“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” (Probably an exaggeration. Although there are certainly plenty of serial killers, I feel confident they are still a very small segment of the population).

“You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!” (God? Or the Devil? Or just a demented sicko?)

“Sometimes I feel like a vampire.” (Figure of speech or did Bundy actually feel this way?)

“Murder is not about lust and it’s not about violence. It’s about possession.” (Possession equals absolute control.)

“There lots of other kids playing in streets around this country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and month, because other young people are reading the kinds of things and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.” (Bundy liked to blame society for his problems. This is a cop-out of the first order.)

“I’m the most cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch you’ll ever meet.” (This may well be true.)

“I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, without question, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. “ (Probably an exaggeration but another good example of Bundy blaming his murderous ways on society and outside factors.)

“I didn’t know what made people want to be friends. I didn’t know what made people attractive to one another. I didn’t know what underlay social interactions.” (Ted was apparently not an advanced student of the “rules of attaction”.)

“What’s one less person on the face of the earth, anyway?” (Bundy was in a flippant mood, either that or he was a firm believer in population control.)

“I don’t feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt.” (I too feel sorry for people who are obsessed with their feelings of guilt; however, there are some things that one should feel guilty about.)

“I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill.” (Speaks for itself.)

“… I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has and society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me, that’s for sure.” (A rare moment of honesty.)

“Well-meaning, decent people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy, while they’re walking past a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to be Ted Bundys.” (Once again, Bundy is making excuses for his aberrant behavior.)

“I’m as cold a motherfucker as you’ve ever put your fucking eyes on. I don’t give a shit about those people.” (Another moment of lucidity.)

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

Sean Rossman of the Tallahassee Democrat writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

Update:

At present, after examinations by a pair of psychologists, Grandma White has been found incompetent to stand trial. She will remain in a state mental hospital until she is found competent to face her murder charges.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The curious case of Pazuzu Illah Algarad had drawn considerable attention from crime fans and during the course of the week, numerous media sources have provided new information concerning Pazuzu’s mental state, which according to some commenters, suggests that his strange persona may not simply be him posturing for attention.

I was gently taken to task by a commenter on All Things Crime Blog who wrote the following:

It is probably best to hold off on making any sort of social conjecture about this guy’s personality type until more information is forthcoming. It has already been determined that he is a heavily medicated schizophrenic with agoraphobia who self-medicates with alcohol. This would seem to indicate that his situation is slightly different from mere posturing for attention.

Before passing judgment on whether I was unfair in my appraisal of Pazuzu (I was certainly cavalier and probably having a little too much fun), let’s review what the new reports disclose:

First of all, Pazazu (whose real name is John Alexander Lawson) was born in San Francisco (my old stomping ground) and lived for an undetermined period of time in Northern California. He is reported to have changed his name to Pazuzu in 2002, well before the current allegations. Pazuzu is apparently a name that refers to a demon lord who figures prominently in The Exorcist.

With respect to Pazuzu’s mental state, Vivian Ho writes for SFGate:

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, psychiatrists who evaluated Algarad in 2010 (at the time of his earlier charge of being an accessory to manslaughter in the death of a man) believed he was schizophrenic and agoraphobic, as well as an alcoholic. Here’s an excerpt from the newspaper report:

During the interview with the psychiatrists, Algarad shook uncontrollably and admitted to drinking up to 18 beers a day, according to the doctors’ report. The doctors also noticed that Algarad had intentionally filed down his teeth, had poor hygiene and body odor, the report said. “And he admitted that he bathed no more than once a year, and had not brushed his teeth in years,” the report said. “He felt such actions stripped … the body of its defenses in warding off infection and illness.”

Despite his diagnosis, Pazuzu’s psychiatrists ultimately determined he was competent to stand trial. He pleaded guilty in 2012 and was sentenced to 10 to 12 months in prison and was on probation when the bodies were discovered in his yard.

Further information on Pazuzu stemming from laymen (non-professionals) includes the following:

WGHP, a local Fox affiliate, quoted a person who knew Algarad and had visited his home as saying he had a split tongue and sharpened teeth — and sacrificed rabbits, typically on a full moon.

“When you walked in the first room, it was kind of blacked out and the wallpaper had been peeled off,” the man said. “There was like scribbles, and scratches, and graffiti, and Arabic and Satan and swastikas. … You could tell when his demons needed something from him, because they took over.”

So what does this tell us? Does his mean that due to his mental illness, Pazuzu could not help his weird behavior and that it was not mere “posturing for attention”.

Possibly. To some degree, I’ll buy that. But on the other hand, what about the fact that he bragged about killing, eating and burying prostitutes? Would he brag about these “exploits” because he was proud of them, or possibly because he could not help himself and felt he had to confess?

And furthermore, being generally off-kilter, even certifiably insane, and sharpening one’s teeth and refusing to bathe, would not seem to predispose an individual to murder and cannibalism. I don’t believe that the medical profession has successfully explained why a small percentage of schizophrenics resort to violent crime, while most do not.

But if Pazuzu is controlled by his demons and if his demons tell him to kill, what choice does he have other than to do their bidding? But then why would he joke and laugh about it? And if he is that crazy, why would he maintain a weird Facebook site resplendent with demons and their familiars, which in some ways is reminiscent of many other weird Facebook sites.

In attempting to make sense of this, I am frankly stumped. Posturing notwithstanding, what is the relationship between serious mental illness and violent crime culminating in murder and the desecration of dead bodies? And if Pazuzu is certifiably schizophrenic and the evidence suggests he is, despite whatever ability he had to function in society (which includes maintaining a social media presence), to what degree  – if at all –does this constitute a defense in his current case?

These are the type of questions that our justice system has never managed to deal with satisfactorily. And as Lise LaSalle suggested regarding Luka Magnotta, who was also diagnosed as schizophrenic and like Pazuzu, maintained an active social media presence, it really makes no sense for lost souls of this ilk to go to trial before a jury of their peers. Rather, society probably needs to devise a new and more effective way of judging them fairly, which is clearly no easy task.

Meanwhile, let me tentatively suggest that cases such as these the “Look at Me” obsession may be accompanied by serious mental illness which, in rare instances, results in horrific violent crimes. Fortunately, in most of us, the egotistical need for attention is not accompanied by severe mental illness or a penchant for murder and mayhem.

Click here to read out earlier Pazuzu Illah Algarad post:

Loudmouth “Evil Gods” Worshipper, Pazuzu Illah Algarad, Caught with Skeletons in His Backyard

by BJW Nashe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

One of the big problems with doing heavy drugs is that sooner or later either you or somebody you know is going to wind up dead. And like it says in the Bible, “You don’t know the minute or the hour.” In a sense, you might almost be better off if you’re the one who winds up dead. Then, disposing of your corpse is somebody else’s problem.

Being confronted with this problem has always been a hassle, but in our modern era of advanced Social Media is all the tougher. Now you not only face the thorny problem of disposing of the stiff, but you also gotta decide (and quickly) how best to inform the cyber-world. Do you simply post it on FB and be done with it? Or do you tweet? Instagram is always an option. You can even Pin It which does seem fitting because photos of dead bodies are very common on Pinterest.

A 24-year-old Joplin, Missouri meth head, Chelsie Berry, was faced with this problem just last week when a weight-lifting friend of hers named Dennis “Nathan” Meyer injected a few too many Dilaudid (a powerful synthetic opiate) and expired right their in her car somewhere in Newton County.

The Smoking Gun has the story:

After their friend apparently died of a drug overdose, two Missouri residents posed for a “selfie” with the corpse, an image that one of them later uploaded to Facebook after dumping the body on a rural road, according to police.

As detailed in a probable cause affidavit, Chelsie Berry, 24, told cops that she was driving around with Dennis “Nathan” Meyer last week when he began acting “crazy” after injecting himself with the pain killer Dilaudid.

When the stiff jolt of Dilaudid apparently lowered Nathan’s inhibitions (let your imagination be your guide), Chelsie naturally got stressed out. She quickly phoned one of Nathan’s friends, a swinging dick named Jared Prier whom she had met the previous evening. Chelsea told Jared that Nathan seemed “unstable” and that he was making her nervous. Prier, who seems amiable enough, told Chelsie he’d be glad to help out and (because this is America), he picked her up at a neighborhood McDonald’s, so they did what good American’s do at McDonald’s, they “hung out in the parking lot for a little bit” (by this point Nathan was apparently unconscious). Of course, they didn’t yet realize Nathan was a “goner”, Chelsea believed he was simply “passed out.”

Jared and Chelsie then drove to a convenience store, possibly to pick up some Red Bull, which, they may have thought, might wake Nathan back up if they could get him to imbibe some. At some point, the cruel truth dawned on Jared and he told Chelsie that “he believed that Nathan had quit breathing.” Chelsie later told the police that she was concerned and that she also “checked Nathan and did not think he was breathing either.”

When making her statement, Chelsie explained to the police that she and Jared were “scared to call for an ambulance and did not want to take Nathan to a hospital because she and Jared were high on meth and Xanax and thought they would get in trouble.”

(As an aside, combining Xanax with meth seems to make good sense because Xanax, which effectively reduces anxiety in most people, should reduce paranoia in meth heads.)

At a certain point, Chelsie and Jared realized that Nathan’s “gig was up” and that they better ditch what was left of him. So they drove to a back road and “dragged Nathan from the front seat to the back seat because they did not want to look at him any longer and also the fact that he began to smell bad.”

Now this sounds like paranoia, Xanax notwithstanding. Based on my scant knowledge, I believe it takes up to 24 hours for a stiff to become odorous, even in humid Missouri weather.

According to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, before they moved Nathan’s body from the front to the back seat, they did the honorable thing and posed for a “selfie” with their 30-year-old deceased friend. They then decided Facebook was the way to go and posted the picture on the social media giant. This turned out to be a mistake because “a tipster subsequently alerted investigators to the photo after Berry uploaded it to Facebook, according to Copeland, who added that the image showed Berry, Prier, and the “passed out” Meyer in the front seat of Meyer’s Nissan Pathfinder.”

Berry told police that once she and Jared had fulfilled their social media obligations, they drove around “looking for a place to dump the body,” finally settling on a rural driveway where they “pushed the body out of the vehicle onto the ground.” According to an autopsy, Meyer’s “breathing would have been faint and it would have taken a while for Nathan to die.”

Berry and Prier were charged yesterday with abandonment of a corpse, a Class “D” felony under Missouri law which could result in a year or more in state prison. In addition, according to some reports, they have been charged with voluntary manslaughter which would greatly increase their prison exposure.

*     *     *     *     *

Although I take a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in goofing on these poor lost souls, the moral to this story is that hard drugs are very dangerous and it’s a good idea to give them a wide berth. Of course, “dopers” don’t always take kindly to good advice. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be “dopers”.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s well known that more than any other cause, money issues can put great strain on marriages and are often instrumental in triggering divorces. One doesn’t expect the money squabbles to erupt, however, during the wedding reception and one certainly doesn’t expect the irate husband to MURDER his own lovely wife right there at the reception before turning the gun upon himself.

If I might draw a brief comparison: My wife and I are both as tight as a well-wrapped Ace bandage, yet at our reception the thought of murdering her over money never entered my pea-brain.

Here are the facts:

On Saturday, Oct. 4th, Dr. George “Scott” Samson, 54, a Terre Haute, Indiana anesthesiologist and licensed gun dealer, exchanged nuptials with Kelly Ecker, a rather young  and pleasant looking 50-year-old nurse. They were both employed at Union Hospital.

So far we see nothing strange or potentially deadly about any of this.

According to Advance Indiana blogger, Gary R. Welsh, the plan was to hold both the wedding and the reception in a tent that had been set up outside their stately semi-rural home. Due to bad weather, however, (the first sign of doom?) a decision was made to move the wedding and reception to the Ohio Building in downtown Terre Haute.

So the wedding vows were made, presumably on cue, and the festivities began.  At some point, however, during the reception, Dr. Samson and his new wife Kelly began to squabble and then it got nasty.

“Did you see that? Did he really call her a gold-digging bitch?

“Somebody give that man a chill pill.”

Apparently there were no ‘chill pills” on hand strong enough to cool things out and things got so acrimonious that the embarrassed guests started leaving. Dedicated friends, however, chose to stick around.

Gary R. Welsh writes:

“The couple and guests retired to the couple’s home for an after-reception gathering. The last guests left the home a short time prior to the shooting as fighting between the two escalated.”

From that point on, the deadly (and apparently one-sided) battle escalated:

“Kelly made a frantic 911 call around 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning pleading for help. “He’s beating the shit out of me,” Kelly told the operator. “Who is?,” the operator asked. “My husband.” The call ended and moments later Kelly called back. “Help,” she pleaded. “Oh, my God. He’s going to kill me.” Multiple gun shots can be heard as the call ended.”

When the Terre Haute Police special response team arrived at the couple’s Eastern Vigo County home, they discovered Kelly Ecker’s ten-year old son and Samson’s elderly parents were present, which means they had witnessed the whole appalling affair. It was determined that our Coward of the Week, Samson, hid in the basement when the police arrived and at some point turned the gun on himself breaking what can only be described as a very tenuous connection. Based on an autopsy, “Kelly died of multiple gunshot wounds to the neck and chest.”

Dr. Samson had plenty of guns laying around the house. Gary R. Welsh writes:

Police recovered dozens of guns, including assault rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition. The Vigo Co. Sheriff’s Department told WTHI-TV that Samson legally possessed the guns as a registered federally-licensed gun dealer.

Advance Indiana has an inside source who has divulged what led to the ferocious argument and Samson’s lethal actions. It seems that the original argument during the reception at the Ohio Building was all about money. The big-hearted doctor is reported to have told Kelly that she would never get her hands on any of his money, a desire on his part that was apparently reflected in a prenuptial agreement.

But wait, there is more to this. Advance Indiana reports that “Scott exploded when he went to pay the bill for the reception at the Ohio Building and learned that his wife had maxed out his credit card and the charge couldn’t be processed.”

So it appears that Kelly’s mistake (in addition to marrying this fool) was — in what could be construed as passive-aggressive behavior — maxing out his credit card. Ay Yi Yi!

And of course there is still more, thanks to Mr. Welsh’s excellent slething:

It seems that Kelly’s parents had serious concerns about her marrying the Good Doctor to such a degree that they chose not to attend the wedding.

This, if you think about it, may have been very unfortunate because there is just a slim sliver of chance that if Kelly’s parents had been there and had seen things deteriorating dramatically, they just might have called 911 much earlier and the horrible outcome could just possibly have been averted. But I realize this is a long shot.

by BJW Nashe

Now that the guilty verdict is in, and the moral issue of Jodi Arias’s crime is supposedly settled, it is time for other considerations to be brought to bear on this unsettling case. Suitably chastened by the firm, steady hand of justice, hopefully now we can all dry our tears, dampen our sense of outrage, stop chanting “USA!” outside the Maricopa County Courthouse, and finally view Jodi’s saga from the perspective of the true crime connoisseur. And in fact, at this point in our history, as inundated as we are with crime, whether we know it or not we truly have become crime connoisseurs. We are experts when it comes to murder – aestheticians of the bloody deed. We should all be awarded honorary doctoral degrees. Such expertise, however, inevitably leads us to legitimate questions of artistry. In the case of Jodi Arias, it is time for a thorough evaluation along these lines. The question is not whether she did it; rather, the question is how well did she do it, how artistically, how pleasingly?

The distinguished English essayist and habitual opium-eater Thomas De Quincey points the way forward in his brilliant and timeless essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (Blackwood’s Magazine, 1827):

“When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done… suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, by putting out our legs to trip up the fellow in his flight, but all to no purpose… why, then, I say, what’s the use of any more virtue? Enough has been given to morality; now comes the turn of Taste and the Fine Arts.”

For Jodi Arias, it is indeed “over and done.” And no, she is not “off like a shot.” Rather, she is caged like an animal, and will be fortunate to avoid the death penalty. Or unfortunate, if her initial response to the verdict is to be trusted. Arias has stated emphatically that she would prefer death to life in prison. In her first statement made to a TV reporter following the conviction, she explained her thought process:“Longevity runs in my family, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my natural life in one place. I believe death is the ultimate freedom and I’d rather have my freedom as soon as I can get it.” One can see why the insanity defense was not considered in this case. Jodi’s logic here is unassailable. If the past is any indication, she will be changing her position on this half a dozen times in the future. For now, however, it is death that is foremost on her mind.

It is worth noting that if death is the “ultimate freedom,” then Arias’ murder victim, Travis Alexander, strikes us as being “over-liberated.” The manner in which he was dispatched from this mortal coil stamped his “ultimate freedom” with an exclamation point. There was no debating the issue. We believe he likely would have preferred to continue living with little or no freedom, trapped in his dual role as Mormon church boy/debauched fornicator. But this was not be his fate.

If death is the “ultimate freedom,” perhaps we should all be murdered just to get it over and done with. But let’s not get sidetracked by too many thorny existential questions at this point. Our primary concern here is the fine art of murder insofar as this applies to Jodi Arias. In particular, we need to look closely at the character of the murderess, her choice of victim, and the style in which the crime was carried out — the various creative flourishes and crescendos the murderess employed.

The Character of the Murderess:

And Jodi Arias earns points right from the start for her physical appearance and her personality. No one doubts that she is an attractive young woman. Many would call her beautiful. The Creator endowed her with certain charms, and the plastic surgeon did the rest. Let us praise the Lord for the miracles of genetics, science, and medicine. We can all probably agree that any time a woman blessed with Jodi Arias’s good looks becomes involved in murder, the aesthetic possibilities are endless.

It is hardly on looks alone that Jodi Arias excels as a murderess, though. There’s no need for us to succumb to displeasing shallowness. We also need to consider her personality and behavior. Happily, Jodi presents us with a wealth of riches in this regard.

Jodi Arias has demonstrated a level of psychosexual dynamism that may be unsurpassed in the annals of female crime. She is able to combine the chilly manipulative demeanor of a top flight film noir vixen — say, Lauren Bacall circa The Big Sleep (1946) — with the red-hot antics of a 21st century porn star. This heady melange of cool, calculated mind-games and x-rated promiscuity was the elephant in the room throughout the circus that some dared call a trial. Emotional blackmail, fits of jealousy, and dysfunctional codependency? Jodi had it covered. Bondage? Degradation? Anal sex? Sperm facials? Jodi was up for it. Let’s be honest, the risque photos displayed at the trial, along with the phone sex recordings, and the naughty testimony concerning Spiderman underpants and rough sex following hot on the heels of a Mormon baptism — all of this turned a whole season of “Court TV” into an Arizona remake of the Marquis de Sade’s Crimes of Love.

And Jodi’s apparent psychological problems — her dissociative personality disorder, her mood swings, and her compulsive lying — only served to boost the scandalous nature of the proceedings. Likewise, her murder trial makeover, in which she was transformed from blonde femme fatale into a bespectacled, brunette librarian, simply rendered the subject matter even more salacious. What sex addict or voyeur has not, at some time or other, entertained fantasies of  “Greek love” with a librarian? We can only assume that Travis Alexander was no stranger to this concept.

None of this detracts one bit from the artistic quality of her crime. On the contrary, Jodi Arias scores extremely high when it comes to personal appearance, style, personality, and attitude. I can’t think of another murderess who presents such an enticing blend of psychological problems, undeniable attractions and untamed desires.

Jodi Arias’ Choice of Victim

When it comes to the matter of Jodi Arias’ victim, we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary. The esteemed De Quincey lays out three criteria in this category for a truly artistic murder. First, the victim should be a “good person.” This satisfies the Aristotelian notion that a murder shall invoke both terror and pity. If the victim is an evil sort, his/her murder, though terrifying, will arouse scarcely any pity at all. Second, the victim should not be a public figure. Killing a celebrity or well-known official takes on the more public flavor of an assassination, which tends to distract us from purely aesthetic considerations. Third, the victim should be in good health, for as De Quincey puts it, “it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear it.”Absolutely. Just because we are dealing with murder here, there is no need to descend to the level of mere savages.

So how does Jodi Arias measure up to these standards? On balance, she does quite well. But as in most areas of life, there is definitely room for improvement. Travis Alexander was certainly in fine health, and he was by no means a public figure or celebrity. His name would mean nothing to us, were it not for his violent demise. As far as being a “good person,” however, this presents us with distinct problems. By pretending to be a devout Mormon, all the while indulging in pre-marital sex binges on the sly, Travis Alexander was clearly a scoundrel. Perhaps not a scoundrel of the order of the venture capitalist and Latter Day Saint, Mitt Romney, but a scoundrel nonetheless. Anyone who rationalizes his clear delight in sodomy because he has convinced himself that the act poses no threat to his Mormon vows, since it is somehow not considered “intercourse,” is a confused and dishonest individual. Indulge in this perversion to your heart’s content, but please, spare us the fairy tales and rationalizations. Sodomy and religious dogma do not mix. Moreover, we would not be shocked to learn that Travis combined his delusional thought processes and beliefs with abusive behavior toward women.  Should we really be surprised that this type of man would one day be attacked by one of his female sex buddies, whom he idly chattered about tying to a tree?

Therefore, when it comes to her choice of victim, Jodi scores 2 out of 3. Her slaying of Travis allows for ample terror, but alas, none of the pity we would feel over the violent and untimely death of a “good person.”

The Artistry of the Murder Itself

Now we can move on to what is by far the most important part of our evaluation — the artistry of the murder itself. Here we must navigate through some fairly complicated terrain. The crime scene itself was a huge mess, the site of bloody pandemonium. Jodi turned that house into an abattoir. Travis Alexander was shot and then stabbed close to thirty times with a knife. His head was nearly severed. So what are we to make of this attempted masterpiece? Remember, we are discussing pure aesthetics here — the morality and legality of the matter having been thoroughly resolved. That dead horse that has been flogged quite enough already.

In terms of planning and execution, Jodi Arias exceeds all expectations. What is particularly striking is the combination of cold-blooded premeditation (ensuring her the coveted first degree murder conviction), with what can only be described as a passionate frenzy when it came time to close the deal. The Manson girls of 1969 inevitably come to mind. But they were unclean hippies. Jodi was well-scrubbed, perfumed, and no doubt clothed in Victoria’s Secret, or some similar lingerie. Plus, she had the audacity to have sex with her victim prior to killing him. Then she proceeded to hook-up with another fellow directly after the carnage. Surely this deserves bonus points! Let’s face it, Jodi would eat the Manson girls’ brains for lunch. Compared to Jodi, they were stoned bush leaguers.

When it comes to the choice of weapons, we are faced with a real dilemma. Perhaps De Quincey might guide us here. The learned and eloquent dope fiend, friend and contemporary of Wordsworth and Coleridge, was partial to stabbing and throat-slitting, above all other forms of killing. Bludgeoning was acceptable, but he had a special fondness for the dagger, and no use whatsoever for poison:

“Fie on these dealers in poison, say I: can they not keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases, compared with the legitimate style, as no better than wax-work by the side of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato.”

I feel precisely the same way about guns as De Quincey did about poison. Any moron can load up on firearms and ammunition at the local gun store. They can visit a gun show, or purchase guns online, and not even be bothered with a routine background check. Pulling a trigger and blasting holes in someone takes no great level of skill or imagination. It is simply a mechanical action, requiring no more aesthetic skill than starting a car or flushing a toilet.

We have no choice, therefore, but to rank Jodi Arias considerably lower than we would prefer on this account, simply because she made the aesthetically disastrous decision to use a gun. It’s a shame, because her knife skills are unsurpassed, truly off the charts. Her blade work and the ensuing bloodshed is reminiscent of both the disfiguring cubism of Picasso, and Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist splatterings and drips. The bathroom scene is a true wonder; it’s shocking that this was only her first murder. And the sexual activity takes us into the realm of transgressive Viennese performance art. (A pre-murder sex tape would have been an excellent touch, but you can’t have everything.) Moreover, Jodi’s incredible performance during the police interrogation – complete with yoga positions and pleasing gymnastics — is pure Dada. Hugo Ball would have surely applauded this tour de force.

All in all, the sublime and terrifying artistry of Jodi Arias’ act of murder is undeniable. Yet it will remain forever tarnished by the crass and tasteless use of a firearm.

I am reminded of Valerie Solanas, the deranged feminist revolutionary and author of The S.C.U.M. Manifesto(1967). SCUM is the acronym for the “Society for Cutting Up Men” (not the “Society for Cutting Up Mormons”). And that’s precisely what Solanis advocated: knife attacks in the face of male oppression. The typical man, as Solanas affectionately characterizes him, “is obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim in a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there’ll be a friendly pussy awaiting him…” The women she calls on to butcher these males are “completely self-confident, arrogant, outgoing, proud, tough-minded… capable of intense, witty, bitchy conversation.” They are also “hateful, violent bitches… given to disgusting, nasty, upsetting scenes.” And they are prone to “slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth.” These women, Solanas writes, would “sink a shiv into a man’s chest, or ram an icepick up his a__hole as soon as look at him, if they knew they could get away with it…”

Zut alors! Not exactly Oprah’s Book Club material–but an undeniably compelling screed from thoughtful and angry psychopath.

Yet when the time came to put her theory into practice, Solanas went for the gun. Not the knife, the shiv, the sword, or the icepick. The gun. You might recall that she’s the one who shot Andy Warhol in 1968, seriously wounding him as he stood there dazed and confused inside the inner sanctum of his famed Factory. Warhol somehow survived the attack. And Solanas had made a serious mistake. The shooting ruined her reputation forever. It also occurred on the same day as the Robert F. Kennedy assassination — which hurt her in terms of publicity. I am perhaps one of the few connoisseurs of crime who even remembers her name. And I only invoke her here as an example of how miserably one can botch an otherwise excellent and artful execution simply by choosing the wrong weapon.

Despite the imperfections noted, Jodi Arias’s slaying of Travis Alexander, when viewed as a complete event — an “artistic whole” — ranks extremely high in the annals of murder. Although Thomas De Quincy would rightly decry Jodi’s inexplicable use of a firearm, this blemish can and will be forgiven over time, considering the strength of the overall performance. Jodi Arias will be remembered for quite some time by all true connoisseurs of crime.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

His Last Words

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

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

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

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

Barry Bearak writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Few Somber Souls

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bundy Claimed to Be Remorseful

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

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

The Killer’s Final Phone Calls

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

Click here to view our previous Ted Bundy posts:

Ten Fatal Facts about Ted Bundy’s Formative Years

14 Cold-Blooded Quotes by Serial Killer Ted Bundy

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The following crime incident gives us the opportunity to act as a “fly upon a wall” witnessing the actions of a fetishist as he engages in his obsessive quest.

Suppose a male burglar breaks into your home and searches the joint, sleuthing around, opening drawers, looking for something. (All of this is captured on video by your home security system.) The burglar is very deliberate and gives the impression that he may be looking for something very specific — diamonds perhaps, a money stash, maybe a will or stock certificates… He does not appear to be a drug addict looking for anything that isn’t nailed down which can be fenced for quick cash. Then suppose that the burglar who appears to be somewhat overweight and appears to waddle a bit opens up a drawer and pulls out a pair of your girlfriend’s drawers (panties). Then suppose this same determined panty thief very deliberately pulls your girlfriend’s panties on over his jeans and then proceeds to sleuth some more wandering around the crib, looking just a bit like Superman with his well-padded “Superman panties” worn over his tights.

Then just before exiting, our awkward panty thief steals your girlfriend’s picture off a table and pops it into his goody bag. The whole escapade is recorded in grainy black and white. There is no sound, just the thief’s movements captured on video.

Weird, huh? Maybe even a bit creepy, or a lot creepy.

Then suppose you are the boyfriend or the girlfriend victim. What would you do with the video evidence? Well, of course you would turn it over to the police in the hope they would arrest the weirdo. But that’s not all you would do. Like any self-respecting user of social media you would also post the surveillance video on You Tube. Of course you would…

Andy Campbell of Huff Post Weird News reports:

He didn’t take any valuables, but he did try on the unmentionables.

A Chicago man says he was terrified to learn that a burglar wore his girlfriend’s panties and stole a picture of her before fleeing. The creepy crawler was caught on surveillance camera at 12:45 a.m. on Sept. 25, rummaging through Steve Fremond’s belongings. The victim posted the security footage to YouTube.

“The guy didn’t take any valuables that we know of,” Fremond told 9 News.

“My initial reaction to seeing it was mostly disbelief, but once it sank in, I was a little scared,” he said. “My girlfriend was very scared, though. If you look towards the end of the video you could see him take the picture of her off of the table.”

According to UPI, to date no arrest has been made.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Henry Lee Lucas (the real life inspiration for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) loved confessing to murders whether he’d committed them or not. At one point he claimed to have whacked over 300 people. All his life he was desperate for attention and when someone was kind enough to give him the time of day, as likely as not he would murder them (or claim later he had murdered them) for thanks.

This is a case where “nurture” may well trump “nature.” Henry was born in 1936 and his childhood was abominable. Like Charles Manson’s mother, his mother Viola turned tricks for a living. Apparently, there weren’t any motels handy; Henry spent his formative years watching Mom service her clients right there on the dirt floor of their hardscrabble cabin in Blacksburg, Virginia. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Henry’s dad Anderson Lucas also had to watch. You see, poor Anderson had lost his legs in a railroad accident and couldn’t get around too well.

According to Jon C. Hopwood at IMDbPro, Anderson not only had to watch Viola cavort with her johns; he also had to absorb a generous daily dose of violence from her work-roughened fists.  Viola used her poor hapless husband as a punching bag. Finally, Anderson decided he’d had enough. He went outside and fell asleep in the snow while Voila was entertaining a customer. This led to pneumonia and Anderson gratefully shuffled off this mortal coil.

After that Henry had to bear the brunt of the punishment that had previously been divvied up between him and his dad.

Viola really knew how to stick the knife in. When Henry started school (a year late at the age of 7) Viola dressed him as a girl. She even coiffed his hair into sausage curls and then sent him off to the schoolhouse, barefoot and humiliated. Naturally, the other kids gave him hell. Much worse, however, was Viola’s reaction when a compassionate teacher gave Henry a second-hand pair of shoes.  It was a beating Henry wouldn’t soon forget. Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola’s live-in lover, Uncle Bernie (yes, she had a lover in addition to her johns), took pity on the boy and took him to the hospital. Despite this one good deed, Uncle Bernie was hardly a bargain. He introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused. Sometimes, Henry would try to adopt an animal and keep it as a pet, but Viola would methodically kill them. No one remembers how it happened, but on one occasion Henry sliced one of his eyes and needed immediate medical attention. Viola refused and Henry went through the rest of his life with only one eye.

It’s easy to understand why Henry developed a hatred for the fairer sex.

In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.

After getting out of the hoosegow in September of 1959, for somewhat inexplicable reasons, Henry moved back in with his mother. this didn’t last long. One night, both Henry and his mother were drunk. Viola had the bright idea of hitting her son with a broom. Henry didn’t take kindly that and son and stabbed her. That was the end of the road for Viola:

After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother’s corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.

This time Henry was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for killing his mother. They recognized that Henry had problems and transferred him to the state hospital for the criminally insane.  Six years later he was paroled and moved in with relatives in Tecumseh, Michigan. It’s amazing that his “loved ones” would take him in, but family bonds, as we all know, are very powerful. Henry soon molested two teenage girls. Though the charges were later reduced to  simple kidnapping, he was sent back to the state penitentiary.  He was paroled in August 1975, even though Henry warned them that he would kill again. No one listened; instead Henry went to work on, of all things, a mushroom farm. He also married his cousin’s widow. The relationship lasted for two years but then his wife divorced him after discovering that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.

Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.

They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.

In 1978, while living with with Ottis’ mother and sister in Jacksonville, Florida, Henry fell in love with Toole’s 10-year old female cousin, Frieda “Becky” Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. Henry and Ottis worked for a local roofing company for a while but this didn’t last. Soon they were back on the road, two men born to ramble.

When Ottis’ mother and sister died in 1981, Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. This didn’t sit well with Henry. He returned to Jacksonville and managed “to spring” Becky and Frank. Then they all went on the road together where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. Henry and Becky became common-law husband and wife. Henry was 30 years her senior. When the child welfare authorities got wind of this, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983. By this point, he’d seen too much depravity.

Becky and Henry made it back to Texas and wound up at the All People’s House of Prayer, a religious commune. Becky grew homesick and she and Henry hitchhiked back to Florida. Unfortunately for Becky, one night they had an argument and Becky slapped Lucas. This was a mistake. Henry was very good with a knife and that was it for Becky. He dismembered her corpse before returning to Stoneburg,

Henry claimed Becky headed for greener pastures with a passing truck driver. Three weeks later, he was on the lam one day after the disappearance of Kate “Granny” Rich, a local octogenarian. Then, one week later he showed up again in Stoneburg, the day after Rich’s home was destroyed by a mysterious fire.

Finally, on June 11, 1983, Henry’s luck ran out. He was arrested as a felon in possession of a handgun. No one really knows why, but over the next few days Henry spilled his guts. Becky’s murder and dismemberment had been bothering him and he had returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. On the night of June 15th, Lucas summoned the jailer:: “I’ve done some bad things,” he began.

One the faucet was turned on, there was no way to turn it off. Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Granny Rich. That was just the beginning. Eventually, body-count had risen to somewhere between 150 and 360, and, staggeringly, reached the 500 to 600 range when he factored in killings by his friends. Lucas implicated his erstwhile pal Ottis Toole in many of the murders, furthermore claiming that he and Toole had committed many murders as a hit-squad directed by a Satanic cult, “The Hand of Death,” that Toole had introduced him to. A cannibal, Toole sometimes ate the flesh of their victims, although Lucas didn’t join him in his insalubrious repast.

Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, had no problem being implicated by his former lover:

In fact, he offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings… The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas’ confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.

At his trial, Lucas took responsibility for over 600 murders. He even claimed to have supplied People’s Temple stalwart Jim Jones with the cyanide to effect the Guyana massacre. Ottis Toole, now on Florida’s Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas’ confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.

Henry Lee Lucas, of course, later changed his mind about  his confessions.  He claimed his whole wild tale was merely to improve his living conditions in jail. He eventually took credit for one murder, that of his mother. Because the authorities were never really sure how many murders could really be attributed to Henry, his multiple death sentences were commuted to life in prison by Governor George W. Bush; it was the sole death sentence ever vacated by the then-governor. This allowed Henry Lee Lucas to die a peaceful death in prison.

A few final notes on Henry:

He had an estimated IQ of 84, which is well below normal.

But Henry could express himself and was not shy about self-evaluation:

I hated all my life. I hated everybody. When I first grew up and can remember, I was dressed as a girl by my mother. And I stayed that way for 2 or 3 years. And after that I 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.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In the last few weeks here at All Things Crime Blog we’ve covered the cases of two truly odd individuals, first the Horned Man – Caius Veiovis — and then last week’s prize Satanist — Pazuzu Illah Algarad. Caius is now a convicted murderer who will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole and Pazuzu, if convicted, will probably get a similar sentence.

With the help of a Mr. Stephen Daniels, I now realize that both of these gentlemen, who I’ve referred to as “Look at Me” types, likely suffer from Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD). These are the folks around whom every scene must revolve, the folks who can never sit quietly and appreciatively while others hold forth, folks who absolutely must be the center of attention.

Today, however, we do not get to examine another whacked out dude; rather, we will cast a preliminary glance at a man so wonderfully normal and successful that no one would ever expect that he too would find himself charged with premeditated first-degree-murder, and in his case, a murder that could be seen as even MORE AWFUL than the murders that Caius and Pazuzu have been charged with for the simple reason that this pillar of the community is charged with gasp strangling his own wife on Valentine’s Day!

The Crimesider Staff writes:

Few in this former port city along the Mississippi River had more cachet than Curtis Lovelace: an all-Big Ten football player, longtime prosecutor, school board president, sports broadcaster and educator at the local university.

That sparkling image in the 40,000-strong western Illinois community of Quincy was shattered when he recently was charged with suffocating his first wife and mother of four on Valentine’s Day in 2006, unsettling many followers of the case that had remained open because a pathologist and coroner’s jury never pinpointed why the 38-year-old woman died so suddenly.

The scandal, cracked open last December when an investigator gave the case a fresh look, has all the makings of a made-for-TV flick: A community pillar is whisked away by police as he steps from his law office for lunch – eight years after his first wife’s death.

So as you can see, in its own way this is some truly hot stuff. A 45-year-old community role model and conspicuous success story strangles his own wife and gets away with it for the next 8 years.

If we simply run through Mr. Lovelace’s index of accomplishments, we can hardly fail to be impressed. For starters, while attending Quincy High School in the 1980s, he managed to maintain a “B” average while earning SIX varsity letters. This esteemed gent ran track, wrestled and played football, and was such a star that somewhere down the road he was enshrined in the school’s sports hall of fame.

So far, so good. Damned impressive, in fact, but nothing compared to what was still to come. Off goes Boy Wonder to the University of Illinois in good old Champaign-Urbana and what does he do? While playing center, he is named team captain and is a two-time all-Big Ten selection.

And… (there’s always an “and” in Dude’s sterling string of accomplishments) , Dude is an ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICAN. Damn! I’m ready to salute.

Here’s what our gentlemanly alleged strangler had to say about it 24 years ago:

“I did not come to the University of Illinois as a star athlete or a star student. I think I’ve reached this point with hard work.”

Clearly, a pleasingly humble over-achiever.

Then Lovelace made a very serious miscalculation. Dude married a former high-school classmate named Cory Didriksen in 1991. Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with marrying someone from your high school but you should wait until you’re at least 47.

Let the damned paint dry on the wall. Step out a little. If you return home to your home town, a conquering hero, you should carefully select a wife from Lower Slobovia or some other obscure locale, not a local girl.

So what do you do when you’re already quite the success story? Simple. You get a law degree and pass the bar so that you can make the big bucks. Then you’re on your way. So naturally Dude did precisely that.

Ulp! Dude made another mistake. He had a bunch of kids, four to be exact, with poor Cory. (Of course, she didn’t know she was “Poor Cory” at the time. She thought she was “Lucky Cory” landing such a big old fish.)

After becoming an Illinois lawyer, Dude became an assistant prosecutor in Quincy.

INTRODUCTORY CHORDS TO BEETHOVEN’S 5TH SYMPHONY

Then the shit hits the freakin’ fan. Crimesider writes:

According to Curtis Lovelace’s account detailed in transcripts of a coroner’s inquest, his wife, Cory, had been sick for days come Feb. 14, 2006, when he drove three of the couple’s four children to school and returned to find his wife dead in bed. An investigator said Curtis Lovelace never summoned emergency responders or tried to resuscitate her.

An autopsy and the coroner’s jury weeks later failed to determine the cause of death.

“At the time it happened, we just considered it a tragedy,” said Mike Cadwell, 64, who has been a barber for 40 years. “I knew there was speculation, questions. But he never seemed to be at the center of it.”

Dude appeared to be the Teflon Man…

But there were chinks in his armor. He married twice more in fairly rapid succession. Big mistake. If you’ve strangled the ex on Valentine’s Day, and have cleverly taken steps to keep it on the Down-Low, you do not get married twice during the next few years. Once is fine if you wait for a suitable period of time, and though your new wife can be moderately attractive, she needs to be sedate and hopefully even a bit mousy. Nothing to draw attention to yourself. Cuz remember, these are the Rules of Murder. If you don’t obey the Rules, you will get popped. I can almost guarantee it.

Dude’s bad break came when “a newly promoted police detective dusted off the file and enlisted two pathologists to weigh in. Each concluded she was suffocated, and Curtis Lovelace was indicted in August.”

Of course, we don’t know what evidence the prosecutors have suggesting that Cory Didriksen was strangled by Curtis Lovelace. Presumably they have something pretty strong but, on the other hand, we know from experience that prosecutors and/or detectives sometime get carried away and start nudging the evidence in one direction or another so that it matches What They Want to Believe.

Lovelace, 45, now faces a first-degree murder charge, to which he has pleaded not guilty. During a Thursday hearing, Judge Bob Hardwick set a trial date for Jan. 26.

* * * * *

So what do Caius Veiovis, Pazuzu Illah Agarad and Curtis Lovelace have in common? Simple. They’ve all been charged with first degree murder.

I would wager Pazuzu will be convicted. After all, they did dig up skeletons in his back yard and he reportedly loved to brag about killing, eating and dismembering prostitutes, something you can be reasonably sure Mr. Lovelace never engaged in.

And I’m not at all certain that Lovelace is even guilty, and if it turns out he’s not, I owe him an apology for having fun at his expense.

But suppose he is convicted? He will end up languishing in an Illinois state prison, perhaps the infamous Joliet State Prison, with other convicted killers. They will swap stories and tell lies. And sooner or later Curtis Lovelace will realize that you shouldn’t marry a woman from your high school until you’re at least 47 years old. Not when you’ve been a BMOC. You gotta let the paint dry on the wall.

commentary by Patrick Moore

Eight months ago I received a lecture for casting aspersions upon foster parents and Child Protective Services’ case workers. The woman who criticized my criticism pointed out that I was focusing on bad foster parents and corrupt case workers rather than realizing that these miscreants are the exception, not the rule. I took the advice to heart and have since bent over backwards to be fair and balanced with respect to this issue.

Earlier this year, however, the Huffington Post and other media sources reported a case of such shocking malpractice (for lack of a better word) on the part of the Los Angeles County child welfare workers that the mind recoils in horror. (In fairness, this is not a foster care case; rather, it is perhaps the most horrific case of child abuse by a biological mother and her boyfriend that I have ever encountered.)

The Associated Press writes:

Graphic grand jury testimony reveals details of the abuse suffered by an 8-year-old Los Angeles County boy allegedly battered to death by his mother and her boyfriend.

Court documents made public Monday show Gabriel Fernandez was doused with pepper spray, forced to eat his own vomit and locked in a cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams, the Los Angeles Times reported ( http://lat.ms/1o9x6pK ).

The Palmdale boy died in May 2013, days after he was hospitalized with injuries including a cracked skull, broken ribs and burns.

The victim’s mother is Pearl Fernandez and her boyfriend is Isauro Aguirre. They are in jail awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to murder charges with special allegations of torture.

As part of their investigation of this case, the LA Times reviewed more than 800 pages of testimony. In a Times article, Soumya Karlamangla, Abby Sewell, and Laura J. Nelson describe the many ways in which the agencies who are supposed to protect our children allegedly dropped the ball:

Several agencies investigated allegations of abuse before Gabriel’s death without removing the boy from the home. On multiple occasions, deputies went to the family’s apartment or to Gabriel’s school to investigate reports of abuse and of the boy being suicidal. Each time, they concluded there was no evidence of abuse and did not write a detailed report.

Timothy O’Quinn, a sheriff’s homicide detective, told grand jurors that there was no indication that deputies had removed any of Gabriel’s clothing to check for signs of abuse.

Investigators searching the family’s apartment after Gabriel’s death found bloodstains, BB gun holes and a wooden club covered in his blood, according to testimony.

In short, Gabriel remained with his mother and her boyfriend despite several investigations by social workers. As a result of this incident, there have been calls for sweeping reforms to the Los Angeles County foster-care system because child welfare workers failed to remove the boy from this “house of horrors”. Two supervisors and two social workers were reportedly fired while others involved in the case received letters of warning or were reprimanded.

The beginning of the end came for poor Gabriel on May 22, 2013, when Pearl Fernandez phoned 9-1-1 to report that her son was not breathing. According to testimony, when sheriff’s deputies arrived at the apartment, she told them her son had fallen and hit his head on a dresser. The paramedics found Gabriel naked in a bedroom. He was not breathing and BB pellets were embedded in his lung and groin. He died two days after the 9-1-1- call.

“It was just like every inch of this child had been abused,” testified James Cermak, a Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic.

Because of several delays in setting a preliminary hearing, frustrated prosecutors convened a grand jury which returned an indictment on July 28th.

During his testimony before the grand jury, Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told the jurors that Fernandez and Aguirre deliberately tortured the boy to death. They did their best to conceal their atrocities with forged doctor’s notes and lies to the authorities.

“For eight straight months, he was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war,” Hatami said.

Two of Gabriel’s siblings, both of whom are minors, testified that the abuse worsened as Gabriel’s death approached. He was forced to eat cat feces, rotten spinach as well as his own vomit.

* * * * *

Gabriel was born in 2005. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to live but relatives and ended up with Fernandez’ parents for an undisclosed period of time. Unfortunately, Fernandez reclaimed Gabriel and two of his older siblings in 2012.

A mere two weeks after Gabriel moved in with his mother, his first-grade teacher called social workers and reported that the boy’s mother had hit him with a belt buckle hard enough to make him bleed. Not unexpectedly, drugs appear to have been involved, and Gabriel apparently demonstrated to the teacher that he knew how to snort cocaine despite his tender age.

Gabriel’s teacher, Jennifer Garcia, testified that she called county services several more times after the child came to school with various injuries included an injured lip which a social worker shrugged off as a “blister”.

At one point, Gabriel wrote a suicide note that was discovered by a counselor at a children’s center. She informed the authorities who once again shrugged it off because Gabriel did not describe the specifics of how he intended to kill himself.

One of the deceased victim’s siblings testified that their mother had told them to lie to social workers whenever they came to check up. He stated that he did lie “because I thought she was going to do the same things to me.”

Gabriel’s school remained vigilant and school officials asked a deputy to investigate his many absences because they suspected child abuse. The deputy claimed that he was initially given the wrong address but that when he eventually reached Gabriel’s mother by phone, she told him Gabriel had moved back to Texas and was living with his grandmother.

* * * * *

It sounds like Gabriel’s school did their level best to rescue the boy but that no one else cared enough to expend enough effort to get at the truth. Drugs were obviously involved, a fact that deputies could hardly have been unaware of. Furthermore, when reports of suggested child abuse with the same victim and the same parents surface over and over again, it seems pretty obvious that “where there’s smoke there’s fire”.

With respect to the abuse itself, I suspect that inflicting pain on the helpless quickly becomes addictive, and thus like any other form of addictive behavior, the addict must inflict more and more pain to gain the satisfaction he or she craves.

Many people who hear about this case will respond by saying that if convicted of first degree murder, Fernandez and her despicable boyfriend Aguirre should receive the death penalty, and I would not be that surprised if they do due to the torture allegations. However, since there is apparently a moratorium on actual executions in California, they may wile away their existences of Death Row for quite some time.

Update:

Since posting this story on August 2oth, unsurprisingly, we’ve received a variety of comments. Everyone is horrified but everyone does not agree as to what should be done, particularly with regards to Gabriel’s siblings and the possibility they may be called upon to testify against Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre at trial.

Child advocate Lori commented on August 20th:

Don’t hold your breath Patrick, on a lengthy sentence. Maybe it will happen since this case has received media attention but the statistics show that crimes against children rarely ever get anywhere near the consequences meted out to people convicted of crimes against adults, or even property crimes. Before people get their panties all in a bunch over this let’s just consider a few things. In all likelihood who will be the star witnesses against mom and stepdad? Yes. The surviving siblings. Who are also victims. Witnessing abuse to a loved one is horrific abuse in itself, sometimes worse than being the one injured.

I don’t care what happens to these “parents”. Yes, I smile when my mind gives me a pleasant picture of them strung up like pinatas with Lady Justice and her blindfold under them with a baseball bat but in reality I don’t care if they go to prison for life or walk free. I care about not victimizing any more children. Do not fool yourselves, testifying against their mom will scar these children for life. Again. They have been hurt enough, now we will let the system take over their abuse? These “parents” are done. They will not be abusing any more children. This is not a case of death due to neglect or stupidity. This is murder by cruelty and they will not ever be allowed to raise any more children. We no longer need to worry about protecting the surviving children from them. Now we need to protect these surviving children from the system, the prosecutors and public opinion demanding revenge. Trust me on this one, these children need protecting right NOW.

I recently had a child in my home that suffered incredibly similar abuse but survived. Same story, different state. After a year of worrying and begging the prosecutor and the victims’ rights advocate to please not abuse this child any more by making him testify, they finally offered mom a plea to take a couple of misdemeanor assault charges instead of going to trial with several felony child abuse charges. I don’t think the decision had anything to do with caring one bit about the child, or anything I said either…. I think the decision was due to children being the crappiest witnesses ever. The defense annihilates them on the stand. Kids lie. They also don’t have the kind of linear memories adults have. They don’t remember locations and dates, or even do a very good job of sequencing events. Easy prey for a defense attorney. They are incredibly easy to manipulate and confuse by both sides. And both sides do it.

Kids don’t hate. This is an adult emotion (aren’t we proud?). Children love their parents regardless of how they are treated. They want and need their parents to love them. They are a part of their parents. If you take this child and try to turn them against their parents you are not only scarring them but you are also telling them they are also “bad” or “evil” or worthless. Look at children in ugly divorces and the damage done when parents bad mouth each other. Now multiply that by whatever number you want. Kids blame themselves for their parents’ divorce. They also blame themselves for the abuse they receive. It’s kind of human nature. If it isn’t our fault then we must be helpless, luckless victims with no control over our lives. Wow. Please don’t describe me that way.

Plenty of therapists and prosecutors will argue that letting them testify will empower them and help them overcome the trauma and give them a voice. Yeah. Whatever. I pick up the pieces every day. I listen to the stories and rock them back to sleep after nightmares. And I tell them their parents love them. All the time. Which may just make me a big liar but oh well. I tell them that it wasn’t their fault and it wasn’t because they weren’t loved. I tell them that I know lots of parents and lots of kids and I have never met a parent who didn’t love his child. (Yes, my nose is growing, but hey, I tell the little ones I believe in Santa too so shut up). I also tell them that I have met lots of parents that can’t take care of their children or keep them safe. I remind them that I can’t fix cars, doesn’t mean I don’t care about my car. What it means is we all have things we can do and things we can’t. They are loved and worthy of love. Someday these kids will be adults (many are) and they can look me in the eye and say, “you were so full of crap” but most say instead, “thanks for letting me grow up without judging my family”. They have a whole lifetime to be an adult and hate all they want.

I am not saying to give the parents a “get out jail free” card. I am saying let’s remember who counts here. It takes a village, which is more than a pretty catchphrase (are you listening Hillary? ‘Cause there are some confused Central American children that wonder why you don’t want them in your village). Whatever happens to these parents let’s not forget to protect the children.

Today (October 13th), a commenter named  Tempus apparently read Lori’s comment and angrily replied in a veritable rage:

So sorry. You are myopic beyond belief on the subject of ‘protecting’ the surviving children here. They NEED to testify. They NEED to exorcise the atrocities committed against their brother. Your cavalier little dismissal of the possibility of a long sentence is not only ludicrous, it is imbecilic; these monsters will be very lucky to escape the death sentence. In case you haven’t noticed, this case is smeared all over the Internet and will continue to be for years to come. What would, of course, be best is to give the parents not the death penalty (appealed until doomsday with taxpayers maintaining the monsters for decades) but life without parole IN GENERAL POPULATION. They would, and one sincerely hopes, WILL then get what they deserve. You are so delusional on the subject of children, on whether or not they ‘hate’, and on the world in general it is simply horrifying.

Rick Stack also seeks a long sentence, but in his usual calm and reasoned manner:

This “mother” and her boyfriend need to receive a very long prison sentence so that they do not have a chance to ever be parents again. I hope that they do not get out of prison until they are both old and gray, although I share Lori’s fear that they may get off with an unreasonably light sentence. I somewhat differ from Lori’s opinion that the two older children should not be required to testify against their mother and her boyfriend because we’re talking about a murder case here! If these two miscreants somehow are able to beat this rap for lack of evidence because the two older children do not testify about the abuse that they witnessed, the mother may succeed in regaining custody of her two surviving children and the cycle of abuse might begin again.

And so it goes, my friends. Meanwhile poor Gabriel has been released from this mortal coil and his abusers have yet to stand trial. I’ll keep an eye on this case and will check back periodically.

by BJW Nashe

In Joe McGinniss’ Fatal Vision, we have a grisly triple murder at the Fort Bragg home of Ivy League doctor and Green Beret Captain Jeffrey McDonald. The doctor’s pregnant wife and two young daughters are stabbed and bludgeoned to death. The doctor suffers relatively minor, non-life threatening wounds. The crime scene investigation is botched. Charges are filed against the doctor, then dropped. Nearly a decade later, the doctor is put on trial. He enlists well-known journalist Joe McGinniss to tell his story. The doctor is eventually convicted of murder, for killing his own family. The journalist’s book, three years in the making, becomes a true crime classic. The doctor feels betrayed by the writer, so he sues him. The controversy surrounding the case shadows the journalist. He can’t get away from it. He is attacked by other journalists, criticized, called names. Thirty-four years later, the controversy still swirls, as attorneys push for a new trial in light of DNA evidence. It is a rich, multi-faceted tragedy, with tragicomic elements. The questions keep piling up and new books keep coming out. No one is quite certain whether Dr. McDonald is actually the murderer.

The triple murder on February 17, 1970 of Collette, Kristen, and Kimberley MacDonald was a perplexing tragedy that received plenty of national attention, though it was perhaps overshadowed by other high profile crimes committed during the same time period by the Manson Family, for instance, and the Zodiac Killer. And the MacDonald family murders were strangely linked to some of those other shocking deaths. A copy of Esquire Magazine with a cover story on Charles Manson was found at the MacDonald crime scene. (In 1970, Manson was somehow connected to everything — an essential part of the zeitgeist.) In the McDonald family master bedroom, above the bed, the word “pig” had been scrawled in blood. In numerous statements, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald claimed that he and his family had been attacked by deranged hippies saying things like, “Acid is Groovy” and “Kill the Pigs.”

The only problem was that there was no evidence whatsoever of any intruders. Not a hint of hippies — or anyone else other than the doctor and his family. Indeed, the crime scene appeared staged — showing few if any signs of a realistic, spontaneous struggle. The fact that Dr. MacDonald was left alive, while his family was so brutally murdered, seemed strange. Yet Dr. MacDonald, an all-American success story educated at Princeton and now serving as a Green Beret, with no history of mental illness or criminal activity, was about as far from the stereotypical psycho killer as one could get.

Could McDonald really be responsible for the carnage inside his house? When case-hardened MPOs (military police officers) arrived at his Fort Bragg home, even they were shocked. MacDonald’s pregnant wife, Colette, was stabbed 16 times with a knife and 21 times with an ice pick. Daughter Kimberly, age five, was bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck. Kristen, age two, was stabbed 48 times; one of her fingers had been nearly severed as she tried to fend off the blows.

At a closed military hearing, although Dr. MacDonald was the only likely suspect, initial charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence, even though his version of events made little sense, and there was nothing to indicate an attack by intruders. Flamboyant defense attorney Bernie Segal was able to shred the testimony of investigators who had made a mess of the crime scene investigation. Even circumstantial evidence against Dr. MacDonald was cast into doubt. In the aftermath of the tragedy and the dropped charges, Dr. MacDonald — an extreme “Type A” personality — enjoyed a certain amount of publicity, or perhaps notoriety is a better term. He talked to news reporters at length; he appeared on the Dick Cavett show. He did not appear overly traumatized.

Dr. MacDonald’s father-in-law, who had initially supported the doctor, soon changed his mind following his own investigative work, and pushed civilian authorities to pursue the case. A grand jury subsequently indicted MacDonald in 1975. He was found guilty of murder four years later, and is serving three life sentences. If his appeal fails, he does not become eligible for parole until 2071.

All of this makes for a compelling murder case. When crafted into the shape of a true crime classic by journalist Joe McGinniss, the case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald takes on a near-mythic quality. The story of how Fatal Visioncame to be written, and the controversy that still haunts the book to this day, is just as fascinating as the crime story itself.

Joe McGinniss was educated at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1965. After working as a journalist in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he achieved massive success with his 1968 book about Richard Nixon, The Selling of the President, which is still considered a classic of campaign reporting. By 1979, he had written several other books, and was working as a writer-in-residence at the L.A. Herald Examiner. He was then approached by Dr. MacDonald, who was interested in having a talented, yet sympathetic reporter tell his story as he moved ahead with his upcoming trial defense.

For the trial, McGinniss embedded himself in the defense team. He lived in the same house as Dr. MacDonald for several months. Initially impressed by the doctor’s intelligence and charisma, and willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, McGinniss gradually achieved a frightening new understanding of the defendant, and the tragic events of the night of February 17, 1979. McGinniss slowly became convinced that MacDonald’s outward appearance of all-American perfection, though compelling at first, in fact belied a psychopathic personality. He came to view MacDonald as a Gatsby-like character. Pull back the curtain on MacDonald, strip away the outer veneer of prestige, wealth, and success, and something truly awful was revealed. The over-achiever was over-compensating for some inexplicable inner darkness. Thus, we learn of the controlling behavior, the violent temper, the hatred of any criticism, the intolerance of imperfection, the amphetamine abuse, the womanizing.

Fatal Vision is a tour de force of true crime reporting, frequently compared with two other classics of the genre –Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. McGinniss’ s 900-plus page monster wipes the floor with most crime fiction lining the bookstore shelves, and blows just about every other true crime book out of the water. His close proximity to the defendant, his obsessive grappling with all details of the investigation and trial, and the steady revelation of the doctor’s psychotic, narcissistic personality disorder all makes for a powerful reading experience. McGinniss has described how this case consumed him — his sleepless nights and fits of anxiety, all brought on by the creepiness of the slowly unraveling mystery. This heady cocktail of diverse elements infuses Fatal Vision with a sense of drama and foreboding that is rare in non-fiction.

In writing this masterpiece, Joe McGinnis came to realize that the man he was living with, who had hired him to tell his story, was a murderer. No gang of crazed hippies had killed MacDonald’s wife and two daughters. It was the Green Beret doctor himself, in a speed-fueled psychotic rage. We can only imagine what the man’s patients — who he had been treating throughout the 1970s — must have thought about all of this.

But is this what really happened? Did McGinniss get the story right? Fatal Vision was a bestseller in 1983. A television miniseries followed one year later. Meanwhile, Jeffrey MacDonald was stewing in prison, plotting his appeals. And we get the sense that McGinniss was finally ready to move on, let go of his obsession with the grisly tale. The grisly tale, however, was not ready to let go of him.

MacDonald, although he had signed a release allowing McGinniss to basically write whatever he wanted, felt betrayed by the author and filed a civil suit against McGinniss in 1984, alleging that McGinniss pretended to believe MacDonald innocent after coming to the conclusion that MacDonald was guilty, in order to ensure the doctor’s continued cooperation. After the six-week civil trial resulted in a hung jury, the insurance company for McGinniss’s publisher chose to settle out of court with MacDonald for $325,000.

Then the inevitable backlash ensued. Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost published a book called Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders,  which was a clear counterattack to Fatal Vision. Claiming that MacDonald was without a doubt innocent, Potter and Bost criticized McGinniss’s book for being wildly inaccurate. In particular, they tried to lay waste to McGinnis’s theory that the doctor’s murderous frenzy was brought on by abusing diet pills. At the civil trial, McGinnis had been forced to admit under oath that he had no hard evidence to support his diet pill theory, and that it may not have happened at all. Potter and Bost also pointed out that Judge Ross, who presided over the civil trial, had likened McGinniss’s conduct toward MacDonald to that of “a thief in the night.” Even worse, the judge had then corrected himself, saying, “I guess a thief in the night wouldn’t see you. He is more of a con man than he is a thief.”

Perhaps, but this might be said of all great writers. And in reading Fatal Vision, we have little doubt that we are in the company of an outstanding investigative journalist. Surely, some of our finest novelists and reporters have been called far worse things than con artists or thieves. Just read some of the criticism of Hemingway, for example. Papa could probably have lived with accusations like “con artist” and “thief” without breaking a sweat. In fact, he might have even viewed  such claims as damned fine praise.

In her own book, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990),  Janet Malcolm used the “Fatal Vision Case” to explorethe problematic relationship between journalists and their subjects. Delving into the murky world of journalistic ethics, rather than attempting some sort of nuanced position on the issue, Malcolm simply damns all journalists to hell for their immoral tactics. She is highly critical of McGinniss; yet she seems to be saying there is plenty of blame to go around. In other words, he is by no means alone in his transgressions:

“Every journalist,” she writes, “knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and then betraying them without remorse.”

McGinniss has responded to this by defending his methods. Of course, he argues, no journalist is going to show his entire hand when dealing with subjects. Both parties are engaged in a certain amount of cat-and-mouse. To accuse a writer of outright deception or betrayal is crude, however. A more complex game is being played by both journalist and subject in a case as morally complicated as the MacDonald murder trial. And the truth of the matter, according to McGinniss, is that Dr. MacDonald was the one most deeply committed to manipulation and persuasion, not vice versa. His sense of betrayal only reflects his disappointment over the fact that his attempt to sway the reporter ultimately failed. So who was really trying to con who here?

Malcolm’s critique of McGinniss is too one-sided. And besides, even if what she is saying has a kernel of truth — that journalists are “immoral” — we are still left with the question of “so what?” McGinniss got extremely close to the story he was covering. His book delivered the goods. Brilliantly. So what if he “betrayed” someone? Loyalty and trustworthiness were not exactly part of his job description in writing Fatal Vision.

It goes on and on. MacDonald’s attempts to appeal his conviction received renewed attention with the 2012 release of a book provocatively titled, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald. Written by Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, this account of the MacDonald family murders portrays the Green Beret doctor as a man who has been wrongfully convicted on the basis of incomplete and corrupted evidence, as well as prosecutorial misconduct.

In December 2012, McGinniss himself felt the need to weigh in on the whole issue one more time with Final Vision: The Last Word on Jeffrey MacDonald.

Except that this won’t be the last word on Jeffrey MacDonald. We will no doubt keep hearing more about this unique American nightmare in the coming months, as the wheels of justice keep grinding.

Last year in September, MacDonald’s attempts to appeal his conviction resulted in a federal hearing in Wilmington, North Carolina. McGinniss was called to testify for the prosecution. He thus came face to face with his infamous subject for the first time in years. McGinniss found the doctor, after years in prison, to be a shadow of the man he once was. Even a Green Beret is no match for the penitentiary. At the hearing, MacDonald’s lawyers asserted that newly-discovered DNA evidence — three hairs that match neither MacDonald nor any of the victims — and the secondhand confession of a key witness who claimed to be at the family’s home the night of the murders, justify reopening the case. As yet, no decision has been made as to whether there will be a new trial.

The “Fatal Vision case” continues to wrap its tentacles around McGinniss. It appears to be the story with which he will be forever linked. For this writer, it has been a lucrative blessing as well as a troubling curse. Much like Capote and the Kansas murders depicted in In Cold Blood, McGinniss has enjoyed considerable fame and success as a result of his true crime epic. Yet he struggles to get past the Jeffrey MacDonald saga, to fully close the door on the psychotic doctor. Some of McGinniss’s subsequent books have been reasonably well-received. Others have bombed. None have enjoyed the stupendous success of Fatal Vision. At least McGinniss has continued investigating and writing, unlike Capote, whose life degenerated into a celebrity blur of booze, pills, parties, and talk shows.

McGinniss’s latest book is The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (2011). Just as he bravely embedded himself in the psychotic doctor’s defense team three decades ago, in order to get as close as possible to the story, for The Rogue McGinniss moved to Wasilla, Alaska, in order to live next door to the Palin’s. Surely, McGinniss’s courage as a reporter is beyond any doubt. Being called a con man is the least of his worries.

In the end, McGinniss remains unconvinced by any attempts to tarnish his own book and exonerate Jeffrey MacDonald: “He’s a psychopath,” says McGinniss. “He doesn’t have the kind of emotions that you and I would have. He doesn’t have the capacity to feel badly about it. These weren’t his wife and children. These were people that got in his way.”

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In an extremely disturbing case which may have set a new world record for age difference between a young killer and an old victim, a 10-year-old Wayne County, Pennsylvania boy named Tristen Kurilla has been charged with criminal homicide in the death of a 90-year-old woman.

According to the boy’s mother, Martha Virbitsky, the boy had a history of “mental difficulties”. His mental state may be considered if he later petitions the court to transfer his case from adult court to juvenile court, the district attorney’s office said.

The boy and his parents had better hope that his still undefined “mental difficulties” are sufficient to convince the court to send his case over to the juvenile court because at present he faces adult charges because under Pennsylvania law, the crime of homicide is specifically excluded from the juvenile code.

It all began on Saturday morning when the boy went to visit his grandfather Anthony Virbitsky at his home in Tyler Hill in northeast Pennsylvania. Although I’m not certain, it’s my impression that Tristen visited his grandpa on a fairly regular basis. According to Wayne County District Attorney Janine Edwards, Anthony Virbitsky was the deceased victim, Ms. Novak’s, caretaker.

It appears that while visiting his grandfather, at some point Tristen was alone with Ms. Novak in her room. It’s unclear whether Tristen was in the habit of checking in with her when he visited his grandfather or if he was even allowed to do so.

The Pocono Record Staff reports:

About 11:15 a.m., state police received a call from the Wayne County Communications Center that a woman was dead at the residence, according to the DA’s office.

The Wayne County coroner was contacted and Deputy Coroner Carol Leinert went to the scene and found Novak dead in her room. She was examined by Leinert and transferred to the Wayne Memorial Hospital morgue.

According to a DA’s office press release, at 3:20 pm on Saturday afternoon, Tristen’s mother Martha Virbitsky took him to the state police barracks in Honesdale. Martha told the officers that her son had told her that he had gone into Novak’s room and that Novak yelled at him. Thus, it’s still unclear whether Tristen was allowed to enter Ms. Novak’s room. As to his claim that the deceased yelled at him, who knows? It obviously sounds like an excuse, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.

In any event, whether or not there was any provocation, it seems reasonably clear that the boy was on the level when he told his mother and/or the police that he “lost his temper, grabbed a cane and put it on Novak’s throat,” not unlike (for those of you who are old enough to remember the series) a demented Bat Masterson.

Once the cat was out of the bag, Pennsylvania State Trooper John Decker met with the boy and his mother for the purpose of discussing Novak’s death. Before the interview began, the Trooper “mirandized Tristen and reviewed his legal rights with him and his mother.”

The affidavit gives a stark account of what transpired stating that Tristen told Officer Decker that “he pulled Novak down on the bed and held a cane on her throat and then punched her numerous times.”

After that the boy must have panicked. He reportedly left the room, went to his grandfather and told him that Novak was bleeding from her mouth.

Then Tristen’s grandfather went in to check on Novak and, according to the affidavit, said she was OK. (This makes little sense. How could she be okay if she was bleeding from the mouth? Of course, the grandfather could have been in denial at first.) The grandfather must have been suspicious, though, because according to the DA’s office, he “then asked the boy if he had done something to Novak and the boy said “No.”

Anthony Virbitsky reportedly went back to check on Novak about 11 a.m. This time he found her unresponsive and called 911, after which he again asked the boy if he had done something to Novak. The second time around, Tristen reportedly admitted to his grandfather “that he had punched Novak and put a cane on her throat.”

The autopsy, which was performed Monday by Dr. Gary Ross at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale states that blunt force trauma to Novak’s neck was revealed, and “that the account given by the boy to state police was consistent with the injuries he observed.”

Thus, it seems clear that whether or not Ms. Novak “yelled at him”, Tristen clearly killed the elderly woman.

I may be way off base on this but I wonder if Tristen didn’t kill Ms. Novak simply because he thought (or knew) he could. There is something in some boys that drives us to do bad things at times even though we really know we shouldn’t. I am reminded of the time down on the farm many lifetimes ago when I – for absolutely no good reason – decided to hang one of our cats. I was busily trying to string it up (ineffectually I might add), when the Fuller Brush Man drove down our driveway, spotted me trying to play hangman, and went immediately to our front door and informed my mother that I was trying to murder an innocent beast.

So I was stymied and you can be sure I heard about it. Yessiree Bob! Now I’m not sure that I would have actually gone through with it and murdered the cat if I wasn’t so ineffectual a hangman or if I hadn’t been caught in the act. The point, however, is that I WAS TRYING TO HANG OUR CAT. And I wasn’t a particularly cruel or violent child most of the time, but I clearly had my moments.

Apparently Tristen did also. He has been charged and arraigned and is being held without bail at the Wayne County Correctional Facility. He won’t be going anywhere until his prelim at 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 22, and I would warrant that he won’t be going anywhere after that either.

Some will insist that there is no way on earth that Tristen should be tried as an adult and I am of this camp. Others will be out for blood.

In thinking about this tragic situation, I am quite shaken. If I had been just a degree or two more twisted as a child, might I have done something like this if given this opportunity ON A WHIM, impulsively, because as Edgar Allan Poe would explain it, The Imp of the Perverse suddenly gained control of me?

In “The Black Cat”, which is probably one of our first great 19th century serial killer stories, Poe’s creepy protagonist starts out by killing a cat, more or less by mistake if I recall correctly. Then another cat falls prey to his mounting bloodlust. And, I believe, a third innocent feline. And then he graduates to humans and his wife becomes his next victim because she frustrates him over some meaningless little thing and because he could.

The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky plumbs this issue in Notes from Underground when he has his troubled and miserable protagonist abuse a rather helpless prostitute who has befriended him purely for the fun of it; i.e., the author’s bothersome little worm of a civil servant abuses her simply because he could, despising himself all the while.

Many of us try hard to do the right thing because we believe it is our moral and ethical duty, but others among us purposely do the wrong thing, at least some of the time, simply because we want to and because we experience twisted pleasure in doing precisely that, no matter what degree of guilt we may feel afterwards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s blood behind the Night Stalker.”

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

by Mike Roche

Exhibit I: The Killing of John Lennon

In the darkness of a cold December night, the assassin waited for his prey to return home. He watched in silence as the limousine dropped off the celebrity couple in front of their exclusive apartment building. As the couple approached, the killer drew his weapon, and at the opportune moment, he fired five shots. Four of his shots struck his victim who slumped to the ground and succumbed to his mortal wounds. The killer paced about nervously — then extracted a book from his back pocket and read seemingly dissociated from the murder he had just committed.

The murder of John Lennon in front of the Dakota Apartments by obscure killer Mark David Chapman shocked the world. During the years preceding Lennon’s death, Chapman had become obsessed with the book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Chapman found refuge and affirmation in protagonist Holden Caulfield’s unceasing attacks on the hypocrisy of the world. Chapman was an under-performer and had already racked up a number of failed suicide attempts. He was a wanderer throughout his early years and settled for a time in Hawaii, where he worked as a security guard.

He initially focused on several possible targets including Johnny Carson, Jackie Onassis Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor and George C. Scott, but ultimately focused on John Lennon. It was to some degree a practical decision in that Chapman believed that Lennon would be the easiest of the celebrities to locate and gain access to. Plus, Chapman was enraged by what he saw as Lennon’s hypocrisy, advocating for the poor, while enjoying the privileged lifestyle of the wealthy and famous. Chapman never forgot that early in his career, Lennon had been heavily criticized for making the claim that he and his fellow Beatles were more popular than Jesus. This was more ammunition and Chapman felt Lennon’s life was in conflict with the humble teachings of the Saviour.

Chapman was perhaps conflicted over his own hypocrisy. He had stood in front of the Dakota with the album Double Fantasy in hand and Lennon had been gracious enough to autograph the album and shake hands with his future killer.  Who asks for an autograph and shakes hands with their intended target? In a sense, Chapman conducted his own autograph session when he signed the inside cover of his well-thumbed copy of The Catcher in the Rye, “This is my statement.”

Chapman told his parole board in 2010 that his initial target list was selected because, “They are famous; that was it,” and he thought that by killing them he would achieve “instant notoriety, fame.” “It wasn’t about them, necessarily,” Chapman said. “It was just about me; it was all about me at that time.” This reiterates the mindset of many mass murderers, whose primary motivation is achieving personal fame. Chapman stated, “I’m sure the big part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.”

The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It describes the adventures of Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old anti-hero who has been expelled from yet another elite preparatory school. Caulfield railed endlessly against the “phonies” of the world. The reclusive author, J.D. Salinger, provided a rare interview to Shirlie Blaney of Windsor High School in Cornish, NH, in which he told Blaney that the novel had an autobiographical aspect. Salinger stated, “My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book. It was a great relief telling people about it.” The catharsis that Salinger experienced from writing the novel resonated and continues to resonate with many of the disaffected and abandoned in society.

Exhibit II: The Killing of Actress Rebecca Schaeffer

Actress Rebecca Schaeffer made a name for herself appearing in the television series, My Sister Sam, which premiered in 1986. In 1989, she was stalked and killed by Robert Bardo, an obsessed fan. Bardo, like many others, was infatuated with her beauty and eagerly mailed her a fan letter. He received back a glossy 8”x10” stock studio photo, which he perceived to be an affirmation of his love. A simple gesture like this photo caused him to completely misinterpret the reality of the situation and set him off on flights of fancy. Bardo traveled to Hollywood on at least three occasions and visited the studio, where he was rebuffed by security.

Temporarily deterred by his inability to get close to Schaeffer, he began to focus his attention on other female celebrities including Tiffany and Madonna. Prior to that, he had focused his attention on Samantha Smith, who had garnered worldwide celebrity status based on her letter writing campaign with Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Smith was killed in a plane crash in 1985 and Rebecca Schaeffer filled the void when My Sister Sam came on the air in 1986.

Robert Bardo was one of seven children who was raised in what is best described as a dysfunctional environment. He struggled with mental illness and was seen by a psychiatrist, but discontinued treatment. His neighbors viewed him as emotionally unstable; he would often become enraged, and he was described by one neighbor as a “psycho.” It is reported that Bardo threatened to get his .357 magnum and shoot another neighbor.

From all accounts, Bardo worshipped Schaeffer’s innocence. In one letter, he told Schaeffer that he identified with her character’s yearning to be famous. His path to fame, however, veered off onto the road to infamy.

Bardo became upset and disillusioned when Rebecca Schaeffer seemingly changed right before his eyes. She began to take on more risqué roles after My Sister Sam was cancelled, which Bardo could not abide. He asked his brother to purchase a .357 revolver for him and his brother foolishly complied. In one letter to the actress, he included lyrics from a John Lennon song and a self-authored song. He wrote to his sister, “I have an obsession with the unattainable and I have to eliminate (something) that I cannot attain.” He was not specific about his intentions.

Finally, Bardo went to Schaeffer’s apartment and rang her doorbell. Her intercom was not working and she answered her door in her bathrobe. She was polite but told Bardo to leave. He complied, went down the street, and called his sister, confiding to her that he was about to complete his mission.

He returned to her apartment and again rang the doorbell. Schaeffer answered, now out of patience, and told him to leave. Upset by this rejection, Bardo pulled out his gun and shot Schaeffer in the abdomen, fatally wounding her.

Bardo claimed that his inspiration to shoot Schaeffer came from the song Exit, by the rock group U-2. Bardo believed that some of the lyrics were references to Schaeffer and himself. Reviewing the lyrics of the song provides some insight into his mindset. “He wanted to believe in the hands of love.” The song describes the mixed emotions of love ranging from black to white with the singer, at least metaphorically, “fingering the steel” of a pistol in his pocket.

What other influences may have held sway with Bardo? When he was fleeing the scene of the shooting, he tossed away a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. He had previously written letters to Mark David Chapman after the assassination of John Lennon. After leaving the crime scene, Bardo was subsequently arrested the following day while running through traffic in Tucson, Arizona.

Exhibit III: John Hinckley, Jr., J.D. Salinger and Taxi Driver

A new PBS documentary on J.D. Salinger will discuss The Catcher in the Rye and will presumably analyze the fact that many killers have identified with the loneliness and isolation experienced by the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield.  Although The Catcher in the Rye should not be seen as a contributing factor to their lethal violence, troubled readers undoubtedly identify with Holden’s loneliness and frustration and view his dilemma as support and affirmation for the similar emotions that they are experiencing.

John Hinckley, Jr. who attempted to kill President Reagan, and wounded four others, was also enamored with The Catcher in the Rye. Hinckley was also motivated by and obsessed with the movie Taxi Driver in which the main character, Travis Bickle, was played by Robert DeNiro. The character of Travis Bickle was loosely based on Arthur Bremer, the shooter of Alabama Governor and presidential candidate, George Wallace. In the movie, Bickel becomes enamored with an aide to a political candidate and when she rebuffs him, he targets the political candidate for assassination. Hinckley reportedly had seen Taxi Driver in excess of fifteen times and he became obsessed with the character of the 15-year-old prostitute portrayed by Jodie Foster. The movie poster for Taxi Driver read, “On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.” Besides being voted one of the best movie taglines of all time, it also epitomizes the deranged thoughts and spirit of many a mass killer.

From jail, Mark Chapman sent a letter to J.D. Salinger apologizing for being inspired by the book. The cloistered author never responded. Catcher is not in itself particularly violent but it does provide comfort to those who have lost their way and are looking for some confirmation of their discontent and disillusionment. They have been sucked into the negative emotional vortex of an all-engulfing hopelessness.

While browsing at your favorite bookstore, the next time you spy someone reading The Catcher in the Rye, you might start looking for the nearest exit. If you look on my bookshelf, you will certainly find a copy. What does that say about me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Boston Bombers: A Tale of Two Troubled Brothers

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

Killers and the Catcher in the Rye

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

As many a man of the cloth has discovered, being the spiritual leader of a congregation that is 50 per cent female can result in temptations of the flesh. Although I’m aware of no statistics that satisfactorily reveal what percentage of clerics succumb and dally where they should not be dallying, I suspect that if the statistics were available, and were revealed, the percentage would be rather high, and perhaps shockingly high.

One cleric who just fell from grace rather dramatically is the highly respected Rabbi Barry Freundel, the spiritual leader of a Modern Orthodox congregation in Georgetown called Kesher Israel.

If the allegations are correct, it appears that Rabbi Freundel cagily came up with a technique that allowed him to enjoy endless sexual stimulation without ever laying a hand (or anything else) on any of the fairer members of his congregation.

To satisfy his powerful desire to view naked woman, he took full advantage of a certain “spiritual cleansing ritual” of no doubt ancient origins, that according to at least one report, he personally instituted at his synagogue.

The ritual he exploited utilizes a ritual bath known as mikvah. The Jewish Daily Forward writes:

Freundel’s synagogue, Kesher Israel, has a mikvah, or ritual bath, next door. In Orthodox Judaism, women are expected to immerse themselves in the mikvah each month.

Kesher Israel’s mikvah is small, with three changing rooms and a single ritual bath. Men and women use the facility at separate designated hours.

The bath is now the only Orthodox-run mikvah in Washington.

Thus, it appears that Rabbi Freundel went to some pains to establish this ritual at his synagogue, its ostensible purpose being to augment the purity of his congregation.

The Rabbi would still be enjoying the fruits of his subterfuge in the privacy of his own computer (and/or other electronic devices) had he not slipped up and been spotted by a female member of Kesher Israel while “setting up a clock radio that also contained a motion detecting hidden camera inside the mikvah”, according to WTTG. When confronted with the awful truth, Rabbi Freundel lamely explained that “the device was to help ventilate the room.”

The miffed congregant was not buying it, however; one thing led to another and before the Rabbi knew what hit him, the police had knocked (pounded) on the door of his O Street home.

Sasha Goldstein writes for the New York Daily News:

Police swarmed Rabbi Barry Freundel’s O Street home Tuesday morning and spent hours investigating, removing hard drives and computers, witnesses told WTTG-TV. The 62-year-old has served as rabbi at Kesher Israel, some five blocks from his home, since 1987.

Freundel was charged with “electronic voyeurism” and appeared in court on Wednesday.

Calling the arrest a “painful moment” for the congregation, Kesher Israel’s board of directors announced Tuesday evening that Freundel has been suspended without pay. The board was first to learn of “potentially inappropriate activity” concerning Freundel and “quickly alerted the appropriate officials,” a statement from the congregation reads. “Throughout the investigation, we cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so.”

It’s important to note that Rabbi Freundel isn’t just any old rabbi. Among other things, he sits on the executive committee of the Rabbinical Council of America, which is affiliated with the Modern Orthodox rabbinical association, and he has served as a consultant to the ethics review board of the National Institute of Aging at the National Institutes of Health.

The Jewish Daily Forward points out that his synagogue is “one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent Modern Orthodox synagogues.” Congregation members include “Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and ex-Sen. Joseph Lieberman.” Nevertheless, the Rabbi was reportedly led out of his Georgetown home in handcuffs on Tuesday morning, according to neighbors.

At least one female congregation member, who has asked not to be identified, has spoken up.

“I feel incredibly uncomfortable and my privacy violated. It’s just really sad that such a beautiful thing is now kind of tainted and turned into something that’s quite ugly.”

Kesher Israel has hired the heavy-weight law firm Gibson Dunn law firm to handle legal fallout from the Rabbi’s arrest. This is the firm that represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the aftermath of the so-called Bridgegate scandal regarding questionable lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.

For the Rabbi’s sake, we can only hope that the forensic examiners do not discover any images of under-aged females in his computer files. Should this happen, there is some possibility he could face a Manufacture of Child Pornography charge which, if it went Federal, probably carries at least a 10-year-mandatory minimum sentence.

* * * * *

Oh what tangled webs we mortals weave! Historically and symbolically, this rather sad and pathetic case hearkens back to the legendary tale of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God up on the mountainside and then returning to camp only to discover that his Chosen People are right smack in the middle of one king-hell orgy worshipping the Golden Calf, partying to beat the band, and screwing everything in sight.

It’s interesting to note that one of the key purposes of all three great Western religions – Christianity, Judaism and the Muslim faith, is to elevate mankind once and for all out of the nether regions of unchecked promiscuity, which in the ancient world often took the form of periodic orgies.

This is epitomized in the Golden Calf story; as soon as their spiritual leader Moses turns his back and heads up the mountainside for a personal interview with God, his people “orgy” like there’s no tomorrow.

Religion has always had practical purpose to go along with its spiritual side, and probably its most important practical function has always been to protect the sanctity of the family.

Despite our wayward desires, and many of us have them, a fair percentage of  us “sinners” manage to repress our promiscuous urges quite successfully. Others do not. Sadly, should the charges against him prove valid, Rabbi Freundel will go down for all posterity as one who fell into the latter category.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

After posting an article on 10-year-old Tristen Kurilla, who is being charged as an adult for allegedly murdering a 90-year-old woman in his grandfather’s care, I was not surprised to discover that many commenters are appalled at the notion that this troubled child could be tried as an adult. He is obviously a very immature child and to try him as an adult would be a travesty.

Several commenters have also stated that the story is full of holes and that the grandfather’s actions are highly suspect. After all, how could he possibly have not realized that Ms. Novak was seriously injured when he first checked on her?

At least one passionate soul on Facebook has suggested that Grandfather could conceivably be the guilty party, or at least share in the guilt, and that they’re trying to frame the boy in order to collect the insurance money or something of that sort.

Although I don’t agree with this theory, I think I understand why these sympathetic souls feel as they do. They are struggling to accept the possibility that bright-eyed Tristen could have actually committed such a heinous act and they also believe that Grandfather should have kept the boy out of Ms. Novak’s room given that he reportedly had “mental difficulties”.

Wednesday’s news is certainly not going to lift anyone out of their gloom. It seems that yesterday Tristen’s lawyer, Bernard Brown, withdrew a request for bail stating that the boy’s family isn’t ready to have him released into their custody.

Thus, for the time being, Tristen remains incarcerated at the Wayne County Correctional Facility.

What the heck is this all about? Suspicious commenters might suspect that the family is buying time to “get their ducks in order” or that, at the very least, they are so disgusted by what the boy allegedly did that they don’t even want him to come back home.

Ouch! As for Tristen, he seems to be beside himself as – guilty or not – the seriousness of his situation begins to sink in.

The AP writes:

The boy, who is charged as an adult with criminal homicide, appeared via a video hookup for a hearing, burying his face in his hands at times but not speaking.

The boy’s family believes he is being treated well at the county prison, where he is being housed alone in a cell and being kept away from the general population, said his attorney, Bernard Brown. He said the boy was being provided recreational opportunities and coloring books.

Tristen’s attorney had filed a petition to have him released into the custody of his father or moved to a juvenile detention facility. In withdrawing the petition, Brown did not elaborate on why the family didn’t want him back at home. It’s possible that the family believes that a little “tough love” is called for in this instance. Personally, I’m rarely comfortable with “tough love” and wish the family wanted Tristen to return home  immediately if at all possible.

The nearest juvenile detention center is 80 miles away, which would make family visits more inconvenient, Brown said. The judge, Raymond Hamill, made the interesting remark that he would be concerned at this time to move the boy to a juvenile center which would expose him to “elements more detrimental to his well-being.”

It is true that to the best of my knowledge, many juvenile detention centers are truly hell holes, but being in a cell alone in an adult prison with coloring books at the tender age of 10 knowing you are being charged with murder can hardly be a bowl of cherries.

Attorney Brown still plans on working to have the case transferred to juvenile court.

The AP writes:

The boy is among the youngest charged with homicide in Pennsylvania, a list that includes two 11-year-olds and a 9-year-old, said Marsha Levick, chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

Levick said the case belongs in juvenile court, calling it a “no-brainer.”

“He’s a little boy,” she said. “It’s a horrible tragedy, but it’s shocking that he suddenly turned into an adult because of conduct that he engaged in.”

As stated yesterday, based on Pennsylvania law, the prosecutors, if they were to consider the case a homicide, had no choice other than to charge Tristen as an adult. The judge fortunately has the right to move the case to juvenile court should he feel it’s appropriate

The District Attorney Janine Edwards is being cagey stating that “she will wait for the results of a mental health evaluation before deciding whether to contest having the case moved to juvenile court.”

* * * * *

It seems almost unfair that a single very serious blunder based on a childish lack of impulse control can have such horrific repercussions, but it can and has in the case of Tristen Kurilla.

The visual of this little boy burying his face in his hands there in the courtroom is truly heartbreaking.

Click here to view our earlier post of Tristen Kurilla:

Did a 10-Year-Old Pennsylvania Boy Kill a 90-Year-Old Woman Simply for the ‘Fun’ of It?

by BJW Nashe

When I lived in Santa Cruz, California from 1982-87, I had no idea that this pleasant seaside town was once dubbed “The Murder Capital of the World.” By the time I moved there to attend UC Santa Cruz, where I majored in philosophy (with an unofficial minor in hallucinogens), there was little or no mention of murder. The mass killing had occurred a decade earlier. The only murders I recall were found in existentialist novels by Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I lived a block and half from the sea. We liked to stroll along West Cliff Drive late at night. Everything seemed perfect.

Only recently did I discover that Santa Cruz was once a murder capital — and I happened upon the information solely by chance. Last month, I was intrigued by a work of fiction by Grace Krilanovich called The Orange Eats Creeps – which I highly recommend, if you’re in the mood for a freestyle gothic tale of teenage-vampire-hobo-junkies misbehaving in the Pacific Northwest. While googling some interviews with the author, I learned that she grew up in Santa Cruz. In one interview, she pointed out that during the early 1970s — before she was even born — her hometown was plagued by an epidemic of serial killings. Sure enough, a quick online search yielded a whole trove of information on these crimes, and the deranged individuals who committed them. Praise the Lord for the bounteous Internet. When it comes to true crime and porn, the World Wide Web really delivers. And it’s fascinating to see how transgressive fiction sometimes bleeds right into true crime.

It may seem odd to realize that one’s college town — the source of so many fond personal memories — has a buried history that includes a bunch of shocking murders. But this shouldn’t seem odd at all, because that’s how it is here in America. Every town has its own buried past, or occult history, which includes an abundance of scandal and crime. Some towns might be considered virtual plague yards. In California, the occult history runs counter to the official version of the Golden State as a success story characterized by progress, wealth, fame, and innovation. The occult history forces us to confront the dark side of the story, which includes child abuse, misogyny, drugs, murder, madness, greed, and exploitation. We might prefer to forget the truly hideous stuff, and hope it all fades away, but it’s still there, waiting to resurface again and again, like some horrible repressed memory that won’t leave us alone until we deal with it effectively once and for all. Perhaps the true arc of human history, as Professor Norman O. Brown used to explain in his seminars at UC Santa Cruz, resembles nothing so much as a patient’s struggle to overcome a debilitating neurosis.

For a town such as Santa Cruz, neurosis is one thing. “Murder capital of the world” takes us to another level altogether. The exaggeration is understandable, however, when you get into the details. During the span of just a few years from 1971-73, three individuals were convicted of 23 separate murders in Santa Cruz County. Several other deaths and disappearances remain unsolved to this day. Given the population and demographics of the region, that’s quite a record. With the high-profile crimes of the Manson Family in Los Angeles and the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco still big news at the time, people in Santa Cruz were justifiably terrified when similar atrocities began to afflict their community.

The murders committed by John Linley Frazier, Big Ed Kemper, and Herbert Mullin in the Santa Cruz area never achieved the same level of national attention as the Tate-LaBianca slayings. Yet the Santa Cruz murders were just as shocking as those committed by the hippie death cult down south. Moreover, the Santa Cruz murders were just as relevant to the troubled zeitgeist of the early 1970s, which was marked by extreme civil unrest, rampant drug abuse, profound disillusionment, and the ongoing tragedy of a doomed war in Vietnam. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that all three of the Santa Cruz killers were men suffering from mental illness. One of them was preoccupied with targeting women. Clearly, mentally ill criminals and violence against women are problems that continue to wreak havoc in American society, even in sunny California.

We can think of the following three psychopaths as anti-celebrities starring in their own deranged counterpart to SoCal’s Hollywood Babylon. Think of them as “NorCal Gothic,” or “Breaking Bad in Santa Cruz.” Like it or not, their stories belong to us, are part of who we are, and we need to somehow understand them if we ever hope to move beyond the twisted psychology of murder.

John Linley Frazier — The Killer Prophet

The Santa Cruz murders began on October 19, 1970, when police discovered the bodies of five people at the affluent Soquel home of a well-respected local eye surgeon. Dr. Victor Ohta, his wife Virginia, their two preteen sons, and the doctor’s secretary all had been shot and left floating in the family swimming pool. The victims were blind-folded, and their hands were bound behind their backs with colorful silk scarves. The killer had left a rambling letter behind, which was evidently typed on Dr. Ohta’s typewriter:

“Halloween, 1970. Today World War III will begin, as brought to you by the People of the Free Universe. From this day forward, anyone and/or everyone or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the People of the Free Universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death or freedom against anyone who does not support natural life on this planet. Materialism must die, or Mankind will stop.”

The note was signed in a distinctive manner: “Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, and Knight of Swords.”

Since several groups of hippies were living nearby, authorities quickly assumed that they were dealing with another Manson-style massacre. In questioning the local long-hairs, however,  cops received a tip that led them to focus on a single suspect — John Linley Frazier. The ensuing investigation painted a distressing picture of a young man driven to random murder by a disastrous combination of mental illness and drug use. The man who penned the “Knight of Wands” note became known as “The Killer Prophet.”

Frazier was considered a “fairly normal guy” growing up in Santa Cruz. A high school drop-out, he worked as an auto mechanic in town, and lived with his wife, who called him a “beautiful person.” As a young man, however, Frazier seems to have developed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. When he began experimenting with drugs, this condition worsened. His marriage eventually fell apart, and he began espousing increasingly radical environmental views, seasoned with apocalyptic visions and mystical readings of the tarot cards. He quit his job at the auto shop, telling his boss he refused to “contribute to the death cycle of the planet.” Fiercely paranoid, plagued by voices, he didn’t fit in too well with the laid-back lifestyle of the local hippie communes. His intensity frightened the pot-smoking vegetarians seeking harmony together. Frazier tended to tune in, turn on, and freak out. When he took LSD, God told him to do bad things.

Soon isolated from the communes, he began living as a self-styled Aquarian Age hermit, residing in a six-foot-square shack in the woods, not far from Dr. Victor Ohta’s property. Frazier had a good look at Dr. Ohta’s place. Right away, he knew that the owners were “too materialistic.” Once, while the Ohta family was out, Frazier broke into their house to creep around. Before he left, he stole a pair of binoculars.

Not long after the binocular theft, on October 19, 1970, Frazier returned to the Ohta mansion. The doctor’s wife, Virginia, was the only person home. Brandishing a .38 revolver that he found inside, Frazier bound Virginia’s wrists with a scarf and waited for the rest of the family to come home. Soon, the doctor’s secretary, Dorothy Cadwallader, showed up, along with one of the Ohta boys. Then Dr. Ohta returned home with their second son. On arrival, each of them were tied up at gunpoint. Standing with his captives outside by the pool, Frazier lectured them on the evils of materialism and the ways in which it was destroying the environment. Dr. Ohta, no fan of hippies to begin with, started arguing with Frazier, who promptly shoved him into the pool. While the doctor thrashed around trying to get out of the water, Frazier shot him three times. One by one, Frazer then killed all four of the others — Virginia, Dorothy, then the boys, Derrick, and Taggart. Frazier went back inside the house, typed his “Knight of Wands” note, and set the house ablaze. When firefighters showed up they found the five bodies in the pool, and the typewritten note tucked under the windshield wipers of Dr. Ohta’s Rolls-Royce.

When the “Knight of Wands” murder note was published by the local press, several hippies recognized the bizarre discourse as possibly belonging to the man who had frightened them with his crazy talk — John Linley Frazier. They told the police where to find his shack in the woods. Police were also able to lift Frazier’s fingerprints from the Rolls-Royce and from a beer can found at the crime scene. Frazier was apprehended five days after the murders.

The murder trial was a three-part spectacle. Frazier was first convicted in just two hours. A second trial was held to determine sanity, and then a third trial to determine his sentence. For the sanity trial, Frazier showed up in court with one side of his head completely shaved, and half of his mustache and beard shaved off. The jury was treated to lengthy testimony regarding acid trips and messages from God and ecological tirades. Some thought Frazier was putting on an act to win an insanity plea, but his psychologist thought otherwise. While Frazier never confessed his crimes to the police, he did tell his shrink all about it. He said he had broken into Dr. Ohta’s house when no one was home, spotted what looked like an animal-skin bedspread, and went berserk. “It blew my mind,” the defendant recalled. He never noticed that the animal-skin was fake.

In the end, Frazier was found to be sane, and he received the death sentence. He regarded the gas chamber as preferable to “having fascist pigs working on my head.” Frazier’s preference became irrelevant, however, when the California Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in 1972, and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Thirty-five years later, “The Killer Prophet” took matters into his own hands. In August of 2009, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his single occupant cell. He was 62 years old.

Stay tuned for Part Two of “When Santa Cruz Was the “Murder Capital of the World”