by John Palucci

I would like to shed some light on one particular question that has attracted a lot of attention in Ferguson, MO; why was the body at the crime scene for so long?

Looking at it from a forensic perspective, the position of the body and its spatial relationship to the other evidence in the crime scene is essential to reconstruct the events that transpired. I am avoiding the use of names intentionally to depersonalize this as much as possible.

What initially caught my attention and did suggest negligence was the excessive delay in the response time of investigative personnel to the crime scene. I have read quotes from Ferguson PD personnel which state that this was due to the amount of unrest that was taking place, and that once on the scene, investigative personnel were unable to begin their investigation promptly because they were being deployed for crowd control.

Understandably, the body being exposed to the public is one direct cause of this unrest and with today’s technology and “forensic awareness”, that situation should have been remedied properly and as expeditiously as possible.

Forensic supply companies sell pop up tents and barriers designed to shield a body from public view and weather. Also, single use covers that are specifically manufactured to be free of contaminants can be placed over a body and later examined for any transfer of trace evidence.

If these items were not available, a more difficult procedure would be to expand the boundaries of the crime scene. It can be argued that the initial boundaries should have been established far enough up the side streets so that the building line would provide cover – although there were many windows facing the scene.

I cringed when I saw the video of a police officer walking towards the body with a sheet of unknown origin, not packaged, and blowing against his uniform in the breeze. Uniform fibers on the subject’s clothing are highly probative and as a result of this carelessness, it could be claimed that any blue uniform fibers on the subject were not from a struggle, but were rather the result of secondary transfer from the police officer to the sheet to the subject. What happened in Ferguson is another case supporting more comprehensive training of first responders in crime scenes who will be handling forensic evidence!

In a New York Times article titled “Timeline for a Body: 4 Hours in the Middle of a Ferguson Street”, that quoted both myself and Dr. Michael Baden, Dr. Baden mentioned the ambient heat as a factor that would command strict attention being paid to minimizing the amount of time the body was left on the scene. From his perspective as a forensic pathologist, heat accelerates the decomposition of a body, thereby making his already difficult task of autopsying the body even more painstaking if the body is left at the crime scene for too long.

Any delays in the response of a crime scene unit to a crime scene is rarely the investigators’ fault since teams are dispatched under the authority of a supervisor, who is often an executive level manager in high profile cases. It’s important to understand that once the investigators do arrive, processing a crime scene is methodical and time consuming. The location of the body in relation to other evidence has to be documented with photographs, measurements and a sketch. These details are of the utmost importance when it comes to evaluating the credibility of statements made by witnesses and subject officers.

In this case, the body’s position as it relates to the shell casings would have a significant impact on reconstruction. Shell casings found at a crime scene don’t reveal the shooter’s exact position as the CSI dramas would have you believe.

Firearms don’t eject casings consistently enough to use their location as a precise metric in determining shooter position, and casings are often kicked, moved, blown around and run over before a scene is secured. In the Ferguson matter, the street was secured immediately after the shooting so the integrity of the shell casings’ position was properly maintained by the Ferguson PD.

Another forensic discipline that plays an important role in reconstructing the events of this incident is bloodstain pattern analysis. Since the subject was bleeding throughout most of his movements between the police car and his final location, the bloodstains provide crucial information as to which direction(s) the subject was traveling.

When a bleeding subject is in motion, the bloodstains deposited on the ground will show the direction of travel. The area where the directionality of the bloodstains is most crucial would be in the vicinity of the body. Did the subject reverse direction and charge back in the subject officer’s direction? The “drip trail” can answer that.

Bloodstains from the drip trail should be sampled for presumptive testing and DNA analysis throughout the drip trail to verify, first of all, that the stains are blood, and that it was the subject who deposited the bloodstains, which would supersede any future claims that the stains were someone else’s blood deposited at a different time.

To remove the body prior to the crime scene unit’s arrival would have jeopardized any analysis of these highly probative bloodstains. A body of that size has a large volume of blood. Morgue personnel would not be able to move such a large body without altering existing bloodstains near the body and also depositing additional bloodstains as blood still in the vascular system found its way out of the wounds, which were downward facing.

Every effort should have been made to expedite investigators’ response to the scene. Timely removal of the body was important due to both the weather and the civil unrest, but once on the scene, it must be remembered that the investigators have far more work to do than simply snapping a few pictures.

There is only one opportunity to document a crime scene with photos and sketches before valuable evidence is lost, contaminated and/or altered. This case will be examined and scrutinized for years to come, which only increases the need for thorough and precise documentation.

About the Author:  John Paolucci is a retired Detective Sergeant from NYPD. He worked in the New York City Housing Police in the South Bronx for four years and undercover in Harlem for another three years. After being promoted to Detective Sergeant, he spent his last eight years on the force in the Forensic Investigations Division, four of them as a Crime Scene Unit supervisor.  He was the first ever to command the OCME Liaison Unit where he managed all DNA evidence in NYC and trained thousands of investigators in DNA evidence collection and documentation. He developed a strong alliance between the OCME Forensic Biology Department and NYPD. John is currently the president of Forensics 4 Real Inc., where he provides forensic support to private investigations, international and domestic.  He also trains students and law enforcement in forensic evidence and crime scene investigations and provides consultations with movie and television writers, directors and developers working on real crime shows and dramas.  www.forensics4real.com.

Click here to view Officer Paolucci’s earlier posts:

Forensic Dispatch From New York City: Searching a House of Horror

New York City Housing Police: A Bygone Era Worth Talking About

As jury selection begins in Luka Magnotta’s murder trial, it’s time to revisit Starks Shrink’s excellent post in which he comprehensively reviews what is known about this distinctively unusual alleged murderer.

by Starks Shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please click here to view The Starks Shrink’s 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)

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Although some crime news seems repetitive as in “so what else is new”, there is an under-reported crime that GQ covers in a new feature article – male-on-male rape in the military. It turns out that simply enlisting in the military increases a man’s risk of being sexually assaulted by a factor of 10 times. (It would be interesting to know how this differs from the increased odds of a guy being raped in prison.)

Matt Cantor of Newser.com writes:

Each day, the Pentagon says, 38 men in the military suffer sexual assault, but it’s not often talked about. In an extensive piece on the topic, GQ speaks to victims, gathering stories many felt they couldn’t tell. “When a gunnery sergeant tells you to take off your clothes, you better take off your clothes. You don’t ask questions,” says one victim.

To add insult to injury, before the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, military sexual assault victims were reportedly thrown out of the armed services for BEING THE VICTIMS of sexual assault. (I guess that, in a sense, this is better than being raped in prison cause you for damned sure are not going to get out of prison for being a sexual assault victim.)

And, of course, the vast majority of military sexual assault victims do not report the attack. Matt Cantor writes citing the GQ article:

About 81% of male victims in the military don’t report the attack. Some report having their lives threatened, and many feel that they’re somehow responsible for the violence, GQ reports. And “there’s the fear that “if other people know this about me, well, then, my life is over,” says a VA psychologist.

Cantor reports that one victim, who apparently confided in a military doctor, was told:

“Son, men don’t get raped.”

Of the cases that are reported, only 7 per cent result in convictions. And then there is the issue of just who are you going to report it to, or as one victim stated:

“Who was I going to report it to? He had serious rank over me.” This particular victim who tested positive for HIV after his attack. In other powerful victims’ quotes:

Another victim stated:

“My first sexual experience ever was being raped by these guys. It screwed me up: That’s what sex is supposed to be—anonymous, painful.”

Nathaniel Penn, the author of the GQ article recounts the story of a certain Navy man who was ambushed by three men in a remote area of his ship wehere he had been sent to get supplies. This was two weeks before his warship was due in port. The assailants threw a black hood over the victims head, strangled and sodomized him (no doubt brutally), then left him for dead on a stack of supply boxes.

The victim told no one for fear that his attackers, whose faces he hadn’t seen, would kill him if he did. In a state of great and profound panic, he hid in a bathroom until he could calm down a bit and until THE PAIN had subsided to a more tolerable level. After that, this man “quietly returned to his post”.

The victim says that he might have killed himself had his father not arrived to visit, and he considers the timing of the visit “almost a miracle. When I saw him, it was the most safe feeling I’d ever felt in my whole life.”

But still, although the victim spent the next five days on board ship with his father, he couldn’t tell him what had happened. “I just kept it inside.” All the while he felt certain that he was being watched by his assailants.

* * * * *

I am reminded of a remark by Sir Winston Churchill. According to Kay Halle (Robson Books, 1985), in 1913, when the young Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, he was having trouble with some of his admirals at a strategy meeting. Sir Winston was apparently a bit biting and one of the admirals accused him of “having impugned the traditions of the Royal Navy.” This provoked Churchill to reply:

“And what are they (the traditions)? They are rum, sodomy and the lash.”

Or as Bob Dylan once stated in a song named “George Jackson” about the Black Panther, George Jackson, who was murdered in prison:

“Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard. Some of us are prisoners. The rest of us are guards.”

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mail Online Reporter writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex lived in a camper near the home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s blood behind the Night Stalker.”

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Stories, stories, stories. And now cometh one of the more eerie alleged triple murderers we’ve come across. Caius Veiovis, a 33-year-old Springfield, Massachusetts man, is accused of helping two Hells Angels, David Chalue and Adam Hall, murder and dismember David Glasser, Edward Frampton and Robert Chadwell in 2011. According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Frampton and Chadwell were scheduled to testify against Hall, who was a ranking member of the Berkshire County chapter of the Hell’s Angels, which meant they had to be silenced.

Veiovis’ trial is now in its early stages. Chalue and Hall have already been convicted of the triple murders and are serving life sentences. I’m largely unfamiliar with the details of the case and will mostly focus on Veiovis in this short post.

According to a story written a few weeks ago by Sebastian Murdock of the Huffington Post, Veiovis’s lawyer, James G. Reardon, is worried his client’s appearance might make prospective jurors prejudiced. You see Veiovis is one the stranger looking fellows we’ve come across during our agonizing trek through the minefield of violent crime.

Mr. Murdock writes:

Veiovis considers himself a worshipper of Satan, and told police he was a vampire who drinks the blood of others along with his own, Mass Live reported.

Along with a large septum piercing and the number 666 tattooed on his forehead, Veiovis also has body modifications in his head that resemble protruding horns.

As is well-known, the number 666 refers to the Beast of Revelations, who is some kind of anti-Christ diabolical figure who opposes God and Truth. See http://www.ucg.org/bible-faq/what-does-666-number-beast-mean for a standard analysis of what the Beast is all about. In addition, Aleister Crowley, the British occultist and sex magician, known as The Wickedest Man in the World, is associated with the number 666.

Veiovis’s attorney, James Reardon, however, stated in his interview:

“I don’t know what 666 means.”

I suspect Reardon is playing dumb in an attempt to distance his client from Satanism. A great many people have at least some sense of what the Beast and 666 refer to.

Veoivis was not always named Veiovis, and it’s not hard to understand why he chose a “flashy handle”, given his penchant for the macabre, and the fact he apparently does not want to be seen as normal. Before changing his name to Veiovis, he was known as Roy C. Gutfinski Jr.

The fact that he was simply Mr. Gutfinski, Jr. did not stop Veiovis from being a vampire. His desire to drink his own blood and the blood of others appears to be very real. In 1999, he and his girlfriend were sentenced to 10 years in jail for bringing a 16-year-old girl to a hotel room, slashing a 7-inch gash in her back, and drinking her blood.

Veiovis was also charged with a much more prosaic crime in 2006, which led to a parole violation and him being sent back to prison. He allegedly kidnapped two strippers from a nightclub and held them against their will in a hotel room. Those charges were later dropped for unknown reasons.

I realize I’m a little weird myself in that I find this fellow to be quite fascinating. Not only is he apparently a real live vampire, but anyone who implants horns in his forehead gets an 11 on my weirdness scale. I could do without his involvement in murdering state witnesses, however, and suspect that the charges against him are likely to stick.

I am a bit disillusioned by one thing, though. Veiovis’s alleged motive for taking part in the triple murder was to prove himself to Hall and the other Hell’s Angels so that he would be accepted into the motorcycle club. This rather mundane desire is not what I would suspect from a blood-drinking, horn-implanting, real live vampire. Not only that, but if he’s convicted and goes to state prison, the only blood he’s going to have access to, beside his own, is CONVICT BLOOD which, from everything I’ve heard, has a rather rank flavor and smell that even vampires turn up their noses at it and often refuse to even sample, much less quaff with gusto.

by Becca Russo

With the latest release of the video of Ray Rice striking his then fiancé, Janay, in an elevator in Atlantic City and knocking her out cold, everyone is in an uproar. As a result of this egregious act, Rice lost his position as a star running back with the Baltimore Ravens football team and is on indeterminate suspension from the NFL. I would guess that they are waiting for the smoke to clear before they figure out just how long they need to keep him at bay before the dust settles, thus giving the team the opportunity to bring him back. After all, the Ravens have millions invested in him and he played (plays) a prominent part in their future plans.

The video was disgusting. Rice hit this woman so hard that she knocked her head against an elevator railing and was completely unconscious as he dragged her body out of the elevator like she was a sack of flour. He is truly a piece of you-know-what. What’s really disturbing, though, is the blind eye that the NFL turns (or has tried to turn up till now) on this type of behavior. They suspended him for two games when the story first broke. Two games — that’s probably less time than it took for her bruises to heal.

The sad thing is that the NFL is full of criminals and I’d like to understand why. My son played both baseball and football in school and I fervently hoped that he would stick with baseball since, while it’s not entirely crime-free, it has a lot less abusive jerks than the NFL seems to sport. Let’s take a quick look at some of the “boys behaving very badly” incidents that have surfaced in “America’s sport” in recent years:

Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend, the mother of his 6 month old child, by shooting her multiple times in the apartment they shared. He then finished his day by shooting himself in the head at the Chief’s stadium in front of his coach and the owner of the team. I felt sorry for this guy at first, until I learned that he’d been stepping out on the mother of his child and was still drunk from the night before at the time of the morning murder.

Darren Sharper, a perennial All-Star, who finished his career with the New Orleans Saints, has been accused of being a serial rapist, and at least 3 states want a crack at convicting him for slipping roofies to women and raping them while they were out cold. And to think that he was a respected football TV personality after his playing career ended!

Rae Caruth hired a man to kill his pregnant ex-girlfriend because she refused to have an abortion. She was murdered when Caruth pulled his car in front of hers to block her vehicle as another car pulled up alongside her and pumped bullets into her and her car. Cherica Adams, the girlfriend, succumbed to her injuries but her unborn child was saved at the hospital. I guess the joke was on Carruth in this instance considering he is the father of a child and is serving 18 to 24 years in prison with a possible release date of 2018.

As is well-known, Aaron Hernandez is facing charges for three murders in Massachusetts in two separate incidents. He had also been previously accused of a non-fatal shooting in Florida. Hernandez seems to be an extreme example of thug culture writ large in the NFL.

And we should not neglect the most notorious of them all — OJ Simpson — who in many people’s minds, famously got away with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and the unfortunate waiter who’d stopped by to bring her a pair of glasses she’d left at his restaurant earlier in the evening. You’d think that his near miss with prison would have taught Simpson a lesson, but not old OJ, he’s currently in prison for assault and kidnapping.

The league is also littered with arrests for DUIs, drugs and assaults. The assaults are usually bar fights or beating up on the women in the player’s lives, and most of them get off with a slap on the wrist by the courts and a few games suspension by the NFL. Take Josh Brent for instance, who had repeated DUIs before he was indicted for manslaughter in the 2012 drunk driving accident that killed his teammate, Jerry Brown. Early this year, he was found guilty and sentenced to a whopping 6 months of jail time. He’ll be back on the playing field for America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys, later this season.

What is wrong here? Are we treating these football stars like such heroes that they believe themselves to be above the law? I think we must be since very few of them seem to be held accountable for their behavior off the field. Getting suspended for a few games is not enough to change this atrocious behavior. Is it the explosiveness of the game itself that carries over into their lives off the field? Obvious anger issues abound. Or have they spent their whole adult lives being catered to so that they assume based on an extreme sense of entitlement, that someone will sweep their deeds under the carpet? I do know that many of them have had less than ideal childhoods; is this a factor? I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that many of these guys are nothing more than thugs and should be treated accordingly. Does everyone deserve a second chance? Probably, depending on the severity of the crime, but habitual offenses that would land the rest of us firmly behind bars, need to be treated with severity. Isn’t it about time that we took these criminals off their pedestals to remind them that they too are subject to the same rules that the rest of us take for granted?

If you think I’m exaggerating the problem, I encourage you to have a look at the UT San Diego NFL Arrest Database. Yes, there really is one and it’s an eye-opener. http://www.utsandiego.com/nfl/arrests-database/

Becca Russo is a mom, wife and recovering housewife living in the San Francisco Bay area. She self-identifies as a true crime junkie and Mexican food addict.

by Lise LaSalle

On June 8, 1989, a 44-year old Canadian nurse named Cindy James was found dead in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. She had been drugged and strangled, with her hands and feet tied behind her back. She was found in the yard of an abandoned home a mile and a half from a small shopping mall where her car was parked.  She had been missing since May 25th, when her car was discovered in the parking lot. There was blood on the driver’s side door and items from her wallet were found under the car.

When her body was discovered at the abandoned house, it looked like Cindy James had been brutally murdered. A black nylon stocking was tied tightly around her neck and the autopsy revealed that Cindy died from an overdose of morphine and other drugs. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however, believed her death to be an accident or a suicide. The Vancouver coroner ruled that Cindy’s death was not suicide, an accident, or a murder, claiming that she died of an ‘’unknown event.’’ This was despite the fact that in the seven years preceding her death, Cindy had reported nearly a hundred incidents of harassment beginning four months after she divorced her husband.

To this day, her death remains a mystery even after a public inquest at which 84 witnesses were called to testify. Her father Otto Hack and his wife Matilda never believed that Cindy killed herself or that she would have been able to stage the death scene. Her sister Melany Hack, who was 27 when Cindy died and who is now married with two children and lives in British Columbia, ended up writing a book titled Who Killed My Sister, My Friend. It took her 14 years to conduct research into the toxicology, the autopsy, and the medical and police reports to obtain enough information into her sister’s unsolved death.

This case, which became the subject of the show Unsolved Mysteries and was discussed on some American TV talk shows including A Current Affair and Maury Povich, was not really sensationalized or kept alive to fuel anger towards a specific perpetrator. There was no villain or hero in this story; rather, it was the puzzling case of an upstanding nurse who struggled for seven years with an imagined or real threat and ended up losing her life in the most mysterious and baffling way. This story had legs and created endless speculation.

In 1989, forensics investigation was in its infancy and the technology did not exist to solve a case the CSI way, or to determine if James was creating her own drama. Instead, the investigators had to rely on basic traditional techniques to determine if her stories of attacks, kidnapping and harassment were true.

Cindy was the eldest of six children. At age 19, she had married Dr. Roy Makepeace who was 18-years her senior. She worked as a nurse but also loved to counsel children with emotional problems. From all accounts, she appeared happy but when she decided to end her marriage in 1982 and move on with her life, all hell broke loose.

She had a very close relationship with her parents and she approached them first with stories of harassment. She ended up going to the police because she was getting death threats by phone and by mail. With each incident, this beautiful, vibrant woman took one step down physically and mentally.

Three dead cats were found hanging in her garden, her porch lights were smashed and her phone lines cut. Bizarre notes began to appear on her doorstep and five violent physical attacks were reported. One night, Cindy’s good friend, Agnes Woodcock, dropped by and when there was no answer when she knocked on the door, she went around the back of the house and found Cindy crouched down with a nylon stocking tied around her neck. She had gone to the garage to get something and was grabbed from behind by an unidentified intruder.

Messages were left on the windshield of her car along with a picture of a covered corpse being wheeled into a morgue. Raw meat was delivered to her house and even her dog, Heidi, was found shaking with fright sitting in her own feces with a cord tied tightly around her neck. The harassment would stop and start again, leaving Cindy feeling more and more destabilized. She expressed her despair in her private journals.

Cindy moved to a new house, painted her car and changed her last name. She finally hired Ozzie Kaban, a local private investigator. The police were investigating but as time passed, they were starting to doubt her stories. Ozzie reported later that Cindy would be evasive at times and withhold information.  Her mother thought that her daughter was reluctant to tell the truth because she was threatened and feared for her sister and family.

Her private investigator installed lights at her residence and gave her a two-way radio and a panic button. The police would do surveillance on a regular basis. One night, Kaban heard strange sounds coming from the radio and rushed to the house. He found Cindy on the hallway floor with a paring knife through her hand with a note on it saying ‘you are dead bitch’. He checked her pulse and thought she was dead. She was hospitalized and only recalled that a needle was put into her arm. The police did not take fingerprints and were growing tired of the whole saga. But Kaban was adamant that nobody could have done that to themselves. Cindy subjected herself to several hypnosis sessions and polygraph tests to try to get to the bottom of this but was considered too ‘traumatized’ to be a good candidate.

The threatening phone calls continued but could never be traced because they were too short. Mind you, there were never any calls when the police was doing 24-hour surveillance so you cannot blame them for growing suspicious. The incidents always happened when they were not around. Her parents thought her attacker was smart enough to stay away at the proper times in order to make Cindy look more and more suspicious. Nowadays, we could trace the calls and know exactly who is zooming who.

After an “attack’’, Cindy was found lying in a ditch six miles from her home, wearing a man’s work boot and glove. She was suffering from hypothermia and had cuts and bruises all over her body. She also had a black nylon stocking around her neck, a trademark of her alleged attacks. She did not remember the event and asked her parents to stay with her. One evening, they were awakened by noises in the basement and saw flames. After realizing the phone was dead, they went outside to alert the neighbors. They saw a man at the curb and asked him to call the fire department but instead, he ran off. It was the second ‘arson.’

The police determined that the fire was started from inside the house because they saw no fingerprints on the window they think the perpetrator would have used to gain entry into the house. Therefore, they determined that Cindy had staged the incident. They also found it quite odd that Cindy would walk her little dog alone late at night when she feared being attacked. I must admit that they had a point there.

Her parents saw her condition deteriorating further and feared for her mental state. She was terrified and going downhill steadily. Believing she was suicidal, her doctor committed her to a local psychiatric ward. Ten weeks later, she was released. That’s when she admitted to friends and family that she knew more than she was saying about the perpetrator and would go after him/them herself. Was she falling deeper into delusion or was there a real person behind all this?

Cindy became very depressed because she felt that her credibility was destroyed and that no one believed that someone wanted her dead or was pushing her towards insanity. Her life was a living hell and while hospitalized, she wrote about committing suicide.

She finally told police that she believed her tormentor was her ex-husband Roy Makepeace. They encouraged her to phone him to confront him and they taped the conversation. As a psychiatrist, Roy would have been familiar with the fine art of playing with her mind, but he totally denied any involvement during the conversation. This phone tape was played at the public inquest. In fact, Makepeace gave the police a recording from his own answering machine that contained a death threat. If the poor man had nothing to do with his former wife’s demise, imagine how awful it must have been for his reputation.

Cindy James was either confused, psychotic or totally innocent, but she was sounding more and more confused as her despair deepened. And it all ended when they found her body two weeks after she was reported missing. She had gone to the shopping mall to deposit her hospital paycheck and do some grocery shopping. You wonder why she would bother doing all this if she intended to kill herself. Plus, why not die in her bed quietly and give her family less pain and sorrow? After all, she loved them dearly.

Neal Hall, a Canadian journalist who wrote a book about the case now thinks she killed herself but her investigator Ozzie Kaban disagrees. He does not buy that her body took two weeks to be found when it was so close to traffic and pedestrian walks. He believes her body might have been dumped. She had an injection mark on her arm so she could have never walked a mile and a half to the spot where they found her and then tie herself up after injecting herself. They found no needle close to her car or around the crime scene. The police think she ingested the morphine and had plenty of time to do the rest. But they found no evidence to that effect and no proof of purchase of black nylons.

Cindy also had a lover named Pat McBride who happened to be a cop. The police suspected him and Makepeace but had no concrete evidence against either one of them. The evidence in this case was quite contradictory and incomplete and very baffling but the police opted to blame Cindy. Her ex-husband came to believe that Cindy had multiple personalities and was unaware that she was tormenting herself. She adored her dog and her parents and would have never tortured them willingly. Her father states that the investigation was never aimed at finding a perpetrator but at pinning the responsibility on his daughter.

The only undeniable truth in this story is that Cindy James suffered immensely in this saga and she paid with her life. Her journals tell the heart-wrenching story of a woman tortured mentally and physically — either by her own hand and mental illness or because of an unscrupulous and sadistic perpetrator who wanted to drive her crazy and eventually killed her. If she was an innocent victim, the lack of support from the police must have caused her excruciating pain. In my opinion nurse Cindy James was a victim either way.

Otto Hack died in 2010 after a distinguished career in the military. His wife Tillie passed away in 2012. They believed till the end that their daughter did not commit suicide. Their daughter Melany continues their search for the truth.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The Beatles once sang “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”, and the statement is probably true if by “love” we are referring to a higher, more exalted experience than mere physical coupling. What is arguably also true is the notion that “money can’t buy you happiness”. A good example of this is the peculiar case of multimillionaire pharmaceutical executive Gigi Jordan.

In 2010, NYPD broke down Ms. Jordan’s door at the luxurious Peninsula Hotel at the corner of of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, not far from Trump Tower and the Museum of Modern Art. The sight that met their jaded eyes upon entering the room was not one to warm the cockles of the heart. James C. McKinly, Jr. writes for the New York Times:

When police officers broke down the door at the Peninsula Hotel in 2010, the evidence of what had happened inside Room 1603 seemed fairly clear.

Gigi Jordan, a multimillionaire pharmaceutical executive, was on the floor, disoriented and babbling. Her 8-year-old son lay on a nearby bed — stiff, cold, still. There were scores of pills and bottles of alcohol scattered about.

“I want a lawyer,” she muttered to the first officers who asked her what she had taken, according to prosecutors. To another officer, she said she wanted to die.

That was four-and-a-half years ago. Now, after going through close to a dozen lawyers and flooding the court with “seven banker’s boxes of litigation”, Ms. Jordan, 54, is finally on trial for murder in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Ms. Jordan has never disputed the fact that she gave a fatal dose of drugs to her son, who was autistic and mute, but from the start, she has steadfastly claimed that it was a mercy killing.

Whether we consider her rambling suicide note (she apparently did not intend to survive either), her multitudinous court papers, or her jailhouse interview(s), this beleaguered woman has displeased a pleasing consistency. Her claim is that her first husband, Raymond A. Mirra Jr., a Philadelphia businessman, was planning on killing her or having her institutionalized, and that if that came to pass, her severely handicapped son would fall into the dark clutches of her second husband, the boy’s biological father, Emil Tzekov. According to Ms. Jordan, Tzekov, a Bulgarian yoga instructor, sadistically and sexually abused the child for years, resulting in a catatonic psychosis that his doctors mistook for autism.

So, viewed in a certain light, Ms. Jordan’s arguments, IF TRUE, could conceivably be construed as making an almost viable moral or ethical case that her son would be better off dead than had he fallen in Tzekov’s hands. Of course, that in no way changes the fact that she had no legal right to take matters into her own hands in the manner she did.

“I was trapped in a corner,” she told The Daily News in August 2012. “I was a mother trying to protect my young, my beautiful, my abused son from further sexual torture.”

From a legal standpoint, killing a person to save him from future abuse has never been a recognized defense to murder in New York State, a point the judge, Justice Charles H. Solomon, has made crystal clear during the pendency of this matter.

Her current lawyers plan to argue that Ms. Jordan “killed her son, Jude Mirra, while in the grip of an extreme emotional disturbance”. The great advantage of this defense is that should the jury be convinced, under New York state law, she can be convicted of manslaughter rather than first degree murder.

An additional advantage of this defense is that it apparently allows the defendant’s lawyers to present any and all evidence supporting her complex tale, a story that involves such juicy factors as: 1) the Philadelphia mob; 2) large-scale financial fraud; 3) death threats from her ex-husband; and 4) a satanic cult that tortures children.

Justice Solomon, who seems to be enjoying himself, told prospective jurors last week:

“I can guarantee you, it’s going to be a most interesting case.”

In what may be a record, Ms. Jordan has applied for bail 10 times and has been turned down every time. In June of 2011, while represented by previous counsel, she presented a 93-page bail motion introducing a novel “altruistic filicide” defense.

In this bail application, her lawyers outlined in detail the altruistic filicide argument by combining the theory that she acted in self-defense with the notion that she was coerced by a threat to kill her. As many veteran true crime fans recognize, this concept has been used, at times effectively, in other states to bolster insanity defenses, as in the case of Andrea Yates who claimed that she had drowned her children to save them from the devil.

According to experts on cases in which mothers have been accused of killing their children, the altruistic filicide defense has never been tried alone without combining it with an insanity defense.

It is my sense that this strategy was abandoned for two reasons: first, Mr. Jordon never agreed to be examined by a psychiatric expert for the prosecution; and second; if she did opt for the insanity defense, combined with a theory of altruistic suicide, and lost, she would almost certainly be convicted of first-degree-murder, a maddeningly final outcome.

Whereas with the present strategy advocated by Ms. Jordan’s current legal team — Allan L. Brenner, Norman Siegel and Earl S. Ward – the lawyers can present the defense of extreme emotional disturbance, and base it on the fact that her extreme emotional disturbance was caused by her first husband’s death threats and her belief that her second husband sexually abused her son.

“The jurors will hear horrific extraordinary circumstances that Jude Mirra and Ms. Jordan were subject to,” Mr. Siegel said.

Needless to say, both of Ms. Jordon’s ex husbands have heatedly denied the accusations, claiming they are the distortions of a disordered mind. Mr. Mirra, who divorced Ms. Jordan more than 10 years ago, has filed a slander lawsuit against her in federal court.

In his complaint, Mirra claims Ms. Jordan crisscrossed the country for years seeing medical specialists in a futile quest to find a cure for Jude’s autism. Then in 2008, he said, she began accusing people of abusing the boy, even though “she was by Jude’s side at all hours of the day.”

Mr. Brenner, the lead defense counsel, said Ms. Jordan’s perception of the threat from her two former husbands would be a key issue for the jury. “The defense has always, always, always focused around Gigi’s state of mind,” he said.

The prosecutors, of course, in their typically prosecutorial single-mindedness, really don’t care about pinning down Ms. Jordan’s motive for killing her son. They believe that all they need to do is prove that she did so intentionally. Neither Mr. Mirra nor Mr. Tzekov was present when Jude died and no physical evidence linked them to the child’s death.

“Even if all the allegations she makes could be proved, it’s still murder,” Mr. Bogdanos, one of the prosecutors, wrote in an April motion.

* * * * *

Pshaw! Why do we have to work? I would give one of my Veiovis horns to attend this trial in person. I’d love to see hear the whole sordid tale, see Ms. Jordon’s defense team in action and watch the stalwart prosecution try to counter them. These guys are pros and you can probably safely assume that they will deliver.

Manslaughter in the First Degree in New York carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in state prison and a minimum sentence of 5.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

Sean Rossman of the Tallahassee Democrat writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

adapted by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sean Penn Tied Up and Physically Abused Madonna

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The “Lolita Syndrome” refers to when a full-gown man of mature years becomes so infatuated with a girl of around the age of 12 that he will risk everything to possess her in every sense of the word. The phrase is based on a rather brilliant novel by Russian expatriate writer Vladimir Nabokov which tells the sordid, but in some ways charming, tale of Humbert Humbert who falls in love with Lolita, marries her mother so that he can be close to Little Lo, and then absconds with the child when her mother conveniently dies of a heart attack.

Nobokov was a respected professor of literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and has long been lionized by the literati.

Now although Lolita threw Humbert over eventually, he would have gotten away with his unlawful abduction of Lolita, had he not gone berserk and shot and killed Clare Quilty, a bothersome dipsomaniac whom he blamed for the destruction of his relationship with the girl. In real life, however, it’s not that simple, as alleged Colorado kidnapper and child rapist, Timothy Wind, 53, is in the process of finding out.

Mitchell Byers of Times-Call Local News writes:

A Longmont man last month kidnapped a 14-year-old Connecticut girl he met online and brought her to Colorado after plotting the abduction for more than a year, police and prosecutors allege.

Acting on a tip from the FBI, Longmont police found the missing girl Wednesday at the apartment of Timothy Wind, 53.

Wind was arrested on suspicion of second-degree kidnapping, sexual assault on a child, enticement of a child and Internet sexual exploitation.

Thus, unlike Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s novel, who conveniently died of coronary thrombosis while awaiting trial for murdering Quilty, Timothy Wind, if convicted of the charges, will likely spend a considerable period of time in a Colorado State Penitentiary.

In a court appearance on Thursday, Boulder County Deputy District Attorney Tim Johnson expressed his belief that Wind had been plotting to kidnap the 14-year-old for more than a year after meeting her in a kids’ chatroom online before actually abducting her.

Hilary Hanson of Huffington Post reports that police have stated that “Wind met the girl about two years ago via a website for children called “Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow,” according to NBC Connecticut. The website was shut down in September 2013.”

At the hearing, D.A. Johnson informed the court that after contacting the girl via online communication platforms Skype and Pinger, he ultimately drove out to Hartford, Connecticut, to “take possession of the girl” in August. According to a Hartford police news release, the child was last seen in the backyard of her house on August 25th.

What set this case apart from more typical abduction and child rape cases is that the alleged perpetrator Wind appears to have been quite enamored of his child victim, not just in a crude physical sense, but emotionally as well. Furthermore, he does not seem to have abducted hr against her will.

According to the prosecutor, after picking her up in Hartford, Wind took the 14-year-old on a “romantic” six-day trip to New York, New Jersey and Kansas on what the girl said Wind referred to as a “honeymoon.” The girl said Wind even took her to the place where his parents first met, according to an arrest report.

Shades of Humbert Humbert…

After the abduction, the FBI got involved and skillfully “put the pieces together”, ultimately locating the girl in Longmont. The FBI then contacted the Longmont police and told them they believed they would find the child at Wind’s apartment on Birch Court.

Mitchell Byers writes:

A Longmont officer tried to contact Wind at his apartment, but Wind did not answer the door. The officer was able to reach Wind by telephone at work at IBM, and Wind told the officer a female “acquaintance” was staying at the apartment, according to the affidavit

The officer called the female on the phone and got her to answer the door to Ward’s apartment. The officer identified her as the missing teen, even though when asked how old she was, she replied, “I’m 20, no I mean 19,” after counting on her fingers.

Wind lived in a two-bedroom unit. One of the bedrooms was reportedly used as an exercise room. When questioned, the girl said Wind slept in the exercise room and denied that he ever had sex with her.

Evidence found on the victim’s laptop would seem to counter her “no sex” claim. Detectives reportedly found images of male genitals and a poem that expressed love for “Tim.” In addition, a friend of the victim said she had been claiming to have a boyfriend named Tim for about a year.

The proof with respect to the sex (or lack thereof) should be at least somewhat apparent from DNA testing, an issue which was apparently not raised at the preliminary hearing.

On the day of his arrest, Wind was taken into custody upon returning home from work and taken to the Boulder County Jail.

The DA asked Boulder County Judge John Stavely to set bond at $500,000, citing the considerable amount of planning that went into the alleged kidnapping:

“We are very concerned about the community safety aspect of this case. He was planning this for over a year and is a high risk to re-offend.”

I agree that Wind certainly appears to be rather resourceful and I would not be comfortable having him free in my neighborhood.

As for the judge, while stating that the case was “concerning,” he pointed out that Wind had strong community ties and no past criminal convictions. He, therefore, set bond at $100,000 cash, surety or property, or $10,000 cash only.

Based on the fact Wind is an IBM employee, it is not unreasonable to think that he will be able to post bond. If so, his release conditions will be stringent:

He will be placed on electronic home monitoring and not have access to computers. He also will have to surrender his passport and was ordered not to have contact with anyone under the age of 18.

Formal charges will be filed on Tuesday.

At present, Boulder County Housing and Human Services is caring for the teen, while steps are being taken toward family reunification. The child’s family is reportedly already in Colorado.

* * * * *

I suspect that many true crime followers will be outraged if Wind posts bonds and is temporarily released from the Boulder County Jail. The judge’s decision to make the bond workable for him was, I think, at least in part, based on the fact that there is apparently no evidence that Wind abducted the child against her will or that he engaged in any form of violence, with the possible exception of rape, which will be dealt with at trial or in plea negotiations.

If there is no DNA evidence that rape occurred, the “sexual assault on a child” charge may be difficult to prove. On the other hand, as the case progresses, the child victim may change her tune and be willing to testify that she was indeed a victim of sexual exploitation on Wind’s part.

Something that could work against Wind is the fact that his victim was quite corpulent, especially for her age, and was possibly desperate for attention, thus making her, one would think, extremely vulnerable to his advances.

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.

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

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)

by Mike Roche

Until May of this year, the Darin and Kim Campbell family lived in a rented 1.6 million dollar Tampa mansion, the former home of retired tennis star James Blake. The house sat behind the gates of the prestigious and very private Avila development, which was populated with multimillion-dollar homes and occupied by celebrity powerbrokers and athletes. The neighborhood centerpiece was an exclusive private golf course. Darin Campbell, 49, was a business executive at VASATEC, a digital records management services company. His wife, Kim, 51, was a stay-at-home mom, who was active in the community and at her teenagers’ school. The Campbell children, Megan, 15, and Colin, 18, attended the prestigious Carollwood Day School. Megan was an honors student and dancer. Colin, who had just attended his senior prom, was a talented student and baseball player.

In the predawn hours on a Wednesday May morning, neighbors of the Campbell’s frantically summoned the fire department as they watched in horror as the opulent home became engulfed in flames. As firefighters battled the blaze, they discovered a grisly scene. Four unidentified bodies were located inside the house. Investigators quickly determined the fire was the result of an arson and the victims were killed by gunshot prior to the fire destroying the home.

Despite the outward appearance that the Campbell’s were the all-American family, there were cracks in the façade. Investigators have learned that in the days prior to fire, Darrin Campbell made several rather unusual moves. First, he purchased several gas cans at a home improvement store at about 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 4^th. An hour later, he bought over $600 worth of fireworks. The sales clerk at the fireworks store noted no unusual behavior from Darrin. On Tuesday, the day before the fire, he filled the gas cans at two separate service stations. He had already previously purchased a handgun in 2013.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Colonel Donna Lusczynski said, “Darrin Campbell, with the gun that was registered to him, systematically shot his son, his daughter and his wife in the head. He then placed fireworks throughout the residence. Used an accelerant to assist in lighting the fire. Lit the fire and then shot himself.”

*     *     *     *     *

Darrin and Kim Campbell moved from Michigan to Tampa in 2000 with their children. They built a home in an upscale neighborhood not far Tampa Airport. Their mortgage was a formidable  $546,000. In 2003, they acquired a vacant lot in another affluent development north of Tampa for $338,000. Darrin and Kim were thriving economically. They paid off the mortgage on the lot and sold the land for a handsome $160,000 profit in 2006.

During the Christmas Holidays, the Campbell family home was so lavishly decorated that the pleasing display drew crowds from neighboring communities. For four consecutive years, the home won honors as the “Best Decorated Holiday Home.” The family’s electric bill rose $800 during the holidays and they accepted donations to defray expenses. The Campbell’s then donated the $3,733 in donations to Metropolitan Ministries, a homeless support shelter for indigent families.

At the height of the real estate boom, the couple bought another vacant lot for $294,000 in the same development where their previous vacant lot was located. Although they still owned the new lot at the time of their deaths, the market had soured and the property was now worth one-third of the original purchase price. A lien was placed on the lot due to $7,800 in unpaid homeowner’s association fees. They eventually paid off the lien, but their financial struggles continued, and they were continually delinquent on their property taxes. They refinanced their house several times before selling it in 2012 for $750,000. The Campbell’s made a profit on the deal, but their overhead expenses continued to be steep. Their next big move was to move into the former Blake residence in the Avila estates.

Darrin Campbell was on the board of Carrollwood Day School, and served as treasurer. He formerly was a senior vice president at PODS, a shipping and storage container company. In 2007, Darrin took a position as vice-president at IVANS, an insurance company. After it changed ownership, he became the chief operating officer (COO) at VASTEC, where he recently took a leave of absence. The rent on the former Blake home was estimated to be a tidy $5,000 a month for the 5,000 square foot home. The base annual tuition for Carrolwood Day School was approximately $34,000 for the two children. The additional cost of books, uniforms, various fundraisers, and other educational expenses had to be a drain on the Campbell family checkbook. And of course, college tuition loomed on the horizon with Colin scheduled to graduate in a month.

Darrin Campbell’s mother, Mary, told the Daily News she was searching for answers. “I have no idea what happened. I spoke to him last night.” (the night before the conflagration). Family friends and neighbors heaped accolades on the entire family. It was obvious that they were well-respected and loved within the community.

We rarely have the opportunity to gaze behind the veneer of the façade our neighbors, or even our relatives, erect. We see what they allow us to see, and they often successfully conceal what’s really going on, especially if they have serious issues.

After conducting an extensive examination of the arson scene, investigators are still searching computers and papers found in the home. Interviews of family and friends may uncover ripples, or even violent rapids, sullying the appearance of calm waters. Interviews with employers both past and present may also shed light into Darrin Campbell’s employment stability or any possible inappropriate behavior. A financial audit will reveal the magnitude of the family’s financial problems.

The further up the ladder one ascends, the more difficult it becomes to step down when one’s personal wheel of fortune descends. One of the top ten stressors in life is finances. As individuals become overwhelmed with financial stress, the pressure often intrudes into both their domestic life and their employment. The negative emotional vortex sucks many formerly successful individuals into a life of despair from which they see no way to escape. They view alternatives (translated as a substantially reduced standard of living) as a stamp of failure.

Two-thirds of those who engage in targeted violence and mass murder have contemplated or attempted suicide in the past. When immense personal darkness clutches at these people, their thought processes and judgment become clouded. They become convinced that their family will have to endure the grief of their loss and the humiliation of their tarnished legacy. As a result, they view killing their family as an act of altruism.

Darrin Campbell will now be labeled as a family annihilator. These killers are most often men. In 2012, a study of 313 murder/suicides by the Violence Policy Center found that 90% of the killers were male. Most multiple-victim, murder-suicides involving a male murderer and three or more victims are perpetrated by family annihilators.  69% of murder-suicides falling into this category were perpetrated by family annihilators.  Family annihilators are murderers who kill their intimate partners and children, as well as other family members, before killing themselves.  USF Professor, Dr. Donna Cohen, states that in over a third of these cases, the annihilator starts a fire to cover their crime leaving only ashes. She feels that this is an attempt to deny access to their personal lives.

As surviving friends and relatives of the Campbell family struggle with the grief of this tragic loss, they are left to contemplate the lost contributions that Kim, Megan, and Colin would have provided to the world.

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

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

by John Paolucci

The investigation into the Cleveland kidnappings is in many ways just beginning.  It brings to mind the case of a murdered 8 year old Hasidic boy by the name of Leiby Kletzky, who was dismembered, packed into a suitcase and discarded in a dumpster by the perpetrator Levi Aron, who performed the dissection of the child in his Brooklyn apartment.  Aron kept a souvenir of the incident, the boy’s feet, which he stowed in a freezer in the apartment.  In the Cleveland kidnappings, like in the Kletzky case, there appears to be a wealth of incriminating evidence against the perpetrators.  In cases like these, the investigators need to have the scenes speak to them, hopefully answering the question, “Are there more victims?”

What we did not have in the Kletzky case was a living victim who could provide investigators with patterns of the perpetrator’s behavior and habits.  Kletsky’s Brooklyn community has its own “Shamrim” patrols, and they generally do not call the police unless it is absolutely necessary.  Therefore, although we were able to learn that Levi Aron had twice been banished from the community, there was no paper trail to follow as to what activities caused this expulsion.  It was rumored that he had behaved inappropriately towards children, but no one would come forward and provide more specific details. Individuals like Castro and Aron exhibit behavior so abhorrent and predatory that investigators will adopt the theory that there are other victims besides those that are already known, and believe that the crime scenes will likely hold clues as to their identity if they exist.

Levi Aron was identified as the person who abducted Kletzky while the investigation was still being carried as a “Missing Persons” case, so in both the Kletzky and the Cleveland cases there was a presumption that there are living victims in the locations who are in danger, thereby giving first responders an exigent circumstance exception to the fourth amendment, allowing them lawful entry into the residences for the purpose of preserving life.  Once it is determined that no civilians’ personal safety is in danger, the residence must be secured until a search warrant is issued so as not to risk the suppression of any evidence at the subsequent legal proceedings.

So the Question Is: What Are the Investigators Looking For?

The Search:  Aron was a hoarder, so the apartment had to be documented in stages, as layers of Aron’s accumulated possessions were moved and removed, to allow overall and detailed photographs, sketches and measurements to be taken. The primary scene (apparent location of the murder) was the third floor wherein there was no air conditioning to provide relief from the humid, New York July heat.  Since it was confirmed that Aron kept a trophy from his victim in the form of body parts, we needed to be certain that nothing as small as a nail clipping was overlooked while searching the stinking mound amassed throughout the years of a child murderer’s life.  Items in jeopardy of perishing in that harsh climate, such as blood evidence, were given immediate attention to ensure their preservation for laboratory testing.  The items of evidence were methodically collected, packaged, documented and made ready for transport.  A police box truck transported evidence to a central location where it was logged in, bar coded and vetted according to the information that was available as the investigation progressed. Aside from the residence, there was also 1) the dumpster in which the suitcase was recovered which was removed to our forensic garage and processed for fingerprints and DNA, 2) Aron’s vehicle which he used to abduct Kletzky, and 3) Aron’s locker and work space at his job, where he showed up to work in the interim between abducting Kletzky and killing him.  It was unclear how Aron was able to leave a live 8 year old in an apartment, go to work and return to kill the child without any other residents hearing anything.

The Evidence:  As commanding officer of the unit in the NYPD’s Forensic Investigations Division responsible for managing all DNA evidence collected in New York City, I had over 1,400 items of evidence seized from the Aron residence.  The evidence was categorized and assigned to the appropriate unit for respective analyses.  I would expect a similar strategy to be deployed in Cleveland.  At a meeting prior to commencing the search of the Aron residence, the Chief of Detectives told the Crime Scene Unit, “I want that place down to f**kin’ 2x4s when we leave!” So it began.  The following are some of the categories of evidence and the types of analyses requested and possible results that were anticipated (certain details and results are being withheld to preserve the integrity of the case):

DNA Evidence:  Leiby Kletzky’s DNA profile was compared to blood evidence recovered from the apartment.  Blood saturated rugs and mattresses recovered at the scene, and specific areas on these items were sampled, analyzed and compared to Kletzky’s DNA, and DNA collected from Levi Aron, to determine if any of the profiles developed were foreign and possibly that of another victim.  All blood evidence matched Kletzky’s DNA profile.  Items such as stuffed animals and women’s clothing were scraped and swabbed to collect skin cells that revealed DNA profiles foreign to the victim and perpetrator, some of which were female.  Through investigative leads, it was revealed that Aron had a brief marriage to a woman in Tennessee, who when contacted identified the clothing as hers, and provided DNA exemplars from herself and her child. When these exemplars were analyzed they matched the foreign profiles. Therefore, the DNA avenue of this investigation yielded no leads as to additional victims.  Though this was good news, it was not satisfying to any of us because we believed that no killer performs a precise dissection of his victim on his first “at bat”.  The search continued.

Digital Multi Media (DMM):  All laptop and desktop computers and accessories, all CDs and DVDs, thumb drives, cell phones, cameras, video equipment and anything that stores electronic data, which Aron had plenty of, was seized.  A task force of computer crimes Detectives was assigned the duty of decrypting, downloading, reviewing and analyzing all data from these items.  Communications via telephone and email helped to establish a timeline of his travels and document persons with whom he associated and locations where he spent time while banned from returning to Brooklyn.  We sent Detectives to Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee tracking down his acquaintances and searching local records for missing children. Several of Aron’s associates had police records involving minor sexual related offenses, arousing further suspicions that Aron had committed other offenses.    The digital evidence was also searched for photos of children or child pornography.  Time and again, all leads were exploited, but no fruit was harvested.

Controlled Substance Evidence: Evidence collected from the apartment in the form of prescription bottles containing pills proved to have significant value in the investigation.  The NYPD Crime Laboratory Controlled Substance Analysis Section documented each prescription and tested the pills to determine if the contents matched the label, many of which were labeled “Controlled Substance”.  Results were forwarded to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) Department of Toxicology, where post mortem samples, collected at autopsy from Kletzky, were analyzed for the presence of these controlled substances.  The horror of Levi Aron’s deed was amplified when it was revealed through the toxicology examination that he had combined several of these controlled substances and made Kletzky ingest this noxious cocktail, rendering him unconscious, which would explain how the child remained silent while Aron went to work that day. The controlled substance analyses were vital in corroborating the series of events we believed had transpired just prior to the child’s murder.  It also explained how some of the incisions performed on this tortured child were made ante mortem.

In Cleveland, nothing will be “out of play” when searching the Castro house.  The victims have already provided DNA exemplars and may have to provide things such as hair samples and undergo other very personal examinations to assist with the investigation.  Remains as small as a miscarried fetus that was essentially beaten out of the mother could be hidden anywhere in the house if not discarded with the trash.  There is hardly an area or an item in that house that can immediately be ruled out as not probative.  Searches, swabs, photos, sketches, presumptive tests, DNA analysis and comparisons to the victims and Castro, floor boards to be pulled up, walls to be opened – there shouldn’t be anything but f**kin’ 2x4s left when they are done searching!  My heart goes out to the victims, their families and the investigators in Cleveland.

Please click here to view John Paolucci’s previous posts:

Dead Body at the Crime Scene – What Forensic Value Does It Have?

New York City Housing Police: A Bygone Era Worth Talking About

About the Author:  John Paolucci is a retired Detective Sergeant from NYPD who worked his last eight years in the Forensic Investigations Division, four of them as a Crime Scene Unit supervisor.  He was the first ever to command the OCME Liaison Unit where he managed all DNA evidence in NYC and trained thousands of investigators in DNA evidence collection and documentation. He developed a strong alliance between the OCME Forensic Biology Department and NYPD.  He also worked as a Narcotics Undercover and Patrol Officer in the Housing Projects of the South Bronx.   He is currently the president of Forensics 4 Real Inc., where he provides forensic support to private investigations, international and domestic.  He also trains students and law enforcement in forensic evidence and crime scene investigations and provides consultations with movie and television writers, directors and developers working on real crime shows and dramas.  www.forensics4real.com.

by Lise LaSalle

Recently, a jury in Prince George, B.C., found Cody Alan Legebokoff guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. A sentencing hearing has yet to take place, but a finding of guilt on a charge of first-degree murder in Canada carries an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. He might be declared a dangerous offender along the way which would mean life without the possibility of parole, unless some mitigating circumstances were to present themselves, which is quite doubtful. His age at the time of the murders might be the only factor in his favor and the fact that he was high on crack most of the time. Crack does not make one a murderer but in his case, maybe one of the walking dead.

He was 20 when he got arrested on November 28, 2010 in the death of Loren Leslie, but it was not his first rodeo because he had already killed three other women by then; Cynthia Frances Maas, age 35, Natasha Lynn Montgomery, age 23, and Jill Stacey Stuchenko, age 35, all mothers of young children. This wholesome looking boy was from Fort St. James which is north of Prince George. He is the second youngest serial killer in Canada’s history and if you rely only on his looks and demeanor, it is hard to believe.

He was described by his family and friends as a very normal young man and a real country boy at heart. None of them could believe he would hurt anyone. Not unlike the city of Prince George that was ranked as the most dangerous city in Canada three years in a row by Maclean’s magazine, but remains a place most residents keep defending as very safe. Sometimes the people closest to you cannot see or hear the evil within.

Maclean’s magazine only ranks the top 100 and only looks at cities with a population above 10,000. The ranking is actually based on actual data and calculates the number of severe crimes – homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault, vehicle theft, robbery and breaking and entering that occur per 100,000 people. Even if they don’t have a murder during the year, if all the rest of the risk factors are high, they are the winner of this ugly title.

It takes a complete methodology to come up with these results and in the case of Legebokoff, no one was minding the fort because if anyone would have been watching the data on this kid, they would have come up with a very dangerous ranking. To everyone’s eyes, he remained the nice country boy they knew and liked in spite of his lifestyle that was spiraling out of control.

I am sorry for the Legebokoff family and for Prince George, but when you are in the presence of danger, it is a good idea to issue a warning so that concerned citizens lose their false sense of security and keep an eye open at all times. Defending the reputation of a town or of a young man in the presence of evil can only lead to trouble, but it is the kind of denial usually rooted in love and blind trust.

A month ago, I wrote an article called The Highway of Tears inspired by a documentary by the same name that came out in March 2014 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Toronto, Canada. It is the story of women, mostly natives, who went missing along a 720 kilometer stretch of highway in northern British Columbia. So far, two murderers were apprehended; Bobby Jack Fowler and Cody Alan Legebokoff. It is very clear that a few more serial killers are still at large roaming the territory and ready to pounce.

Most of the victims were hitchhikers that were picked up along the highway but in Legebokoff’s case, 3 of the dead girls were not picked up on the road but were invited to his apartment where they were attacked. His last and youngest victim, 15-year old Loren Donn Leslie, had met him online where his name was 1countryboy and she ended up being murdered and dumped on one of the logging roads of that same stretch of highway. One of the 3 other girls’ body was never found but her DNA was all over Cody’s apartment.

It was easy for young Loren to trust Cody because he looked like the boy next door and worked at a Prince George car dealership while sharing a house with 3 female roommates. He was popular and supposedly had a good upbringing and family. I say supposedly because even though his family had only positive things to say about him, none of them came near the courthouse during his trial.

His grandfather talked about hunting and fishing with his ‘normal’ grandson when he was younger, but they obviously did not keep tabs on the boy because at the time of the murders, he had become a crack head who did not do anything productive or positive with his life. He was partying with his friends, inviting prostitutes to his place and rewarding them with a one way ticket to die.

His reign of terror finally ended when a dedicated police officer who saw him speeding while exiting a logging road, stopped him to inspect his vehicle. He had blood on his chin and legs and there was a pool of blood in his truck. A conservation officer suspected poaching and retraced his tracks which led him to Leslie’s body. Her face was so mutilated that they had to ID her from a tattoo on her wrist that said Grip Fast; a family motto created by her father to keep the family strong during hard times. Leslie was legally blind but had managed to overcome many obstacles and was excelling at karate. But she was very naïve and would hitch a ride to Prince George often in spite of her parents’ attempts at stopping her.

She was quite taken with her new countryboy and looked forward to meeting him. He sounded very genuine to her and she enjoyed the comments and songs he posted:

‘’Out in the Backwoods down in the haller

Out in the backwoods working hard for a daller

In the backwoods, yeah we got it done rite

Work hard, play hard, hold my baby tight

Lordy have mersey

It’s a real good life in the backwoods” 

At trial, Legebokoff attempted to plead guilty to four counts of second-degree murder before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett, but the Crown prosecutor, Joseph Temple, did not consent to the plea and reiterated that he was seeking a verdict of first-degree murder for the deaths of the four women.

During his closing statements, Cody’s lawyer, Jim Heller, asked the jury to find his client guilty of second-degree murder, rather than the more serious charge of first-degree murder.

Legebokoff took the stand in his own defense and testified that he was involved in the killings of Stuchenko, Maas and Montgomery, but that three other people identified as X, Y and Z were the real murderers. He was there and had simply supplied the blunt objects used for the murders in his own apartment. He would not divulge the names of the killers because he was not a rat and was afraid of retaliation from the drug dealers he alphabetized. Had the situation been less tragic, his efforts at blaming the alphabet would have been hilarious and almost like a Sesame Street sketch.

The murder of young Loren was trickier to explain because he was alone in his truck when they stopped him. No letter from the alphabet would help him spell some excuses for that one. So he resorted to an explanation that I personally found appalling; he said that after he and Leslie had sex, they went for a drive in the woods, and she went ‘psycho’ on him and started hitting herself in the face with a wrench and a pipe that happened to be handy. She was trying to kill herself so he basically finished her off as a favor with only a few blows. In fact, her throat was slashed and some drag marks were found. She did not stand a chance against this ‘humanitarian’ killer.

According to Legebokoff, letters from the alphabet were bringing street workers to his pad, announcing to him they would die, and he would then provide the weapons and mop the blood afterwards; all in a day’s work. But in the case of Leslie, he managed to accomplish a mercy killing.

What was even more troubling than the alphabet killers and the victim’s suicide defense was how his lawyer could not extirpate one ounce of emotion from this country boy even though he desperately attempted to make him appear human. And Lord knows he tried.

It probably would have been more fruitful to throw himself at the mercy of the court and show remorse but it was not Legebokoff’s style to act like a contrite human being. He was more like an empty vessel quite uninterested in the concept of his own guilt. He kept repeating that ‘he was not that type of guy’ so he could not have done it.

Heller kept throwing him a bone, hoping he would show remorse and emotions so the jury could see him as a young and foolish kid worth saving but he did not bite. Hell, he did not even try to smell it. He was asked ‘’How did you feel, emotionally?’’ Because if drug dealers killed women in his apartment, it must have been very scary, but he answered ‘’Nothing.’’

He sounded hollow and did not seem to realize how his answers were freakishly scary to the average citizen. Even if he continued with his mantra of being an ordinary kid from a good family, it did not pass the sniff test with the jury. It smelled more and more like horror in that courtroom and less and less like teenage angst. If we are going to use the alphabet, I have to say that Heller deserved an A for trying.  

When interrogated by detectives, one of them said ‘’He seemed like a f…normal person.’’ His constant ‘Cause I mean I’m not this kinda person, right’ were peppered with ‘I did her with the wrench’ and ‘I was mopping blood.’

To show how normal he was, he told police about his plans for the future: ‘’His girlfriend (yes he had one and she thought he was great also) would start her job as a teacher, he’d complete his apprenticeship at the car dealership and they would get married and have kids. Live happily ever after.’’ As if it would erase the whole bloody mess.

The guy did not have a criminal background or a dysfunctional or abusive childhood and he grew up playing sports before graduating from high school. He came from a family that had decent money so no deprivation there.

But the problematic seemed to lie in his whore/madonna complex. He was obsessed with sex and even if he denied going with hookers, he was using them and discarding them like dirty laundry. He said that he and Loren had consensual sex, but in a text, she clearly tells him ‘’we’re just hanging out, right? Nothing sexual.’’

He bragged about how many sexual partners he had and kept a list of his prowess. His girlfriend was a different story and as he said ‘’I found a good girl and decided to settle down.’’ 

In his cold, cold world, Legebokoff had rules: the good people were to be respected but he could discard the street workers, the crack whores and in the case of Loren, the bad girl who hooked up with him online. Strangely, he seemed to have taken himself out of the equation completely as far as morality.

The kid had absolutely no human empathy and was cold as ice, but thank God he was just a simple and normal country boy.

One down and way more to go for the victims of the Highway of Tears….

The Highway of Tears

http://www.thetroublewithjustice.com/the-highway-of-tears/

by BJW Nashe

These days, if you’re going to start robbing banks or convenience stores, you need to put some effort into personal style and fashion. You are certain to be caught on surveillance video at some point during your escapades. Soon your appearance will be on the Internet for all to see–much like celebrities who grace the red carpets of awards shows. So there’s no excuse to neglect the fashion component of your criminal activity.

Lately we have seen criminals exploring a wide variety of styles — from glamorous cross-dressing to casual grunge to silly disguises — with varying degrees of success. No matter what, they have definitely been turning heads at the FBI. Here are some notable examples:

On May 20, a woman robbed a bank in Stuart, Iowa while wearing a striking green gown described as a “mullet dress,” since it’s short in front and long in the back. Surveillance footage shows that the slim, 5’4“ woman had long, dark reddish-brown hair, and carried a handbag slung over her shoulder. Authorities are still trying to figure out if the suspect is an actual woman, or a transvestite. Either way, all agree that as a pure fashion statement, this robbery was a big success.

Leonard Brown Jr., known by police as the “Stretchy Pants Bandit,” was caught on camera robbing a bank in Ceres, California in September 2012. His ensemble included a dark wig and women’s “flashdance-style” aerobics clothing. No one doubts that this was a large black man dressed as a female. And RuPaul doesn’t have anything to worry about, in terms of being upstaged by “Ms. Brown.”

According to the FBI, a woman known as the “Plain Jane Bandit” has robbed seven banks in Southern California since July 2012. She earned her nickname by pulling jobs without any makeup, and usually wearing sweats, with no hairstyle to speak of. Sometimes in the world of crime, “non-style” is a style in itself.

The “AK-47 Bandit” is a traditionalist. In 2012 he hit one bank in North Bend, Washington and then another in Chino, California. This past March, he managed to shoot and wound a police officer while robbing a bank in Vacaville. He tends to wear a black ski-mask, dark earth-toned shirts and trousers, and always carries an AK-47 assault rifle. It is a forceful, functional look that works well in any bank robbery.

Colton Harris-Moore, known as the “Barefoot Bandit,” led police on a two-year crime spree involving stolen cars, boats, and planes. For obvious reasons, he wasn’t shoplifting any shoes. Perhaps his barefoot antics indicated a willingness to dispense with clothing altogether, and head in the direction of fully nude crimes. We’ll never know, however, since Harris-Moore was eventually captured, and is now reduced to wearing flip-flops in a Washington State prison.

In July 2010 a man was caught on camera robbing a New York City bank while carrying a large bouquet of flowers. The note he reportedly handed over to bank personnel demanded cash, and stated, “Don’t be a hero.” The flowers, by all accounts, smelled lovely, and added an element of mystery and romance to the crime.

In Australia, a woman known as the “Buxom Bandit” was caught on camera with a male companion holding up a gas station with a knife. She earned her nickname for two obvious reasons, which were barely covered by the plunging neckline of her top. If you got it, flaunt it–especially when it comes to armed robbery.

 The “Geezer Bandit” looks like an 85 year-old man as he shuffles up to the bank teller and demands cash. His wrinkled face is partially obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap, though. After his most recent robbery in California, he was seen sprinting across the parking lot. The authorities think the geezer look might be a disguise.

The “Fat Clown Robber” in Redding, California became an Internet sensation in late March when security cameras videotaped his botched attempt to bust into a convenience store in the middle of the night. The huge gut, stocking cap, and colorful pajama bottoms are a sure way to make a spectacle out of yourself during any crime. And if you fall flat on your face when trying to make your getaway, you will no doubt gain some “fans.”

So there you have it. Any wannabe armed robbers out there might want to take this lesson to heart. If you’re going to stick up a bank or a gas station or a convenience store, your “look” matters. The cameras will be rolling. Soon the cops will give you a nickname. Then the fashionistas will start weighing in. It may be your last chance to make a statement, before you end up in a faded prison jumpsuit.

by The Little B

It has taken me a few days to feel like I could write about this. The suicide of Robin Williams was difficult to write about. This.. this is just.. I don’t know what this is. We hear about it. We read about it. Some of us have thought about it. Some of us have tried it. But when a child; yes, a CHILD, takes his own life in the school of an immediate relative, it hits you. It hits you so hard that you actually lose your breath. Your stomach twists and your heart drops, and feels like it almost stops. Your throat gets that pain, that aching sensation, and you know the tears are coming. The internal pain is so bad all of a sudden that you just don’t know what to do with it. Crying suddenly doesn’t seem enough. You want to scream. Then you think about that child’s parents. Oh my gosh, that child’s parents!! I’m a parent. A parent of four amazing children, and one of those children has tried to take her own life multiple times, during the year of 2011. Thankfully, she did not succeed. If she had – I can’t bear the thought. My eyes are burning now. Then you think about your immediate relative. My niece goes to that school. MY NIECE GOES TO THAT SCHOOL! My heart breaks for her and the madness that she now finds herself surrounded with; the questions that must be running through her mind; the probable fear lurking inside somewhere; the sadness.

Lamar Hawkins was a 14-year-old 8th grader at Greenwood Lakes Middle School. Lamar was actually a fairly small child for his age. He had health complications early on in life, and his small size made him an easy target for bullies. He didn’t grow up in Central Florida. He actually moved here from New York, ironically to escape bullying.

“The family lived in New York, the child was bullied in New York, they fled to Florida to leave the bullies in New York and when they got here, it continued,” said attorney Matt Morgan. -taken from an interview by WFTV, Central Florida.

I’ve watched several interviews with students and friends of Lamar, talked to different people, read dozens of articles that have come out since this happened, and the more time that passes, the more evident it has become that Lamar was a good, polite, nice young man, victimized physically and emotionally because of his size, and because his cries for help constantly fell on deaf ears. Morgan said the boy’s dad went to the school about the bullying issue, but district officials said they couldn’t talk about any action that was taken because of student confidentiality. -same interview. Really? I suppose I can understand not being able to tell the bully’s name(s), but you can’t tell the parent whether anything was done or not? Am I reading that correctly? “They have had to deal with emotions that no parent should have to deal with. It’s something that is every parent’s worst nightmare, having to bury their child,” Morgan said. This child was bullied, literally, to death.” -same interview.

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014, while I was busy writing on my Facebook page about the fact that it was World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day, and to please reach out if you felt like you needed help, a child the same age as my youngest son put a gun to his head in the restroom facility of a public school less than a mile from where I once lived, pulled the trigger, and ended his own life. 

According to Seminole County deputies, Lamar’s mother went to Greenwood Lakes Middle School to pick him up from school at about 5 p.m., but she could not find him. She then returned home and searched the neighborhood for approximately 2 hours, after which she decided to call the authorities, reporting him missing. Sheriff’s deputies were then dispatched to Greenwood Lakes to fully search the campus and they eventually found Lamar in a boy’s bathroom stall, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, at around 7 p.m. It has been reported that the gun belonged to Lamar’s father, but I’ve found no details on how Lamar actually came to be in possession of the gun himself, and Lamar’s father will not comment on the subject as of yet. That really isn’t the point, in my humble opinion, though. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. Remember, I know. I’ve been there personally. 

I can’t help but think of the fear in that boy, the courage it took to actually put that gun against the side of his head; yes, you read that correctly. I said courage. As I said when I wrote about the death of Robin Williams, suicide is not the easy way out. It does not take a coward to commit suicide. You are very sadly mistaken if you think so. I will repeat it until the day that I, myself, take my very last breath. Cowards don’t commit suicide. Courageous people who have had to live each day with more strength than you could possibly imagine do. Do I condone it? Absolutely not! But don’t ever tell me it’s selfish, thoughtless, cowardly, or otherwise. You, or I, will never know all of the things that Lamar had to endure up until that point, all the things that he kept inside because the times he did say something, it was swept under the rug, all the emotional torment that he had piercing his soul while he bravely fought the world second by second until one too many ruthless teenagers told him he should just go ahead and kill himself. Yes, they did. Students have reported that not only was Lamar bullied, but he was bullied to the extent of being told he should take his own life.  Watch the video on one of the first reports done on this story and hear it from a student’s mouth directly: BULLYING LED MIDDLE-SCHOOL STUDENT TO KILL HIMSELF

It’s time to stand up against bullying. Our community came together, hopefully for the beautiful start of a campaign against bullying at Greenwood Lakes Middle School, as these Greenwood Lakes middle schoolers began to join hands down the sidewalk in support and memory of Lamar Hawkins.

When is enough going to be enough? Is teasing okay? Do we just sit back and say “kids will be kids” and chalk it up to lessons learned in life? I don’t freaking think so! It is not normal nor is it right for a child to tell another child to just go and kill him/herself! Teasing IS bullying when taken to extremes! Some kids, and even some adults, are way more susceptible to emotional damage caused by teasing, even if the teasing is considered “minor” because of mental health issues or other underlying factors, such as perhaps being abused as a child. The fact is, YOU DON’T KNOW. That alone should be enough to act like a civilized human being, I don’t care how old you are. Parents: Talk to your children about bullying and explain to them that it is not okay to make fun of someone else for any reason; it is not okay to talk about another person behind their back; it is not okay to speak hatefully about someone, whether you know them or not, but especially if you don’t know them. Children/Teenagers: Watch your mouth! If you wouldn’t want something said to you, why in the world would you say it to someone else? Treat each other with respect. Have dignity and uphold integrity. Think about when you have children one day; would you want someone to do or say the things to YOUR child that you are doing or saying to someone else’s child? I don’t want to hear “Oh, I would just think it was a joke.” or “I didn’t really mean anything by it.” or “Some kids are way too sensitive.” or “People really need to get a sense of humor.” I’m not sorry, but I don’t think telling another child that he should kill himself is anywhere near funny. Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle. -often attributed to both T.H. Thompson and John Watson, and even J. M. Barrie, but appears to actually originate from a Jewish philosopher named Philo of Alexandria.

This beautiful young lady is my daughter. She is now 16 years old (17 next month), but when she was also 14 years old, she was placed in a facility 9 times over the course of a year because of suicide attempts and self-injury. Does she look unhappy to you? If you could only see her eyes up close. She has been through a lot, including bullying. As a matter of fact, it isn’t only the fact that Lamar went to the same school that my niece attends that this hits so close to home; it’s also due to the fact that bullying played a role in my own daughter’s subsequent attempts after the first unsuccessful attempt. 

My little girl has been through a lot. As a mother, I would love to say that I’ve never brought my daughter any pain, but I think if all parents are honest, we can all say that we have inadvertently hurt our children at some point in time. Of course, there are the A-holes that hurt their children on purpose; however, I am not an A-hole. At least, I’d like to think not. I made some very poor decisions in my personal life that brought my children pain, that I never intended for them to go through. My daughter has something in common with me -actually, has more than one thing in common with me- that I wish she didn’t. One of those things is bipolar disorder, which she absolutely detests, and the other is something you will be able to figure out on your own if you pay careful enough attention to the things I write or the videos that I post. No, she has never abused drugs. My daughter did not deserve what happened to her, nor does she deserve what she has been through. After missing school for a while after her first breakdown in 2011, the self-centered bullies (I have other choice words, but I will not resort to calling then-middle-schoolers names in my blog, other than bullies, because that’s what they are) began to spread rumors about my daughter. They had all kinds of theories about why she hadn’t been at school. One of those rumors was that she was was pregnant and had left school to have the baby. I don’t know where kids come up with some of the things they do, but really teenagers: JUST STOP IT ALREADY. When she returned to school, she was talked about, teased, snubbed, etc. It started a snowball effect of self-injury and suicidal ideation, and pure effing hell for all of us, but especially her, that lasted for approximately a year. As a result, my daughter is now home-schooled and has been since 2012. Is this what I would have chosen for her? No, it isn’t. Are we going to force her to go to school where she might be triggered into another episode after doing much better the last 2 years? Hell no. It isn’t even an option to send her to another school; zoning and all that. She attends Circle Christian School for certain activities and such, but mostly does Florida Online Virtual School, with her step-mother as her at-home “teacher.” 

I am very disconnected with this beautiful face right now. I wish it weren’t so. Because of the things she has been through, the things WE have been through, and other factors, she needs time away from me to adjust to her life and work her way through her feelings on her own. It’s been almost a year since we have really talked, not for lack of my trying. But I finally realized that sometimes we have to let go of what is broken so that true healing can take place. Some of it is because of things that have happened, but I truly believe that some of it is fear, as well; fear because we DO have so much in common. You would think it would be easier to talk to a parent that has so much similarity to you, because they would be the one that would understand you and be able to make sense of it all. Not necessarily always true, young grasshoppers. Sometimes they are the hardest to talk to, because the vulnerability is too much. That vulnerability leads to anger, sometimes there is resentment, and a lot of times there is hurt. It has taken me a VERY long time to realize this, and by no means whatsoever does it make it easier not to be able to talk to someone who was, up until the end of 2010, almost literally my shadow and twin. Wherever you found me, there she was. I almost used to run right into her, not realizing she’d followed me into a room, and turn around to walk and come nose-to-nose with her, having to halt myself before smacking our faces into each other. I have had to let her go and stop trying so hard, and quite honestly, it hurts like hell. I cling to hope and I have my faith, and I look forward to the day when she finally knows it’s time to talk to her mommy again. But I will never stop loving her, being her mom, being her advocate, and doing everything I can to make sure she is never hurt again in the ways she has been hurt in the past.

Do you see now? I term it bully-cide for a reason. I read the most ignorant statement in one of the articles I reviewed about the Lamar Hawkins suicide, and was angered when I saw who made the statement and quite fervently believe she needs to find another job, I don’t care where she got her statistics. I’m not going to call her out in this article, but she stated [paraphrased] “Bullying happens a lot, a lot of kids are bullied and it’s sad, but the fact is, most kids who are bullied don’t go and commit suicide.” Maybe most kids don’t, but the statement was so unnecessary in the article that I wanted to throw my laptop.

The FACT is that kids ARE committing suicide because of bullying. Google it. You will have more results than you care for. The question is, how are we going to stop it? What are you willing to do?