by Lise LaSalle

Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Canadian tourist who was found dead in a downtown Los Angeles hotel’s rooftop water tank in February 2013. Lam was from Vancouver, British Columbia and had traveled alone to Los Angeles on January 26, 2013, intending to stay a few days before making her way to Santa Cruz, California. She was last seen on January 31, 2013 by workers at the hotel, but on February 19, a maintenance worker found her body in one of the four 8-feet-tall, 4-foot diameter tanks on the hotel roof. A crew had gone to check the tanks because some of the hotel patrons were complaining of low water pressure.

Authorities had searched the roof of the hotel earlier during an investigation into her disappearance but had not opened the four cisterns. It was not even considered a possibility at the time.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Crossville, Tennessee is a lovely town of around 10,000 situated atop the Cumberland Plateau in East Central Tennessee. 97 per cent white, it bills itself as the golf capital of Tennessee, boasting 12 courses. On Wednesday, three local teenage boys: Steven Presley, 17, Dominic Davis, 17, and John Lajeunesse, 16, and their designated driver, a popular 22-year-old woman named Danielle Jacobson, headed toward Renegade Mountain, a nearby resort area, to go four-wheeling, nothing out of the ordinary for young people in rural Tennessee.

They never came back. A Crossville resident discovered the car with with all four young people dead inside, parked along a country road near Renegade Mountain on Thursday morning. They had been fatally shot.

Although law enforcement has not yet divulged how they determined who the alleged shooter is, they already have a suspect in custody, Jacob Allen Bennett, 26, who they picked up on a parole violation without incident around midnight Thursday in nearby Rhea County. According to court records, Bennett had been booked in Cumberland County five times before this and was sentenced to two years in prison in 2010 after pleading guilty in Fentress County to theft-related charges and of being a convicted violent felon in possession of a firearm.

District Attorney General Randy York, whose territory includes the crime scene, told reporters Friday that his office intends “in the very near future” to empanel a grand jury to consider bringing murder-related charges against Bennett.

In an effort to calm the fears of the citizenry, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn stated:

“The citizens of Cumberland County and Crossville can rest assured that we have the person who committed the crimes in custody, that the community is safe.”

Bennett is being held at Cumberland County jail. Apparently he and the victims knew each other “to some degree,” said Deputy District Attorney General Gary McKenzie, who declined to elaborate on a possible motive or any other details about the case. Law enforcement has been working diligently on the case since first learning about the deaths early Thursday morning.

“They’re kind of like robots, they’re still going,” said Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess of the state and local investigators. “To them, it’s not a job, especially when they see the circumstances involve kids. It hits home.”

* * * * *

Crossville, indeed, all of Tennessee, is reeling in shock. Three of the victims were current or former students of the local school district.

“It’s something that reverberates through the entire community,” said Donald Andrews, Cumberland County’s school superintendent. “The loss of life is always tough, and especially (so) when it’s young people.”

The local residents are struggling to make sense of the bloodshed, but many are still insisting that these kinds of things just don’t happen in Crossville.

Michael Rick, who lives with John Lajeunesse’s family, said that he had dropped the 16-year-old off at Steven Presley’s house on Wednesday afternoon. Lajeunesse mentioned that the pair were going to go four-wheeling in the Renegade Mountain area and were going to spend the night at a friend’s house. When Lajeunesse didn’t call Rick to be picked up on Thursday, he had the eerie feeling that something was wrong.

“You just get that gut feeling when nothing is right.”

According to the Cumberland County Board of Education, Lajeunesse had attended two local high schools, and was currently being home-schooled. When interviewed, Rick stated that Lajeunesse loved skateboarding and hunting, and was very loving toward his family, dedicating himself to his mother, sister and baby niece.

The deceased driver, Danielle Jacobson, was the mother of a little boy:

“She loved her little boy more than life itself. She talked about her child a lot. That’s what saddens me the most,” said a friend, who asked not be named.

Dominic Davis was new to the Crossville area, having moved from Colorado. The fourth victim, Steven Presley, had graduated from Phoenix High School, a school for at-risk kids where he had reportedly thrived, in June.

The county seat for Cumberland, Crossville is located about 70 miles west of Knoxville and 110 miles east of Nashville. It’s a close-knit community that School Superintendent Andrews describes as a “down-home type community” where “everyone seems to know everyone.”

Students in the county’s 12 schools, particularly its three high schools, were told about the killings Friday morning, then encouraged to talk about it in class or with counselors.

“Some were very quiet, some were reflective, some were more open,” said Andrews. “The mood at the schools was very subdued.””It was just a surprise. It’s one of those ‘this doesn’t happen here’ kind of things. It’s actually a grim reminder to us all that we’re all vulnerable.”

* * * * *

Although no one is saying anything definite, it’s being whispered that drugs played some part in this, perhaps a drug deal gone bad or a rip-off. Despite all the nice things that Michael Rick had to say about him, the fact that Lajeunesse had already attended two high schools and was being home-schooled could suggest that he was a kid with problems. Add to this the fact that Steven Presley had to attend a high school for at-risk children. Breaking Bad, anyone?

*     *     *     *     *

 Update:

Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that although Jacob Allen Bennett reportedly blurted out an admission of guilt in his initial court appearance in September of last year, Cumberland County Criminal Court Judge David Patterson has denied a defense motion that the guilty admission be accepted.

According to Bennett’s attorney, Robert Marlow, his attempted plea, if accepted, would have limited his range of punishment to life in prison and prevented the state from going after the death penalty.

Judge Patterson’s rationale for rejecting Bennett’s proclamation of his is that it occurred before he was given the opportunity to represent himself, and that he hadn’t been properly arraigned at that time.

The judge added, “The court is concerned that the defendant didn’t understand what was going on.”

During a reconvened arraignment a few weeks later on Oct. 3, the state filed its intent to seek the death penalty and Robert Marlow was appointed to represent Bennett. Furthermore, “not guilty” pleas to the murder charges were entered on Bennett’s behalf at that time.

Based on evidence collected by case investigators following Bennett’s arrest, it’s now being reported that the case was indeed a “drug deal gone wrong”, but that the product being sold was supposed to be marijuana, not methamphetamine.

by Starks Shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by BJW Nashe

The Zodiac Killer is responsible for the most confounding series of murders in the history of American crime. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area community with senseless shootings and stabbings, followed by a series of bizarre letters and phone calls which taunted the press and police, and threatened the public at large with further violent acts. Despite years of frenzied investigation, he was never captured. To this day, his identity remains a mystery.

This mystery has captivated the imaginations of many. The stories of obsession that follow in the wake of the Zodiac are just as fascinating and disturbing as the crimes themselves. Leading the pack is Robert Graysmith, whose true crime book, Zodiac and its follow-up, Zodiac Unmasked , was made into a brilliant 2007 feature film by David Fincher, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo in leading roles. Graysmith, who worked as a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac murders, had an insider’s perspective on the case, which served as the foundation for his subsequent investigation, resulting in the books that have made him famous.

At times Zodiac reads like an edgy thriller written by Don DeLillo or Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Pahlaniuk, which is altogether fitting, since the Zodiac himself is our most infamous postmodern serial killer.

To grasp what I mean by this, consider the JFK assassination, by way of comparison. JFK’s death in Dallas in 1963 can be viewed as our nation’s first major postmodern event, insofar as the central truth of what happened on that November day has remained elusive, or absent, while a whole plethora of different interpretations, based on a seemingly never-ending supply of information, continues to expand and multiply. Famous English author J.G. Ballard used to quip that the Warren Commission Report on JFK’s death was the greatest novel of the 20th century. Painstaking descriptions of the arrangement of boxes in the book depository, for instance, or the design of the presidential limousine, are considered by Ballard to rival the best experimental fiction produced by nouveau romanciers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet. Though sorely lacking in “truth” (and in fact more concerned with obscuring, than revealing, the truth), the Warren Commission Report more than delivered the goods in terms of weird fiction. A more “unreliable narrator” for those tragic events, and that mass of details, would be hard to find.

Likewise, the Zodiac Killer inhabits a similar zone of manic indeterminacy. The horrific murders remain unsolved, the full truth never revealed, and the criminal’s identity and motives remain shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, the investigations and interpretations continue to spiral outward, generating more and more complexity and confusion. From each crime scene, we are led directly into the prison house of language, where we must struggle to make sense of the Zodiac’s letters and cryptograms. These strange “clues” supplied by the killer only lead us deeper into a labyrinth of never-ending interpretation. This is both maddening, and to some extent fascinating, depending on your point of view. It’s easy to see how anyone interested in crime can become more than a little obsessed by the case. And it’s no wonder that the articles and books and films keep on appearing.

The historical context here is crucial. It seems only fitting that the Zodiac Killer should emerge during the tumultuous late 1960s. The year 1968 in particular was remarkable in many ways. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy left the nation reeling in anger and sorrow. Race riots erupted in cities across the nation. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned into an ugly, televised streetfight between cops and protesters. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam led to some of the bloodiest fighting in that conflict. The hippies’ 1967 “Summer of Love” had quickly devolved into hard drug abuse, mass arrests, and homelessness.

Yet life in the sleepy East Bay town of Vallejo, located some 30 miles north of Oakland, probably seemed rather detached from the insanity of the nightly news, and big city problems such as violent crime and drugs and riots. On December 20, 1968, the man who would become known as the Zodiac changed all of that. When David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, two teenagers from Vallejo who had driven to a remote area off of Lake Herman Road in Benicia, were found late that night, killed by multiple gun shot wounds from a 9 mm Luger, the brutality and randomness of the crime shocked the entire community. Local police struggled to find any leads or possible motive for the murders.

On July 4, 1969, another young couple was attacked while parked in a car at the entrance of the Blue Rock Springs Park and Golf Course in Vallejo. Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin were both shot multiple times, again by a 9 mm Luger. Ms. Ferrin was pronounced dead at the hospital. Mr. Mageau managed to survive despite being shot multiple times in the neck, face, and chest. Within an hour of this incident, the killer placed a phone call to the Vallejo Police Department, claiming responsibility for the crime, as well as for the previous Lake Herman Road murders. The police traced the call to a phone booth at a gas station located less than a mile away from Ferrin’s home, and only a few blocks from the Vallejo Police Department.

Then the letter-writing campaign began. And it is here, in the letters and cryptograms attributed to the Zodiac, that we see the case take on its own particularly postmodern flair–and its own unique horror. The only possible precedent is the frenzy of speculation surrounding Jack the Ripper’s murders in London. The Zodiac, however, proved to be far more prolific than the Ripper. And the Ripper didn’t draw up any cryptograms.

On August 1, 1969, three letters prepared by the killer were received at the Vallejo Times Herald, the SF Chronicle, and SF Examiner. In addition to taking credit for the shootings at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs, each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded they be printed on each paper’s front page or he would “cruse [sic] around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.” 

On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at The San Francisco Examiner with the salutation, “Dear Editor, This is the Zodiac speaking.” This was the first time the killer used the name which would become his calling card. The letter was a response to Police Chief Stiltz’s request for more details that would prove he had killed Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not yet been released to the public, as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code “they will have me.”

On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden–a couple of amateur sleuths from Salinas, California — managed to decode the 408-symbol cryptogram. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer claimed that his purpose was collecting slaves for the afterlife. No name appears in the decoded text; in fact, the killer indicated that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.

The Zodiac’s third attack was even more chilling than his first two. On September 27, 1969, two college students picnicking at a secluded spot on the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County were attacked. Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard were approached by a man armed with a gun and wearing a black executioner’s-style hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes and a bib-like fabric on his chest that had a white 3″x 3″ symbol of a circled cross on the front. The hooded man claimed to be an escaped convict from Montana, where he had killed a guard and stolen a car. He explained that he needed a car and some money to get to Mexico. Despite Hartnell’s attempts to reason with him, he tied up Hartnell and Shepard with lengths of plastic clothesline. He then drew a knife and viciously stabbed both of his captives over and over again. Leaving both victims for dead, the attacker then hiked 500 yards back up to the road to draw a circled cross symbol on Hartnell’s car door with a black felt-tip pen. Beneath the symbol, he wrote: “Vallejo/12-20-68/7-4-69/Sept 27–69–6:30/by knife.”

Hartnell and Shepard were rescued by park rangers after a man and his son, both fishing nearby, heard their cries for help. Shepard died after lapsing into a coma on the way to the hospital. Hartnell would eventually recover from his wounds. Both Shepard, prior to her death, and Hartnell while hospitalized, were able to provide police with a detailed description of their ordeal. Shortly after this attack, Zodiac again placed a call to the police–this time to the Napa County Sheriff. The call was traced to a pay phone just a few blocks away from the Sheriff’s Office.

The brutal savagery of the knife attack, along with the frightening hooded costume and circled cross insignia, the eerie message scrawled on the car, and the audacity of the follow-up phone call, only served to heighten the growing terror. It appeared that a homicidal maniac was on the loose. While writers of crime and horror fiction live to dream up this kind of material, to have it play out in real life was nearly too much for the public to handle. People were afraid to send their kids off to school.

To add to the sense of cultural shock, down in Los Angeles at this time, the murder of Sharon Tate and her friends at the hands of Charles Manson’s deranged followers had the entire Southern California region gripped in fear. Late summer and early autumn in 1969 was quite a time for Golden State. And there was still the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont to look forward to. The Hells Angels would be hired to keep everybody safe.

Up in the Bay Area, the Zodiac wasn’t finished yet. On October 11, 1969, he entered a taxi cab driven by Paul Stine at the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets in downtown San Francisco. Near the intersection of Washington and Cherry Street, Zodiac shot Stine once in the head, took Stine’s wallet and car keys, and tore away a section of the man’s bloodstained shirt tail. Three teenagers witnessed the crime in progress from across the street, and notified the police. However, the police dispatcher inexplicably sent out an alert for a black man as the suspect. In an excruciating twist to the whole story, at one point, a mere two blocks from the crime scene, Officer Don Fouke, responding to the call from dispatch, observed a stocky white man walking along the sidewalk. Fouke actually asked this man–presumably the Zodiac, if he had seen anything strange. The Zodiac said he had seen a man running in the other direction with a gun, and the cop car sped off. The was the closest anyone would ever come to catching the Zodiac Killer. But it was not to be, due to a linguistic slip involving a racial mix-up. An intensive search ensued, but no possible suspects were found. A police artist worked with the three teen witnesses  to prepare a composite sketch of Stine’s killer.

Following the taxi cab murder in the city, San Francisco Detectives Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi were assigned to the case. Toschi, a charismatic figure at SFPD, would be the inspiration for the Harry Callahan character in the 1971 film Dirty Harry, in which the villain, referred to as “Scorpio,” was clearly modeled on the Zodiac.

The San Francisco Police Department investigated an astonishing 2,500 suspects over a period of many years following the Stine murder, all to no avail. Both Toschi and Armstrong would be tormented and enraged by the Zodiac, their own personal health and well-being jeapardized by their inability to crack the case. It is worth pointing out that at the time, police departments from different cities and counties were not too willing to fully cooperate with each other on cases. Inter-departmental task forces were not exactly standard practice. Police were not geared for cross-country murder sprees. When Robert Graysmith, researching his Zodiac book, began to look at the evidence from all four attacks as a single unfolding story, he was able to uncover more information and make more connections than any of the actual detectives.

At the time, however, without the benefits modern forensics science, and with no murder weapons and no matching fingerprints, what the detectives mainly had to work with, in addition to witness statements, were the letters. Handwriting analysis took on a newfound sense of urgency with the Zodiac. The case became an exercise in semiotics. Psychologists and criminologists were consulted. The killer’s mental state was analyzed. The letters seemed to indicate a degree of sexual sadism. Toschi speculated that the Zodiac must have been masturbating as he wrote them. In any case, there was ample opportunity to explore various interpretations, because the letters kept coming in, with the now customary opening line, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” The killer clearly thrived on the public attention and notoriety he was receiving, typically demanding that the newspapers print his deranged missives in their entirety, or else he would retaliate by going on a rampage. At one point he insisted that people in San Francisco start wearing “Zodiac buttons” around town. This trend never quite caught on.

• On October 14, 1969, the Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a bloodstained fragment of Paul Stine’s shirt tail to prove he was the killer. The letter also included a threat about killing schoolchildren on a school bus. Zodiac claimed that his plan was to “just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”

• On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded. Numerous possible solutions have been suggested, but none can be claimed as definitive. Perhaps it is just gibberish.

• On November 9, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter ridiculing the two policemen who pulled over and spoke with him just three minutes after he shot Stine in the taxi cab. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12. That same day, Officer Don Fouke wrote a shamefaced memo explaining what had happened that night.

• On December 20, 1969, exactly one year after the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, the Zodiac mailed a letter to famed San Francisco Attorney Melvin Belli, “the Duke of Torts.” In this letter, which included another swatch of Stine’s shirt, the Zodiac claimed he wanted Belli to help him:

“Dear Melvin, This is the Zodiac speaking. I wish you a happy Christmass [sic]. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extreamly [sic] difficult to hold it in check I am afraid I will loose [sic] control again and take my nineth [sic] and possibly tenth victom [sic]. Please help me I am drownding [sic]. At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so massive to dig in & the trigger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I hold back too long from no nine I will loose all control of my self & set the bomb up. Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer.”

Spelling was clearly not one of the Zodiac’s strengths. Or were the misspellings just a ruse? Likewise, was the plea for help in fact genuine? Or some sick joke? The Zodiac, or someone claiming to be the killer, had reached out to Belli once before, with a request that either Belli or F. Lee Bailey appear on the local television show “A.M. San Francisco,” hosted by Jim Dunbar. Bailey was not available, but Belli was able to rush over to appear on the program. In a truly surreal episode in TV history, Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times, saying his name was “Sam.” Belli engaged in a series of on-air conversations with the caller about headaches and aspirin and chiropractors, and agreed to meet with him outside a thrift shop in Daly City. The suspect never showed up. The caller was later identified as an inmate of a mental asylum, not the actual Zodiac.

The Zodiac’s threats to detonate bombs or shoot at school buses induced terror throughout the Bar Area community. None of these threats ever materialized, however.

On March 22, 1970, another deadly attack was apparently attempted, but narrowly averted, in Modesto, California. A woman driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma with her ten month old daughter was experiencing car trouble. A man offered to give her a ride to a nearby service station. Inside the car, he may or may not have threatened to kill her. Evidently he drove around for 90 minutes without stopping. She may have leaped out of the car and fled with her child. It is unclear exactly what happened, due to conflicting statements and reports. The man did match the description of the Zodiac. And the Zodiac did claim to be the man involved in subsequent letters. But who knows?

Who indeed? It is impossible to do justice here to the incredible twists and turns of this meandering case as it dragged on through the years. Police began to suspect that the Zodiac may have been responsible for the murders of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards, who were shot and killed on June 4, 1963, on a beach near Gaviota. Likewise, police considered a possible link to the murder of Cheri Jo Bates, who was stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on October 30, 1966, at Riverside City College in Riverside. And police were also concerned that the disappearance of Donna Lass might be the Zodiac’s doing. Ms. Lass was last seen on September 6, 1970, in Stateline, Nevada. A postcard with an advertisement for a condominium complex near Lake Tahoe on the back was received at the Chronicle on March 22, 1971, and has been interpreted as the Zodiac claiming Lass was one of his victims. However, no evidence was uncovered to definitively connect Donna Lass’ disappearance with the Zodiac.

Throughout 1970, the Zodiac continued to send regular letters and greeting cards to the Chronicle. He threatened to bomb school buses. He took credit for multiple killings that could not be verified. He kept score of how many killings he had committed (his final tally was 37). He sent a ghoulish Halloween card and death threat letter to reporter Paul Avery, who had been writing up the Zodiac story for the paper.

Then, abruptly, the letters stopped. No new crimes were boasted. No threats issued. Nothing, for three whole years. Was the Zodiac running out of steam?

It wasn’t until January 29, 1974 that the killer was heard from again. On that day, the Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac praising The Exorcist as “the best saterical comidy [sic]“ that he had ever seen. The letter included a snippet of verse from an executioner’s song in The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as an unusual symbol at the bottom that has remained unexplained by researchers. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, “Me = 37, SFPD = 0.”

A handful of other letters were sent during 1974, but their authenticity is debated. The avalanche of publicity that had engulfed the Zodiac story during the past several years had produced plenty of copycat activity, including fake letters and prank calls. And police were presented with innumerable leads that turned out to be simply wild goose chases or attempts at revenge. If you were angry at your ex-husband or your step-father, one surefire way to get even was to claim that he was the Zodiac Killer. No wonder Detectives Armstrong and Toschi were nearly driven mad by the case. Red herrings were everywhere. The cops could never seem to zero in on a single suspect and obtain enough evidence to even come close to an arrest, let alone pursue a conviction.

And now the Zodiac seemed to by laying low. The question is why? One can’t help but assume that a serial killer who craved attention and notoriety would keep pushing the envelope. The natural progression, in fact, would seem to culminate in a highly publicized arrest and trial. Many serial killers probably want to be captured; this ensures them some degree of personal celebrity. Thus Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez get to enjoy stacks of fan mail and love letters in prison. John Wayne Gacy was able to see his clown paintings sell for thousands of dollars apiece. Charles Manson gets to do interviews with the tabloid media, while his fans manage his website and sell his murderabilia.

One of the strangest things about the Zodiac case is that by the mid 1970s he eschews this sort of celebrity altogether. He simply stops communicating. He presumably stops committing crimes (though we can’t be sure), and has no desire for further attention. Why? Did he get sick and die? Did he become too incapacitated to function anymore as a serial killer? Did he retire? Was he somehow cured of his mental illness? What happened? We simply do not know. If nothing else, the Zodiac remained a true enigma.

In a March 30, 1978 front page re-cap of the Zodiac case for the San Francisco Examiner, Detective Toschi stated:

“I think he’s alive. It’s almost a gut feeling. But, if he had been killed in an accident or committed suicide or been murdered, I believe someone would have gone into his room. And I think he would leave us something to find.”

Toschi went on to explain that, “He got his pleasure by telling us about the murders. My guess is that he hasn’t been killing. Ego is what forced him to kill and write letters, knowing the media would broadcast and print it. I think he is in a period of remission and that some symptoms abated. Perhaps during this period, he had no desire to kill.”

A month after this statement to the Examiner, Toschi himself became embroiled in a controversy that seems emblematic of the strangeness of the Zodiac case as a whole.

Shortly after Toschi’s statements to the Examiner, it appeared that the Zodiac had broken his silence. A letter to the Chronicle, dated April 24, 1978, was initially deemed an authentic work from the Zodiac. This would have made it the twenty-first letter from the killer since 1969. The letter read as follows:

“Dear Editor, This is the Zodiac speaking. I am back with you. tell herb caen I am here, I have always been here. That city pig toschi is good. But I am smarter and better he will get tired then leave me alone. I am waiting for a good movie about me. who will play me. I am now in control of all things.”

The letter was big news. Toschi, and his principle case and personal obsession, were back in the news. Then, a few months later in July, Toschi’s world came crashing down. “Shocker in S.F. Zodiac Case,” screamed the headline in the Oakland Tribune. After eighteen years as a star of the elite homicide squad at SFPD–nine of those years spent relentlessly chasing  the Zodiac–Toschi was being demoted to Pawn Shop Detail. The story that unfolded was both silly and scandalous.

Apparently a complaint against Toschi had been filed on June 6, 1978 by Chronicle columnist Armistead Maupin (and his publicist). Maupin thought that the tone of the recent Zodiac letter was similar to certain anonymous letters he had received praising Toschi. Maupin had featured Toschi as an advisor to one of his characters in his “Tales of the City” serial. In the serial, Toschi helps to arrest a Zodiac-like serial killer known as “Tinkerbell.” Maupin suspected that the anonymous fan letters praising Toschi were in fact written by Toschi himself–as a form of self-promotion. Thus, Maupin claimed there was reason to suspect that Toschi had also forged the last Zodiac letter.

Toschi admitted to writing and sending the fan letters to Maupin. It was a lark, he said, a way for he and his family to have fun with his characterization in Maupin’s popular column. But he dismissed as absurd the notion that he forged any letter from the Zodiac. Experts tended to agree with him. Nonetheless, Toschi’s reputation was damaged. And his enemies at SFPD, who resented his fame, were able to capitalize on his indiscretion. Armistead Maupin garnered a fair bit of publicity. And somewhere, if he was still around, the Zodiac was no doubt having a good  laugh.

The April letter’s authenticity continued to be debated. In his book Graysmith claims that his own deep analysis of the letter led him to a kind of breakthrough. He asserts that he came to the realization that the Zodiac didn’t actually write any of the letters, so much as he traced their contents using a stenciling method, whereby each character was drawn according to outlined characters compiled from the handwriting of various others.

It’s all very complicated and strange–a fine example of how a particular controversy can emerge and then morph into some new discovery, which in turn leads to a whole new set of questions and any number of possible theories. There’s no end to this, when it comes to the Zodiac case. After April 1978, though, there were no further communications attributed to the Zodiac himself.

By 1986, when he finally publishes his meticulously researched book, Graysmith claims he has solved the mystery of the Zodiac’s identity. And while the case Graysmith builds against the man named Arthur Leigh Allen is made fairly convincingly, the proof does not lead us beyond a reasonable doubt. No doubt Graysmith has enough circumstantial evidence to make Allen a leading suspect. Which is what Detectives Toschi and Armstrong thought all along, and which is why they investigated Allen at considerable length. They simply could never obtain any physical evidence to arrest him and press charges. Allen was a sociopath, a possible child molester, and all-around unpleasant person. He made incriminating statements, owned a typewriter that may have produced the letters, wore a Zodiac watch, and most importantly, could reasonably be placed at the scene of each murder. But whether he was without a doubt the Zodiac Killer–we just can’t be sure at this point. And since Allen died in 1992 of natural causes, he will never be prosecuted for any of the crimes. Readers of Graysmith’s books will have to make up their own minds. These books have their admirers and their detractors. Regardless of whether you agree with his conclusion or not, Graysmith’s Zodiac is a tremendous book which reads frighteningly well. It certainly presents a thoroughgoing account of the whole baffling affair, and all of the personalities involved.

Of course, one’s enjoyment of Graysmith’s true crime writing may depend on one’s comfort level with a high degree of indeterminacy and doubt. With the Zodiac Killer, we remain trapped in a kind of hall of mirrors. There is no truth in this funhouse, no certainty, no confidence. Just horrible crimes, accompanied by a confusing jumble of partial evidence, conflicting information, hearsay, and theories. No matter how obsessed we might become with all of this material, we only seem to end up with more questions. The books and films may be brilliant, yet we must, in good conscience, remain unconvinced. In the end, the cryptograms turn out to be indecipherable. The letters have no ultimate meaning.

Perhaps the Zodiac was French deconstructionist philospher Jacques Derrida. I don’t have any hard proof, but it makes sense, when you think about it. The Zodiac case seems to deconstruct itself as it proceeds with each new set of ciphers, and each new theory.

In any case, it’s hard to conceive of any other high profile case that could log so many police hours, and generate so much discourse, and yet still remain unsolved. Imagine if the Tsarnaev brothers, for instance, instead of being killed or captured following the Boston bombing, were to spend the next several years hiding out, setting off a few more bombs and there, and sending out bizarre letters to the press, without ever being caught. This would be unthinkable for us, in our present context.

Which leads to a final question worth pondering: in our current society, with our rapid flow of digital information and our advanced surveillance and DNA testing and paramilitary police forces, is a postmodern serial killer such as the Zodiac now rendered obsolete? Would such a phenomenon even be possible anymore? We shall see what our new “information age” has in store for us.

by Darcia Helle

In 1870, New Orleans was a city divided by politics, class, and race. The Civil War had left much of the south reeling, and now the government’s Radical Reconstruction attempted to force change by integrating the black population into the white-dominated hierarchy. Some whites rebelled, clinging to their Confederate roots, while others who supported the change suffered ridicule and disdain within their community. The atmosphere was tumultuous. Racism was not only openly practiced but encouraged.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice John Campbell, who resigned in order to join the Confederacy, illustrates this point well. He had this to say to his fellow New Orleanians: “We have Africans in place all about us, they are jurors, post office clerks, custom house officers & day by day they barter away their obligations and duties.”

Racial strife was not the only or even necessarily the biggest cause of violence. New Orleans’ wealthy class had a hair-trigger temper when it came to real or perceived slights. Duels to the death continued to be a favorite way of settling these disputes, earning the city of New Orleans the title of ‘Dueling Capital of the South’. The reason for this ran to the core of their values. Class and reputation were vital to the people of New Orleans. They believed the way a person dressed, spoke, and carried him/herself to be a statement of character. A person’s reputation was unquestioned, upheld by the community, and so the residents held a zero tolerance policy toward slander.

By 1870, this self-appointed elite class had become the minority. Foreign born immigrants made up 75% of the city’s population. Prejudices went much deeper than skin color. Irish and German immigrants were considered lowlifes, their presence tolerated by the upper class only slightly more than the presence of African-Americans. This hostile environment made New Orleans one of the most dangerous places in America during the late 1800s.

Thomas and Bridgette Digby were two of the city’s Irish immigrants living in relative obscurity. They had fled their country during the mid-1800s, along with thousands of others known as the “Famine Irish”. By June of 1870, the couple had three children and were living in a working class section of New Orleans. Thomas drove a hackney cab, and Bridgette took in laundry and sewing from the wealthy residents. Nothing about them or their lives was remarkable at the time. Certainly nothing suggested that their names would be committed to history.

That all changed on the afternoon of Thursday, June 9. At the end of each workday, the Digby’s street bustled with activity as people made their way home from their various jobs. On this day, two of the Digby children were in their front yard playing while Bridgette cooked dinner. George Digby, age 10, was playing with a group of friends. Seventeen-month-old Mollie was being watched by Rosa Gorman, a white teenage neighbor who sometimes babysat for Bridgette. Rosa was standing by the sidewalk, holding Mollie in her arms and occasionally conversing with the passersby.

Two African-American women who’d been walking by stopped to chat with Rosa. This was not unusual, despite the racial tension within the city. Irish and German immigrants shared that part of the city with free northern blacks and former slaves. They frequently conversed and even did business with one another. The two women were familiar to Rosa. She’d spoken to them before, though she did not know their names.

As they stood talking, Rosa noticed smoke and flames coming from a storefront two blocks away. Soon the fire engine, pulled by a horse, raced by with its bell clanging. An excited crowd followed to watch Seligman’s Photographic Studio burn. Rosa wanted to join the procession to watch the firefighters at work. She called to George Digby to take his sister. While George grumbled, the taller “mulatto” woman extended her arms and offered to take Mollie so that Rosa could go. Rosa happily handed Mollie off, leaving the two children in the care of the two African-American women on the sidewalk.

In today’s society, this would seem an insane thing to do. We don’t leave our children with strangers, regardless of race or color. But communities were different in the late 1800s. Relying on one’s neighbors was not unusual. The main factor here was probably that these two African-American women were well-dressed, well-spoken, and familiar. In the city of New Orleans, where people based their opinions on appearance, this meant the two women were trustworthy.

This one incident on that June afternoon taught an entire community that looks are deceiving.

After Rosa raced off behind the horse-drawn fire engine, the shorter of the two women called to George, Mollie’s brother, and asked if he knew where a particular seamstress lived. He said he did, and so the woman took him by the hand and asked if he would take them there. The two African-American women, one holding Mollie in her arms and the other holding George by the hand, made their way through the crowded streets.

According to George’s later account, he soon pointed out the home of Mary Cooks, the seamstress in question. The shorter woman told George he was mistaken, that it wasn’t the home they were looking for. And so they walked on.

New Orleans in 1870 was racially divided, but it wasn’t unusual to see black women with white children. African-Americans and black Creoles often worked as nannies for white families. No one paid the four of them any attention as they joined the crowds on the busy streets.

Eventually they reached a public market. The woman holding Mollie, described as tall and wearing a “seaside hat”, handed George some money, directed him to a booth to buy some bananas for his sister, and said they would wait for him. When George returned, the women – and Mollie – were gone.

The events following Mollie Digby’s kidnapping created chaos within New Orleans. The city was in the midst of Radical Reconstruction, already bitterly divided by racial issues, and now two black women had stolen a white child. The rumors didn’t take long to start circulating. People claimed Mollie had been taken for voodoo sacrifice. Others said she’d been sold to roaming Gypsies. Then there were those who speculated that she’d been abducted as revenge against Thomas Digby for some perceived slight, or that she was being used to extort money from a former lover by claiming the child to be his.

As rumors swirled and people pointed accusing fingers, the newly integrated police force struggled to gain traction in the case. In June of 1870, 28% of the New Orleans police force was African-American. While the majority, and all ruling officers, were white, this did nothing to ease the minds of conservative – bigoted – white New Orleans citizens. They wanted someone to blame for the police department’s failure to find Mollie and her kidnappers. White Police Chief Algernon Sidney Badger, along with Jean Baptiste Jourdain, the detective in charge of the case, became easy targets.

At a time when newspapers had limited circulation, before TV news gave us images of tragedies across the country, and long before the Internet put this all at our fingertips, the Digby case made national news. The missing child, however, was not the driving factor. Sadly, kidnappings and missing children were fairly common occurrences back then. The interest here stemmed partly from the circumstances, with well-dressed, well-mannered African-American women stealing a white child. But, more than that, the nation paid attention because this was the first case ever to be handled by a black police detective.

The details of this case are too complicated and convoluted to share here. For a full account of this story, as well as fascinating details of the historical period, I highly recommend reading The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Rage, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era by Michael A. Ross. The short version of this story is that the outraged and outspoken media and citizens pushed the police department toward an arrest. In fact, they demanded nothing less. The following is a typical newspaper quote during the weeks after Mollie’s abduction:

“We may say to the police of New Orleans, that unless this child be found, they will suffer a burning disgrace – a lasting shame.” ~ The Picayune

Nonexistent witnesses were conjured up, people embellished or outright lied, and police interrogated and threatened anyone thought to be even remotely involved. The intense emotions surrounding the case fractured the relationship between white and black Creoles. Before this, black Creoles and African-Americans existed on different planes, with black Creoles enjoying a higher status within their community. They were longtime residents, businesspeople, respected by the white-dominated population. With Mollie’s disappearance and the ensuing investigation, they found themselves scrutinized in ways they hadn’t experienced. Prejudice stung them as black Creole women became the lead suspects. The racial divide carried them along, lumping them in with the now freed slaves who couldn’t be trusted.

Eventually two black sisters – Ellen Follin and Louisa Murray – were arrested, after having been identified by three white ‘witnesses’. The preliminary hearing and criminal trial became the most talked about events in the city, as well as entertainment for the nation. The media was not so much concerned with facts of the crime, since the white-dominated papers, at least initially, assumed the women to be guilty unless proven innocent. The details the newspapers chose to share say much about the era and the mentality of southern society:

A reporter from the Picayune noted that Louisa Murray wore “a dress of brown checked summer silk and a very light brown and fleecy veil.” She was “a handsome quadroon” with “small features, thin drawn up lips”, and “a wealth of glossy hair”.

Another reporter noted that the two sisters were much alike. “Both are tall beyond the average women, and slenderly formed. They are… mulatresses, but are by no means deficient in good looks. They dress with exceeding care and evince in their appeal a great deal of taste.”

Perhaps the most astonishing part of this entire case, given the time period, the outright persecution of someone black to blame, and the lackluster defense, is that the two sisters were found innocent by a jury of ten whites and two Afro-Creoles. Not only were they found innocent, but the jury took a mere eight minutes to deliberate. Again, the newspapers played a large role here, though not in the way one might expect. As the investigative details became public, reporters latched on to the glaring improprieties made by police

The Commercial Bulletin wrote that it was “next to impossible that an inquest [could] be conducted with less regard to the rules of evidence, the suggestion of common sense, the proprieties of judicial proceedings, or the law indicating the duty of a committing magistrate.”

While the tumultuous times certainly contributed to Louisa Murray and Ellen Follin’s arrest, these same times also helped, on some subconscious level, to aid their defense. The sisters were well-known, well-respected, and well-educated Afro-Creole women. Had they been poorly educated African-American women, the trial’s outcome would likely have been far different. Also, Mollie Digby’s abduction came at a unique historical period. In 1870, New Orleans was a somewhat enlightened southern city. Just a few years earlier would have placed them in the midst of the Civil War, when Confederates demanded control and wanted to subjugate all people of color. Just a few short years later, this area of the south was taken over by White Supremists, ensuring no person of color held any position of power or authority. But during this seven month period, from June 1870 to February 1871, a racially divided city managed to look beyond color to see the core of injustice.

An especially intriguing aspect of this case is that, before the trial or even the arrests, Mollie Digby was found and returned home. Or so the story goes. A fair-haired child of the same age was certainly handed off to the Digbys, though we will likely never know for sure whether that child was indeed Mollie. When the child was first given to Thomas Digby, her father, a mere couple of months after her disappearance, he could not say for sure whether the child was Mollie. In fact, he initially denied she was Mollie and didn’t want to take her. With some cajoling from those who found her, he opted to take her back home to let his wife decide. Bridgette Digby saw her husband return home with the child in his arms, and she immediately declared that child to be Mollie. Most took her at her word, believing Bridgette Digby to know her own child. Others had doubts rooted in the fact that Bridgette had been institutionalized because of her inability to cope with the loss of her daughter. She’d only recently been released and, perhaps, was so desperate to have her child back that she deluded herself into believing the fair-haired stranger was hers. There appears to be no record of Mollie’s reaction to being reunited with her parents or, possibly, the two people who claimed her as their own.

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.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is the largest city in a sparsely-populated state. With a population of somewhat over 150,000, it is more than double its size back in ’67 when I hung out there briefly with my crew when our VW Microbus developed engine trouble.

Although South Dakota is hundreds of miles east of the fabled Badlands, a huge national park known for its sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires – the sort of place you don’t want to get lost in – the “Badlands” recently came to Sioux Falls, metaphorically speaking, when a conventional-looking 30-year-old woman was arrested and placed in custody for allegedly raping not one, not two, but three little neighbor boys all at once in her apartment.

Rachel Skytta KDLT.com writes:

A Sioux Falls woman is charged with multiple counts of child rape, after her boyfriend found her with several young boys at their apartment.

According to police, 30-year-old Anne Elizabeth Doubler and the three little boys, who were in the 7-to-10 year age range, were all naked when her boyfriend and their four-year-old son came home to their apartment near the 600 block of N. Lewis Ave.

Unsurprisingly, law enforcement is quite confounded by this deeply disturbing case. Among other things, it’s still unclear how many other children may have been victims of this reported female pedophile.

“When we’re talking multiple victims, especially at one time, that’s something we don’t see very often,” said Officer Sam Clemens of the Sioux Falls Police Dept.

Clemens believes that there may have been a total of six prepubescent victims.

Ms. Doubler is facing multiple charges for first degree rape, sexual contact with a child, and sexual exploitation.

Although the precise details of the boyfriend’s discovery are a bit cloudy, according to the Café Mom, Kiri Blakeley, the boyfriend informed law enforcement that he walked into the apartment, and started to head upstairs, when he saw the au natural Ms. Doubler at the top of the stairs.

Although the boyfriend may have initially thought that Ms. Doubler’s nudity was for his benefit, he quickly learned that was not the case and called 911.

Police believe that the youngest of the potential victims is 5-years-old.

Female child molesters, who are sometimes frustrated or immature school teachers, usually target teenage boys, so if these allegations are true, this is an extremely unusual case.

One of the alleged victim’s mothers, a Ms. Batulo, who is very possibly of African descent and lives a few doors done from the suspect, told KDLT:

“She is bad, very bad. I asked the officer, I said ‘what is going on, what is she doing to my baby?’ I don’t feel good. I don’t like it.”

Ms. Batulo added that this wasn’t the first time that young boys had been over to the woman’s apartment. She said her son was shaking when he arrived home after the incident.

“The boys are seven and eight-years-old. I said ‘what’s she thinking’,” Ms. Batulo added.

“We don’t know if it necessarily started last night, or if it’s been going on for some time,” said Officer Clemens, elaborating further, “It really unusual to have multiple victims, especially in one instance. Especially, we had three and believe there’s up to six and there could be more as well. It’s pretty rare for something like that to happen.”

Although Officer Clemens seems to have a penchant for repeating himself, it’s certainly understandable given the circumstances.

When questioned, the boys described having sexual contact with Ms. Doubler.

Ms. Doubler is currently being held on a $50,000 cash-only bond. She apparently will be allowed to see her four-year-old son, but only during supervised visits.

If convicted of first degree rape, Doubler could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The Café Mom writes:

I couldn’t imagine being a mom and not letting my child go play at a woman’s house — a woman with a 4-year-old child. A neighbor. This really makes you rethink whether women are always “safe.”

* * * * *

Damn! This sounds awful and it seems pretty clear that something very untoward was probably going on. However, we don’t know precisely what occurred between Ms. Doubler and the boys, and it’s important not to succumb to hysteria. It’s notoriously hard to get at the truth in matters of this sort when the only witnesses are young children.

adapted by Patrick H. Moore

Sooner or later we all face that moment of truth — the Grim Reaper comes knocking and there’s no way to talk him out of it. Some of us will handle it bravely; others may flinch and quail. I suspect that in our private moments many of us wonder whether we’ll be up to the task when that day of reckoning comes. Here, therefore, as a sort of twisted inspiration, are some truly badass final statements by some strong — and in some cases evil — condemned men. The list was compiled by Ian Chessman of Cracked, who also gets credit for calling the statements “badass”, which they truly are. The quotes are in the public domain.

Carl Panzram, Serial Killer, about to be hanged:

“Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you’re fooling around!”

Panzram also stated on another occasion:

“I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill ‘em.”

Chief Sitting Bull’s final words when he was about to be shot by 43 members of the Bureau of Indian Affairs:

 ”I am not going. Do with me what you like. I am not going. Come on! Come on! Take action! Let’s go!”

The Chief also stated on another occasion:

“I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.”

George Engel, union activist and founder of the Socialistic Labor Party of North America as he awaited hanging:

“Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life.”

Engel was convicted of Conspiracy in the famous Haymarket Square labor riots in Chicago in 1893 which resulted in the death of seven policemen and four civilians.

Giles Corey, colonial farmer and accused Massachusetts Bay Colony witch, while being crushed with stones, in a futile attempt to make him confess his crime:

“More weight. Add more stones.”

Corey never did confess as the life was slowly squeezed out of him. I’m convinced he was innocent. You probably are too.

James French was a convicted murderer serving life in prison in Ohio. He decided a life sentence was just too long and decided to force the issue by killing his cell mate. His plan worked and he was given the electric chair. Unphased by it all, but glad to be going, French quipped as they strapped him in:

“Hey fella! How about this for a quote for tomorrow’s paper? ‘French fries.’”

French is not known to have made any other notable statements.

While facing the Irish Free State firing squad, Irish nationalist Robert Erskine Childers insisted on shaking hands with every marksman and then encouraged them to:

“Take a step forward lads — it’ll be easier that way.”

Childers was also a poet and novelist and wrote three respected spy novels: Riddle of the Sands; The Great Impersonation; and The Czar’s Spy.

And then there was Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, a thief, a murderer, and worst of all a “morning person.” He was wide awake for his early morning hanging and full of “piss and vinegar”.

“I’ll be in hell before you start breakfast! Let her rip!”

Ketchum’s executioners apparently didn’t appreciate being subjected to his racket so early in the day. They accidentally on purpose gave his line some additional slack which caused him to be decapitated when he dropped through the gallows.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Children’s fiction is full of stories in which clever teen (or even pre-teen) detectives delve into crimes and mysteries that they ultimately solve gloriously thus righting wrongs and bringing bad guy/girls to justice. These tales make for lively and highly entertaining reading that bring youthful readers many hours of constructive pleasure.

However, young readers should be forewarned that kids’ detective stories are just that: STORIES, and it is probably not wise or desirable for kids to attempt to solve serious crimes ON THEIR OWN IN REAL LIFE.

The heart-rending case of a 14-year-old Alabama special needs student who was SODOMIZED by a reputed adolescent sex fiend in a “sting operation’ gone wrong is an excellent case in point:

Hilary Hansom of Huffington Post writes:

An Alabama middle school is accused of using a special-needs student as “bait” in a sting operation that allegedly led to her rape.

The allegations resurfaced last week when the Department of Justice filed a brief saying the Alabama District Court made a mistake by dismissing the lawsuit brought by the girl’s parents, WAFF reports.

Here’s how this horrifying series of events “came down”, according to reports recently posted by various news services:

In January of 2010, a 14-year-old special needs student at Sparkman Middle School in Toney, Alabama went to a teacher’s aide named June Simpson and told her that a 16-year-old boy, who was known for sexual harassment and violent behavior, had propositioned her, telling her he wanted to have sex with her in the school bathroom.

Upon hearing this disturbing news, Ms. Simpson should probably have gone to the school authorities immediately, and if that didn’t work, she should have stepped it up to the next level by contacting city or county law enforcement.

Instead of following this “pedestrian” series of steps, Ms. Simpson decided to implement a “clever plan” to catch the rapist red-handed, “in the act” as it were, by using the 14-year-old as bait.

Ms. Simpson told the 14-year-old girl to wait for the Rapist in the bathroom. The plan was that as soon as The Rapist made his move, Ms. Simpson (and presumably others) would swoop in and arrest him. To her credit (and perhaps hoping that help would be forthcoming), Ms. Simpson informed vice-principal Jeanne Dunaway of the plan, but according to court documents, VP Dunaway did not give Simpson any “advice or directive.”

Before we unload on Ms. Simpson, it should be pointed out that earlier that school year, she had informed Principal Ronnie Blair that the boy needed constant supervision, but Blair informed her that he “could not be punished because he had not been ‘caught in the act.’”

Thus, although it seems quite clear that she may lack common sense, Ms. Simpson’s heart appears to have been in the right place. She wanted to nail the 16-year-old creep, and she tried to recruit help to aid her in doing precisely that.

Simpson allegedly told the girl to wait in the bathroom and instructed her, “Don’t do anything. Just get him to meet you and we’ll catch him.”

The aide later told authorities that she watched security cameras but saw neither the girl nor the boy go into the bathroom, so she gave up and left. However, the students had simply gone into a different bathroom, where the boy allegedly raped her, according to CNN.

VP Dunaway reportedly had the unmitigated gall to testify at a later hearing that the 14-year-old “was responsible for herself once she entered the bathroom.”

Doctors have confirmed that as a result of the sexual assault, the poor 14-year-old victim suffered anal tearing and bruising. The child withdrew from school and her family ultimately moved to another state. The damaged was done, however, and according to a press release from the National Women’s Law Center, the girl’s formerly good grades dropped and she began struggling with depression.

Unbelievably, although The Alleged Rapist was temporarily transferred to an alternative school, he later returned to Sparkman Middle School which he is now attending.

On second thought, perhaps it would have done no good had Ms. Simpson gone to the cops initially. Although a criminal investigation did take place after the rape it appears to have been perfunctory in nature and resulted in no charges. After that, the victim’s aggrieved family filed a lawsuit against the school’s administrators, but it was dismissed by the Northern District of Alabama District Court.

The Feds to the Rescue:

Although I am typically not a big fan of the Feds, it appears that they sometimes fill a valuable niche. At least, they appear to be doing so in this case. In a brief they filed last week in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that the Alabama District Court made a mistake and that the case should be heard in a different court.

Thus, depending on how the 11th Circuit Court rules, this case may not be over yet.

The National Women’s Law Center has also filed an additional suit against the Madison County School Board, calling the administration’s response “outrageous.”

Howe about “callous”, “cruel”, “uncaring” and “disgusting”?

So where do our Proud Players stand currently? Ms. June Simpson resigned (perhaps in shame) following the incident, but Jeanne Dunaway HAS BEEN PROMOTED and is now principal of an elementary school. Sparkman Middle School principal Ronnie Blair remains at the helm of his school. It is unknown whether he is supervising his 16-year-old Rapist as he lurks in the corridors of this bastion of higher learning.

I am slowly beginning to understand why some parents make the choice to home school their children.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

Deborah Hastings of the New York Daily News writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*      *     *     *     *

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

by Patrick H. Moore

Richard Ramirez, the world-famous Night-Stalker, died of “natural causes,” reportedly Hepatitis C or some other form of liver disease, in June of 2013. He was only 52. Few murderous crime sprees have matched that of Ramirez for sheer ferocity. During a relatively short period of time in 1985, Richard wreaked such havoc that when he was finally captured in East Los Angeles by a group of angry citizens on August 31, 1985, he was charged with thirteen murders, five attempted murders, six rapes, three lewd acts on children, two kidnappings, three acts of forced oral copulation, four counts of sodomy, five robberies and fourteen burglaries. Out of the 55 counts, he was convicted of 41 in a Los Angeles county courtroom on September 20, 1989. Since then, he has been serving time on Death Row in San Quentin.

Ramirez’ distinctive moniker was based on his modus operandi. He typically crawled into homes through open windows in the early morning hours. He was an equal-opportunity slayer who alternated between strangling, throat slashing and shooting. He left spray-painted pentagrams — a distinctive Satanist symbol — on the walls of the some of victims’ homes. The killings so terrorized Los Angeles County that there was a significant increase in the sale of guns, ammunition, locks and window bars.

One of the strange aspects of the Night-Stalker’s case is that he was captured and beaten by angry citizens in East Los Angeles after trying to steal a woman’s car. He made a frantic effort to escape seven Los Angeles Police patrol cars that chased him for 20 minutes, but was subdued by four determined citizens who worked him over with a steel rod. When the police finally arrived, they found him covered in blood, begging for his life in Spanish:

“Dejeme en paz! Dejeme en paz!” — Spanish for “Leave me in peace!

According to writer Jennifer Grise:

Richard was born in 1960 in El Paso Texas, to parents of meager economical means. His father, Julian Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant, and his mother, Mercedes Ramirez, a Mexican American citizen, both worked long hours every day to support their five children. Julian was an abusive parent as his father was before him. If Mercedes or any of the children did anything that Julian considered wrong they were physically beaten.

Richard and his siblings all had medical difficulties during early childhood, in part due to the Government-sponsored nuclear bomb tests in nearby New Mexico. The radioactive fallout from the bombs was wind-borne to El Paso, infecting the landscape, the livestock and the human population. The Ramirez children were born with problems ranging from respiratory difficulty to bone deformation, which permanently disabled Richard’s older brother Reuben.

In 1959, while pregnant with Richard, his mother Mercedes “was working at Tony Lamaís boot factory… mixing chemicals such as benzene, xylene and toluene.” During that era, the toxicity of these chemicals was either unknown or ignored. Mercedes gave birth to Richard on February 29th, 1960.

While in the 5th grade, Richard began having grand mal seizures in school and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. By this point, he had put his childhood ailments behind him “and was considered to be a healthy although hyper and aggressive child.”

Richard’s home environment was hardly a picture of mental health, but the single most destructive influence in his life was his cousin Michael, a Vietnam veteran just back from the war who had enjoyed killing and raping Vietnamese women. After his arrest, Richard reported that when he was 12 years old, Michael showed him a series of detailed photographs depicting him raping a Vietnamese woman. It is unclear who took the pictures or if they are authentic, but there is little doubt that they had a markedly deleterious effect on Richard. According to Richard, the last picture in the sequence was of the same rape victim’s severed head, “held by Michael in his hand, positioned so that the victim’s mouth was placed around his penis.” The series of photographs was, in effect, a photographic snuff film. Michael also taught Richard how to shoot a gun, and how to effectively maneuver a knife.

After a few months of this diabolical tutelage, a tragedy occurred:

Richard and Michael were at Michael’s house playing billiards. Michael’s wife Jessie was very angry with her husband, a fight ensued and Michael shot her, right in front of a twelve year old Richard. He then casually told Richard to get out of there before the police arrived, and never to tell a soul what he saw. This traumatic event was locked inside Richard’s mind for an extremely long time. Richard admits that he was especially sexually aroused by the photographs of the rape/murder victim that Michael showed him. He knew it was wrong to feel that way, and he couldn’t talk to anyone about it without getting Michael in trouble. So Michael remained his most special confidant and teacher, until he killed himself shortly there after. Richard continued to practice shooting the gun and wielding the knife until he was arrested.

When Richard turned 18, he moved to Los Angeles where he hit the streets and soon became an alcoholic and a cocaine addict. He and his crew hung out at the bus station. Honing his criminal skills, Richard obtained a master set of keys to Toyota and Honda cars. Each night, he stole a car and drove around Los Angeles looking for houses to rob. His all-around crime skills quickly improved:

Within two years he was robbing up to two homes per night. Once he became a master at burglarizing homes, he decided to up the anti. He began raping women and robbing them when he was through. Eventually Richard’s behavior escalated to include torture and murder. His torture, rape and murder spree was underway.

Although Richard claimed to be under the sway of Satanic influence, he had no specific identifying, ritualistic behavior to leave as his mark at each crime scene. He was no “This Is Zodiac Speaking.” He was rather an all-around murder generalist. Stabbing, strangling, shooting, it did not matter. He was no cannibal nor is there evidence he was fascinated with corpses a la Jeffrey Dahmer. Rather, he was a stone-cold killer, and a county of 10 million souls recoiled in fear as he left his swath of destruction in his bloody wake.

Click here to read:

Eight Awful Quotes by Richard Ramirez, Night Stalker

by BJW Nashe

When “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, who gained fame in the 1990s as a groove-metal guitarist for the band Pantera, was killed in 2004, many of us found the news hard to take. Rock stars are notoriously prone to early death. They overdose, wreck cars, die in plane crashes, hang themselves, hold guns to their heads, jump out of windows. Not Dimebag. He seemed indestructible — a force of nature, a highly talented musician whose outlook and productivity showed no hint of looming disaster. Nevertheless, fate dealt Dimebag a tragic blow one cold December night, when he was inexplicably shot and killed onstage while performing with his band Damageplan in Columbus, Ohio.

Prodigy. Darrell Lance Abbott was born on August 20, 1966 in Ennis, Texas. His father, a country musician and record producer, bought young Darrell his first guitar, a Hondo Les Paul, when he was thirteen. Darrell was soon winning local guitar competitions. He and the instrument seemed made for each other. In 1981, Abbott formed the band Pantera with his brother Vinnie Paul on drums. The band gained a following in the heavy metal scene, opening for large acts such as Slayer, Metallica, and Motorhead. Abbott soon drew attention for his expressive guitar work. He played monster metal riffs laced with blues licks; he used specific effects and tunings to tailor an individual sound; his solos could range from screaming rage to soaring melodies. Initially, he used the nickname “Diamond Darrell.” Later, as the band became more successful, he became known worldwide as Dimebag.

Cowboys from Hell. Pantera’s major label breakthrough album was Cowboys from Hell in 1990. Vulgar Display of Power was even more successful in 1992. The band had refined its “groove-metal” sound, which took heavy metal into a more musical direction, but sacrificed none of the power and rage. I remember seeing Pantera play in San Francisco around this time; the band was incredibly heavy yet undeniably soulful. Dimebag was clearly a guitar virtuoso at this point. He had managed to combine ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, and Slayer into his own wicked style of attack. Dimebag’s guitar didn’t just roar; it grooved and jammed and writhed around in between notes. He was the John Coltrane of heavy metal. His riffs sounded like Godzilla taking a stroll down the block.

Pantera went on to sell over twenty million records. In the mid-nineties, however, the band was plagued by lead singer Phil Anselmo’s drug addiction. Music was more important to Dimebag than a rock star party-lifestyle. Though far from a tee-totaller, he had no interest in heroin dependency. He took time off from Pantera to collaborate with numerous musicians, appearing on tracks by Anthrax, King Diamond, and Nickelback, among others. Dimebag’s unique solos were a prized commodity in the world of metal, always capable of lending fluid dynamics and depth and texture to any track. He also took time to explore his country roots, playing with local musicians from the Dallas area.

Damageplan. On indefinite hiatus from Pantera, in 2001 Dimebag and his brother Vinnie formed the band Damageplan in order to continue on in the groove-metal vein. With former Halford guitarist Pat Lachman on vocals, and Bob Zilla on bass, Damageplan released its debut album, New Found Power, on February 10, 2004. The record debuted at number 38 on the Billboard 200, selling 44,676 copies in its first week. By all accounts, Dimebag was excited by the new lineup, and looked forward to taking the show on the road.

Death Onstage. Damageplan was scheduled to play at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio on December 8, 2004. Three opening bands were also on the bill. A crowd of just 250 people showed up for the gig, well short of the venue’s capacity of 600. While the opening bands thundered away inside, outside a man named Nathan Gale was hanging around in the parking lot. Gale was a six foot three inch, 250 pound construction worker from Marysville, Ohio. He was reportedly wearing thick glasses and a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey over a hooded sweat shirt.

When someone asked him why he wasn’t inside enjoying the show, Gale replied that he didn’t care about any local bands; he was waiting for Damageplan. Club manager Rick Cautela thought Gale was a harmless hanger-on who didn’t have a ticket, or couldn’t afford one:

“He was just a crazy fan trying to talk to members of the band,” Cautela said. “One of my guys who helps to set up the bands eventually told him to leave.” Unfortunately, Gale had his own sick plans for Damageplan.

According to a Rolling Stone story from December 30, 2004:

 “… as Damageplan took the stage, Gale jumped a six-foot-high fence and rushed into the club through a side door. Walking swiftly past pool tables, a bar and the sound booth, he reached the left side of the stage. Witnesses thought Gale, whose head was shaved, wanted to stage-dive. It was about ninety seconds into the first song of the set, Damageplan’s new single, ‘New Found Power.’

“‘The dude was way determined,’ said Billy Payne, the singer for Volume Dealer, who saw Gale enter the club. ‘He was on a mission. He looked angry. He was walking like he was going into battle.’

“Onstage, Gale drew a Beretta 9mm handgun and headed straight for Abbott. Joe Dameron, bass player for Volume Dealer, thought Gale shouted something about Pantera, but he wasn’t sure. ‘With the feedback, I didn’t hear what he said,’ Dameron said. ‘I saw him open his mouth to yell something, but I don’t know what it was. He just looked determined.’ Gale shot Abbott – who was headbanging, his hair in his face – at least once in the forehead. ‘Dime was doing his thing,’ said Aaron Benner, a fan who was standing nearby. ‘He gets really into it, so he was blindsided.’

“Cautela, who was tending bar, thought firecrackers had gone off. Others figured the speakers had popped or somebody had fired a cap gun. ‘I thought they were playing a big gimmick,’ said Ryan Melchiore, who was working security. ‘People were pumping their fists, thinking it was a hoax.’ Cautela kept pouring drinks.

“The music stopped; drummer Vinnie Abbott, Darrell’s brother, stood up behind his kit. Abbott’s guitar began to emit feedback in a high-pitched shriek.

“A security guard tackled Gale, who continued to shoot into the crowd. One bullet grazed the arm of a Volume Dealer roadie, Travis Burnett, a burly former soldier who dropped his beer and ran toward the stage to try and disarm the shooter. ‘I asked him, Dude, what the fuck are you doing?’ Burnett said. ‘He was like, Get out of here, get away. As I went to grab him, he shot at me. The bullet went through my shirt, and I didn’t even feel it.’

“Darrell Abbott lay on the stage, bleeding from his head. While most fans fled, one concertgoer, Mindy Reece, a registered nurse from Columbus, rushed forward. ‘I said, Fuck this, I’m a nurse,’ said Reece. ‘He needs help.‘I did chest compressions for fifteen to twenty minutes. I kept saying, Dimebag, come on, come on, please, stay with me.’ Abbott was near death by the time paramedics arrived.

“From the backstage area, Officer James Niggemeyer appeared, carrying a twelve-gauge Remington shotgun. He walked past a stack of amplifiers and saw Gale, who had taken a male hostage. Holding his gun to the unidentified man’s head, Gale began moving toward the rear of the club. From twenty feet away, Niggemeyer fired once, killing Gale.

“Nathan Gale, according to people in Marysville, was troubled, but not prone to violence. He enlisted in the Marines in 2002 but left the Corps, for as yet unknown reasons, eighteen months later. He worked on construction sites; in an oil-change shop, Minit Lube; and as a landscaper. Gale also played offensive guard for Lima Thunder, a local semipro football team. On the team bus, Gale could often be found with his headphones on, listening to Pantera.

“On November 17th, at 3:20 A.M., police arrested Gale for driving with a suspended license. By then, friends told the Columbus Dispatch, Gale had changed; he’d begun talking and laughing to himself. He told a friend that Pantera had stolen his songs and that he was going to sue them.

“Lucas Bender, manager of Bear’s Den Tattoo in Marysville, across the street from Gale’s house, said Gale was a frequent visitor. ‘He got a tattoo on his right or left forearm, a big custom-design tribal,’ said Bender. ‘He also got his ear pierced about a week or two ago. He came in on a daily basis. I tried to keep him away from the clientele; he kind of gave everyone a weird impression.’

“Bender said Gale told him he’d left the Marines due to mental problems, was taking medication and may have been bipolar. ‘Nathan was infatuated with guitarists,’ said Bender. ‘One of our tattoo artists plays guitar, and Nathan started trying to hang out with him.’

“As police officers and detectives flooded the Alrosa Villa on December 8th, Vinnie Abbott escaped into the Damageplan tour bus. He climbed into Dimebag’s bunk and wept.”

 

Aftermath. Following the tragic shooting, several thousand fans and friends gathered at the Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, Texas, to mourn the loss of Dimebag Darrell Abbott.

The inside of the convention center was filled with flowers and oversized magazine covers featuring Dimebag, according to The Dallas Morning News. Among the musicians on hand to pay tribute were guitarists Zakk Wylde and Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains, as well as members of Pantera and Slipknot.

Eddie Van Halen, a good friend of Dimebag, had earlier placed his original black with yellow stripes guitar (commonly called “bumblebee”) into the Kiss Kasket Abbott was buried in. A copy of the guitar, designed in Dimebag’s favorite color combination, was crafted by Van Halen as a gift several months before his untimely death. However, upon hearing of the shooting, he offered to place the original guitar in the casket. Dimebag’s brother Vinnie was quoted as saying, “If he had known he would be buried with this guitar, he would have said ‘shoot me now!’”

In a stunning display of ignorance and bad taste, a man named William Grim outraged the metal community when he wrote an article for the web site Iconoclast titled, “Aesthetics of Hate: R.I.P. Dimebag Abbott, & Good Riddance.” In the piece, Grim claimed that Dimebag was “part of a generation that has confused sputum with art and involuntary reflex actions with emotion,” “an ignorant, barbaric, untalented possessor of a guitar” who looks “more simian than human.”

In retaliation, Rob Flynn, vocalist and guitarist for the stellar metal band Machine Head, wrote a song called, “Aesthetics of Hate.” The track is a glorious eruption of speed and fury. “Aesthetics of Hate” received a nomination for Best Metal Performance at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008.

Just 38 years old when he was senselessly gunned down onstage, Dimebag Darrell is now widely recognized as one of the most influential hard rock/metal guitarists of all time, alongside such luminaries as Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen, and Randy Rhoades. He is also considered by all who knew him as one of the finest people you could find working in the tumultuous, ego-driven music business.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s well known that sometimes a guy gets hungry. When you get hungry, however, it’s generally assumed that murdering your girlfriend and consuming her organs after cutting them out of her still-warm flesh is not appropriate behavior, even if you think you are actually a former NFL player named Zeus Brown and that you played for the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns prior to “getting hungry”.

You’re not buying it?

Well, neither am I, with one caveat. Although our suspect, whose name is actually Joseph Oberhansley (Joe O. for short), probably doesn’t believe he is NFL baller Zeus Brown (great name, by the way), he may nonetheless not be quite right in the head, not that a positive diagnosis of certifiably crazy is liable to do him much good in this case given the hideous nature of his alleged crime.

What did Joe O. do?

The Crimesider Staff at WLKY Louisville writes that Joe O., 33, brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend, Tammy Jo Blanton, 46, last Thursday and then ate at least part of her lungs, heart and brain after cooking them. Bloody plates, pans, and utensils were found in Ms. Blanton’s kitchen.

On Monday, Oberhansley, 33, made his first court appearance, maintaining his innocence. But CBS affiliate WLKY reports that (according to) newly released court documents he confessed to police September 11, just hours after the body of Tammy Jo Blanton, 46, was found.

In the probable cause affidavit, which was filed Monday, Joe O. admits that he broke into Blanton’s home and stabbed her multiple times, killing her.

The affidavit also states that after Oberhansley killed Blanton, he removed parts of her skull and brain, heart and part of a lung, which he then cooked and ate.

So this is really nothing new. Every so often a hungry guy kills his estranged girlfriend and cooks and eats her organs.

But what really got the courtroom buzzing was the fact that while addressing the court on Monday, Joe O. calmly told the judge that police have the wrong guy. He’s not the killer/eater. He can’t be because his name is Zeus Brown, a former NFL baller who played for the Ravens and the Browns. And then, in a truly novel twist, Joe O. told the judge he’s not sure if he’s a U.S. citizen.

“I don’t buy it. I think there is a motive and a reason for what you saw in the courtroom today and I don’t believe he really believes he’s Zeus Brown,” said Clark County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jeremy Mull.

Well, yeah… The motive and reason is probably that Joe O. is trying to convince all and sundry that he’s stark raving mad.

Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart responded in similar fashion, stating that Joe O’s attorney may file a motion to determine whether he’s mentally competent to stand trial.

“I think he may have just been playing games but it would only be a guess,” Stewart said.

Notwithstanding Joe O’s actual identity, Stewart is understandably disturbed by the actual crime.

“After being a prosecutor for so long you think you’ve seen everything. This is one of those cases where I’ve never seen this, where a defendant is alleged to have removed and eaten flesh of a murder victim.”

Ms. Blanton’s neighbor Edna Hall observed Joe O and Blanton arguing Wednesday night. She also observed the suspect putting clothes into his car around 9:30 p.m.

There’s just something about us guys when we don’t get out way. Is it something in the air or are we just depraved by nature? In any event, the court documents state that at 2:52 a.m. Thursday (5 and ½ hours after Hall saw them arguing), Ms. Blanton (in obvious fear) called police to report that Joe O. was trying to get into her home.

So the police had to come and told Joe O. to leave, which he did, for a while.

“Ms. Blanton talked to officers and said they had had a recent fight and she was breaking up with him. She had changed the locks and wanted him off the property,” said Jeffersonville Police Detective Todd Hollis.

What d’ya do when your girlfriend is rejecting you and she calls the police on you and they tell you to scram?

Well, that’s easy. You turn to good ol’ Mom. You wake her up out of a sound sleep and plead your case. In fact, according to the probable cause affidavit, after leaving Ms. Blanton’s residence, Joe O. woke his mother up around 3:30 a.m.

So poor Mom got the whole sob story. Not only was Joe O. miffed over the fact Ms. Blanton had changed the locks; he was also upset about his job and financial situation.

Why do we hungry guys feel so goddamned sorry for ourselves?

So poor Mom sat in Joe O’s car and spoke with him for several minutes before going back into the house and presumably going back to sleep.

This was a mistake. You never leave your madman son stewing in his car in front of your house at 3:30 am after his girlfriend has dumped him and changed the locks. It’s just asking for trouble. You made the mistake of bringing Zeus into the world; now you’re stuck with him.

* * * * *

Naturally, Ms. Blanton didn’t show up for work the next morning. A co-worker called her house and a man answered claiming he was the victim’s brother. Nobody believed him; perhaps Ms. Blanton had been telling her co-workers that she was going to have to ditch her psycho boyfriend.

When police arrived at Blanton’s home on Locust Street, they noticed signs of forced entry at the back door.

The man who answered the door identified himself as “Joe” but said he didn’t have identification. Officers noticed a fresh injury on Oberhansley’s right hand and he was slow and deceptive when answering questions, according to the affidavit.

Growing suspicious, the officers took physical control of Oberhansley and found a knuckled-grip folding knife with the blade extended. It was covered with blood and hair. Yucchhh!

They found Ms. Blanton’s in a bathtub, covered with a tarp. Her skull and chest had been cut open.

Jesus God! This fool might as well be Jeffrey Dahmer.

According to the M.E., Blanton died of multiple blunt sharp force traumas to the head, neck and torso.

Joe O. is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse and breaking and entering.

This is not the first time he has been in a jam. In 1998, Oberhansley was convicted in Utah of killing his 17-year-old girlfriend and shooting his mother. (Is this the same mother he woke up at 3:30 am before returning to Ms. Blanton’s house to do his foul deeds?) Joe O. was released in 2012.

Earlier this summer, he was arrested on allegations he strangled someone and led police on a (merry) chase.

When his bond was lowered, it was Ms. Blanton who paid to get him out.

What a generous and foolish lady. It has cost her everything!

Furthermore, I’m quite certain Joe O. is not actually Zeus Brown. Poor Zeus died of a diabetic ailment in 2011.

by Lise LaSalle

On June 27, 2010, 25-year old Emma Czornobaj stopped on Highway 30 west of Montreal to rescue some ducks crossing the road. She parked on the left-hand lane, put her blinkers on and proceeded to get out of her Honda Civic to push the ducks out of harm’s way. A first motorist went around to avoid her car but a second one carrying a father and his 16-year-old daughter riding in the back, collided with her car and they both died as a result.

Even with no criminal intent attached to her actions, Emma was convicted of an offence that carries a maximum life sentence; the jury that deliberated four days, found her guilty of two counts of criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death which could lead to a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Emma was ready to plead guilty to some of the charges but with no jail time. Her lawyer Marc Labelle tried to negotiate a deal with the Crown but nothing came of it. The case was in the media so they wanted their pound of flesh and insisted she did jail time.

Labelle insists to say that Canadian criminal law is not designed to handle such a case that found his client guilty of criminal negligence causing death. At trial, Labelle acknowledged his client’s action was ‘’open to criticism’’ and even ‘’dangerous’’, but he vehemently denied it was criminal.

“There may be room here in this case. But we’ll evaluate that: (whether) to ask the (Quebec) Court of Appeal if the way that a jury has to (consider) criminal negligence in Canada should be revised. Here we have a situation where the act was considered dangerous by the jury — that’s obvious. But there was no ill will at all — no alcohol, no speeding, no race. In a case like this, the instructions that the judge gave (to the jury) are a little bit unjust for a citizen in this situation.”

He also specified that he didn’t have a problem with the instructions Superior Court Justice Éliane Perreault provided to the jury before they deliberated.

“What I’m saying is that the instructions (all) judges are obliged to give on criminal negligence can’t suit a case like this. What the jury is asked is: consider the act, if it is dangerous, objectively, then you may infer there was a crime.’’

This case is stretching the limits of the criminal negligence definition and dangerous driving. Emma was an animal lover and when she stopped on the highway to avoid a family of ducks, she did put her hazards light on and never imagined that the outcome would be the loss of human lives.

Soon after she stopped, the motorcycle driven by André Roy and his daughter Jessie slammed in her car but he was driving exceedingly fast and wearing no helmet. A woman driving behind Emma had managed to avoid hitting her before Roy crashed into her car.

Her lawyer said she made a decision open to criticism with no ill will. She wanted to rescue some ducks. “You can’t judge this based on the type of animals involved. For example, what if this were four Labrador puppies.’’ Some people are having a field day because she cared about ducks.

Her lawyer, fiercely defends her saying it wasn’t a crime and that while she certainly has a fair amount of critics, her actions are not criminal and do not warrant prison.

Some factors beyond Czornobaj’s control included the position of the setting sun that night as drivers were headed west, and the speed at which Roy was driving his Harley-Davidson when it crashed.

Pauline Volikalis, the wife and mother who lost two family members in this accident says she doesn’t blame the young woman who will be charged in their deaths. When asked by reporters if she wants Emma to go to prison, she had no comments and said that she wished nothing of the sort for the defendant.

Volikakis insisted tat she had not pushed for charges against Czornobaj and was unable even to say whether she considered it a good thing the trial was held.

“It’s not me that’s bringing her to court,” she said. “I have no expectations concerning this trial.”

But she hopes the publicity will reinforce a basic message to drivers.

“Future and present drivers should know that we don’t stop on highways, and it’s very dangerous. Even if it’s a small animal that we like or that we want to preserve, we should not stop on the highways,” she said. “It’s not a place to stop.”

Czornobaj was willing to plead guilty as recently as April but refused to do jail time. She now has a sentencing hearing scheduled for August.

Lawyer Marc Labelle said his client was shocked by the verdict. He said the jury decided there was a criminal element to what she did. He said he might file an appeal.

“So now we are at the sentencing stage in this case. The question we have to ask is that considering the nature of the facts, it is rare that we have criminal negligence where there are no bad elements. This was not a race. This was not a person who took a chance and drove drunk. This is not about someone who was speeding and took a risky maneuver,” Labelle told reporters while suggesting his client might only merit a sentence that can be served in the community.

During the trial, a witness testified that she saw Czornobaj on the left-hand side of the highway, bent over and motioning to some ducks.

“I shouted to my children: ‘What is she doing there? She’s going to get killed,’” she noticed that the driver’s door of the parked car was open and she saw her car lift up in the air from the impact.

Emma, as a professed animal lover, told the court that she did not see the ducklings’ mother anywhere and planned to catch them and bring them home. She could easily would have been the one killed. Her actions were naïve but well-intentioned.

Labelle said he will use the next few weeks to decide if he will ask for a pre-sentencing report when the case comes back to court on Aug. 8. The report would involve a criminologist looking at many aspects of Emma’s life, as well as her attitude towards what she’s been convicted of, and make recommendations to the judge. Czornobaj, a financial analyst who graduated from Concordia’s John Molson School of Business, has no criminal record. She also made the dean’s list at Concordia while she studied there.

Emma’s actions are hard to understand but no one can deny that she intended to help animals and never imagined that she would cause a highway accident.

The fact that Pauline Volikalis does not blame her for the loss of her family, considering the circumstances, should have been sufficient to let her cut a deal involving community service. But as usual, the media glare made the Crown eager to shine in the spotlight.

When it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck and Emma is not a criminal but a fine young lady who made a huge mistake. She should not end up in prison for it. She will no doubt, live the rest of her life haunted by this ride to hell and the two people who lost their lives because of her impulsive decision to save baby ducks.

 Update: 

Sadly, the wife and mother of the two victims, Pauline Volikakis, has changed her mind and now says she wants Emma Czornobaj to face a sentence that reflects the gravity of her decision. She made her case against leniency at Czornobaj’s sentence hearing. 

The Crown is seeking a nine month prison term for Czornobaj and 240 hours of community service. The defence agrees with the 240 hours of community service, but is arguing for a suspended sentence with three years of probation, saying there was no criminal intent. 

Despite a public apology to Volikakis from Czornobaj in an interview with CBC News in July, the grieving wife and mother said Czornobaj should have done so sooner — and to her personally.  

“Why didn’t she do so following the accident? She never once tried to contact me. During the trial she had opportunities to speak to me,” Volikakis said. 

Czornobaj’s mother, Mary Hogan, told during the hearing that her daughter is sorry about the accident, which has affected her profoundly. 

“It changed who she was, at her very core… It was something she couldn’t talk about or share with us at all… She just couldn’t accept that it had happened,” she said.

Ed’s mother Augusta Wilhelmine Gein despised Ed’s father and considered him a failure for being an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job (he had worked at various times as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman). Augusta operated a small grocery store and used the proceeds from the sale of the grocery store in 1914 to purchase a farm on the outskirts of the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became the Gein family’s permanent home.

Augusta relocated to the farm to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Edward was allowed to leave the premises only to attend school. Other than that, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, a fervent Lutheran, preached to her boys about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking, and the belief that all women (except herself) were naturally prostitutes and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament concerning death, murder, and divine retribution.

Edward was shy, and classmates and teachers remembered him as having strange mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. He was sometimes bullied. To make matters worse, his mother punished him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.

While Gein was devoted to making his domineering mother happy, Augusta was rarely pleased with her boys, believing that they were destined to become failures and alcoholics like their father. In their teenage years and early adulthood, Ed and his brother Henry remained detached from people outside of their farmstead, and had only each other for company.

George Gein died of heart failure caused by his alcoholism on April 1, 1940, aged 66. Subsequently, Henry and Ed began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. By all accounts,both brothers were considered reliable and honest by residents of the community. While both worked as handymen, Ed also frequently babysat for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults. In 1941, Henry began dating a divorced, single mother of two, and planned on moving in with her; Henry worried about his brother’s affection for their mother, and often spoke ill of her around Ed, who responded with shock and hurt.

Henry Gein died in a marsh fire in 1944, under perhaps suspicious circumstances, leaving Ed and his mother alone on the farm. Augusta suffered a paralyzing stroke shortly after Henry’s death, and Gein devoted himself to taking care of her. She suffered a second stroke soon after, and her health deteriorated rapidly. Augusta died on December 29, 1945, at the age of 67. Ed was devastated by her death; in the words of author Harold Schechter, he had “lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world.”

After that Ed went downhill quickly. We’ll let Rachael Bell and Marilyn Bardsley of Crime Library entice you just a bit more with the following brief excerpt from their in depth Crime Library study of this remarkably strange individual.

Eddie Gein

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s well known that sex accompanied by strangulation, known as erotic asphyxiation,  is an increasingly popular pastime among the young, the kinky, the just plain adventurous, and sometimes the not too smart. A few older guys and gals also apparently don’t turn up their noses at the giddy pleasure. The Reverend Gary Aldridge, of Montgomery’s Thorington Road Baptist Church, died on June 24, 2007 from “accidental mechanical asphyxia”; he was “found hogtied, wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask.” This is even weirder than the sad passing of film star David Carradine, whose death has been described in the following manner:

David Carradine died on June 4, 2009 from accidental asphyxiation, according to the medical examiner who performed a private autopsy on the actor. His body was found hanging by a rope in a closet in his room in Thailand, and there was evidence of a recent orgasm; two autopsies were conducted and concluded that his death was not suicide, and the Thai forensic pathologist who examined the body stated that his death may have been due to autoerotic asphyxiation. Two of Carradine’s ex-wives, Gail Jensen and Marina Anderson, stated publicly that his sexual interests included the practice of self-bondage.

This is all well and good but it doesn’t answer the question of what do you do when you accidentally strangle your partner to death during the sex act and are left with his or her still hot but very dead body. Not being a practitioner of erotic asphyxiation, I cannot answer this highly pertinent question from personal experience. In September, however, an Italian lover by the name of Andrea Pizzicolo found himself confronted with this prickly situation when his lovely 18-year-old Romanian lover, Lavinia Simona Ailoaiei, accidentally expired during an erotic game the two of them were playing.

David Lohr of the Huffington Post writes:

A man who allegedly killed a Romanian teenager, had sex with her corpse and then dumped her body, was arrested in Italy. During a weekend press conference, prosecutor Vincenzo Russo, said murder suspect Andrea Pizzicolo was arrested at his home in Arese. The 41-year-old accountant shares the residence with his 5-year-old daughter and an unidentified woman.

According to the investigators, Pizzicolo killed his 18-year-old lover sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. He also didn’t cover his tracks very well. The young woman’s naked body was discovered Sunday in a corn field in Lombardy.  Pizzicolo hadn’t bothered to remove the self-locking plastic ties that were bound tightly around her neck. He left her unclothed corpse with a towel draped over her head, a mistake because the the towel led police to a nearby hotel, where Pizzicolo had allegedly rented a room Friday night.

When the  authorities searched Pizzicolo’s home, they allegedly found plastic ties similar to those that were found on the victim. Pizzicolo was escorted down to the police station. After four hours of determined interrogation, the Italian allegedly confessed. According to Prosecutor Vincenzo Russo, Pizzicolo stated:

“I’ve lost my mind, I went on tilt.”

Pizzicolo apparently then confessed that he had met the teen, who had just turned 18, on the Internet. Their rendezvous on Friday at a motel north of Milan was only their second date. Pizzicolo told the investigators that they engaged in an erotic sex game, in which Pizzicolo put the plastic ties around her neck. According to Pizzicolo, she struggled to breathe during their game and, despite his best efforts, he was unable to remove the ties and she expired.

According to Russo and the Head of the Flying Squad of Lodi, Alessandro Battista, the investigators have learned that Pizzicolo transported Ailoaiei’s body to another hotel, where he allegedly had sex with her dead body before he dumped it. The teen’s cellphone and other belongings were found in the trash bin of a restaurant near the second hotel.

Strangely, Ailoaiei is not the first victim to have been dumped in the outskirts of Lodi. According to La Repubblica, in 2011, a Moroccan woman was found dead in the area with her head and hands removed from her body. Roughly 10 years earlier a 25-year-old woman was found naked and strangled. Neither case has been solved.

The authorities have not indicated there is any connection between those two cases and the Pizzicolo case.

Pizzicolo has been charged with murder and committing obscene acts on a corpse.

The victim’s ex-boyfriend decried the alleged acts and remembered Ailoaiei as a “compassionate loving” girlfriend.

“I did not expect her to get hurt … I really miss her and love her,” AdmYn AdrYano, told The Huffington Post on Monday. (It almost sounds like he was in the motel room with them.)

*     *     *     *     *

Although Pizzicolo is charged with murder and committing obscene acts on a corpse, it seems to me that unless it can be proved that he intended to kill the 18-year-old victim, a more proper charge would be some form of aggravated manslaughter. As to the “committing obscene acts with a corpse” charge, I don’t believe it just be given much weight at sentencing. (Note: This is what I believed prior to the update based on this single case. See Update below).

As for the poor deceased victim, it’s hard for me to comprehend why she would practice erotic asphyxiation with an older gentleman whom she barely knew. Good god, it was only their second date.

Update:

Andrea Pizzocolo may have been responsible for other violent attacks, according to police.

More charges may be forthcoming against Andrea Pizzocolo, 41, who was convicted for the death of an 18-year-old woman, police said at a news conference.

A man has come forward to describe how in August he rescued a young woman who was tied in the same fashion as the earlier victim, police said.

And as many as 10 other similar cases are under investigation.

by Lise LaSalle

September 23, 2014, Steve Benson from The Arizona Republic published a ‘cartoon’ titled Middle East Has ISIS, Arizona Has Arias with the caption Media Manipulators.

My first reaction was to say ‘Are you shitting me?’ After mulling it over for a while, I had to admit to myself that the Arizona Republic has been somehow moderate so far about the Arias case compared to some of their counterparts, and that there was indeed some truth to the fact that Arizona was considering this Latina girl from Yreka, California like the worst thing to ever set foot in their territory. Calamity Jodi was born in an Arizona courtroom and if they had their way, they would have put her to death because of the great menace created and promoted by the media. Hell, they tried once and when it failed, they cried foul and are giving the sentencing phase a do over.

So OK the State of Arizona considers Jodi Arias aka Candy Crush because of her super addictive nature, like a crisis deserving of more media attention than ISIS. They have proven it so far with their incessant and loud media coverage. She is such a threat to national security that they spent millions of dollars to make sure she would be treated like the worst terrorist on the planet. Nothing is more dangerous than this woman. Right? After all, she has killed her abusive boyfriend by ‘cutting his throat’ so that would qualify her as a member of the Islamic State.

Are you shitting me? So terrorists who are trained to hate and who have used the media to terrorize the world by cutting the throats of reporters are comparable to a young woman who ended up in a battle to the death with her boyfriend? And this woman has manipulated the media like ISIS?

So far, every time Candy Crush has talked to the media, it has exploded in her face. She did two long interviews while in jail and what did not end up on the floor from the hours of tape, was a mashup of negativity that was played at trial by the prosecution. Who can forget the number one manipulation? ‘Mark my words, no jury will convict me.’ It worked so well that the jury used it to find her guilty. How arrogant of her to say that. And the two intruders’ story worked so well that it once again, sank her credibility like if she had attached cement weights to her own ankles. So bravo for Arias, she is such a master media manipulator.

Since she has cut the media pipeline and objects to cameras in the courtroom, we keep hearing the same tune: Media manipulator. What part of ‘she is not talking to the media, she is not on twitter and she does not give interviews’ don’t they get? Her art is for sale online because this is the only way she will be able to afford a defense or have any kind of money. Have you seen Nurmi in action or should I say in inaction? She has a lousy defense team and unlike Casey Anthony, no dream team jumped to her defense and she had no photos of her offspring to sell for cash flow. She is indigent. If she was wealthy, she would have been out on bail during the five years preceding her trial and probably would have never been charged to begin with. So when I hear that she is a master media manipulator, I think who is zooming who here? She has never had any power and was manipulated by the media who offered to tell her story and proceeded to make her look guilty as sin.

Arpaio has refused the request of a film crew who wanted to make a documentary about Candy. I am sure that he wants to make sure that no objective footage ever comes out of his Estrella cellblock. He is the only one who is allowed to be a media whore and to toot his own horn. If I was in her prison shoes, I would love to have a director say ‘Do you want the truth to come out?’

After her 1^st degree verdict, she gave interviews and once again, was accused of trying to influence viewers, but after being the object of a relentless hateful media campaign for so long, didn’t she have the right to try to tell her side of the story? I get the feeling that she is naïve enough to believe that some people will really listen to her and see that she is not the monster they make her out to be. But once again, it was an epic failure because she is still perceived as an international threat. The Ebola of Arizona.

During the investigation, Flores and some of Travis’ acolytes were trying to scare the population into thinking that she was going to kill other victims like the Hughes, her new beau and Alexander’s former girlfriend Lisa. Are you shitting me? Isn’t it how terrorists try to scare us? By spreading the fear of other attacks? I do not believe that it was Candy Crush playing terrorist in this situation, but the authorities and the victim’s circle of friends. Be afraid, be very afraid because the threat of Arias is imminent and she is coming for you. Boo!

Arias wrote a letter to Ryan Burns to assure him that she was not a threat. They even went as far as talking about her having buried other boyfriends in the desert. The Hughes made up the rabbit boiler nickname at that moment. The conspiracy to turn her into a national threat was going full steam, but it did not come from the bottom of her cell bunk where she was busy drawing, and trying to survive on peanut butter and beans while asking herself how on earth this could have happened to her life. The fear and terror campaign was taking place without her in the media.

ISIS

Isis was, in Egyptian mythology, the goddess of fertility and motherhood. She was the daughter of the god Keb (Earth) and his wife/sister, the goddess Nut (Sky). She was the sister-wife of Osiris, judge of the dead, and mother of Horus, god of day. She is described in ancient writings as having great magical skill, and she was represented as human in form though she was frequently described as wearing the horns of a cow, or as a winged woman.

Isis was believed to be powerful in the ways of magic, having the ability to create and destroy life with mere words. She not only knew the words which needed to be spoken to cause certain things to occur, but was also able to use exact pronunciation and emphasis in order for the desired effect to occur. It is believed that if the best effect was to be produced by words of power they must be uttered in a certain tone of voice, and at a certain rate, and at a certain time of the day or night, with appropriate gestures or ceremonies. Only when these conditions have been met can true magic occur.

This is obviously not the ISIS wreaking havoc and scaring the world right now. But we can clearly see that Candy did not have any power with words and no rabbit came out of a hat to save her because of her magic skills to influence the media or the jury. So we can cross that one off the list.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or ISIS is what we constantly hear about these days. The throat cutters of news gatherers who have used the media to promote their message of terror. The group has been described by the United Nations and the Western and Middle Eastern media as a terrorist group and the US designated them as a foreign terrorist organization. They are accused of grave human right abuses.

They recently beheaded two American journalists; James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Foley was kidnapped in 2012 and executed recently followed by Sotloff. This militant group fighting to establish an Islamist state, is the heir apparent of al-Qaeda and they are spreading into Syria and other regions. They say the executions are the result of Obama’s decision to conduct airstrikes in Iraq against ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State.

Everybody’s talking about it and that’s exactly what they want. “They want to cut through the media,” Aki Peritz, a former CIA counter-terrorism analyst who was responsible for watching the beheading and execution videos of al-Qaeda in Iraq, said from Washington. “A very explicitly gruesome, but very effective tactic to get into the press. The ISIS guys are true believers and they believe Allah is on their side so they have become relentless.”

Despite these barbaric displays, it’s been successful. They’ve been able to grow and flourish, and they have been able to attract people to their cause despite this barbarity and perhaps because of it.

They seem to want to attract a U.S. military response and are using the media to boost their membership and reputation and to trick the world into thinking they are bigger than life. As commentator Bill Maher said, we have to be careful not to fall into this trap. It is not like we are going to be beheaded while lining up to buy our iPhone 6. They are using the media to make the threat look much bigger. After all, the reporters knew the risks when they entered that kind of territory.

“War makes these kinds of organizations stronger. If you can bring America in in a big way, they can quickly paint them as stooges of their Shia government in Baghdad,” Peritz said. “Long term, they want to create another enemy out of us.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CNN that the goal of the United States is to “degrade and destroy” the capabilities of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, “it’s not contain”, “It makes you sick to your stomach, but it again reminds you of the brutality and barbarism that is afoot in some places in the world,” Hagel said. “… It won’t just recede into the gray recesses of history until we stop it.”

So their media manipulation seem to have attracted the right response and I sincerely hope that the U.S. will think twice before entering a full-fledged attack on a group that might as well have created a gross exaggeration of their true power because of shock videos promoted by the media.

The Media

The media means mass communication such as television, radio and newspapers when they are regarded collectively. When you have non-profit Broadcasting corporations or newspapers, you might be able to expect a fair and balanced account of public events and affairs, but considering that most media outlets are for profit only, we can see where the element of objectivity becomes fairly impossible.

If you want sponsors, you have to deliver the goods and it means sensationalism. The beheading of the two American journalists became huge stories on CNN and other stations where the viewer becomes enthralled and enraged by the event. And it is walking right into the trap set by groups like ISIS. They want to wag the dog to rise themselves to the ranks of great warriors and saviors of their nation real or imagined. The media is not going to keep any of this under wraps because their sponsors want huge ratings so it becomes a vicious circle.

Crime has become a huge industry also in the U.S. and the same principle applies so they have to create heroes and villains to collect the ratings and rake in the money.

It is a double-edged sword because at times, the media can save lives, find missing persons or bring attention to a wrongful conviction. It is a lot like the cops, we love them when there is an emergency but they get away with a lot of abuses of power.

The Social Media has entered the sphere of the media in a very insidious way. What used to be social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks has now interfered with the mainstream.

To sustain their ratings, television shows and news programs now need to integrate tweets from viewers. All of us feel the need to be included in the process; present company included with my blogs. If I do not find the kind of conversation I am looking for in the media, I will write it myself.

The main stream articles about ISIS or Jodi Arias seem to always lean in the same direction; if you stray, you could lose your sponsors and your ratings so it is a risky proposition. So bloggers can express their thoughts because they do not have a horse in the race or a direct vested interest.

It opens the door to a lot of superficial hogwash because it became obvious to me that a lot of people on social media have not studied the details of a criminal case anymore than the ISIS crisis. And no matter how hard you try to show them evidence or lack thereof, they have made up their mind.

I read a blog recently where the author said that her husband who was a hand surgeon (sic) knew for a fact that Jodi Arias’ tendon was cut when she stabbed Travis Alexander. So her finger was never fractured by Travis in an earlier fight. The only problem is that Ryan Burns testified that Jodi, the day after the murder, had very tiny cuts and band aids on her fingers. Nothing like a cut tendon that would have been debilitating. People let their imagination run wild and do not bother with facts. Chris Hughes also forgot that important detail when he said during an interview that Jodi had big bandages and deep cuts, which he had never seen anyway. But the more troubling aspect of the ‘finger mystery’ is that it did not matter anyway if she had cuts or not because she admitted stabbing him.

I will never forget when HLN correspondent Jean Casarez covered the Jodi Arias trial and was chastised for saying that she sounded honest on the stand. When Jodi pleaded for her life, Casarez had tears in her eyes, but had to say she was suffering from allergies that day so that viewers or her employer would not read her the riot act. She was supposed to join the ranks of the haters because it was the party line.

The media has become unreliable and has been purchased and wrapped with a bow every step of the way by big money, so it is difficult to judge the real situation on ISIS or on any criminal trial, if you stick to what their numerous tentacles decide to present to you. The menu of the day depends on what is in season. Will it be fish or chicken today? Well it depends on who is buying and what they want you to believe and whose pockets they want to fill.

What we the consumers gobble up are the images of beheading like in the cases of the American journalists or of Travis Alexander. The horror remains but the details become foggy and are justified according to the gospel of the protagonists. We cannot forget that every puzzle has many pieces even if the result looks easy on the picture of the box cover. It is not always a slam dunk to assemble and can be treacherous.

ISIS might have been manipulating the media but they were right there for the taking. They did not have to show these images and start a fear campaign that is helping boost the ego and recruitment power of this group of misguided, virgin hunting and desperate souls searching for glory.

The media has eaten Candy Crush for breakfast and spitted her out into the Roman arena so that the lions could feast on her while the Christians roared. So don’t come and tell me that she has any kind of power of manipulation over them. She is in a cage in Arizona where the media has put her on display like Pluto the polar bear stuck on a tropical island. And now she has become a real threat like ISIS and has magically acquired some power of persuasion. What trial have they been watching? Of yes, the one where everything was controlled and manipulated by the MEDIA; the real cutthroat, powerful and encompassing bearer of truth or dare.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Let’s get real, my friends. Haven’t most of us –at one time of another – fantasized about taking someone (or several someones) out? It could be the slick fellow who his eased his way into the life of the beauty who told us she merely wanted to be friends. It could be the co-worker who badmouthed us to the boss. It could be the so-called friend who double-crossed us when the chips were down. It could be any of these people and a whole lot more.

Personally, I sometimes fantasize about taking out certain someones but I never go beyond mere fantasy because the wee small voice of conscience reminds me that I’m being an idiot and that I should “forget it” and go about my business of being a good American citizen. So to the best of my ability, I do. But for every 10,000 or so of us (including myself) who are content with mere aberrant fantasies that we would never actually carry out, there is that one peculiarly determined soul who not only conceives of a plan to commit mayhem, but plans it carefully, and executes it with consummate skill.

Such a person appears to be suspected Pennsylvania cop-killer, 31 year old Eric Matthew Frein, who before going on the run and taking to the hinterlands, “lived with his parents in Canadensis, about 20 miles from where the troopers were shot outside their barracks in Blooming Grove.”

An arrest warrant has been issued for Frein, who is accused of the first-degree murder of Cpl. Bryon Dickson II, a 38-year-old married father of two, at the Pike County barracks in Blooming Grove. A second trooper, Alex Douglass, 31, was wounded as he arrived for duty late on Friday, September 19th.

Although the officers were armed and in uniform, Frein’s alleged ambushed was carried out so smoothly from the woods across from the station that neither had a chance to return fire, according to the Pennsylvania State Police.

The sniper, who used a high-powered .308-caliber rifle, also shot at a civilian dispatcher who tried to aid the wounded Dickson at the front door. Fortunately, the dispatcher escaped harm. The available video surveillance indicates that the gunman fired four shots in about a minute and a half before disappearing back into the woods.

John Johnson of Newser Staff writes:

The barracks is in a wooded area, and a massive air and ground search was launched immediately after (the attack). “This has been an emotional night for all of us,” said state police commissioner Frank Noonan. (At the time, Noonam) did not speculate about a motive but said the attack appeared to be “directed particularly at the Pennsylvania state police,” reports CNN. Noonan said he did not think the public was in danger, but added, “We can’t say that the situation is completely in hand.”

In a subsequent statement in which Frein was named as the suspect, Commissioner Noonan stated: “He made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and to commit mass acts of murder.”

Frein was identified as a suspect when someone walking a dog spotted a jeep that was apparently stuck in a pond about two miles from the barracks, according to Philly.com.

Insider the jeep, police found camouflage paint and military gear that they were able to trace to Frein. CNN reports that this led them to Frein’s parents’ house where they found spent shell casings “that matched those used in the shooting.” Based on information they have gleaned, “Noonan described the 6-1, 165-pound Frein as a survivalist who should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Frein’s father put it pithily in an interview with Philly.com stating that Frein “doesn’t miss”.

* * * * *

The cop-killing happened on Friday night. As of this posting, it is Friday morning. Thus, the manhunt for Frein has entered its seventh day. Although it would appear that it is only a matter of time until law enforcement flushes this fiend out and brings him to justice, the fact he has eluded them for this long does suggest that he is a “damned good survivalist.”

Rob Quinn of Newser Staff writes:

Police combing a heavily wooded area of Pennsylvania for the survivalist suspected of shooting two state troopers are starting to suspect he is playing some kind of twisted game with them. Almost 1,000 officers are combing the area for Eric Frein, and there have been repeated sightings of a hooded figure dressed in black that police believe is the suspect. “There have been pursuits. The type of terrain and cover, he has had the ability to disappear,” a police spokesman tells ABC. “Some of the sightings have occurred in circumstances where he kept himself far enough away where he knew that it was unlikely someone could get to him.”

All of the factors including the careful preparations that culminated in a perfectly executed ambush, and the fact he has managed to elude law enforcement up until now, has led the authorities to conclude that the 31-year-old Frein planned the attack and his escape for months or even years.

Oddly, Frein has left a bizarre trail of dirty diapers and Serbian cigarettes behind him. Investigators believe that the diapers fit the profile of a trained sniper trying to “stay in position for a longer period of time.” The cigarettes may signal his involvement with a group of Eastern European military enthusiasts, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Despite the fact that Frein has led law enforcement personnel “on a merry chase”, they appear to be closing in slowly but surely and “the search area has narrowed to a few square miles after an extensive search that has involved checking numerous abandoned buildings—and evicting some bears from their caves—say police, who warn that Frein needs to surrender before he “gets hurt or worse.”

* * * * *

One of the dangers here, of course, is that although the end of Frein’s time as a free man is drawing steadily closer, there is no guarantee that law enforcement will be able to “take him alive”. If he is killed, or if he ultimately takes his own life, it will be a terrible letdown and we will probably never know just what led this peculiar man to ambush innocent law enforcement personnel.

In a more general sense, this case is a good object lesson in why we should never let our aberrant social impulses lead us to actually commit mayhem. The powers that be will always come after you, and given their superior firepower and numbers, they will ultimately capture you, although by that point you may be reduced to a mere corpse.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

This compelling yet horrifying array of 51 disturbing quotes from 19 disturbed serial killers is drawn from the public domain. Although I’m quite certain that each and everyone of these killers had their moments of intense terror and loneliness, I am struck by the fact that some of them seem far more unhappy than others. For example, Aileen Wuornos may have been one of the most unhappy women that every lived. Compared to her, suave Mr. Bundy seems to to be feeling only moderate pain, while the deadly Dahmer appears to be consumed with guilt over his actions. What all of this boils down to is that although serial killers may well shares many basic personality characteristics, they are all different which makes it tough to generalize effectively about them.

Aileen Wuornos  (the saddest woman who ever lived)

 “May your wife and children get raped, right in the ass. (to the jurors who convicted her) “

 “To me, this world is nothing but evil, and my own evil just happened to come out cause of the circumstances of what I was doing.

David Berkowitz  (was no doubt possessed by something though probably not the devil)

“A ‘possessed’ dog in the neighborhood won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.”

“Hello from the gutters of New York City, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.”

“I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I love to hunt.”

“I was literally singing to myself on my way home, after the killing. The tension, the desire to kill a woman had built up in such explosive proportions that when I finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, all the hatred, had just vanished, dissipated, but only for a short time.”

“The demons wanted my penis.”

Ed Gein  (the inspiration for Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lamps. Gein lived in my home state of Wisconsin)

“She isn’t missing. She’s at the farm right now.”

“I had a compulsion to do it.”

“They smelled bad.”

Edmund Kemper (Big Ed was tall, large and reportedly had the I.Q. of a genius. He has been a model prisoner.)

“Even when she was dead, she was still bitching at me. I couldn’t get her to shut up!”

“I just wanted to see how it felt to shoot Grandma.”

“I remember there was actually a sexual thrill . . . you hear that little pop and pull their heads of and hold their heads up by the hair. Whipping their heads off, their body sitting there. That’d get me off.”

“The first good-looking girl I see tonight is going to die.”

“With a girl, there’s a lot left in the girl’s body without a head. Of course, the personality is gone.”

H.H Holmes (completely unique in that he built his notorious Murder Castle where he apparently did in his victims)

“I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing..I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.”

Henry Lee Lucas (Henry was without a doubt the victim of bad parenting. The cult film, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is loosely based on him and possibly Ottis Toole. I strongly recommend it but keep in mind, it is not for the faint at heart.)

“I hated all my life. I hated everybody. When I first grew up and can remember, I was dressed as a girl by mother. And I stayed that way for two or three years. And after that was treated like what I call the dog of the family. I was beaten. I was made to do things that no human bein’ would want to do.”

“Sex is one of my downfalls. I get sex any way I can get it. If I have to force somebody to do it, I do…I rape them; I’ve done that. I’ve killed animals to have sex with them, and I’ve had sex while they’re alive. “

Ian Brady (Brady, killer of children along with his partner Myra Hindley, was apparently quite the intellectual. He is old and ill now and has expressed his fervent desire to die but the British authorities insist on keeping him alive by means of a feeding tube.)

“Contrary to popular perception, the so-called Moors Murders were merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964.”

Jeffrey Dahmer (What can you say about Dahmer that has not already been said and re-said?)

“I carried it too far, that’s for sure. “

“I’ve got to start eating at home more..”

“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies.I viewed them as objects, as strangers. It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I’ve done”

“I couldn’t find any meaning for my life when I was out there, I’m sure as hell not going to find it in here. This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing… it’s just a sick, pathetic, wretched, miserable life story, that’s all it is. How it can help anyone, I’ve no idea.”

John Wayne Gacy (I don’t like this guy at all though I am weirdly enchanted by his Clown Paintings.)

“A clown can get away with murder.”

“The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.”

Peter Kurten  (known as The Vampire of Dusseldorf)

“After my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment , the sound of my own blood gushing from my neck? That would be the best pleasure to end all pleasure. “

Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker was smart and could have done much good in the world if he’d had a decent childhood.)

“Big deal, death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”

“I’ve killed 20 people, man. I love all that blood.”

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

“We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid, control life itself.”

“You maggots make me sick, I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all.”

Ted Bundy  (There’s something quintessentially creepy about Bundy. Monster Smooth is a little too suave and self-serving for my taste.)

“I haven’t blocked out the past. I wouldn’t trade the person I am, or what I’ve done – or the people I’ve known – for anything. So I do think about it. And at times it’s a rather mellow trip to lay back and remember.

“I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill.”

“You learn what you need to kill and take care of the details…Its like changing a tire…The 1st time you’re careful…By the 30th time, you can’t remember where you left the lug wrench.”

“You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!”

Albert DeSalvo (Although DeSalvo was definitely a rapist, it has not been definitively settled whether he was actually a murderer. That could be why his quote seems unlike those of the “real” serial killers. His remains have been exhumed in hopes of obtaining DNA matches.)

“It wasn’t as dark and scary as it sounds. I had a lot of fun…killing somebody’s a funny experience.”

Albert Fish (Like Henry Lee Lucas, Fish was very likely prone to exaggerating his evil deeds. He was one of the early lucky fellows to “ride the chair” at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York.)

“I always had the desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost. “

 ”I saw so many boys whipped, it took root in my head.”

 ”I like children, they are tasty.”

Arthur Shawcross (This execrable human claimed to have eaten the vaginas of 3 of his 11 known female victims.)

“I took the right leg of that woman’s body, from the knee to the hip took the fat off and ate it while he stared at the other girl. When I bit into it she just urinated right there.”

“She was giving me oral sex, and she got carried away . . . So I choked her.”

 Dennis Rader ( “BTK” was his infamous signature. It stands for “Bind, Torture, Kill”.)

“When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can’t stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t.”

“I actually think I may be possessed with demons, I was dropped on my head as a kid.”

Charles Manson  (You have to admit that Charlie is quite the character.)

“I’ve killed no one. I’ve ordered no one to be killed. These children who come to you with their knives, they’re your children. I didn’t teach them, you did.”

“Total paranoia is just total awareness.”

“Believe me, if I started murdering people there’d be none of ya left.”

“You know, if I wanted to kill somebody, I’d take this book and beat you to death with it. And I wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d be just like walking to the drug store.”

Carl Panzram (Panzram confessed to 22 murders, and to having sodomized over 1,000 males. He was hanged for having murdered a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1930.)

“I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it.”

 “Today I am dirty , but tomorrow I’ll be just dirt.”

“Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you’re fooling around!”

The Zodiac Killer Quotes (The Zodiac was very smart although he certainly might have been brought to justice if modern forensic techniques had been available during his “reign of terror”.)

“If the blue meanies are going to get me they’d better get off their asses and do something.”

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In “Coney Island Baby”, the late, great Lou Reed sings:

“Ahhh, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember different people have peculiar tastes.”

Although Reed was singing about the Big Apple, it appears “different people” can also have “peculiar tastes” in small-town high schools. This was certainly the case with popular band director Jeffery Gainous, age 32, at T.R. Miller High School in Brewton, Alabama, a town of slightly over 5,000 in south central Alabama just north of the Florida panhandle.

Mr. Gainous’s “peculiar tastes” (his name rhymes with heinous and you know what else)  involved having sex with under-aged students (this by itself  is too common a crime to really be considered “peculiar”), while spicing up his illegal acts by “tying up and gagging the girls during bondage sex sessions in the band room and his house, police said.”

Only a truly jaded soul could claim that “tying up and gagging” your under-aged students while having sex with them is not peculiar. In fact, even Lou Reed, if he was still with us and if we caught him in a reasonable state of mind, would probably admit that such a pastime is peculiar.

At present it’s not precisely clear what all the charges against Gainous ultimately will be, but one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that they are (will be) very serious.

The Inquisitr.com writes:

Jeffery Gainous had just accepted a teaching job in Georgia with the Thomas County School System but was arrested and extradited back to Alabama on the sex charges. According to Brewton police, Gainous had sex with the female students and committed acts such as tying the girls up with rope and gagging them with bondage style devices. Police expect more victims to come forward in light of the latest allegations. Investigators say that at least eight young girls have had sex with Jeffery Gainous either in his home or in the school’s band room. The girls were shocked to find out that they were not the only victim.

Gainous worked at T.R. Miller high school from 2008 until 2013 when he moved on to greener pastures in Georgia. According to the Inquisitr.com, “the high school students all thought highly of (him), a young and handsome teacher who everyone thought was cool.”

Someone recently told me that “perception is reality” which would seem to be the case here. When I look at pictures of Gainous, I see a man who is certainly not handsome, but who might well seem cool to high school girls based on his position and status.

That’s the whole point. To be a band teacher is “to be cool” almost by definition. Who cares if this fool was or was not handsome? What is disturbing is the fact that Gainous clearly used his position as a “cool band director” (he was known fondly as “Mr. G”) as a tool to seduce impressionable young girls in a truly appalling manner.

And Gainous was certainly a go-getter. While at T.R. Miller High, he consistently earned superior ratings and received “Best in Class” awards. His band was selected to perform at half time at the NCAAF “BCS” Championship game in New Orleans. Under his leadership, the band program flourished and grew from about 70 to more than 100 musicians. Keep in mind this is a school whose entire enrollment is only 340 students.

Sasha Goldstein of New York Daily News reports that Brewton Lt. Brock Holt told a CBS affiliate.:

The allegations from most of the juveniles were in a sexual nature of he was basically tying them up and performing a sexual fantasy in his mind, he was taking pictures of them, video tapes of them.

Although Lt. Holt’s grammar leaves something to be desired, we get the picture. Gainous is acting out his kinky fantasies on these kids. Imagine what must be going through their young and impressionable minds as this dark scenario unfolds. Initially, they are probably excited and a bit scared, but eager to be “getting it on” with the “cool band director.” The next thing they know, he’s slipped a gag into their mouths and has them tied up.

This is nasty. I have no strong objection to the “kink”, but this sort of conduct, if one must indulge it in, should clearly be reserved for the consensual activities of adults. These kids are liable to be scarred for life.

Sasha Goldstein writes:

“I know what kids said about (Gainous),” Brewton Police Chief Monte McGougin told the newspaper. “They loved him. They say he was great, but this is terrible. It’s bad when a place where your child should be protected isn’t safe. I will say that the school board is as upset as we are. It’s disturbing.”

The investigation began after one woman, now 20, came forward and detailed the abuse, the Brewton Standard reported, which opened the floodgates leading to more students coming forward.

Gainous had only been on the job in Georgia for a few weeks when the charges arose leading to his extradition back to Alabama.

Up until the allegations arose, Gainous had managed to obfuscate his criminal activities entirely. Dr. Dusty Kornegay, the Thomas County Schools superintendent, told WCTV.:

“At the time he was hired we did a very thorough background check, we did a criminal background check, we thoroughly checked references. There was absolutely no hint of any kind of suspicion of this type of activity at all when he was hired.”

Andres Jaurequi of the Huffington Post writes that when interviewed following his arrest on Aug 20th, after initially showing no remorse whatsoever, Gainous changed his tune, assumed a posture of regret, and admitted to having sex with one of the minors and also confessed to the police that he’d sent sexually themed text messages to others.

Nevertheless, this “devil-may-care” dude maintained some of his customary cockiness at one of his court appearances telling the reporters:

“There’s always more than one side to the story.”

Here, I would beg to differ. To in any way blame the victims in this apparently open-and-shut case suggests a rather grotesque arrogance. At the same time, it is sad to see a man destroy a promising life and career so thoroughly and irrevocably.

After four days of jury deliberations, Massachusetts horned man and self-styled blood-drinking wannabe Hells Angel Caius Veiovis has been convicted of murdering three Berkshire County men and ditching their dismembered bodies. According to various news reports, Caius did not take the verdict in stride:

“I’ll see you all in hell! Every f—ing one of you! I’ll see you all in hell!”

It is perhaps somewhat surprising that Veiovis was found guilty after four full days of jury deliberation, but that just goes to show that you can never be certain of a verdict until the jury reassembles in the courtroom and its verdict is formally announced.

Here is our earlier somewhat whimsical take on Veiovis and his unconventional ways:

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

Mr. Murdock writes:

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know what 666 means.”

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

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

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

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

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

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