commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Although it is generally believed that men are typically the “evil beings” who brutally slay their children for no good reason (not that there is ever a “good reason” for murdering your kids), the reality is that a surprising number of American mothers are highly troubled and are completely capable of killing their little ones in an emotionally charged state. What is odd about this appalling syndrome is that in some instances, these same mother-murderesses will experience “buyer’s remorse” after completing the act and turn themselves in to the authorities.

A particularly disturbing example of this occurred in Athens, Texas this week where 25-year-old Stacie Marie Parsons brutally killed her 4-year-old daughter Victoria, possibly out of jealousy, and then allegedly marched down to the police station and turned herself in. When the police rushed over to investigate, they found Victoria dead in the trunk of Ms. Parson’s car with trauma to her head and chest at the suspect’s home in the 400 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Athens.

David Lohr at Huffington Post writes:

Police in Texas say a 25-year-old woman walked into a police station Monday and confessed to killing her 4-year-old daughter.

Athens resident Stacie Marie Parsons has been arrested and charged with one count of capital murder of a person less than 10 years old in the brutal slaying of her 4-year-old daughter, Victoria Wyatt. Parsons is being held on a $2 million bond in the Henderson County Jail, police said.

Parsons allegedly walked into the Athens Police Department at about 8:45 p.m. Monday and confessed to the murder.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt recounted:

“She walked in and [said] that she had just killed her daughter.”

In a scene so sad that one can hardly grasp it, at about the same time Ms. Parsons was turning herself into the police, her common-law husband, Gary Wyatt, had reportedly found Victoria in the trunk of Parsons’ car and was trying desperately to revive her.

“Oh, God it was awful. Foaming out of her mouth, her head was bashed in,” Gary Wyatt told KSLA through tears. “My baby’s dead, she killed my baby.”

Wyatt told KSLA he had told Parsons on Sunday that he wanted a divorce, which, as one might suspect led to an argument. Then on Monday morning, when he woke up, Wyatt discovered that Parsons was already gone with Victoria, which led him to assume that she had taken their daughter to enroll her in pre-school. Sometime later, when Parsons returned to the house, she parked her car, and walked away. When Wyatt and other family members tried to talk to her, she simply said, “I wouldn’t be in that car if I were you.”

The family then naturally rushed to the car, which is when they found Victoria in the trunk, wrapped in a garbage bag, and tried futilely to revive her in the front yard.

When interviewed, Wyatt said his wife was never violent towards the girl. He did, however, suggest that Ms. Parsons had harbored strongly negative feelings toward the 4-year-old.

“To be honest with you, I think she’s been jealous of that little girl since the day she was born.”

Family friend Randy Dyess thinks otherwise and stated that Parsons made serious threats just a few days before the slaying:

“She said I’d rather kill Victoria and spend the rest of my life in prison, than to put up with you.”

Although Sheriff Nutt declined to discuss a possible motive in the slaying, he made a further statement in which he sounds not unlike Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men philosophizing on the nature of evil:

“It makes you wonder about human nature. About why people do the things they do.”

Victoria’s body has been transferred to the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas for an autopsy, which may well match the preliminary examination which revealed trauma to the child’s head and chest.

The family was not insured, so a Facebook page has been created to raise money for funeral expenses.

* * * * *

This is a rough one and we have the utmost sympathy for Victoria’s distraught father. His statement about Ms. Parsons “being jealous of the child since the day she was born” would appear to be telling, for at least two reasons. First, it suggests she should never have had a child if she was going to resent the little one being “the apple of her father’s eye.” She presumably had some sense that Wyatt was fond of children, probably even before she got pregnant, and this is, of course, something that would please most mothers greatly.

Second, assuming that Ms. Parsons was prone to jealousy, it is possible that Wyatt made it all too clear that he doted on the little girl, and perhaps preferred her to his wife. In a perfect world, there would be absolutely no reason for him to hide his strong affection for the child, but this paternal feeling should probably not have dominated his emotional state to such a degree that he was unable to show equal affection to Ms. Parsons. Furthermore, she may well have sank into post-partum depression that never lifted after giving birth to her daughter.

I do not make any of these suggestions in an attempt to defend the wife and denigrate the husband; rather, I am simply pointing out that the 3-way relationship was clearly complex and became unhealthy and horribly imbalanced which, in turn, paved the way for the disastrous event that cost little Victoria her life.

Update:

On Sept 8, 2014, Rich Flowers of the Athens Review reports that Stacie Parsons has been indicted for the death of her child:

Parsons was indicted for one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted capital murder. She was arrested after admitting to Athens police that she had killed the child, Victoria Wyatt.  APD went to the residence on MLK Boulevard, where the child’s body was found. Police learned that Victoria had been killed under a bridge on County Road 1500 and turned the case over to the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office which has jurisdiction in crimes that occur in unincoporated areas of the county. Parsons was booked into the Henderson County Jail with bond set at $2 million. She was still in jail as of Friday.

At present, I can find no further news on this case.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

It’s no secret that serial killers often masquerade as everyday good citizens. To some degree, Alaska’s most prolific serial killer, ‘Butcher Baker’ Robert Hansen, did precisely that. Hansen, who confessed to murdering 17 women and raping 30, mostly in the Alaskan wilderness, died last Thursday at Alaska Regional Hospital after being in declining health for the past year. During his life as a free man, prior to his conviction in 1984, the Butcher Baker ran a bakery in Anchorage, Alaska and lived across town with his wife and children who had no idea that Dad was a deranged rapist/serial killer.

Serial killers naturally vary considerably in their techniques and BB added an unusual and particular cruel wrinkle to his murder technique. Some of you who are ancient like me may have read a short story by Richard Connell first published in 1924 in Collier’s called “The Most Dangerous Game”. It’s the scintillating tale of a New York big-game hunter Rainsford who falls off a yacht and swims to an obscure island in the Caribbean where he is hunted in the jungle by a jaded Cossack aristocrat. Naturally, since it’s an adventure tale, Rainsford ultimately turns the tables on the Cossack, feeds him to his own dogs, and sleeps comfortably in his bed.

The Butcher Baker may have read Connell’s gripping tale; if not, he came up with a similar scenario on his own. His victims of choice were strippers and prostitutes who were plentiful in Boomstate Alaska during the 1970s and 1980s.

Rachel D’Oro writes:

Construction of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s brought prostitutes, pimps, con artists and drug dealers to Alaska’s largest city, all aiming to separate construction workers from some of the big money they were pulling in. Many who looked for quick riches left as abruptly as they arrived in Anchorage, making sudden disappearances commonplace.

According to retired trooper Glenn Flothe, who helped put Hansen behind bars, Hansen initially targeted any woman who caught his eye, but soon learned that due to their transient lifestyle, strippers and prostitutes were harder to track and less likely to be missed.

After selecting a victim, Hansen would abduct them and take them to remote places outside Anchorage. He was clever and would vary his modus operandi. Sometimes he would drive his victims to their doom, and other times he would fly them out into the middle of nowhere in his private plane. Sometimes being a licensed pilot comes in handy. Furthermore, he wouldn’t always kill the women he raped but would sometimes return them to Anchorage, warning them not to contact the authorities. “The Most Dangerous Game” connections stems from the fact that on other occasions, he would transport the women out into the wilderness, set them free, and then hunt them down with his rifle.

The Butcher Baker’s reign of terror began to show chinks in 1983 when he met 17-year-old Cindy Paulson. Hansen had offered Cindy $200 for oral sex, but when she got into the car, he pulled a gun on her and drove her to his house where he tortured and raped her. His exertions apparently wore him out; he chained her by the neck to a post in the basement and took a nap

When he woke up, he put her in his car and drove her to the Merrill Field airport where he kept his Piper Super Cub. He told her his plan was to “take her out to his cabin” in the Knik River area of the Matanuska Valley, which was accessible only by boat or bush plane). While Hansen was busy loading the cockpit, Paulson made a run for it and escaped. Had she not gotten away, it’s very likely she would have been one of Hansen’s hunting victims.

She reported her nightmare to the police who questioned Hansen who of course denied the accusations and claimed Paulson was just mad because he wouldn’t kowtow to her extortion demands.

Amazingly, although Hansen had had several prior run-ins with the law, his meek demeanour and humble occupation as a baker, combined with a strong alibi from his friend John Henning, kept him from being considered as a serious suspect, and the case went cold.

Dead bodies had begun turning up, however, with some evidence they had been killed by a hunter. Detective Frothe consulted with FBI agent Roy Hazelwood, and a criminal psychological profile was developed. Hazelwood believed that the killer would be an experienced hunter with low self-esteem, and would therefore, as is often the case, feel compelled to keep “souvenirs” of the murders, such as jewelry. With the help of the profile, Flothe investigated possible suspects and ultimately came to Hansen, who fit the profile and owned a plane. The remains of 23-year-old Sherry Morrow had been discovered in a shallow grave near the Knik River, which of course was accessible only by plane.

The screws were tightening and Flothe and the APD obtained a warrant to search Hansen’s plane, cars, and home. On 27 October, 1983, the investigators struck gold. They found jewelry associated with some of the missing women hidden in the corner of Hansen’s attic and an aviation map with little x marks on it secreted behind Hansen’s headboard.

After that, it was only a matter of time, and Hansen finally confessed to more than a decade of attacks beginning as early as 1971. His earliest victims were teenagers, not the prostitutes and strippers who led to his discovery.

Hansen was serving a 461-year sentence at the time of his death which means he would have had to live to be as old as Methuselah to complete his sentence. Still, 30 years is a pretty decent stretch.

The Associated Press attempted to interview Hansen 22 years after his conviction in 2006, but he rejected their request, writing in a unsigned note.

“I do not care so much for myself, but you journalist (sic) have hurt my family so very much.”

Hansen was the subject of a 2013 film titled, “The Frozen Ground,” which starred Nicolas Cage as an Alaska State Trooper investigating the slayings. John Cusack played Hansen.

* * * * *

Hansen’s childhood provides at least some insight into the origins of his bloodthirsty ways. Although he was eventually to marry twice and have two children, he was a loner as a child and had a terrible relationship with his domineering father. To make matters worse, he stuttered and had bad acne, which led to bullying at school. Hunting was his escape and he served a year in the United States Army Reserve, and later worked as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa.

When he was 21, he was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County Board of Education school bus garage, which led to him serving 20 months of a three-year prison sentence. His first wife, whom he had married shortly before burning down the garage, filed for divorce while he was incarcerated. After he got out, he was jailed several more times for petty theft. Thinking a change would do him good, in 1967, Hansen moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with his second wife, whom he had married shortly after his release from state prison.

The amazing thing is the fact that in Anchorage, Hanson was well liked by his neighbors. His great prowess was as hunter and he set several local hunting records, quite a feat in big-game Alaska.

Ten years after moving to the north country, he went to jail for stealing a chainsaw. Later, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and prescribed lithium which he may or may not have taken.

Without peeling back very many layers of the Serial Killer Onion, we see that the Butcher Baker had at least four qualities often associated with serial killers, and if we knew more about his childhood, we might discover more. He was 1) a loner; 2) had a dysfunctional relationship with his father; 3) loved killing animals (his specialty); and liked setting things on fire.

He was rather a late-bloomer, however, and apparently didn’t murder his first victim until 1971 when he was 32 years old.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Last November, the media was awash with stories about an idealistic young girl known only as Star whose idealism had somehow become fixated on the old Murder Manager himself, Charles Manson, to such a degree that she had decided that she and Manson were going to be married. In a post we ran on All Things Crime Blog, we wrote:

It’s now reported that Manson not only has a young female admirer but that she is determined that he and she will “walk down the aisle together” or however marriages are handled in the notorious California State Prison system. Her name is Star and she is a 25-year-old brunette who’s been loyally visiting Manson in jail since she was 19 years old. She maintains several websites devoted to defending her man and his pro-Earth environmental causes. Star told Rolling Stone that she became enchanted with Manson’s environmental stance, which he calls ATWA — air, trees, water, air — when she was only 19.

As for Star herself, she stated:

“I’ll tell you straight up, Charlie and I are going to get married. When that will be, we don’t know. But I take it very seriously. Charlie is my husband. Charlie told me to tell you this. We haven’t told anybody about that.”

Manson, however, in his typically cynical fashion, refused to corroborate Star’s impassioned statement. “Oh that,” he says. “That’s a bunch of garbage. You know that, man. That’s trash. We’re just playing that for public consumption.”

On another occasion he told Rolling Stone: “Star! She’s not a woman. She’s a star in the Milky Way!”

Now, however, almost one year later, it appears that Star’s glorious dream of marrying Manson may soon come true after all. Linda Deutsch and Scott Smith write for AP:

Mass murderer Charles Manson has gotten a license to marry a 26-year-old woman who visits him in prison.

The marriage license obtained Monday by The Associated Press was issued Nov. 7 for the 80-year-old Manson and Afton Elaine Burton, who left her Midwestern home nine years ago and moved to Corcoran, California — the site of the prison — to be near Manson. She maintains several websites advocating for Manson’s innocence.

Deutsch and Smith state that the license does not have a specific wedding date and that the December-May couple must be lawfully wed within a 90 day window, or else they will need to reapply.

Star, however, whose real name is Afton Elaine Burton (no wonder she changed it) told the AP in her somewhat laconic and spacy manner that she and her man will definitely be married next month.

“Y’all can know that it’s true,” she said. “It’s going to happen.”

“I love him,” she added. “I’m with him. There’s all kinds of things.”

When asked about Manson’s obnoxious and rather deprecating “trash” and “public consumption” comments, Star was unphased:

“None of that’s true.” She then added that she and Charlie are waiting for the prison to process their paperwork.

When approached by the AP, Terry Thornton, a California Department of Corrections spokeswoman, confirmed that the prison had received the license.

In our work here in Los Angeles, we periodically represent clients who do “tie the knot” while cooling their heels in custody; it’s not particularly unusual.

Thornton explained that each California state prison designates an employee to be a marriage coordinator. Said official processes the paperwork which is generally approved because the CDC (California Department of Corrections) considers such weddings to serve as “a tool of family reunification and social development.”

Admittedly, though, Manson’s case is somewhat unique. In a moment of candor, Star explained that the wedding might have happened sooner “if Manson did not have “some situations” at the prison.

Specifically, according to Spokeswomen Thornton the “situations” include three violations of prison rules on Manson’s part, which suggests that Star’s betrothed is still marginally incorrigible, although at this late date, he probably doesn’t really pose much of a threat to anyone. But you be the judge. The violations which date back to February are:

1) possession of a weapon

2) threatening staff

3) refusal to provide a urine sample.

Star is confident that she and Charlie’s nuptials will go forward as planned. Prison marriages occur on the first Saturday of each month and she expects the ceremony will be held in an inmate visiting room.

According to prison rules, Star and Charlie can ask someone from the free world to preside over the ceremony and they are allowed to invite up to 10 non-inmate guests.

Once they are lawfully wed, the couple will not be allowed to engage in conjugal (family) visits because Manson is serving life and has never succeeded in convincing the parole board to give him a parole date

This does not appear to bother Star, though, who intends to work on his case and help him eventually obtain release. As Manson’s wife, she will have the legal right to obtain information not available to non-relatives.

“There’s certain things next of kin can do,” said Star who maintains that Manson is innocent and will ultimately be granted a new trial. As things stand presently, Manson will not be eligible for parole until 2027.

Manson has been incarcerated since 1969. He was convicted of master-minding “the gruesome killings of actress Sharon Tate and four others at her estate on Aug. 9, 1969, and grocers Leno and Rosemary LaBianca who were killed the following night.”

Two of his earlier women followers, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, are still in prison. His most famous follower, Susan Atkins, died of cancer while still in custody.

Unlike Manson, who will probably never be (or seem) completely redeemed, most of his imprisoned followers became model prisoners. Yet, they allowed themselves to be led terribly astray by Manson and his peculiar charm which led to the murders and their imprisonment in the first place. Thus, Star is simply the latest young woman to be swept off her feet by Charlie. The old boy, alas, still has the knack.

Fortunately, it seems quite unlikely that he will try to manipulate Star into killing someone on his behalf. But, of course, you never know for sure.

Click here to view out earlier Charles Manson posts:

Charles Manson Always Had a Way with the Ladies

Charles Manson: Murderer, Scapegoat, Superstar

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

A few weeks ago I wrote that the recent unbelievably cruel child abuse death of Gabriel Garcia in an outlying area of Los Angeles County was perhaps the worst case of child abuse in Southern California history. Just yesterday I came across a case out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania which, although many details have yet to be revealed, appears to be equally awful, although there does not necessarily appear to have been the same degree of outright malice on the part of the parents of the deceased child as in the Los Angeles County case; rather, the abuse seems to have consisted of extreme and appalling neglect — largely sins of omission rather than “sins of commission”, if you will.

In this case the victim was an autistic boy named Jarrod Tutko Jr. At the time of his passing (and in his case dying could be seen as an act of mercy because his life was so painful), Jarrod, who was nine years old was 42 inches tall (3 and ½ feet) and weighed just 16.9 pounds.

To put this in perspective, our little miniature schnauzer Oreo weighs about 17 pounds, half a pound of that is fur, and the little guy is about two pounds overweight.

The average 6-year-old child is about 42 inches tall and weighs almost 50 pounds.

At present, Jarrod’s parents, Jarrod N. Tutko Sr., 38, and Kimberly A. Tutko, 39, have been arraigned before District Judge Barbara Pianka on criminal homicide charges. They have been denied bail. With a preliminary charge of criminal homicide, any one of a number of charges can still be brought ranging from manslaughter to first-degree murder, which in the state of Pennsylvania can result in the death penalty.

Although it’s unclear who tipped them off, the police went to the Tutko home on August 1 based on a report that there was a dead child there. Once they got there, they discovered a true chamber of horrors in and around poor Jarrod. Feces were reportedly smeared on his body and on parts of his bedroom. It was one of those appalling cruel scenes where the door to the bedroom was “rigged so it could be opened only from the outside.”

Jarrod’s  mother, Kimberly Tutko, tried to stonewall it at first telling the “police initially that she had not seen her son for several years”, but she caved, possibly under the duress of intense questioning, and eventually admitted that she had seen Jarrod in the days before his death and that her husband had told her that he had been dead for several days in his third-floor bedroom.

According to law enforcement, four children from Tutko’s first marriage were taken away by the courts, and that Jarrod and the five living children found at the house of horrors were from her current marriage to Tutko.

It appears that neither parent was working and the family reportedly subsisted on a variety of benefit checks that they received monthly.

Thus, is seems apparent that whatever degree of malice was present in this matter, this family was completely unable to cope with the responsibilities of parenthood, and it is very unfortunate that the authorities did not get wind of the neglect/abuse until it was too late for Jarrod. Furthermore, I can’t help but think that Katherine Tutko likely suffers from some form of mental imbalance or deficiency.

I have long had moments of dread in which I imagine something going badly wrong in my life and in the lives of those close to me, the problem serving as a sort of catalyst which creates a domino effect in which the problems compound one another until a tipping point is reached after which there is no going back and no way to regain any sort of equilibrium.

This is what appears to happen in families such as the Tutkos; fixtures and forces conspire to kick the disastrous snowball effect into high gear and it’s Katie bar the door. A workable analogy might be what happens to a body whose cells have been invaded by a virulent form of cancer; parts cease to function properly and connections break down; eventually the organism is doomed.

What is odd about human families, however, is the fact that when the breakdown takes the form of child abuse, one child is often mistreated far worse than the others. If the family is seen as an organism (or body), the abused child can be viewed as a weak or unwanted part of the body/organism that is neglected and/or abused until it dies.

Jarrod was an autistic child who also suffered from the fragile X genetic syndrome. The National Fragile X Foundation provides the following information on the relationship between fragile X syndrome and autism:

Whereas autism is a behavioral diagnosis, fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a medical or more accurately, a genetic diagnosis. When associated with FXS, the autism is caused by the genetic change or mutation in the Fragile X gene. This is similar to other conditions such as Down syndrome. Individuals with Down syndrome can also have other conditions, including autism, hearing loss, diabetes and other behavioral and medical conditions. If a child is diagnosed with autism and then diagnosed with FXS, he or she still has autism, it is just that the cause of their autism is known. It is no different than someone with FXS also having ADHD or any other behavioral symptom of FXS.

Although he was horribly neglected in life, both a pathologist and a forensic dentist appear to have given Jarrod due consideration in death.

The pathologist, Dr. Wayne Ross, discovered the boy had almost no body fat at the time of his death.

David DeKok of Reuters writes:

“He indicated that the lack of body fat was a sign of starvation,” police said in an affidavit filed in the case. “Dr. Ross noted signs of dehydration and malnutrition.”

Dr. Andrew T. Stewart, a forensic dentist, discovered that Jarriod had two badly abscessed teeth that would have caused him terrible pain. There are no records of the boy having ever seen a dentist.

* * * * *

I’d like to think that Kimberly Tutko, and possibly her husband, did the best they could do based on their lack of the essential qualities decent parents must possess. And if I were in a harsher mood, I would be condemning her vigorously. The longer I explore these cases, the more I realize that my responses are often based on fleeting whims and chimeras that change like the moon waxes and wanes.

It may be fortunate that my insufficient response will have no bearing on the outcome of this case. On the other hand, if I were working on the case, I would have access to Discovery and would be able to interview people which would help me assess, at least to some degree, just what kind of a “deck” Kimberly was playing with, which would lend some insight into whether she was operating sadistically (with malice aforethought) or was merely incredibly incompetent based on any number of negative factors.

Update:

At a preliminary hearing in late October, Kimberly and Jarrod Tutko, Sr. were been bound over to stand  trial in Dauphin County Court on murder and child endangerment charges. Jarrod Tutko also faces a count of abuse of a corpse.

Patrick H. Moore of All Things Crime Blog will appear on Amy Beth Arkawy’s Blogtalk Radio show on Tuesday Nov 18th at 12:00 noon EST. Possible topics of conversation include the Bill Cosby rape allegations, the Teresa and Joe Giudice fraud scandal and the Ferguson murder case.

Please click here to go to the broadcast:

blogtalkradio.com/amybetharkawyshow/2014/11/18/crime-scenes-w-investigator-author-patrick-moore …

by Starks Shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please click here to view The Starks Shrink’s Other Posts:

Charlie Bothuell V May Have a Very Sharp Axe to Grind

The Overheating Death of Cooper Harris: Murder or Tragic Accident?

Why Beautiful Murderesses Inflame the Passions of the True Crime Fan

Going Postal Goes Fed-Ex!

How to Raise a Serial Killer in 10 Easy Steps

The Julie Schenecker Tragedy: Negligence, Finger-Pointing and the Death of Children

Luka Magnotta: Man, Boy or Beast?

The Disturbing Truth about Mothers Who Murder Their Children

Teleka Patrick Needed a Psychiatrist, Not a Pastor!

Rehabbing the Wounded Juvenile Will Save Their Souls (and Ours)

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

One of the most interesting aspects of criminal defense work, which has been my daily vocation for over 11 years now, is observing how my clients deal with and respond to not only the fact that they are serious trouble with the law, but also to the many restrictions, some self-imposed, that they struggle with during the pendency of their cases.

By self-imposed restrictions, I mean the following. A man or woman facing Federal charges often must make a sort of “to be or not to be decision”. The client can move forward with his or her life as normally as possible which would mean working, getting exercise, making future plans, and being generally productive and positive while waiting for the big boot to drop. Or alternatively, and this happens with disheartening frequency, the client can fall into deep psychological doldrums which often results in a state bordering on catatonia. You lie around in bed; you lack any kind of motivation; you worry endlessly while awash in a morass of self-pity and fear.

In some cases, the defendant’s situation is complicated significantly by restrictions imposed by the court. This can include home confinement, electronic monitoring and a host of other restrictions.

This is the situation everybody’s favorite high school English teacher and child seducer (just barely: the Destrehan student was 16 and the age of consent in Louisiana is 17) Shelley Dufresne finds herself in as her case grinds slowly forward.

From her photos, it’s obvious that although Shelley is a pretty young woman, she is also depressed. She rarely smiles and usually projects a sort of glumness and flatness of affect. When I see these pictures, chivalrous soul that I sometimes am, I can’t help but feel sorry for her.

The authorities are fully aware that Shelley suffers from psychological problems (teaching English while having three kids by the time you’re 29 can do this to the best of us, especially if you have a predisposition toward depression). According to a motion recently filed by her attorney, Deanne Williams, “Dufresne attends outpatient therapy sessions four hours each weekday for treatment of depression and mood disorder at River Oaks Hospital in Elmwood.”

Without belaboring the obvious, that’s an awful lot of therapy. Other than that, based on the conditions of her $200,000 bond, she is only allowed to leave her house to go to church and attend court hearings. In short, Ms. Dufresne is locked down pretty damned tight. Perhaps the authorities think that if they don’t keep a really close eye on her, she’s going get the old wandering eye and stalk stalking more 16-year-old boys.

In any event, now that a bit of time has passed, Ms. Dufresne’s attorney has filed a motion asking the court to loosen her restrictions so that she can 1) help more with her three kids who range in age from 3 to 7; and 2) get some freakin’ exercise in an attempt to help alleviate her depression.

Littice Bacon-Blood of Nola.com and The Times Picayune writes:

Shelley Dufresne…is asking a judge to loosen her house arrest restrictions so she may take her young children to school, doctor’s appointments and other activities. She also wants relief to attend an exercise class as part of her treatment for depression and a mood disorder, according to court records.

In the three-page motion, which was filed on Friday, Williams points out that Ms. Dufresne’s current regimen doesn’t allow her “to help with the care of her young children outside of the home.” Her oldest child, the 7-year-old, suffers from autism spectrum disorder and receives physical therapy in New Orleans from 3 to 6 pm every Thursday and occupational therapy during the same hours on Tuesday.

The motion makes it very obvious that Ms. Dufresne wants to help fulfill her family’s needs more than she is able to during her present rigorous home confinement, stating in part:

“Defendant’s husband is employed, and at least one parent must tend to therapy while the opposing parent cares for the two (2) younger children.”

Shelley Dufresne smiling

After pointing out that Ms. Dufresne is not a flight risk and has been in compliance with the terms of her release, the motion suggests, with impeccable logic, that “Dufresne should include physical exercise as part of her medical regiment. She asks to be allowed to attend, when her family schedule permits, a Jazzercise class (in LaPlace) that’s made up “primarily of adult women.”

William’s motion further requests:

“Due to the burden that house arrest has placed on her family, as well as on her mental and physical well-being Defendant is respectfully requesting that … it be modified to be mandated only between the hours of 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. or at the very least, that she be allowed to assist with the caring and transportation for her children, attend exercise classes and continue to attend court appearances and medical/mental health treatment between the hours of 7 a.m. and 8 p.m.”

It will be interesting to see how Ms. Dufresne current judge, Anne Simon, rules on the motion which comes up for consideration on Nov. 25. That same day, the D.A.’s office is expected to identify the formal charges or charges against Ms. Dufresne.

* * * * *

Although I don’t have a crystal ball, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that Ms. Dufresne is eaten up with guilt over having put her family through this. The fact that she wants to contribute more to her family’s well-being is very much to her credit. The fact she wants to get some serious exercise while having a little fun (the Jazzercise class) seems eminently reasonable.

It will be interesting to see how the judge rules on the motion. I would not be at all surprised if the judge agrees to some modification of the conditions, particularly regarding her helping out with the kids outside the home. As for the Jazzercise, I wouldn’t count on it…

Click here to view our earlier Shelley Dufresne post:

Two Louisiana Teachers Arrested for Alleged Threesome with 16-Year-Old Boy after High School Football Game

by Patrick H. Moore

There is a new Reality TV show called “Parents from Hell and the Children They Abuse” that is Number One with a Bullet. The object of the game is to determine which set of “parents from hell” will stay in the competition until the bitter end and win the Evil Parents of the Year award. The key factors that go into the judging are — in no particular order:

1. The Hideousness of the Child Abuse
2. The Creativity of the Child Abuse
3. The Length of the Prison Sentence the Parents Ultimately Receive

Winner are selected once a month and then the twelve winners compete against each other for the grand prize. The irony of the show is that each winning couple actually loses big time. Doing 30 to 50 years of hard time while wearing the brand of an extreme child abuser is probably not  a pleasant way to spend your “mature” years.

My favorite candidates for the month of November are Brian Gore, 31, and Shannon Gore, 26, formerly of Hayes, Virginia, now residents of the Virginia Commonwealth’s state prison system. The Gores pleaded guilty to felony child abuse and entered an Alford plea on charges of aggravated malicious wounding, according to the Associated Press. An Alford plea is not an outright admission of guilt, but rather a concession that there is enough evidence for a conviction.

Although the Gores were only sentenced to 30 years — a middling sentence in the “severe child abuse” sweepstakes — they are still in the running to win the November “parents from hell” award based on the hideousness of their distinctive form of child abuse combined with their remarkable negligence. Here is the situation that led to their arrest in May 2011, as reported by the Huffington Post:

Their daughter’s “room” was a makeshift cage, comprised of an upside-down crib held in place with a board and boxes stacked on top. In other words, the child was held prisoner in an upside down crib with a bunch of crap on top of it to weight it down so that she could not escape.

The girl was starving, naked, covered in feces, and so cramped in the crib that she could not fully extend her legs, according to the Daily Press.

She was so hungry that she was eating pieces of her own flaking skin, according to ABC News. At age 6, she weighed under 16 pounds.

The girl was born at home, had no birth certificate, and had apparently never been to a doctor. Her father told authorities that she had Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy, but there were no medical records to support this claim.

Now I realize that it can be argued that this particular form of imprisonment is not overly imaginative, but keep in mind that most of these “parents from hell” are not the sharpest knives in the cutlery drawer.

And to their credit, the Gores, with the help of some determined investigators with a penchant for digging, managed to produce the body of a thoroughly decomposed child who was buried near the house. They say the devil is a logician and Brian Gore, quite logically, told investigators that he did not call 911 after the child, who was born in 2007, experienced trouble breathing because he was afraid the law would discover that he and Shannon kept their daughter in a cage. 

The Gore’s diabolical nature, an important factor in victorious “parents from hell”, is further revealed in the fact they were not charged with the child’s death. Charges could not be brought because the poor thing’s body was so thoroughly decomposed that medical examiners could not determine a cause of death.

And then, just to keep everyone guessing, the Gore’s had a third child, a one-month-old boy, who was healthy and unharmed at the time of their arrest.

A la Ariel Castro, neighbors and people close to the family stated that they were aware of the Gore’s 1-month-old son, but had no knowledge of either the 16-pound six-year-old or the deceased child.

*     *     *     *     *

In an email,the child victim’s attorney, Brian Decker, informed WTKR that she is “progressing as well as you can expect, given the trauma that she has been through.” Decker wrote that she is “trying to be a normal child” and has been placed with a family who puts her needs first.

*     *     *     *     *

One of the criteria for winning the monthly Parents from Hell sweepstakes is that the candidates must inspire such virulent hatred on the part of the judges that they would gladly cast them into a pit of writhing vipers and watch with satisfaction as the venom-laden serpents fanged them to death. I believe the Gores inspire that level of Hatred. Thus, they just might win this month’s competition.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Exhibit I:

In 2000, Brandi Blackbear was a student at Union Intermediate High School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. She wrote horror stories in the style of Stephen King, dressed in a slightly Goth-like way, and was not afraid to be herself, or to stand up to bullying by popular kids. Brandi’s otherness engendered hostility toward her from certain groups among her school’s culture. False stories of threats of violence were circulated, and the combination of her writing and the authorities’ natural hyper-awareness following the Columbine massacre led to her being suspended. When some of her fellow students later saw her checking out a book on world religions, including Wicca (as research for her stories), they immediately branded her a witch, and eventually accused her of casting a spell that made a teacher sick. Fear of her spread through much of the school, and she was suspended for a second time.

Exhibit II:

 According to an ABC News article dated Oct. 28, 2000, an Oklahoma high school suspended a 15-year-old student after accusing her of casting a magic spell that caused a teacher to become sick, lawyers for the student said on Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on behalf of student Brandi Blackbear, charging that the assistant principal of Union Intermediate High School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, suspended her for 15 days last December for supposedly casting a spell. The ACLU does not accept the notion that a charge of “casting a spell” is sufficient grounds for suspension.

The suit also charged the Tulsa-area Union Public Schools with repeatedly violating Blackbear’s civil rights by seizing the notebooks she used to write horror stories and barring her from drawing or wearing signs of the pagan religion Wicca.

“It’s hard for me to believe that in the year 2000 I am walking into court to defend my daughter against charges of witchcraft brought by her own school,” said Timothy Blackbear, Brandi’s father.

Joann Bell, executive director of the ACLU’s Oklahoma chapter, said the “outlandish accusations” had made Blackbear’s life at school unbearable. Bell simply refuses to believe that Brandi’s alleged “spell” actually made the teacher sick:

“I, for one, would like to see the so-called evidence this school has that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell,” Bell said.

Unsurprisingly, a lawyer for the school district declined to comment.

The lawsuit is simple enough. It alleges that Blackbear was summoned to the office of Assistant Principal Charlie Bushyhead last December after a teacher fell ill, and was questioned about her interest in Wicca.

According to the lawsuit, Brandi Blackbear had read a library book about Wicca beliefs and, under aggressive interrogation by Bushyhead, said she might be a Wiccan. In fact, Blackbear is a Roman Catholic, according to the newspaper Tulsa World.

“The interview culminated with Defendant Bushyhead accusing Plaintiff, Brandi Blackbear, of casting spells causing (a teacher at the school) … to be sick and to be hospitalized,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit stated that because of the “unknown cause” of the teacher’s illness, Bushyhead advised the 15-year-old girl “that she was an immediate threat to the school and summarily suspended her for what he arbitrarily determined to be a disruption of the education process.”

*     *     *     *     *

The ACLU is, of course, on solid ground in deriding the notion that Brandi could have made the teacher sick. But when you think about it, the really scary thing is that Assistant Principal Charlie Bushyhead and other authorities as well members of the student body and god knows who else may ACTUALLY BELIEVE that Brandi’s spell knocked the props out from under the teacher.

Exhibit III:

A July 2002 post from the Freedom Forum discusses the U.S. District Court’s decision:

Brandi Blackbear, a senior-to-be at Union Intermediate High School, has lost her lawsuit that claimed she was suspended because of her interest in the Wicca religion.

A July 18th order by U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan said neither of Blackbear’s two suspensions in 1999 violated her constitutional rights.

Eagan said Blackbear testified during a deposition that she is not, has never been and has never wanted to be a Wiccan. The judge also said Blackbear admitted that the defendants have not done anything to keep her from practicing any religion.

“In view of this testimony, the court finds that Brandi does not hold a sincere belief in the religion of Wicca,” Eagan wrote in the order.

Union Public Schools attorney Doug Mann was much harsher and called the lawsuit “absolutely ridiculous.”

District Superintendent Cathy Burden seemed perturbed and perhaps a bit embarrassed by the whole matter.  She the case became an “international media event” that put Union in an unfair light. And Ms. Burden was worried about financial drain. The “frivolous lawsuit,” she said, cost the district more than $100,000 in legal fees.

Judge Eagan’s order also said Blackbear has admitted that religion played no role in the decision to discipline her in December 1999.

The judge’s decision supports Brandi’s suspensions on the grounds she was “disrupting the educational process.”

Cathy Burden set the record straight (at least in her mind) by stating that the July 18th suspension had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Blackbear’s “terrorizing” students. Burden also said the whole “religious freedom” allegation appeared to be a ploy to make the lawsuit more exciting to the media.

So how did Brandi terrorize the other students? Simple, two of Blackbear’s classmates had alleged they were “fearful” because she allegedly was claiming to be a witch and to possess the power to harm people by casting spells on them, the order states.

Brandi’s terrorist threats consisted of her allegedly claiming she was a witch who could harm others by putting spells on them.

Now it seems to me that for the threats to be taken seriously, there would have had to have been some possibility that Brandi could actually carry them out.  To carry them out, Brandi  would have had to have been a witch, and an effective one at that — someone capable of casting spells that produce results.

But if she is not a witch (a member of Wiccan), and the court held that she is not, then it follows that the threats are completely empty — they are not actually terrorist threats at all but simply Brandi making statements that at most could be construed as meaningless threats. Meaningless not terrorist!

Therefore, unless something is escaping me, it seems clear that Brandi’s suspension was uncalled for. She didn’t really do anything but talk. She was wrongly suspended no matter how you look at it, unless she made violent threats, and there appears to be no evidence that she did.

*     *     *     *     *

Blackbear’s attorney John M. Butler said he thinks the order may not be “exactly correct” on those points and said his client’s purported statements may have been “taken out of context.” Butler also said an appeal is probable and expressed optimism that Blackbear will prevail at that level.

The good news is that Burden said Blackbear is now a “successful student in our district.”

Exhibit IV:

Claire of PaganCentric followed the case from start to finish. Here she provides some very salient details that the other sources seem to have ignored:

The lawsuit was for $10 million which Brandi’s parents thought was too high. The ACLU said it had to be that high or it would not be taken seriously. Then a perhaps surprising thing happened. The school offered a settlement and the Blackbears refused to accept it. They turned down the money even though they needed it. What they really wanted was to have their story heard in court to inform the public that the school had mistreated Brandi.

When the judge ruled to dismiss the charges rather than going to trial, she ordered the Blackbears to pay $6000 in court fees, which they could not afford. Eventually it was agreed to drop the fees if the Blackbears dropped their appeal.

*     *     *     *     *

So what actually happened here was that Brandi Blackbear was accused of being a witch by Assistant Principal Bushyhead and at least two students. By being a witch, at least in Bushyhead’s eyes, Brandi had disrupted the educational process which in turn led to her suspension.

So she was suspended for being a witch even though — according to the Federal judge — she was not and had never been a witch.

It all seems like much ado about nothing except for the fact Brandi was unjustly suspended because of narrow-minded thinking on the part of the authorities. The unhealthy message that was delivered that is that if you are a young person and if you are different, you may be seen as persona non grata and stigmatized. It may even lead to your suspension. And that bogus suspension will be upheld in Federal court.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be witches. And if it’s somehow unavoidable, teach them to keep it on the downlow.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Okay, so you’ve gone and cheated on your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. Furthermore, it was just a quick-hitter, a one-time-thing. So the question then becomes: to confess or not to confess?

Most American men would probably say confessing is a bad idea, for after all, what good will it do other than to perhaps salve your conscience? Generally speaking, confession can only hurt the cuckolded partner. I can’t speak for the women, I don’t know what they would recommend, though perhaps their opinions would vary.

The important thing to remember is Do Not Cheat if afterwards you are going to be wracked with such guilt that you wind up confessing to assuage your own conscience.

This is what happened to Veronika Filippova, a rather fetching 27-year-old Russian newlywed and it cost her dearly.

Morbid of The Dreamin’ Demon writes:

Ivan Kuzmin has been accused of setting his new bride on fire because she had sex with an ex-lover on their wedding night after he fell asleep.

According to reports, Veronika Filippova, 27, had an affair with an ex-boyfriend after Kuzmin passed out drunk at their wedding reception. She was so consumed with guilt that she later told Kuzmin everything.

Now before we go any farther, lets analyze the possible motivations of the players. The wedding occurred somewhere in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in southern Russia where vodka flows like water, especially on festive occasions. Brother Ivan may have slopped down a little too much Kalashnikov or whatever he was drinking which caused him to pass out. Veronika may have been (probably was) anticipating “making beautiful music” with Ivan at the end of the evening and could been terribly disappointed or even miffed because the old boy exercised bad judgment and got too drunk to deliver.

Upon discovering that Ivan was snoring, Veronika may have gotten drunk herself to numb the pain of abandonment, or she may have already have had too much to drink. We all know that when drunk, some men and some women have the bizarre experience of discovering that potential sex partners are more or less interchangeable and that everyone looks pretty good.

This is one of the many reasons heavy drinking is not advisable. In fact, once upon a mattress, after a long night of clubbing and heavy drinking approximately 33 years ago, I ended up with a woman I had purposely avoided earlier in the evening. Now this is embarrassing but it happened. Such is the power of alcohol…

In the case of poor Veronika, although you can’t be sure, it’s certainly possible that her ex was drifting around the fringes of the wedding party, just biding his time, hoping to get his hands on her. In any event, when he had the chance to do just that, he certainly didn’t “Just Say No”.

So it turns out that Veronika made two mistakes and the first led to the second as sure as the moon’s the North Wind’s cookie. 1) She slept with her ex. Okay, big mistake but not the end of the world. Her ex probably was not going to tell Ivan. 2) V’s fatal mistake was letting her guilt overwhelm her so that she confessed.

Sometime after she ‘fessed up, Veronika fell asleep. Brother Ivan took advantage of this opportunity and doused her with alcohol. This woke her up. She must have realized he was in a rage; she reportedly tried to escape, but her angry husband set her on fire with a cigarette lighter.

Filippova was rushed to the hospital with burns to over 80 percent of her body but would die a few hours later. Kuzmin was arrested and has admitted to murdering Filippova. He’s now facing 15 years in prison. (As you can see, even in Russia, sentences in capital cases are much lighter than they are here in the lock-‘em-up USA.)

What Veronika didn’t know was that Brother Ivan had once served ten years in prison for the attempted rape and murder an underage girl. Had she known this salient fact, she may well have never tied the knot with him in the first place. In fact, she might have moved clear to Vladivostok to get away from him.

According to Sergey Domnyshev, an investigator in the Kirov district of Volgograd, in his earlier fall from grace, Ivan was convicted of trying to rape a girl under the age of 18 and then trying to destroy evidence by setting the apartment on fire with the girl still inside.

According to Sugar Daily, in commenting on Veronika’s cruel fate, one of her relatives said plaintively:

“He set her on fire when she was sleeping, pouring alcohol on her and our Veronica is gone.”

Why is there so much drug addiction in Utah? With singular and disturbing regularity, we read about truly awful crimes, usually against children, committed by Utes while under the influence of hard narcotics.

Today’s wretched story is about a Utah mother who reportedly stood by passively while her bespectacled 4-year-old son (Hell! This kid could have been me!) was brutalized and ultimately killed by his stepfather to be, a man named Nathan Sloop who both sides agree was suffering from mental illness.

Nina Golgowski writes for the Daily News:

A Utah woman sobbed before a judge Monday while taking full responsibility for the beastly murder of her 4-year-old son.

Stephanie Sloop, whose tiny son Ethan was repeatedly burned and beaten before his disfigured body was tossed into a shallow grave in 2010, pleaded guilty to his murder while telling a Farmington judge: “I am entirely responsible because I was his mommy.”

Crime followers are not going to feel much sympathy for Stephanie Sloop and it’s not hard to understand why.

Expressing real remorse when it’s too late doesn’t do a damned bit of good for the victim child, but it does suggest that Stephanie does have at least somewhat of a heart which means she’s going to spend the rest of her life (most or all of which will be spent in prison), regretting her lethal passivity.

Stephanie pleaded guilty to first-degree felony aggravated murder and second-degree felony obstructing justice. Her sentences will run concurrently and she will serve 20 years to life (and I suspect that given the heinous nature of the crime, it will be at least 30 years before she gets out and then only if she can convince the parole board that she has redeemed herself).

In a statement before the Court, Ms. Sloop said:

“I had an obligation and a responsibility as his mother to take care of him and protect him and I failed horribly. My selfish behavior is the reason I am standing here today pleading guilty to these charges.”

This case is an excellent example of the very real dangers of exposing your helpless child to a new boyfriend/lover (once again I use the word loosely), particularly when drugs and mental illness are involved. Shockingly, according to the Deseret News, “it was only a little more than a week after the bespectacled child was sent from Virginia to live with Sloop and his soon-to-be stepfather, Nathan Sloop, that the physical abuse began.”

Ugh! I can just see Nathan’s eyes lighting up with dark joy at the sight of the little boy.

According to the reports, the abuse consisted primarily of scalding the child with hot water, beating him and over-medicating him before he succumbed to the injuries and expired on May 8, 2010. The abuse reportedly lasted for 10 days.

Once little Ethan was dead, the criminals apparently “disfigured his corpse by burning it and bashing it with a hammer”, presumably to disguise the damage. Then, as a final insult, Ethan was buried in a shallow grave with dog food sprinkled atop it.

The one thing that could play in Stephanie Sloop’s favor is the fact that – according to the prosecutors – Nathan Sloop was the one to actually carry out the abuse on the child while Stephanie stood passively by. (This bridges the delicate issue of personal responsibility when confronted by the evil of others – a very tricky topic indeed. The need to protect your own child from harm perpetrated by others is, however, patently obvious.)

Ms. Sloop’s attorney’s theory of the case is that Nathan Sloop was jealous of little Ethan “and that he took advantage of her while she was abusing medications.”

Well fine, Nathan was jealous of Ethan. This would perhaps be a more viable argument if there was evidence that Ms. Sloop was showering Ethan with love and affection and ignoring “poor” Nathan. This hardly seems to be the case, though, considering that Stephanie was apparently stoned out of her gourd while all this was going on.

Ms. Sloop continues in her prepared statement:

“Aside from my selfishness, my addiction to prescription medication and failure to get help paved the way for this tragedy. I failed to recognized the signs, or rather, I just out-and-out ignored them, doing what I wanted to, like always. My selfishness wouldn’t let me accept that I had ‘a problem,’ let alone let another else try to help me.”

Once again, this is all well and good but a great many people have drug or alcohol problems and do not stand passively by while their deranged boyfriend/husband systematically brutalizes and ultimately kills their child. There has to be more to this and I wonder who made the decision to send Ethan out to Utah from wherever he was staying in Virginia.

The added wrinkle to the story is that Nathan Sloop, who faced the same charges as Ms. Sloop, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in February with the added caveat that he was mentally ill.

“He also pleaded guilty, while mentally ill, to second-degree felony aggravated assault for attacking a Davis County jail officer,” the Deseret News reported.

Nathan Sloop was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for Ethan’s murder and one to 15 years for the aggravated assault.

Although I believe that mental illness should normally be considered to be a mitigating factor in cases like these, given the horrific nature of the abuse, it’s hard for me to drum up any sympathy for Nathan or Stephanie at the moment. It is reported, however, that both the prosecution and Nathan Sloop’s defense team acknowledged that he had a history of mental illness and that he was mentally ill at the time of the crime.

If this is true, by rights, Nathan should be serving his time in a psychiatric hospital, not in an ordinary state prison in general population. If I was his doctor at the institution, however, I would be very wary of EVER releasing him back into society.

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

“Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted.” — Jim Morrison

With a name like Daisy Gutierrez, you might expect this 19-year-old Chicago resident and mother of two toddlers with a third child on the way to be fresh and simple, basic like the flower. You certainly wouldn’t expect her to have performed a striptease in order to lead Jose Reyes, a 30-year-old male admirer from Honduras, into a lair of death where her pathologically jealous boyfriend would stab and decapitate him. But then Jose had probably never heard the immortal line from Jim Morrison’s “People Are Strange”: “Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted.” Not that it would have necessarily done any good anyway because Jose didn’t realize that he was “unwanted” and therefore didn’t pick up on the signals that sweet Daisy wasn’t sweet at all, but rather was very “wicked” indeed.

The Daily Mail Reporter brings us the story:

A 19-year-old Chicago woman has been charged with first degree murder for helping lure her ex-boyfriend into the clutches of her new lover, who then stabbed and decapitated the man.

Police don’t believe Daisy Gutierrez helped slay Jose Reyes, but they do think she knowingly lured the 30-year-old Honduran to his bloody demise with a strip tease on May 21.

They also believe she helped her lover, with help from her father, 56-year-old Salvador Gutierrez, bury the victim’s body parts in the family’s backyard in Scottsdale. According to law enforcement, Salvador spent three hours digging a hole in his backyard and watched as the killer placed the body parts in plastic bags which were then dumped into the hole. It is unclear who then covered the bags with dirt, filled the hole, and tamped it down.

Reyes’ body was found by police on Friday after they searched the home. Law enforcement has not yet disclosed what prompted the detectives to look for Reyes in the backyard of the Gutierrez residence. Nor is it clear what prompted Daisy Gutierrez, who is pregnant with her new boyfriend’s child, and her father, to admit to having taken part in the crime. Of course, the fact that Reyes’ body was found in several pieces in the backyard could have motivated them to “give up the ship.” The assistant state’s attorney Heather Kent stated that after their arrests on Friday, Daisy and Salvador Gutierrez both admitted to the crimes in a video recording.

According to the police, they also found human body parts in jars in the house. They have not yet determined whether those remains belong to Reyes or to someone else.

Both father and daughter made their first court appearance at a Sunday bond hearing. Daisy Gutierrez’ bond was set at $2 million Sunday and her father Salvador’s was set at $500,000. Salvador is charged with concealing a homicide for watching as the unnamed murderer dismembered Reyes’ body.

*     *     *     *     *

The chain of events leading to the homicide was as follows:

Daisy had two children, currently ages 1 and 2, with Reyes’ brother. This relationship did not last and at some point after Daisy and his brother separated, Reyes became interested in the femme fatale. There is no evidence, however, that they became lovers, although I suspect that there was undoubtedly a certain amount of flirtation.

At or around the time this was going on, Daisy became romantically and sexually involved with the murderer. It is not clear whether Reyes was aware of his existence.  According to the police, the lover was aware that Reyes’ was attracted to Daisy and for some reason this made him insanely jealous. Instead of trying to reassure her lover that he had nothing to worry about; i.e., that she and Reyes were merely friends, Daisy — in classicfemme fatale fashion — appears to have fanned the flames of his jealousy. This, in turn, led to them conspiring to kill Reyes. I suspect that Daisy came up with the idea of luring Reyes to his death by means of the striptease.

On May 21st, Daisy asked her family to leave the house so that she could have Reyes over. After Daisy’s lover stabbed and decapitated Reyes and — with Salvador’s help — buried him (or rather pieces of him) in the backyard, he and Daisy fled to New Jersey where he is currently being held for questioning pending charges.

*     *     *     *     *

Menage a trois with a femme fatale at the center of it. Someone had to get it in the neck. Poor Reyes did. Literally.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s truly amazing how people manage to wreck their lives without even trying. And of course there are varying degrees of disaster. The ultimate disaster, however, may be when you box yourself so far into the corner that the only way out is to commit the “perfect murder” only to discover – to your undying dismay – that like most of us you’re not capable of committing the perfect murder…

This is more or less what happened to a 42-year-old Deltona, FLA mom named Angela Stoldt who had gotten herself involved in an unwieldy relationship with her next door neighbor, a 36-year-old man named James Sheaffer.

It seems that Ms. Stoldt and Mr Jimmy shared a bank account. We don’t know why but it is reported that the bank account was gotting overdrawn with disturbing regularity – at least it was disturbing to Ms. Stoldt.

Things reportedly came to a head in April of last year when Mr. Jimmy demanded a $4,000 loan, from Ms. Stoldt’s father of all people. Meg Wagner of the New York Daily News writes:

Prosecutors said the saga started on April 3, 2013, when Stoldt and Sheaffer met at her house to discuss finances.

They shared a bank account ― although police have not said why ― and frequently overdrew funds, she told investigators.

While at the house, she mixed him a cocktail of vodka and prescription muscle relaxers to make him sleepy and confused, she said.

Thus, we see that at this juncture Ms. Stoldt was apparently plenty sick of Mr.Jimmy badgering her about money. Soma (or something similar) and vodka can certainly get you messed up, not that I would know from personal experience.

Once she had slipped him the mickey, they drove, for unknown reasons, to a nearby cemetery, where things escalated. In his state of disrepair, Mr. Jimmy asked Ms. Stoldt “for a $4,000 loan from Stoldt’s dad”. According to Ms. Stoldt, who I’m not convinced is a particularly reliable witness, Mr. Jimmy then “became aggressive and threatened to kill her if she didn’t cough up the funds.”

At that point, our Floridian mother did a not particularly motherly thing.

“He starts coming at me and … he didn’t even really hit me, but he scared … me and I just snapped,” she said. ” He came at me and I stabbed him.”

She claimed she attacked him out of self-defense. According to the police, “she grabbed an ice pick from her car and dug it into Sheaffer’s eye. Then, she strangled him with a rope.”

I can handle the rope but the ice pick in the eye thing is nasty. In any event, as result of “all this jazz”, Ms. Stoldt found herself in the difficult position of being stuck with a large, dead body. If she had been a funeral director, she could have theoretically popped the corpse in a coffin in some kind of switcheroo scheme like the Chicago funeral director supposedly did recently.

Ms. Stoldt is not a funeral director, however, so she had to resort to more pedestrian measures.

She apparently managed to drag what was left of Mr. Jimmy back to her house. How she did this has not been explained, unless he was already in her car. Then she went to work in the following fashion, according to the police:

Step One: Dismemberment

Step Two was very odd. According to Ms. Stoldt, she “separated the limbs into two kiddie pools in her garage.” (Or as the song that they play constantly in L.A. says, “You gotta keep ‘em separated”.)

Step Three: Fire up that oven. Ms. Stoldt popped a leg in the oven and put the other limbs into pots on the stove.

Problem Child: Ms. Stoldt’s “daughter complained of the smell of burning skin,” but our murderess assured her it was nothing.

Not As Easy As It Looks: Despite all her efforts, Ms. Stoldt realized that the cooked body parts still looked like body parts. Oh, drat!

That’s when she put the pieces in trash bags and trashed them in a dumpster. She even got her son to help by telling him she needed to get rid of a deer’s corpse.

She spent the next few days destroying more evidence: she buried his cellphone and threw out the pots and pans she used in her kooky cooking plot.

Three weeks after the killing, she confessed her crimes to her family ― and her sister turned her in, police said.

Ms. Stoldt, who seems to have a knack for turning a pithy phrase, also stated:

“Thursday is when I was cooking him. Friday is when I was dumping him.”

Although Ms. Stoldt certainly appears to be accepting responsibility for her crime, she did point out that the reason she killed Mr. Jimmy was “because he ruined her life.”

“I’m sorry, but I put Jimmie where he belonged, in my opinion at the time.”

Based on her confession before the grand jury, Ms. Stoldt’s charges have been upgraded to first-degree-murder. Prosecutors have stated that they will not be seeking the death penalty.

Since she will most likely end up serving LWOP, Ms. Stoldt will have plenty of time to ponder just where she went wrong and how truly difficult it is to commit the perfect murder, even with the best of intentions.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Q: “What do we got brothers and sisters?

A: “We got bad religion!”

Q: “What do we got brothers and sisters?

A: “We got bad religion!”

Q: “Say it LOUD!”

A: “WE GOT BAD RELIGION!

I am not dissing on the good folks of Oklahoma and I’m sure that the vast majority of them are kind and sincere individuals. One of our earliest All Things Crime Blog supporters is a wonderful Oklahoma mother, housewife, and I believe grandmother (and she may also have a career although I don’t know the details). She has always been unfailingly kind and supportive of me and our Blog, even though she may secretly believe that I am some kind of professional liberal or wild-eyed radical.

So I want to make it crystal clear that I do not in any way believe that what follows in any way reflects on good decent Oklahomans, notwithstanding their political and religious views.

So what happened in El Reno in Canadian County, Oklahoma to inspire this disclaimer and post?

Well, it seems there was a 6-year-old boy living there in El Reno in an attractive stone house with two very attractive “parents” and 3 siblings. At some point in time, according to his very attractive parents, who may not be the most trustworthy source in this instance, the boy developed the bad habit of hearing voices. It’s not clear how the boy responded to the voices and/or if he did their bidding. Actually, we don’t even know for sure that he heard voices. What we do know is how his “parents” responded to the fact they believed he was hearing voices.

First, they engaged in a logical exercise and tried to determine the source of the voices. (I’m not sure if a 6-year-old can develop auditory hallucinations that are schizophrenic in nature, but I assume it happens, perhaps rarely.) The unidentified boy’s parents apparently did not consider the possibility that the voices were an indication that their “son” was suffering from some sort of early onset mental illness. Oh no, that would make entirely too much sense!

Instead, these concerned parents and good citizens concluded that the boy must be possessed by demons. Now far be it from be it from me to make the foolhardy claim that there is no such thing as demonic possession. Although I don’t believe that I personally have suffered from this horrific phenomenon, I know god-fearing folks here in Catholic Southern California who have called upon their kindly priest to exorcise their home in order to rid of uninvited spirit guests.

So I’m not ruling out the possibility that the boy may indeed have been possessed by demons, and if true, that would certainly be a problem. That would not, however, be THE PROBLEM. The problem in this case would be the manner in which the parents attempted to rid the boy of the demons.

Here’s what happened, according to Jay Dillion of OKCFox.com:

The Canadian County Sheriff’s Office says it has pulled four children from an El Reno home after learning a six-year-old was locked up like a wild animal and being abused. The sheriff says it’s one of the worst cases he’s ever seen.

Edward Everett, 28, and Krystal Everett, 32, were both arrested in El Reno Thursday night.

The sheriff’s office received a call saying a six-year-old was locked in a small room and was being abused and neglected. The caller said the room had no furniture, the child was barely given food, and was forced to use the bathroom in a bucket. According to deputies, the caller said the child was locked up because the adults believed the child to be demon possessed.

According to deputies, when they arrived, they were led to a door that was latched from the outside. (It’s unclear whether they were led willingly or unwillingly.) The door was unlatched and they went inside where they discovered a small child wearing only underpants and lying in  fetal position on an egg-crate style mat. The deputies report that the child had large bruises on his  forehead, two black-eyes, and various other bruises, burns, and sores on his body.

The deputies report that when Edward and Krystal Everett were asked about the injuries, they claimed they were all self-inflicted.

Naturally, the Department of Human Services was called to help with the investigation. According to the sheriff’s office, a DHS investigator discovered the child was only fed one meal a day, was tormented and beaten with a leather belt and buckle, and was shocked and burned with a cattle prod. When he had to go to the bathroom, he was required to use a plastic apple juice container that was left in the room.

“This is one of the worse cases of child abuse and neglect I’ve ever seen,” said Randall Edwards, Canadian County Sheriff.

According to the authorities, the boy and his three “siblings” (their precise relationship is unknown) were all removed from the pretty stone house (which was apparently not so pretty inside) and placed in protective custody. The child was taken to a local hospital for evaluation.

The Everetts are now cooling their heels in the Canadian County Jail. Edward Everett was booked on complaints of child abuse and child neglect and Krystal Everett was booked for enabling child abuse.

Dominic Kelly of Opposing Views writes:

“There was a lot of talk at the Sheriff’s Office this morning,” said Officer Chris West. “On one hand it’s just a terrible, terrible thing to happen. You can’t imagine in your wildest dreams finding something like that. Especially if you’re a parent and have your own children.”

The couple reportedly fed the boy once a day and only went in the room to give him his meal or to shock him with a cattle prod.

“I wouldn’t even treat my animals that way,” said neighbor George Heupel.

*     *     *     *     *

It’s important to note that I’m not irreligious or anti-Christianity or anti any other organized religion that treats its members with kindness. I’m undoubtedly the most religious member of my large family and, over 30 years ago, had a moving and life-changing experience in which, while I was at work in a sheet-metal shop, a force I perceived of as the Lord apparently sealed off the door to my office (I was a layout man), and very kindly spent 20 minutes or so with me inspiring me to stop being stubborn and to instead go to college to IMPROVE MY MIND.

So I did… Of course, I could be crazy. You never know…

*     *     *     *     *

Q: “What do we got brothers and sisters?

A: “We got bad religion!”

Q: “What do we got brothers and sisters?

A: “We got bad religion!”

Q: “Say it LOUD!”

A: “WE GOT BAD RELIGION!

by BJW Nashe

“Getting away with murder” now serves as a euphemism for avoiding the consequences of just about any kind of bad behavior. In its most literal sense, however, the phrase points to an especially troubling phenomenon — serial killings committed by psychopaths who somehow manage to avoid being caught and convicted of their crimes. The Zodiac Killer, who terrified the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a string of murders accompanied by bizarre cryptograms and letters to the press, is probably the most famous murderer who was never captured. The Zodiac is not alone, however.  Our recent history is littered with unsolved mass murders. The following rogue’s gallery — presented in no particular order, since they are all equally hideous — lists some of the ones who got away with the worst crimes imaginable.

The Bone Collector is an unidentified serial killer from the area known as the West Mesa of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2009, the chance discovery of a human bone by a dog-walker led police into something closer to an archaeological dig than a typical crime scene. The remains of eleven women, later determined to have been prostitutes, were slowly excavated from the area — which turned into the largest crime scene in U.S. history. Yet not a shred of promising evidence was ever unearthed from this macabre dumping ground — no DNA, no potential murder weapons, no personal clues, nothing at all. Sex workers in the area still live in fear of the killer, even though no murders associated with him have been reported for several years. To this day, the Bone Collector’s identity remains a complete mystery.

The Axe Man of New Orleans was responsible for at least eight killings in New Orleans, Louisiana (and surrounding communities) from May 1918 to October 1919. Typically, the back door of a home was smashed, followed by an attack on one or more of the residents with either an axe or a straight razor. The crimes were not considered linked to robbery, since no items were removed from the victims’ homes. The Axe Man was never caught or identified, and his crime spree stopped as mysteriously as it had started. He wrote a notorious letter to address the public, which was printed in the newspapers. Beneath the heading, “Hell, March 13, 1919,” the Axe Man explained that he was a non-human spirit, something close to the “Angel of Death,” and he vowed to take more victims before he departed earth for his native “Tartarus.” He also made it clear that music was of crucial importance:

“I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.”

Charlie Chop-Off was active in Manhattan between 1972 and 1974. He killed five black children, and attacked another who he left for dead. The nickname comes from the genital mutilation inflicted on the male victims. A principal suspect, Erno Soto, was arrested and did end up confessing to one of the murders. But Soto was considered unfit for trial and sent to a mental institution instead. The case is still considered open.

The Grim Sleeper of Southern California is thought to be responsible for at least ten murders, plus an additional attempted murder, in Los Angeles from 1985 to roughly 2007. His nickname derives from the fact that he appeared to take a Rip Van Winkle style nap, in the form of a 14-year hiatus from crime, during the years 1988-2002. When he was active, there was so much killing going on in L.A. at the time that it was hard to distinguish one murderer’s work from that of another. Thus, the Grim Sleeper was initially confused with the Southside Slayer. In any case, when the May 2007  murder of 25 year-old Janecia Peters was linked through DNA analysis to as many as twelve unsolved murders in L.A. dating back to 1985, a special task force was formed. The Grim Sleeper’s profile emerged as an African-American man who had sexual contact with his victims before strangling or shooting them with a .25 caliber handgun. On July 7, 2010, a suspect was arrested. Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, was charged with ten counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and special circumstance allegations of multiple murders. We still don’t know if Franklin is guilty, though, although he apparently will be going to trial soon for what amounts to a quarter century of killing — with plenty of time off for sleep.

The Cleveland Torso Murderer (also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) was an unidentified serial killer who killed and dismembered at least 12 victims in the Cleveland, Ohio area in the 1930s. The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered his victims, sometimes also cutting the torso in half — in the style of the Black Dahlia corpse. Most of the male victims were castrated, and there was also evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies. Although two suspects were investigated for these horrifying crimes, with Elliot Ness in charge of Cleveland police at the time, no one was ever convicted of the murders.

Jack the Stripper was responsible for the London “nude murders” of 1964 and 1965 (also known as the “Hammersmith murders” or “Hammersmith nudes” case). The similarities with the nineteenth century Ripper murders are obvious. The Stripper murdered at least six prostitutes, whose nude bodies were discovered around London or found dumped into the River Thames. Two additional victims are often attributed to him, although these do not appear to fit his modus operandi. The Stripper’s third and seventh victims were allegedly connected to the 1963 Profumo Affair. Also, some victims were known to be involved in London’s underground party and pornographic movie scene. Scotland Yard’s initial investigation included nearly 7000 suspects, which was supposedly narrowed down to just 20 men, then 10, and eventually only three. No one was ever convicted of the crimes, and the Stripper, for whatever reason, ceased his killing spree.

The Doodler was responsible for slaying 14 men and assaulting three others in San Francisco between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname derived from the perpetrator’s habit of sketching his victims prior to having sex with them and then stabbing them to death. (One wonders whether the sketches ever made it onto the murderabilia market.) The perpetrator met his victims at after-hours gay clubs, bars and restaurants. Police zeroed in on a prime suspect in the case, who was identified by two of his surviving victims. Yet the cops were unable to proceed with an arrest, since the survivors (an entertainer, and a diplomat) refused to “out” themselves by way of testifying. The suspect, who never admitted his guilt, has never been publicly named, and the murders have faded into obscurity.

Bible John reportedly murdered three young women after meeting them at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, Scotland between 1968 and 1969. All three women were raped, strangled, and beaten to death. Just prior to the third murder, the killer supposedly took a taxi ride with the the victim and her sister. The sister said the man, who was named John, was soft-spoken and liked to quote from the Bible. As of 2013, the killer has never been identified, although the location and activities of known Glaswegian serial killer Peter Tobin strongly suggests that he may have been behind the killings. No proof of this has ever been established, however, and the case remains unsolved.

The Phantom Killer is responsible for the “moonlight murders” committed in and around the twin cities of Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas in 1946. The Phantom Killer is credited with attacking eight people, and killing five of them. The attacks occurred on weekend nights, nearly always three weeks apart, and always involved a .32 caliber pistol. The case terrified the entire area, and eventually inspired the 1976 horror film, The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Two of the earliest victims were able to give a description of their attacker — and it only served to heighten the sense of terror. They described a six-foot tall man with a plain white sack worn as a hood over his head, with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. One suspect, a man named Youell Swinney, was imprisoned as a repeat car theft offender in 1947, and released in 1973. He was never charged with the crimes. Due to the killer’s hooded disguise, some in law enforcement and the press have speculated that the murders may have been the early work of the Zodiac Killer, but this has never been proven.

The Babysitter Killer of Oakland County, Michigan was responsible for the murders of four or more children — at least two girls and two boys — in the years 1976-77. The children were abducted and then held for time periods ranging from 4-19 days, before they were killed by either strangling, suffocation, or shooting. Two of the victims were also sexually assaulted with an object. These atrocious deaths caused extreme public fear bordering on mass hysteria, and triggered a murder investigation which was the largest in U.S. history at the time. The Detroit News offered a $100,000 reward for the killer’s apprehension. A number of suspects were investigated — some authorities even considered John Wayne Gacy to be a likely perpetrator. However, the murders remain unsolved.

A more deranged bunch than this is difficult to imagine. How did they get away with it? Dumb luck? Skillful evasion? Police incompetence? Or all of the above? The truth probably resides in the simple fact that it is often just plain difficult — and very time-consuming – to solve murder cases. We tend to take homicide investigations for granted, and assume that justice will be served. However, given the sheer number of homicides, and the complexities involved in most cases, we shouldn’t be surprised that some of our worst psychopaths are able to slip through the cracks, and get away with murder.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

On Saturday we run our errands and of Sunday we kick back and watch the NFL. On Monday we play Date Rape! Huh? That’s right! On Monday we play Date Rape. At lease Anita Smithey and her estranged husband Robert Cline III did, and it cost them both dearly.

This was a dysfunctional marriage that could probably have only happened in Florida (or some highly dysfunctional place). Just kidding. It could happen anywhere where people are twisted and the cloud of unknowing sets in. It certainly did for Anita and Cline III:

It seems that in February of 2010 Robert and Anita separated and began living apart. Nevertheless, they got together every Monday evening for rough ‘date rape’ consensual sex, which reportedly included Cline III threatening Anita with a knife. They apparently found these histrionics quite stimulating.

So nothing too extraordinary here. Couples do all sorts of somewhat strange things to keep the fires burning after post-romantic boredom sets in, although not usually after they’ve formally separated.

It’s a bit hard to imagine this peculiar practice continuing regular as clockwork year after year every Monday night without the stakes gradually being elevated. At first you merely threaten your “lover” with the knife. Then when that gets old you hold the knife against her throat and move it gently back and forth barely grazing the skin. Then when that gets a bit tiresome you draw a little blood and so on.

Twelve weeks into their Monday night kink, things went seriously awry and Anita wound up shooting and killing Cline III when he apparently wouldn’t leave after Anita thought the evening’s hi-jinks were over, and instead allegedly threw her down on the bed and began raping her (and according to some reports sodomizing her). Because Anita told law enforcement several different versions of what she claims transpired (these conversations were recorded and played to the jury at trial), it’s difficult if not impossible to know what really happened.

Rick Jancha

The fact that Anita couldn’t keep her story straight undoubtedly worked against her in the eyes of the jury, which deliberated for only three hours before convicting her. The fact fact that she stood to receive a $750,000 insurance settlement if Cline III left the land of the living also undoubtedly did not help her cause. (Based on Anita’s conviction, the money will reportedly go to Anita’s children.)

Although Anita did not take the witness stand during her trial, based on the wonders of video, the jurors were treated to the dubious sight of her being grilled by law enforcement on at least three occasions, a grilling that led Anita’s lawyer, Rick Jancha, to claim that she had been under severe duress during the interrogations. No matter, as the jurors watched the videos over and over again, it appears to have become progressively clearer that Anita was not capable of clearly explaining 1) what had transpired; and 2) sticking to her story.

David Bodden and John W. Davis of MyNews13 write:

What started as a love affair in 2007 ended in violence in 2010. The couple married but wedding bliss would soon wear off and the couple separated. Despite living in separate homes they continued to meet on Monday’s to have sex. It was during one of those visits in May of 2010 when Smithey claimed Cline became violent and raped her. She admittedly shot Cline, killing him.

Later at the Oviedo police department…Smithey claimed just before the shooting she and Cline were fighting over a knife that he was using during a date rape role play scenario.

At one point Anita told police that Cline III stabbed her during the scuffle. But then she quickly changed her story:

“I freaked out and I picked it up and I stabbed myself,” Smithey told investigators.

Although both sides make it clear that Anita’s guilt or innocence appears to hinge on her own statements, they have very different interpretations of what her statements mean. The prosecution insisted that the various versions of what went down captured on video prove that she is lying. The defense, on the other hand, focused on a 911 call in which she is “pleading with emergency responders to hurry to help Robert Cline III as he was dying on her bedroom floor.”

The fact that Anita reportedly told a neighbor, whom she sought help from after the shooting, that Cline III had stabbed her contrasts markedly with her later admission to the police that she had stabbed herself “to make her claim of self-defense more convincing.”

There is no doubt that Anita’s defense team did their best maintaining throughout the proceedings that the cuts and abrasions on Anita’s body when she arrived at the hospital “proved that the sex could not have been consensual, according to station WESH.”

Assistant State Attorney Kelly Jo Hines appears to have delivered the best line, however:

“You’re not allowed to kill a houseguest who’s overstayed their visit.”

It’s hard to argue with that…

Anita, had had been out in bail, was remanded into custody after the verdict. She faces a term of 25 years to life behind bars.

Anita’s family is trying to make the best of the disaster that has enveloped their family. David Bodden and John W. Davis write:

“We’re just very distraught at this moment but grandma’s always taught us to have faith in God and that God has a reason for everything,” said Smithey’s Cousin Monica Andry.

With perhaps a bit more logic, Andry also stated: “We have faith in Anita and we still stand behind her. We all know what happened, what the jury heard and what happened is two different things and there’s just no winners in this at all,” Andry said

But as she struggled to make sense of this tragedy, Ms. Andry did make the important point, albeit a bit clumsily, that what this case is really about is domestic violence and that whenever it occurs, there are never any winners:

“I do feel the case has been oversensationalized. I don’t think it has anything to do with rough sex and things like that. It has to deal with plain domestic violence, and sometimes when you have the safest plan to get out, it just does not work. This is one case where it ended in the worst way possible.”

Is consensual date-rape rough sex a form of domestic violence? In my typically shallow fashion, I’d never really considered the possibility. But perhaps poor distraught Monica Andry makes a good point… Meanwhile, Anita Smithy is going to spend what will seem like eternity in a Florida women’s prison. And we still don’t know for sure if she killed Cline III because she feared for her life and simply because she was sick of him and believed he “needed killing”.

The story begins back in 2009 when child welfare workers were summoned to Darnell and Hare’s Oxford home, 60 miles northwest of Orlando, after receiving reports that they were smoking weed and popping pills in front of their kids. Upon investigating, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) authorities felt that there were signs of negligence and/or drug use at the house and requested that Darnell and Hare submit to drug tests. The couple agreed, perhaps realizing that they had little choice.

When the results came back, Hare, who was four months pregnant at the time, tested positive for marijuana. Darnell’s urine also revealed marijuana as well as oxycodone, for which he didn’t have a prescription. Darnell’s excuse for smoking the herb was that he was recovering from surgery and the cannabis reduced his pain and anxiety. Presumably, he claimed he was also using the narcotic pain pills to alleviate pain. In an attempt to put his best foot forward, he pointed out that neither he nor Hare “hit the pipe” in front of the kids. State social workers verbally chastised Hare for smoking marijuana while pregnant explaining that studies have linked it to memory, concentration and judgment problems in children who are exposed to it fetally. Hare presumably promised to stop.

The DCF also took a picture of Darnell’s eight-foot Burmese python and made a precautionary note. They failed, however, to check whether whether he was duly licensed to possess the snake, which is required under Florida law. Later on at the trial, it was revealed that Darnell did not have the proper paperwork to own such a pet. Within a few short months, the snake would take center stage. Cory Zurowski writes in Bad Moms:

During the late morning of a hot day in July, authorities received a panicked 911 from Darnell.

“Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby,” he said during the emergency call.

According to Darnell, he awoke around 10:30 a.m. that morning to find that his eight-and-a-half foot albino python, Gypsy, had gotten out of its cage. He then walked into the bedroom of Hare’s two-year-old daughter, Shaiunna. The snake was wrapped around the child’s neck and bite marks flecked various parts of her tiny body.

Although it was too little too late, Darnell dissuaded the python from doing any further damage by stabbing it to death.  He then extracted Shaiunna from its death grip and called 911. Although Emergency responders arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, they were unable to revive the toddler.

A subsequent police investigation revealed that the snake had not been fed in nearly a month. In the month prior to asphyxiating  Shaiunna, the snake had escaped its enclosure no less than ten times.

The following month, both Darnell and Hare were arrested in connection with the child’s death based on the prosecutors contention that even though the snake did the literal killing, Darnell and Hare were responsible. They were both charged with third-degree murder, manslaughter and child neglect and were each offered a ten-year plea deal which they turned down. Instead they insisted on going to trial.

At the trial, it was revealed that despite the snake’s repeated escapes, Darnell and Hare’s only attempt to restrain it consisting of covered its tank with a quilt to keep it inside — as if that would stop a hungry python from a little midnight marauding. Hare’s mother even testified on behalf of the prosecution, stating that she’d warned her daughter that the snake was dangerous and should not be kept in the house with a toddler. She’d offered to buy it and keep it locked up at her house, but Darnell had insisted that the python wasn’t dangerous and had refused to sell.

For the jury, it appears to have been an open-and-shut case. They were out for only two hours before finding the couple guilty of third-degree murder, manslaughter and child abuse.

In addition, it turned out that Darnell already had six felony convictions on his record.

The couple are believed to be the first people in Florida history to have been convicted of criminal charges in a python-child death case.

On August 24, 2011, Darnell and Hare were both sentenced to 12 years in prison, only two years more than the plea deal they were apparently offered.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Haleigh Cummings disappeared from her family’s home in Satsuma, Florida on February 10, 2009. Approximately 24 months later another little girl, 20-month old Ayla Reynolds, vanished from her home far to the north in Waterville, Maine. Although the cases bear some striking similarities (drugs, the fact no one has ever been arrested in either case, and the fact the little girls appear to be gone forever), Ayla – unlike Haleigh who vanished without a trace – left behind more than a cupful of blood, or as the investigators so quaintly described: “More blood than a small cut would produce.”

Ayla Reynolds was last seen at 10 PM on the evening of December 16, 2011. According to a family member, she was there in her bed that night, but was discovered missing by her father, Justin DiPietro, the next morning. Ayla’s disappearance triggered the largest criminal investigation in Maine state history, and was the third largest search for a missing child.

It was a somewhat circuitous route that ultimately placed Ayla in her father’s care. She had been cared for by her mother, Trista Reynolds (although heart-breakingly beautiful, you should never name your child Trista for grief is likely to strike at the heart of anyone whose name contains this essence of sadness), but Trista had a drug problem which led her to enter a substance abuse recovery program. She therefore sent Ayla to stay with her maternal grandmother, who apparently did not pass muster, leading the social workers to remove her from her grandmother’s home, which meant she was then sent to stay with her father, Justin.

Although Justin DiPietro and his two companions who were there at the house that fateful evening, namely, his girlfriend Courtney Roberts, and his sister Alisha DiPietro, have never been arrested and are no more than “persons of interest”, the investigators have always believed that little Ayla was not abducted, the obvious implication therefore being that either Justin or one of his companions that night, or perhaps all of them, are responsible for the toddler’s disappearance. Thus, this is one of those maddening cases in which there would appear to be obvious suspects yet “they are not suspects”.

Justin DiPietro told the police that “the last time he saw Ayla, she was wearing green polka dot pajamas with “Daddy’s Princess” written across them, along with a soft cast on her left arm.”

It was at a news conference five months after Ayla’s disappearance that the investigators’ findings concerning the copious amount of blood and the identities of the three individuals who were at the house that night were announced.

A mystifying further detail is the reported claim that “DiPietro had taken a two-hour road trip before reporting Ayla missing”, which seems inculpatory, and the fact that “DiPietro had also taken out a life-insurance policy on Ayla” (equally or even more inculpatory).

David Sharp of the AP writes in a new article:

Though investigators believe Ayla is dead and the three adults know more about what happened that night than they’re telling, no charges have ever been filed.

Now the clock is running out on some of the lesser charges the girl’s mother believes could have already been brought. The statute of limitations on misdemeanors like child endangerment expires in a matter of weeks, on the third anniversary of Ayla’s disappearance.

“All of them should be put in jail,” said Ayla’s mother, Trista Reynolds.

Trista, however, is not in regular contact with police and does not believe that any charges — including those of a capital nature – are on the horizon.

Although Trista is very frustrated by the apparent lack of any substantial progress (which of course would seemingly include charges) in the investigation, Steve McCausland, a Maine State Police spokesman, insists that the investigation remains “active and ongoing.”

Jim Burke, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law, has a convincing explanation for the fact the police have up till now chosen not to bring any of the lesser possible charges. First of all, there is no statute of limitations for any type of homicide charge and there’s a six-year limit for other felonies, which means the prosecutors still have a full three years to bring any other felony charges such as kidnapping or false imprisonment. While it’s true that the statutory limit of three years for the lesser charges – misdemeanors including simple assault and endangering the welfare of a minor – is rapidly approaching, it could (and possibly would) be completely counterproductive to bring misdemeanor charges at this time.

According to Burke, the last thing the prosecutors want is to put their homicide investigation at risk for the sake of pursuing misdemeanors. Bringing the lesser charges “would expose evidence central to the homicide investigation and could allow the defense to try to prevent harsher charges by claiming double jeopardy, said Assistant Attorney General Leane Zainea. She said prosecutors are keeping “an eye toward the more serious offenses.”

In a similar vein, Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, who is well aware of the case although she is not prosecuting it directly, expressed her belief that the prosecutors know exactly what they are doing and are fully aware of what sort of evidence they would need to win at trial should murder charges be brought. Maloney stated:

“They’re absolutely devastated by this case that has consumed them. They’re trying to do everything they can. I have 100 percent confidence in them.”

As the months have trickled by, Reynolds has done what she can “to put pressure on DiPietro and law enforcement agencies while trying to keep her daughter in the public eye.” In a curious encounter, she and her compatriots actually chased DiPietro following an unrelated court appearance last year, shouting “murderer!” and “Where’s Ayla!”

Maloney, who is clearly sympathetic to Trista, said she doesn’t blame her for being frustrated and demanding justice: “What she’s going through is the worst thing a parent could go through.”

Professor Burke reminds us that in the real world criminal investigations often do not play out nearly as quickly as they do on TV or in film. In fact, they often take years.

“The state is not going to go away,” said the professor. “Sometimes it takes 20 years for someone to slip up. So they sit and wait. They never give up.”

* * * * *

It appears to me that the investigators are leavening urgency with needed caution. They are undoubtedly determined to bring the killers to justice while being equally determined to not screw things up by jumping the gun or otherwise exposing any weaknesses on the side of the prosecution.