commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In North America, respecting one’s parents is generally thought to be a fine and exemplary thing. On the other hand, many children are either taught, or learn as members of the permissive gerneration, to “look out for number one” which, of course, can drive parents to distraction. There’s nothing tougher than trying to deal with a stubborn adolescent who is absolutely certain that he or she knows everything, or damned near everything, and certainly knows far more than their ignorant parents. This troubling teen tendency has led one of my more cynical friends – an energetic fellow who has raised, supported and educated three fine girls — to announce solemnly to whoever would listen: “Teenagers don’t know diddly-squat.”

The uneasy balance between self-assertive kids and their bemused parents is a constant in many North American homes.

In contrast to this uneasy balance of power, we have the “traditional” approach to child-rearing favored by “traditional” peoples the world over. In this model, the parents are absolutely in command; the children learn from an early age that the consequences of crossing one’s parents can be severe. It could be argued that the “respect” for their parents that these children are inculcated with from an early age, actually more closely resembles fear.

Notwithstanding whatever combination of “fear” and “respect” these children may feel for their parents, while growing up, they cannot help but become progressively more aware that here in North America, many children have rights that would be unheard of in traditional cultures and enjoy a considerable amount of independence.

Within this context, children who are raised by traditional parents can find themselves “caught in a crossfire” when it comes to such issues as sexuality, pregnancy and the right to have a safe and therapeutic abortion.

In the case of Sarah Leung, 28, of Vancouver, Canada, these issues, and the decisions she made concerning them, has led her to a horrible impasse in which she is charged with two counts of second-degree-murder for allegedly killing her two newborn infants after steadfastly concealing her pregnancies.

Vivian Luk of the Canadian Press writes:

A Vancouver woman accused of killing her newborn sons was so afraid of her parents finding out about her pregnancies that she gave birth alone in the family bathroom and then secretly disposed of the infants, says the Crown.

Sarah Leung, 28, was charged with second-degree murder after the body of a baby boy was found in a plastic bag outside the home in April 2009.

Police alleged Leung gave birth to a second baby boy in March 2010 and killed that baby as well, though the infant’s body was never found.

In a court hearing on Monday, Crown lawyer Sandra Cunningham informed the jury on the first day of Leung’s trial that at some point while being questioned, Leung confessed to police that she was afraid to tell her parents about her pregnancy.

“She told (a detective) her parents didn’t really approve of getting pregnant before marriage, and she was scared to tell them because she knew they would be unhappy,” Cunningham said in her opening statement.

“She knew she had done something wrong against them, that they wouldn’t have liked, so she hid everything from them.”

At Monday’s hearing, while the crown described the sequence of events that police believe led to the deaths of the two baby boys, Ms. Leung, wearing jeans and a black jacket over a grey hooded sweater, listened quietly.

It is an age-old tale that goes like this:

Ms. Leung was dating a man with whom she became intimate. Then, as surely as the night follows the day, she became pregnant with her lover’s child.

The Crown prosecutor stated that Ms. Leung’s boyfriend, whom she eventually married, was aware of the pregnancy and was even happy about it, but the accused, based on her belief that her parents would be furious if brought into the loop, kept their relationship and her pregnancy completely secret from her family.

It appears to me that in a peculiar way, Ms. Leung’s furtive activities, while certainly demonstrating the fear she felt for her parents, may have also been a way – albeit misguided – to assert her freedom and independence.

And who knows, it might have worked except for one huge and irrevocable problem that pushed the accused to the breaking point. In the summer of 2008, Ms. Leung became pregnant.

Now if either of my daughters had become pregnant as teens, the burning question would have been “to abort or not to abort” or whether to put the child up for adoption if the decision was made to take the pregnancy to full term. Fortunately, we were never faced with that challenging dilemma.

To put this into context, Ms. Leung was approximately 23 years old when she became pregnant in 2008. According to the Crown, in April 2009, the accused delivered her baby into a toilet at the house where she still lives with her parents and brother.

Nothing has been disclosed as to whether Ms. Leung even considered the possibility of getting an abortion or choosing to go the adoption route. As a full-grown woman in Canada, could she have obtained a therapeutic abortion through the Canadian health services without her parents being any the wiser? Did she consider this option? I don’t know.

I am told that after drowning her child, Ms. Leung put the infant in a plastic bag, cleaned up any tell-tale signs of her delivery, and told her boyfriend that she had a miscarriage. Crown Prosecutor Cunningham told the jury.

“She put her baby boy, still, inside the plastic bag, outside between her house and the next door neighbour’s, and carried on as if nothing had happened.”

“No one suspected a thing.”

Right at this moment, it becomes horribly clear that this appears to be far more than simply a case of cultural identity issues and the clash between the old ways and the new. Rather, Ms. Leung’s bizarre act (although apparently not bizarre to her) is a clear sign of grievous family pathology. This is the 90-ton elephant in the room that should be front and center in this case.

Although based on what I can gather, Crown prosecutor Cunningham seems to be spewing little if any of the contempt and vitriol that we might expect if a case of this nature were being tried in the U.S., it is nevertheless a fact that this is being handled as a very serious criminal matter. Instead of recognizing that Ms. Leung is a young woman with severe emotional/mental issues, she is apparently being tried as an ordinary citizen.

With my very limited knowledge of the workings of the Canadian justice system, I don’t know if the defendant’s lawyers can defend her in a manner that properly and objectively faces the fact that Ms. Leung is, in a certain sense non compos mentis. Even if she is perfectly sane in other respects, faced with this unsolvable inter-generational dilemma, brought to the flash point by the actual births of the children, she acted like a crazy person.

Had she been in a rational frame of mind, she would surely have realized that given her age, and given the fact she apparently had a supportive boyfriend, if she informed her parents that she had given birth, although they might fume, roar, or even assault her, there wouldn’t really be much they could do about it beyond disowning her. Which, I imagine, is exactly what they might have done.

*     *     *     *     *

Let’s look at the actions and statements of Ms. Leung and her parents, who ultimately, learned the sad truth that their daughter had killed not one, but two of her newborns.

Ms. Leung’s father finds the first dead baby outside the house in a plastic bag. Ms. Leung had apparently disposed of it in the common area between their house and their neighbor’s house. Because the father does not speak English, he had his son call the police. When the police question the parents, they stated that they saw nothing unusual in the way their daughter responded to the news that the father had just found a dead baby in a plastic bag next to their house.

“She reassured them she knew nothing about the baby or how it came to be in a plastic bag outside,” said Cunningham.

Of course the DNA testing caught up with Ms. Leung and by August of 2009, the police knew that the dead baby belonged to Leung and her boyfriend. Prosecutor Cunningham believes that by this time, Ms. Leung was pregnant with her second child.

The jurors were informed that Ms. Leung and her boyfriend were married in November 2009 and were planning to move in together after the baby was born. Ms. Leung, of course, said nothing to her family about her marriage and pregnancy.

But then in March of 2010, when Ms. Leung was due to give birth to her second baby boy, the madness once again overcame her.

After the baby had stopped breathing, Ms. Leung allegedly put him in a plastic bag which she placed inside their garbage can, covering the package with a piece of cardboard. The garbage men came and collected the garbage which, predictably, ended up as landfill.

Understandably, the police have chosen not to search the landfill.

On Monday afternoon, Ms. Leung’s mother, whose name, following Canadian procedures, is covered by a publication ban, “testified that Leung is a quiet, self-conscious young woman who rarely talked about her personal relationships.”

“She said she didn’t notice anything physically or emotionally different about her daughter leading up to the day her husband found the first baby outside their home.”

Leung’s mother explained to those assembled that she and her husband taught their children to respect themselves and their elders, study and work hard, and value family. She disapproves of sex before marriage, and cannot accept her children having casual sexual relationships.

“If you have the bond of marriage there, then on both sides there would be a goal when you do something and you’ll cherish each other more,” she said through a Cantonese interpreter.

Either I’m dense or this last statement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Ms. Leung and her boyfriend/husband eventually did “have the bond of marriage” although it obviously has not saved her from this disaster.

*     *     *     *     *

To break it down:

Ms. Leung’s parents had expectations for their daughter that – caught in the cross-fire of the generational gap — she could not possibly meet.

Their communication skills were virtually non-existent. There was little meaningful dialogue within the household.

Ms. Leung hid important information from both her parents and her husband.

On both occasions, when confronted by the reality of giving birth, Ms. Leung phased into an irrational state, a fact the Crown seems to have at least partially recognized given that they have opted for second- degree rather the first-degree-murder charges. My fantasy is that during the births, killings, and quick disposals, Ms. Leung was in a fugue state, a shadow world in which one does things one normally would not do.

This is one of the saddest cases imaginable and I would hope that the Crown, in conjunction with Ms. Leung’s lawyers, would recognize Ms. Leung’s severe mental imbalance and the role it played in the children’s deaths. There should be a hospital commitment and treatment program for this poor woman, not an extended term of imprisonment.

by BJW Nashe

When I lived in Santa Cruz, California from 1982-87, I had no idea that this pleasant seaside town was once dubbed “The Murder Capital of the World.” By the time I moved there to attend UC Santa Cruz, where I majored in philosophy (with an unofficial minor in hallucinogens), there was little or no mention of murder. The mass killing had occurred a decade earlier. The only murders I recall were found in existentialist novels by Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I lived a block and half from the sea. We liked to stroll along West Cliff Drive late at night. Everything seemed perfect.

Only recently did I discover that Santa Cruz was once a murder capital — and I happened upon the information solely by chance. Last month, I was intrigued by a work of fiction by Grace Krilanovich called The Orange Eats Creeps – which I highly recommend, if you’re in the mood for a freestyle gothic tale of teenage-vampire-hobo-junkies misbehaving in the Pacific Northwest. While googling some interviews with the author, I learned that she grew up in Santa Cruz. In one interview, she pointed out that during the early 1970s — before she was even born — her hometown was plagued by an epidemic of serial killings. Sure enough, a quick online search yielded a whole trove of information on these crimes, and the deranged individuals who committed them. Praise the Lord for the bounteous Internet. When it comes to true crime and porn, the World Wide Web really delivers. And it’s fascinating to see how transgressive fiction sometimes bleeds right into true crime.

It may seem odd to realize that one’s college town — the source of so many fond personal memories — has a buried history that includes a bunch of shocking murders. But this shouldn’t seem odd at all, because that’s how it is here in America. Every town has its own buried past, or occult history, which includes an abundance of scandal and crime. Some towns might be considered virtual plague yards. In California, the occult history runs counter to the official version of the Golden State as a success story characterized by progress, wealth, fame, and innovation. The occult history forces us to confront the dark side of the story, which includes child abuse, misogyny, drugs, murder, madness, greed, and exploitation. We might prefer to forget the truly hideous stuff, and hope it all fades away, but it’s still there, waiting to resurface again and again, like some horrible repressed memory that won’t leave us alone until we deal with it effectively once and for all. Perhaps the true arc of human history, as Professor Norman O. Brown used to explain in his seminars at UC Santa Cruz, resembles nothing so much as a patient’s struggle to overcome a debilitating neurosis.

For a town such as Santa Cruz, neurosis is one thing. “Murder capital of the world” takes us to another level altogether. The exaggeration is understandable, however, when you get into the details. During the span of just a few years from 1971-73, three individuals were convicted of 23 separate murders in Santa Cruz County. Several other deaths and disappearances remain unsolved to this day. Given the population and demographics of the region, that’s quite a record. With the high-profile crimes of the Manson Family in Los Angeles and the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco still big news at the time, people in Santa Cruz were justifiably terrified when similar atrocities began to afflict their community.

The murders committed by John Linley Frazier, Big Ed Kemper, and Herbert Mullin in the Santa Cruz area never achieved the same level of national attention as the Tate-LaBianca slayings. Yet the Santa Cruz murders were just as shocking as those committed by the hippie death cult down south. Moreover, the Santa Cruz murders were just as relevant to the troubled zeitgeist of the early 1970s, which was marked by extreme civil unrest, rampant drug abuse, profound disillusionment, and the ongoing tragedy of a doomed war in Vietnam. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that all three of the Santa Cruz killers were men suffering from mental illness. One of them was preoccupied with targeting women. Clearly, mentally ill criminals and violence against women are problems that continue to wreak havoc in American society, even in sunny California.

We can think of the following three psychopaths as anti-celebrities starring in their own deranged counterpart to SoCal’s Hollywood Babylon. Think of them as “NorCal Gothic,” or “Breaking Bad in Santa Cruz.” Like it or not, their stories belong to us, are part of who we are, and we need to somehow understand them if we ever hope to move beyond the twisted psychology of murder.

John Linley Frazier — The Killer Prophet

The Santa Cruz murders began on October 19, 1970, when police discovered the bodies of five people at the affluent Soquel home of a well-respected local eye surgeon. Dr. Victor Ohta, his wife Virginia, their two preteen sons, and the doctor’s secretary all had been shot and left floating in the family swimming pool. The victims were blind-folded, and their hands were bound behind their backs with colorful silk scarves. The killer had left a rambling letter behind, which was evidently typed on Dr. Ohta’s typewriter:

“Halloween, 1970. Today World War III will begin, as brought to you by the People of the Free Universe. From this day forward, anyone and/or everyone or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the People of the Free Universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death or freedom against anyone who does not support natural life on this planet. Materialism must die, or Mankind will stop.”

The note was signed in a distinctive manner: “Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, and Knight of Swords.”

Since several groups of hippies were living nearby, authorities quickly assumed that they were dealing with another Manson-style massacre. In questioning the local long-hairs, however,  cops received a tip that led them to focus on a single suspect — John Linley Frazier. The ensuing investigation painted a distressing picture of a young man driven to random murder by a disastrous combination of mental illness and drug use. The man who penned the “Knight of Wands” note became known as “The Killer Prophet.”

Frazier was considered a “fairly normal guy” growing up in Santa Cruz. A high school drop-out, he worked as an auto mechanic in town, and lived with his wife, who called him a “beautiful person.” As a young man, however, Frazier seems to have developed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. When he began experimenting with drugs, this condition worsened. His marriage eventually fell apart, and he began espousing increasingly radical environmental views, seasoned with apocalyptic visions and mystical readings of the tarot cards. He quit his job at the auto shop, telling his boss he refused to “contribute to the death cycle of the planet.” Fiercely paranoid, plagued by voices, he didn’t fit in too well with the laid-back lifestyle of the local hippie communes. His intensity frightened the pot-smoking vegetarians seeking harmony together. Frazier tended to tune in, turn on, and freak out. When he took LSD, God told him to do bad things.

Soon isolated from the communes, he began living as a self-styled Aquarian Age hermit, residing in a six-foot-square shack in the woods, not far from Dr. Victor Ohta’s property. Frazier had a good look at Dr. Ohta’s place. Right away, he knew that the owners were “too materialistic.” Once, while the Ohta family was out, Frazier broke into their house to creep around. Before he left, he stole a pair of binoculars.

Not long after the binocular theft, on October 19, 1970, Frazier returned to the Ohta mansion. The doctor’s wife, Virginia, was the only person home. Brandishing a .38 revolver that he found inside, Frazier bound Virginia’s wrists with a scarf and waited for the rest of the family to come home. Soon, the doctor’s secretary, Dorothy Cadwallader, showed up, along with one of the Ohta boys. Then Dr. Ohta returned home with their second son. On arrival, each of them were tied up at gunpoint. Standing with his captives outside by the pool, Frazier lectured them on the evils of materialism and the ways in which it was destroying the environment. Dr. Ohta, no fan of hippies to begin with, started arguing with Frazier, who promptly shoved him into the pool. While the doctor thrashed around trying to get out of the water, Frazier shot him three times. One by one, Frazer then killed all four of the others — Virginia, Dorothy, then the boys, Derrick, and Taggart. Frazier went back inside the house, typed his “Knight of Wands” note, and set the house ablaze. When firefighters showed up they found the five bodies in the pool, and the typewritten note tucked under the windshield wipers of Dr. Ohta’s Rolls-Royce.

When the “Knight of Wands” murder note was published by the local press, several hippies recognized the bizarre discourse as possibly belonging to the man who had frightened them with his crazy talk — John Linley Frazier. They told the police where to find his shack in the woods. Police were also able to lift Frazier’s fingerprints from the Rolls-Royce and from a beer can found at the crime scene. Frazier was apprehended five days after the murders.

The murder trial was a three-part spectacle. Frazier was first convicted in just two hours. A second trial was held to determine sanity, and then a third trial to determine his sentence. For the sanity trial, Frazier showed up in court with one side of his head completely shaved, and half of his mustache and beard shaved off. The jury was treated to lengthy testimony regarding acid trips and messages from God and ecological tirades. Some thought Frazier was putting on an act to win an insanity plea, but his psychologist thought otherwise. While Frazier never confessed his crimes to the police, he did tell his shrink all about it. He said he had broken into Dr. Ohta’s house when no one was home, spotted what looked like an animal-skin bedspread, and went berserk. “It blew my mind,” the defendant recalled. He never noticed that the animal-skin was fake.

In the end, Frazier was found to be sane, and he received the death sentence. He regarded the gas chamber as preferable to “having fascist pigs working on my head.” Frazier’s preference became irrelevant, however, when the California Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in 1972, and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Thirty-five years later, “The Killer Prophet” took matters into his own hands. In August of 2009, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his single occupant cell. He was 62 years old.

Stay tuned for Part Two of ‘When Santa Cruz Was the “Murder Capital of the World”

by Lise LaSalle

After writing an article titled The Infamous Trial of Candy Crush, I thought that I had put this subject to rest until after the sentencing retrial. But lately, the media waves of the deep ocean that is the Jodi Arias saga have been violently crashing on the Shore of Crazy Island and quite a storm is brewing.

Jodi is more than ever associated with the name Candy Crush. She is still as popular and addictive as the game and manufacturers around the world are looking for a replacement to acquire this slice of the market to gain the same popularity. Cha ching!

During the recent proceedings for Miss Arias, the cameras were not allowed to the dismay of the media and of the lynch mob eager to continue throwing darts at her. How can they accomplish this if they do not have her directly on their TV screen or if they cannot have their favorite hate mongers disguised as commentators, directly in the courtroom to tweet them how bad she looks or that we can now finally hear the rattling of her chains when she walks in court?

Is she flirting with the bailiff today? Are her eyes as empty and scary? Does she wear the fake glasses? And what’s up with her hair? How dare she wear it in her face to hide her pain? She does not feel pain because she is a monster. Right? Someone please tell us over and over again that this woman is the most dangerous and vile creature that ever walked the earth because otherwise, we might have to see her as a human being. And frankly, that is no fun at all.

While the game manufacturers have been pulling their virtual hair to come up with a replacement for the addictive Candy Crush, the media has been desperately trying to get a replacement for Jodi Arias but to no avail. She is a hard act to follow.

Every time a new murderer pops up, their ears perk up and they wait and see if it is going to be the ONE. But so far, their quest has come up empty. Marissa Devault came to the rescue but it did not have the oomph they needed to boost ratings. They put her picture side by side with Candy Crush and kept comparing them, but it did not explode into huge ratings. Marissa had worked as a stripper, killed her boyfriend with a hammer, had dark hair like Candy so what else do you want people? Heck, she even had a strange smirk during the police interviews, but the public did not bite or very so lightly.

After such an adrenaline rush of pleasure for the media and some viewers, Devault did not cut the mustard or anyone else for that matter. Pistorius is interesting but not captivating and it is in South Africa. And a good looking man does not unleash the same passions as a young middle class American woman.

The disappearance of Heather Elvis and the possible culprits Tammy and Sidney Moorer seemed to have captivated a segment of the population and rattled a few trailer homes but once again, not to the extent of our infamous Candy.

What is the media to do to remedy this situation? After comparing every criminal on the planet to Arias and trying constantly to join their photos or certain elements of the case, they have to abandon ship OR they can recycle the case over and over trying to give it a new spin or they can make up some stories…

The head cheerleader of the parade to lead Jodi Arias to a public execution has undoubtedly been HLN. So they are the prime recycling bin of the Candy Crush games. Jane Velez Mitchell wrote her own book and probably gave a few cents of the proceeds to animal rescue. It is based on illusions, character assassination and more crapola. But it allows for more discussions or as they call it in my neighborhood ‘deluded verbal diarrhea.’

A few movies were made to keep the momentum going. The lifetime movie was described as ‘media malpractice’ by some and as total delight for haters by others. To this day, I read posts where people include elements of the movie in their discussions about the trial: but she is the one who went after him and she did a striptease in his room…sad but true.

What they do not seem to realize is that every time they reactivate the story, even though Arias is trying to cut the media pipeline, they are the ones who are disrespecting Travis Alexander. Every time the media plays his sex tape, he is the one who looks bad and not her. But if they could play it in trains, planes and bus stations, they would because people would not forget the case and it would give them the high ratings they desperately are seeking.

This weekend, not on April’s Fool day but during this sacred Easter celebration, TMZ came up with a big story about Jodi Arias. They claimed that she filed legal documents naming Joe Arpaio and Nancy Grace.

‘’Jodi claims in new legal docs — obtained by TMZ — while she was in the custody of Sheriff Joe … she was given a Tuberculosis shot with an infected needle, which gave her Hep C. She also claims her left silicone breast implant leaked and caused a fungal growth. Jodi alleges she was denied medical care. Jodi also claims Joe has put cameras in her cell and forces her to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning or else she won’t get fed. Now Nancy Grace … Jodi alleges Joe intercepted sexual letters between her and Travis’ cousin and leaked them to Nancy, who then blabbed about them on TV. Nancy claimed the 2 were getting hitched. Jodi — who filed the papers without the benefit of a lawyer — wants a restraining order against Nancy and Joe … prohibiting them from allegedly violating her privacy and hurting her ability to get a fair shake in the death penalty phase.’’

TMZ has been known to report false stories or announcing the death of a celebrity just for fun. Their record is laughable and because the host and owner Harvey Levin has studied law, some viewers still stick to his credentials to claim a story true. They are what I call ‘television plague’ and it is contagious.

ABC instead of jumping the gun about the Hepatitis C story, simply called sheriff Arpaio to ask him directly if the story had any merit. With his usual lack of grace, Joe stated that he had not heard about any of it but took the opportunity to attack Arias’character. He said that Arias is probably using the story to get more attention. He added “Nothing surprises me with her. She’s just angry with me because, No. 1, I stopped all the media from going to the jail to interview her.’’ He could not stick to saying that it is probably a hoax, he had to add insult to injury. Arias has fought to keep cameras away, closed her twitter account and has not talked to the press so what is his reasoning? She has not filed the documents but she is trying to get attention? It is another attempt at discrediting her.

You would think that Joe’s story would give them pause but instead, they divulged the content of the fake document.

William Pitts who is a reporter at @12 News in Phoenix posted the fake document on twitter and he was not the only one to do so. They knew from the start that it was fake because the document mentions the 4th avenue jail but Arias has always been lodged at Estrella. Her signature is different than the one on her birth certificate which was made public during trial. And the content simply tells you that it is a hoax because it is ridiculous and so far-fetched.

But none of these professionals took the time to think twice before publishing the document even if they knew it to be total hogwash. We do not have to ask why. It did spread like wildfire on the Internet and boosted the ratings of every station publishing it. I thought Easter was about the resurrection of the Lord but I was wrong; it was about the resurrection of Candy Crush.

Last Easter, the Pope was out washing the feet of inmates to show love and forgiveness. A very powerful message that fell on so many deaf ears and minds.

The media will tell you that it does not matter if they published it because if it is a hoax, there is no foul right?

Wrong. Because once a story is imprinted in the minds of readers, it is difficult to remove it. Especially if these same individuals are inclined to hate the subject. It is a proven fact. When they release wrongfully convicted inmates, some continue thinking they were guilty even with proof to the contrary. They were first told they were guilty so they are sticking to it.

Let us look at prime examples with Candy Crush. There is a former cellmate of Jodi named Cassandra Collins, but I call her Pom Pom lady because of the tasteful hair pieces she puts on her head before appearing on camera, and she was invited to give interviews about her infamous cellmate. She declared among other things, that Jodi wanted to have Juan killed and that she deserved the death penalty. She also said and I quote ‘’Jodi is out of her freaking mind.’’ “She’ll try to suffocate you with her version and her side. When I got released out, I was like thank you God I got delivered out of hell.”

The interesting point about this interview is that Pom Pom shared a cell for only a few months with Jodi and that her other long-term cellmate that had great things to say about her was never interviewed. The truth is that Collins was found by the court to be criminally incompetent to stand trial. It should give any reporter pause before taking her word, but Troy Hayden from Fox News decided to go ahead and he did warn the viewers by saying that Cassandra has had problems not unlike most inmates. What a crock.

The media manipulated this poor troubled soul craving for attention, into becoming a TV star. She felt for it hook, line, and sinker. Even if some viewers are savvy and realized that none of her statements could be taken seriously, many stuck to them as gospel. They now had more ammunition against Jodi Arias.

She was also invited on the Dr. Drew show who tried to portray her as normal while making her spew some more trash about Arias. He then discarded her after having accomplished his destructive mission; destroying Candy Crush at all turns.

He invited another winner on his show and this time, it was a neighbor of the Arias family in Yreka, California. This middle aged woman showed up dressed in her best Honey Boo Boo outfit and proceeded to have nothing to say about Jodi because in fact, she did not know her. She had moved next to the family when Arias was a teenager and had never talked to her. She ate at the restaurant where she was a waitress and said that she looked at her friend funny. At the very end, with a lot of coaxing and arm twisting from Drew and his acolytes, when asked if she was a liar, the guest finally answered yes. Bingo! Another person to confirm that she was a liar.

ABC interviewed a young man named Taylor Searle who was a friend of Travis Alexander and he confirmed that Travis read to him, the horrible abusive comments he had sent her shortly before the murder. This was used to inflame the viewers against Arias but instead, what I heard was a man asking Travis “Aren’t you afraid she’s going to hurt you after this? Isn’t it harsh?’’ His reaction was to think that anyone would want to hurt the sender after reading such harsh words. I think he made a solid point that flew under the radar because as usual, it was geared towards Travis the wonderful and not Jodi Arias being abused.

The fake documents that were circulating this weekend mentioned hepatitis C. This disease attacking the liver is rampant in American prisons where most prisoners do not receive treatment because of the high cost of the drugs. If it raised a debate about this curse it means that there was at least a positive aspect to this debacle. Not all people know about the privatization of the medical services in prisons and how the prison profiteers make billions and pay their CEO millions while neglecting the health of inmates. This should be at the forefront instead of hate and dismay.

Here is a mixed sample of comments that were all over the Web this saintly weekend about the documents supposedly filed by Jodi Arias and Christopher Alexander. Bear in mind that Jodi is supposedly sick and suffering from hepatitis C and an infected wound.

Can you believe this impudent bitch? Jesus, not only did that murderous psycho hoe cost us like 2 million dollars to pay for HER DEFENCE but she has the audacity to speak even after she was deservingly found guilty. What a kunt.

Hope her fake tits get gangrenous and puss starts to drip from her eyes and ears. Hope she phukking dies already. well, sounds like her breast rejected her also, maybe she should stab it 27 times, saw it off and then shoot it…….it is her method of operation to rejection…….. Jodi Arias — who was convicted last year of murdering her ex-BF Travis Alexander, is awaiting the death penalty…………WHY IS THIS MONSTER STILL ALIVE hahaha…….I wondered what she’d come up with next. hahahahaaha…. Histrionics.

Hard to believe her stories after all her antics and her lack of remorse or conscience.Trailer Trash extraordinaire

Stabby is a sociopath and just needs the “REAL” needle! Her troubles will be over then..bring it on!Ploy to appear mentally unstable. So obvious.

The best way to stop her Hep C would be to lock her in a room with Travis brother and a butcher knife. You can go for many years and not know you have Hep C. Can she prove how she got it? I don’t feel for her. A fungal growth? Evil oozing through her This POS has been screwing anything on two legs since she was 13 years old, how the hell would she know how she got anything?

Poor jodi months outta the spotlight and look at the crap she comes up with for attention. The only thing i want to hear about the skank is when she’s executed.

The only post I came across that was not as bad was this one.

As horrible as Jodi Arias is, Joe Arpaio is an absolute s***bag, as is Nancy Grace. I hope Jodi wins. Anything that damages either of them is a good thing.

In this case, go Jodi!

It is obvious that these people are not going to change their mind after finding out the documents were fake and it is demonstrating the lack of humanity and hatred that is circulating out there.

And this is what the media is feeding on….pure hate and violence.

Easter weekend turned out to be quite a carnage for the media. I wonder if these same people went to mass and prayed for world peace on Sunday and if they heard sermons about love thy neighbor. I must have missed the passage that says that thy neighbor must not make mistakes.

At least they witnessed a resurrection but it was that of Candy Crush. They want her dead by keeping her story alive. Am I the only one feeling crushed by this total lack of humanity?

by Darcia Helle

“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.” ~ Voltaire

If books and TV shows like the Rizzoli and Isles series are to be believed, then medical examiners are crime-fighting heroes who find all the answers hidden within the murder victim’s body, while also pretty much dictating the investigative process. The ladies also wear 5-inch Manolo Blahnik heels while performing autopsies and wandering through crime scenes. Today we’ll take a look at the history of autopsies, and learn whether medical examiners are as vital in solving murders as Maura Isles and her $800 shoes would like us to believe

The word autopsy comes from the Greek word autopsia, meaning “to see for oneself”. Around the 17th century, autopsy entered our language to describe the examination of the inside of a dead body in order to determine cause of death and/or to learn about various diseases. Before this, the practice was rare. Words like dissection and examination were used, as it was more about scientific experimentation and exploration.

While Egyptians from as far back as 3000 BC removed organs in the religious practice of mummification, they did not examine the organs or the body to find cause of death. In fact, early Egyptians believed outward disfigurement of a dead body prevented that person from entering the afterlife. Organs were removed through small slits, and the body was treated as sacred. Most of our earliest societies, right up through the Middle Ages, forbade dissection of human bodies on religious and/or legal grounds. Fortunately, a few rebels along the way provided a foundation for understanding anatomy, biology, disease and, eventually, how all of this could help solve a murder.

The first dissections of human bodies for the purpose of studying disease were performed by Herophilus, who lived from 335-280 BC. Herophilus was a physician in the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt, and lived during a period in early Greek history when human dissection was legally allowed. He is credited with making huge strides in explaining the workings of the human body and is often referred to as the “father of anatomy”.

Erasistratus, an Alexandrian physician practicing around 250 BC, used Herophilus’s work as a starting point for his own studies. He is credited as the first to determine that the heart pumped blood throughout the body. He described the heart valves and the difference between veins and arteries. Erasistratus also gave one of the first in-depth descriptions of the cerebrum and cerebellum. These contributions earned him the title of “father of physiology”.

All of this paved the way for the first autopsy ever to be performed on a murder victim for the purpose of determining cause of death. On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of Roman Senators calling themselves the Liberators. The planned assassination took place in Pompey’s Forum after a Senate meeting. Caesar’s servants eventually carried his body home, where the physician Antistius performed an autopsy. Antistius documented 23 stab wounds, perhaps assuming each wound had been inflicted by a different attacker. He determined the second wound, an upward-angled thrust just beneath Caesar’s left shoulder blade, most likely pierced the heart and caused Caesar’s death. Modern studies indicate Caesar would have bled to death regardless of the deciding wound. Historians also agree it would not be possible for 23 people to have attacked Caesar at once, estimating between 5 and 10 people were responsible for the 23 stab wounds. Regardless of any inaccuracies, Antistius’s autopsy report is the first documented autopsy in history.

Various cultures continued performing dissections off and on, though mainly for learning about disease and the inner workings of the human body. Legal prohibition against touching the dead, along with the Christian belief that dissection of humans was a sin, made for extremely slow progress. In 925 AD, England assembled committees naming the ‘Coroner System’ in order to identify causes of death. In 1100, Jerusalem mandated the inspection of all murder cases, to be accompanied by reports stating what had been done to the victims.

The first documented and detailed forensic autopsy report, in which cause of death was investigated for the purposes of laying blame to a killer, was made by Bartolomea de Variagianca in Bolonia (Italy) in the year 1302.

The 15th-century Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni performed 15 autopsies with the specific intent of determining cause of death.

In 1532 in Germany, the “Constitutio Criminalis Carolina” required the dissection of all corpses when imported medical evidence was introduced in court. This legality helped push forensic autopsies forward, eventually leading to the separate branch of forensic medicine.

In 1769, Giovanni Morgagni published the first intensive book on pathology, titled On the Seats and Causes of Diseases as Investigated by Anatomy. By comparing symptoms and observations of roughly 700 patients with the anatomical findings after autopsy, Morgagni moved medicine from the study of books to the study of patients.

By this time, the religion-related fear of cutting open a dead body had, for the most part, been pushed aside and legal restrictions had been lifted. The absence of superstitions gave science room to flourish. First came French anatomist Marie F.X. Bichat, who stressed the role of different generalized body systems and tissues in the study of disease. Karl von Rokitansky of Vienna followed closely behind, introducing pathological anatomy as a diagnostic tool.

German pathologist Rudolf Virchow’s work in the mid-to-late 1800s made perhaps the biggest impact on our modern use of forensic autopsy. Virchow established and published specific protocols for standardized autopsy procedures still used to this day. He introduced the cellular doctrine, stating that changes in cells are the basis of the understanding of disease. He was against the singular dominance of pathologic anatomy in autopsies, which is the study of the structure of diseased tissue. Virchow believed the future of pathology lay in physiologic pathology, or the study of the functioning of the organism in the investigation of disease.

This all laid the foundation for forensic autopsies and crime-fighting medical examiners like Maura Isles.

In the US, any sudden of unexplained death, particularly if murder is even remotely suspected, typically falls under the coroner’s jurisdiction. A coroner is an elected official and not necessarily a medical doctor. Ideally, the police and coroner go to the scene together and decide whether a forensic pathologist is needed before the body is moved.

A forensic pathologist, or medical examiner, is a specialized medical doctor. Unlike a clinical pathologist, who studies and diagnoses disease, a forensic pathologist specifically focuses on cause of death. In doing so, the forensic pathologist must establish and document all anomalies, lethal and nonlethal, in order to present clear and definitive evidence for or against homicide charges.

Autopsy procedures differ in much the same way as pathologists do. A hospital autopsy is performed in order to study the progression of a disease, confirm cause of death, or determine medical malpractice. This type of autopsy is relatively rare, with only about 5% of hospital deaths resulting in autopsy.

A forensic autopsy is performed only on suspected homicide victims and is far more detailed. Here, the medical examiner looks not only for disease, but also for signs of trauma, foreign objects such as bullets and glass fragments, and all other clues that might lead to, confirm, or exclude a suspect. The forensic autopsy report is a legal document and must stand up to scrutiny. These cases are often referred to as medicolegal, because the investigators’ evaluation of the crime scene and circumstances and the forensic pathologist’s findings hold equal weight, and the case is dependent upon both.

In all autopsies, but particularly with forensic autopsies, the medical examiner’s findings must be dictated to a stenographer or into a digital recorder as they are determined throughout the procedure. This is crucial in legal cases, as the transcript or actual recording often becomes evidence. So when you see Medical Examiner Maura Isles talking to Detective Jane Rizzoli during the “ah-ha” moment while performing an autopsy, that is a legal screw-up. Maura needs to be recording her findings, not randomly running in and out of the room sharing information with her cop friend.

A forensic pathologist must approach each autopsy without preconceptions or assumptions, and be open to any and all explanations for cause of death. The pathologist must also determine the chain of causation leading to death. For example, a woman is stabbed on a city street. In her frantic attempt to escape, she runs in front of a car, is struck, and dies. During autopsy, the pathologist will need to figure out whether the stab wound would have been fatal on its own, or whether the victim would have survived had she not run in front of the car.

All autopsy reports contain the following information:

• Diagnoses
• Toxicology
• Opinion
• Circumstances of Death
• Identification of the Decedent
• General Description of Clothing and Personal Effects
• Evidence of Medical Intervention
• External Evidence of Injury
• Internal Examination
• Samples Obtained – Evidence, Histology, Toxicology
• Microscopic Examination

Unlike Maura Isles, who runs down to homicide shouting “Eureka!”, and waving her findings around because she’s solved the murder, a typical medical examiner files his/her report and is finished with the case. The rest is up to the cops, whose actual job it is to catch killers.

Let’s take a look at TV versus reality:

On TV, Maura Isles goes along with Detective Jane Rizzoli to interrogate suspects and make arrests. In reality, that never happens. Medical examiners are not cops, nor do they behave like cops.

On TV, lab results are almost immediate. Maura Isles wants to know if a murder victim was drugged. She runs the toxicology tests herself and in no time the results magically appear right from her own lab. In reality, these results take an average of 3-4 weeks and are not run at the medical examiner’s office. Furthermore, medical examiners do not decide which tests to run but instead only collect DNA. The law enforcement agency then decides whether or not they want to run tests at the crime lab.

Have you ever watched a crime show or read a mystery novel in which the murder was solved based on the stomach contents of the victim? Maura Isles is such a pro at this that all she has to do is sniff the stomach contents, which, by the way, grosses out Jane Rizzoli. The reality is that any tests for stomach contents are completely unreliable and not generally used. Medical examiners test for undigested pills. They do not find out the victim’s last meal was squid that is only served on alternate Thursdays at one restaurant on the lower East Side of New York.

What about murder weapons? Is it possible for a medical examiner to break a murder case open by determining the weapon was a 7-inch serrated blade, 1/4-inch in thickness, which penetrated exactly 6 inches into the chest, thrust upward at a 75-degree angle by a left-handed villain? Sorry, but no. The medical examiner does his/her best to determine whether the blade used was blunt, sharp, single-edged, etc. But the medical examiner simply cannot accurately measure the depth of the stab wound, and would not determine the exact angle of the initial plunge of the blade.

The one major discrepancy that might surprise most people has to do with time of death. This is always the first demand detectives make of the medical examiner. “Give me a time of death.” And, of course, our fictional pathologists always have the answer. The reality is that medical examiners do not determine time of death. Instead, they record the time the victim was declared dead by the professionals on-scene, whether cops or paramedics.

The reality of a medical examiner’s job is not nearly as glamorous as fiction would have us believe. But, then, reality doesn’t make for good TV. The truth is that even “reality” TV shows are scripted.

I have to address one final flaw in our fictional crime-fighting, medical examiner heroine Maura Isles. While I appreciate her fashion sense, I cringe at the way she prances around her office in those 5-inch heels and designer dresses. First, it’s just absurd to consider a professional woman standing on her feet all day in those things. But, beyond that, the reality is that medical examiners wear uniforms and are fully covered, from the cute little paper hat to the little paper booties. And I just don’t think Manolo Blahnik makes those booties.

Please click to below to view Darcia’s Helle’s previous posts:

Don’t Crucify Me, Dude! Just Shoot Me Instead! Spartacus and Death by Crucifixion

To Burn or Not to Burn? Auto-Da-Fé Is Not Good for Women or Children!

The Disgraceful Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass: Keep the Narcs Out of Our Schools

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

“Don’t Behead Me, Dude!”: The Story of Beheading and the Invention of the Guillotine

Aileen Wuornos, America’s First High-Profile Female Serial Killer, Never Had a Chance

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

Al Capone Could Not Bribe the Rock: Alcatraz, Fortress of Doom

Cyberspace, Darknet, Murder-for-Hire and the Invisible Black Machine

Darcia Helle lives in a fictional world with a husband who is sometimes real. Their house is ruled by spoiled dogs and cats and the occasional dust bunny.

Suspense, random blood splatter and mismatched socks consume Darcia’s days. She writes because the characters trespassing through her mind leave her no alternative. Only then are the voices free to haunt someone else’s mind.

Join Darcia in her fictional world: www.QuietFuryBooks.com

The characters await you.

by Lise LaSalle

Recently, I had the pleasure of discovering an older movie called “Six Degrees of Separation”, a film adaptation of a play written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Guare. The story was inspired by real-life con artist David Hampton who impersonated Sidney Poitier’s son and managed to fool many people in upper crust circles.  In the movie, Stockard Channing was magnificent playing a socialite married to art dealer Donald Sutherland. Will Smith got jiggy with it and gave a super performance in the role of David Hampton. This movie is a real gem.

The title refers to a theory that all people on Earth are connected to one another by no more than six separate individuals. Not unlike the idea of  “it’s a small world.’’ The theory maintains that through a series of connections or steps, all people have the potential to know one another on a first name basis through mutual acquaintances.

Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy first proposed the theory in 1929 but had little to support it. In the 1960s, the Milgram’s Small World Experiment run by a researcher at Harvard University conducted various not entirely scientific experiments testing the truth of the theory. They asked initial participants to mail a letter to friends who would then mail it to their friends, then friends of friends, until it would reach a designated stranger in Massachusetts. Usually, the packets that reached the targeted recipients got there after five to six mailings.

Facebook, along with the University of Milan, organized a study in 2011.  They analyzed  information from 721 million active members. Researchers found that the average number of connections from one randomly selected person to another was 4.74.  And if you limit it to just the United States, it was just 4.37.

On Twitter, a network is created when users follow each other. According to a study by social media monitoring firm Sysomos, five or less steps separate almost all of Twitter’s 5 billion users.

Even Hollywood had its own version of Six Degrees of Separation with Kevin Bacon. The game “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” began in 1994 at Albright College in Pennsylvania, where three friends holed up in a room watching TV realized that Kevin Bacon was everywhere.

Google has incorporated the ‘’Sig Degrees of Kevin Bacon’’ in its search function. This game lets you connect any actor, living or dead, to Bacon.

Let’s try one more: say, Tom Cruise.

“A FEW GOOD MEN”

TOM CRUISE: (As Lt. Daniel Kaffee) “Colonel Jessup, did you order the code red?”

GREENE: “Oh, yes, that famous line from “A Few Good Men,” which also starred Kevin Bacon. They were side by side. So that gives Tom Cruise a Bacon number of one.”

The Six Degrees game can apply to anyone really so for a laugh, a friend and I decided to play the “Six Degrees of Separation of Nancy Grace.”  I find it scary to think that I could be separated from her by only six people or less, but it was worth a shot.

As she is not a famous actor, but a television crime ‘fighter’ and mommy dearest of twins, I had to find people connections related to her life.

In order to be able to connect the dots, we needed a little biography on our girl Nancy. And it had to be a real one, as she has a knack for twisting the truth.

As she says in her TV promo: “I like to investigate.’’ So do we, Nancy, so do we!

She was born in Georgia and even after the death of her supposed fiance, she studied law at New York University and found her way to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Atlanta where she served as Special Prosecutor. Her aggressive approach led her to be hired as a TV co-host with Johnny Cochran and on Court TV and finally HLN.

She was accused of prosecutorial misconduct several times in her career and sued a few times while on CNN because of her outrageous lies and slander of people involved in the crime stories she reported on. She is a huge liability but the producers prefer paying up and keeping their sacred cow until the milk stops flowing. Viewers are attracted to her like honey to the bee when she spews her hatred. It is quite a spectacle to see her go after Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, the Duke Lacrosse players or anyone her heart desires as long as she can shred them to pieces. TV host and funny man Jon Stewart has made some laugh out loud videos about her exploits.

According to Nancy, in 1980, her fiance Keith Griffin, was shot five times in the head and the back by a 24 year old stranger and thug who stole $35 from his wallet.  Police tracked the killer and he denied involvement. At trial, again according to Nancy, she testified and waited for three days for deliberations to end.  The DA asked her if she wanted the death penalty and she said no. The verdict was guilty – life in prison – and appeals ensued. She describes her suffering and her subsequent rise to the status of bulldog prosecutor and anchor on Court TV and HLN as crusader for victim’s rights and professional vilifier.

Great story but most of it turned out to be false; she claims she was engaged to Keith Griffin who was murdered and the man who killed him is serving a life sentence. Her engagement, however, was ‘secret’ so we will never know if she was really supposed to marry this lucky guy.

In fact, Griffin was shot by a former co-worker whose name was Tommy McCoy and he was only 19 and had no prior convictions.  He confessed to the crime the evening he was arrested. The jury convicted him in a matter of hours, not days. Prosecutors asked for the death penalty but didn’t get it, because the young man was mildly retarded.  Nancy was never consulted and McCoy never filed an appeal; he filed a writ of habeas five years ago, and it was rejected. Nancy also misreported the date of the incident – it was 1979, not 1980 — and Griffin was 23, not 25.

Nancy talks incessantly about her fiance’s murder and knowing what we know, it makes you wonder if she is living in the same dimension as the rest of us. She also talks about her twins all the time and we know they exist because she waves their pictures on her show and they were on display during her stint on “Dancing with the Stars.”

With all this in mind, we had to find Six Degrees to Nancy.”

Here is what I came up with and it was way too easy:

I follow Mark Geragos on twitter and he recently wrote a book in which he calls her one of the “blond angry women” he has had to deal with. And it’s not a compliment. So I went on my account and wrote to Geragos that after reading his book, I thought it was true that angry blondes had more fun. He replied gregariously that it was very true. As he had been on her show many times, I had my connection. So it was a win!

There was only one degree between us.

But that was too easy because on Twitter, you can be connected to anyone. I then decided to try through my people channel.

It turned out to be more difficult.

I did not know anyone in Georgia or on CNN and I could not channel her dead fiance and the twins are off limits.

But I thought of my ex who was a lawyer and had gone to the Playboy Mansion.

Nancy would never have been invited to the Mansion or God help us to pose in the Magazine but she was a guest of Larry King who had Hugh Hefner on his show several times. Bingo! It was only 3 degrees of separation.

I was actually amazed at how easy it was. And it makes you go through your whole Rolodex of names and acquaintances.

But my friend had to find her Six Degrees to Nancy Grace and not through my connections.

She had a cousin who was a cop and he went on a trip to Florida while Cayle Anthony was missing. He met and talked to a volunteer who knew another volunteer who knew Tim Miller from EquuSearch who happened to be on the Nancy Grace show.

She was 4 people away from Nancy.

So believe it or not, we all have Six Degrees of Separation to Nancy!

End of the game or was it? As amusing as it was, I found it too simple for my taste until I realized that there were other degrees of separation that connected Nancy Grace to a truly critical part of the legal process: jury selection.

It so happens that during voir dire for Casey Anthony’s jury selection, the lawyers decided to ask the potential jurors if they watched the Nancy Grace show. They were quizzed about it. Did they watch it? How often? What did they think about the show? So if a juror was a regular viewer of her show and lapped it up, you could pretty well determine that they were pro-prosecution and out the door they went.

The defense had hired famous jury consultant Richard Gabriel for this case and his choice of jurors turned out to be a total success because they won an acquittal. Gabriel wanted ‘’jurors who were strong enough to ask the hard questions and resist the public’s demand for a conviction unless they felt the prosecution had proved their case.’’ The win was not because of Jose Baez who frankly, was lacking in experience, but because of the carefully picked citizens that were sitting in the jury box. In fact, the only juror that faced the cameras to give an interview after the verdict, declared that there was no place on the air for shows like Nancy Grace. Proof is in the verdict!  The 6 degrees of Separation of NG became a tool to weed out the jurors leaning towards conviction.

The legal game of degrees of separation of Nancy has picked up more steam. During the George Zimmerman voir dire, defense attorney Mark O’Mara asked the jurors if they watched the Nancy Grace show which led to another win for the defense!

During the trial of Dr. Martin MacNeill, the game was not played during voir dire, but the degrees of separation came in handy during the cross examination of prosecution witness, forensic pathologist Dr. Joshua Perper. This sober medical examiner was called to debunk the defense theory that the victim died of heart problems. Perper’s theory was that the victim had drowned after ingesting too many drugs and  implied that it was with the ‘help’ of her husband who was on trial for her murder. But the defense decided to play six degrees with the doctor. ‘’Weren’t you on the Nancy Grace show to discuss the case?’’ He actually had been and his testimony on the stand contradicted what he had said when questioned by Nancy. He also admitted that the cause of death was undetermined so it did not bring a victory to the defense but it definitely rattled the prosecution to once again have used Nancy as a potential defense ‘tool’. This time, the jury was already picked so the game was less successful. So it seems to work its magic best during voir dire but who knows? The sky is the limit with such a valuable tool to measure people’s gullibility vis-a-vis HLN.

So any degree of separation with Miss Disgrace could mean you have a chance to win your case. Who knew that this fake justice seeker would one day be used to really fight crime? Every time someone is associated with her, no matter to what degree, they are immediately identified as trouble and the case has a better chance to be solved with less bias. Maybe it is poetic justice after all.

If you are not sure about any legal question, find the six degrees of separation of Nancy Grace. This game is a winner and I am thinking of asking Google to incorporate it in its search engine.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The word sexist is a dirty word and I would rather be called many other pejorative terms rather than it. Of course, as an American male who flailed through early childhood in the 1950s and came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, there is little doubt that somewhere in my compromised soul I carry a bit of the sexist, not a lot, I trust, but I’m certain there is some there.

Why do I bring this up? Very simple. A story that comes to us out of Iran got me thinking about sexism in general and the fact that like most human foibles, it tends to be relative in nature.

In 2007, Reyhaneh Jabbari, an Iranian interior designer was reportedly lured to the flat of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, an Iranian intelligence agent, under the guise that he wanted to hire her to help him re-design his apartment.

Maryam Namazie writes:

Reyhaneh Jabbari is now 26 years old and has been in Tehran’s dreaded Evin prison since 2007.

In July 2007 she was alone inside a coffee shop and was speaking on her phone about architecture and design. Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a physician and a former employee of the feared Iranian Intelligence Services, overheard the conversation, approached her and asked for her expertise in order to renovate his office. The afternoon of 7th of July 2007, Morteza made an appointment with Reyhaneh for business purposes.

Reportedly, Morteza stopped his car at a pharmacy on the way to the appointment. It was later discovered he bought condoms. Then they went into the apartment and Morteza closed the door. Morteza approached her and demanded to have sex with her; he had already made some drinks for her. Forensics analysis found that the drink he intended to serve to Rayhaneh contained sleeping aids and sedatives. Reyhaneh did not allow him to rape her, therefore he asked her several times to have sex with him but Reyhaneh resisted. During this time she felt threatened and scared.

Fearing imminent rape, she took a knife out of her bag and stabbed Morteza at the back of his right shoulder. Morteza died due to heavy bleeding.

An interrogator went to the apartment and made a report. At that time Reyhaneh clearly stated to the investigator that she was innocent, that she had met Morteza a week earlier, and that said she killed him only in self defence.

 “The evening I was there, I knew that he wanted to rape me, so because of self defence I stabbed him and escaped,” she said.

At Ms. Jabbari’s trial, despite the fact she pleaded self-defense, she was convicted of murdering the intelligence agent and sentenced to death by hanging.

Her date with doom is rapidly approaching and according to her lawyer, the hanging is likely to be carried out within the next few weeks.

As we’ve all heard ad nauseum, every culture is different. Iran happens to have a peculiar law, which is imbued with a peculiar type of compassion, that is probably foreign to most Americans. In Iran’s Islamic-based legal system, the families of victims have the right to grant clemency in capital punishment sentences should they so desire.

In fact, it was reported in the media that just a few days ago in Iran, a young man convicted of murder escaped the hangman’s noose when the victim’s mother intervened, slapping him in the face and declaring forgiveness.

According to the UN, more than 170 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2014 and if Ms. Jabbari does not receive clemency, she will become just another number added to the already long and grisly list.

In Ms. Jabbari’s case, Agent Sarbandi’s son Jalal has stated that he is offering her the option of avoiding the gallows but only under certain circumstances that if followed, would exonerate his father of the sexual assault/rape charges. Here is what Jalal demands in return for clemency:

 ”Only when her true intentions are exposed and she tells the truth about her accomplice and what really went down will we be prepared to grant mercy.”  

Jalal insists that Ms. Jabbari, who is now 26 years of age, conceded at some point in the proceedings that a third party, a man, was present in the apartment where his father was stabbed to death, “but she refuses to reveal his identity”.

Thus, it appears that Jalal may be insisting that Ms. Jabbari must confess that she and her accomplice went to Agent Sarbandi’s flat with the intention of attacking and killing him, if she wants to avoid the gallows.

Demian McElroy of The Telegraph writes:

Jabbari’s case has triggered domestic and international condemnation.

Iranian actors and other prominent figures have launched an appeal against her execution.

The United Nations and several international rights groups say Jabbari’s confession was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors.

According to Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s human rights Iranian watchdog, Ms. Jabbari’s trial was deeply flawed and he believes that she acted in self-defense.

“The Iranian authorities should review her case and refer it back to court for a re-trial, ensuring the defendant’s right to due process which is guaranteed under both Iranian law and international law,” said Shaheed.

Shaheed quoted “reliable sources” as saying that the victim, Sarbandi, had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office, but then took her to an apartment where he sexually abused her, which apparently led to her stabbing him which resulted in his death.

Jalal Sarbandi, however, is having none of it. He insists that his father’s “murder” was premeditated, and insists that Jabbari confessed to having bought a knife two days earlier.

Jalal also claims that Ms. Jabbari “sent a text message to her boyfriend saying she would kill him (Agent Sarbandi)”.

Shaheed has stated that Jabbari only stabbed Sarbandi in the shoulder and had called for an ambulance before fleeing the scene.

*     *     *     *     *

As most alert readers will have noted, there are troubling holes in this story. First and foremost, what happens if Ms. Jabbari goes along with Jalal’s program and confesses to having planned to murder Agent Sarbandi with the help of an accomplice? If she does confess, won’t she then be condemning herself to life in prison (she has already been incarcerated since 2007)?

Or will she once again be a “free” woman based on clemency being granted by Jalal? These are questions I would like to see answered.

And, of course, if Ms. Jabbari refuses to change her story, and if international and local pressure does not result in a re-trial, she will apparently be hanged within a few weeks. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In the case of Jalal, this appears to be about family honor plain and simple. He wants his father exonerated of the rape accusation. The son must have at least an iota of conscience or he would not have offered to commute the death sentence in the event Ms. Jabbari changes her story.

*     *     *     *     *

So although I confess to carrying some taint of the sexist, however slight, I think I can accurately say that although it is clearly a character flaw, it does not begin to compare to the level and degree of sexism that poor Ms. Jabbari, and presumably other Iranian women, face on a daily basis. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if anyone has more knowledge of this case, I would appreciate them checking in and enlightening us.

by BJW Nashe

SerialKillersInk.net recently came out with their new Serial Killer Trivia Game. You can purchase it online at their web site. You can also purchase arts and crafts and mementos from an entire menagerie of convicted murderers. Same thing with web sites such as Supernaught.com and MurderAuction.com. Manson is a big attraction, of course. Plenty of his handicrafts are for sale. You can also find items pertaining to criminals such as Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. This is now a growing industry catering to folks who, for various reasons, enjoy collecting anything remotely associated with notorious criminals. No matter how much the self-proclaimed “defenders of public decency” try to shut it down, this market for “true crime collectibles,” or “murderabilia,” keeps on thriving.

Perhaps the infamous “killer clown” John Wayne Gacy, and his “artwork,” is where it all started. Gacy’s amateur paintings now fetch hefty prices of several thousand dollars apiece on the murderabilia market. While Gacy was living out his final days in jail prior to his execution, a Baton Rouge mortician named Rick Staton became his exclusive art dealer. Staton went on to become one of the top collectors of murderabilia in America. Some well known buyers of murderabilia include painter Joe Coleman, musicians Lux Interior and Poison Ivy from The Cramps, and shock-rock performer Marilyn Manson. The Son Of Sam Law does not allow killers to profit from their crimes (i.e. from movies or books), but murderabilia has flourished on the Internet (despite being forbidden on eBay), and new laws have been difficult to pass, due to obvious first amendment concerns. Sales and purchases of these alternately morbid and ridiculous items is likely to continue.

Some of the loudest critics of murderabilia inadvertently have only served to draw more attention to this whole weird brand of commerce. John Walsh from the TV show “America’s Most Wanted,” and Andy Kahan, a former parole officer in Texas who now runs the mayor’s crime victims’ office in Houston, have both condemned murderabilia as a “sick and disgusting business.” What better marketing could you hope for, if you are an entrepreneur operating way out on the cultural fringe?

One can easily understand how murder victims’ families might be upset about their loved ones’ killers being glorified by the murderabilia market. Sometimes, however, it seems that they just want a sizeable piece of the action. They are less likely to be upset if the majority of the proceeds ends up in their pockets. When the U.S. government auctioned off a small fortune worth of junk that belonged to Unabomber Ted Kaczinski, there were no cries of outrage, because all of the money went to the victims’ families. Likewise, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison before a deal could be finalized regarding book and movie rights — once again with all money going to the families of the victims — those families were apparently dismayed that they would be missing out on some good hard cash. And who can blame them, really? But doesn’t that implicate these families in the whole murderabilia racket? In an excellent article for the Media/Culture Journal in November 2004, David Schmid analyzes this quandary at some length:

“…When Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison in 1994, the families of his victims were delighted but his death also presented them with something of a problem. Throughout the short time Dahmer was in prison, there had been persistent rumors that he was in negotiations with both publishers and movie studios about selling his story. If such a deal had ever been struck, legal restrictions would have prevented Dahmer from receiving any of the money; instead, it would have been distributed among his victims’ families. Dahmer’s murder obviously ended this possibility, so the families explored another option: going into the murderabilia business by auctioning off Dahmer’s property, including such banal items as his toothbrush, but also many items he had used in commission of the murders, such as a saw, a hammer, the 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies, and the refrigerator where he stored the hearts of his victims. Although the families’ motives for suggesting this auction may have been noble, they could not avoid participating in what Mark Pizzato has described as “the prior fetishization of such props and the consumption of [Dahmer’s] cannibal drama by a mass audience.” When the logic of consumerism dominates, is anyone truly innocent, or are there just varying degrees of guilt, of implication?”

None of the artwork or handicrafts or tools or vats or refrigerators associated with the criminally insane has any special value in and of itself. They are only “collectible” because of the horrible crimes with which they are tainted. They have some spooky aura about them, I suppose, like primitive idols or sacrificial altars. But they are basically nothing more than trash, when you get right down to it. The flotsam and jetsam of society, randomly assembled. At the online stores, you can view terrible paintings and drawings, cheap jewelry, crummy knicknacks, illegibly signed documents and postcards, used candy wrappers, even nail clippings and skin scrapings. It’s all on sale. Items that cost more than $50 or so can be accompanied by a “certificate of authenticity.” It’s rather surprising just how banal so many of the items are. Imagine the frenzy that would ensue if a pair of Jodi Arias’s panties appeared on this market.

In the end, these “collectibles” strike me as being no more interesting than the criminally insane individuals they are linked to. Which is not all that terribly interesting. Others may have a different opinion. But I think just about everyone would agree that, regardless of ethics and values, and no matter how “sick and disgusting” it may appear, the murderabilia market’s continued success is a fascinating phenomenon. The way in which these items are obsessively sought after and advertised and collected is intriguing on many different levels. The culture of murderabilia seems to serve as a kind of bizarre parody of American capitalism and commodity fetishism in general. It raises all sorts of questions regarding the value we assign to things, and the type of things we use as identification markers for ourselves and our communities. No doubt, the murderabilia market forces us to confront the horribly important role played by murder in the history of our society.

Anyone want to buy a Christmas card from the Son of Sam?

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We’ve all heard of hoof-and-mouth disease, an infectious and often fatal virus that decimates herds of cattle and other cloven-footed animals. Well now, Cliven Bundy, the embattled Nevada “use the Government’s land for free guy” appears to have come down with foot-in-the-mouth disease. In an interview with the New York Times, the Nevada rancher whom some Republicans and tea party activists have rallied around as he fights federal government efforts to restrict the land his cattle can graze on, suggests that African Americans might be better off as slaves, given their current situation.

In the course of his remarks, Bundy referred to African Americans as “the Negro”. Here are Bundy’s remarks verbatim as they are reported in the national media.

From Adam Nagourney at the Washington Post:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

“They put their young men in jail because they never learned how to pick cotton.” What the hell! I knew this guy was a moron, not so much because he’s “working hard” to continue to graze his cattle “for free” but because he is prone to saying truly ridiculous stuff. I didn’t expect anything quite this bad, however.

Naturally, many of Bundy’s former supporters are fleeing like rats on a sinking ship:

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a forner supporter, quickly distanced himself. A Heller spokeswoman told the Times that the senator “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.” Good for Sen. Heller. At least he knows which way the wind is blowing…

At 9:59 a.m. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has also been supportive of Bundy’s cause. chimed in with: “His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him.”

Yeah people! Climb on the bandwagon and climb back off as soon as the moron you’ve been supporting puts his foot in his mouth. And I thought I was prone (I am prone) to saying stupid stuff now and then. If I want to get better at being a moron all I have to do is listen to Massa Bundy, this peculiar and perhaps morally debilitated excuse for an American.

Please click here to view Robert Emmett Murphy Jr’s Previous Cliven Bundy post:

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

by Pamela Stewart

There is a theory that has been posited on the Internet for over a decade called Caesar’s Last Breath. The Fermi question sets out to prove that everyone on earth has inhaled a molecule of air from Julius Caesar’s last breath. Apparently this concept can be applied to any other person – good or evil.

I don’t understand math, but dozens of websites claim to prove this theory. If it is true, it means all of us have also breathed in a molecule of air that came from that dark and bitter place that is Karla Homolka, or her ex-husband, Paul Bernardo.

Your body is probably full of molecules that were touched by evil, but that also means that your soul has been touched by the atomic clusters that were a part of the victims. Maybe that is why we are so interested in the people who commit these horrible acts. And yet, when we have the misfortune of being in much closer contact with someone like Karla, or Paul Bernardo, our radar doesn’t go off.

Perhaps it’s because we have dumbed down the instincts all animals have to recognize a predator. It could also be that many of us are too trusting, or we don’t look for what is lurking behind those blank eyes. Karla and Paul seemed like your average suburban couple. They don’t appear to be people who would contribute anything of value for those of us who like stimulating discussions. That is one reason why they were able to do what they did. We ignored them because they were boring.

A former colleague of mine used to be a teller at a Royal Bank in Scarborough. When the police sketch of the Scarborough Rapist was released to the media, she called police and told them that it looked like her regular customer – Paul Bernardo. Here is a copy of the police report:

METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

Date of this Report

27 Jun 1990 1300

Info from: Ms M… Royal Bank, Ellesmere Road & Neilson Road

The above party called S/Insp. J. Wolfe at the S.A.S. office and gave the following info.

One Paul BERNARDO 21 Sir Raymond Drive West Hill DOB 27 Aug 64 is a dead ringer for the photo in the papers of the Scarb. Rapist.

The caller also reports that he had not been seen at the Bank since the last rape until June 27/90. When seen on June 27/90 he had changed his hair style, the caller also reported that this party was a student at the Scarbor. Campus of the U. of T. and that he looks about 21/2 yrs. old.

P.C. Buchanan #1897

That woman provided information that could have prevented the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. Like many tips the police get in a busy active investigation, it wasn’t followed up. An investigation review report by Justice Archie Campbell outlined the inadequacies in the case management that led to this tip being overlooked:

The various police agencies, scattered through the different investigations, had more than enough information to make Bernardo a first rate suspect if all the information was put together systematically in a form that was recognizable and accessible to the investigators. But there was no such system in place and Bernardo continued to slip through the police net. Together in one place and followed up, (the McNiff report, the Royal Bank Tip, the Madden report, the stalking incidents, the Haney tip, the I.L. tip) and the lack of common computerized case management computer software to ensure that separate investigations into the same suspect can share information effectively (c.f. the ineffective communication between Metro and GRT in May of 1992 about the status of the Toronto investigation), and the lack of a unified command structure to co–ordinate parallel investigations into the same suspect.

A close friend of mine knows someone who dated Karla for about six months when they were teenagers. She asked him if he noticed anything strange about her. He said she seemed like a normal girl. They just kind of drifted apart. Teenage boys aren’t really known for being intuitive, but I wonder if the animals she held at the veterinarian’s office she worked at recognized the darkness in her.

My friend also knows someone who was a neighbor of the Mahaffy family. He told her about the destruction of that family caused by their pain. Their lives have been ruined by the guilt they have to live with for locking their 15-year-old daughter out of the house the night she was kidnapped by the evil duo.

Another friend of mine told me about a woman he knows who worked on the case and it destroyed her career. She was never the same after she viewed the evidence, but how could you be?

I met Kristen’s mother, Donna French, when I was a volunteer with a Toronto area Rape Crisis Centre. She gave a speech at one of our events. There hadn’t been a long passage of time since the death of her daughter.

It was heartbreaking looking into the eyes of this woman and wondering how anyone could survive something so horrific. I remember that Donna was a very warm and compassionate woman. Even though the event took place outside, when she spoke it was as if all extraneous sound ceased. The birds stopped singing, the sound of cars passing by was muted. The only voice that could be heard was Donna’s and that was as it should be. We were all crying, but Donna French had probably cried herself out of a lifetime of tears. She was comforting us! Like many people who have lost someone to a senseless act, Donna turned her sorrow into something positive. I don’t know how that is possible.

In her victim impact statement at Bernardo’s sentencing, Donna said this:

“Only a parent who has lost a child through an act of violence could possibly understand the pain. It’s as though the hand of evil has reached in and ripped away a part of your heart and you’re left with this huge, gaping hole that throbs, and aches, and refuses to heal.”

Karla Homolka AKA Leanne or Emily Bordelais helped kill three children. Now she has three of her own. Those children have her DNA. If the theory I mentioned at the beginning of this article is true, the spirit and physical molecules of Kristen and Leslie and Tammy inform their souls. We often want someone to pay for their crimes by suffering the same fate as their victims. For her children’s sake, I hope Homolka never has to experience the kind of pain she caused to others.

Click here for Pamela Stewart’s previous posts:

Dellen Millard: He’ll Be Flying Solo to the Big House

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.

by Darcia Helle

Humans have a long history of finding new and unique ways to kill each other, and the death penalty offers the perfect outlet for the more creative voyeurs among us. We want our vengeance, but we don’t want to look as if we’re enjoying it too much. With this in mind, our civilized American society continually seeks convenient and, we tell ourselves, painless ways to put our prisoners to death. Wanting them to die is acceptable; reveling in their torment is not. This is how the electric chair came to be one of America’s more infamous inventions.

Let’s go back to the year 1880, when capital punishment was a popular solution to violent crime all across the U.S. That year, 96 people were put to death and all but two were hanged. As incomprehensible as it might seem to us now, at that time in our history hangings were still occasionally public events. And, contrary to popular belief, hangings typically were not quick deaths. Depending on the skill, and perhaps the mood, of the hangman, the condemned prisoner could sway on the end of that rope for as long as 30 minutes before finally succumbing to asphyxiation. Occasionally, an overzealous hangman decapitated the prisoner with the noose. Some people found this all a bit unsettling and wanted an easier, more appealing way to kill people.

By the way, the two prisoners in 1880 who were not hanged were instead killed by firing squad, which was probably slightly more pleasant.

Now let’s move ahead to Buffalo, New York in the year 1881. On July 31, The Brush Electric Company installed arc lamps as streetlights, which were roughly 200 times more powerful than the typical filament lamps of that period. This was a major event. Everyone wanted to see how this new technology worked, and so visitors flocked to the building where the system was kept to see the coal-fired, steam-powered alternating current dynamos generating the voltage required to power these new lights.

One week later, on August 7, Lemuel (or Samuel or Edward, depending on the source) Smith went out drinking with some friends. That evening, he visited the electric company’s building to see how it all worked. He wanted to touch one of the poles and get a little thrill from the energy jolt. Police escorted him out of the building, but that didn’t deter Mr. Smith. He hid in the darkness and, after the police had left, he raced back inside. He placed a hand on one pole but felt nothing. So he placed his other hand on the second pole. The subsequent thrill he received was probably a little more than he’d bargained for.

The next day, newspapers reported Smith’s death as “painless”, noting that he was the first person to be killed by a dynamo. Joseph Fowler, the official Buffalo coroner, performed the autopsy. He reported that, had he not known the circumstances of Smith’s death, he would not have been able to tell how the man died. Outwardly, he appeared fine. Only after peeling away Smith’s skin did Fowler notice faint lines of darker cells following the path the electrical current took through his body.

The story of Smith’s strange death quickly spread. Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist and former steamboat engineer, read the story with intense fascination. Southwick was an advocate of the death penalty, and immediately wondered if this quick and painless death with electricity could replace the less efficient method of hanging. He rigged his own primitive contraption to mimic the electric company’s setup and went on to experiment on stray dogs. He did this for a few years, perfecting a method he believed to be the perfect, painless execution.

Convinced by his own experiments, Southwick brought his idea to his friend, State Senator David McMillian, who then relayed the information to Governor David B. Hill. In turn, Hill requested that state legislature investigate the use of “modern day” electricity as a more humane method of execution to replace hanging.

At about this time, Thomas Edison was establishing himself as the giant in DC (direct current) electrical service. George Westinghouse was right on Edison’s heels with his own invention of AC (alternating current) electricity. The two competing electric company giants unwittingly helped pave the way for the electric chair.

In 1886, New York Legislature enacted Chapter 352 of the Laws of 1886, entitled “An act to authorize the appointment of a commission to investigate and report to the legislature the most humane and approved method of carrying into effect the sentence of death in capital cases.”

The Death Penalty Commission was soon formed. The three members were Elbridge T. Gerry, who was the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Matthew Hale, who was a judge from Albany, and, of course, Albert Southwick. Elbridge Gerry was appointed chair, and the men got right down to work. They began with a detailed analysis of execution methods including options such as burning at the stake, impalement, the gallows, and the guillotine. The Commission also sent questionnaires to prominent judges, asking their opinions on the death penalty and the various options. Southwick ensured this questionnaire was heavily slanted toward electricity as the preferred method of execution.

Meanwhile, Southwick was intent on continuing his experimentation in order to prove he was right about electricity. In the summer of 1887, he made an arrangement with the city of Buffalo and the SPCA, allowing him to conduct further experiments on dogs. At the time, the city handled unwanted dogs by drowning them. The SPCA was concerned about overcrowding in the city pounds, which compelled them to allow Southwick and his assistant George Fell, another Buffalo physician, to test their “dog killing cage” on stray dogs. Southwick kept careful records of his experiments for scientific papers.

Elbridge Gerry did not initially support electricity as a method of execution. He favored an overdose of morphine given by injection with the new hypodermic needle. Physicians, however, did not support Gerry’s preference for two reasons. First, they were concerned regular patients would develop added fear of these new needles because of the association with death. Second, physicians expressed concern that participating in executions would be a violation of their Hippocratic Oath.

Southwick, intent on pushing forward his dream of death by electricity, worried Gerry would ultimately reject his recommendations and set out to recruit help. On November 8, 1887, he sent a letter to Thomas Edison requesting the esteemed inventor’s opinion on details such as the strength of current required to ensure a quick and painless death. Southwick did not realize that Edison was a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. One month later, Southwick received a disappointing reply. Edison declined the request, stating that he did not believe the law had the right to kill.

Southwick was not to be deterred. He immediately replied, telling Edison that capital punishment always had and always would be used, and therefore it was best for them to determine a civilized and humane method of execution. Southwick went on to assure Edison that his opinions would greatly influence the Gerry Commission.

During this time, Edison and Westinghouse continued to battle over their different methods of supplying electricity, each wanting to prove theirs was the best and the safest. Edison’s follow-up reply to Southwick either reflected a change of heart or a calculated business play. He informed Southwick that he still preferred a world without capital punishment but, after careful consideration, he understood the merits of a more humane method of execution. He went on to recommend electricity as his method of choice, emphasizing that Westinghouses’s AC dynamo was the best option.

Albert Southwick’s ploy with Thomas Edison worked. The correspondence and Edison’s subsequent recommendation swayed Elbridge Gerry over to his side. Gerry relented and, on January 17, 1888 after two years of study, the Commission submitted The Gerry Report, a 95-page report recommending that New York State become the first place in the world to kill criminals with electricity.

The following spring, Charles T. Saxton, the chairman of the Assembly’s judiciary committee and a friend of Southwick’s, introduced the bill recommending that death by electricity become law. Two contentious parts of this bill threatened to stop it in its tracks. First, the bill called for a gag order on the press at all executions. The second, and at the time biggest, issue was the order of expeditious disposal of the condemned inmate’s remains. The inmate would be buried in the prison yard, without religious rites, and covered with quicklime in order to speed up decomposition. This issue was hotly debated by the Catholic Church, though it was a fight they ultimately lost. The Electrical Execution Act was passed on June 5, 1888, removing executions from the public eye, and launching the veil of secrecy still currently surrounding US executions. The law would officially go into effect on January 1, 1889.

The day after the Electrical Execution Act passed, June 6, 1888, a relatively unknown, self-educated inventor called Harold P. Brown wrote a scorching editorial letter to the New York Post. He described the death of a boy who’d touched an exposed telegraph wire running on AC current, chastising Westinghouse for supporting a “damnable” system that brought stockholder dividends at the expense of public safety. Brown recommended limiting AC transmissions to a reasonable 300 volts, despite knowing that would negate the economic advantage of AC electricity.

Thomas Edison, in the meantime, continued campaigning heavily for the use of Westinghouse’s AC current electric chair, in the hopes that consumers would not want the same type of electrical current used in their homes. Upon seeing Brown’s editorial piece, he immediately hired the inventor to do research at his New Jersey lab.

Several well-known electricians poked holes in Brown’s theories. Brown accused the electricians of being on the side of the wealthy and powerful, namely Westinghouse, and decided to stage a public experiment. On July 30, 1888, Brown invited 75 electricians to Columbia College of Mines, where he led a 76-pound Newfoundland dog onto the stage to be killed with electricity. The dog was large but friendly, which apparently disturbed some of the onlookers, so Brown assured them the dog had an aggressive nature and had already bitten two people. The dog, named Dash, was led into a metal cage, muzzled, and tied down while electric cuffs were tightened around two of his legs.

Brown first wanted to show the comparable safety of direct current. He sent 300 volts of DC electricity through Dash, provoking a sudden yelp followed by whimpers. Next Brown amped up the voltage to 400 and jolted Dash once again. The dog struggled desperately as he howled in pain. Brown set the charge up to 700 volts. This time, Dash tore through his muzzle, broke the straps on his legs, and nearly escaped the cage. Despite protests from the crowd, which was angered by the brutality displayed, Brown secured the dog back in the cage and zapped him with another 1,000 volts of direct current. At this point, Dash was barely clinging to life and in obvious agony.

According to a New York Times article from that day, Brown attempted to placate his audience, telling them that Dash “will have less trouble when we try the alternating current. It will make him feel better.” Brown then switched to AC, sending 330 volts through Dash and finally killing him. Brown’s audience gasped at the stench of burning fur and flesh. Brown, though, was just getting started. He was about to continue on with more dogs when the superintendent of the SPCA mercifully intervened, putting an end to Brown’s horrific display, at least for the day.

In the fall of 1888, while on Edison’s payroll, Dr. Fred Peterson was appointed head of the Medic-Legal Society’s committee and tasked with carrying out further research on the best design and current for the electric chair. Over the next few months, Peterson electrocuted two dozen dogs.

On December 5, 1888, Harold Brown and Dr. Peterson electrocuted two calves and a 1,230-pound horse. The New York Times article covering the event ends with the following prediction: “…alternating current will undoubtedly drive the hangmen out of business in this state.”

On December 12, Peterson submitted his report to the New York Medico-Legal Society, recommending the AC-powered electric chair over the DC option.

The following day, December 13, Westinghouse wrote an editorial for the New York Times, accusing the inventor Harold Brown of acting “in the interest in and pay of the Edison Light Company.” He was so infuriated by the decision to use his AC power source for the electric chair that he refused to sell any AC generators to prison authorities.

In March 1889, Harold Brown met with Austin Lathrop, the superintendent of New York prisons, in order to arrange the purchase of three Westinghouse AC generators. Westinghouse still refused to sell to prisons, but Brown easily worked around that by disguising the real purchaser’s identity. Now they had the law and the generators. All they needed was the actual chair and a condemned prisoner to sit in it. They didn’t have to wait long for either.

In Buffalo, New York, on March 19, 1889, William Kemmler murdered Matilda Ziegler, his lover, with an axe. In May, he was sentenced to death for his crime. His lawyer immediately filed appeals, arguing that electrocution was “cruel and unusual punishment”. Edison and Brown both testified for the state, ensuring that this form of execution was quick and painless, while doing their best to gloss over the problem areas such as varying tolerances to electricity and the unpredictable results. Brown held his ground and put on a good show. The state of New York won the first and both subsequent appeals.

In the meantime, Edwin R. Davis, an Auburn Prison electrician, built the first electric chair to be used in a prison. That first chair closely resembles the more modern version familiar to most people. It was fitted with two electrodes composed of metal disks held together with rubber, and covered with a damp sponge. These electrodes were attached to the condemned prisoner’s head and back. William Kemmler was to become the first prisoner executed on the new electric chair. Much to Westinghouse’s dismay, for many years being put to death this way was referred to as being “Westinghoused”.

On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler made history at Auburn Prison in Buffalo, New York. A group of doctors and reporters gathered anxiously to watch the historic event. Kemmler was strapped into the electric chair and jolted with 1,300 volts of electricity for 17 seconds. Just as the group was about to celebrate their success, someone yelled, “Oh my God! He’s breathing!” The warden immediately ordered the current to be restarted. A full two minutes passed while they waited for the charge to reach the full 2,000 volts of electricity. All the while Kemmler’s chest continued to heave as he gasped for breath, frothed at the mouth, and moaned. Finally, Kemmler was given another 70 seconds of electricity. Hw thrashed and convulsed in the chair, as the electrodes seared his head and arms and the room filled with the acrid smell of burning flesh. His body began to smolder, then caught fire. Some witnesses fainted, while others fled from the room in desperation to escape. In the end, the state-sanctioned “humane” murder turned into several minutes of torture. The autopsy later revealed the electrode that had been attached to Kemmler’s back had burned all the way through to his spine.

We have a tragedy or a success, depending on whose opinion you listened to from that time:

George Fell, the assistant to the executioner: “The man never suffered a bit of pain!”

Alfred P. Southwick: “Not a cry from the subject. Not a sound. [He] died without knowing anything about it.”

The New York Herald: “Strong men fainted and fell like logs on the floor.”

The New York Times: “…an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging.”

New Jersey’s Camden Chronicle: “the world is horrified. … The electricity was turned on three times before the man was killed. The breath heaved; the nails cut into the flesh; the flesh sizzled and smoked, and was burned into a crisp; the clothing caught on fire, and one of the witnesses fainted.”

George Westinghouse: “They would have done better with an axe.”

State commissioner on humane executions: “…the grandest success of the age.”

While critics demanded the return of the gallows, New York steadfastly supported its electric chair. The state soon executed two more inmates, both without incident. The fourth inmate was not so fortunate. William Taylor was strapped to the chair on July 27, 1893. With the first jolt of electricity, his legs shot upward with such force that the ankle straps tore free. He remained very much alive. The executioner attempted a second jolt but the generator in the powerhouse had blown and there was no electricity. Taylor was removed from the chair and placed on a cot, where he was kept alive with chloroform and morphine. In one of our government’s unfailing absurdities, officials wanted to ensure Taylor remained alive long enough to be put to death on the chair. One hour and nine minutes after being partially fried, Taylor was strapped back into the chair and properly killed.

These setbacks didn’t deter other states from joining in the fun of electrocution. Ohio brought in the electric chair in 1896. Massachusetts followed, then New Jersey, Virginia, and in 1910, North Carolina joined the fray. Soon afterward, 26 states employed the electric chair as the execution method of choice.

Despite the volume of activity the electric chair saw over the years, all the kinks hadn’t been worked out of the design. In 1903, Fred Van Wormer was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison and pronounced dead immediately afterward. His body was brought to the autopsy room, where he promptly began breathing again. The executioner had already gone home, thinking his job was done. He was called back to the prison to re-electrocute Van Wormer. By the time he arrived, the inmate had died – again. But he had not died on the chair, so his corpse was strapped back in and the executioner zapped him with 1700 volts for 30 seconds. Fred Van Wormer now holds the distinction of being the first, and probably only, dead man to be executed.

You might think design flaws were worked out as we entered the 20th century, making the electric chair the more humane execution method it was meant to be. Dozens of condemned inmates would vehemently disagree, if they were able to come back and share their opinions. More than seven decades later, in 1963, New York banned the electric chair, siting the execution method once touted as humane, to be “cruel and unusual punishment”.

Other states have been more stubborn in their conviction of electricity as the perfect means of death. Here’s a brief look at some of our more recent botched executions:

April 22, 1983: John Evans was executed in the state of Alabama. After the first jolt of electricity, sparks and flames erupted from the electrode attached to Evans’ leg. The electrode broke away from the strap and caught fire. Smoke poured out from beneath the hood covering Evans’ head. Two physicians were ushered into the death chamber and found Evans’ heart still beating. The electrode was reattached to Evans’ leg, and he was given a second jot. Thicker smoke surrounded Evans, and the smell of burning flesh filled the room. Doctors were again asked to check for a heartbeat, and again they found Evans still alive. Evans’ lawyer’s pleas for a reprieve were ignored. The third jolt left Evans’ body smoldering, but he was finally dead. The execution took a full 14 minutes and was anything but humane.

May 4, 1990: Jesse Joseph Tafero was executed by electric chair in Florida. Three separate jolts of electricity were needed to finally stop Tafero’s breathing, during which time six-inch flames erupted from his head. State officials regretted the botched execution, stating it was caused by “inadvertent human error” because a synthetic sponge had been substituted for the natural sponge they normally used.

March 25, 1997: Pedro Medina was executed in Florida. During the first two-minute cycle of 2,000 volts of electricity, a crown of 12-inch-high flames shot from the metal headpiece Medina wore. The death chamber filled with thick smoke and the stench of burning flesh, gagging the two dozen witnesses. An official flipped the switch to manually cut off the power before the end of the first cycle. Medina’s chest continued to heave as he struggled to breathe. Finally the flames died out, along with Medina. Prison officials blamed the fire on a corroded copper screen in the headpiece of the electric chair. Two experts later hired by the governor disagreed, concluding the fire was actually caused by the improper application of a sponge to Medina’s head.

July 8, 1999: Allen Lee Davis was executed in Florida. Davis was a large man of approximately 350 pounds, and would not fit in the prison’s electric chair. A new chair was built to accommodate larger inmates, and Davis was to be the first to give it a test ride. Before he was finally pronounced dead, blood poured from his mouth, onto the collar of his white shirt. More blood seeped through his chest, spreading to the size of a dinner plate and oozing through the buckle holes on the leather strap holding him to the chair. Photos of his bloody body cooking in the chair were leaked to media and on the Internet, causing public outrage.

Shortly after Davis’s botched execution, another Florida death row inmate challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair. Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw stated that, “the color photos of Davis depicts a man who – for all appearances – was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida.” Justice Shaw went on to describe the botched executions of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina, calling them “barbaric spectacles” and “acts more befitting violent murder than a civilized state.”

Justice Shaw’s outrage has yet to extend to Florida voters, as the state is one of eight that still lists the electric chair as an optional method of execution. The other states are: Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Virginia.

Please click to below to view Darcia’s Helle’s previous posts:

Autopsies: Truth, Fiction and Maura Isles and Her 5-Inch-Heels

Don’t Crucify Me, Dude! Just Shoot Me Instead! Spartacus and Death by Crucifixion

To Burn or Not to Burn? Auto-Da-Fé Is Not Good for Women or Children!

The Disgraceful Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass: Keep the Narcs Out of Our Schools

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

“Don’t Behead Me, Dude!”: The Story of Beheading and the Invention of the Guillotine

Aileen Wuornos, America’s First High-Profile Female Serial Killer, Never Had a Chance

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

Al Capone Could Not Bribe the Rock: Alcatraz, Fortress of Doom

Cyberspace, Darknet, Murder-for-Hire and the Invisible Black Machine

Darcia Helle lives in a fictional world with a husband who is sometimes real. Their house is ruled by spoiled dogs and cats and the occasional dust bunny.

Suspense, random blood splatter and mismatched socks consume Darcia’s days. She writes because the characters trespassing through her mind leave her no alternative. Only then are the voices free to haunt someone else’s mind.

Join Darcia in her fictional world: www.QuietFuryBooks.com

The characters await you.

The Nightstalker was cold, colder and coldest. He was also not unintelligent, a fact which tends to get lost in the hyperbole he loved to unleash. Richard Ramirez is the stuff nightmares are made of. Here are eight of his most awful quotes courtesy of Angelfire.com.

“It’s nothing you’d understand, but I do have something to say. In fact, I have a lot to say, but now is not the time or place. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time or breath. But what the hell? As for what is said of my life, there have been lies in the past and there will be lies in the future. I don’t believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society. I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, hater, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards–truly trematodes of the Earth, each one in his own legal profession. You maggots make me sick– hypocrites one and all. And no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world, which kill in the name of God and country or for whatever reason they deem appropriate. I don’t need to hear all of society’s rationalizations, I’ve heard them all before and the fact remains that what is, is. You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil, Legions of the night–night breed–repeat not the errors of the Night Prowler and show no mercy. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all. That’s it” –Richard Ramirez’s statement before he received sentencing at his trial.

“I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place, and then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood.”

“Even psychopaths have emotions. Then again, maybe not.”

“Serial killers do, on a small scale, what governments do on a large one. They are products of our times and these are bloodthirsty times.”

“Killing is killing whether done for duty, profit,or fun.”

“I gave up love and happiness a long time ago.”

“There’s blood behind the Night Stalker.”

“No big deal death always comes with the territory I’ll see you in Disneyland.”

by Starks Shrink

Luka Magnotta, dubbed by the media as the “cannibal killer”, is a Canadian who stands accused of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Montreal Concordia University student, Jun Lin. He is also accused of mailing the body parts of his victim to members of the Canadian parliament in Ottawa and two schools in Vancouver — charges to which he has pleaded not guilty. In addition, he is charged with distributing obscene material for a video posted on an Edmonton website called “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick”, which depicts parts of his gruesome deed in graphic detail. His trial is expected to begin in September of 2014.

Luka Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Kirk Newman in Scarborough, Ontario. He is the oldest of three children. Little is known about his childhood save for reports that it was dysfunctional. We do know, however that he lived with his grandparents after his parents’ divorce and went to high school from 1998 to 2000. Classmates and teachers recall him as vain and prone to telling preposterous stories, mostly to nurture his own grandiosity. While all this is hearsay, it is supported by Luka’s own words, which are amply posted on the Internet. I believe that at some point, his deceit became his reality, and that he put immense pressure on himself to maintain his self-image.

We know unequivocally that in 2000 he was treated as an outpatient and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.  As many do, he struggled to accept his diagnosis and only took his medication sporadically.  He also had the bad habit of missing his doctor’s appointments and was hospitalized at least twice in 2003. For someone who had confabulated his whole life and believed himself to be superior intellectually and was undoubtedly an attractive physical specimen, this must have been a terrible blow because of the stigma associated with schizophrenia which many still believe to be a personal flaw.

At one point in 2011, he joined a support forum on Psych Central, which allows users to pose questions and answer other participants’ questions. A member posted that he hated his mother and Luka responded, using one of his known online pseudonyms, Vladamir Romanov. Luka described in detail his childhood travails and the abuse he suffered, none of which can be verified, of course. There were several paragraphs in which he describes having been held in a hospital ward against his will because he had been the victim of rape. He goes on to claim that he had been held for several days because his mother refused to give the doctors permission to release him, despite the lavish vacations and expensive gifts he had bestowed upon her even after the abuse.  He claims that this event transpired in 2010, when he would have been 28 years old, and would not have needed parental consent to be released, had he indeed been in a hospital trauma ward. I believe he is reliving his rage about having been held in an inpatient psychiatric ward at some earlier point, and even years later, his fury and hatred are clearly evident. His words reveal a juvenile’s tendency toward prevarication, putting him and his mother at extreme ends of the spectrum with Luka portrayed as the ever-generous son while his mother is cruel and callous. At the age of 28, he is still displaying a childlike social perception. These are traits that seem to be consistent throughout his life.

From 2000 onward, Luka’s life tool on a whole new direction.  In 2002, he went to work as a male stripper, using pseudonyms such as Rocco, Luka and Jimmy, though at this point his legal name was still Eric Newman. According to news sources, he had a transgender girlfriend during this time, who claims to have broken off the relationship because Luka was, in her words, “a pathological liar”.  It’s interesting to note that Luka is purported to have had several transgender girlfriends but also openly identifies himself as gay. The rumor surrounding Luka’s career is likely just that –rumor generated by Luka himself.  His claims of having been a porn star and model may have some basis in reality but probably more a toehold than a foothold.

For some, being a gay porn star may not be the height of aspiration, but Luka needed to be seen as a pinnacle of success in his chosen field and must have found it frustrating when the only roles he could land were mere bit parts in low-budget pornographic films. Maintaining the illusion of being a rising star and paying for cosmetic enhancements doesn’t come cheaply, and in 2005, Luka was charged with a myriad of fraud offenses. It seems that Luka had befriended a woman, who while legally of age 21, had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. He persuaded her to obtain credit cards and racked up $10,000 worth of fraudulent debt. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of fraud and impersonation. The judge, however, gave Luka leniency based upon a letter from his psychiatrist, which indicated that Luka was schizophrenic but would have a decent prognosis if he was compliant with his medication and treatment schedule. He was given nine months of community service and a year’s probation. This incident displays Luka’s striking lack of concern for the welfare of others as long as they serve his needs, which at the time were financial. The Crown had also intended to charge him with sexually assaulting and videotaping the same woman but for unknown reasons withdrew the charges.

Over the next couple of years, Luka would work as a paid escort and continue to seek out and play bit roles in gay pornography both in print and on film. During this time, he legally changed his name to Luka Magnotta, a final desperate bid to rid himself of the Eric of his youth who was so vastly inferior to the Luka of his present and future. He also made several stabs at starring in reality TV shows, and one audition tape provides some firsthand insight into who Luka really is. The audition video is for a reality show about cosmetic surgery. In it, Luka admits to having had a number of procedures, including a cosmetic rhinoplasty and hair implants. What this tells us is that he is speaking about his insecurities concerning his appearance as he constantly compares himself with others in his chosen field. He indicates that he had always been good-looking but that at the ripe old age of 25, his looks were fading and he was ‘looking kind of ugly’. He goes on to add that looks are the number one priority for him, with intelligence coming a distant second, although he believes he possesses both of these qualities in abundance.  Some of what he relates in the video is intended to persuade the casting agents to select him for their program but his mask slips and we see glimpses of who he really is. In an effort to shock his audience with what he will tolerate in the name of physical perfection, he relates in quite graphic detail what occurs when he gets his hair transplants. Interviews with friends and family also confirm that as a youth, he was obsessed with his physical appearance, so this, at least, is not a performance. He was ultimately rejected for the program as was so often the case. That of course did not stop him from claiming online that he was a reality star.

By this point, Luka was busily creating the image of who he wanted to be through online personalities. He created upwards of 100 separate online accounts and over 20 websites, all dedicated to his favorite topic — Luka Magnotta.  Many of these personalities feature photos of Luka or promoted fan pages and blog accounts about Luka. He seemed to be seeking attention in whatever way he could. He went so far as to create online rumors romantically linking himself with Karla Homolka, and then used other sock puppets to dispute the rumor in order to stimulate discussion. When that didn’t result in sufficient attention to satiate his ever-growing appetite, he went to the headquarters of the Toronto Sun to dispute the online rumors, though the paper hadn’t published the alleged link. Though Magnotta railed against online ‘haters’ and wrote pages about the evils of cyberstalking on one of his websites, he planted the rumors himself and in fact, stalked himself more than others did. Magnotta definitely went by the old saw that no publicity is bad publicity.

By 2009, estranged from his family and lonely and broke (he’d filed for bankruptcy two years earlier, citing an unnamed illness and medical bills), he set out to find someone to hustle. He found his perfect victim in a traveling companion who was in was his 70s, and does not wish to be identified. They traveled to Europe with his old “friend” footing the bill and ultimately toured Russia, which made quite an impression upon Luka. After that, he would frequently claim to be Russian, posting photos from the trip in which he sports a jacket emblazoned with that country’s name. He would even post on Russian social media sites. Vladimir Romanov, as well as other Russian-sounding personalities, were born. He even used a fake Russian accent in another attempt to seem more exotic than he really was. His traveling companion must have fed his need for adoration and attention because by 2010, Luka would resort to radical and sadistic ways to increase his online following.

The kitten videos are notorious among animal rights groups and web-sleuthing groups. Most people equate animal cruelty with features of sociopathy, but typically sociopaths exhibit these tendencies in their youth, not at nearly 30. Luka was reveling in actions that generated attention through sheer shock value. He initially posted a video (not of his own making) on his Facebook account entitled “3 guys 1 hammer” in which the actual murder of a man in the Ukraine is shown – a veritable snuff video. He apparently enjoyed the negative attention so much that he moved on to experiment further with his own sadistic videos. In December of 2010, he posted a video entitled “1 boy 2 kittens”, in which a ‘boy’ (Luka in a hoodie) is shown killing two kittens by placing them in a vacuum sealed bag and asphyxiating them by attaching a vacuum hose. He then displays the dead kittens on a shelf inside a refrigerator. The video is emblematic of his sadism and contained elements that would eventually link him to murder of Jun Lin. In posting it, once again Luka clearly displays his affinity for notoriety; he had to know that this video would spark outrage, but perhaps he underestimated the intelligence and vigilance of others who also avail themselves of the internet.

The video ignited a firestorm amongst several groups, public and private, who fight against animal cruelty, most notably, a group calling themselves Animal Beta Project (ABP). Although the video was removed within hours of being posted, the fuse had been lit. These self-styled online investigators inspected the video frame by frame, analyzing every element contained therein in an effort to identify the ‘vacuum kitten killer’. They spent thousands of hours in research and discussion identifying tiny details, such as where a blanket shown in the video was manufactured and sold. For a time, the attention had Magnotta spooked; he had never anticipated the power of crowdsourcing an investigation. He became more and more paranoid when there was a reward offered for his capture, and even contacted an attorney. But his craving for the limelight ultimately ran roughshod over his instinct for self-preservation, and he infiltrated the sleuthing groups with some of his own fake Facebook personalities, alternately defending himself and hinting at clues that would lead the sleuths closer to his true identity. It is believed that when the group was unable to identify him, Luka, via a fake personality, posted a message from a puppet account, giving the group his name. It seemed that his rants about cyberstalking would soon come home to roost.

After a year of playing cat and mouse, Luka decided it was time for a taunting encore, and posted two more videos in which he found ways to torture and kill kittens in even more gruesome ways. Throughout this time, Magnotta slipped quietly between Toronto, New York and London, perhaps using falsified passports, because by this time, there were police files on him in Ontario, based upon the insistence of the ABP activists. But even this amount of attention wasn’t enough for Luka, not nearly enough. Despite videos posted by ABP that named many of Magnotta’s aliases and revealed his photos as well as proof that he was behind the kitten videos, they gained little online attention. Luka craved much more.

In the weeks before the May 25th murder of Jun Lin, Magnotta took to message boards once again in the guise of many of his online personalities to promote a snuff video that did not yet exist. He characterized himself as a dangerous psychopathic serial killer, but was it confession or another attempt at notoriety?  But, on May 25, 2012, a video was posted that was to make the kitten videos look like child’s play. The video, “1 lunatic 1 icepick”  was posted to the bestgore website, was indescribably graphic and would eventually lead authorities to the body of Jun Lin, or at least to pieces of his body. The internet kitten-killer hunters, ABP, immediately connected the video to Luka Magnotta. They alerted police that they believed Magnotta to be in Montreal but were dismissed as being a group of armchair internet detectives with no real evidence.  Four days after the murder, a janitor in Montreal found the torso of Jun Lin in a suitcase behind Luka’s tiny disheveled apartment. But Magnotta had evaporated the very day of the murder. Shortly thereafter, severed body parts began to arrive at political offices and schools all across Canada and the Interpol search was on. He was apprehended ten days later on June 4th in an internet cafe in Berlin when he famously uttered the words, “You got me”.

This is the timeline and description of Magnotta’s apparent actions, but what does it tell us about Luka, the man, or should that be Luka, the boy? We know that Luka has schizophrenia; it was diagnosed and documented and he was known to eschew his medications which would have tended to keep his illness in check. Schizophrenia, in his case, was characterized by positive symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and paranoia, but schizophrenia is also characterized by negative symptoms such as flat affect and poor cognition. We do know that in the last years of his freedom, he did most of his living online and his life was mostly that of a recluse. When someone with schizophrenia is experiencing a relapse, isolation is a common warning sign. But what about him traveling the world in his imagination and posting his adventures online, with the help of photoshop, for the world to admire? Could his enormous need for attention be traced to his schizophrenia? Some clients affected by schizophrenia experience delusions of grandeur, often seeing themselves as Gods among men. Luka certainly felt that he was superior to most, as evidenced by his taunting games with those who pursued him.

However, studies show that criminals who suffer from schizophrenia are far more likely to have comorbid antisocial personality disorder, which could explain the inordinate percentage of the prison population who have schizophrenia. Studies show that there is a high rate of deficient affective experience which is “a personality style indexed by lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions”. While this often accompanies substance abuse, there is no indication, other than Luka’s own descriptions of his nonexistent party life, that he consistently indulged himself in drugs or alcohol.  His online search for attention resembles that of a small child seeking attention from his parents, at first mugging, performing and trying to obtain positive attention, and then when ignored, the behavior intensifies to acting out with accompanying tantrums until the desired attention is received. It is the attention that is the goal and whether the attention is positive or negative is secondary.

While much of Magnotta’s information is sealed from the press and public since he has not yet come to trial, we can still draw inferences from what he has presented to us. There are posts attributed to Magnotta in the months before the murder in which he describes himself as having a paraphilia — specifically necrophilia. It is obvious from the body of the text that Luka had been exploring legal and psychological documentation and was prepared to argue that the morality contained therein was arbitrary. He posted similarly about cannibalism. What was his aim? Was he seeking to understand the increasingly disturbing images in his own mind, generated by a psychotic episode? Or was he seeking for ways to create a world in which, through shock, fear and awe,he could finally be seen as a giant?

The videos themselves hold clues. In the kitten videos, he acts very loving toward the two kittens, even nuzzling them before carefully placing them in the bag in which they would be asphyxiated. He then photographs the dead kittens inside an empty refrigerator. The movements are calm and deliberate, without a sense of urgency, and appear to be done to both enrage and entertain the viewer. The icepick video contains clues as well. The actual murder is not recorded; we see a man bound to a bed, with his head covered, who is clearly alive, though his struggles are lethargic at best. The video is then edited to show the man untied and clearly already dead, with his throat slit. The ensuing indignities are carried out in a passionless way, I believe to show the viewers just how heartless he is capable of being. After dismembering the body, he goes on to remove a section of tissue using a fork and knife, presumably to bear out his online description of his own cannibalism, though he doesn’t show that on video. Perhaps he didn’t want to show his face or perhaps, as he had in the past, he was trying project a shocking version of himself that wasn’t grounded in reality. The same is true of his masturbation with the severed arm. It seems as though it was intended more for the viewer than for his own fulfillment.  He also included images of body parts in an otherwise empty refrigerator, which ultimately linked the murder video to the kitten video, thereby establishing his identity. Did he create the link purposely? And if so was he seeking to taunt ABP members again? It’s doubtful that he was crying out to be caught. Some surmise that he was imitating the murders in the film version of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho based on the music he chose to use as a soundtrack. It’s not a great leap to presume that the main character in the movie would be someone that Luka would aspire to emulate, in fact his obsession with his looks and perceived ‘cool factor” were of paramount importance to him as were they to the character portrayed by Christian Bale in the movie.

He appears to be lucid while brutalizing Jun Lin’s corpse, and indeed, he took the time to stop and move the camera angles, reposition the body, take close ups of severed parts and edit the video. Given the time frames, he appears to have uploaded the video while sitting amidst the gore he had created. He then calmly packaged up the remains, disposed of the torso and mailed off the remainder of the body parts on his way to the airport while fleeing the crime scene. Typically, such organized thoughts and actions are not seen in a person in the throes of a psychotic break. Studies on mutilation of the victim’s body are sparse as it is a relatively rare phenomenon, and Magnotta’s actions don’t fit clearly into the usual classifications of this type of behavior. However, studies (such as they are) have discovered incidents of mutilation as being higher in offenders with schizophrenia  than the rest of the population, but have been unable to connect these incidents to a particular psychopathy. Furthermore, in Magnotta’s case, none of the known reasons for mutilation exist other than a frail, and probably unpersuasive, connection to schizophrenia.

We will never definitively discern Luka’s state of mind was during the actual murder unless this peculiar individual divulges it, and even then, reality and his version of the truth are often separated by a large chasm.  It is unlikely that Luka Magnotta will ever walk among us as a free man again. His online torrents about the nature of the crime before it occurred prove premeditation. His seemingly calm and deliberate actions in the murder video belie any defense that he was unable to appreciate his actions or stop them. Finally, mailing the body parts seem more like a misguided attempt at gaining infamy than the actions of a man who was legally insane. And if this is not enough to secure a conviction to Murder One, when he fled the country with assorted falsified documents, he demonstrated that he had the clarity of mind to make choices, which of course, were consistently the wrong ones.

It is a tragedy for Jun Lin and his family that throughout the course of Magnotta’s interaction with Canadian Mental Health services, his comorbid sociopathy was never noted which meant a parallel and appropriate course of mental health treatment was never initiated. Schizophrenia did not make Luka Magnotta a murderer but sociopathy almost certainly did.

Please click here to view The Starks Shrink’s Previous Posts:

The Disturbing Truth about Mothers Who Murder Their Children

Teleka Patrick Needed a Psychiatrist, Not a Pastor!

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

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

by Geo Ack

This incredibly moving post is by an All Things Crime Blog reader. It originally appeared as a comment on our post entitled “10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers”. We thank the author, Geo Ack, for his permission for us to post this insightful meditation.

I always wondered why I never became a serial killer. Then I realized that even though I was subjected to all the abuses and isolations and fantasies, my fears were much stronger. I turned my anger inwards and took it out on myself rather than anyone else because my fear of reprisals from my abusers were stronger than my need to unleash my rage on someone/something else. They had effectively turned me into a mouse, too afraid to show any type of emotion, forced to keep it all inside. Every time I acted out, usually in anger, I was punished in some sick, sad way. I was a loner, no friends. Just not an acceptable person. I was poor, so not dressed well, or even properly for the weather. I would often run and hide downtown in the small gaps between the buildings, where no one could get to me, even if they should happen to notice me. As time passed I learned I could be accepted, in a way, by using drugs and alcohol. The only way I could feel accepted by anyone was through sex. Rejection was terrifying. I was very lost.

I have stopped those harmful things and am beginning to grow up with the help of my psychiatrist. But, the idea that I really was close to becoming someone who took their rage out on others and could have become a serial rapist/killer is clear to me. I am really glad I did not. I am also very glad and proud that I did not pass these horrors on to my two kids. They got all the love and attention, GOOD attention they needed and have grown into very good people.

So, while I do have much more to say, I will just thank you very much for this article. It does explain some of the unseen nuances that can turn a person one way or another. Thank you………………Peace….Geo Ack

Please click here to view our post “10 Most Common Traits of Potential Serial Killers”:

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It’s times like this that make all the hard work that goes into All Things Crime Blog particularly gratifying. We welcome any and all contributions by readers concerning their battles to overcome familial crime, abuse and mistreatment.

by Nicholas Frank

What do you think of when you hear about a kid who is in a gang?  Do you think Irredeemable Criminal?  Drug Dealer?  Violent Thug?  How about Loser? Or Predator?  Whatever thoughts come to mind, I’ll bet “Love” is not among them. Whenever I hear of a kid who is in a gang, Love is definitely among my thoughts.  You see I am a little closer to the subject of kids in gangs than most people.  For a few years, starting when he was around sixteen years old, our second oldest son was a member of an offshoot of the Crips that had set up shop in our town, far away from that group’s urban origins.  We hated the choice he made, but we never stopped loving our boy. Love was of no use, however, in preventing his descent as we lost him to the gang’s criminal world.  When he was seventeen he participated in a botched robbery attempt.  Fortunately, not a single person was harmed.  Nevertheless, he was tried and sentenced as an adult to thirty-two years followed by two consecutive life terms – in other words, for the rest of his life.  And, the love that failed to prevent his descent into a criminal world proved equally useless when it came to persuading the judge to find kindness in his heart and to give our son a chance at redemption. So, another thing I think when I hear that a kid is in a gang is, “Poor kid, they are going to bury you.” When you love someone, you are stuck on the ride with him wherever it goes.  My heart followed our son into prison, but my mind went in search of answers:

1. What makes a boy turn his back on his family and join a gang, something that is essentially a repudiation of everything his parents represent?
2. Why would a “justice” system bury a confused boy who did not hurt anyone behind concrete and steel for the rest of his life?

To understand how a young boy comes to be a gang member, it is useful to understand some things about gangs.  For example, you might not be aware that youth gangs have been a constant part of society virtually since man began to gather in cities.  From at least as far back as early 14th century London there are reports of gangs with names like the Mims, the Hectors, the Bugles and Dead Boys.  Similar reports come from every era since, including today. 

 What’s more, the characteristics of street gangs are remarkably consistent through the centuries.  They are predominantly youth oriented, engaging in high profile criminal behavior, with distinct and displayed group identities, and are identified by geographic boundaries (turf) that they claim, tag and fight over.  A person could be excused for confusing the 14^th century Mims with the 21^st century Crips, Bloods or Fresno Bulldogs, for that matter, if he were reading a basic description of each gang’s behavior and organization without knowing which one he was reading about. 

In a way, the phenomenon of youth gangs is amazing.  They have outlasted the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, American and European enslavement of African people, the Spanish Armada and the Spanish Inquisition, the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, Apartheid, the First, Second and Third Reichs, the USSR, the Cultural Revolution, and the list goes on.  All historical attempts to eradicate them have failed, including those being pursued today.  If survival and reproduction are measures of evolutionary validity, youth gangs are a valid socio-evolutionary adaptation that is more robust than almost any other form of social organization. 

Of course, that begs the question, “Adaptation to what?” 

By and large, the theories about gang formation and why kids join them circle around a couple of central themes.  On a macro-social level, youth gangs have consistently formed through the ages as alternatives for disenfranchised populations that are essentially blocked from opportunities for success in obtaining money, status, power, etc. in a society’s dominant, socially legitimate systems.  In our modern world, the illegal drug trade has brought gangs into communities that had no previous history with them.  What’s more, gangs have been erroneously romanticized and delivered into all American homes by the media.  Representations of gang members and gang life in song and film have presented them as an attractive, apparently viable option for a much wider group of troubled kids than ever before.  On the individual level of why kids join gangs, it is most often because their bonds or ties to family, school and other social/cultural institutions are weak or broken, as those institutions fail them.  They seek an alternative to the world that let them down or that appears to have no place for them. 

 In the case of our son, we certainly failed him as we went through an 8-year custody war that permanently rent the fabric of every element of family.  School districts failed in a myriad of ways, not the least of which was to kick him to the curb as part of the idiocy of Zero Tolerance policies for kids who are struggling with drugs.  Other institutions such as the medical profession, probation department, family court, law enforcement and more were no better.  No wonder he looked outside of our world for a place.  Regardless of how much we loved him and how much our actions and reactions came from that love, everything we did seemed to exacerbate his problems.  In the end, the adults in his life helped to accelerate what might have been ordinary adolescent defiance into extreme anger, disillusionment, depression, drug abuse, delinquency, gang membership and ultimately life in prison. 

There is another fundamental characteristic of youth gangs that I did not mention above.  Unless something profound happens to them, most gang members grow up and leave the gangs and their criminal life.  That is a fact that is not generally known.  In fact, it is precisely what happened to my son, even though he is down for life in prison.

Gangs are predominantly a youth oriented phenomenon.  Just as it is with all other forms of juvenile delinquency, as young people pass through adolescence to acquire adult minds and sensibilities, the needs that gang life appeared to fulfill diminish, not to mention the mature individual sees the inherently insufficient ability of their gang to meet those needs anyway.  Only the true criminals, many of who would have been criminals in any case, continue to use their gangs to exploit the next generation of disillusioned, confused and temporarily hopeless kids.

And that brings me to why a “justice” system would bury a confused boy who did not hurt anyone behind concrete and steel for the rest of his life.  The problem starts with a “justice and corrections system” that directs little to no resources and therefore gives no value to rehabilitation or redemption.  Without rehabilitation (i.e., correction through the replacement of damaging behavior with productive behavior) as an ultimate goal, punishment serves no purpose beyond the intentional infliction of harm on offenders.  The necessarily unsatisfactory result of a corrections system that includes no rehabilitation – no correction – is a system of ever harsher and ever more permanent punishment.  What we have now is a system of condemnation and ruination.  Its most obvious symptoms are bloated, overcrowded prisons and a recidivism rate that is the one of the worst in the developed world. 

This hateful approach has driven its condemnation/ruination campaign into the treatment of juvenile offenders by trying them as adults more often and by sentencing them far more harshly than ever before.  The result has been to destroy kids’ lives before they even finish developing.  My son’s devastating sentence is just one example.  Rather than acknowledge what the experts in the fields of psychology, sociology, criminology, etc. have known and have proven for years, that adolescents are in a transitory stage of life that often includes temporary forays into delinquent and criminal behavior, and that the overwhelming majority of them will grow out of such behavior if given the chance, those that run our “justice” system too often choose to inflict the most permanently damaging punishment as possible on our errant youth.  In other words, they prefer to condemn them before they even have the chance to become.  That is the kind of “profound” thing that can turn a kid who would otherwise have outgrown his gang into a permanent gangster.

So, here I am trying to reintroduce to as many people as possible and to our “justice” system, the positive power of forgiveness, rehabilitation, love and ultimately redemption for my son and the millions of others who were slammed and who are being slammed into devastating prison sentences for their offenses committed when they were youngsters, gang members or not. 

I would love to read your thoughts on the subject.

Nick Frank  

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Should you bring a son into this world, and should you be a lady, and should there not a clear and present father in your son’s life, and should you decide to relocate with your female lover from the great state of Pennsylvania to the equally great state of Georgia, and should you be concerned about how best to discipline your 6-year-son who has behavioral issues and is a bit of a handful, and if you are a wise and sage woman, which you undoubtedly are (most of the time), you will make sure that when you make the long trek South, that you don’t leave your instruments of child discipline behind you in the Keystone state, but rather bring them with you to your new home in Georgia.

In this case, the instruments of discipline, which when utilized get your son extremely upset, thus suggesting that he just might learn his lesson, consist of a dog cage, a bag of cat litter and a big bottle of maple syrup.

But hey, whatever works! You got to keep your kid, who is apparently OCD, in line. If at times this calls for harsh measures, so be it. Anything is better than an out-of-control OCD brat. NOT!

It turns out that this beleaguered 24-year-old mother, whose name is Crystal Jean Hostetter, and her 30-year-old live-in lover, Sara Elizabeth McClain, went way too far a week ago Saturday and veered off into a netherworld of heinous discipline that should never be foisted upon boy, girl, man, woman or beast. Their cruel and unusual punishment has resulted in serious criminal charges being brought against them.

Deborah Hastings of the New York Daily News writes:

A little boy in the Atlanta suburb of Douglasville is now in foster care after his mother and her lover were charged with felony cruelty to a child for imprisoning the 6-year-old in an animal cage, making him hold a brick over his head and covering him in syrup and cat litter.

Crystal Jean Hostetter, 24, and her 30-year-old girlfriend, Sara Elizabeth McClain were also charged with reckless conduct.

The mother allegedly covered the boy’s hands and feet in syrup, even though she knew he had behavior issues that included a fear of being sticky. Then she and her girlfriend covered the syrup with cat litter, according to the Douglas County Sentinel newspaper.

This was no brief “punishment”. In fact, it reportedly lasted for two hours on this particular Saturday night, and there was at least one witness to the abuse – a neighbor who saw the women stuffing the child into the cage, according to police. During his punishment, the boy screamed “Please don’t kill me” and “I thought you loved me.”

11Alive’s Paul Crawley looked into this situation and interviewed the neighbor who reported that she was watching TV around 7 p.m. Saturday when she heard the boy crying and screaming. Like a good neighbor, the woman went out on her back porch and saw the women (it was a joint effort, of course) pour the syrup and cat litter on the boy, and then put him into the cage.

Our concerned citizen then called Children’s Services but they didn’t pick up, perhaps because it was evening. Now, truthfully, at this juncture, the neighbor probably should have gone next store and confronted the two women who were abusing the poor child so shamefully. Perhaps she was scared, though, that she’d be shot or get her ass kicked by the two “neighborhood jailers”. So although she, in a sense, let the terrified child suffer through two hours of hell in the dog kennel, she did not ignore the problem and on Monday April 21st, she reported the incident to a school counselor at the boy’s school, which her daughter also attended. The counselor did the right thing and contacted Children’s Services and the Douglasville police.

Hostetter and McClain were arrested the following day and are currently being held in the Douglas County jail without bond.

According to Douglasville Police Sgt. Todd Garner, who interviewed the boy after he was “liberated” from his mother and her lover, he was in decent physical condition, but bore the earmarks of having been mentally abused. In what is quite heartbreaking, the boy – who loves his mother just as virtually all abused children love their parents – kept asking the police how his mother was doing while suggesting that she gets crazy sometimes and needs help.

Indeed she does – help in the form of some serious mental health counseling combined with a couple of years in state prison.

*      *     *     *     *

When questioned, no doubt recognizing that the gig was up, the women made no attempt to deny the fact they had been punishing the boy. They admitted to forcing the child to hold bricks over his head in both hands  and locking him in the dog cage. According to KXIA-TV, they claimed that they were only disciplining the child and that they had deliberately covered him in syrup, knowing that his fear of being sticky (perhaps a symptom of his OCD) would upset him, thus rendering the discipline effective.

After all, what’s the sense of disciplining a kid if the measures are ineffective?

The women and the boy had moved to Douglasville just last month and officials said they were checking with the Pennsylvania authorities, where the three had previously resided, to see if there were any previous instances of the women abusing the child.

*     *     *     *     *

Many folks are going to get very angry when they learn about what these two misguided disciplinarians did to this vulnerable child. Although, as many of you know, I generally lean toward short sentences combined with counseling and rehabilitation, in this case I genuinely believe that this particularly nasty and unnecessary crime should result in a couple of years in state prison for Hostetter and McClain, who although their names suggest a comedy team, were, in this instance, anything but funny.

by Lise LaSalle

On July 30, 2008, 22-year old Tim McLean, boarded bus 1170 to return home to Winnipeg, Manitoba after finishing a stint as a carnival worker in Alberta. It was 12:01 p.m. when he took his window seat at the rear of the bus.

It was a long 22 hour ride so he had brought his music and was quietly reflecting on his journey when at 6:55 p.m., the bus made a stop at Erickson, Manitoba and picked up a new passenger named Vince Weiguang Li — a tall man in his 40s wearing sunglasses and sporting a shaved head. At first, Li sat near the front of the bus but after a rest stop, he moved to the back to sit next to McLean.

After “barely acknowledging’’ Li, Tim fell asleep with his head on the window pane while wearing his headphones. All of a sudden, according to some witnesses, Li attacked McLean with a large knife and stabbed him in the neck and the chest.

Garnet Caton, a seismic driller who sat one row ahead of McLean, described hearing “a blood-curdling scream”. “I turned around and the guy sitting right behind me was standing up and stabbing another guy with a big Rambo knife….Right in the throat. Repeatedly.’’

Another passenger, Stephen Allison, stated that McLean fought his attacker which gave the other passengers time to get off the bus. The bus driver and two other men tried to come to McLean’s rescue but were chased away by Li who was slashing wildly with his knife.

Li decapitated McLean and displayed his severed head to the horrified passengers who had fled the bus and were gathering outside. They were in the middle of nowhere so they could not escape this horrific situation. Caton reported that he got sick after he saw the severed head. “Some people were puking, some were crying, some were in shock. The attacker just looked at us and dropped the head on the ground. Totally calm.’’

A police officer who had arrived at the scene, saw Li cut off body parts from the victim’s body and eat them. After the bus driver’s failed intervention, Li had gone back to the body to sever other parts and consume some of McLean’s flesh.

What is even more baffling than this gruesome attack on McLean is the fact that law officers who had arrived at the scene did not stop Li. They allowed him to continue decapitating and desecrating his victim’s body in plain view of the passengers. Li would pace back and forth. He had body parts in his pockets and would hold them up for everyone to see.

The bus driver had engaged the emergency immobilizer system to render the vehicle inoperable because Li had tried to escape by driving the bus.

So, the bus had transformed itself into a mobile Theater where the spectators outside could not help but view and in a way, participate, in this gruesome play. It was like the puppet shows that you see in France where the public is sitting in front of this makeshift mobile trailer and reacts very loudly to the drama of the story.

In this case, the spectators were puking, fainting and crying. Some of the male passengers were growing very upset over the inaction of the police and wanted to go in themselves to put a stop to the ongoing horror. But they were obviously ordered in no uncertain terms, to stay out of it.

In fact, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) had received a report of a stabbing in a bus at 8:30 p.m. They arrived to find the bus driver, and a truck driver armed with crowbar and a hammer, trying to prevent Li from escaping.

By 9:00 p.m., the police summoned special negotiators and a heavily armed tactical unit. Li was dangerous but he only had a knife and the cops had guns and outnumbered him. They stayed there and did nothing while Li was eating parts of the body and pacing around the bus. They started bringing the stranded passengers to the police department to be interviewed. The suspect declared, “I have to stay on the bus forever.’’

It sure looked like it. The police did not seem to be in hurry to stop the carnage. Some of the passengers were growing more and more upset in view of the law enforcement inertia. Were they expecting William Shatner to arrive in his helicopter to serve as their negotiator? It was a farce.

At 1:30 a.m., the suspect, probably tired of being in the bus, tried to break a window to escape. They shot him with a Taser twice, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a police car. You wonder why they did not enter the bus to Taser him long before he tried to get out on his own.

I do not understand to this day why the desecration of this young man’s body was allowed to happen for hours while they had plenty of resources to put a stop to the attack. Hell, I think I could have stopped him myself with a few of my girls and pepper spray.

The bus looked like a butcher shop; they placed parts of the victim’s body in plastic bags. McLean’s ear, nose and tongue were found in Li’s pockets. His eyes and a part of his heart were never recovered and it goes without saying that he ate them. There were some bloody parts strewn across the dashboard.

The Greyhound representatives had to take the passengers to a local store to replace their clothes as nothing left on the bus could be retrieved. They finally arrived in Winnipeg at 3:30 p.m. that day to be met by their loved ones. McLean’s mother, who was so anxiously awaiting the return of her son, had to be told that his tragic final destination had been reached earlier than expected.

In some Canadian towns, the police have been accused many times of shooting without any hesitation mentally ill people that they perceive as a threat.  But in this case, they took their sweet time even though they had the ideal situation at hand; Li was basically encaged. Were they not capable of going from first to second gear? Maybe there is no protocol in place for a bus attack?

In Toronto, they recently shot a young troubled man several times because he was ‘kind of causing trouble’ in a tramway car. Maybe there were no rules in their booklet for a ‘bus cannibal’. Whatever their excuse is, they demonstrated their outlandish incompetence in this specific standoff.

Tim’s mother, Carol De Delley, had heard on the radio that a young man was decapitated in a bus but had no clue it was her son. She even had prayed for him at dinner time with her husband. She finally learned from her former husband that it was her child. She was totally devastated by the death of her son, especially by the gruesome way he was killed.

She could not believe that law enforcement had allowed her son’s body to be desecrated this way and that the rampage lasted almost 5 hours. She was inconsolable. If the term mater dolorosa was ever invented with a purpose in mind, it was to describe the pain suffered by this poor woman. Tim was the doting father of a little girl and from all accounts, a great guy who had not engaged Li in any way, except with a friendly smile.

The entire family of Tim McLean brought a lawsuit of $150,000 against Greyhound, the Attorney General of Canada and Vince Li.

In 2011, two passengers filed a lawsuit against Vince Li, Greyhound, the RCMP and the Government of Canada for being exposed to the beheading. They are seeking $3 million in damages. Pretty ridiculous when you think that the family has been asking for a very reasonable amount of money for themselves.

Vince Li was obviously mentally ill and was under the impression during the attack that he was chosen by God to save people from an alien. He had been hearing voices for a while and was obviously not sane enough to realize that he was afflicted with schizophrenia.

He was born in China in 1968 and had graduated from the University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computers. He immigrated to Canada in June, 2001. He worked menial jobs at a Church to support his wife. The Pastor had no complaints against Li, except the language barrier. He did not show anger issues. But he was apparently hospitalized in 2004 after problems with the police.

He worked as a forklift operator and his wife as a waitress, and he showed no signs of trouble before he quit in 2005. He also worked at Wal-Mart and as a newspaper delivery man in 2006.  Four weeks before the murder, he was fired from Wal-Mart for problems with other employees. A storm was brewing in his mind. He said he had to go to Winnipeg for a job interview and the rest is history.

He boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg on July 28. On July 29, he got off the bus in Erickson with three pieces of luggage and spent the night on a bench. He sat there all night staring into space, according to witnesses. On July 30, he sold his new computer to a teenager for $60. It was seized by the RCMP and the boy received a new one for his honesty. He finally boarded the bus going to Winnipeg that was carrying McLean just before 6 p.m.

During the attack, witness Garnet Caton said that Li was in his own world. Not enraged but more like a robot. When Li appeared on charges of second-degree murder, the only words he uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

Because he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Lee was found not criminally responsible. The psychiatrist testified that Li performed the attack because God’s voice told him to execute McLean. He was remanded to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. He had not fully emerged from the psychotic phase at the time but he was starting to realize what he had done.

Chris Summerville, the CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, held regular meetings with Li. He visited him once every two months after his remand. Summerville believes that there are two victims and two families who are victims of untreated, uncontrolled psychosis. He says ‘’the media was more favorable to the McLean family because the country has entered a period of ‘tough on crime’ with very little attention being paid  to restorative justice, rehabilitation, recovery and redemption or the role of mental illness in this unfortunate incident.’’

Summerville offered this take after his May 19, 2012 meeting with Li:

‘’It is remarkable the positive effects of the medication. Up to 25 per cent of people who will have a psychotic break with reality will never experience another psychotic episode.

Up to 65 per cent will experience a degree of recovery in order to live a meaningful life. Ten per cent will take their life by suicide due to the losses associated with schizophrenia.’’

‘’Of the 300,000 people in Canada who live with some form of schizophrenia, the vast majority lead quiet, law abiding lives hoping for some quality of life. People living with schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of violence rather than being perpetrators of violence.’’

Since 2012, Vince Li has been granted temporary passes out of the Health Centre while supervised by a nurse and peace officer.

Tim McLean’s family was disappointed that Li was found criminally not responsible. They consider that he committed the crime and could still be a danger to society. Tim’s mother is unmoved by Li’s apology and remorse and thinks he should remain locked up.

‘’You’re interviewing an individual who has gone through treatment and meds and come to this place where he’s come to these realizations. Now you take him off those meds for a while and see what kind of an interview you would get,’’ she said.

At the same time, this good woman says she is trying to forgive her son’s killer.

‘’I’m working on it. I think for the advancement of my own soul, I think that that’s going to be a necessary thing,’’ she said.

‘’But it’s an extremely difficult and a very private thing,’’ she added.

The unjustified public fears about Li will probably keep him in a mental-health hospital longer than necessary. The horrific nature of Li’s act has demonized him in the public’s mind, Summerville said.

‘’I don’t think he will be released anytime soon because of public sentiment,’’ adding that the perception of Li is ‘’rooted in fear and in some people, in hate and in vengeance. Some hold a characterization of him that is just not true of him.’’

While he is not advocating Li’s immediate release, Summerville said there is little public understanding of the nature of schizophrenia and its treatment with medication. ‘’Schizophrenia is treatable. Recovery is possible.’’

When I try to put myself in Carol De Delley’s shoes, I can feel her pain and understand her argument but if I do the same for the family of Vince Li, I cannot help but feel compassion. I hope they both can find peace.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Go north, young man. Jobs a-plenty on the Alaska pipeline. Major money. You work all day and drink till dawn and then you do it again. So California boys Tall Tom and Angry Larry swallowed the bait and wound up unemployed somewhere in the great Northwest sitting on the dock of the bay drinking beer and watching the sun move across the horizon.

They were both mad because they couldn’t find work and became even more churlish when the sun sank and they ran out of beer. Angry Larry got angrier and angrier and he pissed off the side of the dock and that didn’t help and he finally figured the only solution was to pitch into Tall Tom so he did and then they were rolling around on the dock and Tall Tom who was 6’4” and rawboned got the jump on Angry Larry which pissed him off even more.

Eventually, Tall Tom pinned Larry to the dock and sat on his chest. “Ha, fucker,” he said. “I always knew it. You’re a pussy.”

Then he released Larry, clambered to his feet and peered around hopefully as if may be some beer had been delivered while they were scuffling. Drawing on his Temecula zombie roots, Angry Larry launched himself at Tom and in a moment of divine inspiration, bit off his nose. Ouch!

*     *     *     *     *

Tall Tom told me this story as we sat forlornly in an Inland Empire bar nursing our draft Anchor Steam beers. He insisted I run my fingers across his stitches which were neat, evenly spaced and rather prominent.

“I’m lucky I have a nose,” said Tall Tom.

*     *     *     *     *

Fast forward 35 years and go south, young woman, all the way south to Alvin, TX, which is small city of slightly over 24,000 not far from Galveston and San Juan Island where the college kids get down at Spring Break. I’m not there and Tall Tom is not there and, thank god, Angry Larry is not there.

Young mother, Chelsi Camp, is there, however. If her photos are any indication, Chelsi was certainly the sort of woman who would have made heads turn on San Juan Island.

But this is not about Chelsi’s beauty; this is about another female quality, or rather two female qualities, that Chelsea appears to have in great abundance – motherly love and sheer raw courage.

In late March, Chelsi was dog-sitting a friend’s pit bull at the South Shore Apartments on E. League City Parkway. The pit had always seemed friendly until he met Chelsi’s two-year-old daughter Mackenzi.

“The dog came up and he was just curious,” recalled Camp. “When he smelled her, that’s when you saw it flip because I think he smelled my dog on her.”

When the pit attacked little Mackenzi and began mauling her, Chelsi reached down deep combining mother’s love, courage and keen strategic principles in an overwhelming combination that apparently had the pit back on its heels in relatively short order. She shoved her fist into the dog’s mouth and bit off its ear all while telling her daughter to turn over so she wouldn’t choke on her own blood. Not only that, during the struggle, Chelsi managed to call 911. When the officer arrived, he shot the dog but didn’t kill it.

In an interview, Chelsi explained: “I only know to fight so how else do you get somebody to stop. I mean I would do the same thing with a human being.”

Ironically, Chelsi comes from a family of dog lovers. She is back at work now and has full use of her arms again.

“I can actually hold her again,” said Chelsi. “I couldn’t hold her for the first week that was the hardest part.”

Mackenzi will get her sutures out this week. She has to stay out of direct sunlight for a year.

“She’s a strong little girl and a fighter,” said Chelsi. “She’s meant to be here.”

*     *     *     *     *

Much as I love dogs, America, pro football and our manly ways, there are two things that bother me. I think we would be all the more manly if we would beat our guns into ploughshares, and I am not a big fan of the pit. I realize that their owners swear by them and wax enthusiastically about what wonderful, loving creatures they are, but they are in the news for incidents like this far too often for my taste.

Snap, crackle and major canine brain fart! Then your child is bleeding and if you’re like Chelsi Camp you throw caution to the wind and risk your own life to save her.

Although Mackenzi will be out of the hospital soon, her facial scars will be with her for a long time. As for the pit, it was euthanized.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

I’ve been lucky. Anyone who knows me well will tell you that, and not just in my wild late teen and early adult years. Let’s go all the way back to middle school, only I’m so ancient that they still called it junior high back in those Neolithic days.

My friend Johan and I lived on our bikes and we were holy terrors – darting in-and-out of heavy traffic, riding for miles without ever touching our handlebars, and always riding without lights or reflectors in the dark. And keep in mind that this was literally decades before all the over-protected, middle-class kids began wearing helmets, not while riding their non-existent chopped Harleys, but rather while riding their bicycles. In all truth, I would have slit my own throat with a rusty razor blade before I would have popped a helmet onto my foolish early teen skull.

Somehow we survived. Johan is now a retired forest ranger somewhere in the hills of Southern Oregon and I’m here in LA trying to keep my guys and gals out of prison.

The reason I bring this up is because Brandon Majewski of Lake Simcoe, Ontario, 90 km north of Toronto, was also a bicycle afficianado, but of the modern variety which means way cool state-of-the-art equipment and all the accoutrements. The problem is Brandon is no longer with us because even though he did use reflectors, he was struck and killed by Sharlene Simon and her SUV while he was on a hot-dog run at 1:30 am on October 28, 2012.

Now, to the horror of Brandon’s father, Derek Majewski, the woman who struck and killed his son is suing Brandon and the two boys he was riding with (one of whom was seriously injured) for emotional trauma she says she has suffered as a result of plowing into Brandon from behind while driving over the speed limit on that dark and rainy night.

This is the sort of thing that makes you think the whole world is completely crazy and full of evil conniving people, and perhaps it is.

Tracy McLaughlin of the Toronto Sun writes:

Still in the throes of agony from losing their son in a vehicle crash, the parents of young Brandon Majewski are now reeling after they learned the woman who struck and killed him is suing their dead child.

“I feel like someone kicked me in the stomach — I’m over the edge,” the dead boy’s father, Derek Majewski, said. “Sometimes, it makes my blood boil.”

As he sits in his immaculate Alcona home…sifting through piles of photographs of his son, the heartache shows on his face and he can hardly contain his tears as he speaks.

Just down the road, on the side of a quiet country stretch of Innisfil Beach Rd., is a memorial complete with a bicycle, flowers and photographs of his son, Brandon.

Brandon, who is described as spunky and reasonably good-looking, was out with his two buddies on that fateful night when they hopped on their bicycles to go for hot dogs at around 1:30 am.

“I know they should not have been out there that late,” says Derek. “But they are good kids.”

Brandon was struck from behind by Ms. Simon who was driving 90 km an hour, 10 km over the speed limit. He was killed and his friend Richard McLean, 16, was seriously injured with a broken pelvis and other broken bones. Their third friend, Jake Roberts, 16, was knocked off his bike but fortunately sustained only scratches.

Simon, a mother of three, who formerly lived in Innisfil, is not only suing Brandon for emotional trauma. She’s also suing the two other boys, as well as the dead boy’s parents, and even Brandon’s brother who died most tragically  from swallowing too many pills and drinks while in the throes of grief a few months after the accident. Not content with suing every person in sight, Simon is also suing the County of Simcoe for allegedly failing to maintain the road properly.

Even Brian Cameron, the Majewski family lawyer, is in shock from the sheer inappropriateness of the lawsuit.

“In all of my years as a lawyer, I have never seen anyone ever sue a child that they killed. It’s beyond the pale. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them on the phone.”

After a face-to-face meeting Tuesday, April 22, Brandon’s parents and step-parents left Cameron’s office almost staggering in disbelief.

“I’m devastated, I’m in shock,” said Brandon’s mother, Venetta Mylnczyk, a dental assistant. “She killed my child and now she wants to profit from it? She says she’s in pain? Tell her to look inside my head and she will see pain, she will see panic, she will see nightmares.”

In his grief, Venetta recalled her last words with her son.

“I said I love you … he said, ‘I love you, too, mom,’ and off he went with his friends,” Mylnczyk said. “At least I have that … but for this woman to be so selfish, to claim she is the one suffering but we are the ones living the nightmare … her children are still living.”

“It blows my mind,” Brandon’s step-mom, Lisa Tessier, said. “We are all devastated. This is so cruel.”

The specifics of the lawsuit are as follows: Simon is claiming $1.35 million in damages due to her psychological suffering, including depression, anxiety, irritability and post-traumatic stress.

“They did not apply their brakes properly,” the claim states. “They were incompetent bicyclists.”

For his part, Brandon’s father Derek defends his son and his friends without reservation.

“They’re kids! And they have a right to make mistakes … it was a wet, dark road — what about slowing down?”

Furthermore, Derek insists that the reflectors on the bikes would have been visible.

The police report states that Sharlene Simco Simon admitted that she was driving at 90 km/h in an 80 km/h zone on the two-lane road. She claims, however, that she didn’t see the boys or any of the orange-red pedal reflectors. The impact of the collision cracked the windshield of her SUV and dented the front bumper. A headlight was shattered, and the roof of the SUV, into which Brandon pitched headfirst, was dented and scratched.

The report also states: “No breathalyzer was performed. Although police say no alcohol was suspected and no charges were laid.

Simon’s husband is Jules Simon, a York Regional Police officer, who just happened to be driving behind his wife on the night of the accident. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, he is barely mentioned in the police report, but is reported to have pulled over when Brandon was struck. (Well, I would imagine so.) Shortly thereafter, he drove his wife home in his vehicle.

Two hours later, Brandon died in the hospital from multiple traumatic injuries.

When the police knocked on Derek Majewski’s front door and the dogs began to bark, somehow Derek already knew.

“I knew,” said Derek. “I had a gut feeling.”

Six months Brandon’s funeral, his brother Devon, 23, who had just graduated as a paralegal, died quietly in his bed after after too many pills with alcohol. It is not believed to have been an intended suicide, merely a grieving brother taking substances to try and sleep.

“This has ripped our family apart,” says Derek. “And now this woman has the gall to try to profit from our dead child she killed? Profit from another boy who was almost crippled?”

Brian Cameron has launched a routine lawsuit against the Sharlene Simon, mainly for medical and funeral costs on behalf of the boys and their families. The lawsuit alleges that Simon was speeding and may have been intoxicated and talking on her cellphone.

“Sharlene Simon failed to take reasonable care to avoid a collision which she saw or should have seen was likely to occur,” his claim states. “She operated the motor vehicle while she was intoxicated.”

*     *     *     *     *

Because none of the allegations have yet been tested in court, it is too early to know how this is going to play out.

Although I am vaguely religious on certain days of the week, I do not tend to believe that HELL exists as an actual place where bad people go to be punished. Thus, Sharlene Simon is probably in little danger of spending eternity down amongst the flames.

She deserves some form of punishment, however, for launching her execrable lawsuit. Perhaps she will come down with a virulent case of Litigation Fever. Oh damn, she already has, you say? That’s what I was afraid of.

I generally consider many civil lawyers to be depraved and dissolute life forms, and after learning about this case, I am more convinced of that than ever. Of course, they generally wouldn’t be able to do their damage without willing and thoroughly unscrupulous clients such as Sharlene Simon to represent.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

During the 14 months All Things Crime Blog has been in existence, one of the burning questions we’ve considered in many of our posts is the question of rehabilitation; i.e., should individuals who are convicted of serious crimes be rehabilitated as opposed to merely being punished with lengthy (and often Draconian) prison sentences. Although I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, it is my belief that most, if not all of our regular contributors, myself included, believe strongly in a rehabilitative model as opposed to one focused solely on punishment and retribution.

Now comes a case that could theoretically test our belief that with proper guidance people can and often will change for the better.

Back in 2005, Luz Arroyo was 25 years old. She lived in the Cromwell Towers apartments in Yonkers with her two children and her boyfriend, David Maldonado, the father of her 20 month old son David Jr. At that time, Luz and David Sr., who were heroin and crack cocaine users, were well-known to DSS (Department of Social Services) based on allegations of domestic violence, and a neglect investigation had been initiated.

In July of 2005, Luz Arroyo was passed out at their apartment sleeping off a drug binge, which left only David Sr. to care for David Jr. and Luz’s other son, Elijah Santana, who was mere weeks shy of his third birthday.

David, who was apparently also far from clean and sober that day, somehow managed to leave the two little boys in the bathroom with the hot water running before passing out like a pole-axed steer (either that or one of the boys turned the hot water on and couldn’t turn it off). The bathroom had a broken door that jammed easily which was to prove instrumental in the tragedy that followed.

Jonathan Bandler and Richard Liebson The Journal News write:

For more than two hours, the young half-brothers squirmed on their tiptoes, trying to escape the scalding water that poured from the bathtub onto the floor.

They probably pushed on the jammed, broken door and cried and screamed, too, but their parents were in the living room of their Cromwell Towers apartment, sleeping off a heroin and crack-induced stupor.

The boys died there, in the steamy, water-filled bathroom, suffering second-degree burns on their backs, legs and feet as their body temperatures reached 108 degrees. It was a scene so horrific that the six Yonkers police officers who responded were debriefed by stress counselors and temporarily removed from duty.  

Bandler and Liebson note that the deaths of Arroyo’s sons led to widespread criticism of DSS for its handling of her case. After having launched an investigation, the caseworker assigned to the family visited the apartment on June 1, 2005, but made no follow-up visits which led to her being fired after the boys died. Her boss was also terminated by the county for failing to properly supervise the case.

Bandler and Liebson add that two years earlier, DSS also failed to adequately investigate an eerily prescient claim that David Maldonado would discipline Elijah by locking him in a hot room. Elijah would have been approximately one year old at that time.

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Now, almost nine years later, a Westchester Family Court judge must decide whether the mother of the deceased children, Luz Arroyo, is now a fit parent who should be allowed to raise her brand-new infant daughter, Spiritual. The baby, born in late February, was taken from Arroyo at the hospital by Child Protective Services and is currently in foster care.

“The bottom line is that Ms. Arroyo does not present a risk of potential child abuse, neglect or maltreatment with regard to her newborn daughter. She is a completely different person than the person she was nearly a decade ago,” said her lawyer, David Sachs, in a statement to The Journal News/lohud.com.

The problem is that the Westchester County Department of Social Services has made allegations that Arroyo neglected prenatal care for her new baby and apparently does not believe that Luz and Spiritual’s father, Miguel Maldonado, will provide a stable home for the little girl.

Yonkers police Detective James Conca was a lead investigator in the boys’ deaths. He believes that second chances shouldn’t necessarily be given when the welfare of a child is at stake.

“Given a choice between her child and doing something for her own benefit, (Arroyo would) neglect the child,” Conca said. “No doubt in my mind. She’d put herself first.”

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Following the death of her sons, Luz Arroyo, now 34, spent nearly two years in state prison after pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide. Based on the fact he was supposed to be “on duty” when the children died, David Maldonado took the brunt of the punishment and received a 5-to-15 year sentence. He has been denied parole three times, in part because he has never definitively admitted turning on the hot water that led to the children’s death. Soon, however, he will have served two-thirds of his sentence which means he will soon be released from custody.

Luz Arroyo also has two teenage children. A daughter is being raised by Luz’s mother and a boy is being raised by his paternal grandmother. She also had yet another child in 2009, a girl, who lives with an unidentified relative.

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In trying to determine whether Arroyo should receive custody of her newborn, it is important to note that her life has hardly been “smooth sailing” since she was released from prison after serving her original two-year sentence.

In March 2009, while pregnant, Arroyo was arrested in an undercover sting by New Rochelle police for making arrangements to provide sex for cash. There were ten bags of cocaine involved which were found under her mattress and she was charged with felony drug possession and misdemeanor promoting prostitution charges. She received a reasonably sweet plea deal, considering she had a serious prior conviction, that reduced the drug charge to a misdemeanor, and served six months Westchester County jail.

Then in 2010, Arroyo was accused of making threatening phone calls to a Greenburgh woman. She pleaded guilty to an aggravated harassment charge and was placed on three years’ probation. To her credit, she has tested clean on all her drug tests during her probationary period, which terminated in March.

Should Luz Arroyo Be Reunited with her Newborn?

In an attempt to sum up the progress she has made, Ms. Arroyo’s lawyer David Sachs stated that “at first blush” the deaths of her sons “should initially raise some eyebrows” but that Arroyo’s life “has taken a 180 degree turn for the best …”

Sachs is requesting that Family Court Judge Michelle Schauer dismiss the abuse and neglect petitions filed by the DSS and return Spiritual to her mother, saying the allegations “are untimely, wholly lacking in merit and have no basis under the law.”

Sachs also pointed out that DSS has not yet sought to terminate her parental rights, and that the agency’s stated goal at this point is eventually to reunite mother and daughter. Recently, Arroyo’s biweekly visits with Spiritual were increased to weekly sessions. She has also volunteered to undergo drug testing.

According to Sachs, Ms. Arroyo’s drug use is behind her, her housing situation is stable and she has undergone successful psychological treatment and counseling, under the auspices of the county Department of Community Mental Health.

“Having fully paid her debt to society, Ms. Arroyo’s complete reformation of every aspect of her life over the last several years is undeniable and should be viewed by our community as a success …” said Sachs.

According to Sachs, Ms. Arroyo and Spiritual’s father, Miguel Maldonado, are living in subsidized housing provided by the county mental health agency and are current on their rent.

Ms. Arroyo’s obstetrician, Dr. Shahram Razmzan, provided her medical records during pregnancy to the social workers. The doctor stated that although Ms. Arroyo may have missed or rescheduled a few appointments, for the most part she took care of herself during her pregnancy.

“Her prenatal care was not deficient,” Razmzan said. “To me, no, it wasn’t to a level to cause concern to take away her baby.”

Retired Yonkers detective Conca, however, is not about to let Ms. Arroyo’s past be swept under the rug based on the progress she’s made in recent years. He describes Elijah and David Jr.’s deaths as among the worst cases he’s seen during his years of investigating child abuse.

“In terms of how much the babies suffered, they had to die a horrible death,” he said.

Conca, however, admits that Arroyo and Maldonado did not abuse their children, but they did let drugs take over their lives. He said Arroyo “was a weak person who depended on everyone else for help raising those kids. Would I trust her with another baby? No. Everything was always about her.”

Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Correctional Association of New York’s Women in Prison Project, appears to disagree with retired Detective Conca. Although she stated that she could not discuss the case specifically, she said “putting people in a state of perpetual punishment serves no one.”

Ms. Karft-Stolar further stated that “one of our fundamental beliefs is that people have the capacity to change. We have seen over and over again how people who have committed the most egregious crimes can turn their lives around. With the proper support and resources they can become loving, strong parents and contributing members of society.”

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This is a tough call. Although I know little about the philosophy of DSS or Child Protective Services in New York, or anywhere else, I have always heard that Family Court judges typically, although perhaps not invariably, make every effort to reunite families whenever possible.

Is such a solution possible in this matter? First, I must admit that I’m somewhat appalled by the way Ms. Arroyo keeps popping out the babies. It makes me think that she may have little overall purpose other than procreating and raising children.

On the other hand, I find two key points that work in her favor. First, there is no evidence that she has ever been an abusive mother. Negligent, yes, in the past, but not abusive. To me this is very important. Second, Ms. Arroyo is now completely drug free and has been for some time. Looking back, her child neglect would appear to have been triggered by her addiction to hard drugs. Thus, if she is allowed to regain custody of Spiritual, it should be with the understanding that she will be drug-tested regularly for the foreseeable future.

Will the Family court judge rule in Luz Arroyo’s favor? I don’t know but given to desire to reunite families, I would not be at all surprised if Luz and Spiritual are eventually back together again.