commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The word “vicarious” is defined as experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person. Many if not most of us live vicariously to some degree, often through our children. When our favorite athletes come through in the clutch, we’re right there with them “making the big play” and reaping the bountiful laurels. One area where our vicarious “dream life” often manifests is in the area of sex and romance. Women enjoy fantasizing about “dreamboats” and no doubt insert themselves imaginatively in the place of the female leads playing opposite these “dreamy guys”. In recent decades, actors of moderate talent such as Hugh Grant have forged excellent careers by allowing themselves to be the vicarious object of desire of untold numbers of women.

And generally speaking, this is probably a good thing. Life would get pretty dull without engaging in vicarious fantasies now and then.

But what if your vicarious desires turns dark? What if you want to hurt the object of your vicarious desire? And what if you take affirmative steps to make your dark fantasy come true? Then things can get complicated. In fact, if you take it a step too far, you can wind up doing hard time because of your aggressive negative fantasies.

An interesting example of this comes to us out of Merrie Olde England where a twisted 30-year-old woman named Joanne Berry developed such hatred for another woman who reportedly “treated her with nothing but kindness” that she decided she could only be satisfied by having her enemy violently raped by a man of her (Joanne’s) choice.

The Guardian brings us this sordid but rather fascinating story which, oddly enough, is largely narrated not by the prosecutor, which is what we would expect in an American court of law, but rather by the judge.

A woman who used sex chatrooms to try to trick strangers into raping a former work colleague has been jailed for six years.

Joanne Berry, 30, posed as the woman online and invited men to act out violent rape fantasies and role play with her.

A judge said Berry may have held the victim responsible for losing her temporary job after Berry displayed “increasingly erratic behaviour” at work.

At some point, after Berry had disclosed her former co-worker’s address online, one eager wannabe “rapist” tried to bully his way in to the woman’s home to “act out” the “rape”. That is, he assumed he was going to have hot sex with her in the guise of rape. To his credit, however, Mr. Wannabe quickly realized that both he and the purported victim had been set up by a third party, who just happened to be the conniving Joanne Berry. Aware that things were not going according to plan, Mr. Wannabe gave up his bad acting job and flew the coop.

As a result of trying to have her “enemy” really raped by an unknown assailant, Berry, of Grove Park, south-east London, was convicted in May of putting a person in fear of violence. She was also convicted of committing an assault with the intention of committing a sexual offense, common assault and attempting to cause a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.

In breaking down the case, Judge David Griffith-Jones QC remarked that Berry had developed an “irrational vendetta” against the victim who had only shown kindness towards her.

The prosecutor told the court that the victim initially bore Berry’s “increasingly frenetic and bizarre” behavior, which took place in a job environment where Berry had a temporary work assignment, with “a degree of fortitude”.

But things deteriorated. The judge explained:

“Things got to a point where (the victim) felt the need to keep you at arm’s length, moreover because of your increasingly erratic behaviour.

“Your temporary work placement was terminated. It’s now quite clear that, irrationally, you took exception to being rebuffed by (the victim).

“It may be that you held her responsible for the loss of your temporary employment.”

Based on her anger, the aggrieved Berry resolved to exact some form of vicarious “revenge or retribution”.

The judge continues: “Thus, it was, you embarked on a bizarre series of events. You carried out some internet research and discovered a web-based chatline facility on which you would make contact with individuals with particular sexual and other interests.

“Through that facility, you made contact with a particular individual – ‘DH’ – who gave evidence during the trial.”

Berry contacted DH repeatedly over a period of time pretending that she enjoyed sex and engaging in role play. But that, of course, was not enough and she eventually persuaded DH to come to “her” home, knock on the door, enter and rape her.

Sayeth the judge: “During this you didn’t reveal your true identity and the address that you provided as your own was in fact (the victim’s) home address.

“He burst in intent on putting the plan between you and him into operation. Fortunately, he swiftly realised that something was amiss, so, after his initial aggressive entry, he aborted the plan.”

* * * * *

Good for DH. Had he not “aborted the plan”, he too would be sitting in the dock facing a serious term of incarceration in a British “nick”.

Meanwhile, let all your vicarious fantasies be positive ones…and you’ll do just fine.

by Mike Roche

On November 16, 1987, during a dark and stormy night, (and no, this is not the bad opening sentence to a mystery novel) John Markle, a Little Rock commodities investor, called his attorney, Richard Lawrence, and told him that he had done something terrible and to come to his house. The storm had crippled the telephone infrastructure and Lawrence was unable to obtain police assistance. After not getting an answer at the door of the Markle residence, Lawrence flagged down a police officer at a nearby Safeway.

The officer accompanied Lawrence and entered the darkened home. The officer discovered Markle’s body in his study of the Victorian style mansion. Using two firearms, John Markle had fired them simultaneously committing suicide. A blood splattered Halloween mask and suicide note were found nearby.

The officer searched the rest of the mansion and found the bodies of Markle’s daughters, Amy Michelle, 13, and Suzanne Marie, 9, together in Amy’s second-floor bedroom. The body of Christine Markle, 45, was found in the master suite that occupied the entire third floor of the house. All had been shot multiple times while sleeping.

John Markle had sedated his family with Elavil, an anti-depressant. He and his wife also had marijuana and valium in their blood system. He donned a Halloween mask, so that in the event his children woke up, they would not see the killer was their father. The suicide note read, “11/16/87 at 2:30 a.m. Let it hereby be stated as true that I, John L. Markle, murdered my wife, and two children, Amy and Suzanne, and then committed suicide myself. My wife had no knowledge or part in this. I think the evidence shall so prove.” Markle signed the note.

In the hallway next to the study was a black briefcase with a note to Lawrence. The briefcase contained: two letters to Lawrence, a long letter to Markle’s mother, $6,400 in cash, a $5,000 cashier’s check, a spiral notebook, a handwritten will and personal papers.

In the VCR was the movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street. The mansion was located on Main Street in Little Rock, a few blocks away from the Governor’s residence, where at the time, Bill and Hillary Clinton slept. What could have brought about such horrors behind the facade of such a beautiful home?

John Lawrence Markle was the son of Mercedes McCambrige, the Academy Award winning best supporting actress for her performance in All the King’s Men, which was also named “best picture” of 1949. She also won a Tony for her Broadway performance in Follies. McCambridge was also the demonic voice in The Exorcist.

John was born on Christmas Day, 1941, in Hollywood. His mother was at the time a 23-year-old radio actress, and her husband was writer William Fifield. When John was 8, his parents divorced and his mother remarried Fletcher Markle, a film director who adopted John.

Markle attained a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA and was hired as a commodities trader for the Stephens Brother’s Investment firm. Stephens Inc. is one of the largest privately owned investment banks in the country. The Markle family was lured to Little Rock in 1979 by the brothers, where John became the firm’s economist and one-man futures-trading department. He also handled a corporate house account for the firm’s founders, Jack and Witt Stephens.

An eccentric individual, Markle was known for his odd behavior. He was often described as being temperamental, rude and socially inept. He had a reputation for wearing purple shoes and was never without a leather Harley Davidson motorcycle cap while conducting trading. After the killings, the police investigation learned that Markle routinely cashed three or four checks totaling $600-$1,000 a week. “Where this cash was spent would be purely speculative,” the detective wrote in the final case report. His eccentric behavior was ignored in light of his performance in generating at least $3 million dollars in trading profits during his first few years with Stephens.

John operated with minimal oversight while personally managing the house account for the two Stephens brothers. When Markle placed a trade with the Chicago commodities brokerage firm, they would often delay assignment of the trade to an account until trading activity had slowed down later in the day. At this point, he would know if the trade was profitable or had lost money. He had also opened an account in his mother’s name and began assigning winning trades to his mother’s account and losing trades to the Stephens brothers’ account.

The Stephens house account lost $5.2 million during the time that Markle was controlling the activity. In the first 10 months of 1987, the house account lost more than $1.3 million dollars. Despite his horrendous performance with the Stephens account, his success rate with his mother’s account was an astounding 91.7 percent. His scheme came to light by accident. When one of the Chicago traders moved to another company, Markle began moving his business to the new company. The new company sent a duplicate accounting of the McCambridge account to the Stephens compliance office. When the compliance officer began reviewing the account history, he learned of the duplicity.

Markle was confronted about the fraud. He initially denied the accusation, but finally admitted to the wrongdoing. He was relieved of his position and given an ultimatum to pay back the money or they would turn him over to the authorities. On November 13, Warren Stephens demanded $1 million in restitution. Markle agreed to the proposal, but he requested 30 additional days to come up with the money. He was fired on Friday the 13th of November. He lamented in his diary over the damage to his family, “None of these people deserve me. I have put all of their futures in jeopardy. My relationship with my mother has been destroyed. I fear I have placed my family at considerable financial risk, i.e., I am broke and they my children have no inheritance left because of my action. Christine says I have put my family last and I have.”

Desperate for help, he went to his mother for a financial bailout. She refused his request telling him that she had provided money to him to invest in savings accounts for her grandchildren’s education and not to trade in hi-risk commodities. He would have to face the music on his own. In his 12-page letter addressed to his mother, the first page of the letter referred to the killings, and was apparently written after his mother rejected his plea for help. “But NO, you refused. So, you didn’t do it and you played hang-up for a week with me and now Stephens is made [sic] at me, and you, and so a deal that would have cost you nothing has now changed in a very different way. I wished you’d never done a lot of the things you did. Night mother. “ “… You were never around much when I needed you, so now my whole family are dead — so you can have the money — funny how things work out isn’t [it]??”

The second page began with a confession to the financial fraud. “Guilty: John Markle traded your account on an undisclosed discretionary basis. I added funds to your account; I added losses to the Stephens account.” He continued listing in chronological order various perceived insults at the hands of his mother. Those included that he was conceived to save a failing marriage, his parents’ divorce, alcohol infused fights with other celebrities, witnessing failed suicide attempts, her ruining innumerable family gatherings, and not helping during times of family crisis. He claimed to have called her daily for 26 years and used boyhood earnings to buy her gifts. “What was I trying to buy?” he wrote. Many of the sections ended with the underlined words, “Thanks for all your help.”

The motive for John Markle’s decision to kill his family was rooted in a suicide of a friend. Markle had a close acquaintance who had committed suicide the previous year. The friend’s widow was so distraught over the loss that Markle hired an individual to look after her and provide companionship to the widow during her period of grief. Markle was deeply affected by the trauma to the widow. As a result, in an effort to spare his own family the agony and humiliation of not only a suicide but the publicity of his crime, he decided to kill his entire family.

Markle was caught in the negative emotional vortex and his desperation is not hard to understand. After being an esteemed economist and trader, he was facing humiliation as an embezzler. His identity was stripped from him by his own acts. He would never obtain another job in the financial arena. He had been rejected by his employer and his mother. The taking of the lives of his family could not have been anticipated and his two daughters were denied any opportunity to build their own lives from the wreckage of their father’s.

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

The Grisly Details of Serial “Mall Killer” Mike DeBardeleben’s Actions Will Never Be Known

Family Annihilator Darin Campbell Murders His Family and Torches Lavish Tampa Mansion

Alex Hribal Was Desperate and Said He Wanted Someone to Kill Him

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

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

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

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

The Boston Bombers: A Tale of Two Troubled Brothers

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

Killers and the Catcher in the Rye

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Clarence Walker, cwalkerinvestigate@gmail.com

On June 25, the US Supreme Court handed down a resounding landmark ruling in two separate high profile criminal cases, requiring police to first get a warrant to search a person’s cell phone. The ruling is a major victory for the privacy rights for millions of cell phone users, with the Supreme Court working to update Fourth Amendment search and seizure law to keep pace with technological advances.

According to a January Pew survey, 90% of American adults have cell phones and 58% have smart phones.

Cell phones are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion. “Cell phones and smart phones with extensive memory can store millions of pages of personal texts, hundreds of photos and videos, which can form a revealing biography of a person’s life, and that the Fourth Amendment must protect personal, private possessions. A cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the exhaustive search of a house.”

In its unanimous decision, the court rejected the Obama administration’s argument that “cell phones are no different from anything else a person may be carrying when arrested, and that cell phones are now critical to tools in the commission of a crime.”

The decision came in two separate cases: US v. David Riley, where a California man was serving 15 years on charges of attempted murder and a gun charge, and US v. Brima Wurie, where a Boston area man was sentenced to the federal pen for 22 1/2 years on drug related charges. The court consolidated the two cases in reaching its opinion.

The question now becomes whether the decision will be applied retroactively to thousands of similar prosecutions where defendants were convicted as a result of warrantless evidence used against them that were taken from their cell phones or mobile devices. If retroactivity is granted, thousands of inmates could either go free, be granted a new trial, or face resentencing.

Attorney Orrin Kerr (gwu.edu)

Writing a commentary in the Washington Post, lawyer Orin Kerr, who serves as a professor at George Washington Law School, explained why the decision in the Wurie and Riley cases may not be made retroactive.

“The culprit is the continued expansion of the good faith exception in Davis v. US, where the Supreme Court ruled that the exclusionary rule is not available if a search was authorized by binding appellant precedent at the time the search occurred,” he argued. “Lower courts have interpreted Davis to apply broadly even when no binding appellate precedent authorized the search. Therefore, under these cases, relatively few defendants will get the benefits of the Riley-Wurie rule.”

In an interview with the Chronicle, San Diego appellate attorney Charles Sevilla largely agreed.

“The court seldom states whether its rulings are retroactive,” he told the Chronicle. “And even if the reversals in Wurie’s and Riley’s cell phone convictions were applied retroactively to cases not yet final on appeal, the defendants must face a ‘good faith’ argument to request a new trial. A ‘good faith’ argument can be made, for example, when a police officer, relying on a warrant, finds incriminating evidence during a search, but the search warrant is later found to be invalid. The ‘good faith’ doctrine allows the use of that evidence if it were unlawfully obtained because the officer was acting in ‘good faith,’” he explained.

“Evidence should be suppressed only if it can be said that the law enforcement officer had knowledge a search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment,” Sevilla added, citing Herring v. US. “If the police, during prior cell phone searches, acted on case law allowing warrantless searches, then an officer’s ‘good faith’ conduct will doom a suppression motion,” Seville argued.

Of course, police usually deny knowingly conducting unlawful searches.

Sevilla also cited another Supreme Court decision, Davis v. US, as another obstacle to retroactivity in cell phone search cases. In that case, Illinois police arrested Willie Gene Davis for providing a false name, then searched his car and found an illegal weapon. An appeals court refused to throw out the warrantless search of Davis’s car because the police only searched the immediate area.

Meanwhile Brima Wurie is scheduled to be resentenced on the drug charge that took his case to the Supreme Court. Because of the court’s ruling in his case, the drugs and weapon found in his home after police searched Wurie’s cell phone will not be considered, but he’s still facing serious time.

“As a repeat offender, Mr. Wurie will still face 20 years from the feds on the original drug case,” Wurie’s appellate public defender, Ian Gold, told the Chronicle. “So the reversal of Wurie’s conviction is largely symbolic without much benefit.”

The Supreme Court minced no words in separating such devices from other property a person might have on them when detained by police.

“Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure.”

The ruling will certainly apply to searches of tablets, laptop computers, and may even apply to digital information held by third parties like phone companies.

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hands does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” Roberts wrote. “Our answers to the question of what police must do before searching a (cell phone seized incident to an arrest) is accordingly simple — get a warrant.”

“I believe the court got it right,” said Lewis Rice, a retired DEA Special Agent in Charge of the agency’s New York Office. “The court must balance our right of privacy against law enforcement’s ability to aggressively investigate criminal organizations.”

Attorney Charles Sevilla (charlessevilla.com)

Rice points out the vital fact that although law enforcement generally needs a warrant, the Supreme Court ruling does allow a warrantless search of a mobile device depending on the immediate situation.

“The court left open the option for law enforcement, under exigent circumstances, to search a cell phone without a warrant,” he told the Chronicle.

Still, the decision in Wurie and Riley is already having an impact.

In Michigan, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock tossed felony drug charges against 29-year-old Matthew Macnaughton on July 16 after Macnaughton’s attorney successfully brought up the Wurie and Riley decision.

Grand Rapids police had stopped Macnaughton for running a red light, and the officer decided to arrest him for driving without a license. While Macnaughton sat in the rear seat of the patrol car, the officer examined Macnaughton’s smart phone just when a text message from a person came across the screen asking to buy drugs.

“What kind of phone is this?” the cop asked. “You must be a drug dealer.”

Macnaughton’s attorney, Chris Wirth, argued that per the Supreme Court decision, digital contents of a cell phone cannot be searched in the course of a routine arrest, and that there were no circumstances requiring immediate action. The prosecutor argued that Macnaughton’s case didn’t apply to the Wurie-Riley decision because Macnaughton’s arrest ocurred in February — prior to the high court handing down the cell phone decision — but that didn’t stop Judge Trusock from tossing the case.

Still, while Macnaughton may have beaten the drug rap, the state still got its pound of flesh. The prosecutor’s office seized his 2005 Lincoln Aviator and over $3,000 dollars the police took off him during the arrest.

The DEA appears resigned to live with the Supreme Court ruling, a Justice Department spokeswoman’s remarks seem to indicate.

“The Department will work with its law enforcement agencies to ensure full compliance with this Supreme Court decision,” spokeswoman Ellen Canales told the Chronicle. “We will make use of whatever technology is available to preserve evidence on cell phones while seeking a warrant, and we will assist our agents in determining when exigent circumstances or another applicable exception to the warrant requirement will permit them to search the phone immediately without a warrant.”

But while the DEA is looking forward, defendants and defense attorneys are looking back — and wondering whether the decision won’t bring some relief.

Chief Justice John Roberts (supremecourt.gov)

State and federal courts expect to review tons of motions for new trials from numerous lawyers representing defendants already convicted on crimes related to warrantless cell phone evidence, now that the Supreme Court has ruled the practice violates search and seizure law.

“There probably will be a good deal of litigation over whether this decision can be applied retroactively,” San Francisco attorney Dennis Riordan told the Los Angeles Times.

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians are also hoping the Supreme Court ruling in Wurie and Riley will have a role in deciding controversial cases making their way through the lower courts, whether it’s cell phone location data tracking or the Obama administration’s NSA spy surveillance program.

“When it comes to the Fourth Amendment, we want courts to ensure this important legal protection survives the rapid technological changes of the 21st Century,” Hanni Fakoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Chronicle.

The cell phone rulings in the Wurie and Riley cases are only the latest landmark decisions to strike a balance between privacy protections and the evolving role. In Kyllo v. US, the high court ruled that police must obtain a warrant before using thermal imaging devices on homes, while in US v. Jones, the high court overturned the life-without-parole drug conspiracy conviction against Antoine Jones, in which FBI agents and Maryland narcotics officers placed a GPS tracking device on his vehicle for nearly a month without obtaining a search warrant.

Still, while Jones won the case, he didn’t win his freedom. After three federal prosecution, including two hung juries and one with the conviction overturned, Jones chose to agree to a plea deal with federal prosecutors rather than face another chance at life in prison with yet another trial.

In a letter from prison, where he is working on a book about his experiences, Jones had something to say about the cell phone decisions.

“The courts are constantly sending a message to police that they’re not willing to give them that much power and control. This is a good thing because the police need to be governed by the courts, and the courts should maintain the power to determine when a search warrant is necessary,” he wrote. “The police are being either lazy, or they try to circumvent the law when courts rules in favor of protecting constitutional rights.”

It is ironic indeed that as the US government grapples with the NSA and Edward Snowden spying scandals, it took the case of two convicted felons to get the Supreme Court to protect the privacy of millions of Americans who use cell phones containing reams of data about their private lives. The irony is only deepened when we consider that Brima Wurie and David Riley won’t benefit much from this historic ruling.

by Patrick H. Moore

As they approached the Labor Day weekend, a South Carolina man and woman decided to get their serious work out of the way so that they could dedicate the weekend to pure relaxation. Therefore, Shaun Bowden, 31, and Emily Craig, 20, made the strategic decision to “get naked” right there in a display shed outside a Home Depot store in North Charleston, South Carolina. It’s not clear why Shaun and Emily made the decision to utilize that particular display shed for their “indoor gymnastics”.

According to reports, the two young lovers were really going at it when some humorless passerby reported them to the Home Depot brass who made the inhumane decision to report them to the police. Why this was necessary is beyond me. I mean, here we have two reasonably attractive young people, both of whom were clearly of the age of consent. They weren’t harming anyone, and according to eyewitness reports, were totally engrossed in each other. Therefore, they were not disturbing the Home Depot product line, which would, of course, have been sufficient cause to bring felony charges.

Perhaps the rationale for arresting the two “indoor athletes” was the fact that a certain number of children do frequent Home Depot — generally in the company of their parents — and one certainly doesn’t want one’s little darlings to be confronted by sight and sound(s) of two healthy young adults “getting naked” in a display shed. Although I really think that it would mostly just make the kids giggle, but who am I to judge South Carolina mores?

What I find really impressive is the fact that it was Hump Day, Wednesday Aug 28th at 8:40 am, when the police arrived and found Emily and Shaun, partially undressed in the shed. The police report states:

“Upon questioning, it became apparent they were engaged in sexual intercourse inside the shed.”

Does this mean the police asked them if they were doing the bloody deed or does it mean they witnessed them getting down? Based on the actual charges, I believe the latter may be the correct answer. Both Emily Craig and Shaun Bowden were reportedly charged with disorderly conduct and being a nuisance on the Home Depot property. Bowden was also charged with indecent exposure for allegedly having his “genitals within public view”. Craig, who was apparently embarrassed by this unexpected exposure, was charged with giving false information because, according to the police, she initially gave them a false name upon being asked to identify herself.

*     *     *     *     *

I am no doubt as Puritanical as the next guy, but I really don’t see why Shaun and Emily needed to be written up for a batch of what I believe are simple misdemeanors. Deterrence does not really seem to be an issue here for the simple reason that very few happy, loving couples are likely to emulate Shaun and Emily’s example; i.e., getting naked in Home Depot display sheds is unlikely to become the newest crime de jour. And if it does, film crews could be assigned and display shed lovemaking could be packaged and sold as a product. After all, nothing should stand in the way of a healthy economy.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

I’ve been a bit hesitant to write about the tragic death of little Jenise Paulette Wright. Perhaps it’s a shallow observation on my part, but there is no doubt that Jenise truly fit the category of “cute as a button.” The thought that a nearly adult male would rape and murder this child is immensely disturbing but that’s exactly what happened. The authorities have arrested the alleged perpetrator, 17-year-old Gabriel Gaeta.

Now we discover that Jenise’s father, Jim Wright (who also faced a child molestation charge some time back), had befriended Gaeta, an Olympic High School student, and was trying to help steer him in a positive direction.

NBC News writes:

The Washington state teenager accused of killing 6-year-old Jenise Paulette Wright is a family friend whom Jenise’s dad had taken under his wing and was trying to teach how to be “responsible to his community,” her father told NBC News on Monday. Gabriel Zebediah Gaeta, 17, a student at Olympic High School, was held on $1 million bail pending adult charges of first-degree murder with multiple aggravating circumstances and first-degree rape of a child. He could face life in prison if he’s convicted.

“It was hard learning [the suspect] was a friend of the family,” James Wright said outside the family’s home in a mobile home park in rural Kitsap County. “We were friends. We fed him. He split wood with me at my house. I was trying to teach him to be responsible to his community — even when we leave home, we are responsible as men.”

Does this suggest that Jim Wright had taken his own “fall from grace” to heart and was trying his best to “be responsible” even as he was attempting to teach Gabriel to do the same? Perhaps, but on the other hand, one cannot help but be taken aback by the fact that when Jenise first turned up missing, Jim and the family didn’t bother to report it until sometime the next day because the 6-year-old often wandered freely around the area, apparently with very little supervision. The child went missing on Friday August 2nd, and was not found until the following Thursday.

Gabriel Gaeta’s responsibility for Jenise’s death seems quite incontrovertible based on the evidence. On Monday afternoon, Kitsap County prosecutors detailed probable cause to hold Gabriel Zebediah Gaeta, 17, on one count of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree rape.

In a probable-cause document, a detective wrote that Gaeta had been linked to the slaying of Jenise Wright through a match of his DNA to DNA found on bloody clothing recovered near Jenise’s body. Jenise’s body was found submerged Thursday in several feet of water in a muddy bog in a heavily wooded area. It was covered by a small wood pallet.

The autopsy revealed the horrible triumvirate of blunt-force trauma to Jenise’s head, strangulation by ligature and sexual assault.

According to a detective, when he was interviewed by investigators after being picked up on Saturday, a highly distraught Gaeta “clearly nodded yes” when he was asked if he was solely responsible for Jenise’s death.

The probable cause document further reveals that in a search of Gaeta’s bedroom investigators recovered the following evidence: blood-stained underwear, a shirt covered in blood and mud, blood-stained shorts and a bloody towel.

Because prosecutors everywhere love to rack up charges like an NBA team running up the score, the murder allegation included the following aggravating circumstances: 1) concealing commission of a crime and sexual motivation; and 2) victimizing a particularly vulnerable victim.

Based on the strong evidence, unsurprisingly, a judge found probable cause to hold Gaeta at a court hearing Monday afternoon and set bail at $1 million. He will be formally charged as an adult when those court papers are filed, according to the Kitsap County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

* * * * *

On Monday, Jim Wright and his wife Denise Wright argued at a court hearing to regain custody of their two older children, who were removed from the family home after the disappearance of Jenise.
No…

* * * * *

In an interview, Jim Wright said of Gaeta, “It’s devastating and it’s going to be hard to forgive” (him). Wright further stated that the teen had been to their house “many, many times” and was a friend of their older children. Gaeta’s mother had also been to their home, according to Wright.

Is anyone else feeling sick yet? What I’m particularly struck by is how vulnerable little Jenise was. A “cute as a button child” wandering freely around the neighborhood with little supervision. Her dad is an alleged child molester. He befriends a teenage boy, ostensibly to help him, who ultimately rapes and kills the child.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but the amount of faith I have in Jim Wright would not fill a thimble. And where was her mother Denise through all this? I’m plagued by the unsettling feeling that Jenise lost her life in the horrible manner described above because she was being raised in a heavily sexist environment where her life simply wasn’t worth very much.

I’m not trying to sound holier-than-thou for the simple reason I’m not holier-than-thou. But to show so little respect for your 6-year-old daughter that you let her wander around a neighborhood filled with one or more predatory males at all hours without supervision is just plain wrong. As the record so clearly indicates…

by Starks Shrink

I’m incensed, and you should be too. Late last week, a 12-year-old stabbed a 9-year-old to death at a playground in Michigan. The 12-year-old, Jamarion Lawhorn, apparently took a steak knife from his home, went to a playground near the victim’s home and asked some boys there to play with him. He randomly chose 9-year-old Michael Connor Verkerke as his victim and stabbed him in the back four times. Connor, as he was known, was helped to his home by his brother who was present during the stabbing, where he collapsed on the porch and died later that evening in the hospital.

This is a situation in which there is no happy ending — not for any of the boys nor their families. In their infinite wisdom, the DA’s office has chosen to prosecute Jamarion Lawhorn as an adult in juvenile court for “open murder” which simply means that the prosecution does not have to decide on first or second degree murder. This is the facet of this case that has me incensed.

Jamarion Lawhorn is twelve years old. He’s a child and the stabbing of innocent Connor was carried out based on a confused child’s motivations. According to investigators, Jamarion called 911 to report himself and was quite agitated when police showed up and didn’t immediately arrest him. He told officers that he had been thinking about his actions for a year, that he wanted to die, and that he had stabbed Connor because he presumed that they would kill him via the electric chair or lethal injection. Clearly, these statements reflect the thoughts of a troubled young boy. Digging into the scant information available, I find that Jamarion had a troubled upbringing; he was never in trouble with the law, but was lonely, forlorn and tormented.

Jamarion comes from a highly blended family with half-siblings and step-siblings numbering approximately 10. He lived in Kentwood, Michigan with his mother, half-sisters and step-brothers until sometime last fall when he moved to New York to stay with his father. His father’s girlfriend and mother of several of his children, claims that Jamarion was being bullied at school in Kentwood being called “dumb” and “black” and thought things might be better with his dad in Geneva, New York. I should note here that the African American population in Kentwood is 15% and just over 10% in Geneva.

Apparently, after months in New York, Jamarion was lonely, having not made friends easily, and he had returned to his mother’s home in Michigan just this past June. His mother made statements to police that Jamarion had never been in any trouble but indicated that he had showed a penchant for playing with fire, even setting her bed alight on one occasion. Anita Lawhorn, Jamarion’s mother, was shocked and heartbroken over the stabbing death, offering apologies and condolences to the Verkerke family.

I honestly don’t understand why his family didn’t seek help for Jamarion. He was obviously feeling hopeless and according to his own statements, thought that he was just a bad kid who did “stupid stuff” and no one loved or cared about him. Playing with fire as a child is very common; his mother doesn’t indicate Jamarion’s age when he started this pastime so it’s difficult to know if this was normal childhood experimentation, or if he was manifesting his psychological distress. However, the fact that Anita chose to relate this to police when they interviewed her indicates that she found it worrisome.

Why then, didn’t she do something about his situation? Perhaps both sides of his family were so busy with life and other smaller children that no one noticed this poor boy’s sense of futility. Regardless of how he arrived at the breaking point, it’s painfully clear that he did.

The idea of charging this young boy as an adult that was capable of planning and committing a crime and understanding the consequences of his actions is absurd. Absolutely absurd! What raises my hackles further is that Michigan is the same state that is handling the Charlie Bothuell case. They chose to view Charlie, also 12 years old, as a small helpless boy when by all indications he was much more street savvy and troublesome than Jamarion ever was. How then does the state of Michigan petition for termination of the parental rights of Bothuell’s father, yet decide that Jamarion is disposable because he was emotionally neglected?

One report indicated that Jamarion Lawhorn would be evaluated to determine his competency to stand trial. His competency to stand trial should not be the major concern in this matter. His fragile psychological state and lack of emotional support are what should be the paramount importance. The prosecution has the option of transferring this boy to adult court and handling his case in that draconian manner, but it also has the option of prosecuting the Jamarion as a juvenile. It’s a tragedy that a small boy lost his life, but it would only compound the tragedy to discard another small boy upon the scrap heap of society’s lost and forgotten children.

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

Charlie Bothuell V May Have a Very Sharp Axe to Grind

Two’s Company, Three’s a Deadly Crowd: The Cruel Killing of Martha Gail Fulton

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

by Patrick H. Moore

On June 17, 2013, Cameron Langford of AlterNet reported that Texas jailers at the Live Oak County Jail were sued by two former female inmates because they ran a “rape camp” where they “repeatedly raped and humiliated female inmates,” and forced them to masturbate and sodomize male guards, and one another.

The former inmates J.A.S. and J.M.N. brought a civil action in Federal court against Live Oak County and its former jailers Vincent Aguilar, Israel Charles Jr. and Jaime E. Smith.

The three guards were arrested in August 2010 and charged with sexual assault. Two of the guards, Smith and Aguilar are now incarcerated in Texas state prisons. The third jailer Charles is not currently in custody. It is unknown whether he has charges pending.

Live Oak is a sparsely settled county in south central Texas.

The complaint reads like every woman’s worst nightmare:

“In addition to the repeated sexual assaults, numerous female inmates were sexually harassed. Certain male guards would strip the female inmates of their clothing and provide only shaving cream to conceal their genitalia. Certain male guards would sometimes force the female inmates to shower in front of them while instructing them to shave their vaginas. In other instances, while detailing their degenerate sexual fantasies, the jailers would pin the girls against a wall, grope their persons, verbally berate them, digitally rape their vagina and/or anus, then force them to perform oral sex.

“In order to facilitate their carnal impulses, these guards would withhold food and water, engage in physical abuse, restrict privileges and verbally and emotionally abuse the women – even threaten to kill them in order to compel their compliance.”

Plaintiff J.A.S. was arrested on a simple marijuana possession charge in July of 2010. Ironically, the charges were later dismissed, but not before her disastrous designation to the Live Oak County Jail.

Not every jailer at Live Oak was purely evil. In fact, shortly after J.A.S. arrived, she was taken aside by a guard she knew only as Jesse and warned to stay away from Aguilar and Smith. When she asked Jesse why he simply told her to trust him and refused to say more.

The criminally cunning guards knew where to take inmates to avoid having their sexual assaults recorded by the jail’s surveillance system.

The complaint states that J.A.S.’s assailants told her that she “belonged to them” and that she was their “sex slave.”

J.M.N. and J.A.S, who are represented by Ronald W. Armstrong II of San Antonio, seek punitive damages for civil rights violations, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Based on the alleged facts of the case as set forth in the complaint, which are supported by the fact that Smith and Aguilar are already serving prison sentences, it seems likely that the two female victims have a very good chance of winning at trial. Although Smith and Aguilar could well be financially insolvent, J.M.N. and J.A.S. would appear to have a very good chance of collecting any damages they are awarded because under the theory of vicarious liability, Live Oak County is presumably responsible for Smith and Aguilar’s egregious conduct, which, in my opinion, is as it should be.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Some of us conjecture on fate and destiny and what it all means and what the difference between the two are. I think the common understanding is that destiny is something positive, a grand possibility that we strive to fulfill, while fate is something irrevocable that simply happens to us and that we have no power to control. Thus, it’s probably fair to say that destiny is generally considered to be a good thing while fate can be a real mother______.

On Monday, however, a 45-year-old California man living on the Central California coast in Santa Barbara County snapped and decided that his “destiny” was to murder his entire family and the family dog with kitchen knives while at least some of them were sleeping. This syndrome of murdering one’s entire family seems to be growing in popularity, not unlike the “knockout game” and other wholly negative forms of criminal behavior.

Angela Boue of Viral Global News writes:

Late Monday, California man Nicolas Holzer went on a killing spree. The 45-year-old man stabbed his father, mother, the family dog, and his two sons before calling police. Holzer had full custody of his sons, Sebastian,13 and Vincent who was 10. When he called 911 after the murders, and detectives arrived, he told them killing his family was his destiny. Holzer has no previous criminal history, stated Bill Brown, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff. Investigators are looking to piece together the events, and any possible motive leading to a family being murdered.

Reportedly, Monday evening Holzer killed his 73-year-old father, then walked into his sons’ bedroom, stabbing the boys to death as they slept. Holzer then located his mother and stabbed her, before turning to the family dog.

Ms. Boue explains that when police arrived at the house, they arrested Holzer without incident and recovered the two kitchen knives that are believed to have been used in Holzer’s rampage. By the time the emergency responders arrived, everyone was dead.

Holzer apparently described the order in which he stabbed his victims.

According to the Associated Press, “Sheriff Brown said Holzer had no prior criminal history and there were no reports of police being summoned to the home during the seven years Holzer lived there with his parents and sons, Sebastian, 13, and Vincent, 10. He had full custody of the boys following a divorce years earlier.”

Angela Boue writes that “Holzer did not provide information to investigators to determine why he murdered his family, but just said he ‘had to.’”

Naturally, a psychological evaluation will be conducted on Holzer, who is being held without bail.

This horrible news comes just a few months after Elliott Rodger, the son of Hunger Games assistant director, Peter Rodger, went berserk behind the wheel of his BMW and murdered six students at the UC Santa Barbara campus near Isle Vista. Goleta, of course, is not far from Isle Vista and it is no exaggeration to say that these lovely communities have had more than their share of disasters in 2014.

Stating the obvious, Sheriff Brown stated Holzer’s murder spree is “another huge tragedy” for the community.

According to some reports, neighbors had been aware for some time that all was not right at the Holzer residence. Kelsey Brugger and Tyler Hayden of the Santa Barbara Independent write:

The tragic event was “not unexpected,” said a neighbor, who did not want to be identified. Holzer had been unemployed for years and had appeared to be on a downhill slide after his contentious divorce a number of years ago, the neighbor added. “You would have to force him to say hello,” he said. The family did not appear to be happy, the neighbor said, adding Holzer had “psychological problems.” The neighbor had previously told William Holzer (the grandfather) to come get him if there were ever a physical confrontation.

The only contact Holzer had with Sheriff’s deputies was in 1996, when he was a witness in an assault case, Brown said. Holzer does not have a criminal record.

According to another anonymous neighbor, Holzer’s ex-wife never came to the house. William Holzer was reportedly still working part-time as he had five mouths to feed and two grandkids to someday put through college, a separate neighbor added. According to Sheriff Brown, William Holzer was a well-known scientist who previously worked for Raytheon and held a patent to an optical measuring device.

* * * * *

Family Annihilators are nothing new and often the motive is financial; i.e., the husband (assuming it’s the husband doing the annihilating) has suffered some huge financial setback, feels completely devastated, and instead of simply taking his own life like a good pathetic father, somehow convinces himself that his family will be lost without him and that it’s actually in everyone’s best interest for him to off the whole lot of them before killing himself.

This rationale, of course, is not only madness, but also demonstrates huge hubris on the part of the annihilator. Obviously, any financially dependent family would be devastated to have the father/husband and breadwinner kill himself, but this does not mean that they would necessarily want to join him in the land of the dead.

So Holzer seems to bring a new wrinkle to the Family Annihilator syndrome. Although he appears to have faced some financial difficulty, there’s no evidence, at least at this point, that he was financially ruined or had suddenly experienced a huge and unexpected financial setback. Furthermore,rather than taking his own life after doing his dirty work, in the time-honored manner of Family Annihilators, he phoned in his crime and explained, with truly eerie calm, explains that is was “destiny.”

The fact that a neighbor stated that the tragic event was “not unexpected” seems a bit misleading. Sure, the family had problems, but doesn’t every family? On the other hand, it hardly seems plausible or possible that this strange awareness of negative destiny would have come upon him suddenly and out of the blue, unless there had been previous signs of serious mental instability.

Hopefully, one or more relatives with knowledge of the situation, or even Holzer’s ex-wife, will come out of the woodwork and shine more light on the situation. One thing’s for certain; his mother and father and children, and the family dog, will not be of much help at this point.

by Lise LaSalle

After the initial shock of Brittany Murphy’s death on December 20, 2009, several questions were raised about her premature passing. Her husband Simon Monjack was in disbelief and at a loss to explain why his 32-year old bride could have encountered such a tragic end.

Monjack was a strange bird with a shady reputation. Unlike Brittany, who had been and remained one of America’s sweethearts, this out of shape older Britt had not won the heart of many. He was a talented photographer and an unemployed screenwriter, but his career was in Slow Mo and he had left a trail of unpaid debts and child support. The word around town was that he was an opportunist using Brittany for the lifestyle, and that he was ruining her career opportunities with his constant meddling. She had recently been fired from a movie set because of him.

On the other hand, mother and daughter Murphy seemingly lived happily with Monjack in their opulent home on the hill in the city of Fallen Angels. Sharon Murphy who had a front row seat to their relationship, only had positive things to say about her son-in-law and she even continued living with him after losing her daughter.

Monjack often spoke to the media of someone who could be “out to get us” and even opened his home up to reporters after Murphy’s death, revealing an elaborate security set-up.

“There’s actually 56 cameras that cover the house,” he said two months before his own death, as he showed off his high-tech security system.

“Inside the house, outside the house, down into the cul-de-sac.”

Along with the 56 cameras, he also had biometric door entries and even a system that scrambles the phone lines if someone tries to record conversations.

Monjack said that both he and Murphy were in fear for their lives and they believed someone was watching them. He even believed that they were in danger of someone “slipping them something.’’

The fact that he died on May 23, 2010, five months following the death of his wife at age 40, and of the same thing, acute pneumonia and severe anemia, also raised questions. But considering that he had cardiovascular problems, was overweight and like Brittany, was consuming loads of prescription pills, it might not have been such a surprise after all.

The LA County Department of Health examined the possibility of toxic mold having been found in the home as possible cause of death but it was later dismissed. After all, Brittany’s mother was living there and she was not showing any signs of intoxication. On the other hand, they found a huge range of over-the-counter and prescription medications in the two victim’s system.

Brittany Murphy was prescribed at least 200 pills monthly from 2008 through 2009, and it sometimes went up to 400. She was using an alias at the pharmacy for nearly two years before she was finally cut off 4 months before her death.

The records indicate that she was getting regular prescriptions of Hydrocodone, Clonazepam, Klonopin and Vicoprofen and certain months, the doses were doubled. The medications were prescribed by Dr. Richard Kroop who received a visit from the authorities during the investigation. He told the investigators that his pharmacy had cut off Brittany and her family 4 months before her death because, “We thought there was going to be an accident there.”

According to the autopsy, Brittany’s death was preventable. The primary causes were pneumonia, severe anemia and intoxication. The coroner believed her condition to be treatable, had she been taken to the hospital on time. The drugs pushed the outcome because of the pneumonia and anemia. So basically, she was sick and did not seek treatment so the anti-seizure medication, the acetaminophen and hydrocodone pushed her over the edge.

In spite of what her mother and widower tried to say at the time of her death, she had abused prescription drugs for years and it is a proven fact that opiate users often end up with anemia, heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia or hepatitis. In light of these facts, it is hard to comprehend why the coroner came up with such a simplistic conclusion as death of ‘natural causes’at the time, even if she had developed some health problems brought upon by the use of prescription drugs.

I was also quite surprised that the coroner’s office found no evidence she was abusing drugs. You only have to look at photos of Brittany and her husband during that period and consider what she was prescribed through the years to conclude that they were addicted to something. Brittany was emaciated and looking unwell. Her husband was bloated and not the picture of health either, but it was not as obvious as his bride. But I guess they chose to buckle the case with a pretty bow on top, and used the toxicology reports without trying to tie them to other logical possibilities.

It looked very similar to the Anna Nicole Smith case who also died because of her addiction to prescription pills.

Since her death, Brittany’s biological father, Angelo Bertolotti, has crawled from under his rock and petitioned the court to obtain hair, blood and tissue samples of his dead daughter to be analyzed for the presence of poisons in her system. He sent the strands of hair to a private lab and the results came up indicating the presence of 10 heavy metals as evidence of a poisoning death.

He is now writing a book called Britt with Julia Davis to explain his conspiracy theory. A documentary The Terror Within is apparently also in the works.

CNN obtained the report by forensic toxicologist Ernest Lykissa, who concluded that the hair from the back of Murphy’s head had higher than recommended levels of 10 heavy metals. “If we were to eliminate the possibility of a simultaneous accidental heavy metals exposure to the sample donor then the only logical explanation would be an exposure to these metals (toxins) administered by a third party perpetrator with likely criminal intent.”

Lykissa, who operates a toxicology testing lab in Deer Park, Texas, did not respond to several calls from CNN to discuss his findings.

The director of forensic medicine at the University of Florida, who is the president of the American Board of Forensic Toxicology, reviewed the report and was very critical of its content. ”It’s ridiculous,” Dr. Bruce Goldberger said. A conclusion of poisoning is an “inflammatory statement” that “is a baseless allegation and outrageous statement to make based on a single hair test.”

Her autopsy indicated no physical signs of poisoning, he said. “A hair test alone, without any clinical signs or symptoms, cannot be used to establish poisoning.” The private report also showed a normal level of arsenic, which would have been elevated if rat poisoning was involved, he said.

“She was a beautiful woman and likely had numerous hair treatments,” Goldberger said. “Chemicals in the hair treatment would alter the chemistry of the hair sample.’’

A hair sample can be affected by many factors such as hair dye, hair spray, prescription medications, foods, smoking even if occasionally and even the environment. So it would take way more than these private lab results to draw serious conclusions on the matter.

Sharon Murphy was infuriated by Bertolotti’s statements. She said ‘’I have no choice now but to come forward in the face of inexcusable efforts to smear my daughter’s memory by a man who might be her biological father but was never a real father to her in her lifetime.’’

She went on to say ‘’Angelo’s claims are based on the most flimsy of evidence and are more of an insult than an insight into what really happened.’’

Brittany’s mom thinks that Bertolotti is trying to profit off of his daughter’s tragedy with the publicity surrounding the poisoning ‘revelations’. She is convinced that a toxic mold found in the house may have killed her daughter and son-in-law even if the Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner said there were no indications of mold in the house at the time.

Sharon disagrees and had filed a lawsuit stating that she discovered extensive water damage and mold infestation in the house where her daughter and, later, her son-in-law died suddenly; the Nina Bow Trust, which owned and operated the property, sued the contractor, subcontractor, and others back in 2006 over all of the perceived construction defects.

Britt and the Terror Within

Angelo Betolotti’s book and documentary will explain how his daughter and Simon Monjack’s death are linked to Brittany’s support for government whistleblower Julia Davis.

In an interview he gave to the Fleur de Lis Film Studios in LA, Bertolotti said: ‘They were, in fact, under surveillance, including helicopters. Their telephones were wiretapped, Brittany was afraid to go home, because of the sneak-and-peek incursions into their residence and other terror tactics she suffered after speaking out in support of Julia Davis and being named as a witness in her lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.’

Julia Davis claimed that while working at the US border with Mexico she uncovered evidence that dozens of potential terrorists had entered America in shady circumstances that may have involved the bribery of customs officials.

She has a whistleblower website where she wrote that family members and witnesses who supported her were ‘subjected to land and aerial surveillance, to the tune of millions – at the expense of American taxpayers.’

‘This included warrantless aerial surveillance with fixed-wing airplanes and Blackhawk helicopters, vehicular surveillance, OnStar tracking, Internet monitoring, wiretaps, warrantless searches and seizures and series of other outrageous, unwarranted retaliatory measures.’

On the National Whistleblower Center website, Julia Davis said she ‘prevailed’ in court against the Department of Homeland Security despite a total of 54 ‘retaliatory’ investigations being launched against her in an ‘attempt to discredit Julia as an upstanding law enforcement officer and a staunch American patriot.’

The site also has photos of Angelo Bertolotti with his daughter and visiting her grave. He also says that Brittany ”was called as a witness in the Julia Davis case.” He added: ”Brittany did tell me she was under surveillance and incidentally so was I.”

Craig Harvey, the chief of operations for the coroner declared ‘’we stand by our conclusions and opinion.’’ ‘’We have no plans to reopen the inquiries into the deaths of Miss Murphy or Mr. Monjack.“

Like so many others, I really enjoyed Brittany’s screen presence and persona. She had a unique quality with big meaningful eyes that could tell a whole story without words and a smile to light up the planet. The sadness of her passing is compounded by the ridiculous claims floating around since she left. I get the impression that this tender soul was surrounded by bloodsuckers in life and now in death. The terror is and often remains within, and in her case, her own husband and some members of her family seemed to have used her as a cash cow without much care for her mental or physical health.

Britt gone too soon

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In Aileen Wuornos’ final interview with Nick Broomfield one day before her execution, she starts out calmly enough and appears to have made her peace with dying. She believes in an afterlife and seems to have no fear of what lies ahead. But then she gets angry and starts dissing on the system. In her mind, she has been used, abused and manipulated by society. Like many people who have been badly hurt, given the chance, she is quick to place the blame on others. Many people who have viewed her final interview, including Nick Broomfield, believe that Ms. Wuornos had succumbed to madness as the final hours of her life ticked away.

Yet, if we examine a selection of Ms. Wuornos’ quotes (brought to us courtesy of brainyquote.com), we find a fairly lucid individual who seems to assess herself unflinchingly without pulling any punches. So what does it all mean? Hard to say for sure but we can be confident on one important point. Aileen Wuornos had been deeply hurt by life and it had rendered her a very angry woman.

• I am a serial killer. I would kill again. (She appears to know herself quite well.)

• I wanted to clear all the lies and let the truth come out. I have hate crawling through my system. (She is in a sense relieved that her killing spree is over but now all that remains is her self-hatred and loathing for the human race that has so damaged her.)

• I need to die for the killing of those people.  (An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This makes me wonder how I would react if I was a serial killer who had been arrested and was facing execution. Would I want to live or die? How precious is life if you are serving life with no chance of parole?

• I’m one who seriously hates human life and would kill again. (Again Ms. Wuornos expresses her deep loathing for the human race. I am reminded of an angry distant relative who ultimately killed himself. In a final statement, he wrote: “All men are zombies. Do you agree? Because all men are zombies, the only humane thing to do is to kill. Do you agree?” In this mindset, we see a reversal of the normal human desire to help, not harm, others. The serial killer (or potential serial killer) projects his or her self-loathing onto the entire species.

• I really got tired of it all. I was angry about the johns. (Understandably, Ms. Wuornos was worn down psychologically by working as a prostitute. I’m sure the attitudes of prostitutes toward their “work” and their customers varies greatly from person to person, and Ms. Wuornos falls into the category of those “ladies of the night” who despise their johns. I’ve known two prostitutes personally, both of whom were drug addicts. One was reasonably fond of her customers, especially the old guys whom she described as gentle and grateful. The other woman never said anything about her johns. My sense is they were merely a means to an end — the drugs she so desperately desired.)

• My main concern is if this composer has been made aware of the fact that I’ve come clean in all of my cases. I killed in pure hate, robbing along the way. So if this person hasn’t, then I’d sure appreciate it if someone would inform him or her of it. (Ms. Wuornos seems to have a strong need to set the record straight and likes to talk about how pure and undiluted, albeit negative, her motives were.)

• I robbed them, and I killed them as cold as ice, and I would do it again, and I know I would kill another person because I’ve hated humans for a long time. (This is why she is, in a sense, glad that her murderous spree came to an end. Somewhere deep within there is the lost part of Ms. Wuornos’ psyche which has been buried and eroded by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that would prefer to live in a kinder and more compassionate world.

• “May your wife and children get raped, right in the ___.” (To the jurors who convicted her.) (Hopefully, the powers that be were not listening. Too many people are already victimized in this manner.)

 Click here to view Darcia Helle’s compelling Aileen Wuornos post:

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

If the rank-and-file American parent fully grasped how common teacher-student sexual relationships are, the whole country might revolt and home-school their kids. A great many of these illicit relationships involve teachers and 16 and 17 year old students. There’s just something about teachers and students in that age range…

But this story is not about this national problem which I guarantee you is not going to go away as long as the human race possesses sex hormones. This story is about an alleged bizarre plot on the part of a 31-year-old male teacher named Ethan Estevez and his 17-year-old student lover to, shall we say, “eliminate” the teacher’s wife.

Andres Jaurequi of the Huffington post writes:

Prosecutors in Maryland allege that a teacher accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a teen student plotted with the girl to murder his wife.

Ethan Estevez, 31, worked as a biology teacher at the Center for Educational Opportunity in Aberdeen, an alternative school serving at-risk youth. He was charged last June with child sex abuse after police learned of his relationship with a 17-year-old girl who attended the school, according to WBAL.

But it appears Estevez’s alleged criminal activity didn’t stop there. After relatives of the victim reported the sexual relationship to police, investigators say they unearthed a plot to murder the teacher’s wife.

Let’s stop right there for a moment. Suppose I want to murder my wife so I can carry on an unfettered dalliance with an under-aged student? (Of course, given that I’ll turn 65 next summer and will gasp start receiving Medicare, it’s somewhat unlikely that a 17-year high school student would want to “dally” with the old boy.)

But just suppose such a relationship did occur and we came to the conclusion that it was in everyone’s best interest for my long-suffering wife to get it in the neck. The burning question would then become how might we best carry out the scheme.

(Just for the record, I really do not want to murder my wife. God knows she can be aggravating, and I’m certain she would say the same about me, but these small issues hardly justify felony murder.)

What I’m getting at here in this roundabout and perhaps flippant manner is that Ethan Estevez was an absolute moron to get the 17-year-old girl involved in his lame-brain scheme to murder his wife (assuming there really was such a scheme and it’s not all just a fabrication on the part of fanciful prosecutors). If you’re going to murder your wife for any reason, you gotta do it on your own. I realize that’s a tall order, and chances are you’re not an experienced hit man, but as soon as you bring other people into the scheme, and it doesn’t matter who the other people are, you are plunging yourself into kaka so deep that chances are you will never get out, which of course is precisely what appears to be happening to Ethan Estevez.

Andres Jauregui of Huff Post reports that Estevez has been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly confirmed this fact this week. The case will now be dispatched to the grand jury.

Cassily, who seems to be a reasonable man, told CBS Baltimore:

“It’s not the kind of thing that we would charge lightly.”

ABC affiliate WMAR reports:

According to charging documents, detectives later learned that his juvenile mistress had told classmates she could get someone to kill her (Estevez’s wife) for $600, but it had to look like an accident because of the life insurance.

The Estevez residence

What the hell? They were going to get the wife whacked for a piddling $600? Surely she’s worth more than that. Any wife is. Has life been so devalued that people are carrying out murders-for-hire for a mere $600. I certainly hope such is not the case.

But whatever the going price is (and I’m hardly an expert in this area), the fact the 17-year-old “juvenile mistress” is babbling to her classmates about their ridiculous plans strongly suggests that Estevez should not only never have gotten involved with her, but if he was moronic enough to enter into the relationship, he certainly should not have recruited her to help kill his wife.

According to the charging documents, Estevez did consider various approaches to killing her:

“At one point, it appears Estevez spoke of making it look like a hit-and-run accident, but later he allegedly explained to a potential hit man how they could arrange for her to die in a drive-by shooting outside a restaurant in Harford County, and the gunman was instructed to then shoot Estevez in the arm to make it look random.”

Oh boy, it’s the old “shoot me too but don’t kill me approach” so that it looks like I too was a victim. How many times have we seen this backfire? Have we ever seen it succeed?

So it’s hard to say who was dumber (assuming the allegations are true), the teacher or the student? Neither appear to be rocket scientist material. In fact, according to Meghan McKorkell of Baltimore.CBSLocal, the “juvenile mistress” actually wrote, perhaps in a text:

“Like it has to look like an accident because of life insurance and stuff” and they “just really need it to happen before Sunday.”

Estevez has been released on $75,000 bond. His attorney, Karen Jones stated in his defense:

“My client would deny any wrongdoing, that he never conspired with anyone to commit an offense or never solicited anyone to commit such an offense.”

Harford County schools had the good sense to terminate Estevez’s employment in January.

by Lise LaSalle

Eminem’s song for daughter Hailie – Now it don’t feel like the world’s on my shoulders, Everyone’s leaning on me, ‘Cause my baby knows that her daddy’s a soldier, Nothing can take her from me

Little Haleigh Cummings was reported missing from her family’s Satsuma, Florida, home on February 10, 2009. She was 5-years-old at the time with blond hair and brown eyes. The police in this small north Florida community had nothing else to go on, but this physical description.

Haleigh disappeared from the mobile home of her father Ronald Cummings, after being put to bed for the night. By the next morning, an Amber Alert and 14 months of search efforts and investigation into thousands of tips covering several states had begun.

Misty Croslin, 17, who was Ronald Cummings’ girlfriend at the time, was the last person to have seen Haleigh. Her story about the events of that night kept shifting and it became very difficult for the investigators to determine the exact time or circumstances of this vanishing act.

Croslin was the live-in girlfriend of Ronald at the time and while he was working that night, she was babysitting Haleigh and her little 4-year-old brother, Ronald Jr. At first, she claimed that Haleigh was sleeping with her in the big bed but eventually said that she was sleeping on a small mattress on the floor in the master bedroom, barely four feet from the bed.

Croslin said she went to sleep around 10:00 p.m. after doing laundry. Ronald Cummings was working the night shift as a crane operator. He says the back door was locked and secured by him before he left and that the deadbolt was hard to open even for an adult. No way that his daughter Haleigh could have opened it.

Croslin supposedly woke up during the night to use the bathroom and saw a light in the kitchen and the back door held ajar by a cinder block. Someone had opened that door and it was not Haleigh who was gone baby gone.

So far, the story made sense and was going to be properly investigated. But what came next could only be described with words spoken by Slim Shady: Let’s get down to business, I don’t got not time to play around, what is this, must be a circus in town, shut the shit down on these clowns, can I get a witness?

The morning Haleigh was reported missing in Florida, a Memorial service was held in Orlando for Caylee Anthony. The media, especially HLN, had filled the air with this story and it had become the cash cow of the century for them. They kept the public enthralled with the ‘search’ for Caylee when we all knew from day one that she was dead, dead, dead. But it was profitable to keep her alive and missing. The girl’s grandparents played their part with brio in this charade at keeping their granddaughter missing from here to eternity. It kept suspicions from floating directly to the culprit, their daughter, known as ‘tot mom’.

It is not surprising that pretty little Haleigh would become the logical replacement for Caylee who was never missing but had been found nevertheless. So the networks jumped at the chance of interviewing the protagonists in this sad case of ‘real’ kidnapping. But boy would they be in for a big surprise. If they thought that Caylee Anthony’s case was gloomy, this investigation was going to blow the lid wide open from this Satsuma portable toilet.

As it turned out, Ronald Cummings and his underage girlfriend, were living in a world surrounded by drugs, violence and shadiness. They were definitely in a state of 911. Ronald had obtained custody of his two children because their mother, Crystal Sheffield, allegedly had a history of drug problems and basically did not show up for a custody hearing because she had not received the notice. Being unemployed had also been a huge strike against her. This distraught and vulnerable mother who had met Cummings when she was also underage, described him as a volatile man with a drug-related past. She accused him of violence against her and the children. It so happened that Ronald was also another woman’s baby-daddy.

The fact that he would leave his two children in the care of a defiant, troubled, uneducated teenager constantly high as a kite demonstrated very well his lack of parental skills or care.

The circus really came to town when several TV stations started ‘trying’ to interview Ronald and Misty on their shows. It was like asking a donkey if God exists. Ronald was somewhat in control but his teenaged girlfriend would stare ahead with this glazed look. She was not just high, she was in a stuperous, narcotized state.

Ronald soon enrolled his mother Teresa for the media rounds because unlike Misty, she could cry a river in front of the camera and act distressed. Ronald would go down on his knees in front of the cameras, and cry an oxy/meth river of tears.

When NBC host Meredith Vieira asked Misty why she changed her story so often, she woodenly replied, “I don’t know.’’ When Ronald was asked by Vieira why he had married Croslin recently, knowing full well she might have been involved in his daughter’s disappearance, he became rude and defensive and basically told her to mind her own business. It was not going well for the media.

Most of the stations pulled out but HLN kept on trucking with a string of guests like toothless grandma Flo and her crocodile stories and cousin Jo Overstreet with his ‘It was not me’ mantra. Jo was in town visiting family when Haleigh disappeared and he supposedly had a fight with Ron over a gun. Nancy Grace was not going to let go of this bone easily. She was never going to be hungry again and would maintain her ratings no matter what. In the meantime, most people were starting to say “frankly my dear Nancy, we don’t give a damn about these people.’’

Mark Fuhrman said it very well in his book The Murder Business:

“It had turned into too much of a white-trash nightmare, too much of a freak show. Viewers can take the bizarre, frightening underbelly of White America only in small doses in a careful context, as guests in Jerry Springer or Maury Povich’s circus acts or when they’re anonymous.’’

A colleague of Fuhrman called him from Satsuma to urge him not to make the trip there to investigate. “Everybody here is high on something.’’ “And everyone is a nightmare to interview and put on TV.’’

Strangely enough, Nancy Grace, who is the queen of outrage when it comes to cases of missing children, took Ronald Cummings’ side in this saga. She invited him on her show and would soothe him and cheer him on during his ‘cry me a river’ displays for his lost daughter. She brought up every possible suspect, including illustrious cousin Jo, Misty, her brother Tommy, drug dealers, the pedophile brother-in-law, but in her eyes, Ronald remained white as snow, pun intended. He became her favorite pet rat. I even wondered if she carved Nancy loves Ro on a tree in the enchanted forest in her head.

We know that Nancy Grace went shamelessly after Richard Ricci in the Elizabeth Smart case and never apologized publicly when he was later found innocent. The poor man died in prison, no doubt aggravated by her actions. Poor Melinda Duckette committed suicide after being badgered by Grace. She also went after the Duke Lacrosse players with a vengeance. They were eventually cleared and declared innocent of the charges. What is it about Ronald Cummings that touched her heart? Maybe he was her perfect soul mate, considering the darkness they both share. They would have been perfect partners on Dancing with the Stars. What a hot tango they would have pulled off.

It never bothered her that Cummings had married Croslin shortly after Haleigh’s disappearance, probably to keep her from testifying against him. Who would marry the woman minding the fort when his own child is abducted under her watch? He obviously had to keep her close to minimize the possibilities of her singing the blues to the police.

We can only speculate as to what happened to this precious child. Many scenarios are possible but if they do not involve or incriminate Misty or Ronald, you would think someone would have spilled the beans by now. Misty claimed to have passed a lie detector test but according to Texas Equusearch who had administered the polygraph tests and a voice stress test, she had failed miserably. Ronald Cummings was asked by Nancy Grace about taking a polygraph test. He declared he had passed but there is no evidence and such information was never released by the authorities.

Grandma Flo said on TV that it was cousin Jo with Misty’s brother, Tommy Croslin, who threw Haleigh’s body in the river attached to cinder blocks because of a gun and some unknown dispute. I think this poor woman, in her own way, was trying to get to the bottom of this murky story. Rumors of trafficking circulated and of Misty not even being at the trailer that night. Did she leave the children alone while out on a drug binge as she had done recently with another cat? Ronald had tried to call her incessantly that night and she never answered. Some speculated they had a fight. The story of a drug debt floated around. Maybe some dealers took his daughter as collateral because he owed them money. A jail letter circulated stating that Haleigh died after ingesting oxycontin at the trailer. Either way, Haleigh’s demise was surely not one for the faint of heart.

For a while, a detective working for Haleigh’s mother claimed to have cracked the case. It was another dead end. They tried to revive the story in the media but it always fell flat because of lack of evidence. Two years ago, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office finally released a statement saying: “The ongoing investigation has minimized the likelihood that Haleigh’s disappearance is the work of a stranger.’’ Thank you, Captain Obvious!

It turns out that Ronald and Misty’s magical union did not last longer than their usual high. Meanwhile, the Putnam County police, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Task Force and the Office of the State Attorney decided to investigate them during a month-long undercover operation. They were arrested with Tommy Croslin for trafficking controlled prescription medications on January 20, 2010.

Their bond were set excessively high so they would have to be remanded while in jail to await trial and sentencing. They were looking at up to 25 years. One cannot help but think that the set- up was to entrap them into confessing about little Haleigh’s disappearance. The ball was in their court now.

It was a complete bust, literally. HLN played the tapes of their jail conversations and wheeled back grandma Flo to the forefront but to no avail. We heard of a sentence reduction for Ronald Cummings for cooperating with the authorities. Misty’s time in custody did not agree with her. She aged 15 years while incarcerated but never gave an iota of helpful information, in spite of the huge sentence she was facing.

It was very telling. If the truth about Haleigh was not despicable or dangerous, why wouldn’t one of them cut a deal? They obviously had a lot more to lose if they came clean.

The prison sentences they received were excessive. Ronald Cummings’ sentence was reduced to 15 years for agreeing to testify for the state in future cases involving the drug counts or his missing daughter, Haleigh. Misty received 25 years for a single count of trafficking Oxycodone. Tommy Croslin was sentenced to 15 years. It is utterly ridiculous to send drug addicts to prison for that long on those type of charges but that seems to be how they roll in Florida. In my opinion, they should have undergone mandatory drug rehab or received much lighter sentences.

This pitiful band of ill-equipped human beings were probably targeted and thrown in the slammer to pressure them into talking about the case. These tactics should never be allowed. Abuse of power is not acceptable even in cases of suspicion of a more severe crime.

During Misty’s trial, we heard of earlier abuse in her life. She came from a broken home and both her parents did time on crack cocaine charges. It is only normal to infer that the next logical step for that poor girl was to land in the trailer of a sick bird like Ronald Cummings. Unless of course, she could have received support or directions from a teacher, friend or family member; I hear crickets on that one. Ronald was also from the school of Hard Knocks with no sugar on top. He grew up with his grandmother and was arrested multiple times for possession of drugs including heroin and GHB, the rape drug, but the charges were dropped. His mama Teresa was a police dispatcher at the time so some speculate that she scratched someone’s back. He was awarded custody of the kids after he lied to Crystal about the hearing. He is dishonest and has a long history of Child Protective Service being involved with raising his kids. He likes young girls and also has a special needs child with one of them. What you would call a triple threat on the dating scene.

They are undoubtedly the product of their upbringing and surroundings. Like so many in small town America, they got caught in the vicious circle of drug addictions and trafficking and did not have the tools or the intellect to get out of Dodge. They are what famous attorney Vincent Bugliosi described as prime candidates for the mental poverty program. But in my opinion, there is more nature than nurture brewing in the mind of Ron Cummings.

Do I believe they are sorry for what happened to Haleigh? Hell to the yes I do! But not enough to come clean and do the right thing. Saving their hide became more important, which speaks to their character but also to the horror and terror that befell that little girl.

In my mind, this case is closed. I do not want to hear the details of her demise. If more guilty parties are out there, they will hopefully be arrested and appropriately sentenced but as far as this little girl goes, she is now free from a future riddled with drugs, neglect and prison. She was trapped in a vortex of emotional emptiness and on a slow ride to hell. The adults in her life never fought for her. They chose mediocrity and self-gratification. Maybe she would have escaped that life of moral and physical stupor and moved on to greener pastures. But let’s say that the odds were not stacked in her favor. We will never know.

Through time, many artists claim to have created their best work under the influence of drugs. But what is happening right now in places like Satsuma is the mind-body decimation of the residents addicted to prescription drugs and other dangerous and destructive substances like crystal meth. Not a romantic notion anymore if it ever was one.

Lately, I imagine her running in a gigantic field under a beautiful blue sky and she is falling into the arms of the Catcher in the Rye who catches her so she does not fall from the cliff — that beautiful image of innocence so brilliantly described in the novel.

Or maybe she is clicking the heels of her red ruby slippers three times to be transported to Oz. She might also be entering a rabbit hole to follow in Alice in Wonderland’s footsteps. For the religiously inclined, she might be in the arms of an angel. For the reincarnation believers, she might be one day reunited with Ronald, Misty and her mother after a long healing.

What counts is that by some Amazing Grace, she was lost and now she is found.

Author’s note: What I have related is only my opinion. I am a huge Eminem fan and I resent Nancy Grace but I have nothing against trailers. And I totally realize that some might hope that Haleigh is still alive or would want to know exactly what happened to her.

by BJW Nashe

The first two photographs in this post are courtesy of San Francisco-based photographer Frank Gaglione. You can see more of Frank’s work at his website.

What’s going on with these people?

Sheila Isenberg, a New York reporter who interviewed three dozen women for her book, Women Who Love Men Who Kill (iUniverse, 2000), found that murder groupies can come from all walks of life. She noted, however, that the ones she wrote about had two things in common: all were Catholic, and all were abused as children. Clearly, those particular women have deep issues that need to be addressed–probably too many issues for any one therapist to tackle. But who knows? Maybe not all of these serial killer groupies are hopelessly troubled. Perhaps some are best seen simply as extreme examples of the young women we noticed growing up who always seemed to be attracted to the “bad boys,” and to living life on the edge. But being young and alive and daring doesn’t mean that the crazy act has to be re-run forever. Maybe it’s not too much to ask that these young thrill-seekers eventually turn things around and become gasp productive members of society. But it turns out that when you’re a self-styled serial killer groupie, it may not be all that easy to shed the urge to provoke shock and outrage.

Which leads us to one serial killer groupie who has made quite a splash in the news over the past few years. A young art and fashion student from San Francisco, Samantha Spiegel was first profiled in an SF Weekly story on December 8, 2010. The piece was striking because Ms. Spiegel presents such a disconcerting combination of physical beauty, high-class roots, boatloads of sophistication, and serious psychological turmoil. Hers is a tale of rampant drug abuse and risky sexual behavior and over-the-top murder-infatuation. She wrote letters to convicted murderers such as Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez. She fell in love with Richard Allen Davis, who sits on death row for kidnapping, raping and murdering 12 year-old Polly Klaas in 1993, in what was a highly publicized case at the time. Reading the piece, one wonders whether this is all a mad put-on, a kind of conceptual artwork in progress, a crazy attention-getting scheme, a truly dangerous form of psychopathology, or all of the above?

What are we to make, for instance, of the following letter to Charles Manson?:

“How are you holding up these days, Charlie? My name is Samantha Spiegel. I have always been extremely fascinated by you and Helter Skelter — incredibly so. In fact, I’m going to be reading [Vincent] Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter after my roommate. This always sounds crazy to people, but your ideals, your ideas — everything makes sense. You have lived quite a life and I really do respect that and in a way admire that. I may not have lived as much as you have, but I haven’t had it easy always. I completely relate to you and Helter Skelter.”

Palahniuk himself couldn’t top this. Not surprisingly, several other publications picked up on the SF Weekly story. It’s hard to resist this level of bizarre, scandalous titillation.

But Samantha Spiegel has apparently moved on. Perhaps the serial-killer groupie thing was just a phase. She’s currently busy working in San Francisco, making her own specialized contribution to the rich culture of that fine city. Obviously, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. In an October 25, 2011 sex column feature in The Daily Californian, Ms. Spiegel was identified by name and interviewed in her current guise as “Madame Farrah Habiba,” a leading high-class escort in the city. She talks about her new tattoos from Amsterdam, her BDSM tendencies, her new “master” who is a professional forensics psychologist, and her previous “dating” of Richard Ramirez and Richard Allen Davis. If you’re interested, Farrah Habiba now has a sleek web page at Wix.com featuring sexy photos and information. Farrah is described as “a sophisticated, intellectual, highly sexual VIP escort,” who is “available for double-date bookings with another beautiful raven-haired VIP playmate and escort!”

 “How are you holding up these days, Charlie?”

Link to the Mirror News story on Samantha Spiegel, originally posted on June 3, 2011:

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s somewhat of a mystery why one child will consent to live a more or less conventional lifestyle, while his or her brother or sister (with the same parents) will go hog-wild. In my own family, I was the only kid to truly “take a walk on the wild side”, a walk so wild that it’s somewhat miraculous that I’m sitting here today in a pleasant air-conditioned office in L.A. knocking out a post about Heather Mack, a rich and clearly spoiled girl who now finds herself facing possible charges for possibly (probably?) murdering her mother on the island of Bali where, if she is convicted, according to some reports, she could be facing the firing squad.

At the risk of being flippant, the firing squad is probably superior to the “needle” or “Old Sparky”, and is certainly a step up from the hangman’s noose.

It’s bad enough being arrested and charged with a capital crime here in the U.S., but it must be even worse in a foreign country where due process may be more or less non-existent. Therefore, if you’re a “walk on the wild side” teenager and feel compelled to murder your mom (or if your mom is murdered in a way which makes you look guilty), I suggest you do it right here at home… Or better yet, eat a few skittles instead, take a few selfies and send out a few Instagrams. Distract yourself with social media. In short, don’t be a fool.

Heather Mack has a great name but she appears to have been very foolish and now finds herself in serious trouble.

She and her boyfriend, 21-year-old hip-hopper Tommy Schaefer, were arrested by Balinese authorities on Wednesday after her mother, Sheila von Weise-Mack, was found half-naked, bloody and quite dead, stuffed inside a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi at the swanky St. Regis Bali resort where Heather and her mother had been staying for the past eight days.

Sheila and Heather have reportedly had a tempestuous relationship for years, which reportedly worsened markedly after Heather’s father, respected jazz musician and composer James Mack, died in 2006.

Rheana Murray of Good Morning America reports that according to the authorities, “closed-circuit TV footage shows von Weise-Mack arguing with her daughter’s boyfriend in the hotel lobby on Monday, the day before she was found dead.”

Ms. Murray writes:

“Once she became 18, her mother couldn’t control her anymore,” said Willie Nance, a music producer in Chicago who was close friends with James Mack, also a well-known producer and composer.

“Sheila was always concerned about the kind of people [Heather] was hanging out with,” Nance said. “She was on the wild side. And that was hard on Sheila.”

Heather was reportedly so hard to control that according to the Oak Park, Illinois police, they came out to the former Mack residence 86 times for domestic disturbances in less than 10 years (which may be a world).

Willie Nance reports that Heather often vanished without a word and wouldn’t tell her mother where she was going. Nance last spoke to von Weise-Mack about two weeks before her death.

“She was sad,” he said. “She was going through a few things with her daughter, and she was upset. Her daughter had left home and had been gone for like a month. She told me, ‘I just don’t know what to do –- it’s killing me.’ She loved that girl so much. And she loved her husband. And she was a beautiful person.”

* * * * *

Damien Gayle, Richard Shears, Helen Pow and Martin Gould report for MailOnline:

The day after Tommy Schaefer and Heather’s mother reportedly had the heated argument in the St. Regis Bali lobby, the young couple decided to check out of the hotel and sent several suitcases down to a taxi waiting in front of the resort. One of the suitcases allegedly included Sheila von Weise-Mack bloody remains.

Unsurprisingly, Heather and Tommy chose not to follow Ms. Von Weise-Mack’s remains down to the taxi stand in front of the resort. Instead, the exited out the back via a stretch of beach and headed for the town of Kuta where they were apprehended by Balinese law enforcement on Wednesday morning. They were seen leaving the St Regis Bali by surveillance cameras.

CNN reports that at the time of their arrest, Heather and Tommy told police they had been taken captive at the resort by an armed gang whose members killed Ms. Von Wiese-Mack, but that they had later managed to escape. (I guess the gang must have left Heather’s mother’s body there in the hotel suite so that Heather and Tommy could pack it up and send it down to the taxi stand on Tuesday morning.)

The taxi driver with the body in the trunk of his cab is reported to have waited patiently for Heather and Tammy for around two hours before he consulted with the hotel staff who advised him to report the matter to the police. Very likely, the suitcase was leaking blood by that point.

The taxi driver then reportedly drove to the Kuta Police Station, where officers opened the suitcase and found Ms. von Weise-Mack’s remains.

‘The body was wrapped in a hotel bedsheet and tied up with duct tape,’ said Inspector Djoko (of the Balinese police). ‘There were blood stains all over the sheet.’

According to the Chicago Tribune, Hery Wiyanto, a Bali police spokesman has stated that no charges have been announced but ‘the couple are now being detained and interrogated.’

Michael Elkin, a Chicago attorney, has been retained to help Heather find legal representation in Bali. Elkin told ABC News he spoke to the teen on the phone:

Rheana Murray writes:

“Heather was denied the right to speak with an attorney after being detained, until a few hours ago, which is quite disconcerting,” Elkin said in a statement. “During my brief conversation with Heather, I was made aware that a police guard was present in the room, even after I requested that I be able to speak to Heather without anyone being present.”

Elkin also said that any allegations that Mack is connected to her mother’s murder are false.

It’s unclear if Tommy Schaefer, 21, has legal representation at this point. Elkin said that at present, he is unaware of any plans to extradite them to the U.S.

* * * * *

Is this another case of two immature and self-absorbed young people murdering a well-meaning, though perhaps somewhat unrealistic mother, because she was in the way and got on their nerves?

Of course, it would be a great thing for Heather and Tommy if they could prove that they really had been taken captive by an armed gang who killed Ms. Von Wiese-Mack, but this theory seems singularly far-fetched.

On balance, this is a very troubling case. Heather’s mother appears to have been unable to let go and let her daughter simply run wild, which is what she was bound and determined to do, while no doubt expecting Mom to foot the bill. Ms. von Wiese-Mack was in an impossible position which has led to her demise.

Should Ms. Von Wiese-Mack simply have stepped into the shadows and let Heather be Heather? Would Heather have grown-up before she destroyed herself completely? Who knows but I do know this. When a teenager (or young person) is determined to “take a walk on the wild side”, there is only one person on earth who can stop them and that one person is the teenager.

Note: Because this is a big story, all of the images available on Google appear to be stringently copyrighted. Therefore, if you would like to see images of the players in this disturbing tale, go to Google images and type in “Heather Mack Bali” and you will be richly rewarded.

by The Starks Shrink

Skylar Neese was just 16 years old when she climbed out of her bedroom window for the last time on July 5, 2012 at around midnight.  She was a bright teen, with a strong work ethic in both school and her part time job at Wendy’s.  But she had a taste for the party life, as many teens in small towns do.  This wasn’t her first time sneaking out of her home late at night, as was evident by the stool she’d left outside beneath her bedroom window to facilitate getting back into her room undetected by her parents. Mom and Dad were none the wiser.

When her father came home from working the night shift to drop off his car for Sklyar, she was nowhere to be found. Her mother wasn’t too disturbed – after all, Skylar was 16 and it was summer; she could be out with her friends shopping or swimming.  Dad called around to some of Skylar’s friends to see if they’d seen her, but came up empty. When the manager at Wendy’s called to ask if Skylar was coming to work, red flags went up for mom, since Skylar never missed work. The police were then called in. Weirdly, however, law enforcement presumed Skylar to be one of the many kids that run away from home each summer in a quest for independence and adventure. The Neese’s were not convinced of that and as the summer wore on turning to autumn, they became increasingly certain that this was not a choice that Skylar had made for herself.

They were comforted and aided in their search for their daughter by one of her best friends — Shelia Eddy.  They’d known Shelia for years and thought of her as another daughter. In September, when school started, Skylar still hadn’t surfaced. Her bank accounts, social media accounts and cell phone had not been touched. Now, the climate began to change. The Neese family had a Facebook page that Mary (Skylar’s Mom) had set up to help people exchange information and hopefully help in the search for her daughter. Shelia Eddy was one of the posters on that page, posting about how she missed Skylar and hoped she’d come home.  Sadly, in reality, Shelia already knew all too well that Skylar would never be returning to her mother’s embrace.

What is fascinating about the quest to find Skylar is how it played out on social media, particularly on Twitter. You see, Skylar had two best pals — Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf.  She’d known Shelia for many years while Rachel had only joined their little posse about a year or so before.  But of course, in high school, a year can be an eternity. But now it is September; all the kids except one are back in school and they are talking. And talking. And they do it on social media, unlike any generation before them. Many of the kids suspected Shelia and Rachel of doing something to Skylar, or at the very least, knowing something.  What was amazing was that many of the details of the actual events that some of these kids tweeted about turned out to be the truth. In October and November, Skylar’s body hadn’t yet been found but kids at the school were tweeting to Rachel and asking about the big cut on her leg that she’d had in the days just after Skylar’s disappearance.  They tweeted to Shelia but she was much more brazen and impervious to the harassment.  Much of this was done via ‘subtweets’, which don’t call out a particular person, but those who are close to the subjects are completely aware of the context. And then the sock puppet accounts showed up.  They were anonymous and were very blatant in their accusations. This was in December of 2012. The two suspect girls were called  “pretty little liars” based on the TV series about mean girls who murdered.

It was in December that Rachel Shoaf cracked.  She’d had a blowout with her mother who decided that Rachel needed more help than she could provide and called police who hauled her off to a local mental hospital for several weeks.  I give credit to Rachel’s mother for having the courage to intervene like that.  It had to be hard for her but it turned out to be the thing that broke the case.

Rachel, apparently guilt-ridden, went to a lawyer after her stint in mental care and confessed all.  And I mean ALL. Her attorney worked out a deal with authorities and in January, Rachel led them to Skylar’s remains which had been concealed in a remote area of Pennsylvania since that fateful night she’d crawled out her bedroom window.

In the meantime, one could watch the breakdown of Rachel and Shelia’s trust on Twitter. Rachel had cooperated with police and FBI in order to get a plea deal and implicated Shelia in the process. Shelia was the ultimate mean girl.  Her hubris was evident from her demeanor on Twitter and she clearly thought that she was above punishment for killing her best friend. She even tweeted “Yes it’s true, we went on 3” – referring to the fact that Shelia and Rachel had planned the attack on Skylar and stabbed her to death on the count of three.

This year both girls were finally brought to justice, with Rachel getting 30 years for her plea to 2nd degree murder and Shelia getting 15 to life for her plea to Murder One.  The horrific details came out at Rachel’s sentencing when the prosecutor read from Rachel’s confession.  They had lured Skylar from her home intending to kill her.  They had driven to a remote area in Pennsylvania, just over the border from West Virginia.  They got her behind the car and on the count of three they both stabbed her to death with kitchen knives.  They stood over Skylar until she stopped breathing and then concealed her body with leaves and brush. They cleaned up with the cleaning supplies that Rachel had brought along and changed their bloody clothing.  They then drove home and went to bed.  These were children. Teens. How do teens plan, perpetrate and conceal a crime such as this? Skylar was murdered in July, Rachel broke in late December and Shelia was arrested the following May. I believe that social media played a part in breaking Rachel and it certainly played a role in demonstrating how cold and callous two teenage girls could be.  Shelia and Skylar’s twitter accounts are still up, though Rachel locked hers during her breakdown.  It’s a forensic psychologist’s dream since you can watch the plot unravel over time.  No one really knows the why the “mean girls” ran amuck. Rachel’s confession states that they “just didn’t want to be friends with her anymore”. Can the motive for murder really be as mundane as that?

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

The Sad and Tragic Story of Jamarion “Please Kill Me” Lawhorn and His Victim Connor Verkerke

Charlie Bothuell V May Have a Very Sharp Axe to Grind

Two’s Company, Three’s a Deadly Crowd: The Cruel Killing of Martha Gail Fulton

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)

The following 10 somewhat bizarre yet prophetically fatal facts about Ted Bundy (Monster Smooth) during his youth and young adulthood come to us courtesy of Bukisa.com and Wikipedia. Bukisa’s interpretations of these facts have, in some cases, been augmented and/or altered by Patrick H. Moore.

1)  Ted Bundy was not his birth name.

The man the world would come to know as Ted Bundy Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home For Unwed Mothers (now the Lund Family Center) in Burlington, Vermont on November 24, 1946. His mother Eleanor Louise Cowell (known for most of her life as Louise) moved to Tacoma when Ted was four and changed his last name to Nelson. Within a year, his mother met Johnnie Culpepper Bundy. When they married, Johnnie Bundy legally adopted Theodore and changed his last name to Bundy.

2)  Ted Bundy thought his mother was his sister for many years.

To avoid the social stigma of having an illegitimate grandchild born to a young mother, his grandparents claimed him as their own. They told Ted that Louise was his sister and not his mother. Although Ted likely suspected that something didn’t quite add up, he did not definitively discover the truth of his maternal parentage until the end of high school or early in college.

3)  No one is really sure who his biological father was.

Louise gives us two different stories. The name affixed in the father slot on Ted’s birth certificate was Lloyd Marshall. However, she later spoke of being seduced by a war veteran named Jack Worthington. There’s still another option, however, though it may be mere speculation. Some members of Bundy’s family think that his grandfather Samuel Cowell may also be his biological father. Samuel Cowell was a tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews, beat his wife and the family dog, and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He once threw Louise’s younger sister Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping. He sometimes spoke aloud to unseen presences, and at least once he flew into a violent rage when the question of Ted’s paternity was raised.  Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression and feared leaving their house toward the end of her life.

I don’t want to belabor the obvious but it sounds a bit dysfunctional to me.

4)  He showed violent tendencies as young as three years old.

Ted showed an unsettling predilection for violence from a very early age. His maternal aunt Julia recalls lying down for a nap and waking up surrounded by knives with a smiling 3-year-old Bundy at her side. If this is true, it is totally freakish and as Bukisa says, paints an eerie, strange picture of an eccentric (in the worst sense of the word) toddler arranging knives around his sleeping aunt.

5)  Bundy’s grandfather (who he thought was his father and indeed may have been) tortured animals.

AND, Bundy describes incidents of his grandfather Samuel abusing the family dog. Samuel would also swing neighbourhood cats around by their tails, and Ted himself reportedly mutilated animals with the ubiquitous knives that seemed to fascinate him so much. Ouch!

6)  Young Ted was active in the Methodist Church and even served as Vice President of the Methodist Youth Fellowship.

Oddly enough, despite his anti-social and no doubt sociopathic tendencies, Ted, like John Wayne Gacy, was a joiner. In addition to the Methodist Church (Note: Patrick H’s family went to the Methodist Church in Campbellsport, Wisc for several years when he was a kid and he narrowly escaped becoming a serial killer), Ted joined the Boy Scouts of America club. It all seems like somewhat of a charade, however, a fact Bundy seemed to intimate when he later stated: “I didn’t know what made people want to be friends. I didn’t know what made people attractive to one another. I didn’t know what underlay social interactions.” you get the sense that Ted may have been thinking all the wrong thoughts both in Church and at Scout meetings. He was often described as shy and introverted at this age.

7)  His criminal activities began before he finished high school.

Ted tendency to be dangerously different, which manifested early with his penchant for knife arranging, was always apaprent in one way or another. According to some reports, he was a habitual liar. and a compulsive shoplifter. Although Bundy’s later claims must be met with some skepticism, he did say that he had gone the voyeuristic route at a young age and was a “peeper”. Bundy was arrested twice as a juvenile but the records were later expunged.

8)  He majored in Psychology and graduated with a degree in 1972.

Despite what might be called demonstratively anti-social tendencies, Bundy also had a confoundedly conforming side. Just like any up and coming lad, he was off to college after graduating high school in 1965. He went through a period when he was engrossed in Oriental Studies and later seems to have settled on Psychology. He was a desultory student at first, though, which he believed cost him the love of his life, a well-appointed and well-off California girl, possibly from the San Francisco Bay Area, who for reasons of decorum, shall remain nameless. After his first and perhaps only love broke up with him for his lack of ambition, he rededicated himself to Psychology and earned his degree in 1972. He was well-liked by his professors and graduated with honors. He started dating a young mother (a relationship that lasted six years) while covertly re-establishing his relationship with his former girlfriend who dumped him. Ted ultimately proposed to the first woman and she accepted. Then two weeks later, he dumped her and began his killing spree. Nonetheless, he did not end his six year relationship to the woman with child until he was arrested for kidnapping in 1976. The general consensus is that most of his victims looked like his original girlfriend who dumped him (long dark hair parted in the middle).

9)  He volunteered at a suicide crisis center alongside a now famous crime author, Ann Rule.

In conjunction with his psychology classes, he volunteered at a suicide crisis center where, it is believed, he quite effectively talked people out of killing themselves. At this point, Bukisa can only state: “Completely bizarre.” At the crisis center, Ted worked closely with Ann Rule who is now a well known crime writer. Ironically, at a certain point, she began researching the crimes Ted was committing, not knowing it was her friend who committed them. She later published a very readable book called : The Stranger Beside Me detailing her relationship with Ted, his numerous crimes and his trials.

10)  Ted was heavily involved with the Republican Party.

Whatever his faults and they were legion, Ted was an activist. In 1968, he managed the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign and attended the Republican Convention in Miami. After his graduation in 1972, he went to work for the state Republican Party. He was later involved in a minor scandal when the Democrats discovered that stealthy Ted had been following one of them around posing as a college student, taping their speeches and pirating the information back to his home office.

So where do we go from here? Hopefully, as time permits, we will have the chance to take a close look at various phases in Monster Smooth’s incredibly diabolical life.

by BJW Nashe

Superstar Murderer. The scope of Charles Manson’s fame is an odd phenomenon in the history of American culture. Manson was a violent criminal convicted of mass murder in 1970. The fact that he has been turned into something much more — a mythological figure responsible for the “end of the Sixties,” a symbol of “pure evil” in the world, an Antichrist with demonic powers — tells us more about the culture we live in than it does about Charles Manson himself, or the horrible crimes he committed. Manson is more than just a case of our celebrity dream machine run amok. He also serves as a convenient scapegoat for our society’s collective guilt and shame following the turbulent 1960s era.

Manson Media Frenzy. The barrage of books, films, TV shows, and magazine stories about Manson may have slowed down a bit since the heyday of the 1970s, but still continues to this day. There’s an old adage from the newspaper business that says, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The Manson saga bleeds like a stuck pig — with hemophilia. From the moment he made headlines and kicked off the evening news, Manson was a big-time story. To put it bluntly, Manson moved product. Manson sold papers and magazines. Manson got good ratings. He and his cult of followers called the Family weren’t just ripe for exploitation. They were tailor-made for sensationalized media coverage. We have to wonder at this point when the Charles Manson Superstar phenomenon will finally reach its nadir.

A New Book About Manson. Nadir? Well, not quite yet. Manson remains a huge presence on the internet. And another book about Manson is scheduled to hit the stores on August 6, two days before the 44th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders which made Manson a household name. The new book, written by investigative journalist Jeff Guinn, is called Manson: The Life and Times of Charlie Manson. It seeks to provide a detailed account of Manson’s troubled youth, his early life of crime and imprisonment, and his frustrated attempt to gain fame and fortune as a folk-rock musician in Los Angeles. Hopefully the book will help to de-mythologize the man by focusing on the facts of his troubled life. Guinn supposedly emphasizes the failed rock star angle, stressing the fact that the Tate murders occurred at the former house of record producer Terry Melcher, who had snubbed Manson by refusing to give him a record deal. Strange to think that all the carnage might have been averted simply by signing Manson to a record contract. Plenty of lame acts were getting deals back then. Consider Herman’s Hermits, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Perhaps Melcher should have just given Charlie a chance. But how was he to know that rejecting Manson’s music would lead to such atrocities? Besides, even if Charlie had been given a record deal, we have no reason to assume he wouldn’t have gone on to commit murder and mayhem anyway. He seemed to be headed in that direction, deal or no deal.

Monstrous Fame. Manson became far more famous as a criminal than he ever would have as a musician. His music is nothing much to speak of — an oddly ineffectual, half-baked hybrid of Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart. Manson’s crimes, however, are the stuff of legend. Anyone convicted of the random brutal slayings of seven people — one of whom is a beautiful actress — is guaranteed a certain amount of notoriety. Manson, however, achieved a level of fame typically reserved for rock musicians and movie stars. His wild-eyed stare, best captured in the notorious Life Magazine cover photo that appeared soon after his arrest, has become as instantly recognizable as the corporate logos for Coca-Cola and Apple, or the features of Bob Marley and Che Guevara. Manson is now a cultural icon of sorts, similar to other legendary figures such as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and John Lennon. Now that nearly forty-five years has passed since his conviction, it behooves us to question the dubious nature of the Manson iconography.

Obsessed with Manson. It’s easy to grow obsessed with Charles Manson. I remember reading Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter back in the mid-Seventies, when I was a teenager living in Southern California, just a thirty-minute drive from the scene of Manson’s crimes. Like many, I found the story to be a thrilling antidote to the safe suburban life of middle class America. Helter Skelter had it all, a grab bag of every weird counterculture trend one could think of: an apocalyptic death cult, drug trips, sex orgies, satanism, rock music, outlaw bikers, movie stars, and savage murders. No wonder Bugiosi’s book, based on his investigative work as the prosecutor in Manson’s trial, remains a top bestseller in the history of the True Crime genre. I also devoured Ed Sanders’s book, The Family, which takes us even deeper inside the twisted world of Manson and his cult. It was even darker and stranger than Helter Skelter. And those two books were just the beginning. There seemed to be no end to Manson mania, and it was hard to turn away when Manson’s name turned up in the TV guide listings, or when his face showed up on the cover of yet another book or magazine. Now on the internet we see a vast proliferation of Manson-related materials. Charlie’s own website, maintained by some of his “fans,” is perhaps the most obvious indication of the man’s enduring status. Google “Charles Manson,” and you can spend days, weeks, and even months reading articles (like this one), viewing photos and artwork, watching videos, and listening to music. It’s hard to believe that it all stems from two terrible nights in Los Angeles in the late summer of 1969.

Tate Murders. On the night of August 8, 1969 (the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), four of Manson’s followers drove to 10050 Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Linda Kasabian broke into the large mansion and attacked the residents. Terry Melcher had moved out several months ago. Now the home was being rented by film director Roman Polanski and his actress wife, Sharon Tate. Polanski was in London working on a film project. Inside the house with Tate on that night was hair stylist Jay Sebring, aspiring screenwriter Woycek Frykowski, and Abigail Folger — an heiress to the coffee company fortune. Tex Watson initially shot a young man, Steve Parent, who was driving up to the property’s guest house. The intruders entered the home and attacked the four people inside with brutal savagery, chasing them with knives and stabbing them as many as fifty times. Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant at the time, reportedly begged her attackers to save the life of her unborn child. Watson and Atkins stabbed her to death. Atkins dipped a finger in Tate’s blood and scrawled the word “PIG” on the front door of the house.

LaBianca Murders. The next night, August 9, the same four attackers, along with two additional cult members named Steve Grogan and Leslie Van Houten, drove to the home of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, co-owner of a dress shop. The house was located at 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. The attackers broke into the residence, then tied up and killed the LaBianca couple in the same savage manner as the night before. Tex Watson stabbed Leno LaBianca multiple times with a bayonet, and carved the word “WAR” into the man’s chest. Krenwinkle left a steak knife buried in Leno’s neck, and stabbed him several times with a two-tined carving fork, which she left jammed into his stomach. The female attackers took turns killing Rosemary, who received over forty total stab wounds during the frenzy. In Leno’s blood, Krenwinkle wrote the words “DEATH TO THE PIGS,” “RISE,” and “HELTER SKELTER” on the refrigerator door.

Apprehension. Due to a convoluted series of events, Manson was not apprehended for the Tate-LaBianca murders until December 1969. This was only accomplished due to an earlier, seemingly unrelated murder of a man named Gary Hinman. Hinman was killed by Manson Family associate Bobby Beausoleil in an attempt to reclaim money following a bogus drug deal. Following the Tate-LaBianca murders, Beausoleil was arrested for the Hinman killing, along with Susan Atkins, who had participated in the crime. While in jail, Atkins bragged about the Tate-LaBianca murders to a fellow inmate, who then told the authorities what she had heard. Many of the Manson Family, including Charlies himself, had recently been arrested on suspicion of auto theft, only to be released due to lack of evidence. Police had no idea that they had the Tate-LaBianca killers briefly in custody. When Manson, Watson, Krenwinkle, Kasabian, and Van Houten were finally charged with the crimes in December, the story exploded, and a dark star was born.

The Trial. The Manson murder trial was a freakish extravaganza that dragged on from June to November, 1970. A group of Manson’s female followers — barred from the courtroom — gathered in front of the courthouse each day, sitting on the sidewalk and chanting slogans. When Manson carved an “X” onto his forehead, the girls outside followed suit. At one point during the trial proceedings, Manson leaped across the defendant’s table and tried to attack Judge William Keene. President Richard Nixon foolishly told a reporter that he thought Manson was guilty. The next day in court, Manson grinned and held up a newspaper so everyone could see the front page headline: “Nixon Says Manson is Guilty.” The first degree murder charges the prosecution insisted on bringing against Manson were considered controversial to some, since the state had no evidence that placed Manson at either crime scene. In fact, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi made no claim that Manson himself had killed anyone. Rather, Bugliosi’s case consisted of proving to the jury that Manson had ordered the killings, and was ultimately responsible. Bugliosi set out to show how Manson exercised total control over the members of his cult. Manson was in charge of everything his followers did. This included their sexual behavior, the food they ate, the drugs they took, and the crimes they committed. Proving this in court involved hours of lurid testimony from various witnesses. When Manson insisted on making a statement to the court, Bugliosi had the jury removed, because he was wary of exposing them to Manson’s “hypnotic powers.” Manson delivered a deranged speech, during which he said, among other things, “You can’t kill me. I’m already dead.”

Helter Skelter. During the trial, and the ensuing media circus, the American public were introduced to the wild and wacky world of Manson and his Family. They met the runaway girls who were snatched up by Manson and turned into willing sex slaves. They heard all about the LSD trips and the dumpster diving for food and the orgies. They learned about the Family hideouts at Spahn Ranch outside of Los Angeles, and at Barker Ranch in Death Valley. They were lectured on the coming race war that Manson preached would soon break out between blacks and whites. Incredibly, Manson claimed that this was encoded within the songs on the Beatles White Album. The Tate-LaBianca murders were supposedly Manson’s way of showing black people how to start the final conflict — which he called “Helter Skelter.” Manson predicted that blacks would win the race war, while the Family would ride out the crisis in some “bottomless pit” in the desert. Then, the Family would emerge as the chosen ones who would rule over the new society. One would have to be on LSD for this to make any sort of sense. The American public also got a sneak preview at what would soon become a growing American “survivalist” trend, as they heard about the Family stockpiling arms and supplies in the desert, and stealing cars to assemble a battalion of makeshift dune buggies painted in garish psychedelic colors and equipped with gun mounts. The whole thing was quite a mind-bending story, unlike anything else ever heard in an American courtroom. Manson ended up convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

Creepy Connections. The Manson story included a staggering series of cultural connections. In prison during the early Sixties, Manson received impromptu guitar lessons from Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the Ma Barker Gang of bank robbers. After his release from prison, Manson befriended Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. For a while, the Manson Family was camped out at Wilson’s rented home. He had to flee the premises, leaving the landlord to evict them. The Beach Boys recorded a version of Manson’s song, “Cease to Exist,” which they re-titled, “Cease to Resist.” Manson Family associate Bobby Beausoleil was close to underground filmmaker and occult magus Kenneth Anger. Anger wrote the infamous Hollywood Babylon books, detailing Tinseltown’s most scandalous events, in order to raise money to finance his film projects. Anger had mingled with the Rolling Stones during their “Sympathy for the Devil” days. Anger also worked with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who was supposed to do the soundtrack for Anger’s film Lucifer Rising. Page, an avid occultist, lived in Aleister Crowley’s old castle in Scotland. Susan Atkins had worked as a stripper in the Bay Area. During that time, she was hired as a “model” for Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan in San Francisco. Atkins appeared nude in various Satanic rituals and black masses at the church. Jayne Mansfield was also linked to the Church of Satan, prior to her fatal automobile accident. On the night of the Tate murders, Anton LaVey supposedly held a black magic ceremony devoted to the death of the hippie movement. Sharon Tate, who had starred in several B-grade vampire and horror movies, was involved in “white magic” activities related to Wicca. Roman Polanski had directed the film Rosemary’s Baby, in which Mia Farrow starred as a woman who gives birth to the devil. Polanski, who was shattered by Sharon’s murder, was eventually forced to flee the U.S. in the face of statutory rape charges for sodomizing a 13 year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s bathtub. Terry Melcher, the record producer who snubbed Manson after meeting him, was married to actress Candace Bergen. Manson had fairly close ties to the outlaw biker gang called Satan’s Slaves. Lynne “Squeaky” Fromme, a gung-ho Manson Family member, was eventually arrested for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. It goes on and on, like the ourobouros, the snake endlessly devouring its own tail.

Blowing Up the Zeitgeist. In American culture at the end of the Sixties, Manson did more than just strike a nerve or set off sparks; he blew up like a ton of dynamite. He cornered what is perhaps best understood as the “reverse market” of positive hippie icons such as John Lennon. Manson filled the role of the evil Beatle. His Family was the dark double of Ken Kesey’s band of Merry Pranksters. He turned the Summer of Love into the Summer of Death. Manson took Timothy Leary’s LSD slogan, “tune in, turn on, drop out,” and tacked on the words “commit murder.” Hippies were no longer just about peace and love. Now they were associated with Satanism, perversion, and murder. For straight-laced Americans who were shocked at the sight of a half-million hippies wallowing in the mud at Woodstock, Manson became a symbol of everything wrong with American youth. Manson was the dark side of the Sixties’ overriding philosophy of liberation. When Manson’s followers claimed he was Jesus, for many Americans this only confirmed that he was Satan, or the Antichrist. He was the new “face of pure evil.” To counter this, some counterculture types miscalculated, and actually chose to view Manson was an admirable figure. Rolling Stone put him on the cover as their “Man of the Year.” Bernardine Dohrn, one of the leaders of the Weather Underground, called him a “groovy revolutionary.” Some of the Weatherman group spoke of “the year of the fork,” referring to the implement stuck in Leno LaBianca’s stomach. Instead of a sober, clear-headed analysis of Manson and his crimes, public discourse tended to be swept away into an apocalyptic fantasia. Later on, Manson would be celebrated as a dark pop icon, and a source of black humor for various culture jammers. His “murderabilia” was sold at special auctions. Genesis P. Orridge of the band Psychic TV collected material on Manson and made a pilgrimage to Spahn Ranch. Sonic Youth wrote a song called “Death Valley 69,” which they performed with Lydia Lunch, while controversial death-trip filmmaker and pornographer Richard Kern was enlisted to shoot the video. Axl Rose of Guns and Roses sometimes took the stage wearing a Manson t-shirt. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails went to live in the Tate murder house for awhile, setting up a home studio there to record his Downward Spiral album.

Fiction vs. Reality. Despite the intriguing nature of the Manson Family’s connections and associates, and the occult fad that permeated late Sixties culture, much of the Manson-as-hippie-devil hoopla was ridiculously overblown, a media-constructed fantasy that flew in the face of the facts. In reality, Charles Manson was not a hippie or a flower child. He had very little to do with Sixties culture. Born in 1934 to an unwed, alcoholic mother in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was a child of the Depression, not a flower-child of the Sixties. And his childhood was no doubt highly troubled, spent primarily in boy’s homes and juvenile halls, since his mother was unwilling or incapable of caring for him. Early on, Manson was committing crimes such as burglaries, armed robberies, forged checks, and pimping. When he was released from prison in 1967, after completing a ten year sentence, Manson was 32 years old. He had spent most of his life behind bars, where he had most likely experienced routine physical and sexual abuse, as well as lengthy stints in solitary confinement. Prison had not broken him, however. It seems to have only strengthened his will and his sense of resolve. He developed delusions of grandeur, fueled by extreme bitterness and resentment. When he emerged from prison in 1967, he was not merely as an ex-con; he was an ex-con with a mission. He was still just a thief and a con man and pimp, but he had a purpose. He had decided to wage war against a society he felt was rotten to the core.

A Hippie Pimp. The Summer of Love and the hippie movement just happened to provide Manson with the context in which to seek his revenge against those he felt had wronged him. He had no real connection to any youth movement in America. He wanted to infiltrate the popular culture, become a rich and famous musician, and use his fame to preach his gospel of revenge. He wanted to form a doomsday cult that would bring society to its knees. He grew his hair and beard long, adopting the “hippie Jesus” look that was popular at the time. Then he preyed on society’s vulnerable young women, utilizing his pimp charisma to coerce them into submission. Using the women as sexual bait, he was then able to lure men into his orbit, including other criminals, bikers, drug dealers, and rock musicians. Young hippies back then used to say, “Never trust anyone over thirty.” They should have kept that in mind with Manson in L.A. He was a 34 year-old man in 1969, manipulating teenage girls to help him carry out his crazy plans. Those plans, of course, were no more realistic that Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. Frustrated by this fact, Manson ended up lashing out, directing his followers to commit random murder. I fail to discern any metaphysical or spiritual significance to any of this. I doubt whether there is any need, or justification, for large symbolic meanings. I could be wrong, but I find that the only thing remotely “demonic” about Manson is his strange celebrity status. This was achieved through a kind of occult process, namely, the media’s exploitation of Manson, which was so ruthless and extensive that he was transformed from a deranged criminal into an evil icon.

Paranoia Fulfilled. It’s difficult to resist the lure of delusional, paranoid thought processes in regard to Manson. Even a writer as clear-headed and dryly understated as Joan Didion can’t resist indulging in pure, irrational fear, and even tossing in some B-movie horror effects, when it comes to discussing Manson. Consider the following passage from Didion’s landmark essay, “The White Album.” I love the passage; the writing is just plain fun, and spooky, far better than anything I will ever write. Yet, at the end of the day, we have to admit that the thought process is sensationalistic and overblown. Clear analysis is thrown out the window. Maybe that’s the best way to write about Manson, but I’m not sure. Here’s Didion:

“I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things going on around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was imaginable. This mystical flirtation with the idea of ‘sin’ — this sense that it was possible to go ‘too far,’ and that many people were doing it — was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full. On August 9, 1969, I was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-law’s swimming pool in Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive. The phone rang many times during the next hour. These early reports were garbled and contradictory. One caller would say hoods, the next would say chains. There were twenty dead, no, twelve, ten, eighteen. Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I remember all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and I wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised… Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”

The End of Nothing. In fact, Charles Manson was not the end of anything. The Sixties decade was full of calamities and disasters and scandals. The whole era did not hinge on any one event. It’s a mistake to assign that much importance to seven admittedly tragic murders in L.A. in 1969. For many, the Tate-LaBianca murders were surprising. The crimes were an aberration, not some inevitable fulfillment. Dogs did not in fact bark at the full moon every single night, even in Manson’s backyard. Yet people like to speak this way about Manson. It’s part of the Manson mystique. What if, however, there is no greater significance to Charles Manson? Let’s suppose he symbolizes nothing. He means nothing more than the brute facts of his life of crime. A madman and an ex-con, he formed a rag-tag cult of misfits. He was convicted of killing seven people. He received the death penalty. He narrowly escaped the gas chamber because the California Supreme Court just happened to overturn the death penalty while he sat on Death Row. He now sits in Corcoran State Prison, a bent, graying old man with a swastika carved into his forehead. When de-mythologized, Manson is just a sad story of yet another American criminal.

Manson as Scapegoat. But we all sense that Manson is bigger than the mere facts. Because we have made him bigger than that. And I think the reason for this lies in the fact that in 1969, America desperately needed a scapegoat for everything that seemed to be so wrong in the world. Maybe we always seek out larger-than-life villains or demonic figures on whom we can pin the guilt and shame of our troubled, violent society. If we have a recognizable “face of pure evil,” we can then deflect all blame onto that symbol. We can load that symbol up with all of the evil baggage in our world. Rather than analyzing the complex events in our shared history, we can simply point to Hitler’s face, or Osama Bin Laden’s face, or Charles Manson’s face. In any case, America in 1969 seemed especially ripe for scapegoating. The events of the decade, which included assassinations and race riots, were simply too much for many Americans to accept or come to terms with. The Vietnam War, in particular, must be seen as the larger context for Manson’s dubious rise to fame. Let’s face it: there was plenty of evil in American life far worse in size and scope than the evil of Manson or any other acid-crazed hippie. Consider the fact that the 1968 Mai Lai Massacre, during which U.S. soldiers raped and slaughtered nearly 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, was revealed to the public at the same time as Manson was charged for the Tate-LaBianca murders. Second Lieutenant William Calley, who led the massacre (as platoon leader in what was called, oddly enough, “Charlie Company”), was not considered to be the Antichrist, or the new “face of pure evil.” His “demonic stare” was never plastered across the covers of magazines and newspapers across the nation. Was the Mai Lai Massacre no less of an atrocity than the Manson Family murders? In fact, one can argue that Mai Lai was much worse. And Mai Lai was emblematic of the vast amount of death and destruction America was responsible for in Vietnam. Yet it was Manson who was the “face of evil” in 1969. Rather than take a clear look at what was going on in America, it was easier to focus on Manson as a scapegoat. This reinforced the desire to view the counterculture in general as the real source of America’s problems. Lieutenant Calley was held accountable for his crimes, to some extent. He was convicted in a military court of premeditated murder, for which he served a total of three and one half years under house arrest at Fort Benning. Manson got the death penalty, and then life in prison. Manson became a symbol of everything wrong in American during the Sixties. Who even remembers Lieutenant Calley anymore?

Manson Fatigue. We are nearing the end of the line with Manson. Soon he will turn 80 years old in Corcoran State Prison. Even Charlie can’t live forever. When he dies, there will be the inevitable “tributes” and “retrospectives.” Perhaps then we can turn away from Manson for good, and let his troubled soul rest in peace. I recently watched Nicholas Schreck’s 1989 documentary film, Charles Manson Superstar, which makes some worthwhile points about the problematic myth of Charlie, but ultimately gets bogged down in lengthy prison interviews with Manson, who at the time was wasting away in San Quentin. Charlie likes to hear himself talk, but his act grows old pretty quickly. He comes across like an old-school snake-oil con man with mental problems — like a character out of Naked Lunch. Watching him carrying on, it was hard to imagine anyone letting him even change the breaks on their car, let alone control their life as part of a death cult. In the penitentiary, the gap between the Manson myth and the Manson couldn’t be more glaring.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

When I first heard that two little Amish girls had been kidnapped at about 7:30 on Wednesday evening from their family’s fruit and vegetable stand near Oswegatchie in upstate New York, my heart sank, and I would have been even more concerned had I known how difficult it would be for law enforcement to find them. You see, I was unaware that many Amish adults avoid photographs entirely which meant the girls’ parents could not provide the St. Lawrence County police with pictures. Instead, the authorities had to work with police sketches and the parents apparently would not allow their six-year-old to even be sketched.

AP writer George M. Walsh reports:

The sisters, who are among the youngest of Mose and Barb Miller’s 13 children, vanished at about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday after a white or light-colored car pulled up to the farm stand and they went down to tend to the customers while the rest of their family stayed at a barn for the evening milking. Both girls were wearing dark blue dresses with blue aprons and black bonnets.

The kidnappings touched off a massive search in the family’s remote farming community which spread out into the surrounding countryside when an Amber Alert was issued at 1:00 am on Thursday morning. I’ve driven through upstate New York, and although it is gorgeous countryside, it is also very isolated. Searching for the girls had to be a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

For unknown reasons, however, the kidnappers released the two sisters about 24 hours after abducting them in the hamlet of Richville, not far from the Canadian border, some 35 miles northwest of where they had been kidnapped. The girls, who must have been incredibly traumatized by this point, and were barefoot, cold, wet and hungry, somehow found the courage to march up and knock on the front door Richville residents Jeff and Pam Stinson.

Gio Benitez and Colleen Curry of Good Morning America write:

When the girls arrived on their doorstep, the Stinsons fed them watermelon and grape juice and the girls were so hungry they couldn’t stop eating the watermelon.

“They ate that watermelon in 30 seconds. It was fast,” said Jeff Stinson.

The Stinsons said they recognized the girls because they were aware of news reports about their abduction, and Jeff Stinson knew exactly where they lived because he had bought corn from the elder girl at their vegetable stand.

The Stinsons then proceeded to drive the girls back home to Oswegatchie. According to the Stinsons, at one point during the ride, the girls ducked down in the back seat because they saw the kidnapper’s car pulled over by the side of the road.

The kidnappers, Stephen Howells Jr., 39, and Nicole Vaisey, 25, both of Hermon, NY, were identified and arrested based on information provided by the two young victims, whom they allegedly sexually abused before releasing. Howells and Vaisy were arraigned Friday on charges they abducted the 7-year-old and 12-year-old sisters with the intent to physically or sexually abuse them and each face two counts of first degree kidnapping, according to St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain.

George M. Walsh reports:

According to D.A. Rain, Howells and Vaisy were merely prowling for easy targets when they “grabbed” the Amish girls and very likely planned to abduct other children.

“We felt that there was the definite potential that there was going to be other victims,” St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin Wells said.

The sheriff said Howells, 39, and Vaisey, 25, “were targeting opportunities” and did not necessarily grab the girls because they were Amish.

“There was a lot of thought process that went into this,” Wells said. “They were looking for opportunities to victimize.”

There is a curious wrinkle to this story. According to a statement Vaisey’s lawyer, Bradford Riendeau, made to the New York Times, Howells had abused Vaisey and treated her as a submissive. Riendeau said Vaisy made a “voluntary statement” to investigators after her arrest and was obtaining a protection order against her “master”.

“She appears to have been the slave and he was the master,” Riendeau told the newspaper.

Sasha Goldstein on the NY Daily News reports that DA Rains said that the Amish girls were “extremely” instrumental in helping the authorities find and arrest the perpetrators. Rain spoke at Howells and Vaissy’s house at 1380 County Route 21 in Hermon, while investigators searched the residence.

The authorities are still trying to learn more about where the girls were held during their 24 hours of captivity.

Vaisey and Howells were arrested after “voluntarily” presenting themselves at the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. (I assume “voluntarily” means they were ordered to come in for questioning after they had been identified based on leads provided by the two little girls.) DA Rain did not disclose if the couple admitted to the crimes. They potentially face 25 to life if convicted of the charges.

* * * * *

I am somewhat stunned by the fact that Howells and Vaissy released the two girls rather than keeping them captive or simply murdering them to keep them from talking. Surely, they must have realized that by releasing the girls, they were putting themselves at considerable risk of being identified and apprehended. But of course, the fact is that there are plenty of pedophiles who, thankfully, are not murderers, which is apparently the case with these two miscreants.

by Yalonda Laugh and Patrick H. Moore

The Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo rape-and-school-girl serial murder case has drawn great attention both in Canada and the United States since the young husband and wife team shocked Canada by the brutal and callous manner in which they systematically raped and murdered Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The horrified followers of these heinous crimes were particularly incensed for two reasons: First, Homolka and Bernardo were attractive and seemingly intelligent young married people. The thought of them raping and murdering schoolgirls — apparently just for kicks — seemed both gratuitous and despicable. Yet, they clearly committed these awful crimes. (There is, of course, controversy regarding the degree to which Homolka took part in the actual murders. At the least, she was obviously complicit.)

In early 1993, after enduring a brutal beating at the hands of Bernardo, Karla Homolka — at the urging of her family — escaped from the shadow of his bizarrely domineering personality, went to the Canadian authorities, and gradually “came clean.” In return for her agreeing to testify against Bernardo at trial (and keep in mind that without Homolka the Crown had no case against Bernardo), Karla received the infamous “Sweetheart Plea Deal,” a mere 12 years in prison on each of two counts of manslaughter to be run concurrently.

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

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

Seven Weeks at Northwestern General Hospital

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Williams writes:

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

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

* * * * * * *

Karla Homolka’s Doctors and Their Diagnoses

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

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

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

“Indeed Karla’s experience since her age 17, could be to some degree, compared to the experiences of concentration camp survivors who as we11 experience horrendous tragedies and had to go through and perform actions in order to survive that under normal circumstances they would clearly have stayed away from, but in the interest of self-preservation or in the interest of preserving other people’s lives, did see themselves helpless and went through the actions as had been required of them.”

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

Dr. Andrew Long’s Diagnosis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Andrew Malcolm’s Diagnosis:

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

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

Dr. Malcolm continued:

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

Brief Commentary on the Three Evaluations

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

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

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

Click on the following links to read previous Karla posts:

Paul Bernardo Engaged to Lovely and Sensitive 30-Year-Old Woman?

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Just Did As She Pleased

Watching Karla Homolka: The Game Gets Real

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Stacks the Deck

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

Watching Karla Homolka: It’s a Family Affair

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

Is Karla Homolka the Most Hated Woman in North America?

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

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