by Patrick H. Moore

All Things Crime Blog has had a pretty good run up to this point and is getting its fair share of attention. For that, I want to thank each and every one of you who has taken the time to click on our posts and read our daily offerings. I also want to give my sincere thanks to all of our fine contributors. I realize that we “don’t please all of the people all of the time” but we try to be thoughtful, entertaining, and even illuminating at times.

I’ll be out of town from Tuesday September 16 through Monday September 21 — pressing family matters that must be dealt with, one of which is a joyous, albeit bittersweet occasion (Daughter going off to college), and one of which is a death in the family (“You don’t know the minute or the hour”.)

During this period, if at all possible, I’ll still be re-posting old articles and an occasional new article.

Things will return to normal when I get back next week.

Have a good one,

Patrick

by Lise LaSalle

On September 3, 2013, Kelli Stapleton published a blog describing an IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting where it was decided that the district school would not offer services to her 14-year-old autistic daughter named Issy. The girl had been discharged recently from an 8-month inpatient program in Kalamazoo, MI (three hours from her home) where she was being treated for, among other things, aggressive behavior related to her autism. While attending treatment, Issy had developed a good rapport with a teacher and the Stapletons were hopeful.

Kelli and her husband, Matt, had decided that Kelli and Issy would move to Kalamazoo so Issy could attend school there and Matt and the couple’s other two children would remain at home. They had sacrificed a lot but it was the right thing to do for their daughter.

Later that same day, police found Kelli and Issy in the family’s van near their home, both unconscious, during an apparent attempt by Kelli to end both their lives. Issy spent a week in the hospital and Kelli is being held without bond on a felony attempted murder charge.

Kelli’s murder/suicide attempt sent shockwaves through the special needs community, especially the autism sector.

Kelli and Issy were victims of a system that ended up victimizing them both. We could say they were powerless because the therapies, education and help they needed and were seeking, would come to them through a bureaucracy that held all the cards, had the financial power and final say. They were not wealthy so they had to depend on this rigid, insufficient and uncompromising system. These parents were completely invested in getting help for their family so they could lead a so-called ‘’normal’’ life. But the chances of them getting the level of help they needed were very slim. So what happened to Issy and Kelli should not surprise anyone; the decision to keep Issy from attending school as planned became the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Kelli Stapleton has been in jail for over 9 months now and her trial will start on July 16^th. A group calling itself “Friends of Kelli’’ are raising money to hire an expert witness for her defense. Without it, the charges filed against this mother could hold a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Kelli Stapleton was writing about her experiences with her 14-year-old daughter, Issy, in a blog called The Status Woe. The family was featured in a Traverse City Record-Eagle story in March that told of Issy’s acute autism, episodes of violence, and the family’s struggle to fund a full eight-month treatment program in Kalamazoo County.

According to Stapleton’s recent blog posts, that treatment ended at the end of August, and Issy was preparing to enter a special-education program in her local school district.

Upon learning that Issy would not be admitted in the local school, Kelli wrote desperate sounding blog posts and was subsequently found with her daughter in a van filled with smoke from portable charcoal grills police believe Stapleton lit. The doors were locked and the van’s windows were closed; Issy Stapleton and her mother were both unconscious.

After mother and daughter were hospitalized and treated for carbon monoxide poisoning, Lt. Kip Belcher said he was not aware of a suicide note and that investigators were are at work trying to piece together a motive for the mother’s alleged actions.

“We are still trying to determine what sort of crisis she may have been facing, “Belcher said.  He said she was reportedly despondent “but as far as the basis for her arriving at this decision, we are still working to make sure we are taking care of that properly …

“I don’t believe she has had much to say. My understanding is she has not been extremely forthcoming.”

Belcher obviously had not read Stapleton State of Woes where she was very forthcoming. (http://thestatuswoe.wordpress.com/tag/kelli-stapleton/)

Her last entry, dated Sept. 3, is titled “When a Power Player Takes You Down.” In it she tells of learning that her daughter would not be allowed to participate in the local school program as planned.

“This week the special education teacher came to the same behavior plan training meeting as my home staff. It was clear within the first hour that there were going to be problems…” Stapleton wrote.

She writes of having a heated argument with the teacher, and of a meeting the next day at which she learned “Issy was not going to be allowed to go to school there.

“So less than a week before school is to start, she is uninvited.

‘’I am devastated.’’

“My husband is gutted.”

She concludes the post:

“If you work with families, please try to minimize the soul shattering disappointments you hand out. There are ways to say ‘no’ without being inhumane. Please don’t make your problems mine. I’m sorry you have 22 kids on your caseload, but that doesn’t mean Issy should be denied consideration because you’re busy. Please don’t tell me there are 50 other people on a waiting list to use general fund dollars. Please don’t tell me that when I’ve found the perfect staff that Medicaid will only reimburse $16 but staff charge $18. At least let me believe you’re trying to figure it out. It’s my job to try to do my best for my daughter. It’s your job to be professional and help me do mine (and only one of us is getting paid).

“There is so much more to say. I’m just too tired to write more.”

If that is not revealing, what is?

We will never know if The Great Lakes Center for Autism Treatment and Research in Portage was involved in helping make that transition back into public school programs.

“These situations require the utmost confidentiality, thus I am not at liberty to discuss this situation,” the receptionist there read from a script during the phone call. She would not give her name.’’

Kelli Stapleton depicted in her blog, the woes of parenting an autistic child. She was inventive, creative and dedicated but she did not have the money to get Issy in private treatment and had to battle with a heavy bureaucracy to get her child in the right programs. Reading her posts, you wonder if someone like Kelli did not make it, who will? But her constant quest to battle and conquer might have been her undoing. She had huge goals and was a perfectionist. She fought so hard that her energy was depleted.

Birmingham-based psychiatrist Gerald Shiener said caregiver fatigue can be a difficult problem for those who are in charge of a disabled relative.

“It can be overwhelming,” he said. “It can cause severe depressive symptoms and cause a depressive syndrome, with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.”

Caregivers also may struggle with feelings of being ostracized or isolated, said Judy Kotzen, medical social worker for Beaumont Health System.

It’s important for caregivers to set aside time for themselves and seek help when needed, Shiener said.

“When a caregiver neglects themselves, that’s when they get overwhelmed, that’s when they feel guilty, that’s then they feel a sense of resentment, that’s when they get discouraged … and that’s when something bad happens,” he said.

And something really bad happened to Kelli and Issy when despair took over and overshadowed all the rest.

I was told by the mother of a severely autistic child that during support group discussions, most of them admitted to having had thoughts of suicide and murder. Not to get rid of the child they loved, but to solve the problem. To spare themselves and their special need child, the agony and constant roller coaster of pain.

I have read many comments calling for Kelli Stapleton’s head on a platter. Some say that if she is not thrown in jail, it might give parents of special needs children, the green light to do the same. I find it offensive that any parent who has not walked in her shoes, would stand in judgment of her actions.

No parents will kill their child because Kelli has tried to harm herself and her daughter. On the contrary, they might find the ounce of energy and courage necessary to keep their own head above the water not to drown like her.

Instead of saying she needed help and did not receive it, and let’s work at improving the system, we are supposed to solve the problem by victimizing Kelli even more?

Some questions the huge argument she had with the teacher and blame the outcome on her lack of finesse and diplomacy. Whatever went down to unleash her wrath must have been very important in her eyes and she snapped. You cannot expect diplomatic skills from a mother fighting for her daughter’s right to a good educational program and school plan. It is a very frustrating process in itself and Kelli was at the end of her rope.

Kelli must have realized her mistake when she said ‘’with this teacher, I pushed when I should have pulled, bobbed when I should have weaved, bit when I should have kissed.” But to have her child dismissed because of the argument, must have been the final blow. They held the purse strings and had all the power so they decided the fate of that family based on the combative argument with the mother.

This very sad event should be a wake-up call for all of us.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurobiological condition that can affect the normal function of the gastrointestinal, immune, hepatic, endocrine and nervous systems. It impacts normal brain development leaving most individuals with communication problems, difficulty with typical social interactions and a tendency to repeat specific patterns of behaviour. There is also a markedly restricted repertoire of activity and interests. Individuals on the autism spectrum tend to have varying degrees and combinations of symptoms and therefore treatment needs to be specific to the individual.

Issy Stapleton was prone to extreme violence and had once beat her mother unconscious in her car. Kelli was actually afraid that her daughter would end up killing her. The situation was very serious and it is not surprising that Kelli Stapleton saw no light at the end of this dark tunnel when she was told that her daughter should be home-schooled.

Some suggested that she could have given her daughter away to the system if she did not feel able to take care of her. Or that she should have sought help from the numerous groups offering help to parents, guardians and other people who think they might commit violence or murder in such a situation.

Relinquishing your own child is rarely perceived as a solution for a dedicated mother. Especially in times of trouble. For obvious reasons, a mother rarely decides to give a child to a system that has failed her countless times. The nurturing instinct is too powerful and the instinctual reflex is to take the child out of the situation.

You see it in nature, when there is a threat, a mother will destroy her young offspring to withdraw from danger. A mother usually acts on instinct and not by the book when it comes to saving and taking care of children. I was told by some mothers that at least, the child would no longer suffer.

Kelli did not act out of love but out of desperation. So to try to attribute guilt and shame to her actions is an exercise in futility.

The only option is to try to fix the problem that created this situation which transcends the case of Issy and Kelli. It is about a system that does not serve the needs of the autistic sphere.

There are not enough support services for Autistic people and their families and they are in desperate need of more support. You have to go on waiting lists and play the waiting game for a long time. Kelli was very proactive and she had managed to get Issy in a residential facility with around the clock care but it had come to an end and she was facing other road blocks.

I was totally shocked to read that because Kelli had a blog and had documented and videotaped some of her daughter’s outbursts, she was considered a bad mother who saw her daughter as ‘’not fully human and not worthy of the rights and respect that most of us take for granted.”

Here is an example of what was said about Kelli “Capturing media as fodder for one’s blog should be about the furthest thing from one’s mind.  And I don’t believe that it is with this type of parent.  The martyr mommy/daddy.  Sure they can claim that they are trying to help other parents not feel so alone…or whatever the party line is.  But even if that is true, if my belief that their attention seeking is wrong, they are doing so at the expense of the privacy of their children.  “Helping” other parents should not override the sacred trust of a parent/child relationship.

Parents prone towards these acts of betrayal of their children are not merely poor parents.  Because the ones that I’ve seen and am speaking of are also prone towards despicable acts of emotional and verbal abuse towards Autistic adults that are brave enough to face their wrath.”

So her blog made her a bad parent who betrayed her daughter and a martyr mommy. Wow, that is harsh!

Instead of focusing on the fact that Kelli Stapleton resorted to a blog probably to reach other parents and get support by the same token, she became the bad guy.

For parents of ‘’normal children’’ it might seem unthinkable, but people like Kelli Stapleton are living on the edge and might resort to unorthodox methods. Would I do it? Probably not but it was her way of dealing with her predicament.

And anyone who is trying to say that she should have acted like everything was fine and that Issy was like any other child, I say try living through your child attacking you in a fit of rage, and tell me what you are going to do about this sacred moment of betrayal.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) issued a statement expressing dismay at the media coverage of the attempted murder of Issy Stapleton.

‘’Both local and national media coverage of Issy’s attempted murder have emphasized her mother’s alleged stress, the “burden” of Issy’s disability, and the insufficient state of autism services today (although Issy had returned home from an intensive 6-month residential placement less than 72 hours previously.) Rather than rallying with sympathy and support for the child victim of attempted filicide, media coverage has consistently attempted to excuse and justify her murderer and paint the person who tried to kill her–her own mother–as the “real” victim.’’

I find it very disappointing that ASAN would attack Kelli Stapleton because her daughter had been recently admitted to a program. What about everything else that happened in between? They are refusing to support her in this tragedy because it will give them a bad name. So they throw her under the bus and distance themselves from the problem as if they were not part of it.

Hilary Clinton was right about the old African saying it takes a village to raise a child. And it takes a huge collective effort to raise a special need child. So when the boat is sinking, let’s blame the entire village and not only Kelli Stapleton. This is way too simplistic and especially cruel.

Kelli is not the only parent to have gone down that road and help is urgently needed. She does not belong in prison and blame and useless shaming is totally uncalled for. It should be a wake-up call and a joint effort to make sure our society has the right support, programs and treatment to avoid this type of tragedy in the future.

Update: Kelli Stapleton recently pleaded guilty to a felony charge of first-degree child abuse and is awaiting sentencing.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

John Wayne Gacy’s hard-headed quotes come to us courtesy of Psychological Autopsy. The commentary following the quotes is by Patrick H. Moore

John Wayne Gacy could have been somebody if his father hadn’t harassed and belittled him over his arguably girlish tendencies to such a degree that — in what turned out to be his fatal defense — he closed off a key part of his emotions to such a degree that the intense pain he felt as a child as a result of his father’s cruel and constant badgering transmogrified into a doubly destructive sexual love and intense loathing for teenage boys (his victims) because THEY REMINDED HIM OF HIMSELF, which is why he both loved and hated them.

John Wayne Gacy lost that part of himself that was most real and authentic and as a result of that — even though he could show great tenderness to his sister and mother — his responses to his hideous crimes, as revealed in the following quotes were fraught with a stubborn denial that substituted cleverness for any real insight into self.

“A clown can get away with murder.”  (Although when Gacy acted as a clown for the children, he was reportedly always amiable, his clown figures, as manifested in his notorious “clown paintings” seem to be stripped of all humanity; in short, they are are literally “clowns without pity”.)

“If Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t meet the legal test of insanity, God help the one that does meet it. I mean, it — it has to really be something. If Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t meet it, then nobody does; and for me, it’s a psychological ploy to use…” (Gacy, of course, tried the Multiple Personality Disorder defense which failed. His deepest desire was that he not be thought of as homosexual. Here he appears to be rationalizing his own inability to win on an insanity defense by comparing himself to Dahmer. If Dahmer can’t win with the insanity defense, then  nobody can.)

“The whole thing with the State’s case has been a sexual theory, and I have always disagreed with that.” (Gacy cannot accept the fact he was driven to have sex with the boys before murdering them because that would make him a homosexual murderer, a possibility he could not abide. The sad thing is that this is his father’s voice still sounding in his head after all has been lost. His father, of course, could not bear the thought that his son might be gay.)

“No, I would definitely not be homosexual. I have nothing against what they do, and I don’t deny that I engage in sex with males, but that’s — I’m bisexual.”  (Gacy was bisexual, he had wives with whom he cohabited, though it’s hard to imagine his desire for the ladies in his life matching the intensity of his desire for the boys).

“The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.” (This is the hard, cynical John Wayne Gacy; his namesake, the real John Wayne, would be proud. “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”

“…hell, I don’t see how you could have found me insane even with the thirteen doctors. It was like playing a board game of chess.” (Gacy was smart and I suspect that he knew all along that his insanity defense was doomed.)

“My personal opinion is the insanity defense does not belong in the courtroom, not in the legal system at all. I don’t even believe it should be used.” (More sour grapes from a man who, try as he might, had no workable alibi. But wasn’t there some validity in his MPD defense? Didn’t he in a sense dissociate dramatically when the sex-and-bloodlust part of his psyche took over, a twisted sub-set of himself that would appear to have little in common with the real and authentic Gacy, the boy who loved to garden with his sister and cook with his mother.)

“What we’re, what we’ve been dispelling is that the thing of it is, they want you to believe that I, and I alone, committed the murders, and I had nothing to do with the murders of anyone.” (Gacy holding his mud. He simply cannot give in and admit that he killed the boys because they were his doubles and because in killing them, he was in some strange way killing himself and pleasing his father at the same time.)

“Well, the idea that I am a homosexual thrill killer and all that — that garbage; and they painted this image of me that, like, I trawled down the streets and stalked young boys and slaughtered them. Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you’d know damn well that I was never out there.” (Gacy was talented and he did work hard. But like anyone with an all-encompassing obsession, he managed to fit sex-and-murder into his schedule. Serial killers are funny that way. Despite all obstacles, they just keep carving notches on the headboard.)

by Lise LaSalle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is now writing a book called Britt with Julia Davis to explain his conspiracy theory. The documentary The Terror Within came out in 2012 and might be reloaded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Britt and the Terror Within

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Britt gone too soon

by BJW Nashe (Back by Zombie Demand)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

by Patrick H. Moore

Now that Adrian Peterson has been indefinitely suspended and is facing rather serious criminal charges for getting a little too carried away with WHOOPIN’ his four year old son, I can’t help but think he would have learned something from the fact his other son was killed in a child abuse case by the the boy’s mother’s boyfriend in October of 2013. It makes you wonder? In any event, here is the post we ran last October on the abusive death of Mr. Peterson’s other boy:

As the sporting world and compassionate folks everywhere reel in shock and disbelief at the beating death of NFL MVP Adrian Peterson’s 2-year-old son, it is now reported that the alleged killer, 27-year-old Joseph Patterson, has a history of domestic violence against women and children. In a recently posted online article Fox News provides numerous salient details on both the suspect and the child’s death and the caring response of the sporting world where Peterson is greatly admired:

Patterson — who has been charged with aggravated assault and aggravated battery in the child’s death — and the child’s mother had recently moved in together. According to a Sioux Falls, South Dakota newspaper, The Argus Leader, court records show Patterson was previously indicted in 2012 on counts of simple assault of a woman and her 3-year-old son. In that case, Patterson was accused of spanking the 3-year-old with such force that the mother had to ice the injury. The complaint states that Patterson then grabbed the mother by the throat and had threatened “to kill me multiple times.” Patterson has a child with the woman.

In his disposition in the earlier case, Patterson was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence for the earlier assault charges and for violating a no contact order. The sentence was suspended based on the agreement that he would undergo counseling.

* * * * *

Lincoln County State’s Attorney Tom Wollman has confirmed the death of Adrian Peterson’s child, although the deceased is not being connected to Peterson in the official statements. The boy had been in critical condition in a hospital with severe head injuries since Wednesday and died at 11:43 a.m. at Sandford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls after being removed from life support Friday.

As All Things Crime Blog reported in our earlier post, the police have stated that Patterson was the only one in the home with the 2-year-old boy when paramedics responded to the call. It is unknown at this time if the boy’s mother was aware of his previous conviction for domestic and child abuse.

* * * * *

Although Peterson missed Thursday’s football practice at the Minnesota Vikings’ Winter Park training facility in order to be in Sioux Falls for a “personal situation,” he returned to practice with the team Friday.

Peterson spoke to reporters on Friday about an hour after the child’s death and stated that he was certain he’ll play Sunday against the Carolina Panthers.

“I’ll be ready to roll, focused. I will be playing Sunday, without a doubt.”

In a statement that epitomizes the love that some players feel for the game of football and its relationship to the larger issues in life, Peterson stated:

“Football is something I will always fall back on. It gets me through tough times. Just being around the guys in here, that’s what I need in my life, guys supporting me. … Things that I go through, I’ve said a thousand times, it helps me play this game to a different level. I’m able to kind of release a lot of my stress through this sport, so that’s what I plan on doing.”

As is to be expected there has been a great outpouring of support for Peterson at this difficult time, both personally and on the social media:

“Sick for my friend. Strong guy but this will bring the strongest down,” NBA star LeBron James tweeted.

“You and your family are in my prayers,” Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III tweeted.

“It’s absolutely terrible. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family, and hopefully things work out,” Panthers head coach Ron Rivera said.

Peterson is the second in the NFL in rushing this year with 421 yards and first in the league with five touchdowns. Last year in a remarkable recovery from reconstructive knee surgery, he returned to rush for 2,097 yards and win the league MVP award.

Classy gentleman that he is, Peterson tweeted Friday:

“The NFL is a fraternity of brothers and I am thankful for the tweets, phone calls and text messages from my fellow players.”

Click below to view our previous post on Adrian Peterson’s tragedy:

Football Great Adrian Peterson’s Son Dies after Violent beating by Mom’s Boyfriend

by Lise LaSalle

In 2010, Colonel Russell Williams was chosen newsmaker of the year in Canada.

The year had started so well for this decorated colonel. He was a rising star in the ranks of the air force that managed Canada’s largest military airfield. As a pilot, he had flown Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the prime minister and many VIP guests in military airplanes.

But the year 2010 ended very badly for Williams – his uniform was seized and burned by the military in an effort to erase any trace of him amongst their ranks. And this is also the year he confessed and pleaded guilty to charges of rape and murder.

From July 2009 until his arrest in February 2010, Russell Williams commanded Canadian Forces Base Trenton, one of the busiest Canadian airbases. He was relieved of his functions as base commander in February 2010 and formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of forcible confinement, and two counts of breaking and entering with sexual assault. Another 82 charges related to breaking and entering were subsequently added.  Or as I would call it: Collecting Artifacts.

Williams was sentenced to two life sentences for first-degree murder, two 10-year sentences for other sexual assaults, two 10-year sentences for forcible confinement and 82 one-year sentences for burglary (collecting artifacts). All the sentences were to be served concurrently at Kingston Penitentiary. The ‘’faint hope’’ clause of the Canadian criminal code does not apply to him, meaning he will never be a free man again.

Kingston Pen closed its doors in September 2013. It was the most famous prison in Canada, not only because of its infamous and notorious prisoners – Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, Hamed Shafia, Helmuth Buxbaum and Russell Williams, but also due to the fact that writer Charles Dickens, who toured the prison in 1842, had called it “an admirable gaol.’’

But the prison’s reputation was mostly built on the role its inmates played in building the city. They laboured to build a quarry in the village of Portsmouth and that quarry was made famous by writer Merilyn Simonds in her novel The Convict Lover. The inmates learned trades while at Kingston, and even the coffin Sir John A. Macdonald was displayed in when he died  in 1891, was made at the prison’s wood shop.

Inmate Russell Williams was transferred from Kingston Pen to Port Cartier prison in Quebec a few months before its closure. And Paul Bernardo was moved from Kingston to Millhaven penitentiary in Ontario. I hear that the inmates at Millhaven are quite pleased to enjoy the new privilege of hearing trains blowing their whistles from afar. So much for small pleasures.

Coincidentally, these two infamous criminals whose paths had crossed at Kingston Pen, had also met when they were young men studying at the University of Toronto in the 1980s.

Some say they were ‘pals’ and partied together but they both deny it. Paul Bernardo’s father stated that his son does not even remember Russell Williams/Sovka. They studied economics at the Military Trail campus and graduated in 1987. Some would love to think that there was a crime spree rivalry between the two, but that is absolutely unfounded.

Even though Bernardo and Williams had both lived in Scarborough, Ontario and attended the same university, their fate reunited them only much later when Williams ended up at Kingston Pen.

While Paul Bernardo was a busy bee becoming the Scarborough Rapist, Russell Williams kept himself occupied modeling his life to the ‘Top Gun’ movies he had watched in awe so many times. Like the hero of the story, he had decided to become a pilot. By all accounts, he worked relentlessly and diligently to achieve his goal.

At that time, there was nothing to indicate that Russell Williams was a troubled and troublesome soul. But Bernardo was already in full-fledge criminal mode. They also approached love very differently. A violent sadist, Paul could not have any normal relationship with a woman. He then met Karla Homolka and the rest is history.

But Williams, after a painful breakup, appeared to have finally met the love of his life, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, a senior executive for a medical Foundation. They were married for 18 years and had a solid and loving relationship. She became his ultimate victim, but much later, when she discovered her “perfect” husband’s secret activities.

David Russell Williams was born on March 7, 1963 and it is not until the age of 44 that he started his criminal behavior. He admitted having had fantasies of stealing women’s underwear in his 20s or 30s but his first break-in didn’t occur until 2007. That is when he started his strange ‘collection of artifacts’.

In fact, some American researchers led by Janet Warren, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, have included Williams in a study into why certain prolific sex offenders keep ‘’artifacts’’ of their victims even if it represents a huge risk to hold on to that type of evidence.

They found that these collections are more than just fetishes. They give the perpetrators a sense of power over the victims and they may be ‘’central’’ to why they commit the crimes.

“The methods used to capture, document, and preserve these experiences differ among offenders, however each reveals his wish to create a collection of victims allowing both a reverie of remembrance and proof that he is capable of taking any victim he chooses, any way he likes,” the researchers wrote in an article for the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior.

They have studied the most prolific sex offenders from the past 40 years, including Williams.

They dubbed Williams ‘’the cinematographer’’ because he films his crimes, poses his victims and participates in the scenario he created. He wants to shoot the ‘’perfect porno.’’

Before becoming violent, Williams started slowly by peeping through windows, breaking into homes and stealing lingerie, and then photographing himself dressed in it.

It escalated to his first victim, a 20-year old girl that he sexually assaulted. He ‘collected’ her bras and panties, bed sheet and baby blanket. He proceeded to break into her home again to steal more lingerie, her driver’s license and other ‘artifacts’.

He broke into the home of a 47-year-old neighbour, and tied her up. He then forced her to undress and pose for photos. It was not the first time he had broken into her house to take photographs and steal some of her personal effects.

The first woman he murdered was a 37-year-old corporal in the air force. She was beaten, tied up, raped and strangled in her own home. He videotaped and photographed the crime after adjusting the lighting for a better shoot.

The last woman he murdered was 27. He bound and raped her and recorded her in various poses wearing lingerie. He brought her to his cottage in the country afterward to continue his assault before the final kill.

The researchers wrote that ‘’Filming these crimes allowed Williams to capture his fetishistic behaviour, cross-dressing and sexual sadism, but it also captured his conflicted gender identity.’’

“The turbulence of these opposing experiences of gender identity escalated into murder, and perhaps that is the core sexual fantasy that Williams sought to capture and resolve.’’

Many killers keep trophies or artifacts as reminders of their exploits. As a way to relive the moments of total control they crave for in their arguably powerless lives.

Some keep objects but others keep journals. They have a strong urge to write the stories of their crimes to relive the surge of pleasure they had experienced. It is a powerful desire to control the materials and to prolong the powerlessness of the victims and enhance their control of the situation.

“It is our impression,” the researchers wrote, “that the collection serves to weld together an experience of self that is of paramount importance to the offender and possibly constitutes the most fundamental motivation for their crimes.”

Sadly, the researchers said, “no treatment exists” to render such offenders harmless, meaning their “rapid identification and apprehension” is key.

Having said that, we are still left wondering why a successful man like Colonel Russell Williams felt so powerless. Why was he looking for a sense of power when his life seemed drenched with honor and rewards?

He was a highly respected man. From all accounts, he had a great relationship with his loving and very smart wife who was not emasculating him in any way. They had decided against having children because ‘he did not want to bring children into this world’. That should be a clue. What was it about this world that he found unfit for children? He knew firsthand about the EVIL LURKING.

His upbringing had not been smooth sailing but by no means tragic. He had a stepfather and from all evidence, did not have a deep connection with him. But he nevertheless, took his side when his mother divorced him and cut ties with her over it.

His heart had been broken by a young lady he really cared about and her rejection drove him to become a hero-pilot à la Tom Cruise in Top Gun. His marriage to Harriman was described as harmonious but she was older than him and kind of homely. Was she the safe respite he craved after feeling undeserving of the one his heart truly desired? Or was it a convenient match to harbor his gender identify issues?

It was divulged that at the time of his crime spree, Williams was taking a cocktail of prescription drugs for an excruciating bout of chronic joint pain he was suffering from, and that he feared, could end his career as a pilot. It marked the crucial moment when he crossed the line from fantasy to obsession and started acting out his sexual deviancy by collecting artifacts and wearing them, and then by detaining women to take photos which led to the rapes and ultimately the murders of two of them.

Was it the effect of the meds? We’ve heard of several cases of people becoming psychotic, oversexed, angry and compulsive after taking these types of medications.  Something was not right. Maybe he was having a hard time fighting his demons and was trying to find ways to numb them. Instead, they somehow became enhanced and he no longer resisted them.

Williams’ best friend was shocked when he found out about his crimes. They were extremely close, and as an educated professional and seemingly sincere man, he had not seen any cold feelings or cruelty emanating from his best bud Russell. Williams and his wife had a cat called Cleo and when it died not long before the crime spree, he was utterly devastated. So he was as flabbergasted as Harriman when they found out that Russell was moonlighting as a psycho rapist and killer.

Even respected psychiatrists where shaking their heads. Several of them as well as crime reporter Timothy Appleby from the Globe and Mail, do not consider Russell a psychopath. He demonstrated genuine consideration to his friends and colleagues and according to them, was capable of feeling shame for his actions. One of the victims he did not rape but rather blindfolded and photographed; she told him she had a migraine and he gave her Tylenol and patted her on the head. She said that she felt he had a conscience.

Not one of Bernardo’s victims ever made such a statement.

Before his crime spree, Williams was already suffering from full-blown obsessive-compulsive behavior. You can see it in the way he catalogued all his ‘artifacts’ with precise attention to detail. He had impeccable computer records and boxes and bags of lingerie neatly folded and classified.

He had child pornography on his computer but refused to plead guilty to possessing child porn even if he was willing to admit to all his other crimes. He was too ashamed and remained adamant against admitting any sexual attraction towards juveniles.

Appleby concluded that William is a ‘’paraphiliac’’ or sexual deviant with sexual obsessions that somehow took over his life.

When the police brought in Williams for interrogation after having accumulated overwhelming evidence against him, he confessed mostly to protect his wife and the military. Sgt Detective Jim Smyth used the Reid technique on him and was hailed as a hero for it, but I frankly did not see this typical routine as brilliant. Instead, what I saw in the interrogation videos, was Russell Williams spilling the beans the minute he found out they would search his house. Right away, he expressed concern for the pain his wife would suffer and for the damage the searches would cause to their new home she loved so much. He also knew they were going to find his ‘artifacts’ so he could not maintain the charade anyway.

At trial, Russell pleaded guilty to expedite the process. He wanted to avoid prolonging his wife’s agony and minimize the scandal for the air force. The minute he was in jail, he tried to kill himself by swallowing a cardboard roll of toilet paper. He left a message on the wall written in mustard to the effect that his feelings were too much to bear and his affairs were in order. They intervened just in time to save his life, even though he had jammed the door lock with paper.

When asked by detectives why he committed the crimes, he genuinely did not seem to know the answer. He was driven by deep dark obsessions.

His wife divorced him in order to hold on to her share of their assets. She was highly criticized by the public for suing the police department to get compensation for damages done to her house during the searches, even though it is an accepted legal practice. Williams is being sued by his victims and his wife was named in the suit. She wanted the divorce proceedings sealed but the judge ruled against her.

Some have been plain cruel to Harriman and they maintain that she had to know what her husband was up to on his nightly jogs equipped with a camera. But from all accounts, this woman had no clue her husband was a criminal. She only knew the stand-up guy she married.

According to Paul Bernardo’s father who was visiting his son regularly at Kingston Pen, Miss Harriman was a frequent visitor at the prison. She stuck by Russell as he did with his son. He describes her as a bright and classy lady. To Harriman, he never was a monster but her officer and gentleman. It must be very difficult for her to this day to absorb this twisted reality.

Williams’ collection of ‘artifacts’, as described by the researchers, might be an indication of the type of deep compulsion he suffered from. And until they find the key to this mystery, the only treatment is his incarceration.

If Williams was to cooperate with researchers looking into the root causes of collecting artifacts as a form of empowerment in cases of sexual deviancy, it would not redeem his crimes or bring back his innocent victims, but, like an antidote, it could lead to some unorthodox form of healing in an otherwise sick and wasted life.

I am convinced that like the rest of us, the doctors would jump at the opportunity to ask him, ‘Colonel Russell Williams where have you been?’

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

Alexis Shaw of World News writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

Carol Kuruvilla of the New York Daily News writes:

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

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

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

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

 *     *     *     *     *

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

Ed Crump of ABC11 writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then she gets heavy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by BJW Nashe

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

What’s going on with these people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Starks Shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Darcia Helle

August 15th of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the most gruesome mass murder Wisconsin has ever seen. The story has all the makings of a New York Times bestseller or blockbuster movie. We have the wealthy and world-famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who had the sense of entitlement that often accompanies being born into a respected and prestigious family. We have a torrid love affair, the ensuing scandal, and, of course, the crazed killer.

The roots of this tragedy go back to Chicago, circa 1909. By this time, 42-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright was already well-known as the leader of the “Prairie School” school of architecture. He’d been married to Catherine Tobin for 20 years and they had six children together. His life was, on the surface, idyllic. But Wright did the unthinkable; he fell in love with a client’s wife. Her name was Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and their affair rocked Chicago society.

Wright abandoned his wife and children, fleeing to Europe with his mistress and her two children, John and Martha. Not wanting to face the scandal back in Chicago, but wanting to return to the US, Wright decided to build a home on his maternal family’s land in Wisconsin. This new home was a sprawling one-story estate with multiple surrounding buildings, situated on 31.5 acres of land. And, like all proper estates, this one had a name. Because the estate sat on the brow of a hill, leaving the top of the hill unencumbered, Wright called it Taliesin, meaning “shining brow”.

In 1911, Wright, Borthwick — who by then had dropped her married name — and her two children quietly moved to Taliesin. Eventually the press discovered their presence, but the ensuing frenzy came and went. Wright and his new family then settled into a routine, with him back at work and Borthwick caring for the children and watching over the home. Their household staff included Julian and Gertrude Carlton, a married couple from Barbados. Gertrude did the cooking, while Julian filled a variety of roles from handyman to butler. Julian was considered well-educated and likable, though beneath that façade he apparently hid something dark and vicious.

On August 15, 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago on business. Mamah Borthwick had a house full of staff and workers, including a carpenter and his 13-year-old son. That afternoon, per family custom, Julian served dinner to the men in a separate room reserved for workers. Mamah and her two children ate on the veranda. As the men were eating, Julian entered the worker’s room and asked William Weston, the carpenter, for permission to get some gasoline in order to clean a rug. Weston gave his consent.

In retrospect, it was strange that Julian Carlton bothered to seek permission to get some gas. From this point on, the facts are fuzzy, but the order of events following his peculiar request seem to be as follows:

Julian, hatchet in hand, went to the veranda where Mamah and her two children were eating lunch. Catching them completely off guard, he first swung at Mamah Borthwick, killing her with a single blow to her face as she sat in her chair. Julian then turned to John, aged 11, quite literally hacking into the child before he had a chance to move. Martha, aged 9, tried to run, but Julian easily caught and killed her. He then poured the gasoline over their bodies and lit them on fire.

Julian took his hatchet and the rest of his gasoline back to where the men were dining. He poured the gasoline under the door and set the room ablaze. The room erupted in flames. One of the workers, Herbert Fritz, happened to be by the window, and was able to break it and dive out. This caught Julian unprepared and Fritz was able to escape. He broke his arm in the fall and his clothes were on fire, so he rolled down a hill to extinguish the flames which saved his life.

Emil Brodelle came next, but this time Julian was ready and he swung his hatchet taking his life. William Weston and his son Ernest then fled the flames straight into Julian’s bloody blade. Julian struck William as he launched himself through the window. William stumbled, then got to his feet and ran across the courtyard. Julian raced after him, striking him with the hatchet a second time. Weston crumbled to the ground and, likely thinking he was dead, Julian left him and returned to his carnage.

David Lindblom got past Julian with a nasty but non-fatal blow to the back of his head with the blunt edge of the hatchet. He was not so fortunate in escaping the fire. Despite Lindblom’s severe burns, he and William Weston managed to run to a neighboring farmhouse a half-mile down the road to call for help. Lindblom remained at the neighbor’s home, while Weston returned to the Wright’s estate to help the fire brigade extinguish the flames. The efforts, though, were futile. In less than three hours, most of Taliesin’s main house was reduced to ash.

In all, seven people lost their lives at Julian Carlton’s hands. They were: Mamah Borthwick, John and Martha Cheney, Emil Brodelle, Thomas Brunker, Ernest Weston, and David Lindblom, who later died as a result of the burns. Only William Weston and Herbert Fritz managed to survive the ordeal.

Hours after the fire, Julian Carlton was found hiding in the basement’s fireproof furnace. He’d swallowed muriatic acid (household name for hydrochloric acid) in a failed suicide attempt. An angry mob attempted to lynch him, but the police intervened and safely transferred him to county jail. Over the following two months, Julian starved himself to death. He refused to talk or explain his actions, and died without ever offering a reason for the brutal murders.

Gertrude Carlton was found in a nearby field that fateful day, apparently unaware of her husband’s intentions. She was taken into custody, but released shortly afterward with $7 and a train ticket to Chicago.

Survivors don’t offer us much in the way of insight. Later testimony stated Julian Carlton had once accused everyone in the Wright household of “picking on him”. One theory is that Julian’s primary intent was to murder Emil Brodelle, who had called him a “black son-of-a-bitch” just days before the massacre. Some claimed Julian had a disagreement with Mamah Borthwick and she’d fired him, giving him two weeks’ notice. Others said his wife Gertrude wanted to return to Chicago, and so he’d given notice on his own.

Whatever the truth is, we do know that Julian had been showing signs of psychological disarray. Gertrude stated that he’d been agitated and paranoid in the days leading up to the murders. He’d been acting strangely, staring out the window long into the night and sleeping with his hatchet beside the bed. Sadly, either no one tried or no one was able to intervene before his mind snapped and he went on his brief but gruesome rampage.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s grief struck deep. He could not bear to hold a funeral for Mamah Borthwick, but he did fund and attend services for all his employees. Angry about the hurtful gossip that had followed them throughout their relationship, Wright made a final tribute to the woman he loved in a letter he addressed “To My Neighbors”. It reads, in part:

Mamah and I have had our struggles, our differences, our moments of jealous fear for our ideals of each other—they are not lacking in any close human relationships—but they served only to bind us more closely together. We were more than merely happy even when momentarily miserable. And she was true as only a woman who loves know the meaning of the word. Her soul has entered me and it shall not be lost.

For months afterward, Wright suffered from conversion disorder, which is a psychological disorder thought to be brought on by severe stress. His symptoms included insomnia, weight loss, and temporary blindness. His sister, Jane Porter, took care of him during this time. As we know, Frank Lloyd Wright eventually recovered and continued on with his career, and came to be known as the most famous architect in American history. Julian Carlton, however, forever altered the course of his life, separating him forever from his dear Mamah.

Please click to below to view Darcia’s Helle’s many excellent posts:

Edward Elmore Rode the Legal Railroad to 30 Years on Death Row: His Crime? Simple! He Was Black and Poor

 “The Wrong Carlos”: Non-Violent Manchild Executed for Murder He Did Not Commit

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

The characters await you.

by Bob Couttie

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England, in 1955. The last man to be executed is a coin toss between Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans who were simultaneously dispatched on 13 August 1964. But for a quirk of timing it would have been Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the Moors Murderers.

From July 1963 to October 1965 Ian Brady sexually assaulted and murdered four children with the help of his girlfriend Myra Hindley and buried their bodies on the desolate Saddleworth Moors near Manchester. They were finally caught after Brady involved Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, in the killing of 17-years old Edward Evans. Smith went to the police who searched Brady’s house and found evidence of two of the earlier killings. In 1987 Hindley confessed to two further killings, that of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

First to die was Pauline Reade. On July 12, 1963 Hindley lured the 16-year old friend of her younger sister into her van while Brady followed on a motorbike. Hindley told the girl that she wanted help finding a glove lost on Saddleworth Moor. As they arrived at the moor, Brady pulled up on his motorcycle and went with Pauline to supposedly look for the ‘lost glove’ while Hindley waited in the van.

Pauline was sexually assaulted and her throat was cut. Together, Brady and Hindley buried the body.

Four months later Hindley picked up 12-year old John Kilbride in a hired car. While pretending to drive him home Hindley again used the excuse of looking for a lost glove on the moors. Again, Hindley waited in the car while Brady lead the boy off, sexually assaulted him and strangled him with a piece of string after trying to slit his throat.

As a souvenir, Brady took a photograph of Hindley sitting at the edge of the grave with her dog, Puppet.

The third victim was 12 year old Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley’s MO was the same: Keith was lured into Hindley’s vehicle and taken to the moors under the pretext of looking for a lost glove. Again Brady sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him.

The body has yet to be found.

Victim number four was Lesley Anne Downey, 10 years old. They abducted her from a fairground. At the house of Brady and Hindley Lesley was photographed naked, tortured, raped and killed.

For a souvenir the couple tape-recorded Lesley’s torture. The tape lasted 16 minutes and 21 seconds.

In what may or may not have been their final victim, in October 1965 Brady and Hindley lured 17 year old Edward Evans to their home where Brady repeatedly hit him with an axe before strangling him with electrical chord. Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, was recruited to help dispose of the body but Smith reported the incident to the police.

From then on the Brady-Hindley murders began to unravel. The tape of the Lesley Anne Downey torture and the photograph of Hindley at Kilbride’s grave surfaced.

It was the month after the arrest of Brady and Hindley that the death penalty was abolished in England.

After a two-week trial at Chester Assizes Brady and Hindley were found guilty of three murders: John Kilbride, Lesley Anne Downey and Edward Evans and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In the early 1980s Brady admitted to two more murders, those of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

The sentencing judge considered Brady “wicked beyond belief” but considered Hindley could be reformed once she was removed from Brady’s influence. The possibility of a reformed Myra Hindley caught the attention of some serious people such as David Astor, editor of the liberal Sunday newspaper The Observer, Lord Longford and the Reverend Peter Timms, a Methodist minister who had once been a prison governor who came to believe that Hindley had reformed and urged her release.

Was she really a woman misled by a ruthlessly wicked man or was she a full partner in a monstrous folie a deux?

Before meeting Hindley when both worked for a chemical company, Brady was a small-time criminal whose biggest ambition was to be a bank robber.  He had an interest in Nazi atrocities and the works of the Marquis de Sade. There is some evidence that he and Hindley were into sadomasochism. Yet thousands share these same tastes without becoming murderers.

In his book, Gates of Janus, Brady writes: “In childhood years I was not the stereotypical ‘loner’ so beloved by the popular  media. Friends formed around me eagerly in the school playground, listening to me talk, and I took it as natural. Apparently, I had a descriptive talent and contagious enthusiasm. All harmless, adventurous stuff, no devious intent. No sense of superiority.”

What finally pushed him across the line may have been Myra Hindley’s chameleon-lie ability to be whatever others wanted her to be, an ability that reinforced the beliefs of those whom she wanted to influence.

Hindley’s background was little different to those of any other working-class Manchester girl. Her ex-paratrooper father liked his drink and was a hard man who wanted his daughter to be hard. When she was hit by a boy as a youngster he told her to go back and beat up the boy, threatening to use his belt on her if she did not. She beat the boy and got her first taste of power but her real talents lay elsewhere.

They both worked at a local chemical company. Hindley became infatuated with Brady, the first man she’d met who had clean fingernails. At first he ignored her, probably deliberately, until finally inviting her out to see a movie – Judgment at Nuremburg (Some account suggest the movie was King of Kings).

The journey to the horror of the Moors had begun.

They largely isolated themselves from co-workers and others in their social circle. Hindley bought a gun for a planned bank robbery and Brady would read from accounts of Nazi atrocities as she cleaned it. They started to lose the essential contact with reality that mixing with others might have brought them.

Hindley dyed her hair blonde and took to wearing makeup and clothes that made her appear more like the Aryan ideal woman of Nazi mythology. In that isolation, with Hindley mirroring and not countering him, Brady came to believe that he was no longer bound by the mores and norms of society.

In the 1960s, the idea that a young woman who might wish to have children one day should murder youngsters seemed only plausible if she had come under the influence of Brady. It was comforting to believe, that removed from his influence, she would be reformed. In due course she became a cause celebre among those who wanted desperately to show that no matter how terrible a crime the criminal was capable of being reformed and returned to society.

She became a devout Catholic, took up tapestry and badminton and took an Open University course in Humanities, middle class pursuits that made her a better fit to the mindset of the reformists who became convinced that she had reformed and should be released.

To prison authorities she became the ideal prisoner and was put in charge of the kitchens.

To a former nun who became a prison guard, Patricia Cairns, she became a lover, one whom Cairns would help escape and the two would run away to South America as missionaries. The scheme was uncovered when wax and soap copies of prison keys were discovered.

Janie Jones, a fellow prisoner, saw another side of Hindley: “(She) could ‘be whatever people wanted her to be. Even then, I noticed two sides to her. One was temperamental: she’d throw a tantrum, shout and perform, and they’d just lock her in her cell where she’d sit and sulk. The other side was very gentle and kind, and this is what made it so difficult to come to any conclusions about the woman’.

Dr. Tom Clark, who studied prison papers about Hindley released in 2008, says: “”You’re expecting something evil, almost as if you are touching evil, but what you find is someone who is very well caught up in the prison administrative system and is actually quite tedious… She uses the system to achieve all sorts of things, whether it’s being able to make her own cups of tea or asking the home secretary about her tariff date.”

Was she a victim of Brady’s force of personality? Dr Clark suggests not: “Hindley did not “do anything that she didn’t want to do. She is very resilient and very forthright in her own mind… I have no doubt that she knew what she was getting involved in.”

Hindley died in prison aged 60 in 2002 and was cremated.

Ian Brady, meanwhile, has been declared insane and is kept under high security at Ashworth Hospital. He wants to die and is on hunger strike. Currently he is being fed by tube and consistently appeals to be returned to prison and allowed to die, a luxury he has not been granted.

But for a quirk of timing he might have achieved that ambition at the end of an executioner’s rope nearly 40 years ago.

See Also:

Serial Child-Killer Ian Brady Argues For Death

More stories from Bob Couttie

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Not all serial killers are weird like Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. Or at least they’re not totally weird. They may even have redeeming features. A surprising number of the multiple slayers who are washed up on the rocks of justice and are serving lifetime prison terms, or are languishing on Death Row, once had families and children, allegedly presided at backyard barbecues and may have even gone to PTA meetings. Others were young men just coming of age who made mistakes they couldn’t undo.

Or so Sarah LeTrent of CNN would like you to believe. Witness this conversation between Melissa Moore, age 33, and her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, in a post entitled “A killer in the family.” Jesperson was a long distance truck driver who strangled eight women while on the road and sent letters to the local police stations bragging about his conquests. He had the habit of signing his mea culpas with a Happy Face and was dubbed, the Happy Face Killer:

“Missy, you need to change your last name,” the shackled man in the orange prison jumpsuit said into the receiver, staring blankly at his 15-year-old daughter’s tear-stained face.

“That’s when I knew that these things were true,” recalls Melissa Moore, now 33.

Until that day, the man behind the glass partition, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was simply her father; the one who used to tuck her into bed at night “like a burrito.”

Keith “Happy Face” Jesperson went to trial and lost. He is now serving life in prison with no possibility of parole. If we dig a little deeper, we discover that LeTrent’s article is not telling us the whole story. Jesperson, who was Canadian born, had always been weird, the typical “loner” child with a propensity to torture. Wikipedia has this to say about him:

He had a violent and troubled childhood under a domineering, alcoholic father. Treated like an outcast by his own family and teased by other children for his large size at a young age, Jesperson was a lonely child who showed a propensity for torturing and killing animals. Despite consistently getting into trouble in his youth, including twice attempting to kill children who had crossed him, Jesperson graduated from high school, secured a job as a truck driver, got married, and had three children. In 1990, after 15 years of marriage, Jesperson was divorced and saw his dream to become a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman dashed following an injury. It was that year, after returning to truck driving, that Jesperson began to kill. Jesperson is known to have killed eight women over the course of five years. Strangulation was his preferred method, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.

So despite his horrific childhood, the Happy Face Killer kept it together for a long while, many years as a family man, before he snapped and went on his killing spree. Melissa Moore no doubt realizes that there are worse things than being tucked into bed “like a burrito”. Might her day have come — if her father hadn’t been stopped?

Whatever the circumstances, very little hits a family harder than discovering that one of their members is a serial killer or a mass murderer. Children don’t even want their parents to sing in public. Imagine how they feel when they find out Dad is a murderer.

After much soul-searching, Melissa Moore made the reluctant decision to sever ties with her father. She changed her name when she got married and set out to build a new life.

In her article, Sarah Letrent states:

Moore is a part of an exclusive group, those who share blood relations with someone perceived by the public as a monster: a mass murderer. With that unenviable tie can come isolation, guilt, grief, fear, disbelief, even post-traumatic stress disorder, in addition to a very public stigma.

In the aftermath of a massacre, questions and criticism are frequently directed at the parents, spouses and children of the accused. The public sometimes sympathizes, often criticizes and even goes so far as to blame family members for the actions of their kin.

This issue of guilt by association can be extremely hard for the family members of serial killers to deal with. A part of you is horrified beyond words by what Dad or Junior (or in rare cases Mom or Sister) has done, but a part of you will still want to defend your shamed loved one.

Sarah LeTrent cites Michael Price, a professor of evolutionary moral psychology at Brunel University in London, who states that people are hardwired to defend their kin, like Melissa Moore did before she realized her father’s guilt.

“There will be strong psychological and emotional incentives to defend and remain loyal to the family member, and to delude and self-deceive themselves about the reality of their relative’s guilt,” Price said.

At the same time, Price said individuals may be prone to protect their own reputations and disassociate themselves from the killer to avoid being ostracized.

“They may experience anger at the relative for putting them in such a conflicted position,” Price said.

In short, the family members of convicted serial killers will be pushed and pulled in diametrically opposed directions. They may wake in the morning feeling the deepest filial connection to their fiendish family member and by noon they’ll be wishing that they had never even met.

One of the hardest things innocent family members face is the public expectation that they will step up to the plate and make a statement about what has happened. I know what you’re thinking, that you’d rather chew on barbed-wire, but the expectation is nevertheless front and center in the mind of the eager, avaricious public.

Recently Adam Lanza’s father, Peter, met with Robbie and Alissa Parker, the parents of 6-year-old victim Emilie, to discuss his son’s actions.

“One of the main reasons that I wanted to speak to him was I wanted to just speak to him as a father, one father to another father,” Robbie Parker told CNN’s Piers Morgan. “And I understand that, despite the circumstances, that he lost his son and that he needed to grieve that as well, just as much as I needed to grieve my daughter. And so I wanted to express those condolences to him, and I felt that we were able to do that for each other.”

You can’t help but feel considerable respect for Robbie Parker. I can’t help wondering how he feels about this revelation:

In documents released Thursday, it was revealed that 20-year-old Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza’s mother (whom he shot in the forehead before turning his guns on 26 more victims, as well as himself, at the elementary school) gave him money earmarked to purchase weapons and allowed him to keep a gun safe in his bedroom.

Susan Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, finally opened up in a 2009 issue of Oprah Magazine with a personal essay titled “I Will Never Know Why.”

She wrote: “Through all of this, I felt extreme humiliation. For months I refused to use my last name in public. I avoided eye contact when I walked. Dylan was a product of my life’s work, but his final actions implied that he had never been taught the fundamentals of right and wrong. There was no way to atone for my son’s behavior.”

For pure carnage, Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people before shooting himself, in April of 2007 is at or near the top of the list. Of course Cho took the easy way out. His family was left to “meet the press.” On behalf of the family, Sun-Kyung Cho, the sister of the shooter, said:

“We have always been a close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence. He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.”

The Chos haven’t spoken to the media since.

The bottom line is that having a serial killer or a mass murderer in your family will, more likely than not, turn your life into a special kind of mental hell. It will always be with you — and though strong souls may perhaps keep it at bay — the memory will never be silenced entirely. Among other things, unless you can somehow manage to live an entirely private existence, you will inevitably find yourself “in the cross hairs” of public expectation, obliged to rub elbows with the hungry masses and talk about what happened which somehow, paradoxically, makes all the listeners feel a little more alive.

by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

 *     *     *     *     *

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

*      *      *      *      *

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

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

Austin L. Miller of the Halifax Media Group writes:

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

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

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

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

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

by Darcia Helle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please click to below to view Darcia’s Helle’s many excellent posts:

Edward Elmore Rode the Legal Railroad to 30 Years on Death Row: His Crime? Simple! He Was Black and Poor

 “The Wrong Carlos”: Non-Violent Manchild Executed for Murder He Did Not Commit

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

The characters await you.

by Thomas Davidson

Bear (in happier days)

Beheadings on YouTube. Crucifixions in Syria. A vampire wanna-be with body modifications in his head that resemble protruding horns. Surely it can’t get any worse. What’s next? Insensitivity in the National Football League?

Then…this. This gem pops up last week in several news outlets. Wait. Hang onto your Pineapple Lemonade Sangria. Here’s the story in a nutshell. Ready?

Man Allegedly Cooked Ex-Girlfriend’s Dog, Served It to Her for Dinner

A California man is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend’s dog, cooking it, and serving it to her for dinner.

Ryan Eddy Watenpaugh, 34, of Palo Cedra, California (pictured above), has been charged with domestic violence, false imprisonment, stalking and animal cruelty. The victim told police she and Watenpaugh argued on Aug. 4. She claimed he physically assaulted her so she ran out the back door of her apartment. When she returned, Watenpaugh and her Pomeranian, “Bear,” were gone.

The couple briefly reconnected in early September. Watenpaugh cooked her dinner that included meat. On Sept. 7, “the victim received a text message from Watenpaugh asking her how the dog tasted, and referenced the meal he had cooked for her,” the police said in a press release.

Two days later, Watenpaugh put a small bag containing two dog paws outside her front door, which she identified as belonging to Bear. “He confessed to sending the messages and dropping off the dog’s paws, but denied killing or cooking the victim’s dog,” the press release says.

Perhaps he found the dog’s paws while walking to morning mass? Watenpaugh is currently reading recipes in Shasta County Jail on $250,000 bail.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news.

Although little Bear was killed, the pooch lives on. Proof? According to the book of Daniel, the Lion will lie down with the Lamb. So there you have it, animals in the afterlife. But there’s more to the story.

Fyodor Dogstoyevsky, canine-afterlife guru

Doggie devotee, Fyodor Dogstoyevsky (pictured above) directed me to growls-and-grudges.com. This website focuses on pets, the afterlife, and revenge. According to G&G, when animal abusers die, they go to the hereafter, which includes a detention center with a cafeteria. We’ve all heard the idiomatic expression, “in the doghouse,” when you so completely effed-up that your parent or spouse has booted you out of the house, and you must snooze in the doghouse with the dog. Well, Ryan Eddy Watenpaugh should view the Shasta County Jail as the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. His ultimate nightmare awaits him. He’s headed for the cosmic doghouse, which doesn’t mean sleeping solo on the sofa.

Creepy things occasionally occur in jail. Mr. Watenpaugh may or may not make it out of jail alive, but eventually he’ll make the celestial transfer. Bear and his crew await. Warning! What follows is not for the squeamish.

celestial transfer (caught on camera)

Picture it. Ryan Eddy drops dead. Whoosh! Within seconds he wakes up in the clouds, surrounded by mad dogs. A philosopher at heart, he astutely observes, “What the fuh…?” Strapped to a gurney, he’s wheeled into a detention center’s kitchen adjoining the dining facility. A Rottweiler, dressed as a catsup-stained busboy, stands on his hind legs and pushes the gurney through the aluminum swinging doors. Bear the Pomeranian stands inside by a counter with a cutting board. He barks, “We meet again.” Bear holds up his front legs, his paws have been miraculously reattached. He extends his paw for a paw-shake, and opts for rhetorical frippery. “Remember me?”

“What?” Ryan Eddy Watenpaugh blinks his eyes. “Why are you shaking paprika on my face? Listen here, you little sonofa…”

From behind, the Rottweiler swings a giant ham-bone down and knocks Watenpaugh unconscious.

Ya wanna beer with that bowl of goulash?

Later that night it’s dinnertime at the cafeteria (a/k/a/ the cARFeteria). The speakers on the walls pulse with Elvis Presley’s “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog,” and Marvin Gaye’s “I’ll be Doggone.” Mighty Marvin Gaye, the soul singer? This must be heaven. Dogs arrive, grab lunch trays, get in line. A bulldog waddles along, inspects the steamy food behind the glass, and barks out, “That stinks delicious. What is that muddy slop? Looks like something I’d step into on the sidewalk. Mmm. Woof woof!”

“It’s a new recipe,” Bear the Chef beams. “Now keep the line moving. Don’t slobber. And for gosh sake, don’t wolf it down. Savor it.”

“I’m so hungry,” the bulldog said, “I could eat a horse.”

“I don’t know about a horse,” Bear said, “but how about a sadist?”

“Yummy. Can you share the recipe?”

“Love to. And remember—I’m putting the ghoul back into goulash.”

Are you ready…for some Ryan Eddy?

Ingredients for mouth-watering Watenpaugh Ghoulash. Recipe makes 20 servings.

10 pounds lean ground Ryan
4 large yellow onions
16 cups Budweiser beer
1 belt buckle for seasoning
4 cans tomato sauce
10 fingers
1 chewy sock
6 bay leaves
1 pair of stinky boxer shorts
10 toes (toenails optional)
200 tablespoons seasoned salt
2 kneecaps
4 cups uncooked elbows (no, not elbow macaroni)
Remove nose and serve

After dinner, everyone lifts their leg by the rubber fire hydrant in the corner of the room and takes a squirt, then drops to the floor for a nap.

UPDATE: On the following morning, the ex-girlfriend in California opens her apartment door and finds a mysterious paper bag on the porch. For a second, she thinks of a doggy bag in a restaurant. Inside the sack are a wrinkled shirt, pants, two shoes and an empty can of paprika.

NOTE: no animals were harmed during the writing of this article.

If you hurt me, you’ll be ghoulash!

#

Thomas Davidson scribbled three quirky thrillers, FLOATERS, THE MUSEUM OF SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCES and PAST IS PRESENT, and a collection of humor, BOTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDUNCE KID. He always doffs his hat when he passes a dog in the street.

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

Crime, Craigslist and Cosmic Justice: A Murderous (Ad)Venture

King Kong STANDS HIS GROUND and Loves Forever!

Bermuda Triangle Spawns the George Washington Bridge Scandal?

The Mega Mack-Daddy of Illegitimate Daddies

The Art of Telephone Ju-Jitsu

Up – astral crime fiction

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

Botch Cassidy & the SunDunce Kid Hit the Home Depot

How the Little Drummer Boy Saved Christmas

website — www.thomas-davidson.com

blog — www.jurassicjim.blogspot.com

twitter litter — @TomDavidson99