commentary by Patrick H. Moore

After deliberating for four hours, in September of 2013, a Pinellas County, Florida jury found Jennifer Mee, 22, the famed Hiccup Girl, guilty of first degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Shannon Griffin. The conviction carries a mandatory life sentence. The jury had the option of convicting her of accessory after the fact or manslaughter but opted for the most serious charge. A few of the jurors, all women, were crying as they were polled after the verdict was read in court. Mee also  sobbed, her eyes red. She continued crying as she walked to the podium to be sentenced, and her tears did not cease as she was fingerprinted and led away to begin serving her life sentence.

Although the prosecution has said all along that it does not believe that Ms. Mee pulled the trigger (co-defendant Laron Raiford was responsible for that), under Florida law her involvement in a robbery that led to a homicide made her subject to a first-degree murder charge.

The prosecution gained a huge advantage based on a tape it obtained of Ms. Mee confessing to playing a key role in the murder in a recorded jailhouse telephone conversation which was played for the jury on Thursday. When Mee’s mother asks her why she has been arrested and charged, instead of keeping her mouth shut, Ms. Mee, who is clearly not the most controlled and contemplative of souls, blurts out:

“I didn’t kill nobody. …I set everything up. It all went wrong, Mom. It [expletive] just went downhill after everything happened, Mom.”

According to the investigators, after communicating with Griffin on MocoSpace.com, Mee arranged for him to meet two of her roommates — her boyfriend, Lamont Newton, and the shooter Laron Raiford – in a dark alley in St. Petersburg to buy marijuana. When the two men tried to rob Griffin, Griffin fought back, and Raiford shot him four times in the chest.

In his closing argument, Assistant State Attorney Christopher LaBruzzo encouraged jurors to listen to the confession tapes while they deliberated.

“Listen to the level of detail she gives to detectives.”

In a similar vein, Assistant State Attorney Jan Olney asked rhetorically during her closing:

“Do you know who our star witness is?”  Long pause… “Jennifer Mee.”

More damning evidence was the fact that after Griffin was discovered dead in the alleyway, investigators found his belongings in a plastic bag, hidden in a bathroom vent, in a north St. Petersburg apartment to which Mee and her co-defendants had access. In the bag were Griffin’s wallet, which contained his driver’s license, and his cell phone.

Mee’s fingerprints were discovered on the driver’s license.

 *     *     *     *     *

 Although he was clearly fighting a losing battle, Mee’s defense attorney, John Trevena, rather ingeniously portrayed a different sequence of events and tried to deflect the blame away from Mee. First, in his closing arguments, Trevena noted Griffin’s autopsy did not turn up any marijuana in his system, indicating he didn’t use the drug on a regular basis. Trevena  then stated that according to Griffin’s cousin, a man named Bolden, Griffin told him he was going to go out on a date with a girl.

“He’s getting out to see a girl,” Trevena said. “Nothing about purchasing marijuana.”

Trevena also suggested that in a prior recorded interview, Mee implicated Laron Raiford’s girlfriend, Jennifer Charron, a prostitute who lived with the three suspects.

According to Trevena, in the earlier interview, Mee said Charron was the one who was to meet Griffin in the alley, apparently for the purpose of performing a sex act. This theory is supported by the fact Griffin was found with his pants pulled down below his crotch, lying next to an opened condom wrapper. In the recorded conversation, Mee said that when Raiford came upon them in the alleyway in a compromising position, he flew into a rage and killed Griffin.

Trevena argued, somewhat persuasively, that the manner in which Griffin was killed suggested a crime of passion, not a robbery that went awry. Six shots were fired from the murder weapon, a .38-caliber special. Four of the shots struck Griffin, three in the chest, one in the shoulder.

Furthermore, Trevena noted Charron, unlike Mee, didn’t initially cooperate with the police. Instead, she hung up on an investigator when first contacted, relocated her three roommates to a different apartment after the homicide, invoked her right to an attorney, and suggested the threesome eliminate all physical evidence with bleach.

Trevena, however, made little progress with Charron on the witness stand Friday. All she admitted to was that she performed sexual acts for money at the spa where she worked, and that she suggested the three co-defendants destroy the evidence with bleach.

 *     *     *     *     *

Naturally, the prosecutors rejected Trevena’s argument.

“There was no inkling this was a sexual crime,” State Attorney LaBruzzo said. “Don’t force yourself to speculate about those things.”

 *     *     *     *     *

The whole thing is peculiar. The fact Griffin was found with his pants down with an opened condom package nearby certainly suggests that a sex act occurred or was occurring when Raiford came upon the scene. Since the third co-defendant, Mee’s boyfriend, Lamont Newton’s case hasn’t been resolved yet, and since he must have been in the alleyway with Raiford (otherwise where does his guilt lie?), he probably would have taken the Fifth if he’d been asked to testify. With Raiford who’s already convicted, however, it’s a different story. If Trevena had subpoened him, and if he had testified, he could certainly have shed light on whether the shooting was a crime of passion based on a sex act or the result of the robbery gone wrong. Of course legally it might not matter anyway since as long as the robbery was part of the plan, under Florida law, grounds for a first-degree-murder conviction are triggered when a robbery spirals out of control resulting in a homicide. And it stands to reason that robbery was part of the plan because otherwise there was no reason for Raiford to have shown up in the first place. And, of course, the whole “pants pulled down below the crotch” bit could have simply been a ruse to make it look like a sex act gone awry.

Still, the facts don’t add up in a satisfactory manner. Mee, however, seems unlikely to win on appeal because of the damning nature of the second recorded conversation. Meanwhile, no one seems concerned that this is — in a sense — yet another social media murder.

Click here to view our earlier post on the Jennifer Mee “Hiccup Girl” murder case:

Famous Hiccuping Woman Charged with First Degree Murder in Latest Social Media Murder 

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

One of the stranger and more disturbing cases in recent memory is the case of Geoffrey Portway, 40, originally from England, and more recently a resident of Worcester, Massachusetts. Portway pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts in May of 2013 to solicitation to commit a crime of violence — kidnapping of a child — and distribution and possession of child pornography. Based on the horrific nature of his scheme, he would normally be looking at around 20 years of Federal incarceration. But in the case of Portway, there’s more — much more.

John Zaremba of the Boston Herald has the story:

In their Federal Sentencing Memorandum, which the filed with the Court on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and Assistant United States Attorney Stacy Dawson Belf write:

“Portway has pled guilty to some of the most vile and heinous crimes known to our society, namely participating in the sexual exploitation of young children through the possession and distribution of child pornography and soliciting the kidnapping of a child for the purpose of killing and consuming that child.”

Reader, you are not hallucinating. Portway not only was conspiring to sexually exploit young children by kidnapping them for the purpose of producing child pornography; he was also planning on eating the victims. And it does not appear that, in this instance, the U.S. Attorneys office is exaggerating (which, of course, they are sometimes prone to doing).

No, in this instance, the Feds have Portway dead to rights. The Sentencing Memorandum includes excerpts from online chats with his alleged conspirators across the country — including the now-convicted Ronald Brown of Largo, Fla., a puppeteer who planned along with Portway to kidnap children he knew through his work with a local church.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Brown sent Portway a photo of one of the boys “with lines drawn on him to identify the different cuts of meat.” Brown and Portway’s plan was to spirit the child away to a rented house in the Everglades, mutilate him, eat his body over several weeks and feed the “leftovers” to the alligators.

In another chat, the perverts discuss eating another boy who, according to Portway, would have yielded “lots of meat.” Brown photographed this particular boy while visiting him at the hospital, where he was recovering from “extensive surgery.”

Based on this vile plan, Portway conceived the following scheme:

“just need to open a mortuary,” he writes. “any boy who is scheduled to be cremated, dissapears. (sic) fake ashes given.”

The Feds began targeting Portway in the summer of 2012 after identifying him as part of an online community obsessed with the cannibalization and rape of kidnapped children. When the investigators searched his home following his arrest, they discovered that he had built in his basement a soundproofed, double-locked room containing a “child-sized homemade coffin,” along with a 3-by-4-foot steel cage, freezers and disposable scalpels.

The investigation was spurred by the probe of a former hotel manager from Milford, Mass, Robert Diduca, 48, who pleaded guilty to charges of sexual exploitation of children, and possession and distribution of child pornography immediately following his November 2011 arrest. The fact that Diduca pleaded guilty immediately after getting picked up strongly suggests that he provided information concerning the twisted activities of the perverts he was associating with. Diduca was sentenced to 18 years in prison. The prosecutors stated that Diduca said that he joined an online forum to chat with other predators.

The Feds are suggesting that Portway receive a 27 year term of incarceration for his crimes. He will be sentenced next Tuesday and I anticipate that he will get every day of the requested 27 years.

*     *     *     *     *

If any of you are of the “just let Bubba make mincemeat of him (not to mention other hideous things)” school of thought, prepare to be disappointed. Federal prisons are typically well-run affairs (with the exception of medical treatment which is notoriously weak). Prisoners at risk of reprisals such as serious sex offenders are typically segregated from the general population and are often housed together, sometimes in sex-offender treatment centers. You can go to a lot of group therapy sessions in 27 years.

Update:

Well, because I cannot tell a lie, I must confess that Portway did not receive the requested 27-year sentence. Rather U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Hillman gave him a four-month discount, sentencing him to a mere 26 years and eight months in Federal prison.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

To our dismay, while running All Things Crime Blog, we’ve discovered that child abuse takes myriad disturbing forms ranging from child rape to locking kids in cages and starving them — to making them live naked in the backyard while starving them — to locking them in chicken coops with electronic dog collars around their necks — to chaining them to the porch with chickens (live or dead) tied around their necks — to just beating the living hell out of them – and, of course, recently we had the Texas lad Joshua Beard, a clean-cut young man who stomped his 18-year-old girlfriend’s child to death for no apparent reason other than the kid was no doubt an inconvenience and may have cried a lot.

Now we have another case out of Raleigh, North Carolina, in which the mother, a former NANNY, is accused of systematically breaking her 16-week-old baby’s bones over an approximate six week period and BITING him for good measure.This case is especially upsetting, perhaps because the child was so young that he/she didn’t even have time to act up or be obnoxious, not that such typical kid behavior would in any way justify child abuse.

Ed Crump of ABC11 writes:

Police have charged a 34-year-old Raleigh mother with biting her 16-week-old baby and breaking the child’s ribs and shoulder blades.

Mary Martin Peele, of Okelly St., was arrested by Raleigh Police Department detectives Monday.

She’s charged with one count of felony child abuse inflicting serious injury and one count of misdemeanor child abuse.

According to arrest warrants obtained by ABC11, Peele allegedly broke 12 of her baby’s ribs and both scapula bones. She also allegedly made a deep bite wound on the boy’s shoulder.

The alleged incidents are said to have occurred between the end of May and mid-July of this year.

Working in criminal defense as an investigator and sentencing mitigation specialist, I often thank my lucky stars that I am not a criminal defense attorney for the simple reason that these beleaguered souls often find themselves in truly impossible situations while attempting to defend their clients. (Of course, I don’t make nearly as much money as the defense attorneys, but hey, you can’t have everything.)

In order to show you what I mean, I will embed the ABC11 video of what transpired at Ms. Peele’s preliminary hearing which occurred on Tuesday, July 29th in the Raleigh courtroom of Judge Jacqueline Brewer:

Like any self-respecting criminal defense attorney, Ms. Peele’s lawyer Damon Chetson pointed out that Ms. Peele has no criminal history and worked for years as a nanny with no complaints of her ever mistreating her youthful charges. It’s always good to start out with the facts and Attorney Chetson appears to have done precisely that.

So what can the lawyer, who needless to say is truly fighting an uphill battle in this matter, do once he’s run out of positive facts? He or she must then resort to “spin”, a time-honored mode of conduct that both defense attorneys and prosecutors engage in on a regular basis. In the case of Lawyer Chetson, he opts to trot out the old sentimentality argument, stating that Ms. Peele’s baby is her “dream child” and that she was only able to carry her child to term after “suffering numerous miscarriages.” Now, if this case did not appear to be so “black-and-white”, this strategy might actually be pretty effective; one can hardly fail to sympathize with a mom who suffers through endless miscarriages, all the while dreaming of giving birth at last to her “dream child.”

The problem is the “dream child” defense is undercut by the hideous nature of what Ms. Peele allegedly did to her child. Fourteen broken bones and a deep bite in the shoulder area is no laughing matter.

Nonetheless, Lawyer Chetson plows doggedly onward stating that his client will fight the charges:

“She stands here telling the court she is not guilty of these charges, and she wants to mount a defense.”

At that point, Chetson relinquished the podium, I suspect to his vast relief.

Prosecutor Melanie Shekita then steps to the fore and makes her case. First, she states, logically enough, that the baby’s injuries “were akin to something he might have suffered in a car accident and were not something he could have done to himself.”

Then she gets heavy:

“For the first 16 weeks of this child’s life someone tortured him. I have grave concerns that if this woman had not presented him to the hospital, and I have no reason to believe that she didn’t do that, that he could have ended up dead,” said Ms. Shekita.

And then, just to get it on the record, Ms. Shekita explains that Ms. Peele “has been telling people the baby has some kind of bone disorder, but that is not the case.”

The baby, of course, could have some kind of bone disorder but that would probably not result in 12 broken ribs and 2 broken scapulas. But perhaps Ms. Peele will ultimately come up with an effective defense of some sort. She’s certainly going to need a strong defense because as things currently stand, “she could face up to 32 years, 9 months in prison on the felony intentional child abuse charge alone.”

Ms. Peele’s bond was originally set at $250,000 and she was ordered not to have contact with any minor under the age of 18 without supervision. The prosecutor requested that her bond be raised to $500,000 and the judge ultimately raised it to $400,000.

Ms. Peele wept in the courtroom suggesting she feels bad about what has happened, and it should be pointed out that, she’s apparently the one who took her injured child to the hospital. If she were completely evil, she would have just kept battering the baby until it died.

So I must say, disturbing as this case is, I hope that Ms. Peele and Lawyer Chetson are able to mount some kind of effective defense that demonstrates that she is not responsible for the harm that was done to the child. The problem is I just don’t see where that defense is going to come from and I suspect that Ms. Peele will ultimately plead out and will be required to serve a long term of imprisonment.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Former West Allis, Wisconsin police officer (1989 to 2001), Steven Zelich, 52, does not inspire confidence. Or rather, if the charges against him bear any semblance to reality, he should not inspire confidence. The first sign that something was wrong occurred toward the end of his 12 years on the force when accusations arose that he had the bad habit of stalking women while on the job and used his position in law enforcement to get access to their personal information. An internal investigation revealed that he had stalked women while on duty. He was allowed to resign his post while avoiding any kind of discipline, criminal or otherwise. This in turn enabled him to pass state background checks for a private security officer’s license.

He then apparently worked as a licensed private security officer right up until June 25 of this year when he was arrested on the same day detectives wearing hazmat suits removed large, brown bags of evidence and an allegedly smelly refrigerator from his apartment.

No one likes a smelly refrigerator but it is an occupational hazard of storing the dead bodies of hapless strangled women in said cooling device.

M.L. Johnson of the AP writes:

A former Wisconsin police officer killed a 19-year-old college student from Oregon during a choking game that went too far, hid her body in a suitcase she brought to their sex date and then kept her body in his refrigerator for months, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday.

Steven Zelich, 52, of West Allis, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide — the Wisconsin equivalent of murder — in the 2012 death of Jenny Gamez from Cottage Grove, Oregon. Zelich also is a suspect in the death of a Farmington, Minnesota, woman.

One of the dangers of the internet age is the possibility that a lonely citizen will throw caution to the wind and hook up with a stone killer when he or she least expects it. This appears to be what happened to poor Jenny Gamez, who after meeting Zelich online, had the bad judgment to fly to Wisconsin for fun and games that would end up costing her her life. Why Jenny, who was cute, blonde, and liked to dress up wearing angel’s wings, wanted to “get naked” for violent sex with a 52-year-old twisto is beyond me, but as they say, there’s no accounting for taste. Furthermore, Jenny may have been unaware of the fact that Wisconsin is the home of the Original Wisconsin Death Trip and not only produced Darkness Personified, Jeffrey Dahmer, but also generated “Mama” Ed Gein, the inspiration for Hitchcock’s Norman Bates.

According to a criminal complaint, Zelich picked Jenny up at the airport in Milwaukee. They then drove to a hotel in Kenosha, south of Milwaukee where they spent several days together. The blonde child allegedly spent several days with Mr. Security. According to the complaint, Zelich told investigators that the two of them played a sexual game in which he would choke her. It was just a little too exciting for the old man, and according to his story, on the last day of their rendezvous, he “went on tilt” and strangled and killed Gamez.

After killing Jenny, Zelich then displayed the sort of sagacity that we have come to sometimes expect from sex killers. He craftily put her body in her suitcase and transported it back to his apartment in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee. Then he popped her corpse into his refrigerator where he says he kept it until he brought the body of alleged victim #2 Laura Simonson, 37, home in November. It’s possible that both bodies wouldn’t fit in the refrigerator, or perhaps he feared the girls would get jealous of each other and start a “dead cat” fight. In any event, Zelich reports that he put both bodies in suitcases and stashed them in the trunk of his car until the weather got too hot and a nasty odor arose.

According to court documents, Zelich also met Simonson online (my 6th grade teacher in Wisconsin, a very devout man, was named Mr. Simonson) and set up a sex date at a Rochester, Minnesota hotel. Zelich reports that he killed her there while playing the same choking game that led to Gamez’s death. Some people never learn.

Kenosha County District Attorney Robert Zapf reports that Simonson’s death proved crucial to breaking the case. Police were able to identify Zelich as a suspect in the Minnesota woman’s disappearance. Surveillance video from the hotel showed the two had checked into hotel together, but only he left. And then, when investigators interviewed Zelich in March, they took a DNA sample that later matched DNA taken from ropes used to bind Gamez. Ah, the tie that binds!

The West Allis police had searched Zelich’s apartment in January but did not find the bodies. D.A. Zapf stated on Tuesday that the bodies were in the trunk of Zelich’s car in March, so we’re not quite sure where they were in January.

As the ladies’ corpses deteriorated, Zelich must have realized that he had to dispense with them. Their bodies were found in June in suitcases left along a rural highway about an hour southwest of Milwaukee. Zelich’s explanation in a nutshell is that he met the women online, killed them accidentally during rough sex, and hid their bodies until they began to smell. Only then did he dump them on the roadside, where they were found by highway workers.

Displaying a pleasing logic, Zapf said he chose to charge Zelich with the most severe crime possible because he didn’t believe the deaths were accidents:

“Killing two women over the span of 15 months under the circumstances in which the defendant acknowledged, by gagging them with a ball gag in the mouth, ropes around the neck, hands tied behind their back, blindfold over their face. He may call that accidental. I call it murder.”

This time around, you won’t hear me arguing with the prosecutor. Zelich’s attorney, Jonathan Smith, however, is not buying it. He insists that to gain a conviction for first-degree intentional homicide, the D.A. would have to prove that his client meant to kill the women, and that might be impossible if they died during consensual sex. Smith also noted that at present, no homicide charges have been filed in Simonson death:

“The fact of the matter is, he’s charged with the death of one individual in Kenosha County, at this point, and that’s the death that we’re going to focus on.”

If convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, Zelich will almost certainly serve life in prison, which hardly seems unreasonable, assuming he is guilty of the charges. The fact that Zelich lost his law enforcement job for allegedly stalking women more than a decade ago suggests that he has been “a bad penny” for a long time now.

by BJW Nashe

1. Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone

 Dog Soldiers may be the best thriller ever written by an American. Set in the tumultuous early 1970s, the story follows John Converse, a journalist on his way back to California from Vietnam, who decides that sending a shipment of heroin on ahead of him might be a good way to earn a small fortune. The deal goes horribly wrong, and Converse is swept up into a whirlwind nightmare featuring gung-ho soldiers, amoral drug dealers, corrupt DEA agents, and psychotic hippies. Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award in 1975, is both a gripping crime story and a profound exploration of post-sixties disillusionment — when the idealism of the civil rights and peace movements was obliterated by drug addiction, moral depravity, political corruption, and mass violence. Stone captures the era of Altamont, Manson, and the Weather Underground better than anyone else has. A must-read.

2. Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith

Cruz Smith’s classic is set in late 1970s Moscow — a full decade before the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain, but you can already tell that the center will not hold. Homicide Investigator Arkady Renko seems to sense the inevitable Soviet slide. In the dogged, cynical, yet ultimately humanistic Renko, Cruz Smith has created one of the most compelling protagonists in all crime fiction. Arkady is assigned to a triple murder case when three corpses are discovered frozen solid in Gorky Park. When the murder trail leads to an American fur dealer, Arkady must navigate through a menagerie of shady characters that stretches from Moscow to New York City. He even manages to fall in love in the midst of all the intrigue. This sophisticated, vodka-drenched mystery, so rich in character and culture, accomplishes far more than the average, run-of-the-mill police procedural.

3. The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity, by Chester Himes

What to do if you’re an intelligent African-American man who’s run afoul of the law, spent five years in the Ohio State Penitentiary, and is sick to death of Jim Crow racism? If you’re Chester Himes, you head over to France, travel around Europe, drink too much, chase beautiful women, and write a series of brilliant noir thrillers. In these two volumes — which basically constitute a single autobiography, Himes pulls no punches in telling how it all went down. Essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of race, the European literary scene in its existential heyday, and the life of one of America’s greatest crime writers.

4. American Tabloid, by James Ellroy
Why not turn the Rat Pack Era and the Age of Camelot into a lurid, blood-drenched crime drama? Plenty of scandal, corruption, and violence comes ready-made with this material. All Ellroy has to do is apply his signature ultra-hardboiled style, crank up the intensity level, and presto, we have an assassination conspiracy novel so feverish that it makes Oliver Stone’s JFK film seem like an after-school sock hop. All the big players are here–the Kennedys, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, the Mob bosses. And Ellroy skillfully invents a whole cast of schemers, fixers, and thugs to do their dirty work. The language used to tell the tale is brutal and offensive; the rapid-fire prose and jittery pacing are relentless. Dense plotting unfolds like a flow chart from hell. At the end we’re not left wondering who really killed JFK, so much as we’re casting around for anybody who wasn’t somehow involved.

5. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane

Lehane’s novel is an emotionally wrenching tour de force that explores the lives of three working class Boston men and their families. One man is struggling to deal with the emotional scars caused by his childhood abduction, a second is devastated by the murder of his nineteen year-old daughter, and a third is a homicide cop investigating the girl’s death. Lehane is clearly a master of plotting and suspense. What’s most impressive here, though, is the depth and compassion he uses to explore the thoughts and feelings of his characters. Lehane understands that daily life for “ordinary working Americans” is often not that “ordinary”. His prose can veer from rock hard to razor sharp, to cynically humorous, to richly poetic — often in the same paragraph. This is American realism striving to achieve the scope and grandeur of Greek tragedy within a rock-solid crime novel framework. Ultimately, Mystic River succeeds not just as modern noir, but as a gutsy requiem for the dreams of all Americans forced to confront the harsh realities of class and crime.

6. Baise Mois, by Virginie Despentes

Think women can’t write disturbing crime fiction? We dare you to read Baise Moi (which  translates as “F—k Me”). Despentes is a well-known in France as a radical post-punk feminist author, filmmaker, and provocateur. Here she takes two reckless women, arms them with guns and a ton of attitude, and turns them loose on a thrill-seeking, nihilistic, sexually-charged crime spree. Picture Thelma and Louise as vengeful ex-prostitutes or sex-workers, starring in a French version of Natural Born Killers. This book delivers a swift kick in the groin to patriarchal society. The film version (co-directed by Despentes) featured a couple of porn actresses in the starring roles.

 7. Clockers, by Richard Price

Nobody writes dialogue better than Price. When his characters talk, they come alive on the page. They keep on talking in your ear even when you’re done with the book. In Clockers, Price alternates between two main characters as they grapple with the crack-addled mean streets of a tough New Jersey town called Dempsy. Strike Dunham is running a crew of dealers selling rocks on the street, but his panic attacks and dangerously unstable drug-king boss lead him to consider a possible change in lifestyle. Rocco Klein is a homicide cop six months away from retirement, struggling to curry favor from an actor who might portray him in a movie. Dunham and Klein’s treacherous paths of self-discovery and revelation intersect in a series of highly dramatic, nerve-shattering plot twists. This masterpiece of urban storytelling is both a searing character study and a clear indictment of American drug policy. There are no winners in the violent drug trade, and nobody ever wins the war on drugs.

8. Let it Bleed, by Ian Rankin

Edinburgh in winter time is no place for sunny dispositions or happy talk. Detective John Rebus will never win any “employee of the month” awards. He drinks too much, has a smart mouth that tends to talk trash to those in charge, and likes the jagged, shambling sounds of the Rolling Stones at their peak in the early ‘70s. He also has a distinctive way of digging deep into the most baffling crime investigations. Here a possible kidnapping and double suicide launch him on a back-alley pub crawl that leads takes us through the underbelly of Scottish society all the way up the ladder of power. Rankin has re-invigorated the British crime novel by incorporating elements of the best American noir, injecting a serious dose of rock and roll energy, keeping the IQ level high, and never taking his foot off the gas pedal. Let it Bleed is one of his best. Should be prescribed by doctors to anyone caught bemoaning the current state of crime fiction.

 9. The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo

Nesbo’s Detective Harry Hole is the Norwegian cousin of Rankin’s Rebus. Both are lone wolves with problematic reputations. Hole’s drinking problem is much more severe, though. Hole intersperses his brilliant crime investigations with deadly alcoholic binges, frequently emerging from blackouts to somehow pick up the pieces and get on with his nightmarish but strangely addictive job. All of Nesbo’s books are worthwhile, but The Snowman marks a definitive step forward in terms of overall plotting, depth of character, and level of suspense. Hole’s attempt to solve a series of murders lead him into a dense maze of tangled psycho-sexual guilt and obsession.

10. Bangkok 8, by John Burdett

Horrific crime, wry black comedy, Buddhist philosophy, and Thai exotica are blended together in this shrewd concoction. Burdett’s first-person narrative, from the endearing perspective of Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, is one of the most compelling voices in modern crime–alternately amused, cynical, outraged, and humorous. He frequently addresses his farang (foreign) readers directly, as he patiently explains the absurdity of his travails. The juxtaposition of Buddhist meditation, acceptance, and nonchalance with the lurid, peep-show decadence and corruption of Bangkok is both insightful and entertaining. The story starts off with a man locked inside a car and executed by cobra bites. It only gets more bizarre from that point forward.

11. Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

This powerful piece of crime fiction takes an In Cold Blood style Kansas family farm massacre and updates it to include our contemporary obsession with Satanic cult killings. The narrator, Libby Day, survived the murder-spree 25 years ago. Her brother is in jail for the crimes. Narrating from the present day, with flashbacks to the day of the tragedy, Libby lets us in on her current dilemma: a group of amateur sleuths and true crime fanatics called the Kill Club don’t believe her brother is guilty. They offer Libby money to help find out the truth, which leads to a gripping confrontation with the dark side of Middle America. A tremendous book by a great writer. Flynn is getting more famous each year, and she deserves it.

 12. Sick City, by Tony O’Neill

An outlandish, grotesque display of cutting edge fiction straight from the bowels of Los Angeles. The story involves a couple of drug casualties who meet in rehab and end up trying to cash in on what they think is a secret Sharon Tate group-sex film. Needless to say, this scheme has its downside. O’Neill’s book reads like Celebrity Rehab turned into an x-rated Tarantino freakfest. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the new gonzo noir style, which uses extreme dark humor as a filter for the worst tendencies of contemporary culture. O’Neill’s throw down on the ridiculous, exploitative pretensions of media recovery gurus such as Dr. Drew is highly worthwhile.

by BJW NASHE

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

I recently learned that an old friend of mine and his wife of many decades traveled to Switzerland last year where they were euthanized under approved Swiss governmental protocol. They were very old and infirm and had decided they didn’t want to suffer anymore. Although I hadn’t been in touch with them for many years, I have a soft spot in my heart for them and feel rather positive about their decision to bring their suffering to an end.

Their “journey to the end of the night” appears to have been handled with courage and dignity. Before their deaths, they spent 9 days doing their best to enjoy their European surroundings. My friend was a great “bon vivant” and I can imagine him enjoying fine food and wines as their day or reckoning neared.

Recently, in Brecksville, Ohio, a 58-year-old man named Steven Curtis faced the dilemma of his terminally ill father waiting out his final days in a nursing home. Mr. Curtis, who had reportedly spent three days there with his father, apparently became intoxicated and tried to hasten his death by attempting to smother him. As a result, he has been charged with attempted murder.

The authorities appear to recognize that the circumstances of Mr. Curtis’ actions may not have been malicious, and he has been released on a $50,000 bond which would probably not be the case if this were a “slam-dunk” attempted murder case.

Jack Shea of Fox8 Cleveland writes:

Attorneys Pat D’Angelo and Thomas Shaughnessy said Steven Curtis had been at his father’s bedside, realizing that his life was coming to an end. D’Angelo told the judge, “The accused was very attentive, was there taking care of him. His father had terminal cancer.” The attorneys maintain Curtis’ only interest was minimizing his father’s suffering. “It’s my understanding that they had ceased all food and water. He was simply on morphine for the last 72 hours, and this gentleman had actually stayed at the nursing home for all three days. He had actually slept there and was with his father,” said Shaughnessy.

Mr. Curtis pleaded not guilty in Garfield Heights Municipal Court to the attempted murder count, and to additional charges that included assault, menacing and disorderly conduct.

Although Mr. Curtis’ father, Roy Curtis, 86, died hours after his son was arrested, it’s not yet clear whether his son’s actions played any role in hastening his death. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office will attempt to answer this question.

Here is what happened as reported by the police and Bryan Minard, an employee of the old folks’ home:

The police state that they were summoned to the Oaks of Brecksville nursing home early Monday morning when staff members reported Steven Curtis was intoxicated and had been seen placing his hands over his father’s mouth and nose, in what was interpreted as an attempt to end his life.

The Brecksville police further report that when staff members attempted to intervene, Mr. Curtis allegedly threw a telephone at them before assaulting one of the employees. He then tried to barricade himself inside his father’s room. These are the actions that led to the assault, menacing and disorderly conduct charges.

Oaks of Brecksville employee, Bryan Minard, said his co-workers handled the situation according to the training they had received:

“I’m glad they stepped in and actually you know take control of that, because that’s a crazy situation for you to try to end someone’s life early.”

Oaks of Brecksville issued a statement that reads, “We were made aware of an incident involving a son’s unfortunate reaction to his father`s end stage of life. We took all necessary precautions and notified the appropriate authorities. In speaking with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, we were informed that the decedent experienced no signs of trauma leading to his passing.”

At this point, the investigation is now being turned over to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. A grand jury may eventually convene to hear evidence in order to decide if Curtis’s actions were those of a compassionate son, or whether he illegally took the law into his own hands and attempted to kill his father.

* * * * *

My take on this is that Mr. Curtis became emotionally unhinged watching his father lying there in what could only have been a deteriorated and vegetative-like state. Does this justify him trying to smother his father, which it appears he was in the process of doing when the Oaks employees intervened? Of course not. On the other hand, it may not justify the attempted murder charge either.

There is also the key issue as to whether the son’s actions hastened his father’s death. It’s truly a shame that Mr. Curtis didn’t simply continue to pay faithful vigil as he apparently had for three days, allowing the hourglass of his father’s life to unwind as the morphine drip carried him slowly but surely to a less painful place.

by Lise LaSalle

In 2011, Quebec cardiologist Guy Turcotte was found not criminally responsible for the stabbing deaths in February 2009 of his two young children Olivier, 5, and Anne Sophie, 3. He was recently arrested after Quebec’s Court of Appeal ordered him to stand trial again. This time, he is facing two charges of 1st degree murder.

Turcotte was back in the prisoner’s box last week and is scheduled to return to court Jan. 10, 2014 when a new trial date will be set. There will be no preliminary hearing.

This case was one of the most notorious court decisions in Canadian legal history. It led to the creation of new federal legislation designed to put more barriers between those found not criminally responsible and their freedom.

During his high profile 1st degree murder trial, Turcotte admitted stabbing his daughter and son a total of 46 times after a bad breakup with their mother. Because he drank windshield-wiper fluid in a failed attempt to commit suicide, the jury accepted his argument that he had experienced a blackout and had hardly any memories of that fatal night. He was locked up in a mental institution and later deemed fit for release after 46 months of psychiatric care. (Strange irony that he did 46 months for 46 stab wounds).

Now he is back to square one.

My initial reaction to this turn of event was to say Holy Crap! What a mess and a complicated one at that. Having little expertise in psychiatry or advanced psychology, I decided to consult with a couple of professionals I had worked with in the past.

I contacted a retired Montreal psychiatrist and a psychologist who did her Post-Doctoral work at a psychiatric hospital in Boston. I was anticipating interesting assessments.

Well, I kid you not, they both opened up with the same comment: ‘The case of Guy Turcotte, Holy Crap!’

After their initial expletives, they had plenty to say but nothing definitive — the case was just too complex. This psychiatrist told me from the start that he was mighty glad to be retired and not to have been the one to sign Turcotte’s release papers from the Philippe Pinel Institute.

He went on to say that it was an extremely difficult case because you have to be in a psychotic state to kill your own children, but in Turcotte case’s, only depression and adaptation disorders were brought up by the experts at trial. The intensity of his depression was never even discussed. In Europe, they have a crime category called ‘Crimes of passion’ which includes jealousy, revenge, rage, etc., which are considered to be mitigating factors at sentencing, but Canada has no such laws. The psychiatrist thought that the fact Turcotte was a doctor might possibly have played favorably in the jury’s mind. He felt that keeping him in a mental institution for 15-20 years would not have served any purpose either. He added, however, that with him a free man, his ex-wife might feel threatened for the rest of her life, justifiably so or not. The term ‘criminally not responsible’ still echoes in his mind and is a hard pill to swallow. He finds it probable that Turcotte had a personality disorder with narcissistic tendencies that went undiagnosed before the tragic death of his children. But would he have recommended another trial? Probably not.

My second ‘expert’ is the mother of two boys so the expletives lasted a little longer. She really had to practice detachment to give an informed opinion on this case. As a professional, she wanted to know more about Turcotte’s mental incapacity on that fateful night. Was he suffering from chronic depression, did he have a history of psychotic behavior? And mostly, she wanted to know if he really drank the methanol before or after stabbing his children? He testified that he drank it first and decided he did not want the children to find him dead but could that be scientifically proven? How was he able to rationalize this if he was under the influence? She believes that intoxication should not have rendered him criminally not responsible. Because he made a conscious decision to drink it, and as a doctor, he knew it would impair his judgement. She supports the new trial because based on the mild nature of the psychological problems presented at trial, the jury was perhaps not properly instructed on the criminal responsibility he should have faced. The jury’s instructions may have been deficient. A new trial would allow his lawyers to present a more revealing psychiatric assessment of their client.

The appeals court’s verdict leans in her direction: ‘’The burden of proof was on the accused to show that he was suffering from an incapacitating mental illness – distinct from the intoxication symptoms – and it was the jury’s job to decide.’’

The new trial seems to be based on confusion over the instructions offered by the judge and the prosecution while delivering its arguments. The jury might not have had enough of a clear and concise blueprint with which to deliberate. I wonder what those five men and seven women would have to say about that. The fact that they took six days to deliberate shows that they took their jobs very seriously.

The trial was not televised, as it is not an acceptable practice in Canada, but had garnered national media attention. Thirty-nine witnesses testified including Turcotte and his parents and numerous mental health experts. News of the not criminally responsible verdict had spread like wildfire and people on social media discussed the outcome incessantly. Many celebrities expressed their personal disgust on public forums.

Veteran lawyer and former Quebec prosecutor Robert La Haye came out to say that the public’s emotional response was not surprising, but it was important to know that juries were not supposed to be populist. They were supposed to render justice based on evidence.

Not much was said about Guy Turcotte at his trial except for the facts of the case. He had been married to Isabelle Gaston, an emergency room doctor, since 2003, and they had been together since 1999. Their relationship had its ups and downs but nothing out of the ordinary. He had no history of mental illness and never had any trouble with the law. They both came from good, decent hard working families and were high achievers who became respected professionals. As much as the parties tried to dig into his past, they could not find anything significant and it was not from lack of trying.

Even if problems might have been brewing beneath the surface, the visible troubles began when he found out that his wife Isabelle was having an affair with their good friend and personal trainer Martin, whose wife found out that their respective spouses were in love and delivered the news to Turcotte. He was utterly devastated. Having always been more of a loner and an introvert than his bubbly, sociable wife Isabelle, he took it really hard. In many respects it sounded like the typical betrayal story reported by many jilted lovers. When Isabelle finally admitted to the affair, Guy collapsed into her arms and said he couldn’t make it without her.

He did not take the split well and his parents tried to support him throughout the ordeal. He moved out of the family home and was in the process of purchasing a new place for himself and the kids when the tragedy took place. He could not let go and would call Isabelle often. He would visit ‘his house’ without calling first and would get into arguments with her about his former best friend living there and having access to the kids. On balance, very typical behavior during a contentious divorce.

Isabelle Gaston never saw the storm coming. She trusted Guy Turcotte with his children as he had always been a great dad. So when he took them for the weekend to his temporary rental home north of Montreal, she was not worried. As a matter of fact, she was going away with some of her girlfriends and never had any hesitations even though she knew he was distraught. She was moving on and maybe trying to convince herself that everything would be fine.

Meanwhile, the scorned wife of Isabelle’s new beau had found e-mails written by the lovebirds and had sent them to Turcotte. After picking up the kids for the weekend, he arrived at his rental home after having made a stop at the local store to buy food and videos. He had also stopped at the pharmacy to get a rash cream for Anne-Sophie and an asthma medication for Olivier. He said he watched a movie with the kids on the couch and that he cried uncontrollably. Little Olivier tried to comfort him and dried his tears.

After putting the children to bed, Turcotte talked to his mother on the phone and spent time on his computer. His mother testified that he sounded very disconnected and she was afraid he might be contemplating suicide. She tried to talk her husband into driving there to check on him, but he thought his wife was overreacting and suggested going the following morning.

There in the house, Turcotte’s mind turned to the e-mails written by Isabelle and her lover. The two were passionate and seemingly very much in love. Nothing like Isabelle had ever been with him, he said during his testimony. By his own admission, he drank methanol to kill himself but decided he did not want the kids to find him dead in the morning. We have to deduce that he grabbed a couple of knives and eventually went upstairs to stab Olivier and Anne-Sophie 46 times. He testified that he wanted to stab himself in the heart but could not find the knives as he was too disoriented.

When his parents showed up at the house in the morning, there was no answer but the car was parked outside. They called the police and entered the residence. They went upstairs and found the carnage. Their grandkids were covered with blood in their beds. Their son was under a bed. If they had not arrived at the house, Turcotte might have died a slow death from the ingestion of methanol. Downstairs, they found his computer, some documents on ‘narcissism’, and a child video of Caillou still in the DVD player. There was a practically empty container of methanol upstairs.

At the hospital where he was taken by ambulance, Turcotte refused treatment saying he was a criminal. He did not want to sign any authorization. The staff knew him and had to keep their overwhelming emotions in check. He was rambling about having given his wife everything without getting any appreciation in return. He was soon transferred to another hospital because of the clear conflict of interest involved in being treated by his peers, who were revolted by his actions. He was then taken to the Pinel Institute in Montreal for assessment. The patients at this psychiatric institute have all committed violent crimes. During his detention, Isabelle had one phone conversation with her husband. She asked him why he did it. Why the kids? She told him she would have given her life for them and he answered ‘’me too’’. That was it. They exchanged a few very cold letters later on about dividing their assets.

During his three month trial, Turcotte testified that he only remembered the evening in flashes. The court heard that little Olivier tried in vain to talk his father out of killing him, crying ‘’no papa,’’ before being stabbed in the stomach. Turcotte was sobbing during his testimony. Apparently, they found Anne-Sophie with strands of her own hair in her hands, which indicates she was wide awake during her father’s attack.

After the trial, when Turcotte was found not criminally responsible by a jury of his peers, it would probably have been the end of the story if not for the public outrage felt all over Canada.

It just so happened that a wheat and canola farmer from Manitoba named Bob Latimer was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for ten years for the mercy killing of his handicapped daughter who suffered from cerebral palsy. Latimer was ready to risk incarceration to save her from an upcoming ‘mutilation and torture’ medical procedure that would have left her in excruciating pain. She died in his truck from carbon monoxide poisoning. Far from the cruelty of a stabbing. But the jury had no mercy on him. And now we have this father who savagely executes his two children because his wife left him and he is not criminally responsible? What’s next? Dancing With the Stars?

Is the fact that Turcotte was a handsome cardiologist a factor with the jury? Maybe the female jurors saw him as a potential mate for one of their daughters or as superior to a simple farmer? Or was it the intoxication factor?

Does it mean that Jodi Arias would have been let off the hook had she drank a shot of windshield wiper fluid? Or that Drew Peterson should have ingested methanol before drowning his former wife? Farmer Latimer forgot to get intoxicated before letting his daughter die peacefully.

The jury never heard that Turcotte refused to pay for his children’s funerals or that he had told his wife that if she wanted war, she was going to get it. Would it have made a difference? So many questions and so very few answers.

Isabelle Gaston’s life has obviously been a roller coaster of emotions and even if she welcomes this retrial, she is still in shock. She was only starting to regain some sense of normalcy and will now be tossed in the middle of another storm. She intends to be there to represent her two children. She has since remarried.

Public support has always been on Isabelle Gaston’s side but a small faction still thinks she should have shouldered part of the blame. Treating him with such disregard and having an affair with a good friend of the family. Parading that friend in front of the kids in poor Guy Turcotte’s house after he had tried so hard to be a good husband and father. I am convinced that she carries some guilt to this day for not realizing how dangerously troubled her former husband was and for going away on a weekend of fun with the girls while he was minding the kids and falling to pieces.

For some, this is a clear cut case of cold-blooded murder that should land Turcotte behind bars for the rest of his life. For others, it is a case of temporary insanity in a long, productive and upstanding life. Does it mean that he should do time in jail or remain on the outside and work in a subsidized clinic helping the poor and the disadvantaged? That would be rich man’s justice and nobody ever asked poor farmer Latimer to plant wheat instead of doing time. And our justice system should to be fair to all or as some of you would say, unfair to all.

In the name of the father Guy Turcotte, we shall see what this new trial will dredge up; no doubt, a lot of Holy Crap!

Note: After a retrial was announced, Guy Turcotte appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to contest the decision to overturn the jury trial’s not-guilty verdict in his children’s killings. His appeal was rejected and he will be tried a second time as there is no double jeopardy in Canada.

by Starks Shrink

You’ve decided you want the fame of being a serial killer but don’t want to commit the awful crimes. No problem, you can still raise your very own serial killer. It takes dedication and commitment but with this handy guide, you can be the proud mother of a notorious serial killer. Since murderabilia seems to be so popular, you may even make a few bucks on the side.

I’ve addressed this guide to the moms because they seem to figure prominently in the serial killer’s psyche, though you will have to be careful not to become his first victim. You will need to raise a male child, which will lead to the highest probability that you will succeed in creating a little monster.

1.  Step one is to select the killer’s father. You will need to do this carefully. Choose an abusive alcoholic that will assist you in abusing the child when he is a toddler and then disappear into obscurity once the child has been sufficiently marred. You may have to endure considerable abuse in the presence of the child for the first couple of years. This will imprint the child with images of a dominant male and a woman who is unable to protect him. He will fear men and loathe women while at the same time craving their attention.  **Note, you do not need to physically bear the child; adopting him from a close relative and keeping it on the down-low is equally effective.

2.  Dress the young boy as a girl and send him out amongst his peers. You could give him a girl’s name too, but then he might just turn into a country singer, and that’s definitely not part of the plan. Be sure to sneer and berate him as he parades around in dresses. This will confuse his gender identity which will lead to sexual confusion later in adolescence and young adulthood.

3. Try to drop the boy on his head frequently as an infant and toddler, or try to inflict head injuries through the frequent beatings you will administer without warning for minor infractions, such as spilling is cereal at breakfast. Do not get medical care for head injuries; they will heal on their own and the trauma can contribute to lesions and neurological disorders.

4.  Be careless about his toilet training; alternate harsh discipline with periods of inattention. This will confuse the boy and foster bed wetting. Allow him to sleep in his wet bed for several days at a time before loudly condemning the child as a failure for not catching on to toilet training. Invite other youths in his neighborhood to the house during these episodes to ensure he will have an extremely limited social circle and few healthy interactions.

5.  Create an atmosphere of promiscuity and disposability in human relationships. You will need to frequently invite unsavory men into your bed and engage in loud, animalistic sexual behavior in front of the child. Preferably, keep the toddler’s bed in your own room while this is occurring. Children often equate the sounds associated with sexuality to violence, which will serve him well later on. You will also cultivate his voyeuristic side, a key component in a serial killer.

6.  Send the child for extended visits to elderly relatives who have very strict, Calvinistic tendencies which will contrast markedly with the chaos in your own home. The boy will come to see religious practices and the accompanying rigidity as punishment. The contrast to his own abnormally chaotic home will make his usual existence seem quite normal to him, thus warping his sense of what is acceptable to society in general.

7.  Drugs and alcohol need to play a large part in the child’s upbringing. However, you need to appear functional to those outside the home so that others will not interfere and remove the child from the home before you’ve completed your mission. Leave alcohol and marijuana within easy reach of the child. He will move on to other substances on his own.

8.  Befriend a seemingly kind male who is a known child molester and invite him frequently to your home to babysit the child. The child will cling to this one kind anchor in his pathetic life and be lulled into participating in unnatural sexual practices. He will likely never report it. The abuse will confuse his sexuality even further, wracking him with guilt and hatred for both the molester and foryou for allowing it to occur, even encouraging it.

9.  Collect or allow the child to collect a variety of stray animals. Be sure to abuse them within the home. Do not feed them and never clean their cages. Act as though their life is worthless. If the boy gets attached to an animal, be sure that it is removed from him by force and cruelly destroyed. However, by this point, it is doubtful that you will have to resort to barbarism yourself as the child will enjoy having a sentient being upon which to vent his anger and lack of self-esteem. He will embark on that long heralded hallmark of sociopathy — animal abuse. Never comment upon the abused animal corpses you may find around the home — let it be his secret as that will engender his mounting sense of power and control.

10.  Cultivate a fascination with fire. Again, this is an area that will likely develop on its own if the previous steps are adhered to correctly. But you can encourage this by leaving lighters, matches and accelerants lying haphazardly around the domicile. Accidentally set kitchen towels alight in the boy’s presence to pique his interest and fascination with pyromania. Pyromania can be considered powerful as well as destructive and the youth will learn to lust for both.

If you’ve adhered to all these suggestions faithfully, you are well on the way to harboring the next great serial killer. Success is not guaranteed, though; serial killers are an elusive and rare breed and children can be remarkably resilient. But consistent chaos, belittling and social isolation will certainly make your chances of succeeding far greater. And as a side note, keep any drawings or art projects the child may create along the way, taking great care not to let him think you cherish them, as that could destroy all of your hard work. Instead, save them for after his arrest or death, since murderabilia has become a growth industry and you should reap some rewards for your efforts, in addition to the self-satisfaction you will attain from seeing your child achieve your dreams.

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

Schizophrenic Child Killer Sheilla Shea Would “Sell Her Soul” to Bring Her Son Patric Back

The Overheating Death of Cooper Harris: Murder or Tragic Accident?

Why Beautiful Murderesses Inflame the Passions of the True Crime Fan

Going Postal Goes Fed-Ex!

How to Raise a Serial Killer in 10 Easy Steps

The Julie Schenecker Tragedy: Negligence, Finger-Pointing and the Death of Children

Luka Magnotta: Man, Boy or Beast?

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In a decision that is going to anger some observers and please others, Theodore Wafer, 55, a resident of suburban Dearborn Heights, near the Detroit, Michigan border, was convicted of second-degree murder on Thursday for shooting 19-year-old Renaisha McBride through his screen door at approximately 4:30 am, after she arrived unexpectedly at his house and reportedly woke him from a sound sleep.

Ed White of the Associated Press reports:

No one knows exactly how the deceased Ms. McBride got to Mr. Wafer’s house after crashing her car about half a mile away at around 1:00 am. Based on the autopsy findings, she was extremely drunk when she crashed her vehicle and was still intoxicated when she arrived at Mr. Wafer’s house three-and-one-half-hours later.

During the trial, several witnesses called by prosecutors described encountering Ms. McBride after she crashed her car and before she arrived at Mr. Wafer’s house. The witnesses apparently suspected she had been drinking, but she walked away from the crash site before an ambulance arrived to treat what was likely a head injury.

Witnesses also stated that Ms. McBride talked about just wanting to go home — a key point repeatedly emphasized by prosecutors and reiterated by prosecutor Patrick Muscat during his closing arguments:

“She ended up in the morgue with bullets in her head and in her brain because the defendant picked up this shotgun, released this safety, raised it at her, pulled the trigger and blew her face off,” Muscat told jurors, holding the gun.

During his testimony, Mr. Wafer, an airport maintenance employee who lives alone, stated that he was woken up at about 4:30 am by an “unbelievably” loud pounding at his front and side doors.

Based on the noise he claims he heard, which if he’s telling the truth, would have been extremely startling, Mr. Wafer testified that he thought there could have been more than one person outside his modest 1,100-square-foot home. Wafer said he pulled the trigger “to defend myself. It was them or me.”

His attorney, Cheryl Carpenter, argued vigorously on her client’s behalf. “He armed himself. He was getting attacked,” she told jurors. “Put yourselves in his shoes at 4:30 in the morning.”

Although I admire Ms. Carpenter’s zeal in defending her client, she probably should have qualified the “getting attacked” statement to “(h)e THOUGHT he was getting attacked”.

Mr. Wafer may not have helped his cause by stating on the witness stand, “I wasn’t going to cower in my house.” This is not to say that he should necessarily have cowered in his house, but on the other hand the “not going to cower” statement could be seen as unduly macho and/or inflammatory.

The prosecutor Muscat pointed out that Wafer could have stayed safely in his locked home and called 911 instead of confronting McBride:

“He had so many other options. … We wouldn’t be here if he had called police first.”

The jury appears to have gone over the trial evidence carefully, spending about eight hours over the course of two days, before delivering their verdict which convicted Wafer of second-degree murder, manslaughter and a gun-related charge.

In any trial of this nature, feelings are going to run high, and Wayne County Judge Dana Hathaway decided to squash any excessive emotionality in advance, stating in no uncertain terms that she would lock people up for any outbursts. This advice was taken to heart and the courtroom was silent after the verdict was read.

Later, Ms. McBride’s mother, Monica McBride, cried and clasped her hands in a semblance of prayer. She gave long hugs to prosecutors as the courtroom emptied.

The victim’s father, Walter Simmons, said to reporters:

“We learned he was a cold-blooded killer. People have a right to bear their arms and everything else, but you have to do it with reason and responsibility. Not just murder somebody when it’s not justified.”

This is apparently what the jurors also thought considering that a unanimous decision was reached.

Although racial “talk-talk” had been anticipated by some because Mr. Wafer is white and the deceased was black, the race angle was hardly mentioned at the trial.

“It’s about people with guns who don’t use the right judgment before they pick them up,” said Ms. McBride’s aunt, Bernita Spinks, outside the courthouse.

Mr. Wafer, who had been free on bond, as is the custom in these matters, was remanded into custody after the verdict. He will be sentenced on August 25th.

* * * * *

Under Michigan law, Mr. Wafer faces up to life in prison, but Michigan appears to be one of a handful of states where judges have broad discretion in a case of this nature. This is not a 15-to-life state for second-degree murder convictions. In fact, it appears that the judge could give Mr. Wafer a much shorter sentence, which is what some commenters anticipate. Of course, the judge will presumably have to factor the manslaughter and the gun-related charge into the sentencing calculus.

Based on that, it might be tough to get the sentence under 15 years.

* * * * *

What concerns me more than the ultimate sentence is the fact it “didn’t have to be this way.” Too many members of our society are running scared, fearful of home invasion, some with good reason, and are ready to shoot at the slightest provocation.

We’ll probably never know for sure how loud the pounding on the defendant’s front and side doors really was, or how much impetus Mr. Wafer really had for reacting in the lethal manner that led to his conviction.

But I don’t feel the need to judge him further. Judgment was initiated by the prosecution and the jury and will be finalized by the judge. And just so nobody thinks otherwise: There are no winners here…

Therefore, let me simply conclude with these sobering words:

“So fundamental, never relent/
Quick on the trigger, so hot for the scent/
We all were going down to the Hunter’s Ground.”

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Although unlike Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy rarely elicits much sympathy or compassion from the “typical” true crime fan, oddly enough, his death by electrocution in the Florida State Prison, in the aptly named town of Starke, appears to have aroused compassion in the minds and hearts of certain individuals who witnessed his death, some of whom spent time with him prior to his execution. It must be admitted, however, that the vast majority of the crowd assembled near the prison were over-joyed by Mr. Bundy “frying in the hotseat.”

In an LA Times article dated January 24, 1989, Barry Bearak describes the scene with real poetic flair:

Ted Bundy, the notorious serial killer, died today in the electric chair after a night of weeping and praying, just as the sun rose over the north Florida plains.

Gone was the storied cockiness. He was ashen as two guards led him into the death chamber to be executed for the 1978 rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. They strapped his chest and arms and legs to the shiny wooden chair.

Bundy’s eyes searched for familiar faces behind the glass. He nodded to some of the 42 witnesses, including the men who had prosecuted him. His lips moved in a faint mumble.

Then his head bowed. The shaved skull glistened where an ointment had been applied. It would enhance the work of the electrodes.

His Last Words

As is customary at these peculiarly American events, the Supt., a Mr. Tom Barton, asked Bundy if he had any last words at which point the murderer of more than 30 young women was momentarily at a loss for words. Them, his voice quivering, the man who has gone down in history as one of our most famous serial killers, spoke:

“Jim and Fred, I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”

Jim Coleman was one of Bundy’s lawyers. He nodded solemnly. So did Fred Lawrence, a Methodist minister out of Gainesville, Fla., who had spent the night with Bundy in prayer.

(Now this is downright odd. Could a just god forgive Bundy his most heinous crimes, even assuming his repentance was real, which was not necessarily the case. Furthermore, it’s well known that Bundy desperately hung on to life and did everything in his power to keep getting his day of destiny postponed.)

Barry Bearak writes:

With that, it was time. A last thick strap was pulled across Bundy’s mouth and chin. The metal skullcap was bolted in place, its heavy black veil falling in front of the condemned man’s face.

Barton gave the go-ahead. An anonymous executioner pushed the button. Two thousand volts surged through the wires. Bundy’s body tensed and his hands tightened into a clench. A tiny puff of smoke lifted from his right leg.

A minute later, the machine was turned off, and Bundy went limp. A paramedic opened the blue shirt and listened for a heartbeat. A second doctor aimed a light into his eyes.

At 7:16 a.m., Theodore Robert Bundy–one of the most active killers of all time–was pronounced dead.

One it was over, as he left the Q Wing of Florida State Prison, a witnessing newsman raised his hands to signal the news to the 500 or so civilians who were waiting eagerly in a dewy cow pasture cross the street. Based on the reports, these individuals were hardly among the sympathetic souls; on the contrary, they seemed to delight in what must have been an agonizing death.

Some of the onlookers began chanting with much enthusiasm, if not much originality, “Burn, Bundy, burn!” Others reportedly sang or hugged or banged on the frying pans they had brought along to “make a joyous noise”.

David Hoar, a policeman from St. Augustine, Fla., remarked moronically, “I wish I could have been the one flipping the switch.”

A Few Somber Souls

Following the execution, some of the witnesses came outside and began pacing the field. They were reportedly a somber bunch, and some are believed to have been shocked “at the celebration that filled the chilly morning air.”

“Regardless of what Bundy did, he was still a human being,” said Jim Sewell, who was police chief of Gulfport, Fla. Sewell, however, who was apparently suffering from post-execution stress disorder (PESD), stated that he felt great relief knowing that Bundy was finally dead.

The famous story, of course, is that of religious broadcaster James Dobson, who interviewed Bundy the night before his death. This is the interview in which Bundy “talked at considerable length about the process of desensitization” he underwent while raping, murdering and sometimes eating literally dozens of women in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Florida.

Well, yeah… Of course, Bundy became desensitized while committing the awful murders with increasing regularity.

Many crime fans may also be somewhat desensitized merely from reading about and viewing endless violent crimes; I know I am. I don’t recall raping or murdering any comely females lately, though, which I guess is to my credit.

In his interview with Dobson, Bundy talked about how his addiction to pornography and subsequent thirst for more and more violent pornography had increased exponentially until “there was nothing more that would give him that high” other than rape and murder.

Bundy Claimed to Be Remorseful

James Dobson made a point of emphasizing Bundy’s remorse, “He wept several times while talking to me. He expressed great regret, remorse for what he had done, for the families that were hurting.”

Perhaps I am a cynic, but I am somewhat skeptical as to the validity of Bundy’s remorse. His weeping for the girls and women he raped and murdered could easily be mere projected emotion, displaced sorrow over the fact that he was going to die for his crimes. Bundy was a charismatic hustler and could easily have “pulled the wool” over Dobson’s eyes, who as a compassionate Christian probably wanted to believe Bundy felt sincere remorse and contrition.

The Killer’s Final Phone Calls

Another peculiar part of the Executioner’s Song are the final phone calls, both of which Bundy placed to his mother in Tacoma, Washington.

According to the Tacoma News Tribune, at the conclusion of his second phone call, Bundy’s mother told him, “You’ll always be my precious son.”

*     *     *     *     *

Bundy was convicted of three Florida murders, and was blamed for dozens more.

Technically, the murder that broke the camel’s back was the 1978 slaying of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach of Lake City, Florida. After killing her, Bundy dumped her body under a collapsed hog shed.

George Robert Dekle, who prosecuted that case, and witnessed Bundy’s death, had this to say:

“The thing that kept going through my mind was the awful crime scene I saw 11 years ago. I kept saying to myself that is where it started and this is where it ends.”

*     *     *     *     *

I realize that my take on this is rather churlish but I can’t help it. I might feel differently if Bundy had murdered one or two women and then turned himself in so that he wouldn’t (indeed couldn’t) re-offend. But that’s hardly what happened. At the time of his arrest, he was going berserk and stepping up the pace of the killings sharply, much as Jeffrey Dahmer had done prior to his apprehension. If Bundy hadn’t been stopped when he was, he would have violated and murdered many more women and girls, with a tally reaching, perhaps, into the hundreds for the simple reason that he had utterly lost control and nothing short of arrest was going to stop him.

Click here to view our previous Ted Bundy posts:

Ten Fatal Facts about Ted Bundy’s Formative Years

14 Cold-Blooded Quotes by Serial Killer Ted Bundy

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Opinions differ as to the validity of vigilante efforts in criminal matters and — for the most part — it’s probably a good thing that non-law-enforcement personnel are typically not in a position to mete out justice. Last June, however, in a rural area of Lafayette Parish, La., it was the family of kidnap victim Bethany Arceneaux, 29, of Duson, La, that rescued her from her abductor, Scott Thomas, in an abandoned house on the edge of a sugar cane field after law enforcement had searched for her fruitlessly for nearly two days. This is yet another true crime story in which the facts could easily be poured into a captivating crime novel.

Alexis Shaw of World News writes:

The family of a kidnapped Louisiana mother tracked down and killed the father of her child in the abandoned house where he was allegedly holding her prisoner, authorities said.

Bethany Arceneaux, 29, of Duson, La., was abducted in the parking lot of a daycare where she was picking up her 2-year-old at approximately 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Department Captain Kip Judice told ABCNews.com.

Witnesses saw the suspect, Scott Thomas, allegedly force Arceneaux into his white Buick LeSabre, before driving off…

Although they were not married, according to Captain Judice, Thomas, 29, of Leonville, La., was the father of Bethany Arceneaux’s child. As a result of relationship problems, Bethany filed a police complaint on June 15, claiming Thomas locked her in a house and threatened to kill both her and her son. A protective order against Thomas was issued June 17 and Thomas was arrested on Aug. 8th, and later released, for violating the order.

At the time of the abduction, Bethany’s child was left behind in her car at the daycare center. Bethany’s mother arrived later and was allowed to take the child home with her. Meanwhile, the search for Thomas and Bethany kicked into high gear. Later that evening, law enforcement officials found Thomas’ car near an abandoned sugarcane field in a rural area of Lafayette Parish, La.

One of Bethany’s shoes was found in the Buick LeSabre; the other had been left in the parking lot of the daycare center.

After locating Thomas’ vehicle, the authorities searched the sugarcane field Wednesday night and all day Thursday, but to no avail. The sugar cane towers two feet above a typical man’s head and it was brutally hard for the rescue team to fight their way through the dense cane.

It wasn’t until Friday morning that a break came resulting from a determined search mounted by Bethany’s own family members. They came upon a secluded, abandoned house behind a cluster of trees directly across the street from the field where Thomas had abandoned his car. According to Captain Judice, only the home’s roof was visible from the road:

“[The family] converged on a piece of property about a mile from where the car was found. One of the family members heard what he thought was a scream.”

Arceneaux’s cousin (it is unclear whether he was the family member who heard the scream) then approached the home, kicked in the door in and entered. There was Thomas holding the beleaguered, and considerably the worse-for-wear, Bethany captive. At the sight of her cousin, Thomas began stabbing Arceneaux, and a confrontation ensued.

“The cousin, who was armed, began firing several shots at Thomas,” Judice said. “After a couple of shots, [Arceneaux] was able to get free of him and they escorted her out of the house.”

Meanwhile, officers who heard the gun shots fired surrounded the home. Upon entering, they found Thomas, who had sustained several gunshot wounds, lying lifeless on the ground.

Arcenaux, who had suffered multiple stab wounds, was transported by ambulance to Lafayette General Medical Center, where she is in stable condition.

Oddly, Captain Judice — in what would appear to be pre-autopsy protocol — stated that Thomas’ cause of death is not known. The captain also stated that Thomas did not own the abandoned home.

Bethany, who was extremely weak and had not eaten or drunk anything since her abduction on Wednesday, told investigators that the home was the only place she remembers being held hostage.

Unsuprisingly, no charges have been filed against the cousin who shot Thomas, and according to Captain Judice, it is unlikely that the man will be charged:

“In the state of Louisiana, you have a right to protect yourself and others from imminent bodily harm. We believe at this point, based on evidence and statements collected, that this guy was acting in defense of Ms. Arceneaux and thus, was within the state law.”

*     *     *     *     *

Carol Kuruvilla of the New York Daily News writes:

The family has been praised for their actions, but the case has also raised questions about why the police were second on the scene. Bethany’s cousin, Dawnetta Roy, found it “upsetting” that her family had to find the missing woman themselves.

But Cpl. Paul Mouton, a Lafayette Police Department spokesman, said that police were on the hunt as well. He claimed it was coincidence that the family found Bethany first.

“While we were looking on one side, they were looking in another and they came upon her. It just so happens where they were looking was where she was found,” Mouton said. “If we weren’t looking at all and they were searching, that would be different.”

“I’m so happy. God is good,” Monica Arceneaux-Henry, Bethany’s aunt, said. “We followed our faith and believed she was alive. God answers prayers.”

 *     *     *     *     *

Although I’m not generally an advocate of vigilante justice, which all too often can deteriorate into mob violence, in this case it seems that it was both effective and necessary. Although some readers will no doubt feel that he had it coming, we’ll never know for certain, however, whether the shooting of Thomas was actually necessary.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s well-known that kids can be damnably mischievous which at times can rob hardworking parents of their much-needed rest. But for the moment, let us put aside the needs of us parents, no matter how justified they may be, and think about who and what is really important.

Obviously, the most important people in our society today are our children. Not only do we love them with an almost otherworldly passion, but we work our fingers right down to the nub to support them and home-school them when necessary to make sure they do not receive the “wrong message” at school.

(Confession: My partner and I were lazy and although we did work our fingers right down to the nub to keep a roof over our child’s head and food (and junk food) on the table (and in her room), we failed to home-school her, basking in perhaps misplaced confidence that our SoCal suburban public school system would do an adequate job of teaching and guiding our little precious. I pray that this was not a mistake; so far daughter has not screwed up in any dramatic way, but if she does I will know who to blame – the blankety blank public school system that did not set sufficiently rigid standards when it came to ethics and moral standards. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. One day they may cross themselves permanently.)

Fortunately, two shining new stars in parenting have burst upon the horizon and offer guidance that I failed to ever even dream of, much less put into action. The parents, Jena Harman (Mother) and Alexander Smith (Mother’s boyfriend), reside in the Equality State, AKA Wyoming, someone out on the range near the famous cowboy town of Laramie.

What’s troubling is the fact Jena and Alex (I trust he won’t mind my use of the diminutive) are both facing up to 20 years in state prison for what is being construed as child abuse. Why, you ask, are these gentle and good-hearted souls facing serious felonies when they are shining stars in the realm of state-of-the-art parenting techniques?

The answer is simple. Jena and Alex are facing 20 years in the calaboose because the public school where they sent their 7-year-old child reported them again and again and again for alleged child abuse when all they were doing was guiding and chastising their precious child in a manner designed to keep him/her safe from all harm.

Let us listen in for a moment as Jena’s stalwart boyfriend Alex describes his philosophy of child rearing to the Laramie County deputies (I employ a bit of poetic license here):

“Look men, I’m not gonna bullshit you. I don’t like the kid. He/she’s a royal pain in the keister. But he/she’s my girlfriend’s child so my personal feelings are not important. What’s important is that we keep him/her safe from all harm. That’s why we keep her in a cage out in one of the fields. That way nothing can get at him/her and nothing bad can happen. And the cool thing is, she seems to like it in the cage. I think it makes her feel safe and warm.”

In her affidavit, Mother Jena had a similar and equally inspiring take on the situation. (Again, poetic license):

“I don’t like saying this but my seven-year-old can be a real handful. She’s constantly doing bad things and regular discipline – you know…a can of whuppin’ and all that – doesn’t seem to help much. So rather than getting all pushed out of shape and pounding on the little brat, my Alex and I came up with a great plan. We decided to put her in a king-sized playpen out on our back 40. That way she’s safe and can’t break anything, get underfoot or otherwise act obstreperous. At the same time, it gives her ample opportunity to think about what she’s done wrong and mend her ways. We’ve all gotta mend our ways from time-to-time, especially my seven-year-old.”

But as you may have guessed, the authorities are treating Jean and Alex like the proverbial parents from hell rather than hailing them as shining examples of the new paradigm in parenting.

The Mail Online Reporter writes:

A couple allegedly locked a seven-year-old in an outdoor cage for three weeks for punishment – with just a bucket to use for the bathroom and a cot.

Jena Harman, the child’s mother, and her boyfriend, Alexander Smith, face up to 20 years jail for allegedly caging the child outside their Laramie, Wyoming, home.

Police said the six-by-five-foot cage was made in June from cattle paneling and wooden snow fence with plywood covering half of the opening.

A metal chain and ‘dog-leash-style latch’ were allegedly used to keep the child locked in with clothing, books, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a five-gallon bucket, Laramie Boomerang reported.

The child, who has not been identified by gender, reportedly spent most of the day and night inside the cage. If she had to go #1, she had a useful receptacle in the cage. If she had to #2, she was taught to hold it so that no foul odors would be unleashed into the air.

The child was fed once a day if Jena was able to take time out of her busy schedule to bring her food. And since the child really aggravated Alex more than Jena, she would reportedly release the seven-year-old from the cage when her man Alex, a truck driver, was not at home.

Alex lived in a camper near the home.

Although neither Alex nor Jena mentioned the following punishments, if the child is to be believed (a big if), he/she reported being kicked by Jena and Alex, sprayed down with a hose, and even being kept in the cage exposed to the elements, even during thunderstorms, which can be quite severe in the Equality State.

According to one report, before moving to the cage, the child allegedly slept on the floor or on a couch in Jean’s home.

Jena and Alex were arrested on July 24th following a tip from an unnamed informant (probably not from the school since it was in summertime when these sterling parents were arrested).

The lovebirds are charged with one count each of child abuse and three counts each of felonious restraint, according to District Court felony information documents.

According to Laramie Boomerang, the Sheriff’s Office began receiving complaints of child abuse and requests for welfare checks in August last year.

At least some of these requests are believed to have originated at the child’s school.

Jena and Alex remain in custody on a $100,000 cash bond at the Albany County Detention Center in Laramie, Wyoming.

* * * * *

Some neighbors have reported that they had wanted to turn Jena and Alex into the authorities well before their actual arrest but feared taking such a step because they were afraid of what Alex might do to them if he found out.

It’s unclear if Jena and Alex are enjoying their time “caged” at the Albany County Detention Center as much as Alex claims the child enjoyed being caged in his/her “playpen”.

by Lise LaSalle

Having enjoyed Tim Burton’s movies through the years, my curiosity went on high alert when I read about his new biopic Big Eyes set to be released this Christmas in a theater near you and me.

Adam Parfrey who runs Feral House Books, a little house of darkness promoting ‘pure information and forbidden subjects,’ has also published a new book called Citizen Keane which tells the story of Walter and Margaret Keane, who were 60s pop artists and trail blazers of Kitsch Art right smack in the middle of the hippie glory days. Their series of paintings called Big Eyes depicted children with humongous eyes in flashy colors. When I say they, I mean that Margaret was doing the painting and Walter took care of business.

My first encounter with a Big Eyes painting took place in the living room of an old aunt who was in awe of it and practically made it the centerpiece of her house, if not to say, her life. Her husband deplored the fact that she paid a fortune for it and had to have it shipped from the US, but it was love at first sight, and except for her cat Bimbo, nothing was more enchanting in her eyes than her painting of strange kids with huge mirrors to their soul presiding over their face.

The Keanes’ paintings were a huge hit and in my eyes, they were not very far from velvet paintings of Elvis and Marilyn on the scale of art evolution. I am exaggerating a tad and they were extremely popular and hung in beautiful mansions as well as in trailer park homes. They had touched a nerve and were selling like hotcakes. Walter Stanley Keane was a former real estate salesman who knew the value of a fad over lasting creative art. So he struck gold with these paintings of semi-distressed looking kids that could touch your soul without making you feel depressed. It was sappy and sentimental but not dramatic like real photos of starving children in the third world. They depicted vulnerability but with a soul.

Big Eyes paintings became so popular that they inspired many to produce countless imitations of their style. The market was inundated with pictures of cute kids or animals trying to project the same emotions to capture their share of the pie. But it did not always give great results.

While Walter got busy promoting his ‘kids’, his wife Margaret worked relentlessly in her basement studio to produce these little nuggets of art. And in reality, she was the real creator of this ‘art naïf’, not her husband. But Walter presented himself to the world as one of the painters and as the creator of Big Eyes.

What Walter lacked in artistic talent, he had ten-fold in salesmanship. He even seemed to believe his own propaganda. He hired a writer to produce a satiric book featuring him and Margaret as masters deserving of great admiration. He wrote in his own autobiography, the World of Keane, that his grandmother would come to him in dreams, to call him a ‘’great master’’. His only artistic genius probably resided in his marketing skills and bringing messages from the dead might have been another ploy to raise himself in the ranks of psychics in case his paintings lost steam. He sounded a lot like a snake oil salesman, but luckily for him, his wife produced a pretty damn good oil.

Margaret ended up suing Walter concerning the origin of the Big Eyes style, and he turned out to have real talent after all; he was a great peddler and a con artist.

Selling paintings is never an easy feat and Walter had to start Keane’s art enterprise and make a lot of connections to get their work recognized. He hustled magazines and newspapers and managed to get guest spots on television shows. He used his ‘genius’ to cultivate business connections and hang Big Eyes wherever he could.

He mass-marketed the images and branched out with merchandise like lithographs, collectable plates, wall posters, greeting cards, etc. During the peak of their popularity, the Big Eyes originals sold for between $25,000 and $50,000, and unframed lithographs from $3.50 to $25. In 1964, they grossed $2,000,000 from prints alone.

Margaret was the silent partner and the artist and Walter was the front man. He even bragged about helping the world discover fine art just as Picasso and Modigliani did. His reasoning was that if people bought his paintings, it made them want to buy more; as if buying Big Eyes, would suddenly open their eyes to a huge world of creativity. His ego was as inflated as his prices.

The 60s might have been the perfect time for Keane and his young painted brood. The economy was booming, the world was in turmoil and children were the representation of goodness and hope. The United Nations had enacted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and child abuse was now an acceptable subject of conversation. Walter once said, “If mankind would look deep into the soul of the very young, he wouldn’t need a road map.’’

Was it sincere or bait? We will never know with certainty but it worked. Not unlike food chains like McDonald or KFC, the popularity existed but not the approval from where it really mattered. The art world made fun of him and did not pave the way for his success.

On the other hand, why should people feel bad about liking a painting even if the art community is not supportive? You should be able to decorate your home the way you like it and the hell with art critics.

Walter never gave a damn about the critics anyway and he became a celebrity in his own way. In spite of the negativity, the Keane paintings were in museums in Spain and Belgium and a copy was purchased by the United Nations. The mayor of San Francisco even commissioned one for his office. Many Hollywood actors became proud owners of Big Eyes, and most of it was due to Walter’s personality that was described as magnetic, and his partying ways.

But where was Margaret during all that time? She was in Hawaii trying to start a new life. She had filed for legal separation in 1965 after a decade of marriage. Her husband’s lifestyle became a cross to bear and she wanted out.

Many men would have been proud to call Margaret their wife; she was an attractive, slender southern lady and a talented portraitist. An introvert, she was polite, shy and spiritual. She also kept a dark secret that would come back to haunt Water some years later.

In the mid-1960s, nobody knew that Walter was a fraud and had never been a painter one day in his life. Margaret was the creator of all the paintings. As she revealed later, the children she painted had eyes that reflected her own sorrow. They had nothing to do with Walter’s statements about seeing the world in children’s eyes.

She had gone along with the charade to please her husband but when she moved out and tried to start a new life, she came clean publicly. But good old Walter was not going to take this laying down.

His signature appeared on many of the paintings, he had written books, and he even had photos of himself holding a paint brush.

A huge legal battle was brewing and Margaret had painted herself in a corner by going along with this lie.

But by continuing to insist that he was the artist who created some of the work, Walter also painted himself in a corner.

After she married new husband Dan McGuire, Margaret decided with his support, to challenge Walter in a public forum. She organized a ‘paint-off’ in San Francisco Union Square where Walter was invited to demonstrate his painting skills. Life Magazine sent a photographer to cover the event but Walter did not show up. His absence spoke volumes.

During their divorce court proceeding, the judge ordered Walter and Margaret to do a ‘painting contest’ to determine who was the original painter and owner of all the Big Eyes paintings. Walter complained of shoulder pain and did not participate while Margaret completed a piece in less than one hour. She won back the right to claim and sell her own art.

Margaret came out of this ordeal smelling like a rose and she continued her work at the Keane Eyes Gallery in San Francisco. According to the gallery website, Margaret’s work reflects more happiness than ever.

Walter Keane was not pleased when the San Diego Reader published a cover story entitled ‘Citizen Keane’ related to Parfrey’s book. He accused the Jehovah’s Witnesses of having paid Parfrey a fortune to take Margaret’s side because she had now joined the religious group.

It is obvious that without Walter, Margaret’s paintings might have never reached the same level of success, but by lying and riding on her coattails, he robbed her of her dignity and talent. Walter’s magnetic personality might have been a blast if he would have chosen to be her agent instead. We have to wonder why she went along with this sham. His charm probably worked on her also.

Walter died in 2000 at the age of 85. Margaret still paints and her story will soon be told in the Tim Burton’s movie, Big Eyes.

Who is playing who now?

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Apparently neither the children of Georgia nor their parents have gotten the message that schoolyard bullying has had its day and that it’s time for children (and adults) to learn to treat one another with respect. Wishful thinking on my part? Well, perhaps, but let’s not forget that there was a time when women were disenfranchised (weren’t allowed to vote), not to mention the fact that as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, Jim Crow was the de facto law of the land throughout much — if not all — of the South.

With respect to bullying, however,we still have a long ways to go as the recent events in Carroll County, Georgia, graphically demonstrate.

Michael Walsh of the New York Daily News has the story:

A little girl, third grader Aolani Dunbar, 8, of Rootville, Ga. has been bullied unmercifully by her classmates for the last three years. In other words, she’s been targeted by her so-called “classmates” ever since she started school. The viciousness  of the harassment intensified after Aolani had extensions put into her hair on Sept. 28. The other children, egged on by two small, aggressive boys, began pulling her hair — HARD!

“The following Monday, kids started teasing her, telling her she was stupid to have a wig on her hair,” said Sarah Charles, Aolani’s mother. “We called the school on Tuesday saying that her hair was being pulled.”

The school either did nothing or did not do enough. The bullying and hair-pulling continued. Aolani’s mother continued to call Rootville Elementary School for the next two weeks, asking for the school to launch a real investigation. But either the message did not get passed on or the school did not care enough to take steps to solve the problem. In any event, according to Aolani’s family, no effective steps were taken to protect the girl from her tormenters.

Although Sarah Charles appears to have been quite diligent in calling the school administrators, she did not catch on to how severe the hair-pulling was for quite some time. Also, Aolani apparently kept the degree of the damage to herself for over two weeks. Then on Oct. 15, Sarah noticed an “ungodly smell” coming from Aolani’s head.

Sarah and other family members began removing the extensions to see what was causing the odor.

“There was a humongous sore,” Charles said. “The doctor at the emergency room had never seen anything like that.”

You can imagine the shock and sorrow Sarah must have felt when when the surveyed the damage. The continuous tugging and yanking had actually torn off part of Aolani’s scalp.

The massive wound on the crown of the child’s head was so serious that it was treated in the emergency room as if it were a burn.

Doctors say Aolani’s hair might never grow back on the damaged part of her scalp and she may need a skin graft. She also had to have the rest of her head shaved to avoid infection.

Although Aolani is recovering physically, she is still a wreck psychologically. She has been out of school for nearly three weeks now suffering from “severe headaches, anxiety and extreme humiliation.” She will be transferred to another school within the same district, according to Sarah.

*     *     *     *     *

WSB-TV, the first station to cover the case, reported that Aolani shaved her head to decrease the risk of infection. Several family members and friends shaved their heads as well in a gesture of solidarity.

The family said that two little boys were responsible for encouraging a larger group of students to “have a tug” at her hair. One of the boys got an in-school suspension, but the other has not been disciplined.

The Carroll County School District released a statement saying the “administration immediately investigated and dealt with the students who had engaged in the behavior and appropriate disciplinary action was taken against them.”

*     *     *     *     *

Yeah, right. Until the boys choose another victim to pick on. But I am reminded of what our friend Pitchforks points out in his post, “Leading Lambs to Syllabic Slaughter.” Pitchforks argues that it’s really rather senseless “to let the buck stop” with the child perpetrators. When children act out in cruel fashion, says Pitchforks (albeit far more eloquently than I am capable of), they are reflecting what they have been taught by their parents at home. Their cruelty doesn’t come out of nowhere. The parents are largely to blame and should be called out for their lousy parenting.

Suppose the parents of the two little boys who instigated the vendetta against Aolani were required to serve 300 or 400 hours of community service to demonstrate that they “get it” and will do their level best to ensure that their kids stop picking on the weaker children.

Of course, it will be a cold day in hell before this happens. Or will it? Time will tell, my friends. In the meantime, children like Aolani who are somehow perceived as being different or weird or somehow unacceptable to the mindless majority will continue to be scapegoats in this dishearteningly cruel world.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The old saying “Ladies Love Outlaws” is perhaps a bit shopworn at this late date but it still rings true in some cases. For example, there are a certain number of seemingly “normal” women who become involved in jailhouse romances with jailbirds. I suspect that this typically horrifies those near and dear to them, but hey, who truly has the right to judge matters of the heart? And I’m quite sure that in some cases, these women not only become enamored with “the jailhouse rockers”, but also sincerely want to help them salvage their ravaged lives.

A romance of this nature, however, will very likely become a “bad romance” if the woman on the outside happens to be “married with children”. This was hammered home with startling ferocity on Thursday in Drexel Hills, PA, a suburb of the City of Brotherly Love.

It all began when one of Christina Belajonas’s small sons went digging through his mother’s purse and came upon not pocket change or Tylenol or a tube of lipstick; rather, the young boy fished out a box of condoms and showed the evidence to his dad, Keith Belajonas.

Dan Kelley and Larry McShane of the New York Daily News write:

A boy’s innocent search through his mom’s purse sparked the jealous rage behind the murder-suicide of his parents.

One of Christina Belajonas’ small sons discovered a box of condoms in her bag, with her husband then digging out a local inmate’s salacious letter asking her for nude photos, a top police official said Friday.

Supt. Michael Chitwood of the Upper Darby, PA police department stated that Ms. Belajonas’s husband Keith became furious and precipitated a fatal altercation when Christina, 28, arrived at the family’s apartment around 1:30 am Thursday. Keith grabbed her by the hair with one hand, shot her in the head (presumably with a handgun) and then stabbed her repeatedly as their two sons, Robert, 5, and Christopher, 4, watched in horror. (As Doc Rivers says, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight.”)

Now I certainly don’t fault Keith for being pissed but really, dude, was it really worth it? If she doesn’t love ya, she doesn’t love ya. It really doesn’t matter who she loves if it’s not you – could be a stockbroker, could be a jailbird. Who cares?

Keith, however, cared just a little too much, and although he only had a few more hours to live, after bolting the murder scene with his two boys, like any self-respecting, modern macho man, he reportedly took time out from trying to evade the police dragnet that quickly swooped into action to post a few macho remarks on Facebook.

“Had an argument. She was cheating on me. I won.”

Well not really. You killed her and now you’re dead and your two little boys are scarred for life. Good job, Keith…

Neighbors apparently reported the slaying and within an hour, the police found Christina’s lifeless body in the family’s second-floor residence. Meanwhile, Keith and the traumatized boys were driving toward Staten Island which is where the family had lived before moving to Drexel Hill.

The incident set off a three-state manhunt with the NYPD eventually tracking him down after a 911 call from someone who recognized the SUV from an Amber Alert.

Once they were on the road, Keith appears to have made some, shall we say, “final” decisions. He dropped his sons off at a local CVS where his brother worked, and then stole a case of beer, cigarettes and cash before heading off to meet his maker.

Death came calling on a dead-end Staten Island street about five hours after Christina’s death when Keith shot himself in the head.

Although the inmate yearning for the nude photos of Christina was not identified by the authorities, he is believed to be an inmate in a Pennsylvania jail.

* * * * *

Christina’s grand-aunt defended her on Friday as the victim’s family took custody of the two little boys.

“She was doing her best, working two jobs,” said Kathy Corrigan. “She wasn’t perfect, but nobody was.”

The boys were released to their slain mother’s relatives hours after her tragic deaths and driven to Folcroft, Pa.

Both boys were out playing with their great-grandfather in a nearby park Friday morning as relatives hoped the siblings could emerge somewhat intact from the terrifying ordeal.

“For the most part, the kids are doing good,” said Corrigan, who traveled to Staten Island to retrieve the boys.

“They aren’t going to get through this without any scars.

She added that the family has come to the conclusion that the best policy will be not to demonize Keith despite his bloody rampage.

Corrigan said she “doesn’t want the boys growing up thinking he was a horrible monster. He was not horrible to them. He was not horrible to her until (Thursday).”

* * * * *

“Nothing good happens after midnight” — Doc Rivers

Matters of the heart and loins are delicate indeed, and people are often not emotionally equipped to deal with a spouse’s infidelity, especially when it’s sprung on them in dramatic fashion as was the case with Keith. But his insane decision to butcher his wife right in front of the kids was far from an appropriate response. These days, human emotional evolution seems, in many respects, to be going backwards, and Keith’s grand finale is yet another example of our inability to deal with anger and frustration in a positive manner.

Keith does deserve credit for one thing, though. At least he didn’t take his two boys with him.

by Starks Shrink

Donna Kay Tapani paid three misfits to murder Martha Gail Fulton, the wife of her former lover, George Fulton. That’s the simplest story; the motivations and complexities of this case run much deeper than what’s readily apparent on the surface.

Gail Garza was a devout Catholic girl who grew up in small town Texas. She met George and they dated but she still maintained her college aspirations and completed a degree in speech pathology. In the meantime, George went off to West Point and a career in the Army. He reunited with Gail and they soon married, anticipating a typical peripatetic military existence.

Gail soon had three children, born at different duty stations, including locations in Germany and the US. She was a devoted and doting mother and wife, believing it to be her destiny as sanctioned by her faith. George, however, if rumors are to be believed, had a wandering eye that was followed by other body parts. One documented dalliance occurred when the couple was stationed in Panama which led Gail to return home abruptly to her home town in Texas. During this period, Gail reportedly became very depressed and lost so much weight that her family was concerned she was anorexic. Gail had severe self-esteem issues and her weight loss was always an indicator of unhappiness. Perhaps she thought that exercise and slimness (about which she was obsessive) would make her more attractive to her husband, or more likely, this was her obsessive reaction to the pain she couldn’t seem able to stop.

George eventually retired from the Army and Gail assumed that they would lay down roots amongst her family in Texas, as they had always planned. That was not to be; George, flailing about to find a career after military service, decided unilaterally to move the family to Lake Orion, Michigan, a small community outside of Detroit. Reluctantly, Gail, as always, gave in to her husband’s wishes.

Gail settled into life in that community with her husband and two of her three children. The move was so abrupt that her oldest child opted to remain in Texas with Gail’s mother while she pursued a college degree. Gail’s two younger children — Emily and Andrew, still in high school, made the big trek to Michigan with their parents. It’s fairly clear from Gail’s friends and family back in Texas, and her children, that she was not very happy during that time. Gail always seemed to lose weight and become anxious and stressed when her life presented difficulties, and during this interval she was rail thin and looked old beyond her years. Mostly she dealt with adversity through talking with her priest, praying and doing her nightly rosary beads, convinced that God would see her through the difficult times. Sadly, her life in Michigan would have more challenges than joys and Gail wasn’t always up to the task.

The job that precipitated George moving his family to Michigan dissolved in a matter of months, and once again, he began seeking the brass ring. He thought he found it in an opportunity in Florida, working with a company called Concerned Care Home Health (CCHH). In truth, however, it was the beginning of disaster. While in Florida on business, George had a chance encounter with a vivacious, outspoken woman, quite the opposite of his wife Gail, named Donna Kay Trapini. She seemed smart, articulate, driven and extremely interested in sex, which presumably after 21 years of marriage, he felt that his wife could or would not provide. He embarked upon a passionate physical affair that was to last nearly two years before his long suffering spouse discovered their relationship.

Gail kept the home fires burning while her husband traveled and worked to keep food on the family table. While she was intelligent and well educated, Gail was guided by her abiding Catholic faith and believed that her place was with her children and her family. However much she tried to maintain her steadfastness through faith, the chinks in her armor showed through, however. Gail often talked of suicide when her husband was away and in her heart, she knew he was unfaithful. She shared these suicidal feelings with her teenage children who lived at home, and as a result, they were constantly in fear for her safety. With their father always gone on business and their mother expressing suicidal ideations, the children had an unsteady and frightening introduction to young adulthood. All these feelings started to come to a head in the late spring of 1999, when George’s mistress and, by this point, boss, began to extend their relationship beyond their adulterous bed and into his family home.

George somehow thought that he could have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. He actually left his wife, Gail, to move in with his mistress Donna Trapani in Florida in early 1999. He never told Gail, however, that he was moving out; rather, he simply told her that he needed an apartment in Florida to pursue his fledgling business. Somehow Gail bought into this. So George moved in with Donna and soon got to know his mistress, perhaps more than he wanted to. Donna turned out to be a woman of many faces.

Donna Kay Trapani was born in mean circumstances in Louisiana to a mother who hadn’t education or wealth, and a father who’d skipped out before she set foot into the world. Donna struggled with her weight throughout her years in school and finally had bariatric surgery in her early college years. Her ensuing weight loss boosted her self-confidence and she went on to participate in collegiate pep squads as well as the active dating life she had always desired but had been denied in her early years. Even Donna’s mother, who to this day believes in her innocence, admits that Donna was obsessed with her appearance and success both before and after her surgery. Narcissism is typically self-loathing and insecurity masquerading as bravado. Donna met and married her husband, an aircraft mechanic, and moved to the Florida panhandle. There are reports that Donna and her husband were unable to conceive a child; perhaps that’s true, I cannot say. However, Donna had ambitions for herself and wasn’t content to simply be the wife of a mechanic. Nursing degree in hand, she started an employment agency for visiting nurses and was determined to become a business tycoon. Reports from many of her previous employees indicate that Donna was volatile with a vile temper, and often lashed out at people over the smallest of infractions. They also indicated that she was a habitual liar, something she demonstrated herself when she took the stand in her own defense at trial. Her stories were wildly improbable, but she would cling to them as though by simply telling them, she could make them true or even believable.

When she met George, Donna was CEO of her company CCHH, and was often out on the town at the bars with the single nurses from her firm, despite having a husband at home who disapproved of this behavior. We get the sense that Donna did whatever Donna wanted; she was always in charge and always needed to be the commander. At any rate, she and George inevitably struck up a physical relationship which grew from there to take on epic proportions, which would ultimately cost Gail her life.

Donna was pretty clear about her intentions throughout the affair. She wanted what she wanted, and she wanted it on her terms. She wanted George, sans wife, and she would do whatever it took to get there, including murder. George, on the other hand, did what he had done his whole life; he manipulated, cajoled, lied and did the expedient thing to get what he wanted in the moment. George wanted hot sex on the side and a reverent obedient wife at home. So he told Donna what he believed she wanted to hear and didn’t tell Gail much of anything. Gail wanted what she wanted too, but she prayed to God to give it to her instead of facing her issues and addressing them with her husband. She did resort to threats of suicide and tried to inflict guilt on George in the hope he would change. Clearly, her efforts could not succeed and the situation grew increasingly volatile.

There have been untold numbers of love triangles, with unfaithful husbands, leading to divorces and families shattered by the sins of the flesh, but this triangle was a mix of personalities that seemed doomed to end in tragedy. A prime example of how these three dysfunctional personalities interacted is their behavior over the 4th of July weekend in 1999. What all three of them did is nearly incomprehensible to most people involved in normal relationships. Donna, having been thrown over by George some months earlier, sent him a letter on doctor’s letterhead, stating that not only was she pregnant but that she had terminal lymphoma as well. George, being either completely gullible or wanting to have his cake and eat it too, invited Donna up to Michigan for the holiday weekend so that she could search for an apartment near his home. He said his goal was to be able to take care of Donna and the anticipated child in her time of need. To facilitate this misguided plan, George set up a meeting between his wife and his mistress at Donna’s hotel. This, of course, was a total failure. Gail became hysterically distraught and Donna turned cruel and vicious, and became even more possessive. George decided to spend the night with Donna in her hotel room, had sex with her, and then dumped her the following morning. The fact that Gail let him back into the family home after this is an indication of her complete lack of self-esteem and total dependence upon George. This disastrous weekend turned out to be the trigger that would set the murder in motion.

Donna Trapani was infuriated over being dumped and became obsessive about winning George back. She began a torrent of phone calls to his home, letters, emails and faxes in which she first tried cajoling and wheedling, then laid on the guilt trip, and finally resorted to vitriol in order to make George come back. Much of the venom was directed at Gail, whom Donna viewed as the barrier to their relationship. When all her attempts failed, as they were destined to do simply based on the hysteria of the communications, she hired three misfits to take out her rival in a hail of bullets. She enlisted one of her habitually errant employees — 38 year old Sybil Padgett, and Sybil’s 19 year old boyfriend, Patrick Alexander, to plan and carry out the murder. They, in turn, connected Donna to Kevin Ouellette, the intended trigger man, a cold opportunist who would do anything for a fast buck. Promised $15,000 from Donna, the hit squad headed to Lake Orion from their Florida home to execute Gail Fulton. Donna’s big mistake was not realizing that if you hire killers, you probably need to actually pay them. Since she failed to follow through on her part of the bargain, all three of her co-conspirators rolled over on her and she was eventually arrested for first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Kevin and Patrick were offered plea deals in return for their testimony against Donna and Sybil, but the prosecutors had no intention of offering any such deal to the women, both of whom were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Both subsequently lost their appeals.

I believe Donna suffers from Borderline personality disorder with marked narcissistic features. When you analyze her actions with her employees, her ex-husband, her ‘recruits’ for murder, and her behavior afterwards, it’s clear that she is disorganized in thought and deed. She is prone to dramatic mood shifts, outbursts of anger and delusional thought patterns. Her constant self-aggrandizing precludes all feelings of conscience for her actions. She truly feels that any means justify the ends, which in her case are whatever she happens to desire at the moment. In this, she reminds me of Jodi Arias. Both believe that they deserve the object of their desire. Both believe that this “object” will propel their lives beyond the mundane existence they believe they currently have and fantasize that a life with this person will enhance their lives far beyond their current state. Both were devastated when the object of their desire rejected them, and they acted out in the only way they apparently could – with fury and destruction. Both told wild tales about their actions with seemingly no compunction, both on and off the witness stand, and both gave TV interviews over their attorneys’ objections immediately after their convictions. Sadly, both were destined to lose their ‘prizes’ because their intrinsically flawed psyches would ultimately preclude them from any type of successful relationship that would fulfill their needs. It’s a tragedy that people fell victim to them, but it was perhaps inevitable given their manipulative, determined natures.

What made Gail Fulton’s murder even more tragic was her complete innocence and probable naivete. While her death was no one’s fault but Donna and her cohorts, Gail contributed to the situation by not standing up for herself or insisting that George behave in a manner appropriate for a husband and father. By allowing George to mistreat her, disrespect their marriage, and return home forgiven, despite his lack of remorse or apology, she gave him free rein to do as he pleased. George must have thought that he had the perfect situation. His wife would never leave him nor kick him to the curb. He could fulfill his sexual desires and still maintain the semblance of a stable home and family life. George essentially loaded the gun that was Donna Trapani. Did he know that she had severe issues that could turn deadly? It’s not likely that he did, but his willful ignorance when her behavior became obsessive and erratic placed his family in grave danger. The toxic mess resulting from these three personality types being thrown together and placed under extreme duress inevitably exploded killing Gail Fulton and destroying lives and families in both Florida and Michigan.

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The Julie Schenecker Tragedy: Negligence, Finger-Pointing and the Death of Children

Luka Magnotta: Man, Boy or Beast?

The Disturbing Truth about Mothers Who Murder Their Children

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Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

by Patrick H. Moore

You are a three-year-old girl and you live in a house in a place called Mascotte. You also live in a place called Florida which you understand is bigger than Mascotte so you don’t know where it starts and where it ends. Your house is on a busy road and sometimes you and your mom walk along the busy road on the way to your grandmother’s house. Because the road is busy, your mom walks on the outside close to the traffic while you walk on the inside away from the cars. Your mom holds your hand and sometimes she picks you up and carries you.

You have a dad too but he and your mom don’t live together. They used to when you were very little but that was a long time ago. You can talk pretty well now and your mom loves to tell you what a smart girl you are. You know that’s a good thing and you glow inside when she tells you that. Because you’re a smart girl you know a lot of words and one night you asked your mom why she and your dad don’t live together. She looks at you strangely and you can tell she doesn’t want to answer. You think maybe you shouldn’t have asked her but then she decides to answer and tells you that she and your dad can’t get along and that he used to be really mean to her.

Then you remember something you had forgotten or maybe it was just that you didn’t want to think about it. You remember the time your mom and dad got into a huge fight and they screamed at each other and then your dad hit your mom real hard. After that the policemen came in special white cars and they took your dad away and no one would tell you where they took him.

The he was gone for a long time and then he came back and he gave you a huge hug and you asked him not to go away again and he said he wouldn’t. But still he didn’t live with you and your mom and he only came around once in a while. Although he was always glad to see you somehow you knew that he wasn’t happy. Once you said, “Daddy, what’s wrong?” and he said “nothin’ darlin’” but you knew that something was wrong.

*     *     *     *     *

Then came the day you will never forget. Your dad came to your house and he gave you a big hug and you were very glad to see him but then he got real serious and you had the sinking feeling that something was even wrong than usual. Your mom said you and your dad were going to have a talk and then she set you up to watch an Ariel video. You love Ariel and you were riveted to the big screen but then after quite  a while you got hungry and you went to see your mom and she was lying on the floor in the family room and she didn’t look right and your dad wasn’t there any more and you got really scared.

You knelt over your mom and said, “Mommy, I’m hungry” but she didn’t answer and you thought she was asleep and tried hard to wake her but she still didn’t stir and then you found yourself shouting at her, “MOMMY. MOMMY, WAKE UP!” but she didn’t wake up and you were terrified and you sprang to your feet and knew you had to get to your grandmother’s house really fast because you knew she would be able to wake your mom up because she was your grandmother and was good at nearly everything. So you raced to the door in your jeans with the flower patches sewed on the knees and your little top and your tennis shoes which you sort of knew how to tie and sort of didn’t. Your mom had tied them earlier in the morning and they were still snug.

 *     *     *     *     *

Outside the cars were whizzing by on the road really fast and you knew you weren’t supposed to be out there by yourself but you knew you had to get to your grandmother’s so that she could wake your mom up. You stayed as far off the road as you could and trotted along half-running, half-walking and you got tired really fast but you didn’t slow down and after a while it felt like your heart was going to pop right out of your chest and your side hurt but you still didn’t slow down. You didn’t know it but some of the people in the cars whizzing by were looking at you strangely and a couple of times people almost stopped but then thought better of it and kept on going.

When you got close to your grandmother’s house you slowed down and smoothed your hair and wished you had brought your comb because your grandmother always liked for you to look nice. When you saw her house up ahead you felt a rush of hope and then you really ran, your heart pounding and you climbed the steps to her porch and knocked on the door shouting “Grandma, Grandma” and it took a minute but then she came to the door and she took one look at you and said, “Oh my God, child! Oh my God.” And you told her that your mom wouldn’t wake up and then you started crying — you’d been holding it in for all this time but it all burst out and then your grandma started crying too.

*     *     *     *     *

A three-year-old girl walked more than a mile down a busy Florida road to her grandmother’s house to get help after her father allegedly killed her mother, officials said tonight.

Sgt. Kristin Thompson of Lake Bay County Sheriff Department described the actions of the tragic toddler as “kind of heroic” and praised the little girl for managing to cover such a distance to raise help. The little girl knew the route to her grandmother’s house because she had walked it with her mother, Thompson said. “She went down to her grandmother’s and said she couldn’t get her mom to wake up.”

*      *      *      *      *

 The sheriff’s department named Johnny Lashawn Shipman, 36, as the suspect and issued a warrant for his arrest in the death of Kristi Lynne Delaney, 26, of Mascotte, 40 miles west of Orlando.

Updated: Johnny Lashawn Shipman was arrested in the days following his warrant.

Austin L. Miller of the Halifax Media Group writes:

Calm, with a serious expression and little to say, Lake County murder suspect Johnny Lashawn Shipman made his first court appearance via video camera from the Marion County Jail…

County Judge James McCune ordered Shipman, 36, held without bond on a warrant for the first-degree murder of Kristi Delaney, his 26-year-old girlfriend, who was found dead in Mascotte on Monday.

He was arrested by members of the Ocala Police Department’s Special Deployment Unit who received a tip on his whereabouts and went to the Fore Ranch area off Southwest State Road 200 in Ocala, where he was arrested without incident at about 4:55 p.m.

When OPD detectives Dan C. Clark and Jeff Hurst arrested Shipman, he had a shirt wrapped around his left hand, according to Clark’s report. In both hands, Shipman had a jacket, a Bible and a cross made out of Palmetto leaves.

He dropped the items, lay on the ground and put his arms out.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Although some of us think about it more than others, we all know that death can come calling at any moment. In reference to this scary fact, the Bible says, “You don’t know the minute or the hour” – paraphrase of Matthew 25:13. Although this verse actually refers to the unpredictable moment when Jesus will allegedly return, in a more generic sense it refers to the fact we don’t know when our time will come so we better be ready.

In Ingmar Bergman’s remarkable film, The Seventh Seal, Death comes calling for an old grizzled Knight who has returned to Sweden after fighting in the Crusades in the Holy Land. Bergman depicts Death as a pale-faced man wearing an enigmatic expression dressed in long black robes. If the Knight is up in a tree reading, he looks down only to discover that Death is busily hacking away at the tree trunk. You quickly learn that Death is bloody patient and in the movie, he agrees to play chess with our grizzled Knight. As long as the game continues, the Knight gets to live, but when check-and-mate arrives, which it inevitably must, it’s Gone Baby, Gone. Because Bergman is a genius (The Seventh Seal is surely a great film), he skillfully juxtaposes the Knight and his morbid ruminations on the meaning, or lack of meaning, of life, with the Knight’s Squire, a good-natured, lusty fellow who fears neither man, beast, nor death, likes a jolly maiden as much as the next guy (“Between the strumpet’s legs I lie”), and will fearlessly lay down his life for his liege lord should it prove necessary.

In the Carlos Castaneda books, Death is described as a presence that is always on your left. It is essentially invisible but if, when the time is right, you cast a quick glance in that direction, you may just get a glimpse of the bugger.

In the case of small children, it is probable that Death is far from their minds most of the time, busy as they are with discovering Life. Yet, as events that transpired in a Killearn Lakes Plantation, FLA home last Tuesday morning demonstrate, Death can sneak up on a small child too, often in the most unexpected way.

Sean Rossman of the Tallahassee Democrat writes:

Mason Rhinehart and his brother were playing video games in their Killearn Lakes Plantation home Tuesday morning when their grandmother, Martha White, interrupted to say she had a surprise for them.

White, 63, who had been babysitting the boys, then took 6-year-old Mason into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, a probable cause affidavit said. Mason’s brother, age 8, heard him start to cry from behind the door and say, “I don’t want to die, please don’t kill me.”

The boy said he tried to get in the bathroom, but could not. He then called his father and hid, court documents said.

Because Big Brother thought fast, first responders were on the scene in five minutes, but it was too late. They found little Mason lying on the bathroom floor with multiple stab wounds to the chest, according to LCSO spolesman, Lt. James McQuaig. Leon County Emergency Medical Services rushed Mason to the hospital, but he did not survive.

Although our alleged killer, Grandma White, was not there when deputies arrived at the home, Mason’s parents said she was the one who cared for him and his brother at their home while they were at work.

Despite doing his best to hide from Grandma White, she apparently found Mason’s brother before leaving the murder scene with a bottle of wine. The brother told the authorities that before making her escape, she told him she “had a surprise for him too,” according to court documents. Fortunately, however, Grandma White’s bloodlust was apparently satisfied for the moment and Mason’s brother was not injured.

Our bloodthirsty grandma apparently did her best to book, but did not get that far. Deputies were able to identify her as a suspect “when they found her covered in blood at the dead end of Valley Creek Drive, about a half-mile away from the boys’ parents’ home in the 7700 block of Bass Ridge Trail. White’s clothing was covered with blood, court documents said. She also had a bottle of wine and a Xanax.”

(Perhaps she should have taken the Xanax a bit earlier. On the other hand, perhaps she had already taken Xanax which could have reduced any anxiety she felt about stabbing her grandson in the chest multiple times.)

After her arrest, Grandma White was taken to a local hospital for medical evaluation. The next morning, she was transferred to the Leon County Jail and booked on a charge of first-degree murder. She reportedly showed little emotion as she was led in handcuffs into the female holding cell just before 11:30 a.m., 24 hours after deputies were initially called to the scene in Killearn Lakes.

According to Lt. McQuaig, it is still too early in the investigation to identify a motive for the stabbing. However, she reportedly told deputies she was “fed up.”

(Not a valid excuse to stab Little Brother. We’re all “fed up” to some degree. And if you’ve reached the breaking point, the appropriate thing is to simply whack yourself, not innocent people around you.)

“We are not clear on the motive at this point in time,” McQuaig said. “That’s one of the many things that the investigators are continuing to dig into.”

Little Mason was scheduled to start the second grade at Killearn Lakes Elementary School. Principal Brenda Wagner sent an email to parents and the school community Wednesday stating:

“This letter comes to you with great concern and emotion,” Wagner said. “Our deepest sympathy goes out to the family and friends.”

* * * * *

Although grandmas are supposed to be loving and beneficent creatures, that has not always been the case with the ones I’ve known personally. When I was little back in Wisconsin, I remember being very excited because one of my grandmothers was going to visit. But then when she arrived, she turned out to a grim old thing and to my dismay, she would get very irritated when I would reach out gleefully and shake the excess flesh that hung down invitingly from her upper arms. To me it was a game, but to her it was purest aggravation…. But I was lucky. She never “had a surprise” for me and never went after me with an ice pick, even though she may have wanted to.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Note: There are rumors that David Lee Simpson’s trial is apparently either under way or about to begin but I can’t find any actual corroborating evidence.

It is well-known that a great many of the women who closely followed the Jodi Arias trial despise the very ground (or currently concrete) that she walks upon. I imagine it is some combination of the fact that she brutally slaughtered the fresh-faced Travis Alexander — with his boy next door good looks and his apparently pleasing motivational-speaker ways — combined with the fact that Jodi is perceived by many as a prevaricating, promiscuous, manipulative, anal-sex loving, prima donna.

It turns out, however, that there are some men wandering about this land who actually prefer Jodi to Travis, and in some cases even had (or still have) powerful crushes on the allegedly good-looking young murderess. Fortunately, I do not fall into that category. With my monk-like ways, I am largely indifferent to Jodi’s personal appearance and simply find poor Travis to be very dead. That much is clear. My feelings toward him are no different than my feelings toward any unfortunate soul who has the bad luck to be murdered as a result of a love affair gone wrong.

But this brief post is not about me and my feelings for Jodi and poor Travis. This post is about an arguably dangerous man named David Lee Simpson, a 48-year old resident of Bath, New York, who is charged with three felony counts of computer tampering and two felony counts of stalking, based on online threats he made against HLN’s Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell and an unnamed Phoenix  newswoman. David Lohr at Huffington Post has the story:

According to Maricopa County prosecutor Edward Leiter, Simpson — who had apparently become infatuated with Jodi — became so incensed and hostile toward Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell because of the negative things they were saying about Arias both before and during the course of the trial that he tweeted in June that he wanted to tie them to a “tree naked and leave them to suffer all night” and then “slit their throats.” Although this may or may not have been quite enough on its own to land Simpson in the slammer, he made it much worse by allegedly telling a co-worker at an auto repair shop in Bath that he wanted to gut one of the TV commentators “like a deer.”

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has reiterated that Simpson made the threats because he was “infatuated with Jodi Arias” and was upset with all the nasty things that the two broadcasters were saying about her while covering her  murder trial.

The coffin nail for Simpson was that during a (not so) routine traffic stop on July 17th, while still in New York but reportedly on his way to Georgia to “take care of business” with Nancy Grace, the police searched his vehicle and allegedly found guns, handcuffs, zip-ties, binoculars, a knife and a police radio. The detectives also found a news article about the Newtown shooting.

“This suspect was on his way south with enough weapons in his car to do serious harm to someone,” Arpaio said at a press conference following Simpson’s arrest.

Now although I usually take what Sheriff Joe says with a grain of salt, this time he may be on the level. Simpson appeared in court on Oct. 16 at a pre-trial conference hearing before Maricopa County Superior Court judge Margaret Mahoney. At the hearing, Simpson’s lawyer, Casey Martin, told the judge he has been in talks with the prosecutor about a possible plea deal for his client.

In response, Judge Mahoney ordered both parties to appear at a settlement conference to discuss the matter.

Simpson, who was extradited to Arizona in July, had previously entered a not guilty plea to the charges.

As is well-known, Arias — the unwitting motivation behind Simpson’s alleged actions — was convicted in May of killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander. The jury determined she stabbed Alexander nearly 30 times, slit his throat and then shot him in the head at his Arizona home. The Arias jury, however, failed to reach a unanimous decision on whether she should receive life in prison or the death penalty. A second sentencing phase jury is scheduled to commence deliberations this coming September. If this jury fails to reach a verdict, the death penalty is off the table and the judge will sentence Ms. Arias.

*     *     *     *     *

At Simpson’s settlement conference, a resolution was not reached which is why it is now preceding to trial.

I don’t have a strong sense of what would be a fair resolution in the David Lee Simpson matter. The threats alone certainly need to be taken seriously, but then, when you toss in Simpson’s “stalking arsenal” complete with the Newtown news article, the profile of a potential psycho-killer begins to emerge. Would 5 years in prison be enough? 1o years? If he was to receive a 5-year term to be served in the Arizona State penitentiary, it would cost the Arizona taxpayers somewhere in the vicinity of $150,000. Would this be a small price to pay to protect the public? It’s a difficult question that doesn’t lend itself to easy answers. A Psychological Evaluation is certainly in order and, I would think, will most likely occur at some point in the proceedings. And if we are to be brutally honest (something we sometimes try to avoid), isn’t obvious that Mr. Simpson’s ultimate sentence should be served in a lock-down state mental facility as opposed to a state penitentiary?

adapted by Patrick H. Moore

The world has changed greatly since the 1960′s and — generally speaking — individuals are held to a much higher standard of conduct with respect to sexual “indiscretions” and other form of blatant or serious criminal misconduct. In this post, the idea of which comes to us courtesy of Lachlan M. and Javier Yepes at Cracked.com, we will discuss three celebrities who “got away with murder”, figuratively speaking, in previous decades but would probably get far more than “a slap on the wrist” if they were apprehended for these crimes in today’s world.

We will start with legendary rock guitarist Jimmy Page before moving on to Vince Neil of Motley Crew and —surprise surprise — Sean Penn.

Jimmy Page Kidnapped a 14-Year-Old Girl and Kept Her Prisoner for Several Years

In addition to his fantastic career with Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page turned in a monumental body of excellent studio work in the mid and late ’60s. He played on Tom Jones’s pop smash “It’s Not Unusual”, The Kink’s monster hit “You Really Got Me” and Van Morrison instant ’60′s classic “Gloria”, before going on to stardom with Led Zeppelin.

According to Lachlan M. and Yepes, in 1972, Page was hanging around a nightclub and laid eyes on 14-year-old Lori Maddox. Page sent roadie Richard Cole to Maddox’s table with the message, “Jimmy told me that he’s going to have you whether you like it or not.” The roadie then grabbed her and chucked her in the back of a limo.

From there, it was on to Page’s house, where the “affair” was quickly consummated. Page may have been sleazy but he was not unintelligent and he knew that if the word got out, hecould be in serious trouble. So for the next few years, although Maddox reportedly traveled with the band at times, she was kept out of the public eye as much as possible so that the relationship wasn’t brought to the attention of the authorities. Even in the wild ’70′s, you could still go to jail for something like this.

Page got away with it and never went to jail or got arrested. Lori Maddox may still be infatuated with him and calls him “romantic.” Perhaps this is a case of the Stockholm syndrome. Here are Maddox’s own words from Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga:

 “It was magnificent. Can you believe it? It was just like right out of a story! Kidnapped, man, at 14!”

Motley Crue’s Lead Singer Vince Neil Killed Someone While Drunk Driving and Only Got 30 Days in Jail and a Large Fine

Motley Crue has sold 90 million albums over their 30-year career. Known and loved for their hard rocking and hard-partying ways, the Crue consumed enough cocaine to put dozens of cocaine dealers’ children through college

Their shenanigans were so over-the-top crazy that it made them caricatures but no one seemed to care. After all, it was the hedonistic ’80s. But not everything they did was lovable. Certainly not the time they killed  a man.

On December 8, 1984, lead singer Vince Neil was enjoying day 3 of a three day party at his Vegas pad. The booze was running low so he jumped in a car with his rocker friend Razzle and drove to a liquor store. Out of control crazy, he soon lost control of the car and collided head-on with a Volkswagen coming the other way. Razzle died instantly, and the two people in the other car were hospitalized. One reportedly suffered brain damage and was comatose for a month.

Neil was convicted of DUI and vehicular manslaughter, which could have resulted in up to 10 years in prison. Being a superstar, Neil hired a “weasel lawyer” and paid him a lot of money. The lawyer talked the sentence down to 30 days in jail, five years’ probation, and $2.5 million in fines. Neil only served 20 of those 30 days because Motley Crue had a tour scheduled.

To his credit, Neil certainly realized how fortunate he was, stating:

“I wrote a $2.5 million check for vehicular manslaughter when Razzle died. I should have gone to prison. I definitely deserved to go to prison. But I did 30 days in jail and got laid and drank beer, because that’s the power of cash. That’s f_____ up.”

It is noted that Neil’s contrition has not stopped him from driving under the influence on one of more occasions since then.

Sean Penn Tied Up and Physically Abused Madonna

Sean Penn is one of our most well-respected actors. Who can forget his roles in “Milk”, “Mystic River” and “Dead Man Walking.” He is also a noted progressive who vehemently opposed our involvement in the war with Iraq.

Therefore, it’s easy to think of him as not only a fine actor but someone who cares about humanity.

In Penn’s earlier years, however, he was known for his violent and aggressive outbursts. The incident that could have resulted in severe repercussions including substantial prison time was the time he assaulted and battered Madonna in 1988.

Their marriage was a stormy affair and Penn’s heavy drinking certainly didn’t help. Finally, in 1988, after he flew into a rage over Madonna’s supposed affair with Warren Beatty, she called the marriage off. Penn responded by turning into an abusive nutcase. Although accounts of the beating vary with respect to details, here is the story according to Lachlan M. and Javier Yepes:

After he got good and drunk (again), Penn climbed into Madonna’s house, where she was alone. He then grabbed her, tied her to a chair, and assaulted her for hours, both physically and emotionally. He then went out for more booze, came back, and kept up the beating. Madonna only escaped after telling Penn that she had to go to the bathroom, which meant he had no problem battering, beating, bloodying, and bruising the supposed love of his life, but felt it would have been too degrading to make her pee in front of him.

While Penn was arrested, the charges were dropped because Madonna didn’t want to generate a media circus, which may have been the one and only time in her life that Madonna actually wanted the press to go away. A couple of decades of political activism and two Oscars later, and the world barely remembers an incident that would turn most people into a pariah.

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In today’s world, any of the above three incidents would result in some serious prison time. For kidnapping and carrying on a sexual relationship with Lori Maddox, Jimmy Page could easily get 20 years or more in prison. For his DUI vehicular manslaughter, Vince Neil would probably be looking at two to three years minimum. As for the violent Mr. Penn, he would be lucky to escape with a year’s county time, depending on whether the authorities wanted to make an example of him.