vries (1969 – 1999)

About the ‘broken angels of Downtown Eastside’:

Woman’s body found beaten beyond recognition

You sip your coffee

Taking a drag of your smoke

Turning the page

Taking a bite of your toast

Just another day

Just another death

Just one more thing you so easily forget

You and your soft, sheltered life

Just go on and on

For nobody special from your world is gone

Just another day

Just another death

Just another Hastings Street whore

Sentenced to death

No judge

No jury

No trial

No mercy

The judge’s gavel already fallen

Sentence already passed

But you

You just sip your coffee

Washing down your toast.

She was a broken down angel

A child lost with no place

A human being in disguise

She touched my life

She was somebody

She was no whore

She was somebody special

Who just lost her way

She was somebody fighting for life

Trying to survive

A lonely lost child who died

In the night, all alone, scared

Gasping for air.

by Patrick H. Moore

One salient fact that is often overlooked in criminal cases is the fact that a great many defendants facing serious criminal charges were not particularly blessed when the brains were handed out. In fact, I strongly suspect that if the 2 million plus Americans doing time were all given the standard cognitive tests, the average prisoner’s performance level would be somewhat lower than the overall societal average.

Does that mean that these less “intelligent” individuals should be shown leniency because based on their lack of mental acumen, they may have been unaware, or not completely aware, that they were breaking the law when they committed their crimes? Possibly. But before we decide, let’s examine the peculiar case of Heather Jensen. Will C. Holden of Fox 31 Denver has the story:

 A trial began this week for a Palisade mom whose kids died from overheating when they were left in her SUV while she allegedly met a man to have sex.

Opening statements began Wednesday, according to KKCO, with prosecutors portraying Heather Jensen as a selfish liar who issued her two children a death sentence when she locked them in her vehicle while she went off to have sex.

Jensen’s defense attorneys, on the other hand, painted a very different picture of the 25-year-old Colorado woman, characterizing their client as a lonely, troubled widow who was trying to protect her kids by leaving the heat on to keep them warm. Furthermore, Jensen’s lawyers pointed out that her IQ is only 76, which is borderline developmentally disabled. The lawyers blamed any poor choices the grieving mother may have made not only on her lack of intelligence, but on her relative youth and the death of her husband, who died in a car wreck two months before the event in question..

Jensen sobbed loudly in the courtroom Wednesday as the opening statements were read.

Jensen is being charged with child abuse resulting in death, false reporting, and — the most serious charge — criminally negligent homicide, which is defined as “a gross deviation from the standard of care expected of a reasonable person that manifests in a failure to protect others from risk making one criminally liable as a result of their conduct.”

The charges resulted from the death of Jensen’s two sons, Tyler, 4, and William, 2. The two young boys died from complications related to hypothermia and overheating on Nov. 27, 2013, after sitting by themselves in their mother’s SUV, which she left running, for 90 minutes in a parking lot near the Powederhorn Ski Resort.

The arrest affidavit states that Jensen locked her children in the vehicle for 90 minutes while she had sex with a man in a truck parked nearby.

Jensen’s credibility is damaged by the fact that in the months prior to her fatal choice to leave her two children in the running vehicle, she failed three different court-ordered drug tests, testing positive for THC, the primary intoxicant in marijuana. In addition, Ms. Jensen — who had received an 18-month deferred judgment after pleading guilty to a third-degree assault charge against her late husband – reportedly violated her parole when she fled to Florida.

If Ms. Jensen had managed to keep the cannabis out of her system while meeting the other terms of her probation, the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office had agreed that upon completing her probation, her assault conviction would have been erased.

Jensen was arrested in January at her mother’s home in North Fort Myers, Fla.

Jensen had submitted a hand-written letter to a Mesa County judge on Dec. 11, according to the Sentinel in which she asked to be released from the terms of her probation that stipulated she had to remain in Colorado.

“I believe it would be a great opportunity for me to start my life over again in Florida, and being surrounded by all my family who loves me to help me get through the losses I’ve had in this past month,” Jensen wrote. “And I would greatly appreciate it if you will let me move on with my life in Florida.”

The court, however, reportedly did not issue an approval of Jensen’s request to leave, but she left anyway traveling to Florida on her own accord.

*     *     *     *     *

On Nov. 27th, the night of the accident, after leaving her friend’s truck and discovering two-year old William was not breathing and had no pulse, Jensen called 911 from the car park close to the Powderhorn Mountain ski resort in Grand Junction, Colorado.

She also told dispatchers that four-year-old Tyler was barely breathing.

William died at the scene from hyperthermia, which is defined as an extreme overheating in the body. Despite being airlifted to Aurora’s children’s hospital, Tyler passed away a week later.

When speaking to the investigators, Ms. Jensen initially told deputies that she left her sons in the car for 10 minutes to talk to a friend but later admitted that it had been much longer.

According to law enforcement, she actually sat in the man’s truck for about 90 minutes.

 *     *     *     *     *

So let’s review… A woman on probation for assaulting her now deceased husband, leaves her two young boys in her vehicle with the engine running and the heat on while she spends 90 minutes with a man in his truck nearby – allegedly to have sex. According to the Daily Sentinel, Ms. Jensen had let the boys play in the snow on November 27th before putting them back in her Toyota 4Runner and turning the engine on.

Based on this, and given Ms. Jensen’s very low IQ, it seems probable that she merely intended to warm her boys up while she dallied with her boyfriend in his truck. And had she dallied for a mere 10 or 15 minutes, her boys would probably have been fine. But instead, she stayed with the man for around 90 minutes, long enough for her poor children to be more-or-less literally cooked.

One wonders if – while involved with her boyfriend – Ms. Jensen forgot that she had left the heat on. Alternatively, one wonders if, given her lack of mental acuity, she ever grasped the fact that what she was doing was dangerous. Keep in mind, there is apparently no evidence that this now childless mother had ever neglected, mistreated or abused her children.

Therefore, it is entirely possible that this tragedy was simply an honest mistake on Ms. Jensen’s part; i.e., she had no idea that she was placing her children in grave danger. This, of course, in no way justifies her decision to leave the kids unattended for a full 90 minutes, which is much too long a period to leave a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old alone in a vehicle.

Thus, notwithstanding her mental deficiency, I think it’s fair to say that Ms. Jensen was definitely negligent in choosing to enjoy the company of her boyfriend for 90 minutes at the expense of her two young children. This does not mean, however, that she is guilty of a criminally negligent homicide, assuming that she had no idea that she was placing her kids in danger.

Should she have known? Of course she should have. Did she know? Probably not. How can we know if she knew that what she was doing was risking their lives? We probably cannot know for sure.

*     *     *     *     *

It is reported that Ms. Jensen was offered a 12 to 24 year plea deal which she apparently turned down prior to going to trial which, based on the verdict rendered on Friday by the Mesa County jurors who sat patiently through the trial, appears to have been a good idea. In a split verdict, the jury acquitted Heather Jensen of criminally negligent homicide but found her guilty of child abuse resulting in death and false reporting.

The false reporting charge stems from the fact that Ms. Jensen originally told the authorities that the children had only been left along in the SUV for 10 minutes rather than the full 90.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

All Things Crime Blog is now 14 months old. During this time, I’ve wrestled with countless crime stories and have discovered that the crimes that most upset me are crimes against children of any type, including the bullying crimes with which kids torture one another. Children are largely helpless to combat physical, sexual and other forms of abuse that are foisted upon them by parents, relatives, other adults and other more domineering children.

We recently witnessed the Miranda Barbour case in which it is clear that her troubles (and thus the troubles she foisted upon others including the shocking Craigslist murder) began when she was repeatedly molested by a depraved relative for a long period of time when she was still a very little girl.

It is a fact that the vast majority of sexual abuse of children occurs within the immediate or extended family.

Now we have a case of shocking depravity that comes to us from New South Wales in Australia. This is possibly the most appalling case of child abuse in Australian history and is certainly among the worst accounts of incest ever made public.

This information is provided by news.com.au. The story originally broke in December of last year:

News.com.au writes:

IT is a case of shocking depravity which came to rest in the hills surrounding a picturesque farming community nestled in a valley southwest of Sydney.

The NSW Children’s Court has taken the rare step of publishing its judgment of actions taken to remove children from the Colt family (a court-appointed pseudonym to protect identification of minors).

Four generations of intimate relations among the Colts had taken place in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and finally come to NSW.

Moving state to state, possibly to evade detection, the scandal only came to light when authorities were alerted there were children living in the hills who didn’t attend school.

Based on the tip, sometime in December, officers from the NSW Police and Community Services went out to investigate a settlement 30km out of the town tucked between large established farms and untamed scrub The Colt’s choice of habitat would have been marginal in the best of circumstances, but what the investigators found there shocked them profoundly.

40 adults and children were living in two filthy caravans in two sheds and tents. There was no running water and no proper way of eliminating sewage. The stoves and cooking facilities were dirt-caked and the refrigerator was full of rotten vegetables. A kangaroo was sleeping on one of the children’s beds.

Tie me kangaroo down, Sport!

Wires were exposed, bags of rubbish and chainsaws were strewn about.

No toilets, showers or baths.

Unwashed children in filthy clothes with fungal infections on their feet.

The children were shy and avoided eye contact.

Their words, when they spoke, were largely unintelligible.

Some had odd features, a syndrome called “homozygosity” caused by identical gene patterns of both parents.

Although it was some time before the investigators and welfare workers fully realized that the damaged children were the result of four generations of incest, as the realization slowly set in that a social time bomb was exploding before their eyes, experienced public servants recoiled in horror.

As one police officer later reportedly told her colleagues, she would never get over it.

Over coming days and weeks, the enormity of what they had uncovered dawned on them.

There were five family groups apparently headed by three sisters including Betty Colt and two of Betty’s daughters. Betty slept every night with her brother Charlie.

• Betty’s son Bobby Colt, 15, could not walk normally, suffered from severe psoriasis and – like many of the children — was in need of urgent dental work. His intellect had not developed beyond the kindergarten level. He could not be understood when speaking and wet and soiled his bed.

• Betty’s 14-year-old son Billy was too thin. His growth was stunted and he had hearing and sight problems. He could barely read or count.

• Kimberly Colt, 14, a granddaughter could not use toilet paper or comb her hair. She had urgent dental problems, hearing, speech and sight issues and was unable to read or write. She threatened to cut off a caseworker’s fingers.

And so it went…

The caseworkers made several visits to the settlement and finally removed 12 children on July 18, 2012.

Once taken into care, the children underwent therapy sessions and told harrowing tales, many of which described adult-child sex and child-on-child sex.

On one occasion, three brothers aged 14 years and under tied their sister, 8, and niece, 13, naked to a tree.

The accounts of incestuous underage sex filled pages of court documents.

Mouth swabs revealed that five of the Colt children had parents who were “closely related” and another five had parents who were “related”.

Slowly the details came out, some of it disclosed by some of the parents.

Betty’s parents had been brother and sister.

She had 13 children, some of whom were probably fathered by her father, Tim, and her brother, Charlie.

Betty’s sister Martha’s children may also have been fathered by Tim.

And so it went…

Some of the children are now in foster families, others are in treatment programs. These children are allowed some contact with their parents and siblings and have reportedly made some progress with schooling and hygiene.

The mothers have taken varying degrees of responsibility for the neglect, incest and intra-familial sexual abuse which allegedly took place.

Betty Colt, however, appears to be in denial. Her lawyer has disputed the court’s findings and she has supervised contact with her children.

News.com.au writes:

The Children’s Court ruled she is not willing “to disentangle herself from her family” and “is incapable of addressing her own traumatic history”.

*     *     *     *     *

…poor suffering children… …poor suffering humanity…

by Michael Mills

In a recent post, How Politics Knocks on Amanda Knox, I presented the idea that since the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito by the court of Claudio Hellmann in 2011, the whole case has become politicised, a sub-plot in the ongoing attempt of the anti-Berlusconi forces to use the Italian judicial system to overthrow him and the counter-effort of the pro-Berlusconi forces to discredit that system by accusing it of bias and corruption.

My theory, which would appear to be more than a mere hypothesis, has of course been met with some resistance by some of the anti-Knox contingent who hold stubbornly to the view that Ms. Knox is a deranged murderess, politics notwithstanding.

Thus, it becomes incumbent upon us to revisit this issue by examining what the Judge himself actually said when addressing the issue with the Italian newspaper La Stampa. Hellmann stated in no uncertain terms that he believed the judgement of his court upholding the appeal of Sollecito and Knox was overturned by the Court of Cassation for political reasons.

An article by Doug Longhini in CBS News, 7 February this year, with the headline “Was Amanda Knox a political pawn in Italian politic?”, contains this statement:

“In April 2013, the Italian Supreme Court threw out judge Claudio Hellmann’s 2011 acquittal of Knox and Sollecito. Now retired, Hellmann told La Stampa newspaper that he “foresaw” the reversal. Hellman said “the party of the prosecutor is very strong in the judiciary” and that political party had “influenced” the Italian Supreme Court, according to La Stampa.”

Though Hellmann did not name the political party, it wasn’t the right-leaning party of Berlusconi, Girlanda, and Bongiorno. Was it prosecutors pushing back against Berlusconi and his crew? Very possibly…

This wasn’t the first time Claudio Hellmann raised the possibility that political considerations were helping drive the pursuit of Knox and Sollecito. In October 2011, he told La Nazione newspaper that there was “a political background” to the case. It was directed squarely at Amanda Knox. Hellmann said, “Many wanted Amanda in prison because she was an American.”

In his article, Doug Longhini gave this background to the allegations of politicisation:

“Girlanda was a member of the Italian Parliament from Perugia. His political party was the PdL (Popolo della Libertà) which was also the party of then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Girlanda and ten other members of Parliament signed a letter asking Italy’s president to investigate the Knox-Sollecito prosecutors. In addition, Raffaelle Sollecito’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, was also in Parliament, head of its Judiciary Committee, and a member of Berlusconi’s political party.

For his part, Berlusconi and his party were at war with Italy’s prosecutors and judges. The Prime Minister was trying to reign in their investigative powers. Prosecutors, for their part, were trying to put Berlusconi in jail.”

So it appears that political supporters of Berlusconi did try to discredit the court that initially convicted Sollecito and Knox.

As to the reasons for that intervention, it may have been that Girlanda and the other members of Parliament who signed the petition were doing a favour for Sollecito’s family, which had connections to the Berlusconi coalition. But a more likely reason is that by discrediting the court that had convicted Sollecito and Knox, the supporters of Berlusconi were hoping to achieve a wider discrediting of the whole Italian judicial system, and, by extension, a discrediting of the court decisions that had brought Berlusconi down.

If this is true and if Amanda Knox is the victim of Italian political machinations, this aspect of the case becomes the controlling meta-discourse that is battling over the fate of the American girl for reasons that are separate and apart from any real consideration of her actual guilt or innocence.

Nonetheless, Judge Hellman’s statement that“Many wanted Amanda in prison because she was an American”strongly suggests a fatal bias against Ms. Knox. In any event, there is no reason to believe that his decision to overturn her original conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher was not based on his belief that the evidence against her was to weak support a conviction.

Please click below to view Michael Mills’ previous posts on the Knox-Sollecito murder case:

How Politics Knock on Amanda Knox!

Under Pressure: A. Knox and R. Sollecito Find Meredith Kercher’s Body

How and Why Rudy Guede Was a Lone Wolf Assailant in the Murder of Meredith Kercher

Michael Mills is a retired Australian Public Servant. He is 66 years old, has a keen interest in history and current affairs, and posts regularly on online history forums. Like many, he was appalled by the recent re-conviction of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, and after substantial intensive research, he has developed the theory of the case that he sets forth herein.

by Patrick H. Moore

Murderpedia brings us the tragic story of Jim Gordon, the great rock drummer who in his prime played with a list of rock notables that sounds like a “Who’s Who in Rock ‘n Roll.”  Jim, who was born in 1945, has been serving time in the California Sate Prison system since 1984 for killing his mother with a hammer.  Jim played with the Everly Brothers, the Bryds, Delaney & Bonnie, Derek and the Dominoes (Jim played on the group’s acclaimed 1970 double album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and composed and played the elegiac piano coda for the title track, Layla), Joe Cocker, Traffic and Frank Zappa. Jim was also an in-demand session player and worked with literally dozens of acclaimed musicians during classic rock’s great era.

Sadly, toward the end of the 1970s, when he was in his late 30s, Jim began hearing voices in his head, primarily that of his mother, telling him to starve himself.  This reportedly filled him with violent rage, particularly if he disobeyed her and ate. Strangely, his physicians failed to diagnose his mental illness and instead treated him for alcohol abuse. Perhaps they thought the voices were the result of his abusing alcohol, a side effect of delirium tremens.

In any event, Jim went untreated and his condition worsened. On June 3, 1983, he brutally murdered his mother with a hammer and a butcher’s knife. Finally, at his trial the following year, he was properly diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia. Unable to use the insanity defense, which California had recently narrowed (Remember the “Twinkie Defense”), Gordon was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to sixteen years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

He has served time at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, Atascadero State Hospital in Atascadero, and the State Medical Corrections Facility in Vacaville. He has twice been denied parole.

A 1994 Washington Post article delves further into this sad story citing an interview with Jim Gordon that occurred at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Opisbo, California:

Apparently Gordon believes that he didn’t commit the crime, but rather the crime “happened” and says “When I remember the crime, it’s kind of like a dream. I can remember going through what happened in that space and time, and it seems kind of detached, like I was going through it on some other plane. It didn’t seem real.” According to police reports, when they found him he feared that the person who killed his mother might come for him too, and in the police car he sobbed “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but she’s tortured me for years.” He was pretty consistently known as an All-American type, with Frank Zappa even nick-naming him “Skippy.” Gordon did admit that speedballs were common on the 1971 Joe Cocker “Mad Dogs and Englishman” tour, when he claims he was dating Rita Coolidge.  A journalist who wrote a never released book on Gordon says he once showed her a letter from Gordon’s father written in 1969 urging him to get psychiatric help.  However, the letter apparently made no reference to the voices that Gordon heard.  The most powerful voice was that of his mother.  The voice would deny him food, with Gordon starving himself for days and then, hiding in a motel to eat fried chicken. The voice also denied him sleep and relaxation, caused him to be sullen and uncommunicative with the occasional violent outburst, and finally, refused to let him play drums. He says “My mother, she persecuted me a great deal, I felt. And it finally got so bad that I just gave up and got a condominium and just stayed indoors. I didn’t go anyplace. That’s when I started hearing voices, and having delusional thoughts and hallucinations, and all of a sudden the crime occurred.”

Although I am no psychiatrist, common sense suggests that the “speedballs” (an injected combination of cocaine and heroin) that Jim Gordon was indulging in with Joe Cocker’s crew in 1971 could not have done him any good.  Although heroin is not known to cause or augment psychosis, it’s well known that cocaine when injected brings on a fantastic rush, not unlike the smoking of crack cocaine.  This indulgence, while reported to be extremely exhilarating at first, can damage the mind with repeated use, and in individuals with a predisposition toward major mental illness, can serve as a mechanism which triggers incipient psychosis.  A similar mental deterioration can occur in individuals who chronically abuse methamphetamine.  The fact that Gordon’s father urged him to get psychiatric help way back in 1969 suggests that the drummer had been struggling with mental issues for some time.  Drugs were rampant among rock royalty during those heady days and although some lucky souls survived their bouts with addiction (Eric Clapton is a good example) others were far less fortunate.

Upon reflection, one can’t help but feel pity for Jim Gordon, the All-American rock drummer extraordinaire, who although still alive is now living the half-life of the terminally incarcerated.  His chronic mental illness will almost certainly keep him from ever being paroled.  Or if he was paroled, it would probably be only to transfer him to a maximum security lock-down mental institution, to some California Shutter Island type joint.  No, given Gordon’s options, the California Men’s Colony isn’t that bad an option. But don’t think Gordon blames anyone else, with the possible exception of his mother, for his sad fate. He has clearly stated that he understands fully why his former rock ‘n roll buddies ostracized him as he descended into the abyss of madness.  In his poignant moments, however, he has been known to voice a wish: that he could get back on stage with Eric Clapton, just for one gig, just for one brief shining hour, so that he could feel the pulse of the moment there under the hot lights as the crowd goes wild.

by Starks Shrink

On a chilly night early in December in Kalamazoo, MI, Dr. Teleka Patrick disappeared, leaving a trail of puzzling clues and a distraught family.  Her car was found along the highway, 100 miles away from her home and job and two hours after she’d last been seen. In it, police found her wallet with driver’s license, credit cards and cash, still intact. And thus the search began.

It was discovered that a colleague of Dr Patrick’s at the Borgess Medical Center where she was doing her residency, had loaned Teleka $100 in cash and driven her to a nearby Radisson Plaza Hotel, that evening, despite the fact that Teleka’s car was parked at the Medical Center and her apartment was a mere three miles away. Dr Patrick had also left her purse and cell phone behind at the medical center and never returned to retrieve them. Video surveillance at the Radisson hotel, where she’d been dropped off, shows an agitated Dr Patrick, speaking with a desk clerk for 14 minutes where, according to hotel employees, she tried to rent a room with cash but was turned away. The last witness to see her alive was the hotel shuttle bus driver who took her back to her car, parked at the Borgess Medical Center.  The final sighting was when her vehicle was reported in a 911 call as driving erratically on I-94 west, though the caller could not identify the driver of the car. The police soon found her Lexus abandoned in a ditch with a flat tire. It was 10 PM on December 5, 2013.

Teleka Patrick grew up in Queens, in New York the oldest of three children born to Matthias and Irene Patrick.  Theirs was a strict and devout household. Matthias was a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist church for over 30 years; her brother is currently a church musician and Teleka and her sister were very active in their churches.  Teleka went on earn her Bachelor’s degree at Oakwood University in Alabama, a private University owned and operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, not unlike Loma Linda University where she received her degree in medicine and Ph.D. in biochemistry. These were no small feats; Teleka was a determined and ambitious woman.

While at Loma Linda, Teleka met her soon to be husband. Ismael Calderon, though an online dating site in early 2006. The internet was to become a friend and foe to Teleka. They were married in July of that same year, but things quickly began to crumble for Teleka, personally, emotionally and mentally.  It’s not clear if students or instructors at Loma Linda were aware of the tumult going on in Teleka’s head but her husband certainly was.  In an interview with Inside Edition, Calderon discloses that Teleka confided in him that she was hearing voices and having delusions.  It became evident to Calderon that Teleka was unstable and he urged her to seek help for her mental health issues. According to Calderon, she agreed initially but then he rapidly became a part of her paranoid delusions and she accused him of trying to sabotage her career amongst other things.  At some point in 2009, Calderon felt he had no choice but to remove himself and his children from their residence in order to preserve their safety. When asked if Teleka would simply wander off, Calderon responded, “…I believe that if she believed in things that weren’t reality…that she might want to hide in a box because it’s so terrifying.

Had she sought help when urged, we might now be telling a different story. Teleka’s body was found April 6th in Lake Charles not far from where her car was recovered. The autopsy ruled that her death was due to drowning and no foul play was detected. Her parents, however, had hired a private investigator and could not accept the possibility that her death was accidental or by her own hand, and had another autopsy performed which yielded the same results.

What happened between the meltdown of her marriage and her untimely death?  We can piece together facets of her life through her own digital footprints.  She was very active on twitter logging tens of thousands of tweets on multiple accounts in the year before her death beginning in April of 2013.  In June of 2013, she started her first year of medical residency at Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, shocking her siblings and parents, since she had been offered residencies at prestigious schools including Yale and Harvard, and had no family or friends in Kalamazoo. Or so they believed. Teleka believed otherwise. Through her tweets we can see that she believed that she was being controlled directly by God’s hand and that she had been sent to Kalamazoo to be with her one true love — a man who she’d never met and who had filled her every thought for a year before she moved to be near him.  A man of faith and of fame, Marvin Sapp, the grammy winning gospel singer, had captivated her heart. She believed that she had a mystical connection to the married pastor and father, and could feel his thoughts communicating with her.  So she moved to Kalamazoo, where he was located and joined his church, even though his ministry is Pentecostal and she was a lifelong Seventh Day Adventist.

Shortly after her move, Marvin Sapp filed for a personal protection order, (PPO) against Teleka. In it, he cites that he had received over 400 letters and emails from Teleka, that she had come to his home, contacted his children and called him her husband.  His order was granted with the judge indicating that there was clear proof of stalking. Sapp’s church sent a letter to Teleka in September of 2013, informing her that she was removed as a member and that the protection order had been granted.

When the media broke the news of the PPO in January, the public was outraged that this information had been concealed by the family. Web sites and discussion forums had already been active for a month by then, trying to decipher clues as to who could have frightened this woman to the point that she fled for her life. The family had to issue a statement saying that her mental state was of no consequence to the search, since they feared that the police and the public would stop looking for Teleka if she was thought to have fled. They treated the PPO as if were not indicative of any particular patterns and in doing so, misused the public trust as they clung to their belief that her disappearance had to have been foul play.

After her move and despite the PPO, Teleka’s tweets and online activity accelerated and showed a woman in need of help.  While most of the tweets are not directed to a particular person, we can surmise that she mostly intended them for Marvin Sapp based upon a myriad of clues in her multiple accounts, too numerous to detail herein. Tweets such as “Does the tweeting make you uncomfortable now that I’m here? Like it is too close for comfort now?” and going on to tell him how he had come to her in the night (mystically or delusionally) were obviously meant for Pastor Sapp. These tweets were followed by rants about demons who were trying to attack her (another common theme). Teleka clearly believed that they had some sort of deep relationship, though he never responded to any of her messages. One set of tweets shortly after she moved to Kalamazoo in June was particularly alarming in that it shows she was having delusions outside of her home during normal activities such as having her hair done:

“The movies were showing Christians converting to witch magic and becoming vampires. Christians dying from witch doctor magic. So they were strongly exalting Satan over Christ. The braiders were enjoying the movies and watching them like nothing was wrong. Then there were kids running around and singing the movie theme song which was some chant or something like that. I was like what the heck?…Another thing that bothered me is generally demons like to wait until I’m by myself to bug me.”

Taken alone, this might not mean much, you could write it off as a one-off, but even so it would be odd, since she was tweeting without tagging anyone. But when taken as a whole, including tweets such as this:

“You know you wake me up in the morning sometimes when you think about me? Like you’re calling to me or something _ And I’m like yes love, good morning. Or sometimes, what’s wrong love, are you okay?” interspersed with: “You need to understand that I am not judging you at all. What I am telling you is that the devil used ME to answer your demonic prayer.”

We get a sense that something is truly amiss. But when you also look at the videos she posted, any doubts that she is suffering from an unchecked mental illness evaporate. Her videos were just this side of seductive and showed her singing, cooking and setting a place at the table for an unnamed and absent lover. In one video, you can even see her cock her head, as though listening to a voice that no one else can hear and then proclaiming, “Yes, I felt you,” as though someone had responded.

Her tweets, videos and behavior show a person who is vacillating between euphoric delusional highs at being in love and mystically connected with the object of her desire, while accusing her same love interest of channeling demons to corrupt her soul. Many people with delusions fixate on God and demons, believing themselves to be in direct contact with or actual conduits for them. Teleka’s strong history with the Seventh Day Adventists and subsequent involvement with Pentecostals may have fueled those delusions, while at the same time cloaking them in religion as opposed to the illness that was so clearly present. It’s tragic that she never got help, especially given that she was a medical resident in psychiatry.  Often mental illnesses are exacerbated by lack of sleep, stress or new environments. Teleka certainly had all those stressors throughout her schooling and her ability to excel academically under those conditions may well be an indicator that she was going through  “manic” phases.  The fact that she was able to manage school and even a marriage for a period of time indicates that her psychosis was cyclical rather than sustained, which makes it easier to understand why it did not come to a head earlier.

There is anecdotal evidence that her brother was aware of her issues, but perhaps not how deep they were. Her own tweets indicate that she had struggled for years and that her family blamed it on her straying from her faith. It’s impossible, however, to discern whether her family was actually “demonizing her”, as she called it or whether this too was part of her delusions.  We do know that her family took great pains to cover up her illness even while she was missing. Perhaps this can be attributed to her religious background with its unhealthy insistence that mental illness is a personal flaw brought on by egotism, perhaps instigated by Satan or demons.  This belief may well have prevented Teleka from seeking help and may have been an even larger motivator for her family’s lack of intervention. Teleka Patrick’s story from her own perspective will never be known, but hopefully we can learn from her life and take the time to notice when people around us are experiencing life threatening illnesses. Had someone noticed the early warning signs of psychosis, Dr. Teleka Patrick could well be alive today treating patients with compassion and understanding.

Please take time to learn about early warning signs of mental illness: http://www.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/First_Episode/About.htm

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Rehabbing the Wounded Juvenile Will Save Their Souls (and Ours)

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

There are civil wars and there are wars between sovereign nations and then there is that ultimate and unending battle known as the war between the sexes. Anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship knows what I’m talking about. [If you’re a same-sex guy or gal just substitute the phrase war within the same sex for war between the sexes (WBTS).]

Why, you ask, do I say this particular war can never be won? A most valid question…

Even though you may win one skirmish/argument, that’s all it is – a skirmish/argument – which will be repeated in slightly different form the next day (or even the next hour). The next time around your partner may win and then the following day you might win. It’s a bit like Amanda Knox’s trial – one day you’re guilty, the next day you’re innocent, then you’re guilty again and so on until you lose your mind…

The war between the sexes is just too open-ended; though you and yours may declare ceasefires, they will certainly be broken when the pressure gets too great.

Suppose you decide that the war is just too taxing and that you want to opt out. In that case, if you’re not married and have no children you can simply slip away into the night. If you are married and must enter divorce proceedings, however, you may well be in for a very expensive sojourn in hell.

The above examples presuppose that the participants are non-violent and that the battles consist primarily of words and/or  erecting walls of silence.

But suppose that you or your partner are prone to violence or even in extreme cases – murder most foul. Just today I had to report for jury duty in Compton, USA, and though the case settled just before the voir dire and we were all released, had the trial gone forward, we would have been treated to four or five days of testimony centered on a domestic violence incident.

Suppose, however, you don’t want to merely beat your partner bloody; rather, you want him or her dead. And then suppose you don’t want to personally commit the foul crime. Your only other choice is to hire a hit man. Which, incidentally, while not common is not that uncommon.

When a relationship has deteriorated to that point, and if you’re not smart enough to simply vanish, disappear, go AWOL, etc., you may find yourself if a position similar to that which Michael Kuhnhausen, a southeast Portland, OR, resident found himself in back in 2006, when he unsuccessfully recruited a hit man to kill his wife.

Michael’s wife, Susan Kuhnhausen (her last name is now Walters), was an emergency room nurse. I don’t know how tall she is, but in 2006, she weighed in at a solid 260. As an ER nurse, she had been specifically trained to deal with violent, explosive people.

Michael, however, was so intent on getting Susan whacked that he ignored the fact that she, when aroused, could prove to be a very formidable opponent; either that, or her formidable nature might be precisely why he hired someone else to carry out the hit.

The hit man’s name was Edward Haffey, and based on his choice of weapon, he may not have been a true professional. On the other hand, using a hammer may have simply been subterfuge to make the authorities think it was a crime of passion, perhaps committed by a random intruder or burglar. In any event, when Haffey attacked her at her house one fine September day, Susan didn’t give an inch.

“I got the hammer and started hitting him with the hammer several times. My father, the carpenter, always taught me a hammer could be used for self-defense — the claw end would work the best,” Susan, who was 51 at that time, testified in 2006 at Michael’s sentencing hearing. Once she had disarmed Haffey and battered him sufficiently with the hammer to completely neutralize him, Susan then strangled him with her bare hands reportedly crushing his windpipe.

She then ran to a neighbor’s house to report the intruder, identified later by police as 59-year-old Edward Haffey.

*     *     *     *     *

Anyone who has ever engaged in the WBTS, knows that what makes the war ultimately unwinnable is the fact that both parties invariably think they are right, and will often not hesitate to resort to under-handed tactics to gain the advantage, however fleeting it might be.

At her husband’s sentencing, Susan, who spoke for over an hour, cleverly painted a scenario in which she described herself as thrice-victimized Susan.

KATU News writes:

In remarks before the court, she said she felt as though she is serving three life sentences, one for the man she had to kill in her home, another for knowing the man she loved tried to have her killed and yet another for the worry she will continue to have about a repeat attack as long as Michael Kuhnhausen remained alive.

At one point, Susan Kuhnhausen rebuked Michael and his attorney for not paying attention and smirking while she testified before the court. She spoke for an hour and 10 minutes and detailed her struggle with her attacker, whom she strangled to death.

“I blame him [attacker Edward Haffey] in some measure for what he did,” Susan Kuhnhausen said at one point, “but I blame you more. You took advantage of a desperate person to do a desperate thing that you were too cowardly to do yourself.”

Shucks. Here I was fantasizing that the hit man was a professional, yet Susan is describing him as a desperate person. For all we know, Haffey could have been a doper, a PDST veteran or an out-of-work high-school principal.

Fighting the bloody WBTS to the bitter end, Susan was hardly content with merely calling her ex a coward. In fact, at one point, she leaned forward toward Michael and stated, “If I ever, ever believed that you deserved to be dead, I would of at least had the balls to kill you myself.”

After Susan had completed 70 minutes of dramatic testimony, Michael Kuhnhausen rose to face the judge with tears in his eyes, stating:

“I’ve hurt a lot of people in the last year, and I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

In response, Susan burst into laughter and then began to weep.

*     *     *     *     *

Michael Kuhnhausen received a 10-year sentence based on his guilty plea to solicitation to commit aggravated murder.

With Haffey dead and Michael Kuhnhausen salted away in an Oregon state prison, we might assume that Susan’s worries are over and that her particular WBTS is a thing of the past. This would be false assumption, however. There is a little thing called parole. Michael is now eligible and could be a free man later this year. As part of the parole workup, in what could be viewed as a continuation of the WBTS, according to KPTV, Walters told the parole board that she’s concerned about keeping Michael away from her if he is released. She quickly countered this uncharacteristic moment of weakness by stating that she’s prepared to fight again if she has to.

In her KPTV interview, Susan mentioned that she hopes her story serves as an inspiration for other targets of violence.

“If you feel like, ‘Wow I don’t feel like I can do that.’ You can. You’re stronger than you know,” she said.

*    *     *     *     *

On balance, it’s evident that in the case of Michael and Susan, their personal WBTS is ongoing, at least in Susan’s mind. Even if Michael is released and does the smart thing and makes no attempt to contact her and just says no to any desire he may be feeling to send a new and improved hit man after her, Susan will spend the rest of her life waiting and wondering when, and if, the shoe will drop and she will once again be forced to fight for her life.

Thus, WBTS not only manifests in the endless fights, arguments, manipulations and subterfuges the parties bring to the table, but it may also permanently manifest in the mind of either or both of the hapless players.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It doesn’t matter where you live – the predators against children are everywhere, even in a supposedly clean-cut, kid friendly state like Minnesota. And with disturbing frequency, the sexual predators are men of the cloth.

David Lohr of the Huffington Post writes:

State and federal authorities are searching two states for Victor Arden Barnard, the leader of a cult-like religious sect who is accused of sexually abusing at least two girls.

According to court documents provided to The Huffington Post, Barnard, 52, is facing 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct related to two young women who claim he abused them for nearly a decade at the church he led.

The two victims, the criminal complaint alleges, were among several girls who lived at the River Road Fellowship compound in Finlayson, Minn., which is located about 90 miles north of Minneapolis.

The River Road Fellowship is an offshoot of The Way International, a nondenominational non-trinitarian (no Father, Son and Holy Ghost) Christian group.

The investigation began when one of the alleged victims (Vic #1) in the case contacted the Pine County Sheriff’s Office in January 2012 and reported that she had been part of Barnard’s “Maidens Group,” which, she says, was made up of young women between the ages of 12 and 24, who were sequestered in an area of the compound referred to as the “Shepherd’s Camp.”

Vic #1 was 11 years old when her family joined the fellowship in 1998. Around the time she turned 13, she reports, Barnard AKA “Barnyard” began having sex with her.

“Barnard repeatedly preached to her that he represented Christ in the flesh, that Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and other women who followed him, that King Solomon slept with many concubines, that the firstborn child was to be sacrificed to God, and that it was normal for Barnard to have sex with her because it was in God’s Word,” the complaint states.

Vic #1 left the compound in 2010 when she was 22 years old.

The second alleged victim (Vic #2) told police she was 12 years old in 2000, when Barnard first raped her. She said he said it was fine for them to have sex because he was a “man of God and she would remain a virgin because of it,” according to the complaint.

Vic #2 stayed at the compound until she turned 20 in 2009.

According to the complaint, both victims told police that they were ordered to keep their sexual relationship with Barnyard on the down-low.

Somewhat unbelievably, according to the Pine County Sheriff’s Office, the River Road Fellowship carried on in Pine County for 17 years.

“They were pretty self-sufficient,” Pine County Chief Deputy Steven Blackwell told The Associated Press. “They processed their own meat; they grew their own crops. As much as they could, they kept themselves separated from regular society.”

The 50-member group remained in Pine County until 2011, when it relocated to Washington state.

As is not uncommon among cult leaders, Christian or otherwise, Barnyard not only repeatedly raped the young adolescent girls; he also reportedly had sexual relations with numerous married women within the group with eventually led to a rift which coincided with the remaining members relocating to Washington.

And don’t think Barnyard is in any hurry to turn himself in and face the music. In November 2012, sheriff’s investigators traveled to Spokane, Wash. to question him but surprise surprise were unable to locate him. Police have stated that the other congregation members were unwilling to help them locate Barnyard.

The investigators have worked slowly and patiently for the past two years to build an airtight case against Barnyard. Charges were finally filed last week in Pine County District Court. Since then, a nationwide warrant for his arrest has been in effect.

The Washington State Patrol has announced that it has received 20 or 30 tips concerning Barnyard this week in the Spokane area. Lt. Shane Nelson told the Spokesman-Review that they’re also contacting his known associates

Washington state’s fugitive task force and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also are searching for Barnyard. Unsurprisingly, members and/or people associated with the group in Washington have been uncooperative, much as they were in 2012. These bastards are protecting him which makes me suspects that at least some of them could be molesters in their own right.

Anyone with information on Barnard is asked to call the Pine County Sheriff’s Office Tip Line at 320-629-8342 or Chief Deputy Blackwell at 320-629-8380.

*     *     *     *     *

I don‘t wish to be unduly churlish but I have to ask: what in the hell is wrong with the parents that join these god-forsaken cults? It’s perfectly fine to remove oneself from mainstream society to a reasonable degree but not at the expense of sacrificing your children’s innocence and freedom.

Barnyard is obviously incomprehensibly evil and will no doubt spend the rest of his life in prison once he is apprehended. But Jesus God, these freakin’ parents ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Maybe they should do 10 or 15 years in a Minnesota state penitentiary for aiding and abetting the pervert. And don’t tell me they didn’t know. They knew just as certainly as the sun will come up in the morning.

by BJW Nashe (Back by Zombie Demand)

Many of us are well aware of the impending zombie apocalypse. Who knew that it would begin in Temecula? Then again, so many of our apocalyptic scenarios seem to originate in California, and Southern California in particular. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

News agencies today are reporting that in Riverside County a man has been arrested after stealing a big rig and colliding with several other vehicles on the highway. The man claimed he was being chased by zombies. Nobody was killed during this bizarre episode, which apparently caused a chain reaction crash on Interstate 15, but two people were seriously injured. The man arrested is identified as Jeremiah Clyde Hartline. According to the Temecula Patch, Hartline is being charged with assault with a deadly weapon, along with other felonies including auto theft, reckless driving, hit-and-run resulting in injury, driving without a license and multiple sentence-enhancing great bodily injury allegations. There’s been no further word on the zombies.

Is it any wonder that this is how the zombie war should start? Some strange incident occurs out on the highway, followed by the authorities willfully ignoring the true nature of the danger at hand, just to avoid widespread panic. Next thing you know, we are in an all-out fight for our lives. Who knows what would have happened if Hartline hadn’t engineered the whole freeway smash-up, in order to escape his undead pursuers? Or what if he did not in fact escape? What if he is now one of them? Our “Patient Zero.” Who knows what lies in store for the people of Temecula? The jail where Hartline is being held could rapidly turn into zombie central. All of California may soon be threatened.

For now, we are unable to ascertain whether these were flesh-eating zombies that chased Hartline, or if they were just trying to get their deteriorating hands on some of his crystal meth. Probably safe to assume both. And we don’t know if the zombies came from some secret biological warfare facility run by the government, or whether the horde was infected by some mysterious virus from outer space. Or something even worse. No accounts of UFO sightings or alien visitations have yet accompanied Hartline’s illegal highway escapades. Law enforcement, of course, is keeping a tight lid on the wider implications of the whole story. They are probably waiting for Homeland Security to step in and take over.

Here’s the official version (or cover-up) of Hartline’s arrest, as reported by the Temecula Patch:

 According to the California Highway Patrol, Hartline, a transient, was picked up by a trucker — Daniel Martinez — in Tennessee en route to San Diego, where the long-haul driver picked up a load of strawberries.

At around 6 p.m. on Saturday, Martinez parked his 18-wheeler at the CHP’s commercial vehicle compliance station just off northbound I- 15, according to the CHP. While Martinez was outside his tractor-trailer, making adjustments, Hartline began to have visions of zombies coming after him, said CHP Officer Nathan Baer.

He told City News Service the defendant was ‘altered,’ possibly under the influence of a controlled substance, and slid behind the wheel of the truck, throwing it into gear and accelerating onto the freeway.

“Hartline thought that zombies were chasing him and clinging to the truck,” Baer said. “Hartline swerved the truck side to side to shake the zombies off.”

Less than two miles into the wild ride, near the exit to Temecula Parkway, the defendant sideswiped a Toyota Tacoma pickup, causing that vehicle to collide with a Toyota 4Runner pickup, which hit a Mercedes-Benz, according to Baer.

“The Tacoma overturned, while the Mercedes sedan and 4Runner spun into the center divider,” the officer said.

“The big rig veered to the left, out of control, striking a Ford Taurus and a Honda Accord before jackknifing and blocking all four traffic lanes, according to the CHP.

Baer said Hartline leapt from the semi and ran to a van that had stopped nearby, climbing inside and allegedly attempting to steal that vehicle, according to the CHP. The driver detained the young man until officers arrived, according to the CHP.

Hartline was treated for minor injuries at Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta and transported to jail.

The occupants of the Tacoma — Kyle Schlosser of San Jacinto and Sarah Small of Hemet — were seriously injured in the crash and remain hospitalized, according to Baer.

He said the occupants of the other vehicles suffered minor to moderate injuries, for which they also received treatment.

The freeway was closed for three hours for the cleanup and investigation.

We don’t need to read too closely between the lines to understand the seriousness of the horror unfolding in Temecula. What were the results of the “investigation?” Was Hartline “infected,” or just scared out of his wits? How can we be sure he was only hallucinating? Why are precise details of the zombie attack being hushed up, or left unexplored?

This has the potential to make Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War  seem like a quaint bedtime story (i.e., The Twilight Saga). And yet World War Z may give us some idea of what we may be in for. Here are some excerpts that the CHP and Temecula Police Department and Riverside County Sheriff’s Department might want to pay attention to:

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

If you live anywhere within a 100 mile radius of Temecula, there may be still time to prepare. But the clock is ticking. Start stockpiling weapons, ammunition, food, and first aid supplies. If you haven’t read the Zombie Survival Guide, I don’t know how to help you… What have you been doing? Reading mysteries? Or “teen paranormal romance?” You may be a lost cause, at this point. Here are ten quick tips for surviving a zombie attack, so you are not totally unprepared:

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

You will notice that stealing a big rig and causing a pileup on the highway is not listed here. This was strictly improvisation on the part of Mr. Hartline, who was clearly thrown into panic when faced with the zombie menace. His approach is by no means recommended for anyone. There’s no need to go crazy here; reason must be allowed to prevail.

In any case, we feel certain that everyone in Southern California should leave work immediately. Stay away from school. Avoid all institutions. Go home and barricade yourselves safely inside your homes, before it’s too late. Trust no one outside of your immediate circle of “survivors.” Keep your own counsel, and maintain a “bunker mentality” until further news filters out from Temecula. It’s going to be a long night.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Like most clichés, the old adage “a woman’s work is never done” bears more than minimal truth.  This is never more true than when the woman in question is a young Texas mother raising seven-year old twin boys and a one-year old baby.  Knowing just how much work is involved in raising a single moderately spoiled child, I salute each and every mother who does her best to provide her children with all the love, attention and discipline they need to grow up with a fighting chance of ultimately becoming productive and well-adjusted adults.

Every mother faces endless worrisome moments in attending to her duties. Whether it’s taking the kids to their pediatricians for their annual physicals and making sure they get their shots, helping them with their homework, attending parent-teacher conferences, or even comforting them and supplying then with bandaids when they fall and injure themselves, it’s a big and never- ending job.

One thing a mother probably doesn’t expect, however, is to dash back into the house to grab a baby bottle, and upon returning to the car, to discover that a carjacker has made off with not only the family vehicle, but your three children as well. Yet that’s precisely what happened to Lucia Rozado, a San Antonio mother on Thursday afternoon.

Hilary Hansen of the Huffington Post writes:

Lucia Lozada, their mother, told KSAT that on Thursday afternoon, she was about to drive to church with the boys and their 1-year-old brother when she realized she had forgotten a baby bottle.

She returned to witness her car get stolen — with her boys inside.

“I went back out and I saw him walking and I smiled at him because I know him from around here because he’s always walking up and down the street, and he looked at me and just ran and got in the car and left,” Lozada said.

We can only speculate as to what terrifying thoughts ran through Lucia’s mind as she phoned emergency services and prayed that her kids would survive their ordeal.

I am reminded of the time my daughter vanished when she was five years old. Our Salt Lake relatives were in town and things were a bit chaotic and all of a sudden, I realized that daughter had been uncharacteristically quiet (this was long before she became a sullen teenager); in fact we had not heard a peep out of her.

A quick search of our two-story townhouse revealed no trace of her – she was gone, baby, gone. I’ll never forget the panic I felt as I scoured the neighborhood shouting her name, all the while thinking that she was not outside and that I wasn’t going to find her.

After 20 minutes of sheer hell, daughter turned up. She’d been there all along napping under the stairs completely covered by some cushions we kept there to serve as protection when she and her friends would hang from the stairs and drop.

*     *     *     *     *

It turns out that Lucia’s 7-year-old twin boys had plenty of spunk, so much spunk that the neighborhood carjacker-kidnapper quickly realized that whatever his intentions were, they did not include putting up with two lively little monsters who were not at all happy to find themselves in his company.

In fact, the 7-year-old twins, Lucius and Luis, fought back vigorously, using anything at hand including a rubber toy snake that their church-going mother Lucia had hesitated to buy them in the first place, perhaps out of concern that snakes are un-Christian (or is it all too Christian?).

The twin’s determined resistance proved to be more than the kidnapper could handle, and within a few miles of Lucia’s house, he pulled over in front of a Maria Garcia’s house, handing one of them a cell phone and admonishing them to call their mother.

It’s unclear who released the one-year-old from his car seat, but what is known is that the three children knocked on Ms. Garcia’s door in a state of great excitement.

“I got up to the door and the little boy was shaken up and the little boy was saying, ‘They kidnapped us. They kidnapped us!’ and I said, come on in, you’re okay,” said Ms. Garcia.

Then they phoned Lucia and you can imagine the relief that she felt. For her part, Lucia says she forgives the kidnapper and is grateful her babies are back home safe and sound.

“I think god that the guy, you know, he didn’t harm them. He gave them the phone and told them to call their mom. I thank god for that. That he didn’t touch them.”

The boys, however, certainly touched the kidnapper, particularly the twin who was closest to him in the front seat. “I was kicking him. I was hitting him with a snake,” the boy told My Fox Austin.

Although the children were unharmed, Lucia’s car is still missing. The suspect, described as a while male in his early 30, has not been identified. Police say he will be charged with vehicle theft, but they have not yet determined what charges he’ll face in relation to abducting the children.