commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Brittany Ruck

It seems like things are getting out of control in the Keystone State. Today, I have two cases of appalling child abuse in good old Pennsylvania, the traditional home of those peaceful Quaker folk. In Beaver County, Brittany Ruck, a “frustrated” 25-year-old mother, pulled her 6-year-old daughter’s hair so hard when she couldn’t count to 12 that the child’s scalp actually separated from her skull resulting in internal bleeding leading to “raccoon eyes”. Nasty!

In the second case, a Washington County alleged abuser, Rana L. Cooper, 46, has been arrested on a litany of charges including trying to sew her 16-year-old daughter’s mouth shut and forcing her to eat cat litter.

Sebastian Murdoch of the Huffington Post writes that Ms. Cooper, “a mother of seven children, has been the focus of an investigation that began at least six months ago. In a criminal complaint obtained by The Huffington Post, Cpl. Robert Copechal of the Pennsylvania State Police details a long list of abuses the teen suffered at the hands of her mother.”

What is particularly upsetting in this case, in addition to horrific nature of the abuse, is the fact that the authorities believe “that the abuse may have started as soon as the child was adopted in 2008.” Furthermore, the child’s adoptive father was allegedly  aware of at least some of the abuse.

Note:

Before we go any further, it must be pointed out that one of the suspect’s seven children, 24-year-old Ronnie Cooper, has informed local station KDKA that the allegations were all false.

“Nothing, none of that happened. Like, I’m here every day, like, none of these [allegations] are true.”

Wow! Are the authorities crazy or is Ronnie resorting to the Big Lie in an attempt to protect his mother?

In any event, please read no further unless you have a strong stomach, because the alleged victim’s allegations are quite extreme, and she has laid out a detailed account of what she claims she endured.

According to the child, Mom employed a sort of “tit for tat” “let’s keep score” approach to discipline (which as we know is not unusual among abusive parents):

• She was not allowed to eat, drink, or even use the restroom until “points” were earned by cleaning the home. This resulted in her often soiling herself and not drinking for days.”

• When she was allowed to eat, it was only after the rest of the family was finished. In order to spice up the gustatory process, Mom allegedly forced food into the child’s mouth, inducing vomiting. On one occasion, the child was allegedly compelled to eat cat litter. In what can only be described as extreme nastiness, the child claims Mom would force her to “go into the bathroom and scrape her finger around the rim of the toilet and eat what was on her finger.”

• The police report alleges allege that Mom once tried to sew the child’s mouth shut with a needle and thread, but stopped after piercing the child’s lower lip with the needle. If the child is on the level, Mom appears to have combined actual physical abuse with terrifying scare tactics. An example of this is Mom regularly threatening to cut out the child’s tongue.

• Alleged eye gouging and sticking Q-tips into the child’s ears causing bleeding and partial deafness are also among the claims.

As if all this were not enough, the child claims that on two occasions, Mom choked her until she blacked out, most recently about a month ago. According to the police report, the child said Dad was present on one occasion when Mom was choking her and that although Dad told Mom to stop, Mom refused to stop and Dad did nothing as the choking continued.

One especially nasty tactic of abusive parents is to blame the victim child for the couple’s marital problems. In this case, the police say that Mom blamed the child for the fact that Dad apparently said he wanted a separation on Easter Sunday two years ago. Mom reportedly punished the child on this occasion by twisting her neck, biting her nose till it bled, throwing her to the ground, and punching her in the face.

Although it’s hard to know how much of this to take at face value given that the child appears to have every reason to “lay Mom out to the best of her ability”, combined with the fact law enforcement sometimes engages in a certain amount of “factual hyperbole”, two facts support the notion that Mom truly is guilty of AWFUL ABUSE.

The first piece of evidence is the fact that the investigation has been ongoing for six months. The second bit of evidence is extremely damning and comes “straight from the horse’s mouth”.

“In September (while under investigation), Rana Cooper admitted to police that she once submerged her daughter’s head under water “for approximately 3-10 seconds,” according to the complaint.

This, if we take it at face value, is truly awful. No responsible parent would ever under any circumstances shove their child’s head under water for any period of time. They just wouldn’t.

Mom is charged with recklessly endangering another person, simple assault, and endangering the welfare of a child. She apparently does not yet have a lawyer which I presume means that she is likely to be assigned a public defender. Imagine being called upon to defend Mom in a case like this. Defense attorney have guts; there’s no two ways about it.

Mom has a preliminary hearing set for Nov. 6.

Thankfully, the child no longer lives with the Cooper family.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

From the moment I posted a preliminary report on the Tristen Kurilla Pennsylvania murder case, numerous crime fans have made it clear that they are simply not buying the official (translated as the police) story. A woman named Dawn Taylor commented on Facebook:

“The boy may have been set up. Perhaps he abused her with non-threatening life injuries. Caretaker does nothing. Was Ms. Novak becoming a burden to care for? Did she have life insurance? Caretaker goes back a few hours later, sees she is still alive and kills her, knowing he can blame the boy. The boy confesses since he knows he abused her. Interesting that these “mental problems” don’t seem to have been documented by any health professionals. What better way to rid yourself of caring for this old woman than having a troubled kid confess. The boy immediately seeks help (when he sees) that the old woman is bleeding. The caretaker seeks no immediate help. It still doesn’t add up in my book and I will be following this story closely.”

Darcia Helle commented in a similar vein and made an additional point about how wrong it is to charge a 10-year-old boy as an adult, no matter what the crime:

“Trying a 10-year-old as an adult is wrong on so many levels. I mean… he’s 10! I was still playing with dolls at that age. When did we conveniently forget that children do not have the same emotional or psychological development as adults? I’m not excusing what he did by any means. But we need to remember that he is a child and needs to be treated as such.

And what’s with the grandfather? He checks on the woman, she’s bleeding from the mouth, and he, what? Leaves her there? Doesn’t call an ambulance? This confuses me. If she was conscious, wouldn’t she have told him what the child did? And if she wasn’t conscious, why would the grandfather leave her there and say she was okay? If he’d called an ambulance right away, would she have lived?

Lots of holes in this story that need to be filled in. The way it looks, to me, the grandfather is partially responsible. He was in charge of watching the minor child. The child told him the woman was bleeding from the mouth, but the adult in charge did nothing until it was too late.”

These skeptics will probably be pleased to learn that Tristen’s attorney, Bernard Brown, is pointedly questioning the of the 10-year-old’s confession, stating that it was “coerced” and as such should not be admissible

Terrie Morgan-Besecker of Citizen’s voice writes:

Prosecutors may face a challenge in presenting the alleged confession of a 10-year-old boy charged with killing an elderly woman because he was not represented by an attorney when he was questioned, the child’s attorney said.

Attorney Bernard Brown said the questioning of his client, Tristin Kurilla, raises several “red flags.”

“It seems there was some intimidation,” Brown said. “You can see through the writing of the affidavit, they seem to be double backing and re-interviewing Tristin or his family.”

To review quickly, Kurilla, of 232 Swendsen Road, Damascus Township, was charged as an adult Monday with homicide and aggravated assault. The official (police) version of the story is that Tristen got mad when 90-year-old Helen Novak yelled at him. He then choked her with a cane and punched her in the throat and stomach, causing her death. The attack occurred at the home of the boy’s grandfather, Anthony Virbitsky, who was Novak’s caretaker.

Here are the steps of what Attorney Brown refers to as “double backing and re-interviewing Tristin or his family.”

1) Kurilla’s mother, Martha Virbitsky,takes her son to the state police barracks in Honesdale in the afternoon, about four hours after the attack. According to an arrest affidavit, she tells Pennsylvania State Trooper John Decker that Tristen “admitted to choking and punching Novak.”

2) Then (and this seems strange) Tristen’s mother ask Trooper Decker to speak to the boy alone, despite the fact (according to the affidavit) the trooper repeatedly advises her that Tristen could face criminal charges and that he was entitled to have an attorney present.

Therefore, the trooper speaks to Tristen alone and asks him what happened. The affidavit asserts that Tristen said to Decker, “I killed that lady.” He then allegedly “described how he choked and punched her.”

3) After Decker had completed his initial conversation with Tristen, he then interviewed the boys grandfather, “who also said the boy admitted hitting Novak.” Then Decker told Tristen’s mother that he wanted to talk to her son again. This time Martha Virbitsky was present in the room with the officer and her son, “but she again declined to have an attorney present.” According to the affidavit, the boy provided a similar statement the second time around, admitting to the assault.

Al Flora, former chief public defender for Luzerne County, believes that a parent has no right to waive a child’s right to an attorney, which provides the defense a basis to challenge his statements. Mr Flora stated:

“The defense can probably raise the argument the statement was not given voluntarily, it was compelled in conjunction with the mother.” It is noted that Flora’s office has “represented several Luzerne County juveniles charged with homicide.”

There’s an additional question as to whether the child, based on his age, “was competent to knowingly waive his right to an attorney.”

Attorney Brown says the nature of Kurilla’s interview is “concerning.” His plan is to ultimately seek to suppress the statements, but his first priority is to get the case transferred from adult to juvenile court.

Simon McCormack of Huffington Post reports that according to The Times-Tribune, during a search of Kurilla’s cell (he is being held separately from other adult inmates in the Wayne County Correctional Facility), guards found several notes apparently written by the boy, including one that said “how to escape.”

In a further bit of information Peter Cameron, also a writer at Citzens’ Voice reports that the original prosecutor, Wayne County District Attorney Janine Edwards, has requested that the attorney general’s office to assume jurisdiction of the case because “the boy is related to a staff member in her office.”

Just like Prosecutor Edwards did earlier, according to J.J. Abbott, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, “it’s too early in the process to comment on whether (the AG) will argue for or against” moving Tristen’s case to juvenile court.

Attorney Brown has announced that a psychological examination is scheduled for Thursday, and that his plan is to file a petition to move the case on Friday.

* * * * *

As this rather fascinating case proceeds apace, it is interesting to note that there seems to be considerable consensus that 1) this has not been handled correctly by law enforcement up to this point, and 2) no matter what Tristen did or did not do, there is no way on earth that this matter should be adjudicated in adult court.

As an aside, would it not make sense in juvenile matters for police officers to simply refuse to question or take a statement from suspects unless legal counsel was present? This would go a long way toward ensuring that all juvenile suspects received due process and would make it much harder for the police to “railroad” them, which is what MAY have happened up till now in the case of Tristen Kurilla.

afterword by Patrick H. Moore

In a true crime story that elevates family dysfunction to dizzying and previously unscaled heights, 25-year-old twin sons, Caleb and Joshua Bledsoe, have demonstrated their extreme dislike (hatred) for their father, William Bledsoe, by attempting to burn him up inside his house. Now that in itself would probably not constitute “dizzying and previously unscaled heights”, but what gives this story extra juice is the fact the twins’ father not only refuses to criticize his boys and their attempted murder, but actually admits that he probably had it coming.

The Daily Mail Reporter and Associated Press reports:

A father who survived an alleged murder attempt by his own two sons has refused to criticize them, saying: ‘My boys are my boys and I’ll never abandon them and not support them.’

William Bledsoe, 70, of Ellensburg, Washington, admits the accusations against his twin sons, 25-year-old Caleb and Joshua. ‘Yes, I am the man they tried to kill,’ Bledsoe told ABCNews.com.

The brothers share a home and a business with their father. They are accused of trying to kill him in a house fire, telling arresting officers it was because they find him difficult to live with and work for.

William Bledsoe appears to agree with his sons’ analysis of their motivation:

‘I’m probably not the easiest guy to live with… I’m not the easiest guy to work with,’ he said in an interview with ABC affiliate KOMO News.

‘I want you to remember, I am their dad, I am not their victim.’

Caleb and Joshua made an initial appearance in Kittitas County Superior Court on Tuesday. They are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree; first degree arson; possession and use of an incendiary device; and the use of explosive without a license. They are being held on $1 million bail.

Here’s what happened:

According to the Daily Record, firefighters arrived at their house to put out a blaze at 1:40 am on Monday, Sept. 16th. They treated Caleb and Joshua’s father for smoke inhalation. Even though, according to Deputy Prosecutor Chris Herion, Joshua tried to hold the bedroom door shut thus imprisoning William, the wily Bledsoe managed to get out of the room and off the property before the authorities arrived. The firefighting crew found a home-made explosive – a propane canister wrapped with multiple shotgun shells – that had been planted at the crime scene.

The probable cause statement says the brothers told police they set fires in the home with the idea the smoke would kill their father. Their rationale for attempting to “take the old man out” was simple. He is very difficult to live with and work for. The old man clearly agrees with them.

This strange threesome worked together at Bledsoe & Sons Gutters and Sheet Metal in Ellensburg. The twins are scheduled to be arraigned on September 30.

*     *     *     *     *

Reading this, you get the impression that William Bledsoe not only will not condemn his sons for attempting to kill him in rather grisly fashion; you get the impression that he will probably finance their legal defense as well, which, god knows, they are going to need considering the seriousness of their crimes. In addition, William no doubt rues the fact that if they are convicted and sentenced to what could be a very long stretch in stir (and I don’t see how they could not be), he’s going to have to run the business without them.

Updated:

In December of last year, Caleb and Joshua Bledsop were sentenced to nine years in Washington state prison.

Although they were initially charged with first-degree attempted murder, arson and possession of improvised explosive devices, they were allowed, perhaps at their father’s urging, to be allowed to plead guilty to second-degree domestic violence attempted murder. (That particular charge is quite a mouthful and appears to combine serious domestic violence with attempted murder).

God only knows how (and if) William Bledsoe will continue to keep the doors of his business open during his boys rather lengthy absence — an absence which may be far longer than a mere nine years given the fact they may not ever again be willing to work for him (though I suspect he would take them back in a heartbeat).

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

I’ve gone on record stating that children should not have children and I’ve gotten some flak for saying so. Sure, there are no doubt large numbers of very young parents who bite the bullet and make the best of their lot, sacrifice mightily and manage to be good and loving parents.

But so many things can go wrong when you’re 16 or 17 and become a mom or dad. At the very least, it’s going to cramp your style tremendously. You’ll want to go out dancing or go to a concert and instead you’ll have to stay at home with the little one resenting your fate.

And if you’re a woman, what are the odds your child’s father is going to stick around for the long haul or even for the first year? Or even if you and he do last for 5 or even 10 years, subjecting your child to the heartbreak of divorce as he or she reaches adolescence is no bowl of cherries.

And because the human brain is so incompletely developed at age 18, in some instances a young mother or father is going to go more or less off the rails. Such appears to be the case with 18-year-old Desiree Ann-Marie Cozzoni, a suburban St. Louis teenage mom who, desiring nothing more than to live the life of a ‘normal teenager’, decided to give her 16-month old son away to, of all people, a HEROIN ADDICT who due to her narcotics habit, had already reportedly lost custody of her own children

Here’s how it started as reported by Sasha Goldstein of the New York Daily News:

Desperate to live the life of a “normal young adult”, Desiree “drew up non-legal papers granting a heroin user, who’d lost custody of her own kids, rights to care for her child so Cozzoni could live the life of “a normal teenager,” court documents obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch read.

According to Susan Welch of the Post-Dispatch, prior to drawing up the “adoption papers”, Desiree had been moving around from place to place, staying some of the time with the “adoptive mother” in motels.

The police report that the junkie “bought and used heroin daily, often in Cozzoni and her son’s presence.”

In early October of this year, Desiree signed over custody of her son to the woman. Once the bogus adoption papers had “gone into effect”, Desiree changed her phone number in order to prevent the junkie ‘caring’ for her son from contacting her.

Thus, her plan appears to have been to get her son completely out of her life once and for all, an absurd proposition if you think about it, for the simple reason that those who knew her best could not have been unaware of the fact she had a child and would certainly wonder what had happened to it.

Desiree appears to have gradually become aware of this thorny problem and at some point began spreading the rumor that the woman had kidnapped her son.

A scheme as unrealistic as this was clearly not going to work for long and the authorities finally were either tipped off or put the pieces together and arrested Desiree on three misdemeanor charges: making a false report, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful use of drug paraphernalia because during the booking process law enforcement discovered a residue-drenched marijuana pipe in her purse.

Desiree was released from jail Tuesday after posting $2,500 bail.

Because this is only a misdemeanor case, Desiree does not appear to be in any danger of serving a substantial amount of time in custody. The problem is what to do with her son. According to court papers, at some point in the not too distant past, Desiree had been living at her grandparents’ house, and they may take custody of the child.

Wherever the child goes, however, as part of any custody agreement, although she will have visitation privileges, Desiree will not be allowed to live at that residence.

Needless to say, this young and woefully immature mother maintains a presence on Facebook. In a recent FB post, she wrote that her first supervised visit with the child was scheduled for Thursday, October 16.

“I just wish I weren’t a bad mom. I wish none of this happened. I just want my baby back.”

Of course, she wants her baby back now that she can’t have him. The grass is always greener. But when she had her son she went to great and rather bizarre lengths to get rid of him.

The point is Desiree is just a kid, hardly the world’s worst kid, but a kid nonetheless. By definition, a kid is not an adult and thus lacks the maturity that adults, at least in theory, possess. Raising a child requires boatloads of maturity, and as we know from following crime stories, a disturbingly large percentage of adults make pathological parents.

Desiree does not appear to have been pathological but her conduct does suggest extreme immaturity and instability. Now just consider how much better off she would be if she didn’t have a child. She would have some hope of gradually maturing, perhaps getting an education, perhaps finding a decent job one day, and like any unencumbered young person, she would also have had the opportunity to HAVE FUN which is obviously what she really wants.

But the day she got pregnant and decided to have that child, the door of freedom swung shut with a mighty crack, a fact she will be living with from now on.

As for her son, who knows what effects this whole sad scenario will have on him as he tries to navigate the thorny pathways of life.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In her article, Sarah Letrent states:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Chos haven’t spoken to the media since.

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Perhaps you’ve toyed with the idea of murdering your wife or husband. After all, no one can deny the fact that our partners do offend from time-to-time. Of course most of us manage to salve our battle wounds and make up with our spouses whether we want to of not. But suppose you can’t? Suppose you have no choice other than to murder your “better half”? How do you do it?

Actually, it’s simple but only if you run a funeral parlor. So if you’re not an undertaker, you might as well forget about it (and whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of hiring someone to do it for you. It never works out the way it’s supposed to). If you are an undertaker, however (and I say with a straight face that I’ve always wished that a malign fate had smiled more kindly upon me and made me an undertaker), you have a fighting chance of murdering your significant other and getting away with it.

At least it is rumored that Harold Lynch, the alleged funeral director of the Thomas Hites Funeral Home in Chicago, thought the odds were in his favor of murdering his wife and getting away with it based on a seemingly foolproof plan he’d cooked up.

Of course, to execute his scheme, he needed a cooperative third party – in this case a dead client, which is a commodity funeral directors can typically obtain without much difficulty.

The Daily Buzz Live writes:

A Chicago family was grieving the loss of their son, as they said their final goodbye’s at his funeral.

Then something strange and unnatural happened, something so macabre that the grieving family no doubt thought they had been transported into some awful Edgar Allan Poe story. One of the grieving family members, who reportedly wishes to remain anonymous, recounts:

“We decided to stay for a bit after the funeral, to let it all sink in. When all of a sudden we heard screams, but we could not figure out where they were coming from. We realized it was coming from under the grave where we just laid my brother. We ran and got help.”

As fast as their legs could carry them, I might add.

Other witnesses apparently corroborate that it was approximately 15 minutes after the body of the boy was laid to rest, when the bereaved family began to hear the blood-curdling screams.

The Daily Buzz Live continues:

Police say when firefighters arrived, they received permission from the family to dig up the freshly dug grave. As they did, the screams became louder and louder.

When they reached the coffin, they pried it open, to find 34 year old Linda Lynch inside.

According to a police spokesperson, it was one of the most twisted scenarios they’d ever encountered (and as you know a lot of weird things happen in ChiTown). What apparently happened this time around is alleged Funeral Director Lynch had ingeniously decided to murder his bothersome wife Linda and then pull the old switcheroo, substituting Linda’s corpse for the corpse of a “validly dead” client. The bereaved family would be none the wiser and Harold would to rid of the wretched woman forever. All that would remain would be disposing of the “validly dead” client quickly and surreptitiously.

So here’s what apparently happened. A brief but poignant funeral service was held for the “validly deceased” in the main hall at the Hite Funeral Home, with Harold presiding. Then as the mourners headed for the graveyard to witness the closed coffin ceremony, Harold quickly wheeled the coffin back to the cool room, popped the “validly deceased” out of it and replaced him with Linda whom he had fed a walloping dose of arsenic and who appeared to be quite dead. Then he wrapped the validly dead client in a blanket and stashed him in a storage closet.

After that it was easy. Off to the old graveyard and into the ground. It all went off without a hitch except for one serious problem. Linda apparently had the constitution of Keith Richards and woke up 15 minutes after she was six feet under. Thus, it’s quite understandable that she started screaming like a banshee.

Linda is reportedly in stable condition now at the hospital “undergoing an intense detoxification process.” According to some reports, it often takes several days for arsenic to leave the system and can take months in extreme cases. Considering that Linda reportedly ingested enough of the substance to pole-axe a steer, I imagine it will be awhile before she’s back on her mettle.

As for Harold Lynch, first-degree-murder is no joke. His big mistake was resorting to arsenic. Cyanide is far more effective and harder to detect. But he came close to pulling it off. It’s not something I recommend, however. It’s probably better to steel your nerves and start writing checks to a marriage counselor, or if all else fails, to your friendly divorce lawyer.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Michael Allen of Opposing Views has been following an interesting controversy at Kroger grocery stores which apparently began based on Kroger’s current policy which allows the open carry of firearms in its stores.

This policy triggered concern on the part of a gun control group called Moms Demand Action (MDA) which organized a petition drive that collected 300,000 signatures calling “for the grocery store chain to ban the open carry of guns because moms and children shop in the stores.”

Michael Allen of Opposing Views writes that “the gun safety group has asked its members to deliver copies of a petition with 300,000 names to Kroger grocery stores across the U.S.”

Moms Demand Action writes on its Facebook page:

Our members across the country are delivering nearly 300,000 petition signatures to Kroger stores asking them to prohibit open carry. This Ohio store manager – and some others – refused to accept our petitions and were discourteous, despite the fact that women and mothers make up the majority of their customers.

However, several managers took our petitions and told members that Kroger management is “taking our concerns into consideration.” Kroger needs to hear from you: their most important customer. Even if you’ve called Kroger before, please call again now, and LIKE and SHARE this status.

Michael Allen explains that in response to the MDA demands, “a pro-gun website BearingArms.com claimed that Moms Demand Action was “attempting to isolate and bully individual companies into accepting their prohibitionist gun control philosophy. Their goal is to accomplish through bullying what they cannot establish through legislation…”

Unsurprisingly, BearingArms.com didn’t mention any actual evidence of “bullying.” It did claim that MDA founder Shannon Watts lives in a “suburban mansion in ultra-white, ultra wealthy Zionsville, Ind.”

Although the pundits at BearingArms.com, not unexpectedly, managed to express their position in carefully crafted phrases suggesting a certain amount of education, such does not seem to be the case with certain other pro-gun supporters, who according to Liberaland.com, left the following inflammatory messages which do not precisely follow the rules of usage set forth in Strunk and White in their grammar classic, The Elements of Style:

I bet you go home and f— trees and lick dogs don’t you. You pathetic excuses for human beings will never remove our rights.

I think the more guns the better. I shop at krogers and have at least 3 guns on me at any given time and two knives as well and people like me will always win.

God bless Croger [sic].

I support Kroger. Like shopping there with my firearm so all can see.

I’m in Kroger now rocking out with my glock out.

Ironically, on October 15th, about a week after Michael Allen’s original post about the MDA petition and the official responses of Bearing Arms.com, and the less formal responses of the “regular” pro-gun folk, a man wearing a skeleton mask robbed a Fifth Third Bank inside a Kroger grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Michael Allen wrote two days after the robbery:

The Kroger grocery store chain has refused to ban the open carry of guns, which one person took literally.

A suspect wearing a skeleton mask and carrying a semi-automatic handgun robbed a Fifth Third Bank inside a Kroger grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Wednesday.

The suspect also carried an umbrella when he walked up to the bank teller and demanded the money, noted Cincinnati.com.

The suspect put the money in a black nylon bag and left the Kroger.

* * * * *

This incident demonstrates that although violent crime in America is at an all-time low in most areas, armed robberies still occur from time-to-time and undoubtedly occur with some frequency in certain high crime areas. I’m not sure if there’s much data available that definitively informs us as to whether open carry has any effect, pro or con, on the violent crime rate and it would certainly be interesting to find out.

Clearly, in the above incident, if there were any open carry folks present, they were either unable to intercede or chose not to.

According to OpenCarry.org, California, where I reside, is not a traditional open carry state:

California is not a traditional open carry state. Open carry is generally prohibited except in unincorporated areas where the county has not made open carry illegal, or, pursuant to a CA open carry permit issued and valid only in a county with a population of less than 200,000 persons.

Thus, in my neck of the woods, the only people carrying openly are law enforcement personnel. I really need to travel to one of the open carry states and hang out for a while to get a sense of whether it is unsettling (or to what degree it is unsettling) to see regular folks wandering around with their guns exposed.

I suppose that like most things, many of us would get used to it after a while. On the other hand, I’m glad we don’t have open carry here in the Golden State in our heavily populated areas. Imagine going to Costco on a Sunday afternoon in football season after the 1:00 pm game and before the late afternoon game. You walk in and there are about 30,000 people (admittedly an exaggeration) packed into a single store. The average size of a Costco warehouse (according to the company profile) is 143,000 square feet. It’s all you can do to guide your shopping cart up and down the aisles without running people over.

Because it’s Southern California, people – for the most part – are incredibly polite and I don’t recall anyone ever getting pissed off because of a shopping cart collision. This doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. But suppose we were all carrying openly. 30,000 people; 30,00 handguns. We’d be stopping to compare weapons and keeping our weather eye open to make sure no one looks too threatening or is aiming a gun in our direction. The aisles would be clogged even worse than they already are. From time to time, guns would go off by accident. Occasional unlucky souls would get shot in the head. Pretty soon the police would be a regular presence at your neighborhood Costco. But don’t hold your breath. I don’t anticipate universal open carry being signed into California law anytime soon.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Bob Dyer of The Beacon Journal has written an excellent article in which he takes a hard look at certain questionable activities that have allegedly been going on for a very long time at a giant Cuyahoga Falls evangelical church known as Grace Cathedral which has been run for decades by a strange old man with equally strange hair, the legendary television evangelist Ernest Angley. Mr. Dyer writes:

Depending whom you ask, one of two things is happening at the big Cuyahoga Falls church run by legendary television evangelist Ernest Angley:

• The devil himself has infiltrated the church, and Angley, who is a prophet of God, has been working tirelessly to fight him off.

• Angley’s church is a dangerous cult where pregnant women are encouraged to have abortions, childless men are encouraged to have vasectomies and Angley — who preaches vehemently against the “sin” of homosexuality — is himself a gay man who personally examines the genitals of the male parishioners before and after their surgeries. They also say he turns a blind eye to sexual abuse by other members of his church.

It seems that thing have recently come to a head at the church. One longtime associate pastor has resigned and has informed family and friends that Pastor Angley had touched him inappropriately for the past seven years.

On July 13th of this year, Pastor Angley and two of his supporters addressed the situation in a lengthy open service. In response to the accusations that he is a homosexual and that he has abused both his associates and members of the congregation, Angley, who is 93 years old, stated:

“I’m not a homosexual. God wouldn’t use a homosexual like he uses me. He calls me his prophet, and indeed I am. …

“They called Jesus a homosexual, did you know that? And still do. Because he was with men. Oh, Mary Magdalene and a few women. But you can’t stop the people’s lies.”

With respect to his history of urging the males in his congregation to submit to vasectomies, the Pastor had this to say:

“I’ve helped so many of the boys down through the years. They had their misgivings. Sure, I’d have them uncover themselves, but I did not handle them at all.

“And I would tell them how that would work. And they’d have to watch it. I’d have some of them come back to me that I felt needed to. And I would tell them, I would look at them, their privates — I, so I could tell how they were swelling.

“And another one, one of his testicles fell out, absolutely fell out. ‘It’s dangerous, you should have a nurse.’ But I knew they wouldn’t get one.

“And men’s — I was a farm boy. We thought nothing about undressing. We didn’t know about homosexuals. We talked about women.

“And some of these turned against me.”

The Beacon Journal interviewed 21 former members of the church who insist that Angley has been running a cult, not a church, and that he “controls virtually every aspect of their lives, from deciding what they read and watch on TV to whom they will marry and when. The sheer amount of time they are urged to spend at the church — three- to five-hour services, multiple times per week, plus a host of other activities — enables him to limit outside interference.”

Angley and other top church officials naturally deny the accusations and say it is a conspiracy on the part of dissidents take control of the ministry.

Many ex members, some of whom left the church decades ago, scoff at the claims of insurrection.

Pam Cable of Akron left the church in 1988. She states:

“This man is a monster. He’s a monster. And I can’t understand why all these years have gone by and nobody’s ever really been able to do anything about him.

“The people in Akron, Ohio, have a Jim Jones sitting in their backyard. … These people in his congregation would drink the Kool-Aid if he told them to. They would.”

What’s just as disturbing as the accusations of improper touching and wholesale prurience is the Pastor’s predilection for persuading his followers to get abortions and vasectomies even when they didn’t want to.

“None of us have kids because he makes all the men get fixed,” said Becky Roadman, 32, who quit the church last year and now lives in Georgia. “You’re not allowed to have babies there.”

If these allegations are true, and I suspect they are, this is Spiritual Mind Control on a large and disturbing scale.

Angley and his late wife, Esther (he called her “Angel”), who died in 1970, never had children. When asked why, Angley said: “We didn’t want children. We wanted to give our lives to the work of God. … My wife really loved children, but she didn’t feel like that we should have them.”

Since Angel died 44 years ago, the Pastor has apparently spent the last many decades with no female voice on hand to check his allegedly wayward impulses, not that she necessarily could have anyway.

* * * * *

I strongly suggest you read Bob Dyer’s entire article which is available here:  http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ernest-angley-s-grace-cathedral-rocked-by-accusations-involving-abortions-and-vasectomies-1.531094

The emotional and sexual abuse of boys and young men is a topic we’ve often covered here on All Things Crime Blog. The sad truth is that it’s incredibly common in our society and along with its close first cousin, general child abuse, is, in my opinion, perhaps the most serious problem facing society today.

In a situation such as that which has allegedly been ongoing at Pastor Angley’s church for a very long time, the abuse — which in in this case appears to have been dishearteningly broad-based and affected couples to such a degree that many have gone through life childless — the fact of the matter is that none of the alleged abuse could (or would) have occurred if the members of Pastor Angley’s congregation had not been desperately seeking a firm guiding hand to tell them WHAT TO DO and WHAT TO BELIEVE.

So I would say that the underlying issue to be examined here is why are so many Americans willing to stop thinking for themselves in order to give their unremitting allegiance to a Strong Man, a Spiritual Dictator, if you will? Another way of asking this is why are we so eager to become sheep, metaphorically speaking?

Good question and I don’t have any easy answers. I do have one idea to toss out, though. Years ago I had a close friend named Black Bob Dunne. Black Bob was a complex and troubled soul and in listening to his opinions, it was necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. One area where I think he may have been on to something is the issue of public education. Bob said that the reason the huge upheaval of the 1960s occurred is because public education in the U.S. had gotten really good between the end of WWII and the early 1960s which means that our kids, for perhaps the first time in the history of this nation, were being taught not only to get the answers right but to think critically. Therefore, when huge numbers of these well-educated kids observed the Vietnam conflict and decided that it somehow didn’t “smell right”, society was thrown into turmoil.

The war eventually staggered to a close, the draft was ultimately rescinded and now we have our all-volunteer military which would have been unthinkable prior to Vietnam.

In describing his theory to me, Black Bob gave me the Black Bob stare and told me in no uncertain terms that the powers that be would never make this mistake again and that U.S. public education would never again make the mistake of teaching kids to think critically.

And it appears that Black Bob was right; with the exception of certain elite schools reserved for the children of the ruling classes, our children are not taught to think critically in our public schools. Fortunately, this changes to some degree at our universities, which are generally considered to be of superior quality.

I can state without reservation that my own daughter, who attended a large student friendly suburban high school here in suburban Los Angeles County was not taught to think critically at her high school. Because she was (is) a very stubborn child, I didn’t worry about this too much while she was still in high school and would tell my wife, “Hopefully, she will improve her mind greatly at the university level.”

I’m gratified to report that at her college, as part of her cluster program which is titled, “The Individual in Society,” she is now taking an entry level Intro to Philosophy class and she tells me that “it’s interesting”. Her professor began the course by asking the basic philosophical question, “What is the relationship of the mind to the body?” The students are required to write short answers to this and related questions. This is the jumping off place and from here the class will no doubt progress to other questions that require the kids to put their thinking caps on and engage in a bit of critical thinking. Next quarter she will take an Intro to Psych class and in the spring she’ll wrap up her first year by taking a Sociology class. By June her little head will not nearly as empty as it was after 12 years of Southern California public schooling.

Thus, the dumbing down of America could be alleviated to some degree if every graduating high school student was to attend a decent college where they would take at least some enriching courses, which while not practical in the way math, science, engineering and business courses are, would nevertheless help them learn to think critically.

To return to Pastor Angley and his decades of tyrannical dominance over his congregation, in a presentation on The Young Turks (TYT), Cenk Uygur breaks down some of the Pastor’s bizarre statements and counsels us all (I paraphrase): “Anytime anyone tells you to suspend your rational function and follow irrational dogmatic advice, no matter what it is, get out of there. Run like hell as fast as you can.”

Sage advice without a doubt. Here is Cenk’s presentation:

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

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

Aileen Wuornos  (the saddest woman who ever lived)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The demons wanted my penis.”

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

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

“I had a compulsion to do it.”

“They smelled bad.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A clown can get away with murder.”

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

Peter Kurten  (known as The Vampire of Dusseldorf)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 ”I like children, they are tasty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Total paranoia is just total awareness.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

From our vantage point here in the USA, it is easy to assume that the criminal justice systems of other nations are similar to ours, with the exception that we are guiltily aware of the fact that many nations have long since deleted the Death Penalty from its roster of potential sentences.

Generally speaking, I have observed that the British system, like ours, is not reluctant to hand out harsh sentences for violent crimes that result in death, including life in prison in some instances.

Last week, however, in the sort of case that would have hordes of American crime followers shrilling demanding LWOP (or even the DP), the English prosecution in a proceeding at the historic Old Bailey court, has seemingly seen eye-to-eye with the defense in seeking a mediated sentence for a severely depressed woman who in despair suffocated her three young severely physically handicapped children before attempting to kill herself.

Here are the facts of the case as reported by Matt Prodger of BBC and Amanda Andrade of Opposing Views:

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has accepted 42-year-old Tania Clarence’s guilty plea to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, the Old Bailey has heard.

The 42-year-old mother from New Malden, south-west London, has denied murder. The prosecution said Mrs. Clarence killed her three-year-old twin sons Ben and Max and daughter Olivia, aged four, because she was depressed and wanted to end their suffering.

The three little ones were found dead at their home on April 22nd. They all suffered from type 2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic disorder that affects nerves responsible for muscle function and causes the muscles to waste away over time. SMA can lead to skeletal deformities, abnormal curvature of the spine, and problems with walking, eating, drinking and breathing. In short, in severe cases, it is a hideous and heartbreaking disease.

In addressing the judge Mr. Justice Sweeney, the Crown prosecutor Zoe Johnson QC sounded not unlike an American defense attorney, explaining that Mrs. Clarence was deeply concerned about the quality of life (or lack thereof) of her children, and felt that their chronic suffering was a more important consideration than their continued survival. The prosecution also frankly acknowledged that Mrs. Clarence, who was in the grips of a major depressive episode, suffocated her children because she wanted to end her suffering and that of her three children. Prosecutor Johnson also stated that given the combination of factors present at the time of the incident, her actions were “entirely understandable.”

“It is clear on the evidence Mrs. Clarence killed her three children because she wanted to end their suffering and at the time she committed the act she could not see any alternative or any other way out of their joint suffering.”

It will probably be a cold day in hell before we hear an American prosecutor in a multiple child death case in which the distraught mother ended the kids’ lives saying anything of this nature.

Ms. Clarence’s actual defense attorney, Jim Sturman QC, described the difficulties she faced while attempting the impossible task of caring for her three children:

“She was manifesting stress throughout the life of the children by their suffering and caring for three children with this condition was exhausting, distressing, debilitating and turned out to be overwhelming.”

Mr. Sherman also pointed out that at the time of her children’s deaths, Ms. Clarence “bitterly regretted” the fact she had survived her suicide attempt, but feels the deepest regret over the death of her children.

He also suggested that “This offending did occur whilst Mrs. Clarence was suffering from an abnormality of the mind.”

BBC correspondent Matt Prodger, who was in court for the hearing, reported that Mrs Clarence could “see no hope for the future” and could no longer cope with caring for her disabled children.

After Mr. Justice Sweeney accepted Mrs. Clarence’s guilty plea on the charge of manslaughter, Attorney Sturman requested that she be sent to a hospital instead of prison, arguing that a court-ordered hospitalization would be a “just and compassionate” sentence.

The key word here is “compassionate”.

Mrs. Clarence was not required to be in court for the hearing. She will be sentenced on the 14th of November. The commentators believe Mr. Justice Sweeney will likely accept Attoney Sturman’s request for hospitalization in lieu of prison time.

Mrs Clarence left three notes before allegedly smothering her children and then trying to kill herself. She was discovered bleeding and crying by her distraught nanny and a neighbour, who had both gone to her house based on their concerns for her safety.

* * * * *

Assuming Mrs. Clarence is hospitalized, we of course have no way of knowing whether her confinement will be permanent.

What I do believe and what Attorney Sturman hinted at in his remarks is that no one should feel this defendant will be getting off easy by being hospitalized instead of imprisoned. She will live every day of her life with full awareness that she killed her three tragically handicapped kids and that she, for whatever reasons, was unable to join them in death.

I cannot judge whether her three little ones – given their former reduced condition — are better off having departed this land of the living. What I do know is that I am deeply impressed by the compassion that has been shown by both the prosecution and the defense. There appears to be a sincerity here that is often lacking in American courtrooms where all too often trials deteriorate into gamesmanship and posturing on both sides.

Go tell it on the mountain…

by Lise LaSalle

On September 22, 2014, Gilles Pimparé, 60, was denied parole for the sixth time by the Parole Board of Canada following a hearing held at La Macaza Institution, a medium security penitentiary in the Laurentians. He first applied for parole in 2001 and has never succeeded in obtaining a release.

In 1979, which was the International Year of the Child, Pimparé and his accomplice Normand Guérin, killed Chantal Dupont, 15, and Maurice Marcil, 14, by throwing them off the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal after having raped Chantal and strangled them both. The two men were found guilty of first-degree murder in 1984.

Guérin, also 60, was going to have a first parole hearing in 2005, but backed out at the last minute and has never applied for parole since.

On the evening of July 3, 1979, the two young friends had decided to head back home before the end of a concert they attended because the featured singer was not really their cup of tea. They had split from their family and friends and were walking the familiar route to their neighborhood which  included crossing the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. The fatal encounter that was going to end their life was with an entirely different set of friends: Pimparé and Guérin were thugs from the wrong side of the tracks who had already left a trail of victims in their path.

Pimparé had already been imprisoned and after his release, had hooked up again with his bud Guérin. The duo had committed at least five violent armed robberies, thefts, assaults and rapes. The bridge was their ideal hunting ground because it had a lower unlocked gangway where they were able to bring their prey without attracting attention.

Armed with a knife and a starter pistol, they intercepted the teens and robbed Maurice Marcil of $2. He then had to sit on the edge of the platform with his legs hanging down while the two men raped Chantal. After the sexual assault, the teens were strangled and thrown off the bridge.

This crime sent shockwaves in the province because of its gratuitous, cold blooded and sadistic nature.

Chantal Dupont

15-year old Chantal was very close to her loving parents and  older sister who had accompanied her to the concert. She was raised by a stay at home mother and a professional father who worked for a Canadian airline company as a mechanic. Her tight knit family could easily be described as salt of the earth, deeply religious and conventional.

On that fatal evening, this lovely girl smiled at her parents in the doorway, and told them a warm goodbye which would be her last. When her body was found floating in the river one week after she went missing, her parents had the painstaking task of identifying it. This indelible image remained imprinted in their mind and they had to constantly struggle to try to replace it with sweeter memories of their younger daughter.

After Chantal failed to come home, they knew something was very wrong because she always called to let them know if she was going to be late. She was never a rebellious or wild child.

I could not help noticing the irony of the fact that Chantal’s last name means bridge in French. Even if not inclined to believe in destiny, it is the kind of detail that makes one wonder about the whole symbolism of this very unusual story.

Maurice Marcil

Maurice was only 14 when he faced a cruel and unusual death on that dreary night. According to his father, his son’s trajectory in life had already been marred with tragedy. When his wife was pregnant with him, they got involved in a serious car crash and when he was born, the boy suffered from a type of cerebral palsy that left him slightly paralyzed with a limp on one side and difficulty walking. He decided to direct his whole energy in intellectual pursuits because the physical ones were out of his reach, and became chess champion while excelling at school.

He was a kind soul who suffered when his parents decided to separate. His dream was to reunite them. His father could not help concluding that his tragic death managed to reunite the family after all.

The fact that his son begged his killers to strangle him first so he would be unconscious before being tossed off the bridge, was the last manifestation of how tortured his path had been from the start. Only Maurice would have thought of methods to facilitate his own death. As if his very existence had been about finding ways to soften the blows.

It is a small consolation that the men granted him his last wish. Maurice was still alive when he dropped to his death and hit the water, but he was not conscious.

They afforded the same ‘courtesy’ to Chantal who begged them to let her go promising to never tell anyone. Apparently, she struggled way more than Marcel before losing consciousness. The cause of death in both cases was drowning so we can only hope they did not come around on the way down.

The thought of those two kids floating in the cold river water for over a week is chilling to the bone.

Gilles Pimparé

Pimparé who was 25 at the time of the brutal attack, already had a long history of violence. At 14, he had an explosive temper that kept escalating until it culminated in murder on July 3, 1979.

He was born and raised in a very poor Montreal neighborhood by abusive parents who beat him constantly. He was the oldest of the boys in a family of 6. His father was a floor layer who was constantly in a rage and taking his frustrations on them.

At 12, he burnt one of his sisters on the arm and threw a knife at another. He was the black sheep of a family living a vicious circle existence with a mother terrified of her husband and taking it on her children who would then take revenge on each other.

At 14, he decided to leave home. A total failure at school and at pretty well everything else he ever tried, Pimparé was sent to reform school after beating a teacher. They locked him up in a cell and after his release, this already dangerous delinguent went on a rampage.

This is when he and Normand Guérin met and together, started to steal cars and rob corner stores. In 1975, he got caught, ended up in prison for armed robbery but managed to escape.

In October 1978, he was sentenced to 20 months, but 5 months later, he was released for good behavior. His parole officer trusted him and had high hopes for this young man who went on to live with his parents and started selling encyclopedia in the hope of turning a new leaf.

After meeting his old buddy Norman Guérin again, he reverted quickly to his old ways. According to Pimparé, the fact that his friend now had a car was enough to convince him to renew with his life of crime.

In June, the two men were spending time on the Jacques-Cartier Bridge looking for victims. They robbed nine people aged 16 to 65 and raped two women. Their life of truancy exploded on July 3, during their final encounter with Chantal Dupont and Maurice Marcil.

Gilles Pimparé was high on drugs and alcohol the whole time, but Normand Guérin apparently did not need to be under the influence to commit such atrocities.

Normand Guérin

Norman Guérin also came from a very modest background, but did not suffer beatings and abuse like Pimparé. He had a twin brother he was extremely close to and 3 other siblings. His brother, during an interview, remembered feeling everything his identical twin would until one day, the visceral connection ended when Normand had to have his blood transfused because of pernicious anemia.

To this day, Guérin seems to blame his behavior on the fact that he lost his father at a young age and ended up creating new ties with the wrong friends after feeling totally lost and unloved. His mother had to give him an ultimatum: choose between his family and the lousy company he kept. He chose Pimparé over his own blood; maybe because they had removed it all during the transfusion.

When he was arrested, his twin brother suffered immensely from being compared and mistakenly identified as his twin. He was harassed everywhere he went and even did a short stint in jail where he was hoping to hook up with his blood brother. But he learned his lesson and came out a new man.

Their poor mother cried for months and must now live permanently with this terrible burden. At first, she refused to talk to her son, but her maternal instinct took over and made her support him no matter what. And by some divine intervention, her son was forgiven and appeared to repent for his crimes.

The arrest

After the police finally realized that Chantal and Marcel were no runaways and their bodies were found floating in the river, it did not take them long to catch the two culprits.

The two felons had maintained their reign of terror on the bridge and some of their victims pointed them out rapidly.

Not too long after his arrest, Normand Guérin started to sing and the jig was up for both of them. He gave a full confession that some so called reporters practicing yellow journalism jumped on, and printed in its entirety in their rags. Sadly, the parents of the victims had not been informed of the specifics yet and had to read word for word, the gory details of their child’s demise in the newspaper with the rest of the population. It almost became a double victimization for the Dupont and Marcil families. This high profile case now belonged to the media.

The trial

Considering that Guérin confessed and Pimparé tried to commit suicide twice, their trial was a slam dunk. The way it was recounted left no room for doubt and they were sentenced to 25-year to life for first-degree murder.

They were tried twice because of a reversal due to a technicality and during the second trial, Pimparé’s lawyer presented special circumstances because unlike Guérin, he was intoxicated and high on drugs during the commission of his crimes, but it did not make any difference to the jury who came up with the same sentence.

During the proceedings, Pimparé’s behavior was very arrogant, but Guérin kept a low profile.

It came out during the investigation that on the night of the murders, they had robbed another victim who was 70-year-old, by breaking into her home. Pimparé wanted to kill her, but Guérin put a stop to it because he was unwilling to kill three people in one day.

They had already committed at least five brutal rapes and had attacked and tortured two young boys for about an hour on that same bridge.

After robbing the elderly lady, the boys stopped for pizza, but fortunately for investigators, they forgot at the scene of the break in, the rope used to detain and strangle their victims.

So it was not a complicated case for the jury to decide considering the circumstances.

They were going to prison and for a long time if not for life. The media and the population at large were outraged, and it was not going to die down anytime soon.

But what happened next is short of a miracle.

Forgiveness

The victims’ parents had a long and painful road ahead and the media did not pave the way for any conciliation. Imagine reading about your children’s torture in the papers. Some details should remain private and sensationalism is never a remedy to pain.

The Dupont family became a lightning rod in this whole sordid story and a ray of hope and light in the darkness, but the media did not welcome their serenity and dignity with open arms.

Forgiveness does not sell newspapers or boost ratings so their personal journey into understanding, love and pardon was even mocked by some journalists whose own Neanderthal instinct would not allow them to ever forgive or forget the person who hurt their child; they were almost implying that the Dupont were idiots.

The Dupont were genuine Catholics and true believers who read scriptures and believed in practicing what you preach. So during their hour of need, they found solace in reading the Bible, which enlightened them and represented a source of courage to find rhyme and reason in this tragedy.

They decided to offer their daughter’sacrifice to the Lord and chose the hard way by not becoming hateful individuals enticing the population to throw the first stone.

They started by telling the parents of Guérin and Pimparé they had forgiven their sons. Normand Guérin’s mother was so shocked that she could not find the words to thank them, but it helped her survive the ordeal. She ended up meeting them privatly.

They also wrote to the murderers and offered them help and forgiveness. It was a long process and it took 10 years before they finally met Normand Guérin. The encounter took place in prison where they embraced and cried together. A cathartic moment for the parents of the victim eager to heal the broken link that led to their beautiful daugher’s demise.

They met Pimparé a few times, but he ended up cutting ties with them because he could not understand or receive their forgiveness. He admitted that he would not be able to forgive someone who would kill his own daughter so he wanted out of this circle of love and indulgence. He could not fake it.

Chantal’s older sister became a nun and also forgave them. She strongly believes that they could not love anyone else because of their self-loathing.

The Marcils reacted differently. Maurice’s mother moved to Europe to put some distance between her life and this tragedy and his father opted for forgetting but not forgiving. He could not go there, but he respected the Dupont’s decision. His brother and sister decided to also forgive.

It did not mean that the Dupont wanted them released, but it signified that they wanted to help the two men find their way back without having to carry the burden of their hate and revenge. They understood the power of love and the need for every human being to receive it.

It made a world of difference for Guérin who never asked for parole and tried to understand the source of the tragedy and expressed regrets. Both men seemed to have zero self-esteem and were on a quest to destroy everything that was wrong with their world. In his own words, Guérin said that the purity and innocence of Chantal made him want to snuff it out of her because he felt like such a loser. He wanted to keep her all to himself.

The movie

Denis Boivin directed a movie about the case called Forgiveness/Le Pardon that won several prizes. It was produced by Films Dionysos, viewed in several countries and is still being distributed.

Every time Gilles Pimparé appears in front of the parole board, it reignites interest in the media and serves as a reminder that these guys still exist and are the product of our societal problems.

The reaction to the movie is quite interesting; some are impressed by the generous gesture of the Dupont, but others basically call them gullible, weak and even dumb. 

It seems that religion is the excuse offered by naysayers, as if forgiveness only came from religious beliefs or weakness. In fact, many non-believers feel the same way and support their decision.

The media

Some members of the media found it next to impossible to accept this display of humanity and attempt at restorative justice. The Dupont wanted to make the best of a bad situation, but they were not welcome to do so in the context of their own tragedy. They stole the death of their daughter from underneath them and the same thing can be said about the Marcil’s family.

They published the awful details of their children’s demise without any care in the world . They expressed hate and anger and tried to organize a lynch mob instead of respecting the wishes of the family. The Marcil might not have reached the same level of mercy as the Dupont, but they were human and moderate in their approach.

One journalist even claimed that it was acceptable for the police to have leaked them confidential information about the case because of its gruesome nature. I will respectfully disagree with this deluded notion; it is even less acceptable to do so when the details are that sensitive.

If the families were not going to huff and puff and raise their fist in the air, they were going to do it in their place. They fanned the flames of hatred and extinguished any sentiment of love and forgiveness to further their career.

How disrespectful towards the victims and these wonderful people who took the high road in spite of their suffering.

I am convinced that it was not easy for the Dupont to embrace the killers of their child, but it was a true example of restorative justice. A perfect teaching moment, but instead, some decided not to go along for the ride.

The movie was a great initiative and it is still in demand. Viewers from different countries are commenting on its content and some are in awe of this powerful civic lesson.

Pimparé has been turned down 6 times by the parole board and it does not sound like he has learned his lesson or accepted complete responsibility for his actions. He still maintains that it was Guérin’s fault and that it was never supposed to be a murder. His behavior has improved, but there is too much doubt to take a chance on him.

I read reports that Guérin was now living in a halfway house, but the mother of Maurice Marcil recently said in an interview that he was still incarcerated. If he makes it on the outside, it is going to be because of the forgiveness he was so generously afforded.

Mrs. Dupont passed away peacefully and her husband lives on still convinced they did the right thing. Marcel Marcil’s brother works with dying patients to try to give back to the community and his family always wanted what is best to protect society; and this does not include releasing Pimparé.

To err is human and to forgive is divine, but be ready to stand alone if you do. Let’s hope that this monstrous tragedy coupled with the most amazing act of forgiveness might serve a purpose. If this incredible colliding of dark and positive forces does not lead us to bridge the sanctity of life with forgiveness, what will?

Click here to go to Lise LaSalle’s website:

The Trouble with Justice

by BJW Nashe

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

What’s going on with these people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Lise LaSalle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Sage advice that is perhaps rarely followed. Here’s another maxim to live by: “Don’t be a stalker.” Just don’t, even if you have to move to another city or to a whole different country. Get help, therapy. Find someone you trust and let them bind and gag you until the impulse passes.

I say this because although I could be wrong, it is possible that here on All Things Crime Blog we may have a reader or two who – given the right unfortunate set of circumstances – could conceivably succumb to the stalking impulse.

So (as Neil Young once said), “Please take my advice.” Do not stalk.

But because I try to be a realist, I’m painfully aware that there are degrees of malfeasance. Therefore, if you feel compelled to stalk, you may get away with it up to a point if you gird your loins and make your will like iron and follow these simple rules.

Rule No. 1:

Under no circumstances, go to your victim’s residence. Just don’t. That way not only will it be much tougher for your victim to call the police on you, but you won’t try to enter your victim’s house illicitly or illegally, which of course can be disastrous and can result at worst in death, but will more likely result in your victim taking out a restraining order which in turn can lead to you being arrested, which is probably not what you want.

Rule No. 2:

Never phone your victim at home. Just don’t. If you must phone your victim, phone them at work. That will piss them off mightily, which although hardly the same as them looking into your eyes and telling you in all sincerity that they will love you forever, it could be seen as being better than nothing. A stalker must accept whatever small victories he or she can obtain.

That’s really it as far as rules are concerned. Follow these two simple rules and it’s just possible you will not end up dead or under arrest.

A young California woman named Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa did not follow the simple rule that states, “Never stalk your victim at his or her house.” Her failure to comply with this simple wisdom did not result in her death but did result in such a catastrophe that for a few brief moments she may have wished she was dead. Genoveva’s fall from grace has been reported by numerous media sources and a series of striking images is readily available. Here’s what happened according to Amy Powell and the ABC7 news staff:

A 28-year-old woman rescued from a chimney at a Thousand Oaks home was allegedly trying to break into the home of a man she had met online.

(Ms. Powell says “allegedly” but Genoveva virtually had to be attempting to break into the house for reasons that become quite obvious as the story progresses.)

Residents in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive reported hearing the sound of a woman crying in the area at about 5:45 a.m.

A neighbor phoned the occupant of the house, a man identified only as Lawrence, and informed him that someone appeared to be stuck in his chimney. He in turn contacted the authorities which apparently resulted in both law enforcement and the fire department ultimately ending up at the house. When the deputies got there they found Genoveva trapped inside the chimney.

TRAPPED INSIDE THE CHIMNEY!

This poor female stalker was so desperate to get at her victim, a gentlemen whom she’d met online and had gone out with a few times before he’d broken off their relationship, that she actually tried to invade his house through his chimney as if she was the magical Mr. Claus or a 19th century chimney sweep desperate for a warm hearth.

Amy Powell writes:

Ventura County Fire Department and Urban Search and Rescue members had to dismantle the chimney in order to get Nunez-Figueroa out. She was lubricated with dish soap prior to being hoisted out, Ventura County Fire Capt. Mike Lindbery said via Twitter.

In an interview, Captain Lindbery explains that they “dismantled the chimney” with common household tools such as hammers, pliers and screwdrivers.

The sight of Genoveva, who appears to be a slim woman, being finally pulled out of chimney by two strong men is a never-to-be-forgotten sight. Imagine how humiliated she must have felt?

She “was conscious upon being extricated and was transported to a hospital for an evaluation,” Lindbery said.

This situation is resplendent with irony. Lawrence, the resident, was not even home when poor Genoveva got stuck. Therefore, even if she had made it down the chimney successfully, she would not have been able to confront the “man who had apparently broken her heart.”

When interviewed, Lawrence said he had met Genoveva online and had gone out with her a few times but had recently ended the relationship.

Oddly enough, this was the second time Lawrence found Genoveva on his roof. Two weeks ago he spotted her up there, perhaps preparing to plunge into the chimney. He called the authorities but by the time they got there, she had disappeared.

“I’m going to be a little more cautious of who I invite into my house now,” said Lawrence…

Sometime after being taken to the hospital, poor Genoveva was arrested for illegal entry and providing false information to a peace officer.

* * * * *

The moral of this story is simple. Do not stalk no matter how strong your compulsion is. Genoveva’s fate is merely an extreme example of the serious repercussions that can result from stalking.

Unfortunately, we humans tend to be obsessive characters and no matter how much sage advice I hand out, confirmed stalkers are unlikely to listen. In fact, sooner or later we’re likely to hear the sad tale of another poor stalker who is heard screaming, trapped inside the sewer line, bound and determined to swim upstream to the toilet bowl like the desperate junkie in Trainspotting. Do not stalk!

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

On February 6, 1943, the famed film actor Errol Flynn, after a month-long trial, was acquitted of the rapes and statutory rapes of Peggy Satterlee and Betty Hansen. The jury deliberated for 13 hours before returning with their unanimous not guilty verdict. According to Trove, Flynn, who had been uncharacteristically subdued throughout the lengthy ordeal, shouted gleefully upon hearing the good news:

Gosh! I feel like whooping!

We’re not sure if “whooping” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse but it certainly sounds like one.  What is known is that while the trial was going on, Mr. Flynn was pursuing and romancing 18-year old Nora Eddington, a teenage redhead who was the lobby cigarette girl at the courthouse. Flynn, who was never shy about expressing himself, explained:

I carefully checked her age. She was eighteen, safe ground. Her name, it turned out, was Nora Eddington.  What I didn’t know was that her father was Captain Jack Eddington of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.

Flynn later married Nora Eddington, but like his other marriages, it was doomed to fail.

The  jury forewoman, a Mrs. Anderson, explained that during the 13 hours the jury was out, there were seven votes of 10 to 2 in favor of an acquittal. Finally, however, the two “hold- outs” capitulated. While all this was going on, Flynn literally could not  sit still and “lit one cigarette after another while rising from his chair and sitting down again.”

Naturally, the courtroom went wild when the verdict was finally read.  In addition to shouting about the joys of “whooping,” Flynn“jumped from his chair and rushed across the court-room to the jury and shook hands enthusiastically with the forewoman and others. Spectators cheered and crowded around Flynn and thumped his back.”

The Judge stated that he believed that the evidence was evenly divided but that  he felt the verdict was correct.

Flynn, who has been accused of many things including having Nazi leanings, commented in an interview:

It’s wonderful news. I did not become an American citizen for nothing. The fair play I received at this trial proves that. My confidence in American justice kept me hoping for such a verdict.

Peggy Satterlee said: “I knew those women would acquit him. They just sat and looked adoringly at him as if he was their son or something. The trial was an awful strain and the verdict horrible. I wish they had taken Betty Hansen and left me out. I was working and minding my own business.”

Given Errol Flynn’s “skin of his teeth” escape, not unlike his many magnificent escapes in his swashbuckling films, one can’t help but wonder who his adversaries were. Who were Peggy Satterlee and Betty Hansen?

Sir! A Magazine for Males, October, 1954, brings us this on Flynn and the two young ladies:

It seems that Flynn got entangled with two lovely young things at two different times in the space of a year. One was a Miss Betty Hansen, aged 17; the other a Peggy Satterlee of even more tender years.

The girls were irked with Flynn and their parents were irked with him. The State of California, having been duly applied to, decided to try him for both charges at one and the same time.  The public, to say the least, never had it better.

Flynn claimed that the whole thing was ridiculous; although he knew the girls, he had no knowledge that they were under 18. Flynn had a point. Both young women appeared to be of the age of legal consent:

Miss Satterlee danced at N.T.O’s Florentine Gardens, clad mostly in a plunge neckline, and Miss Hansen had come to the coast with movie ambitions.  When dressed for the kill, they could, both of them, have been an attractive pair of youngish grandmothers, what with their warpaint and mascara.

Satterlee and Hansen, however, hardly looked like “youngish grandmothers” in the courtroom. No doubt their attorneys had advised them on the need for innocent presentation:

Miss Satterlee appeared without even powder, clad in a little girl’s billowy dress and flat wedgies, and she had her hair artfully rigged in two long braids down her back caught with fetching bows.

She could have been ten. And Miss Hansen, also eschewing cosmetics, wore flat heeled shoes and a plain drab smock.

Miss Hansen was the first to take the stand. She claimed to have gone to dinner at the home of Flynn’s friend, McEvoy, where she had been given an “evil green drink” which had made her very sick. Always the gentleman, Flynn had taken her upstairs to take a “nap.” He had also helped her undress. On cross-examination, Flynn’s lawyer, the famed Jerry Geisler, inquired of Miss Hansen:

“But when you found you were not going to sleep, didn’t you try and push him away?”

Miss Hansen admitted she had not pushed him, kicked him or scratched him.

Miss Satterlee’s testimony was similar in nature except, in this case, Flynn’s unwanted advances had taken place on his yacht, the Sirocco. She stated that she had not screamed for help even though there were people nearby. She stated quaintly that she had not thought it worthwhile because: “the refrigerator was running.” With logic like that, it’s not surprising that Flynn was acquitted on both charges. Newsweek (yes they had Newsweek way back then) stated:

It happened in the best Hollywood tradition. The defendant leaped joyfully to his feet.  Spectators cheered. Flashbulbs popped…”

Flynn  was innocent. Not one seemed to be particularly put out over the not guilty verdict, not even Betsy Hansen’s mother who issued a statement from her home in Lincoln, Nebraska:

Oh well, nobody got hurt. I have no hard feeling toward Mr. Flynn. Betty is the cutest little thing you ever saw…a clean little Christian girl!

MORE ON THE TRIAL

Jurors are prone to speaking out following verdicts and the Flynn jurors were no exception. Motion Picture in conjunction  with Hollywood Magazine brings us the following:

What really convinced the jury that he was innocent?

With MOTION PICTURE-HOLLYWOOD’S policy of bringing you the inside story behind all front-page Hollywood news, we went to the individual jurors and asked them. Nine women and three men—all mature, intelligent and conscientious—sat in on the fate of Flynn, but because they are respectable citizens with families and want to avoid the spotlight, we have respected their desire for privacy by not quoting any member by name.

One of the jurors told me significantly, “It was not so much Flynn’s testimony that helped him as it was the testimony of both the girls who brought charges against him.”

“Their testimony proved to us that they were not always telling the truth. For instance, Betty Hansen first said that she undressed herself, and then said that Flynn had undressed her. During the preliminary hearing she said that the alleged act took place on a large bed in a large room, but on the stand she said it was a small bed in an alcove.”

The appearance of the girls did their cases no good either, according to the jurors. “There were no tears, no grief in recalling the alleged acts. We felt that a girl whose virtue had been molested would be unable to control her emotions on recalling the incident, but Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee were belligerent and displayed no regret.

“Besides, Mrs. Satterlee knew that her daughter was living in the apartment of a married man and was accepting money and gifts from him.”

“I felt sure,” a pleasant-faced, motherly juror told me, “that Betty Hansen first brought charges against Flynn out of hurt feelings and a sudden desire for revenge, and that when her case was weak, Peggy Satterlee was brought in.”

“Betty, on the other hand, was furious at Errol Flynn because he had paid no attention to her at Fred McEvoy’s party which she had crashed. She had come uninvited to that party with the express purpose of playing up to Mr. Flynn to obtain his help in getting into pictures…”

The jury was alert, not only in weighing every word uttered in court, but in making their sage analysis of the evidence displayed. The snapshots of Peggy Satterlee in a bathing suit taken on Sunday a few hours after she said she was attacked, told them plenty. “She looked happy and carefree, not at all like a girl who had suffered a harrowing physical experience as she had claimed.”

Not a thing missed their keen scrutiny. When Peggy told how she and Cathcart-Jones had played tag one night in a mortuary and how she had placed her face next to that of a dead man, they were revolted and arrived at the conclusion that a girl who could do that must be too calloused to be as deeply hurt as she said she was.

The Judge himself admonished the jurors that a birth certificate need not be viewed as conclusive evidence.

“We never felt that the girls were as young as they claimed,” several jurors explained. “Betty told us that she had been graduated from high school and then had gone to Teachers’ Training for two years before she came to Hollywood. Even a very bright girl—which Betty obviously was not—couldn’t have accomplished so much under the age of 17. Peggy looked and acted worldly; and on many occasions had sworn that she was older. For instance, she and her mother insisted that she was 18 when she applied for a driver’s license, and she said she was 21 when she applied for a job at a night club. Apparently she thought nothing of adjusting her age to suit the circumstances.”

One of the jurors stated that Errol Flynn’s reputation as a glamorous Hollywood star had no influence in her decision to vote for acquittal:

“Believe me,” one of the women told me, “I have seen him on the screen only once. I looked upon him as a man seeking justice, not as a dashing film star with a handsome profile…”

How can one argue with such eloquence?

THE week after Errol Flynn’s trial was over, the boys and girls who attended it and wrote it up gave him a party where the whole cast was re-enacted, amidst much merriment. The party was in payment for one Errol threw for them on the ninth floor of the Hall of Justice, while the jury was out cogitating as to his guilt or innocence. Errol had his butler bring down two cases of liquor and lots of sandwiches, and a merry time was had by all except the judge and jury. Errol also wanted time on the radio to thank the Great American Public for giving him such a fair trial. Networks wouldn’t go for it.

FLYNN’S AFTERMATH

Naturally, we can’t help wondering what happened to Fynn after the trial. It is noted that the well-known expression: “In Like Flynn” stems from his acquittal. The website For Shame! brings us the following:

Errol’s career didn’t really suffer from the trial, but rather from negative public opinion when he didn’t enlist during WWII (sidenote: not his fault, he wanted to, didn’t pass the physical, remarkable considering sword choreography prowess which you’d think the Army could use somehow). By the early 50s he’d really embraced a late-Kerouacian diet of cake and whiskey, resulting in alcoholism and weight gain.

But Errol, the scalawag, the rapscallion, had to go out with an inappropriately younger bang: at the age of 50, he met and fell in love with a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD whom he planned TO MARRY and with whom he planned to move to Jamaica. Very, very unfortunately, Errol died of a heart attack in 1959 before he could really love or marry his little island childbride. Sad.

Although the moralists among us may despise Errol Flynn for his caddish, inappropriate and downright sexist behavior (not to mention his alleged Nazi leanings), he never seemed to express any regrets for his many flaws. But what can you expect from a man who stated in his typically flippant manner:

“I like my scotch old and my woman young.”

by Bob Couttie

It was 11.45pm on 11 October this year when room attendant Elias Gallamos entered Room 1 at the Celzone Lodge, a short-time hotel, in Olongapo, Philippines, for the second time that evening. Fifteen minutes earlier he had seen a pair of slippers at the bathroom door and assumed that the attractive young woman who had checked in around 45 minutes earlier with a white male was still there although the male had apparently already left. The slippers were still there, unmoved.

Looking into the bathroom, Gallamos found a female figure, head leaning against the toilet bowl. A cream-coloured sheet covered her part-naked body. She had been badly beaten and there were bite marks on her body. There were grip marks on her neck and the water found in her lungs showed that she had been drowned.

Two used condoms were found in a trash can but nothing is yet known about their provenance.

That discovery set in motion a manhunt for a US Marine in what will prove to be one of the most controversial and sensitive cases of its kind, the echoes of which will last for decades.

Despite her slim, attractive, full-breasted bikini-worthy figure, Jennifer was a transgender sex worker called Jeffrey Laude. She should no longer have been in the Philippines, where same-sex marriage is forbidden, but in Germany with her fiancé, Marc Sueselbeck, but the German embassy had denied her a visa. She had an appointment to apply again for a visa on 16 October, five days after her death. Laude was the breadwinner of a poor family in a conservative country in which there are few work opportunities for transgenders, and homophobia is common.

A friend, known as ‘Barbie, who accompanied Laude to the Celzone Zone Lodge, which rents rooms by the hour, says Laude was wary of the suspect discovering that she was transgender. Barbie and another friend booked themselves into another room at the hotel.

All that is known for sure is that Jennifer met her killer at about 10.45 at the Ambyanz Disco in the company of three US Marines. CCTV cameras at the disco show her with her alleged killer. The photographs helped the US Naval Criminal Investigative service identify a suspect among the thousand or so US military personnel who were in Subic Bay as part of joint 2014 Amphibious Landing Exercises with the Philippines.

Following a photo ‘identification parade’, Marine Private first class Joseph Scott Pemberton was identified as a suspect. Initially detained aboard the USS Peleliu, a Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, he has been helicoptered to a Philippine military base where he will be held pending trial. Olongapo mayor Rolando Paulino met the suspect, who is alleged to have said “I did something wrong” and declined to say more without the presence of a lawyer. Pemberton is just 19 and joined the Marines last year.

US authorities, the NCIS, and the navy are collaborating fully with the Philippine authorities on the case. But things are going to get messy on several critical fronts.

Few Americans are aware of the history of American-Philippine relationships. Few know that the Philippines, having declared independence from Spain in June 1898, fought a war of independence from February 1899 to July 1904. The campaign was often brutal on both sides. Until 1946 the Philippines was US sovereign territory. Even afterwards the US treasury controlled the Philippine economy.

Despite that, the number of anti-American Filipinos is tiny, not surprising in a country in which around one in four families have members residing in the United States. That tiny group, largely influenced by the Marxist politics popularised in the 1970s, make the most noise and get the most media coverage, while having minimal influence.

Nevertheless, that historical record means that most Filipinos, while not anti-American, don’t trust American policy. This is not surprising. After World War Two, the US refused to pay benefits to the Philippine Scouts who served – and had served since the early 20th century. The Scouts were an entirely US military, not Philippine government, unit. Indeed, its cavalry arm performed the last cavalry charge by a US military cavalry unit, in Morong, Philippines.

Another thread of controversy is that Olongapo, where the Laude killing took place, remained US territory until the 1960s, long after the rest of the country got its independence.

Add to that the fact that long after Olongapo itself was finally handed back to the Philippines, the US Navy was perceived to have been a law unto itself, shuffling personnel out of the country when crimes had been committed by US service personnel. Later the naval base was nominal put under Philippine control but remained de facto US territory until the Philippine senate by a margin of one, declined to ratify a new treaty that would enable the base to remain and on 24 November 1992 the US Navy finally departed..

With the growth of Chinese power in the region, the US is focusing on the western Pacific once more. The Philippines has a territorial dispute with China but negligible means to defend itself. While the US is not establishing permanent bases, it is increasing its presence throughout the region and the Philippines is a key part of its ‘pivot’.

Under a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), similar to what the US has with Japan, the accused may request to be detained in US custody until the end of all judicial proceedings. This has become a bone of contention but the there are several reasons why the measure is in place. Under Philippine law the accused has no right to know what his or her rights are; there is no equivalent of the Miranda requirement. There is also no trial by jury in the Philippines, a country where Judges are notoriously corrupt.

The VFA also mandates that judicial proceedings must be complete with a year. Given the notoriously slow legal processes in the Philippines, in which even the simplest case can last thirty years, with lawyers mainly concerned with delaying judgement as long as possible, this is a sensible demand.

It is now, for instance, five years since a powerful political family in Mindanao were implicated in the murder of 58 people, 30 of them journalists. There have been no convictions and it is unlikely that there will be any in the foreseeable future.

That perception may not be accurate. In 1983, Michael J Butler, a military serviceman, was condemned to death in a Philippine court for the brutal killing of a Filipina. It was later changed to reclusion perpetua.

Hanging over the current case is that of Daniel Smith, accused of rape in 2006. It is widely perceived that Smith was guilty and that he was only released when the plaintiff, Suzanne Nicolas, retracted her statement. In fact the appeals court set aside the alleged retraction and found Smith innocent because the plaintiff was considered, at best untruthful and unreliable.

As if things were not messy enough, the Philippines is moving towards presidential elections in 2016. Philippine presidents are allowed only one term so the current incumbent, Nonoy Aquino cannot run again. As a result president-wannabees are riding on the back of the Laude killing. Vice-president Jejomar, a frontrunner for the next election, has sought media coverage with photo opportunities of him posing next to Laude’s coffin.

Another president-wannabee, Miriam Defensor Santiago, is leveraging the case to raise her profile by demanding that witnesses appear before a Senate committee, thus getting media traction for herself. Name recognition is one of the most important factors in getting elected in the Philippines.

Harry Roque, the activist lawyer acting on behalf of the Laude family, is grandstanding the case to attack the government and the Visiting Forces Agreement.

In addition to everything else, the case has, rightly, become a cause celebre for the Philippine LGBT community. In a country where beating up gays is common, but rarely prosecuted, and bigotry is rife, this is something they feel keenly about. It is a very public opportunity for them to demand rights in  country where they have none.

All of which makes for a very messy mix.

Preliminary investigation spearheaded by Olongapo City Prosecutor Emilie Fe de los Santos began on 17 October. Pemberton was not required to appear which has encouraged conspiracy theories that the US Navy has spirited him out of the country despite assurances by his prosecution team that he is still aboard the USS Peleliu. However, at 8.50am  the day after the preliminary investigations began Pemberton was transferred to Camp Aguinaldo following agreement been the US and Philippine governments that he be held in joint custody in the compound of the Joint US Military Assistance Group, JUSMAG.

Unless required to attend court he will be held in an air-conditioned 20-foot van with a single cot bed.

Pemberton’s team must now decide whether or not to lodge a counter-affidavit by 27 October, after which the prosecutor’s office will decide whether to dismiss or pursue the case.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Pulchritude is a word you don’t hear much anymore. When I have heard it used it’s generally been in reference to “female pulchritude” which I always assumed meant “female physiognomy” or feminine physique, but in looking it up online it’s simple a middle English word derived from the Latin and it simply means “beautiful”. Or as one proponent of pulchritude put it, “My girlfriend is the most pulchritudinous woman in the woman in the world.”

However, after deep thought, it seems to me that pulchritude could be applied to both sexes not to mention transgender people. Thus, if a man and a woman make beautiful music together we could say that pulchritude is meeting pulchritude.

All of this is a roundabout and not very clever way of getting around to the fact that there seems to be an awful lot of pulchritude meeting pulchritude at American high schools these days, the only problem being that the pulchritudinous females are invariably rather attractive teachers generally ranging in age from 24 to 32 while the pulchritudinous dudes are always either 16 or 17. Every darned time this seems to result in somebody, generally the boy, letting the cat out of the bag. Then the teacher loses her job, gets arrested, is shamed and humiliated, and very likely goes to jail or prison.

It seems clear that no matter how wonderfully pulchritudinous the 16/17 year old boys appear in the eyes of the older women, it’s just not worth it, yet these these desiring ladies just don’t seem to be able to stop themselves.

Just today on Huff Crime News, there’s a story about Ashley Zehnder, a bespectacled 24-year-old biology teacher and assistant cheerleading coach at Pasadena High School Pasadena, Texas who faces a felony charge for having an improper relationship with an under-aged male member of the cheer squad, according to Click2Houston.com.

Oddly enough, Ashley appears to have inadvertently turned herself in by complaining to the school authorities about a naked selfie of herself that began circulating among the students. Oh Jesus, every time you take a nude picture of yourself with your cell phone and send it out into cyber-space you are taking one king-hell risk.

But the new “mature woman — younger fella” story I want to talk about briefly concerns the case of  a rather interesting former Irish college hoopster and recently terminated high school basketball coach in NYC named Megan Mahoney. Andres Jauregui of Huffington Post writes:

A former basketball coach and gym teacher at a prestigious New York City high school faces statutory rape charges for her alleged sex abuse of a male student.

Megan Mahoney, 24, was arrested Monday for allegedly having regular sexual contact with the same 16-year-old student over a period of more than two months beginning in late October 2013, the Staten Island Advance reports.

Due to law enforcement’s habit of counting each discrete unlawful act as a separate charge,  Mahoney faces 30 counts of statutory rape. According to the New York Post, court papers assert that Mahoney had sex with the teen “on numerous occasions, that is at least two times per week during the period.”

Just to make it worse, she’s also charged with four counts of “criminal sexual act” because of allegedly engaging in mutual oral sex with the boy “at least two times per month during said period.”

As a result of her impropriety, Mahoney has wrecked her career. She resigned from Moore Catholic High School in Staten Island, where she was a gym teacher and an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team.

According to the investigators, some of the illicit encounters occurred on school grounds. In August, in an interview with the New York Post, the boy stated that the relationship began after Mahoney allegedly approached him in the gym, struck up a conversation and offered to coach him in basketball.

“We would just drive around and [do it] in the car,” said the boy.

And as is sometimes the case, there’s another authority figure in the mix, Richard Postiglione, the Moore Catholic High School athletic director, who was investigated for allegedly failing to report sex abuse accusations against not only Mahoney but also another female teacher at the school.

Based on her pulchritude and strapping physiognomy, it is not surprising that Mahoney was a student athlete who played basketball at Wagner College and later at Fordham University before becoming a coach and P.E. teacher.

*     *     *     *     *

This one depresses me. Unlike the recent Louisiana sex-threesome-with-teen ladies, Shelley Dufresne and Rachel Respess, who although attractive look rather staged and neurotic to my experienced eye, Mahoney looks hale, hearty and like she’d be lots of fun to get to know. She looks like she was a battler on the court in the best Irish New York tradition, like she very likely gains and loses poundage regularly, and like she doesn’t mind the sun. In short, a “gamer” in every sense of the term.

So why has she also chosen to wreck her life? Sure, the pulchritudinous teen was undoubtedly attractive, at least to her eye, but so what? If we all had a dollar for every attractive kid roaming around around our high schools, we could all probably retire. Because this syndrome appears to be becoming more and more of a social problem, it seems steps need to be taken to keep the problem from arising in the first place. Young vibrant women like Megan Mahoney (or even the wan Ms. Dufresne and Ms. Rachel) should not be throwing their futures away over forbidden fruit. And why does this forbidden fruit seem to be so deucedly attractive to so many young female teachers? I don’t get it and can only shake my head in confusion…

by Rick Stack

It is a rare occasion when both the defendant and the surviving family of a victim agree on the sentence imposed by a judge. That atypical scenario appears to have occurred on Tuesday in a Johannesburg, South Africa courtroom during the sentencing of fallen Olympian Oscar Pistorius. Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa imposed a 5-year prison sentence for “culpable homicide” (analogous to manslaughter in the U.S.) against Pistorius in the killing of his 29-year-old girlfriend and model, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s night 2013, as well as a 3-year suspended sentence for separate weapons charges. In a blow to the NRA, Pistorius also was declared unfit to possess a gun in the future.

Pistorius had faced a sentence of up to 20 years on the homicide charge alone. Under South African law, Pistorius can apply for parole as early as next August, by which time he will have served 1/6 of his sentence. Immediately after being sentenced, the disabled sprinter was remanded into custody and placed in a private cell of the hospital wing of the notorious apartheid-era prison, Kgosi Mampuru II, in Pretoria.

Pistorius, who bawled and vomited through much of his marathon eight month murder trial, didn’t flinch or break down crying when Judge Masipa announced her sentence. Those histrionics had led the Judge and defense counsel to request a postponement midway through the trial this summer in order to conduct a psychological evaluation of Pistorius. In June, the pair of court-appointed mental health experts concluded that Pistorius was not suffering from a mental illness when he killed his girlfriend by firing four shots at Steenkamp through a closed toiler door and that he was capable of appreciating the wrongfulness of his act.

Judge Masipa had disappointed Steenkamp’s parents last month by acquitting Pistorius of premeditated murder, which would have guaranteed a prison term of 25 years to life. However, she found him guilty of only the culpable murder and weapons charges. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel asked for a 10 year prison sentence for Pistorius. The prosecution’s theory was that Pistorius killed Steenkamp after a Valentine’s Day argument. It portrayed the Olympic athlete as a hothead with a love of guns, an inflated sense of entitlement, and a history of domestic abuse. In contrast, defense attorney Barry Roux asked for house arrest and community service, arguing that the 27-year-old athlete would be preyed on by rapists and targeted for murder if he was jailed.

In “splitting the difference” between the requests of the prosecution and the defense, Judge Masipa struck a balance between mercy and retribution. Prior to imposing her sentence, the Judge criticized Pistorius for having acted with “gross negligence.” Although she accepted Pistorius’ claim that he killed Steenkamp by accident when he fired four times through a bathroom door believing that an intruder had gotten inside his gated Pretoria apartment, she still found it inacceptable. Judge Masipa said, “using a lethal weapon, the accused fired not one but four shots into the door.” Summing up her sentence, Masipa said her decision was “about achieving the right balance — proportionality.” A long sentence would lack mercy, she said, while a more lenient one would “send the wrong message to the community.” She added, “It would be a sad day for this country if an impression was created that there is one law for the poor and disadvantaged and another for the rich and famous.”

The last quote of Judge Masipa strains credulity somewhat, since it’s hard to believe that a poor, black South African accused of similar crimes as Pistorius who could not afford to hire his legal “dream team,” would have received the same sentence. Not surprisingly, on the street outside of the courtroom, some South Africans told reporters that Pistorius should have been jailed for 10, or even, 20 years. The New York Times interviewed minibus taxi driver Johannes Mbatha, who lamented the lenient sentence as evidence that South African society has not yet transformed. “If it was a black man, he never would have received such a light sentence,” Mbatha said. “But that’s how things are in South Africa.”

I, for one, believe that Judge Masipa imposed an overly lenient sentence upon Pistorius, and had expected that she would sentence him to about 10 years of prison rather than the 5 year sentence she chose. After all, an intelligent, beautiful, and lovely woman with unlimited promise was stricken dead in the prime of her life for no good reason under somewhat suspicious circumstances, by a man (Pistorius) who shot first and never asked any questions. Then again, I was not in the courtroom hearing the evidence and observing the demeanor of the witnesses, including, most importantly, that of Pistorius. Was he acting when he sobbed incessantly during the trial and caused numerous delays in the proceedings or was he genuinely expressing sorrow and remorse for accidentally killing his girlfriend? Or, was he just feeling badly for having ensnared himself in such a dire predicament, and playing “crying games,” contemplating how he could spend the rest of his life in prison? (i.e., he was sorry that he had gotten caught).

My opinion of this sentence, however, would appear to be irrelevant because both the defense and the victim’s family are “on board” with Judge Masipa’s sentence. Pistorius’ uncle, Arnold Pistorius, said they will not fight the sentence. “Oscar will embrace this opportunity to pay back to society,” he said. Demonstrating the seemingly infinite ability of some people to forgive their loved one’s killers, Steenkamp’s mother, June, said justice was done. “It’s right,” she said. “There’s no closure without Reeva.”

At all events, this is a sad situation all around. Two lives and two families have been irrevocably destroyed by the accidental death of Reeva Steenkamp. Moreover, the beacon of light that Pistorius provided to both disabled and able-bodied people throughout the world by his exciting and inspiring performances in the London Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2012 has been forever tarnished. Oscar Pistorius is a tragic hero who has fallen to earth.

Rick Stack is a Los Angeles-based tax lawyer working in the private sector. Prior to that, he worked for many years as a Federal Prosecutor in the Tax Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He resides in Los Angeles County and is interested in politics, civil rights, his family and the Chicago Bears. Rick is one of All Things Crime Blog’s earliest supporters and is known for his trenchant and unabashed comments.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Folks don’t make a great deal of money in Buffalo, Missouri, a town of less than 4,000 people in the Ozark Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. The median income for a household is less than $20,000 and close to 30 per cent of the town’s population lives in poverty. There’s one thing you can count on, though. Except during the periodic droughts, you can count on plenty of home-cooked meth being readily available. These days, Missouri, and particularly the Ozarks, is known as the world’s home-cooked meth capital.

People in the Ozarks once made moonshine whisky, but back in the 1950s, the locals started buying mail-order speed in pill form in large quantities. When the mail-order supply was eventually cut off, ingenious souls learned how to manufacture their own crude amphetamines. This in turn led to making meth which caught on quickly. Before long, the entire Ozark plateau found itself in a methamphetamine choke hold. 40 years later, the situation really hasn’t changed.

Although the meth plague is often associated with the rural folk — the so-called hillbillies — the reality is that meth long ago spread to the small towns and cities and as likely as not there’s somebody cooking meth right on your block — could even be your next door neighbor.

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Amy Lee Hartley is a meth addict. Her home, which is located at 810 Locust Street in the town of Buffalo, has been described as an “uninhabitable” meth lab by the Associated Press. You see Amy — who sustained a brain injury in 2008 stemming from a traffic accident and struggles with short term memory problems — and her boyfriend, 47-year-old career criminal Anthony Balbirnie, have been in the news lately.  On September 21, 2012 a 15-year-old girl named Khighla Parks, whom Amy had reportedly befriended at at a party, died of asphyxiation at Amy’s house while being raped by Anthony. Charges were filed against Amy in October of this year.

Khighla had been reported missing on September 20, 2012 after she left her grandparents’ home in Willard, Missouri to go for a walk. She was last seen at a party in Buffalo, which is probably where she met Amy.

According to a local newspaper, the News-Leader, Khighla died at Amy’s house on Locust Street on Sept. 21st within hours of meeting her during “asphyxiation sex” with Balbirnie.

Court documents outline a grim scenario. First Amy invited Khighla to stay at her home/meth lab, and “to engage in sex with multiple partners, some of whom were known by the defendant to engage in asphyxiation sex.” The court documents also state that Hartley, 37, engaged in “deviate sexual intercourse” with the teen. Her actual death, though, is thought to have occurred during asphyxiation sex while she was being raped by Balbirnie.

After Khighla died, the police allege that Amy helped dispose of her body. Balbirne allegedly weighted down the deceased victim and dumped her body in nearby Truman Lake, where, according to Ozarks First, it was found by a boater on Sept. 30, 2012.

Amy was arrested after the charges against her were filed on Oct. 17th, Ozarks First reports.  She is charged with second-degree statutory sodomy, tampering with physical evidence and abandonment of a corpse. Amy is also charged with endangering the welfare of a child by allowing Khigla into her home, where methamphetamine was made and used.

The charges against Anthony Balbirnie may stem from information provided to the police by Amy who reportedly told investigators that she saw him wrapping up a girl’s body and placing it in the trunk of his car in the early hours of September 21st. In addition to facing a federal charge of abandoning a corpse, Balbirnie is charged with Khighla’s murder, and faces additional counts of statutory rape and child molestation.

Balbirnie was released from prison on parole in August of 2012 after serving 15 months for possessing marijuana, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. The 47-year-old has a long history of criminal charges ranging from drug possession to resisting arrest.

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Amy Lee Hartley and Anthony Balbirnie are not the world’s nicest people. Neither are the other “persons of interest” who are still being investigated by law enforcement. You put a bunch of meth freaks together in a group and God only knows what will happen. Khighla Parks found out the hard way. One can only surmise what was going through her head during her final moments after she made the foolish decision to accept Amy’s invitation “to party”.

Meanwhile, life goes on as always in the Ozarks and it’s not likely to change any time soon, not as long as people still cook up their homemade meth and smoke it in glass pipes or inject it into their veins.

Update:

SFGate reports that one of three suspects charged in the death of 15-year-old Khighla Parks will be sentenced in December for his role in her case.

Dallas County authorities report that 40-year-old Larry Warner of Springfield, who was originally charged with second-degree-murder, pleaded guilty last Friday to endangerment and conspiracy in Khighla Parks’ death in September 2012.

According to KYTV, Warner, who although apparently a person of interest was not technically a suspect when this story broke last fall, has stated that he took Parks and Anthony Balbirnie to the home of Amy Leigh Hartley in Buffalo but later left. Prosecutors allege Balbirnie killed Parks during sex and he and Hartley dumped her body in Truman Lake.

Balbirnie is scheduled for trial in March. Hartley is scheduled for a hearing next week on several charges, including statutory sodomy and abandonment of a corpse.

The fact Any Lee Hartley has a hearing scheduled a few weeks after Warner’s guilty plea leads me to believe that she will also probably enter a guilty plea one or more of the charges against her. And, I also think it’s very likely that she has agreed to testify against Anthony Balbirnie.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Twisted souls who experience sexual arousal from viewing child pornography (CP) inhabit a shadowy world of shame and obsession in which they typically obtain their horrific images online, often utilizing peer-to-peer platforms in which they engage in the despicable practice of trading their images back-and-forth with other child pornographers. Some of these same folks also inhabit kiddie porn chat rooms in which they often egg each other on, trying to see who among them can fabricate the most deranged examples of sexually exploiting children. And of course, in some instances,  their stories are true

It must be noted that Federal Sex Agents also inhabit these chat rooms and do everything in their power to persuade other “members” to plot and plan to get their hands on an actual child. Under Federal law, crossing state lines to molest a child will get you anywhere to 20 to 40 years in Federal prison if convicted. Operating on a peer-to-peer platform and Distributing and Receiving illegal images will typically get you anywhere from 5 to 10 years in Federal prison. In Southern California, individuals who simply possess these illicit images, in today’s sentencing climate, will usually receive sentences ranging from 1 to 5 years, depending on the judge and the circumstances.

It is likely that most individuals who simply possess these images are not hands-on sex offenders though some of them probably (or undoubtedly) are.

For these images to exist, someone has to be making them. Historically, much of the child pornography available on the internet has been manufactured in the Scandinavian countries and in Eastern Europe. Some of it, of course, is produced in the U.S. With cell phones, anyone who molests a child can produce images depicting his or her hideous actions.

In what is certainly a rather unusual case involving the manufacture of child pornography, a 16-year-old Plant City, Florida boy, Jared Kyle Henry, was arrested Sunday not only for 93 counts of possession of child pornography, but also for 9 counts of promotion of a sexual performance by a child and four counts of lewd and lascivious molestation.

Sebastian Murdoch of Huffington Post reports that Henry, who attends Plant City High School, was booked into the Hillsborough County Jail.

The WFLA staff reports:

Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Tampa Bay Regional Operations Center Cyber High-Tech Crime Squad began investigating Henry in September 2014 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations received a tip from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that a computer user in Plant City, Fla. was sharing images of child pornography online.

On Oct. 1, 2014, FDLE and HSI Agents executed a search warrant at Henry’s residence where they located numerous images of child pornography. During the course of the investigation, agents determined that Henry molested the child in the images to produce the child pornography in his possession.

Thus, Henry is essentially guilty of most of the possible children pornography charges. He produced the CP in his possession by molesting a child and creating images depicting the molestation. He then apparently shared at least some of the images online which suggests, although I have no proof, that he was also interested in trading some of the images he produced for other images possessed by other “traders”.

The authorities are naturally concerned that Henry may have molested other victims and perhaps made pornographic images from these possible illicit encounters.

The suspect is being held on an $802,000 bail and the FDLE has asked that anyone with any information involving other potential victims call Special Agent Michael Miller at 800-226-1140.

Students at the boy’s high school are naturally reeling from the news.

“I never thought that a 16-year-old would be doing that,” student Korey Jackson told WTSP.

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This is a horrible situation. At least one child has been molested by a child and the molester has reportedly shared images of his victim with other deviants on the internet. Henry is being charged as an adult. (At present he is still charged at the State level although the case could go Federal in which case he would probably be looking at a much longer prison sentence.)

Although it’s certainly understandable that people would be furious at this teen based on the hideous nature of his crime, there is a strong possibility that he was molested himself at some point (and possibly repeatedly) during his childhood. As I’ve stated before, being the victim of sexual molestation is often a triggering cause in future serious criminal activity on the part of the victim child.

What is unusual in this instance is the fact that Henry began to manufacture child pornography at such a young age. I’m not personally aware of any other case in which a suspect engaged in this vice prior to adulthood.

The burning desire to possess child pornography can justly be called a national problem of the first magnitude. It exists not only among ordinary “civilians” but also among law enforcement personnel, the military and even judges. For example, in January 2011, the Boston Globe discovered that Defense Department investigators had failed to finish reviewing 1,700 cases of Pentagon employees (and contractors) purchasing and downloading child pornography. I’m not sure how many of these cases were actually prosecuted but I’m fairly certain that many of them were not. I do know that a few of these offenders were convicted and were sentenced to prison time. It is possible (if not probable) that folks in positions of so-called “authority” sometimes (or often) get a free pass when caught possessing or distributing these unnatural images.

Just another nasty day in the cruel world of the sexual exploitation of children.