We here at All Things Crime Blog extend a warm welcome to Yalonda Laugh. Yalonda is a Karla Homolka super-sleuth and is the main author of this post. We thank her for digging deep and providing us with a fascinating depiction of Karla’s childhood.

by Yalonda Laugh with analysis from Patrick H. Moore

The question of who Karla Homolka really is has baffled people all across Canada and the United States (and the rest of the world) ever since the trial of Paul Bernardo in February 1993 , when the ex-accountant from Price Waterhouse and soon to be ex-husband of Homolka was arrested for the rapes and murders of Canadian schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Followers of this compelling case are universally aware that in return for testifying at trial against Bernardo, Homolka received what many consider to be a “sweetheart” plea deal, a mere 12 years in prison. Bernardo, on the other hand, received the maximum term allowable by Canadian law — life imprisonment. Karla Homolka currently resides in Guadeloupe in the West Indies with her husband and three young children. She has for all intents and purposes reinvented herself. Is she happy? No one really knows except perhaps those closest to her. Does she sleep well at night? Again, no one knows.

What is known, however, is that Karla Homolka is despised by a great numbers of followers of this case, detested with an almost visceral hatred. The cause of this virulent hatred appears to be the fact that Karla is perceived as having been a “normal child” who enjoyed a “normal upbringing” in “normal circumstances.” Therefore, according to this line of thought, she had absolutely no reason or excuse for turning into a conscienceless rapist and murderess. It’s as if your next door neighbor for purely gratuitous reasons decided to rape and murder for the sheer sport of it. Is this view of Karla as a “normal” person who engaged in truly horrific conduct out of sheer self-indulgence accurate? This is the question we will explore in this inquiry. Or as researcher and co-author Yalonda Laugh expresses so pithily:

How could a smart, head-strong young woman from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada align herself with school-girl killer and Scarborough Rapist Paul Bernardo? That has been the key question informing this frustrating case since Homolka’s plea deal was first made public on May 14, 1993 . Who was Karla Leanne Homolka? Were there clues in her childhood and early years that signaled what she was to become and why she would ultimately be considered “the most hated woman in North America?”

Let us take a journey toward this destination so that each reader can decide for him or herself:

Karla Leanne Homolka was born on May 4, 1970 to Czechoslovakian immigrant Karel Homolka and Dorothy Seger of Ontario. Karel made a living as a traveling salesman, selling black velvet paintings and lighting fixtures from the sidewalks of shopping centers and malls.

Karla Homolka was asthmatic which resulted in frequent hospitalization during her childhood. Her attacks seemed to be triggered by any type of situation where she felt excited or frightened, such as birthdays, holidays or the first day of school.

According to Karla’s mother Dorothy, this obstacle didn’t stop little Karla from blossoming. She walked and talked at an early age. In the 3rd grade, Karla was given an IQ test in which she scored a quotient of 131, which demonstrated conclusively that she was indeed a very bright girl. (For the sake of reference, an IQ score of 135 is associated with the 98th percentile.)  Karla’s teachers described her as “eager” and “a good student.”

One of Karla’s friends from the second grade at Parnell Public School notes that at this early age she was constantly drawing houses. She was always the first one to be seated at her desk, the first one back from recess and the first one to start her work. She seemed almost fanatical when drawing her little houses and was preoccupied with, even unnaturally intent, on staying within the lines.

Thus, this early snapshot of Karla seems to reveal that at a tender age she was already obsessive, but not in a bad way — a hard worker and a perfectionist, more focused perhaps on pleasing the authority figures than on conforming to the expectations of her peers.

Karla showed a soft spot for animals, even at this young age. Once when some boys on the playground were tormenting a beetle with a stick, Karla rushed to the aid of the insect and screamed: “You shouldn’t kill it. It’s wrong to kill anything.”

As she got to know her better, Karla’s new friend started to see that she was a bit bossy and wanted things to be done her way. She wanted to be pushed on the swings, she wanted to go down the slide first, and she demanded that her new friend come spend time with her at her home on Linwell Road. The friend couldn’t help wondering how much the two girls really had in common. At that stage, Karla dressed only in pink frilly dresses and was downright prissy, while the friend was a tomboy — a hockey fan in the best Canadian tradition. The friend wasn’t surprised when she arrived at the Homolka residence and found Karla waiting for her with with over a dozen Barbie and Ken dolls. Karla told her friend that everything about her Barbies was, and had to be, perfect: their clothes, their hair, even their undergarments. The friend recalls Karla fantasizing that one day she would have the perfect life which would include a handsome husband not unlike Ken. In retrospect, it wasn’t much of a play-date for the friend. Karla insisted on rigidly controlling the game. She decided what the Barbies did, where they went, what they wore and what words came out of their little Barbie mouths. When her friend suggested new or different story lines,  Karla reacted huffily and immediately put the Barbies away .

Based on this evidence, it is clear that at the age of 7 or 8, Karla was bossy, controlling and obsessive. This early pattern of selfishness was, of course, her bete noire which would ultimately lead herto the take part in committing the awful crimes that shocked the world.

The friend’s dog Buster hated everyone on the planet except for little Karla, who seemed to have a way with animals. Karla claimed that she had a dog named Lester, an obvious falsehood, which drew stares from the family. Strangely, around this time, animal lover Karla decided it would be fun to make a pillowcase parachute and toss her friend’s hamster out of an upper story bedroom window. The parachute malfunctioned and the hamster hit the ground hard and died two weeks later. After the hamster had been interred for a while, Karla decided it would be fun to dig up the little pet’s corpse and see what the decomposed body looked like. She stared at it for a long time and then exclaimed: “GROSS”.

This behavior is, of course, somewhat reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer and his well-known obsession with dead and decomposing bodies. The killing of the hamster could be termed an accidental homicide, or perhaps an involuntary manslaughter. In any event, it appears to be the first time Karla killed a living creature and is an early example of her rapidly-evolving penchant for cruelty.

When she was 10, Karla accompanied a friend, whom she later gifted with a booked called Brainchild, by noted behaviorist B.F. Skinner,  to the park to play baseball one afternoon. While the friend played, Karla became fascinated with a small girl playing in the outfield. The girl arms were deformed, half the normal length. Karla walked up to the girl’s brother and shouted: “Your sister’s a freak. She’s creepy looking. She’s got seal arms and belongs in a zoo.” This made the boy and the small girl cry. Karla clearly got satisfaction out of making the two cry. This incident also reveals her growing pleasure in hurting others.

At around the age of 12, Karla became obsessed with the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew mysteries. She bought a crime fighting kit and vowed that she would grow up to be a policeman(woman).

Karla and her friend met again when they were approximately 13. Karla had asked if she could bring her Barbie dolls over, but her friend had stated they were getting too old to be playing with dolls. They met up at Grace Lutheran Church and to her surprise, the friend noticed that Karla was hardly dressed in Barbie-like fashion:

On the contrary, she was dressed in black from head-to-toe, and was wearing black Doc Marten boots. Also noticeable was Karla’s new hairstyle. Gone was her beautiful naturally golden hair replaced by a multi-colored look. Her teeth seemed defective which Karla blamed on her asthma medication. The friend recalls that Karla seemed distant and moody and barely smiled. She wore dark eye makeup and black nail polish and seemed to be affecting a Goth look.

Friends at Ferndale Public School have noted that Karla loved shocking people by screaming obscenities for no reason. She was the only one of her peers to talk back to her parents and slam doors during arguments. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was the parent and who was the child. Friend Lisa Stanton described Karla as loud and stubborn and willful. She refused to ever admit that she could possibly be wrong and never backed down on anything for any reason:

“You couldn’t push her into anything. It didn’t matter if you were a parent, teacher, friend or stranger, Karla always spoke her mind. If she was mad about something she would let you know about it.”

Some sources have remarked  that Karla was a daddy’s girl most of the time. If her mother Dorothy refused to give her what she wanted, she would simply ask dear old daddy Karel. However, when Karel drank he had the bad habit of calling Karla a whore or a slut. This, however, was only after Karla had begun dating Paul. Karel was the only man in a house full of strong-willed women and he would often retreat to the basement when he felt outnumbered. Karla and her younger sister Lori were known to scream “Fuck off” at Karel and they would call him “a dumb Czech” when they didn’t get their way. Karla, however, was kind and attentive to Lori. When Lori was sick with the flu and Karla’s parents were gone for the day, Karla gave Lori a little bell to ring whenever she needed something or merely wanted attention.

The summer before high school Karla began cruising around town with her friends. Karla had the audacity to would wave at boys in cars whom she felt were attractive. She had no compunction about striking up conversations with complete strangers.

Once Karla entered high school, she exhibited all the usual symptoms of a typical depressed adolescent, albeit a boy-crazy depressed adolescent. She anguished over the opposite sex. She told her friends that boys were her main concern and that school was a drag. Her style of dress grew increasingly non-conforming. She wore long johns and boxer shorts complete with ballet slippers to Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School, which made her stand out like a sore thumb. The school was considered to be mainly a preppy school  and the majority of the students were well-off. Karla didn’t try to hide the fact that she disliked the preps and the diehard preps hated her. Karla gave the impression that she really didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was bound and determined to be her own person.

Friend Kevin Jacoby remembers Karla as open and honest. She was seen as someone weird or different who didn’t hold back and always said whatever was on her mind.

Once in high school, Karla seemed to live in two worlds and certainly exhibited mood swings. Her friends recall that at times she seemed elated and would speak enthusiastically about going to university, becoming a veterinarian or an undercover police officer. At other times, she would hardly speak at all for weeks at a time. Karla often spoke about killing herself and once revealed a small slit moving horizontally across her wrist. If it was a suicide attempt, it was a feeble attempt and her friends remarked that they were sure that it was just to get attention. Karla also claimed that she had tried to overdose on sleeping pills. Her peers struggled to understand how someone as vain as Karla, who was constantly looking at herself in the mirror and fixing their hair, could apparently have such contempt for their own life.

Karla talked frequently about her favorite movies which were mostly horror flicks. “Friday the 13th” made a big impression on her and she loved the story line about young virgins being slashed and hacked up by a psychopath.

Karla got a part-time job at the Number One Pet Center, feeding and watering the animals.

Kevin Jacoby remembers Karla phoning frequently, crying and depressed. She complained of her volatile relationship at home with her father who was frequently drunk. She described fights between her parents and her fights with her mother. “Everything she did or said was taken in the worst possible way when Karel was drinking.”

In contrast to this picture of a depressed, negative and brooding Karla, her mother Dorothy described Karla as smart, sweet ,active, fun-loving, outgoing, a leader, an instigator, academically and socially successful, and always surrounded by friends. She liked quiet time to recharge her batteries and loved to read and think. Dorothy did admit, however:

“Mind you, something did change when Karla got to high school.”

During this period, Karel Homolka told Lynda Wollis that he was in love with her and wanted to leave Dorothy. Lynda told him to go home and keep his mouth shut. Apparently, Karel failed to do so. In any event, Dorothy went to Lynda the next day and told her:

“You could save my marriage if you sleep with both of us.” Nobody knows exactly how this might have affected Karla or if she even knew, but it was well-known that Karel was called “The Pervert” at the Shaver faith-based geriatric clinic where Dorothy worked.

Karla developed an interest in the occult when she entered high school. Her friend Amanda said they would burn candles and incense and talk about spirits and the “Screaming Tunnels” which were near the railroad tracks outside of town. Karla placed ads in the papers to buy a Ouija Board.

Friend Debbie Purdie stated: “When we were in high school she was a little rebel. Nobody ever told Karla what to do (or what to think). She was her own person and her own boss.”

Karla studied music and took voice lessons but she would not sing in front of the class. Friends noticed strange circles carved into Larla’s arms and filled in with nail polish. Karla inscribed in a book, Michelle Remembers, which is about satanism, sexual abuse and the repressed memory syndrome:

“There is always something more left to say.”

Karla admitted that in Grade 10, she smoked dope and experimented with white crosses, an upper of mild to moderate strength..

Karla once told her friend Tracy Collins, “You know what I’d like to do…..? I’d like to put dots all over somebody’s body and take a knife and then play connect the dots and then pour vinegar all over them.” Tracy dutifully reported that to her parents who, logically enough, would no longer let her associate with Karla. They said she was strange and domineering and that Tracy’s grades had slipped during the period of their friendship.

Karla dated a boy named Doug in Grade 12. He found her to be moody and consumed with the thought of death. She was constantly threatening suicide. When Doug moved to — of all places Kansas — Karla, against her parents’ wishes, flew there to visit him. Karla admitted to drinking “Purple Jesus” grain alcohol and snorting cocaine. Karla told her friends she that she had lost her virginity with Doug and described a shocking — and unlikely scene — that involved bondage, dog collars, extremely dirty talk (at least for middle-class teenagers), and strangulation. According to the more conventionally-minded Doug, they had only had normal sex. As Karla related the story to her friends, they noticed that she was detached and displayed no emotion. They wondered who she would get involved with next time. It was clear by this point that unless something or someone stopped her, Karla was heading toward a place that very few of us would like to visit.

At the end of senior year Karla inscribed a friend’s yearbook: “Remember: Suicide kicks and fasting is awesome. Bones rule ! Death Rules ! Death Kicks ! I love death ! Kill the fucking world! “

Oddly, while all of this was going on, Karla and her friends Debbie Purdie, Kathy Wilson and Lisa Stanton formed the Exclusive Diamond Club. Their goal was to recruit rich, good-looking older men, obtain the coveted diamond, marry and live happily ever after.

Friend Kathy Wilson remarked on the fact that Karla was “the tough one of the group.” She kept a pair of handcuffs hanging on her bedroom wall and told friends she was going to become a police officer.

Analysis by Patrick H. Moore:

It is my understanding that many followers of Karla seem to believe that she was the product of a normal upbringing and seem to hold that fact against her as if the products of middle-class homes are given less latitude for aberrant behavior than individuals who are reared in less-privileged environments. It is certainly true that Karla’s family was economically comfortable. Both parents worked and she lived in a decent house in a good neighborhood. However, there are clear signs that her family was at least somewhat dysfunctional. Her father was a heavy drinker, probably an alcoholic, and was reportedly abusive when drunk. There appears to have been an ongoing power struggle within the family as Karla’s father Karel wrestled with the demands of the four strong females with whom he lived. It is also perhaps strange that Karla’s mother Dorothy, when confronted with her husband’s infidelity, suggested they have a threesome as a way to salvage their marriage.

The vast majority of children, however, who grow up in problematic households, do not become rapists and murderers, or even criminals for that matter. Karla’s choice of Paul Bernardo as a partner in crime cannot be explained by her upbringing.

As a child, however, Karla exhibited definite signs that she was not entirely “normal.” The fact that she killed her friend’s hamster by “parachuting” it out of a second story window is not in itself that damning. After all, kids frequently do odd things and she was for the most part an animal lover. However, the fact she dug the hamster’s corpse up after a few weeks in the ground to examine the ongoing decomposition is very unusual and reminds this commentator of Jeffrey Dahmer’s penchant for observing bodies in various decayed states.

By the time Karla had entered the Canadian equivalent of middle school, she had begun exhibiting anti-social tendencies. Her choice of the Goth look and various other non-conforming modes of dress suggest an insecure individual desperate for attention. From the time she entered high school, Karla was clearly depressed, perhaps dangerously so. Her suicide attempt(s) was a red flag that something was seriously wrong, as was her habit of carving peculiar decorations into her arms. The fact that she expressed her desire to play “connect the dots” with a knife on other people’s bodies should have been a warning that she was harboring dangerous fantasies, as was her choice of highly unconventional reading material. Her crowning indication of “strangeness” was her claim that when she lost her virginity with Doug, they engaged in “bondage, dog collars, extremely dirty talk (at least for middle-class teenagers), and strangulation.”

Based on my eleven years of experience in working with criminals, there is no doubt in my mind that by the time Karla had completed high school, she was was a soul teetering on the edge of the abyss. Could it have been predicted with any certainty that she would turn into a rapist and serial killer? Of course not. Based on her domineering personality and penchant for darkness, however, it does not seem at all surprising that she was drawn to Paul Bernardo who appears to have shared many of these same qualities. I would posit that once Karla and Paul were together, they brought out the worst in each other with the result being that Leslie Mahaffy, Kristen French and Karla’s sister Tammi suffered horrible and entirely unnecessary fates.

Was Karla a normal child? The answer is a resounding “NO!”

Note: The quotations in the factual basis of this analysis of Karla Homolka’s childhood are derived from Stephen Williams’ “Invisible Darkness,” Nick Pron’s “Lethal Marriage,” and Alan Cairns and Scott Burnside’s “Deadly Innocence,” all of which have been widely disseminated and serve as valuable research tools for Karla followers.

Click on the following links to read previous Karla posts:

Paul Bernardo Engaged to Lovely and Sensitive 30-Year-Old Woman?

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Just Did As She Pleased

Watching Karla Homolka: The Game Gets Real

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Stacks the Deck

Karla Homolka Psychological Evaluation, Part One: Abuse Victim or Just Plain Evil?

Watching Karla Homolka: It’s a Family Affair

Was Karla Homolka a Normal Child? The Answer Is a Resounding No

Is Karla Homolka the Most Hated Woman in North America?

The Karla Homolka Files: A U.S. Perspective on Karla Homolka’s Plea Bargain

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo: Canada’s Most Notorious Serial Killer Case

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It seems like it’s always the season of the domestic mass murderer. A recent perpetrator was a narcissistic individual named Bryan Eugene Sweatt, a 27-year-old resident of lovely Greenwood County, South Carolina. There was nothing lovely, however, about Sweatt’s psyche, as is demonstrated in his (you guessed it) Facebook postings in the days leading up to him laying in wait and slaughtering his estranged girlfriend Chandra Fields, age 26, Chandra’s parents, Richard Allen Fields, 51, and Melissa Kay Fields, 49, and her two nephews, Tariq Kenyon Robinson, 11, and William Asa Robinson, 9. Chandra was the mother of Sweatt’s baby daughter.

According to Greenwood County Sheriff Tony Davis, Sweatt — who had an extensive arrest record and was facing a lengthy prison sentence for a 2013 burglary — used a large-caliber handgun to kill first the victims and then himself. At a press conference, Sheriff Davis stated that the police believe Sweatt ambushed the victims at Chandra’s parents’ house at they arrived home in the afternoon, sometime between 4 and 6 p.m. He apparently bound them with duct tape prior to executing them in unknown order.

The sheriff confirmed that Chandra and Sweatt were in the midst of a custody dispute over their 7-month-old daughter and that police had previously been called out to the residence to defuse domestic disputes. The child was apparently carried to safety at some point during the ambush. Three other children also escaped.

What is odd about this case — not that it does any good now that everyone is dead — is that Sweatt seems to have repeatedly cried out for help in his Facebook postings in the days preceding the mass slayings, and in a 911 call he made while he was holding the victims hostage. It seems unlikely, though, that anyone could have actually helped him, based on the extreme selfishness he has demonstrated both in word and deed.

In an Oct. 9 Facebook posting, Sweatt wrote:

“…i just want someone to talk to and be here with me so bad im just about to get in the truck and ram it in the biggest…pole i can find nobody gives a **** about me…” He went on to say “ive ask for someone to be here for me to take my mind off doing something stupid to hurt myself…”

In a post dated Oct. 20, just nine days before the shooting, Sweatt wrote about his ongoing legal problems. “i hope tha best but i no im gone for a long time i just hope this judge dont slap me with a whole 45years…”  

Deputies report that Sweatt called 911 to warn them that he “was feeling on edge” and was planning on “hurting himself” moments before shots were fired. The incident report said a deputy was dispatched to the Callison Highway address.

Here is a transcript of the 911 call.  Sweatt sounds eerily calm, though he’s “about to take my life” as well as the life of five innocent victims

Sweatt: “I need an officer to 2007 Callison Highway.”

Operator: “What’s wrong?”

Sweatt: “Oh, I’m just stressed out and I’m about to take my life. I mean…”

” Operator: “What’s your name?”

Sweatt: “It’s unknown.”

Operator: “Do you have a weapon with you?”

Sweatt: “Huh?”

Operator: “Do you have a weapon with you?”

Sweatt: “Yes.”

Operator: “What do you have, sir?”

Sweatt: “A .44″ [Sweatt tells someone to "get in there."] [Victim says "Don't point that at me."]

Operator: “What’s going on?” [Hangs up.]

Dispatch then received a second 911 call from a neighbor’s house, where the surviving children had fled, stating that their mother had been shot.

*     *     *     *     *

Conspicuously absent from Sweatt’s pleas for help is any concern whatsoever for anyone other than himself. He repeatedly asks for someone to keep him from “hurting himself” but seems utterly unconcerned with the fate of those that he ultimately murders. This extreme self-absorption is very troubling but is really not surprising in that it seems to be the very essence of the narcissistic criminal mind. Self-absorption, of course, is a marked characteristic of adolescence, and the chronic selfishness of the career criminal suggests that these pariahs have been unable to mature into adulthood.

Sweatt’s selfishness has not only taken the lives of five people and left his 7-month old daughter without parents; it has stunned an entire community.

A neighbor, Jeff Hicks, had known Chandra Field’s parents, Richard and Melissa Fields, for several years and described them as “good people.” 

“They always had kids in their yard,” Hicks said. “The kids must have really loved them because they stayed here all the time.”

According to Hicks, he had met Sweatt but they never conversed. “He was just by himself, kind of like a loner.”

Hicks’ home is about 100 yards from the shooting scene, and Hicks said he was home with his daughter Tuesday night when a friend called and warned him not to leave because hostages were being held prisoner in a nearby residence.

As the community attempts to recover, Samantha Parente — who is no doubt voicing the opinion and anguish of much of the community — said she is worried about how her family, including her children, will now cope.

“You see something like this on the news and of course, it’s always somewhere else. And so you think it would never happen here, my kids are free to play outside because we feel safe.”

“Now, it’s scary,” she said. “We definitely have lost that sense of security, for our children, especially.”

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It seems like it’s been open season on children lately. But perhaps it’s always been that way. Some historians believe that in ancient Greece it was standard procedure to take unwanted children out into the wilderness where they would be dropped off to be savaged by wild animals or, if they were lucky, expire due to exposure.

Was that perhaps a sensible, albeit cruel, way of dealing with unwanted children? Well, probably not, but the fact remains that a surprising number of mothers in the modern world apparently resort to murdering their children and then trying to cover it up simply because they don’t want them.

Most of these unsuitable mothers are, of course, apprehended soon after the killings, but there are always the select few who escape detection and go on about their business, sometimes only to repeat their criminal acts.

A Michigan woman, Janice Summerfield, 77, may be one of these multiple murderesses. On the other hand, she may only be responsible for the killing of her baby boy, 8-month-old William Earl Summerfield III, in 1961. there’s a slim cghance she’s not responsible for killing anyone.

So how and why has Janice’s confession come about after all these years? Not an easy question to answer but thanks to one of Janice’s surviving children, Paula Gastian, 54, of Battle Creek, Michigan, at least we have a better sense of what may have actually transpired.

William Summerfield goes to prison

Paula reports that she was raised in an abusive home. Her mother Janice used drugs and neglected Paula and her siblings. Their father, William Summerfield, 86, a truck driver, was no knight in shining armor. He was often on the road and was guilty of molesting a child on at least one occasion which led to him being sentenced to prison in September of this year.

Paula and her two surviving brothers have wondered about the death of William III in 1961 and eight and nine years later, the death of their twin sisters, who died as small children.

Trace Christenson of Michigan.com writes:

Beth Summerfield was 3 months and 15 days old when she died May 1, 1969. Her sister, Brenda, was 11 months and 14 days old when she died Jan. 1, 1970.

Both girls died while the family was living in Battle Creek and death certificates for them list bilateral pneumonitis (lung disease) as the cause of death.

Oddly enough, the unveiling of the apparent truth about the death of William III occurred at Janice’s nursing home the day after Paula’s father was sentenced to prison. Paula went to the nursing home that day to talk to Janice because she had been informed by the staff that “her mother had been making statements to nursing home staff about her role in a killing.”

Paula had always been suspicious that her mother was somehow responsible for the deaths of Beth and Brenda. She would have been about 9 years old in 1969 and had always suspected that they had died of neglect. Thus, when she went to the nursing home, she anticipated finding out the truth about how and why her tiny twin sisters had died.

In an interview, Paula states:

“The day after the sentence I told her I want to talk about the babies. I expected it to be the twins. She was quiet and then she said his name. I don’t know how I stayed calm.

“I was not ready for her to tell me that she killed my little brother. I was completely blown away. She said she smothered him. She covered him up with a blanket and smothered him. ‘I killed him.’ It came out of her mouth. ‘I killed him.’”

“I asked if she had told anyone and she said she told my dad. He just told her, ‘Well I haven’t been there for you and I guess life goes on.’”

In their conversation, which Paula recorded, Janice Summerfield said the stress of raising three small children alone was too much.

“She said my dad drove trucks and was gone a lot and she couldn’t take it. My brother was 4, I was 2 and Billy was 8 months old.”

Following Janice’s confession, Paula spoke to Detective Steve Hinkley of the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Department and told her about her mother’s confession.

William III’s tiny casket was then exhumed and his remains are now at a morgue at Western Michigan University to be analyzed.

Detective Hinkley has been fairly tight-lipped but did confirm that the department has opened a homicide investigation pending the results of William III’s autopsy. He also stated that Janice confessed to him that she had smothered her son.

In a further strange but perhaps understandable twist, after her mother’s confession, Paula arranged for her to be interviewed by the Battle Creek Enquirer. The interview took place in the dining room of her nursing home, and at first Janice backtracked, denying that she had killed anyone, stating that she had been “coerced into confessing a few days before.”

At her interview, Janice was initially in denial, telling the Enquirer that “she was taken to a dark, quiet place”:

“The doctor would come in and say open your eyes so you can sign this piece of paper. They made me confess. When I came out of that darkness my mind was not working right. That darkness did something to my brain. I couldn’t stop talking. I talked all the time.”

She then told the Enquirer reporter that she didn’t want to talk anymore that day.

The next day Janice had a change of heart and left messages with the Enquirer admitting she had killed William III:

“What they said is true. Everything Paula told you is true.”

“I killed that baby. My mind wasn’t right. I killed that baby. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Phil Summerfield

The fact that Janice smothered William III is bad enough but what adds to the horror is the fact that she blamed his death on Paula’s older brother Phil Summerfield. Phil, who is now 58 and lives in Huntsville, AL recalls vividly waking up that spring morning and finding little William cold and dead in bed with him:

“After she allegedly smothered the baby she put the baby in bed with me. I was shy of 5 years old. I woke and he was dead. I picked him up and took him downstairs. She told me it was my fault.”

As a little child, Phil of course believed Janice and the guilt has scarred him for the rest of his life. That and the abuse he and his siblings suffered:

“We were knocked down and thrown down steps. That was just another part of the abuse. I learned to survive and I did my best to help Paula survive and then the twins. I was in school when the twins went. I thought I didn’t do a very good job.”

Phil was not the only child wrongly blamed for the death of a child. Paula was castigated for the death of sister Brenda who was found dead on New Year’s Day in 1970.

The proximate cause of Brenda’s death may have been Janice putting the child in a room upstairs without heat. Paula remembers:

Paula Gastian

“She put a hat on her and she was sleeping in a tiny crib. The next morning (mother) went upstairs and she yelled and came stumbling down the stairs and came over to me saying it is all your fault. If you had slept up there she wouldn’t have died. My brother and uncle carried the crib downstairs.

“She was good at blaming other people. She blamed me that morning and I was 10 years old. I blamed myself for years.”

Both Paula and Phil say that they have lost most of their feelings for their mother.

“I am kind of numb,” Phil said. “There was no angry process. I have distanced myself from (her). The last time I talked to her was two years ago on my birthday and she called to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and I hung up the phone. I don’t have any feelings for her. There is no anger. There is nothing.

“I had a dream one night that I was choking her and had my fingers on her throat and her life was leaving her. But I don’t know that I will ever go through an anger stage. We had to learn as children to be void of emotions because they caused a lot more punishment.”

Paula says that her “great fear now is that investigators won’t be able to find the cause of death to support their mother’s confession.”

Nonetheless, Paula doesn’t want to see Janice go to prison:

“I don’t want to see her go to prison. But it needs to be put on record. She needs to be somewhere for what she has done.

“It is just such a relief. I am sick of living with secrets.”

* * * * *

In trying to view this mournful tale objectively, one thing is crystal clear. Janice Summerfield had way too many children. Abortion was decriminalized in the United States in the mid-1960s and the early 1970s and since then, untold numbers of unwanted children have not been born. Some would say this is a crime; others would say it’s a good thing.

This sticky issue can be largely avoided, however, merely by using birth control. And with that I will briefly join Paula and Phil as they once again mourn the lost lives of their loved ones.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well not really. You killed her and now you’re dead and your two little boys are scarred for life. Good job, Keith… (This is the Jim Rome voice.)

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

by Patrick H. Moore

The Alphabet Serial Killer Joseph Naso enjoyed one helluva run but even his luck ran out when a Marin County jury recommended the death penalty for the 79-year-old former photographer convicted of the decades-old killings of four Northern California women. Naso, who represented himself at the trial, asked the jury to spare his life but to no avail. He will be formally sentenced at a later date by Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet.

Why the peculiar nickname Alphabet Murders? A brief history lesson is in order:

The first phase of the “Alphabet Murders” (also known as the “double initial murders”) took place in the early 1970s in and around Rochester, New York, where three young girls were raped and strangled. Each of the girls’ first and last names started with the same letter and each body was found in a town whose name started with the same letter as each girl’s name (Carmen Colon’s body was found in Churchville, Wanda Walkowicz’s in Webster and Michelle Maenza’s in Macedon).

The Rochester Victims

Carmen Colon, 10, disappeared on November 16, 1971. She was found two days later, 12 miles from where she was last seen. Although her body was discovered in the town of Riga, the village of Churchville is the town’s center, and the town of Chili is nearby.

Wanda Walkowicz, 11, disappeared on April 2, 1973. Her body was found the next day at a rest area off State Route 104 in Webster, seven miles from Rochester.

Michelle Maenza, 11, disappeared almost eight months later on November 26, 1973. She was found two days later in Macedon, 15 miles from Rochester.

The Suspects

While hundreds of people were questioned, the killer was never caught. One man, considered to be a “person of interest” (he committed suicide six weeks after the last of the murders), was cleared in 2007 by DNA testing. In the case of Carmen Colon, her uncle was also considered a suspect until his suicide in 1991.

Kenneth Bianchi, who at the time was an ice cream vendor in Rochester at vending sites close to the first two murder scenes, was also a suspect. If you recognize Bianchi’s name, it’s because he later moved to Los Angeles, and in tandem with his cousin Angelo Buono, Jr., committed the Hillside Strangler murders between 1977 and 1978. Bianchi was never charged with the alphabet murders, and has tried repeatedly to have investigators officially clear him but to no avail. There is circumstantial evidence that his car was seen at two of the murder scenes and he remains under suspicion.

The California Alphabet Murders

The man convicted of the four California Alphabet Murders, which also date back to the 1970s, 79-year-old Joseph Naso, was  a New York native who lived in Rochester in the 1970s. He was arrested in Reno, Nevada on April 11, 2011. The California murder victims, like the New York victims, all had double initials: Roxene Roggasch, Pamela Parsons, Tracy Tofoya, and Carmen Colon (a different Carmen Colon than the Rochester, NY victim.) All four women have been described by authorities as prostitutes. Naso is also considered a “person of interest” in the New York Alphabet Murders . In his preliminary hearing in Marin County, CA, on January 12, 2012, his alleged “rape diary” was entered into evidence. It mentioned the death of a girl in the “Buffalo woods,” a probable allusion to Upstate New York. Naso was a professional photographer who traveled between New York and California extensively for decades.

Solving the Crime

The four killings were cold cases until 2009, when probation officers in Reno, Nev., conducted a routine firearms search of Naso’s home, who was on probation at the time for a felony larceny conviction in California. Inside his house, a macabre collection of evidence was discovered that led to his conviction. Naso apparently was a collector of sorts who was obsessed with the collectings references to the murders that he had committed. Police found a “List of 10″ featuring references to the killings, photographs of women appearing drugged or dead, and a journal with detailed descriptions of rape and violence toward underage girls and women.

• No. 3 on Naso’s list was “Girl from Loganitas,” who prosecutors believe was Roggasch. Her body was found near Lagunitas, a small town near the coast in Marin County. Court documents show Naso might have used his then-wife’s panty hose to strangle Roggasch in 1977.

• No. 2 on the list was “Girl near Port Costa.” Colon’s decomposed body was found in 1978 near Port Costa in Contra Costa County. Authorities have said DNA evidence collected from her fingernails tied Naso to her slaying.

• Parsons was found in 1993 in Yuba City, where Naso was living at the time with his son. Prosecutors presented evidence during the trial that Naso had photographed Parsons.

• Tafoya was also killed in Yuba City while Naso lived there. Her body was found on the side of Highway 70 near Marysville Cemetery in 1994.

Investigators also found news clippings of the slayings in Naso’s safe deposit box.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the prosecutors also presented evidence tying Naso to the unsolved killings of Sharileea Patton, whose body washed ashore in Tiburon in 1981, and Sara Dylan, a Bob Dylan groupie whose skull was found near Nevada County in 1992. Naso was not charged in those cases.

Naso was convicted of the murders on August 20, 2013. After hearing closing arguments from Naso, who said he “was not the monster that killed these women,” and from the prosecutors, who — in arguing for the death sentence — had presented grisly photos of the lifeless bodies, the jurors deliberated for a mere four hours before deciding on the death sentence. Naso will be formally sentenced at a later date by Marin County Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet.

*     *     *     *     *

It should be noted that even if Judge Sweet agrees with the jurors and sentences Naso to death, it is rather unlikely that he will actually be executed. There are 725 inmates already on California’s Death Row and executions have been on hold since 2006, when a federal judge ordered an overhaul of California’s execution protocol.

It will take at least another year for prison officials to properly adopt the state’s new single-drug execution method and have it cleared by the judge.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We all know that being a teen is tough. You’re experiencing beaucoup physical and emotional changes and to make it worse you tend by be more self-conscious than you’ll be at any other time during your life. Therefore, you tend to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at yourself in the mirror questioning your features while striving to make your hair perfect.

This roughly describes the apparent feelings of an unidentified 14-year-old female student in Stockton, California in August. Isha Iran of Jezebel writes:

A physical education teacher in Stockton, California, has been charged with a misdemeanor corporal injury to a child after attempting to force a 14-year-old student into a pool by dragging her.

Any Graff of The Mommy Files explains why the student didn’t want to get into the pool:

The story goes that the unnamed student planned to attend a special event that night and had her hair done in the morning. She didn’t want to ruin her hairstyle by swimming during gym class and refused to jump into the water.

My first response to this is to attempt to put this in context. Suppose you’re an adult… No one and I mean no one is going to force you – whether by physical force or psychological coercion – to get into the pool against your will. In fact, if you’d just had your hair done for a special occasion, I can almost guarantee that you wouldn’t be at the pool in the first place. Hell no! Au contraire, you’d be carefully protecting your lovely hair so that it shines with a splendor all its own at the evening’s festivities.

So as you can see, our 14-year-old heroine was at a distinct disadvantage. She was a kid. Although she didn’t have to work for a living, she had to follow her P.E. teacher’s orders or RISK GETTING MARKED DOWN. Or at least that’s what one would suppose.

The P.E. teacher, a man named Danny Peterson, however, didn’t see it this way. Perhaps he thought for a moment that he was a police officer or a prison guard and that the child was a criminal thus behooving him to use violence to maintain order.

In any event, he grabbed the girl by the arms (and then later by the feet) and started dragging her across the cement apron toward the pool, his plan obviously being to toss her bodily into the water. The girl reacted with great displeasure screaming in protest, fully determined to not be tossed into the water. She kicks and screams and to make matters worse is deathly afraid that her top is going to come off. The P.E. teacher just keeps dragging even though it’s obvious that the child is not about to give up. This goes on for a very long 95 seconds, as recorded for posterity on another student’s phone.

Amy Graff writes with far more decorum and less heat than I am feeling:

Patterson was adamant that the student needed to participate and dragged her across the tile deck before forcing her into the water. Wearing only swim shorts and a bikini top, the girl kicks and screams while being pulled toward the pool and screams that her top is falling off. Another students hits the teacher with a kick board and another throws water.

In addition, based on the video, the remarkable thing is that one or possibly two other students come to the girl’s aid and – standing above her – wrap their ankles around her ankle/leg holding her there so that Peterson can’t make any headway in his moronic plan to toss her forcefully into the pool. At some point, however, the girl’s helpers peel off leaving only the girl struggling with all her might to resist Peterson.

Isha Iran writes:

This is something that would have warranted a failing participation grade for the day and an eye roll at worst. But instead of dealing with the situation like rational figure of authority in a high school setting, Danny Peterson used physical force, dragging her by her arms and feet in an attempt to get her into the water.

When Peterson’s misuse of authority was reported to the authorities, he was immediately put on paid leave for one month before being reassigned to another school. Now, however, since the misdemeanor charge was filed, he has once again been put on paid leave.

Stockton attorney, Gilbert Somera, who is representing the girl’s family stated with impeccable logic that by Peterson “should have punished the girl academically instead of resorting to physical force.”

“This isn’t a situation where she’s attacking a teacher, and he’s defending himself. When a woman or a 14-year-old girl says no, it means no,” Somera said.

* * * * *

Considering the length and relative ferocity of the assault, I’m somewhat surprised Danny Peterson is only charged with a misdemeanor, and I suspect that it might possibly be a felony if it wasn’t for the fact he was a teacher. That being said, I’m aware that many will feel that the girl was unreasonable in refusing to get in the pool, but Peterson over-reacted in such a grotesque fashion that it suggests that he is the last person who should be put in any position of authority. He probably wouldn’t treat his dog as shabbily as he treated this child. Then again, he might.

Meanwhile, it’s heartening to see many of the students coming to the victim’s defense. I suspect most of them were shocked to see Peterson run amuck in such dramatic fashion.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Although it doesn’t exist in reality, it almost seems that there is a nationwide conspiracy among child abusers to come up with new and creative ways to abuse children. A recent alleged abuser, Adam Morton, 27, of Berlin, New Hampshire appears to have come up with a novel form of abuse that was very painful to the victim and virtually effortless on his part. He merely placed the victim in his girlfriend’s clothes dryer, turned it on and gave the boy a “ride”.

The 2-year-old boy had second-degree burns on his back and arms, blisters on his feet, and bruises all over his body. The burn pattern allegedly matched the drum of a clothes dryer and there was a series of cuts and lacerations that matched the bolts on the inside of the appliance, according to a probable cause affidavit filed by Bangor detective Tim Shaw.

Nok-Noi Ricker of the Bangor Daily News writes:

A New Hampshire man accused of placing his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son in a clothing dryer at her Bangor home last month and turning on the machine remained behind bars Monday.

Adam Morton, 27, of Berlin, New Hampshire, was charged with aggravated assault Aug. 28 and remained in custody at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor.

“Mr. Morton admitted that on August 2, 2014, he put [the boy] into the dryer, shut the door and turned it on,” Shaw wrote in the affidavit, referring to the injured child. “He stated that [the child] was not in the dryer for very long. He indicated that the dryer made only one revolution.”

Now the ghastly truth is, if the child was actually in the dryer for only one revolution, it seems unlikely that he would have sustained second-degree burns as well as the other damage unless the perp had warmed the dryer up for quite a period of time so that it was RED-HOT. Furthermore, if the child was really only taken on a one-revolution ride, the dryer probably wouldn’t have picked up enough speed to cause “bruises all over his body”, etc. Therefore, I suspect the poor child was probably in the dryer for a lot longer than one revolution.

In fact, Dr. Lawrence Ricci, a Portland physician who consults with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services in child abuse and neglect cases, told the police:

“Based on an analysis of the lesions, this trauma could only have occurred inside the dryer. It is also likely that the child was in the dryer for a fairly prolonged period of time, and the dryer, indeed, may have been turning.”

In order to see for themselves, the police tested the dryer and determined it could reach temperatures of up to 180 degrees by running for three minutes.

At the time of the alleged crime, the child’s 24-year-old mother, whose name has apparently not been revealed, had recently split up with the father of the victim and his three older siblings, and had been dating Morton for only a short period of time.

The child’s mother returned home from work at around 4 p.m. on Aug. 2, only to discover her two-year-old was badly injured. She immediately took him to the emergency room at Eastern Maine Medical Center.

The mother does not believe, however, that her new boyfriend is the one who subjected her child to this torture. Nok-Noi Ricker writes:

“For me, I don’t believe for a second Adam did it,” the mother said Monday, standing on the front steps of her apartment holding her scarred child. “It just doesn’t make sense to me. For me, [the evidence is] inconclusive.”

“Somebody had to do something to him. He was really beat up,” she said later. “He has three older brothers, and boys get crazy and play rough.”

It is the mother’s contention that the police pressured Morton into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit:

“The detective said things would go a lot smoother if he confessed. It was weeks of pressure. It wasn’t just two interviews. I told him to get a polygraph. I told him not to confess to something you never did.”

“It’s not because of my feeling for Adam. It just doesn’t make sense. I can’t explain what happened. I can’t explain how he got the burns.”

Detective Josh Kuhn and Tim Shaw reportedly interviewed Morton twice in Berlin, New Hampshire, where he moved to from Bangor shortly after the incident. Morton apparently confessed on August 27th.

“I asked him if he ‘snapped,’ he told me he did,” Shaw wrote. “He stated he was remorseful and regretted that it had ever happened.”

According to the affidavit, Morton’s story changed several times during the course of the questioning. He initially said he did a load of laundry while he took a shower. At another point, he accused the older boys of injuring the child before finally admitting to the aggravated felony assault that could result in up to 10 years in prison.

The mother’s protestations notwithstanding, I suspect that Morton did put the child in the dryer, turned it on and left him there for way too long.

Although his bail is only $2,500, Morton has been unable to post it and remains in jail at present. Superior Court Justice Ann Murray has barred him from contacting any children under the age of 6.

As is often the situation in cases of this nature, Morton is likely to be indicted by the Grand Jury, and was not asked to enter a plea at his initial appearance.

The victim and his three brothers are reportedly still living in Bangor with their mother.

The boy’s father, Mike Sousa of New Hampshire, feels that a potential 10-year prison stretch is hardly sufficient for a crime of this magnitude.

“The charges were aggravated assault, which I kinda question. If he’s a 30-year-old man, and my son is a 2-year-old boy and he admits to putting him in a dryer. I don’t know what world we live in today, but that’s definitely … attempted murder at least.”
Sousa justified his opinion, in part, by describing the boy’s injuries:

“It was really awful. There was like a yellow pus on his really bad burn on his [right] elbow, and it stretched [across his back] to his left shoulder blade.

* * * * *

It goes without saying that what Morton did is really awful (assuming he is guilty). What I also find to be of concern is the fact the victim’s mother entrusted the care of her four boys to Morton when she hardly knew him. As any experienced parent knows all too well, trying to keep four lively boys in check is no easy task, especially when they don’t know you and may, in fact, be suspicious of the fact you are “getting naked” with their mother. Just a bad situation all around.

I am curious, however, as to what Morton was thinking. Did it really think he was going to get away with it? This assumes guilt, of course, but it seems somewhat unlikely that he would have confessed to a crime this serious if he were innocent, no matter how hard the police leaned on him.

Update:

The Penobscot County district attorney says a jury on Wednesday indicted Adam Morton, of Berlin, on aggravated assault charges. The boy suffered burns and blisters due to the incident.

Police say Morton admitted he put the toddler inside the dryer but said it was for only one revolution of the drum. A doctor who examined the boy told police he was in the dryer for a prolonged period.

by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

According to writer Jennifer Grise:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to read:

Eight Awful Quotes by Richard Ramirez, Night Stalker

My Tulsa neighborhood near 1st Street and 168th East Avenue is reeling in shock today. Yesterday was an ordinary day in the neighborhood until a very strange thing happened. I was changing my 1-year-old’s diaper when my 3-year-old came in carrying a handgun. It was a fine gun, my husband served in the military and he knew his firearms. Somehow my little guy found it and I was about to tell him to put it down immediately when he shot me through the head.

When you die, it doesn’t happen all at once. You kind of hang around for a while, and though I couldn’t see things that clearly, I could see enough to know that everyone was very upset. A homicide detective with the Tulsa police named Dave was beside himself and kept saying:

“It was a horrible, horrible accident.”

But what was breaking my heart was the fact my little guy knew he had made a big mistake. He just wasn’t sure yet how big a mistake. When the police came, they realized he was the only possible suspect, since I didn’t shoot myself in the head. So I had to watch from the other side as they loaded my little guy into a police patrol car and drove him off to be interviewed by child specialists who will try to get him to describe what happened. Actually, he was saying all that needs to be said as they were taking him away. “Mommy shot! Mommy shot!” he kept saying over and over again

My mother-in-law, who lived with us, found me bleeding when she came home yesterday at 4:30. She called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital but it was too late.

My husband was working when my son shot me. I don’t think he knew what had happened until he got home about 8:00 o’clock and heard the awful news. I know that he’ll never be the same and I don’t think my son will either. And of course we know that I’ll never be the same.

What was most heartbreaking was how scared my son was. He tried his best to scram when his grandmother got home but he didn’t get away in time. But I like to think that much as he wanted to leave, he also wanted to stay there with me.

I heard the police talking and they were trying to figure out how my son got his hands on the gun. They said our house looked pretty kid-proof and they’re right – it is — except for the gun which was in an open holster lying on a coffee table in the living room.

I don’t understand why this had to happen. I just don’t. What cruel fate devised this terrible end to my life and this life sentence of anguish for my son and husband? Maybe where I’m going somebody – if there are any somebodies – will be able to explain it to me.

Good-bye, dear family. I wish I could help you but I can’t. And I don’t picture myself a ghost hanging around making everyone nervous. So this is Christa Engles signing off.

by Darcia Helle

Allow me to tell you a story about a woman born into the most dismal of circumstances. Her mother is a young teen when she marries a violent man. He is soon arrested and convicted of the rape and attempted murder of a 7-year-old girl. By some reports, her father is schizophrenic. Her mother decides parenting is too difficult and soon abandons her.

Life gets no better for this woman. She’s never given a chance to succeed. Under these circumstances, it’s human nature to feel sympathy for this woman right?

Now what if I tell you this woman became a serial killer? Does that change how you feel about her?

This woman’s name is Aileen Carol Wuornos, and she is considered our most famous female serial killer. She was born in Rochester, Michigan on February 29, 1956. She confessed to, and was put to death for, the murders of six men.

Aileen’s history is murky, surrounded by half-truths and suppositions. The truth is bad enough and needs no distortion. Her parents – Diane Wuornos and Leo Dale Pittman – were married in1954. Sources differ on Diane’s age at the time; she was either 14 or 15-years-old. All sources agree that Pittman was a violent man. He had beaten his grandmother repeatedly, and his favorite pastime as an adolescent was to tie the tails of two cats together, sling them over a clothesline, and watch them fight.

Diane gave birth to Aileen’s older brother Keith in 1955. She promptly became pregnant again but, two months before Aileen was born, Leo Dale Pittman vanished from their  lives forever. Here again accounts differ. Most state that Pittman had been arrested and went to prison, though at least one source has him enlisted in the military in order to avoid petty criminal charges. Either way, Diane left him and Aileen never met her father. At some point, Pittman was arrested for and convicted of the rape and attempted murder of a 7-year-old girl. He died in prison in 1969. Most sources say he hung himself, although there are also rumors that he was strangled by another inmate.

While still a young teenager, Diane found herself the single parent of two babies, and the ex-wife of a child rapist. Those early years appear to have been disastrous for all involved. Unable to cope with her responsibilities, Diane handed Aileen and Keith over to her parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos. Aileen was four-years-old.

Lauri and Britta raised their two grandchildren alongside their other children. Oddly, Keith and Aileen believed Lauri and Britta were their parents. No clear explanation seems to exist as to how or why these two children were able to simply forget the woman they’d call Mommy so completely.

Britta Wuornos was an alcoholic. Some accounts describe her as “strict”, while others call her abusive. Lauri Wuornos had little patience and would often whip Aileen with his belt. The environment was far from ideal for two young and troubled children. In 1962, when Aileen was six, she and her brother Keith used lighter fluid to set fires. Aileen was badly burned on one occasion and left with permanent scarring.

Some sources say Aileen was selling sexual favors at school by the age of nine, though this information is sketchy and probably not reliable.

Aileen Wuornos claimed that both Lauri and Keith sexually abused her from an early age. There is, of course, no firm evidence for this. Neither her grandfather nor her brother ever made any such admissions, and Aileen did not have the kind of family or social support she needed to turn to for help.

At around the age of 12, Aileen discovered that Mom and Dad were actually her grandparents. This information caused even further turmoil in the children’s lives. They acted out, but no rational adult stepped in to help.

When she was just 14-years-old, Aileen became pregnant. She claimed Keith was the father, though, again, there is no proof of this. She was sent away to a home for unwed mothers and, in 1971, gave birth to a boy who was put up for adoption.

In July of 1971, shortly after Aileen gave birth, Britta Wuornos died of apparent liver failure due to alcohol abuse. Lauri wanted nothing to do with raising his grandchildren alone, and insisted Keith and Aileen be made wards of the state. The two were removed from the home, and soon afterward Aileen ran away. With no education, no family or friends to help her, and no reasonable means of supporting herself, Aileen turned to petty crime and prostitution.

In May of 1974, at the age of 18, Aileen was arrested for disorderly conduct, drunk driving, and firing a weapon from a vehicle. And this was only the beginning.

Within the next couple of years, Aileen’s brother Keith died of throat cancer and her grandfather committed suicide. Aileen was 20-years-old and completely alone, so she stuck out her thumb and took to life on the road.

While out hitchhiking, Aileen was picked up by a 69-year-old, wealthy yacht club president named Lewis Fell. He was love-struck and almost immediately proposed, which might have been the only bit of luck Aileen ever experienced. They were married in Georgia, with the wedding announcement even making it into the society pages. But Aileen was unable to settle into married life. She got into bar fights and was soon arrested for assault. Approximately one month after the wedding, Lewis Fell realized his mistake and had their marriage annulled. In his divorce petition, Fell claimed Aileen had beaten him with his cane.

Aileen continued along her path of destruction for the next decade. She drank too much, did drugs, sold her body, committed robbery, and vandalized property. In 1981, she was so distraught over the breakup with her boyfriend that she planned to commit suicide. She bought a gun and got drunk in preparation, but then changed her mind and instead robbed a grocery store while wearing her bikini. She was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. After serving 18 months, she was released from prison and went to live with one of her male prison pen pals. This relationship didn’t work, and Aileen was once again on her own.

Aileen was lonely and angry at the world when, in 1986, she met 24-year-old Tyria Moore at a biker bar in Florida. Their attraction was instant and mutual. Aileen went home with Tyria that evening, and the two spent the entire weekend in Tyria’s bedroom. From then on, the two were inseparable. Tyria, known as Ty, provided the unconditional love Aileen had been missing all her life. For a time, Aileen seemed to find an anchor in the raging sea of her life.

But her fairytale was not all bliss. The couple led a nomadic lifestyle, sleeping in cheap motels or in the woods. Aileen continued selling her body for money to survive. While Ty later claimed begged Aileen to stop prostituting herself, there is no evidence that she made an effort to help support them in any way, legal or otherwise. In fact, at the start of their relationship, Ty quit her job in order to spend more time with Aileen. While Aileen was out hooking to buy them food, Ty was typically at the bars drinking away what little money they had.

After a few years of this, Aileen was struggling to support them. Money was tight and problems arose. Aileen feared that Ty would abandon her, as everyone else in her life had. She felt desperate and would do anything to hold on to the one person that she’d ever truly loved. This volatile mix of emotions led Aileen straight to the crisis she’d been working toward all her life.

On November 30, 1989, in Tampa, Florida, Aileen was picked up by Richard Mallory. And this is where it all goes horribly wrong. Until shortly before her execution, Aileen maintained that Mallory tried to rape her, and that she shot him in self-defense. Mallory was known to frequently pick up prostitutes along the interstate. He also had a criminal record, having been convicted of rape in the past, but this information was not introduced when Aileen was eventually brought to trial. Regardless of any initial intent, on that day in November, Aileen shot Mallory three, or possibly four times, stole his money and his car, and drove straight back to Ty.

Aileen told Ty about the murder right away, though Ty later claimed she hadn’t believed her. Still, Tyria didn’t appear worried about where the money and car had come from. The two women packed up Mallory’s Cadillac that night and left the motel in a hurry. Once they’d relocated, they wiped their prints from the car and ditched it near Daytona.

After Mallory’s murder, life for Aileen and Tyria returned to their version of normal. Even so, their lack of money was always a point of stress for Aileen. When Tyria’s sister came to stay with them, Aileen was convinced Ty would leave with her sister and go back to Ohio. Jealousy, fear, insecurity, and anger pushed Aileen over the edge. During that three-week period, she robbed, shot, and killed three more men.

On July 4th, 1990, Aileen and Tyria, during a particularly heated argument, crashed the car they were driving in Orange Springs, Florida. They fled the scene on foot, but a witness described both women to the police. The vehicle they’d wrecked belonged to Peter Siems, a missing 65-year-old retired merchant seaman. The interior of the car showed signs of a struggle. Police obtained a number of palm and fingerprints from the car, and the women’s descriptions were circulated throughout Florida.

Eventually, police connected the murders, realizing they had a female serial killer on the loose. By mid-December, 1990, a number of leads led them to Tyria Moore. They also had three other names – Lee Blahovec, Lori Grody and Cammie Marsh Greene – all of which matched the description of the second woman. When Aileen used her Cammie Marsh Greene ID to pawn a camera that had belonged to Richard Mallory, she was required by law to provide fingerprint identification. She later pawned a set of tools matching the description of those missing from David Spears’ truck. Those fingerprints from the pawn shops matched fingerprints taken from the crashed car belonging to Peter Siems. The information was passed on to the National Crime Information Center, where they were able to connect Aileen Wuornos’s name to the three aliases. By January 5, 1991, the police finally had names for their suspected serial killing females and were ready to move in.

By this time, Aileen had lost her struggle to hold on to Tyria. Devastated over the breakup, Aileen was once again on her own.

On January 8, 1991, two undercover cops spotted Aileen at the Port Orange Pub. They bought her a few beers and later offered her a ride, which she declined. She left the pub around 10 p.m., and they followed her to a biker bar called The Last Resort. There the undercover cops sat with her and bought her a few more beers. The cops left at midnight, but kept Aileen under surveillance. She spent her last night as a free woman sleeping on an old car seat at The Last Resort.

The following afternoon, the decision was made to arrest Aileen rather than to risk losing her. The two undercover cops offered to let Aileen use their motel room to clean up. She accepted the offer, but when she walked out of the bar with them she was arrested on what police told her was an outstanding warrant for Lori Grody, one of her aliases. They did not let on that they knew her true identity. No mention was made of the murders, and the media was not told that Aileen was their suspected serial killer. The police were being extra cautious because they had no murder weapon and had yet to find Tyria Moore.

The following day, on January 10, 1991, Tyria was found. She’d been living with her sister in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Tyria was read her rights but not arrested or charged with a crime. In short order, Tyria gave Aileen up as the killer. Despite later interviews where she claimed not to have believed Aileen’s first murder confession, Tyria told the cops she’d known about the murders from the very beginning. “I told her I didn’t want to hear about it,” she told the police. “And then any time she would come home after that and say certain things, telling me about where she got something, I’d say I don’t want to hear it.”

The next day, Tyria Moore went back to Florida along with the police, not as a criminal, but as a witness to help them ensure Aileen Wuornos’s conviction.

Tyria was put in a motel in Daytona and told to contact Aileen at the prison. Her cover story was that her mother had given her money to come back down to Florida in order to pick up the rest of her belongings. Phone conversations were taped, and Tyria was instructed to tell Aileen the police had been questioning her family about her and the Florida murders.

The first call was made on January 14. Aileen had yet to be charged or even questioned about the murders, and remained under the impression that she’d only been arrested for a weapons violation under the alias of Lori Grody. When Tyria voiced her concerns, as scripted by the police, Aileen reassured her, saying, “I’m only here for that concealed weapons charge in ’86 and a traffic ticket, and I tell you what, man, I read the newspaper, and I wasn’t one of those little suspects.” Aware that prison phones were monitored, Aileen did her best to speak in code. She went on to say, “I think somebody at work – where you worked at – said something that it looked like us. And it isn’t us, see? It’s a case of mistaken identity.”

The calls continued for three days and Tyria played Aileen well. Knowing Aileen would do anything to keep her safe, and to keep her love, Tyria used that advantage as she cried and even suggested she should just kill herself. In listening to the conversations, it seems apparent that Aileen knew something wasn’t right. She even asked Tyria if someone was with her during the conversations. Tyria naturally denied any such thing and played up her fear skillfully. She begged Aileen to tell the cops the truth. On the morning of January 16, 1991, Aileen did just that and confessed to killing six men.

Throughout Aileen’s confession to police, she reiterated two points. First, she adamantly declared Tyria Moore innocent, taking full blame and responsibility for the six murders. The men she admitted to killing were: Richard Mallory, David Spears, Charles Carskaddan, Troy Buress, Dick Humphreys, and Walter Gino Antonio. She denied killing Peter Siems, whose murder police believe she’d committed but whose body was never found. The second point Aileen continually made was that none of it was her fault, not the murders and not the circumstances of her life leading up to them. She insisted all the men she’d killed were aggressive and had either assaulted, threatened, or raped her.

Her public defender, Michael O’Neill, continually advised Aileen to stop talking. She ignored him. Exasperated, he finally said to her, “Do you realize these guys are cops?” Her reply was, “I know. And they want to hang me. And that’s cool, because maybe, man, I deserve it. I just want to get this over with.”

Once the media picked up the story, Aileen Wuornos found instant infamy. Book and movie deals were offered to detectives, relatives, Tyria Moore, and Aileen herself. For a while, Aileen was the media darling and everyone wanted a piece of her. For the first time in her life, people were interested in what she had to say. She relished the limelight, and no doubt enjoyed perfecting and embellishing her story as she went along.

Within two weeks of her arrest, Wuornos and her attorney had sold movie rights to her story. Investigators did the same. Aileen Wuornos’s tragic life story resulted in several books, two movies, and even one opera, called Wuornos by Carla Lucero.

Aileen’s newfound fame brought her an unlikely champion for her cause. Arlene Pralle, a 44-year-old Born Again Christian, ran a horse breeding and boarding facility in Ocala, Florida. After seeing Aileen’s photo and story in the newspaper, Arlene wrote Aileen a letter that began, “My name is Arlene Pralle. I’m born-again. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but Jesus told me to write you.”

Arlene provided her phone number and, on January 30, Aileen called her collect. The two formed an instant bond. Arlene became Aileen’s confidant and defender. On Arlene’s advice, Aileen asked for and received new lawyers. The first public defense team, according to Arlene, was attempting to profit from Aileen’s story. She wanted Aileen to have lawyers who’d work hard to protect her, not to make money off her.

Arlene began speaking to media and tabloids. She appeared on talk shows and arranged interviews for Aileen. When asked about their relationship, Arlene said, “We’re like Jonathan and David in the Bible. It’s as though part of me is trapped in jail with her.” To another reporter, Arlene said, “If the world could know the real Aileen Wuornos, there’s not a jury that would convict her.”

On November 22, 1991, Arlene Pralle and her husband Robert legally adopted Aileen Wuornos because, according to Arlene, God told her to.

Through her defense team, Aileen agreed to plead guilty to the murders of six men in exchange for six consecutive life sentences. But the prosecution was determined to get the death penalty and wouldn’t make the deal. They decided to try her for the murder of Richard Mallory first, since that was their strongest case.

Aileen Wuornos’s trial began on January 14, 1992, with Judge Uriel Blount presiding. The combination of evidence and witnesses for the prosecution was damning. Dr. Arthur Botting, the medical examiner who’d autopsied Mallory, testified that Mallory had taken 10-20 minutes to die an excruciating death. Probably most difficult for Aileen was Tyria Moore’s testimony. Tyria told jurors that Aileen had not seemed upset, nervous, or drunk when she’d returned home and confessed to killing Mallory that day. Not once during her testimony did Tyria meet Aileen’s eyes.

Aileen was damned further by a Florida law called ‘Williams Rule’, which allows prosecution to introduce evidence from pending cases providing they demonstrate a criminal pattern. This enabled the prosecution to tell jurors about the other murders Aileen was suspected of committing, vividly painting her as a vicious serial killer.

Against her lawyer’s advice, Aileen insisted on testifying on her own behalf. The story she told the jury about the night she killed Richard Mallory barely resembled the initial story she’d told on her videotaped confession to police. She now claimed Mallory had raped, sodomized, and tortured her. When the inconsistencies of her story were pointed out on cross-examination, she became agitated and visibly angry. She invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination a total of 25 times.

On January 27, 1992, the jury took less than two hours to return with a verdict: guilty of first-degree murder. As the jury filed out of the courtroom, Aileen shouted, “I’m innocent! I was raped! I hope you get raped, scumbags of America!”

The penalty phase of Aileen’s trial began the following day. Expert defense witnesses testified that Aileen was mentally ill, that she suffered from borderline personality disorder, and that her tumultuous childhood had stunted her emotional growth. Jurors, though, were having none of it and unanimously recommended death. On January 31, 1992, Judge Uriel Blount sentenced Aileen Wuornos to death by electrocution.

That would turn out to be Aileen’s one and only trial. On March 31, she pleaded guilty to the murders of Troy Buress, Dick Humphreys, and David Spears. In her statement to the court, she said, “I wanted to confess to you that Richard Mallory did violently rape me, as I’ve told you. But these others did not. [They] only began to start to.” On May 15, Judge Thomas Sawaya gave Aileen three more death sentences.

In June of 1992, Aileen pleaded guilty to the murder of Charles Carskaddon, for which she received her fifth death sentence.

Finally, in February 1993, she pleaded guilty to the murder of Walter Gino Antonio and was sentenced to death for the sixth and final time.

No charges were brought for the murder of Peter Siems, whose body was never found and whom Aileen still maintained she had not killed.

When evidence was brought to light that Richard Mallory, Aileen’s first victim, had served 10 years in prison for rape, Aileen’s attorneys felt jurors would have viewed that case differently had they been told. For a time, there was speculation of a new trial. But that was not to be. Aileen’s conviction was upheld.

Once sentenced to death, Aileen never wavered in her request that her execution be carried out as soon as possible. For that to happen, she needed to convince the Supreme Court that she was sane and understood what she was asking. In her letter to the Florida Supreme Court, she wrote, “I’m one who seriously hates human life and would kill again.” About this time, Aileen also confessed to murdering Peter Siems, stating she’d killed all seven men for the money. She stressed that she was not a thrill killer as most serial killers were, and had only murdered the men in order to eliminate witnesses. She was a thief, not a killer. Despite confessing to this last murder, she never told anyone and didn’t appear to know the location of Siems’s body. During this same interview, she retracted her claim of killing Mallory in self-defense. She handed everything over in a tidy package so that her execution would not be delayed.

The Court reviewed her letter and all the information, and subsequently allowed Aileen to fire her attorneys and stop her appeals. She was also allowed to choose lethal injection over the electric chair as the manner in which she’d die.

Because the case remained in the media spotlight, Governor Jeb Bush issued a stay of execution and ordered a psychological exam. The execution of mentally ill inmates is against international law. After three psychiatrists deemed Aileen Wuornos sane and able to understand her situation, Bush lifted the stay.

The day before her execution, Aileen gave her final media interview to British producer Nick Broomfield, who had put together a documentary on Aileen in 1993. The interview so rattled Broomfield that, outside the prison afterward, he stated, “My conclusion from the interview is, today we are executing someone who is mad. Here is someone who has totally lost her mind.”

Aileen Wuornos refused her last meal. She was ready to die, resigned to her fate, and maybe even looked forward to the release death would bring.

At 9:47 a.m. on October 9, 2002, Aileen Wuornos was put to death at Florida State Prison. Her last words were, “I’d like to say I’m sailing with the Rock and I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back.”

In the end, Tyria Moore, the woman Aileen would and did do anything for, both betrayed and abandoned her. Arlene Pralle, her adoptive mother, also abandoned her, and didn’t even know Aileen’s execution date. The only person who remained by Aileen’s side until the end was a childhood friend. The two were committed pen pals throughout Aileen’s prison stay, and they spent some of Aileen’s last hours together

Tyria Moore was never charged with any crime. While it is likely Aileen did commit all the murders on her own, Tyria herself admits to knowing about them from the start. Had she immediately notified the police after Richard Mallory’s murder, Aileen would not have been free to keep killing. Had Tyria gotten a job and taken some financial pressure from Aileen, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Instead, Tyria played a passive-aggressive role, happy to live off the money Aileen brought home after robbing and killing her victims.

Tyria Moore was just the last in a steady line of people who failed Aileen, helping to turn her into the killer she became.

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

The Kidnapping of Mollie Digby: Was the Fair-Haired Stranger Actually Mollie?

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

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

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

The characters await you.

by BJW Nashe

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

What’s going on with these people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Five years ago on Thanksgiving in Jupiter, FLA a large extended family gathered at the home of Jim and Muriel Sitton and ate their fill of a traditional turkey dinner, after which they gathered round the piano to while away some happy hours singing and dancing.

Patrick Knight, who is now a Miami attorney, was there with his wife Lisa and her family. Lisa was pregnant with their first child and they were eagerly anticipating starting a family. In total, there were 16 or 17 people there, one of whom, Paul Merhige, Muriel Sitton’s cousin, had been invited at the last minute.

According to the police, as the night wore one, for unknown reasons, Merhige left the house, returned with a gun and shot and killed four people. His victims were Jim and Muriel’s 6-year-old daughter Makayla, whom he shot and killed in her bed, his aunt Raymonde Joseph, 76, and Carla and Lisa Knight, his 33-year-old twin sisters. And there probably would have been more victims had many guests not escaped in terror into the night.

His mayhem complete, Merhige escaped at about 10 p.m. Thursday night in a blue, four-door 2007 Toyota Camry. After that, he was on the lam for nearly 30 days and according to court records, not only engaged in serious suicidal ideation, but actually took steps to end his life, ordering a suicide handbook and stocking up on suicide supplies including helium, plastic bags, scissors, duct tape and tubing. Despite his preparations, however, he chose to stay alive and and was eventually arrested in the Florida Keys.

As we all know, capital cases tend to drag on, sometimes for years, but then suddenly approximately 22 months after the murders, Merhige’s lawyers signaled that they might opt for the insanity defense and then, as an alternative to what would probably have been a messy, lengthy trial, proposed a plea deal that would spare him the death penalty.

It apparently happened very quickly, within a matter of days, and Jim Sitton, who had grieved steadily for his daughter Makayla ever since she was murdered, and had probably assumed Merhige would get the death penalty, was shocked by the deal. In fact, in what had to have been a highly irregular scene, at the hearing, he literally fell to his knees, begging the judge, Joseph Marx, not to accept a deal.

(I’ve seen some odd emotional outbursts in Federal Court and clearly remember the unforgettable sight of two large ______ _____ weeping and screaming uncontrollably down on the floor after one of them had received a rather moderate sentence of around three years. This happened out in the corridor and since it did not undermine the dignity of the Federal courtroom, the U.S. Marshals — in what was a rare display of understanding – let them scream for quite a while before asking them to cease and desist.)

In the Merhige case, however, Jim Sitton fell on his knees right there in the courtroom, and the deputies ordered him to get up off the ground, which he did.

Jim’s wife Muriel then stated in open court:

“This killer you see in the courtroom today is not the man that was in our home that night. (He) was a cold blooded killer without remorse without mercy just gunned down our family members and would have killed more of us had we not escaped out of the house.”

Later, Jim Sitton tearfully shared his heartbreak and Muriel said she would never forget seeing Makayla’s body on the stretcher.

“If the death penalty isn’t for this guy, who’s the death penalty for?” Jim Sitton said after the hearing.

In return for entering a guilty plea, Merhige’s lawyers agreed to withdraw the threatened insanity defense, and the killer was sentenced to seven life sentences (which is really only one life sentence when you think about it).

Although Jim Sitton was outraged that Merhige is escaping the DP, State Attorney Michael McAuliffe stated that the majority of the surviving victims and their relatives agreed with the LWOP sentence, in part because they just wanted to get it over with so that they could get on with their lives. Some of the participants, however, agreed with Jim Sitton that anything short of the DP would be unjust.

Merhige’s parents, who of course lost two children (Merhige’s twin sisters), said they supported the deal but Carole Merhige understandably said her life was ruined.

Patrick Knight, whose wife was killed, but has since remarried, said he agreed with the plea, but got a few zingers off calling Merhige a fat loser who was jealous and angry.

After the hearing, Jim Sitton also said he dropped to his knees in front of the judge because “they listened to the murderer’s plea. I thought maybe if I dropped to my knees someone would listen to me.”

I’m not sure exactly what he means by that because the judge appears to have had little choice other than to accept the prosecutor’s offer based on the fact the majority of the victims and their relatives supported the LWOP resolution.

Now as most of you know, I’m largely opposed to the death penalty, except possibly in extreme cases of sexual abuse of children culminating in their murder, in which case I can take it or leave it (not that I have any control over the outcome anyway).

But Jim Sitton’s stance leaves me pondering whether a bereaved family member of a murder victim whose killer is executed actually feels better as a result of the perpetrator receiving the ultimate punishment. Perhaps some do, while others don’t. Hopefully, I’ll never be in that position to find out for myself.

I’ve long been aware that I don’t respond as emotionally to many of these cases as many other crime followers do. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but without this protective quality, it seems unlikely that I would be able to cover these cruel and tragic cases on a daily basis without either slowly losing my marbles or falling into a realm of dark and inescapable bitterness.

Or maybe I’m simply being melodramatic…

by Patrick H. Moore

Zion Wright, a 14-year-old amateur skateboarder and his father, Leroy Wright Jr., have plenty to be thankful for evey Thanksgiving Day. In an act of real heroism, two summers ago, Wen Jones, a 43-year-old former Marine from Jupiter, Florida, saved the boy and his father from assault that would have resulted in serious injury by rescuing them from three violent 20-year-old men at Juno Park in Palm Beach County. In return for going to the aid of the boy and his somewhat diminutive father, Mr. Jones ended up being brutally beaten by the three thugs who turned on him with a vengeance.

According to the reports of various witnesses, the three young assailants had been spending the afternoon acting like jerks — harassing Zion Wright and his friends, kicking sand at various beach-goers, and generally acting like petty hoodlums. By the time former marine Jones got involved, matters had escalated and Zion Wright’s father, Leroy Wright, Jr., who  had gone to his son’s rescue, was being punched by the hooligans.

When Wen Jones intervened, he told the punks to leave the father and his son alone. At that moment the three young men, Cody Moore Roon, Tyler Dylan Carswell and Eric Michael Deiter, all 20 – turned on Jones attacked him. Jones, who is married and has two children, was brutally beaten by the thugs, an attack that was recorded on the cell phones of numerous witnesses.  Jones suffered a concussion and a fracture under his eye which needed surgery, and he was left with stitches all over his face.

When interviewed, Mr. Jones stated:

“I’m not happy to have been injured pretty severely, but at the same time, I ask myself, would I do it again? You know, it was the right thing to do, so I probably would.”

Jones stated that when he intervened, the three men were harassing Zion and his friends outside the restrooms, and had begun physically accosting Zion’s father who had told them to leave.

“I couldn’t stand there and watch this older guy and kid get beaten up,” Jones said.

So he approached the punks and told them to calm down – but they then turned on him.

“I got tangled up with one the biggest guys and he beat me in the back of the head until I was unconscious. When I came to, I was being beaten in the face.”

As police arrived on the scene, the three assailants ran away but witnesses helped track them down. Several of those who recorded the attack on their cell phones, have handed the footage over to authorities.

Roon, Carswell and Deither were originally facing aggravated battery charges, but based on the video evidence, the charges have been elevated to felonies.

Leroy Wright Jr. was taken to hospital and had surgery a few days later and did not have the chance to ask Jones for his name, so the two men have not spoken since. In an interview, however, Wright — who was obviously touched by Jones’ kindness — told the Orlando Sentinel that he hopes they’ll be in touch.

“I feel like this man literally risked his life, because he saw a situation that was bad,” Wright said. “Out of all the people that was standing around on the beach that day, he was the only one that stood up against these guys.”

For his part, Jones, who looks a lot like former NBA great Chris Mullin, stated that he was lucky to receive excellent medical care and gives the impression that he has (or is) recovering nicely.

*     *     *     *     *

Wen Jones is an everyday hero and we should all be thankful that he is here among us.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In trying to make sense out of the wobbly world of crime, we’re occasionally confronted by a case both gruesome and strange that makes us shake our heads and ask, “What was he/she thinking?” This comes up frequently in cases involving children whether it’s the schoolyard bullying syndrome or teens doing crazy things like locking their parents in their room and setting the house on fire.

Any of us who have experienced the great pleasure of raising a teenager know that it doesn’t matter if they’re boys or girls – either way as a parent you’ve got to be on your guard because sooner or later Jack or Diane will do something that keeps you awake at night. And then of course there’s the problem of the nervous parent who lies awake at night worrying about what Jack or Diane may do even though they haven’t done it yet.

With girls (and sometimes with boys), you may face the best friend gone wrong syndrome. That’s when Diane and Jill who are really close and share everything suddenly inexplicably quarrel —  maybe over a boy, maybe over another friend or even a remark that is taken as explicitly hurtful.

Painful though such a breakup may be, you generally don’t worry that either your daughter or your daughter’s former friend is going to end up a murderess and that the victim is going to be the other party. But that’s exactly what happened in Sinaloa, Mexico not too long ago ago. Andres Jaurequi of the Huffington Post writes:

A Mexican teen is accused of killing her best friend following a dispute over nude photos on Facebook.

Erandy Gutierrez allegedly stabbed Anel Baez 65 times at the victim’s home in Guamuchil, Sinaloa, on March 19, according to Mexican news site Notus.

The girls, both 16, had once been close, but that relationship deteriorated after Baez posted a “humiliating” naked selfie of herself and Gutierrez to Facebook, according to the New York Daily News.

According to the International Business Times, when Baez uploaded a picture of the two girls both naked, Gutierrez became furious and threatened to “bury” Baez before the year was over.

It must be said that the slayer Gutierrez certainly gave Baez fair warning:

“It may seem that I am very calm, but in my head I have killed you at least three times,” Gutierrez reportedly wrote to Baez in her Twitter account, which has since been deleted.

According to Notus, the prosecutors have stated that Gutierrez has admitted slaying Baez as revenge for her posting the naked selfies.

If we are to believe the victim’s family, however, there is some doubt as to whether the photos ever even existed, according to a Huffington Post translation of the website. And Baez’s friends have stated that they never saw the purported photos on Facebook.

These alleged facts, however, do not prove that the offending selfies never existed and could (I realize this sounds callous) merely result from the victim’s family’s natural desire to present poor deceased Baez as completely blameless in this matter.

Furthermore, Gutierrez’s threatening tweets must be in response to something her former friend did.

What is heartbreaking is that Baez would almost certainly be alive if she hadn’t succumbed to her own desire to bury the hatchet with her former best friend. According to a HuffPost translation of Semana, on March 19th, Baez foolishly and fatally invited Gutierrez to her house with the intention that the two teens would resolve their dispute and become friends again.

This is the moment not unlike when Heather Elvis succumbs to Sidney Moorer’s allurements and gets in her car and drives to the boat landing, all the while texting like a madwoman. This is the moment when the viewing audience turns bone-white and entreats the future victim, “No! Nyet! Nein! Ay no! Don’t do it! Don’t you see…”

Tragically, Anel Baez did not see. At some point after Gutierrez arrived at Baez’s house, she allegedly picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed her former best friend in the back with it up to 65 times.

After that Gutierrez fled the scene and reportedly tried to hide her involvement by grieving with friends. At some point, the authorities learned she had been at Baez’s house. They moved in and arrested Gutierrez at the funeral. The purported slayer is expected to be charged with murder this week.

*     *     *     *     *

Since her brutal murder, Anel’s local high school (which was also attended by Erandy) has been hosting lectures and seminars aimed at preventing further similar tragedies, local media reports.

News website Cafe Negro says the ‘therapy’ sessions are being run by rector Juan Eulogio War Liera for a community left ‘sad and outraged’ by the brutal murder.

‘In this community I want to tell you are not alone, we share your pain and anger and can add efforts to overcome the bitter moment,’ the website quotes him as saying.

‘Unity in the family is a way to preserve peace, values​​, tranquility and have a better world.’

If this were a U.S. case, it’s very likely that the 16-year-old Gutierrez would be tried as an adult. In Mexico, however, I think such a barbarism is unlikely. Notus reports that if convicted as a minor, Gutierrez would face a prison term of up to seven years.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986, renowned Beat novelist and counter-cultural icon William S. Burroughs delivered a “Thanksgiving Prayer” to the nation. Dedicated to John Dillinger, “in hoping he is still alive,” the prayer is a vitriolic smear laid over all of America’s worst attributes. In effect, Burroughs is saying thanks very much for the violence, racism, oppression, and homophobia. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant later made a short video montage featuring Burroughs reciting the poem in his characteristically deadpan Midwestern drawl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE

No doubt this is pretty strong medicine on Thanksgiving — sort of like stuffing the roast turkey with arsenic. One problem is that the prayer has little of the dark, wild humor that makes Burroughs’s most caustic writings a bit more palatable. And while few of us can deny that the problems he refers to are terrible, and that the genocide of Native Americans tends to be conveniently forgotten on Thanksgiving, by lashing out on a national holiday Burroughs risks coming across as an angry, bitter, resentful old man — which, for various reasons, personal as well as political, is precisely what he was even as late as 1986. Thus it becomes tempting to overlook the substance of Burroughs’ message, and view the Thanksgiving Prayer as something best suited for a psychiatrist’s office, rather than the public airwaves.

The bitterness of the Thanksgiving Prayer, however, was not the final stop on Burroughs’s long journey. Naturally, it is the incendiary subject matter — the drug addiction, the criminality, the homosexuality, the avant-garde writing, the radical ideas — that tends to dominate most discussion of his life and work. Less well-known, perhaps, is the remarkable transformation Burroughs underwent during the last several years of his life. This transformation should be just as important to the Burroughs legacy as the deep scorn of the Thanksgiving Prayer.

In No Maps for These Territories, a fascinating documentary film starring acclaimed sci-fi author William Gibson, the topic of Burroughs inevitably comes up. Gibson, a longtime fan of the Beat icon’s ground-breaking work, observes that Burroughs, in spite of a lifetime of pain and turmoil, toward the end of his life finally arrived at a place where he was no longer tormented, and no longer in need of synthetic pain killers. “He was OK,” says Gibson, from the back seat of a car in Vancouver. “And it was good to know that he was going to be OK.”

By most accounts, amazingly enough, Burroughs was even better than “OK” at the end of his life. Sometime after he settled down in Lawrence, Kansas, the notoriously cold, heartless writer began to change dramatically — so much so that as he neared death he achieved a kind of peace and serenity that he never thought possible before. This is expressed simply and poignantly in the final entry in his journal, written just days before his death in 1997, in which he states that love is “the most natural painkiller that there is…” I find it incredible that Burroughs’s long, strange trip through hell culminated in a very spiritual journey into bliss. We have to wonder what happened?

The journey was not an easy one. Born in 1914, Burroughs had a privileged upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri, but he never felt comfortable in his immediate social surroundings. A shy, bookish adolescent with gay and bisexual tendencies, he grew up to be rebellious and assumed the stance of a perpetual outsider. Blessed with high intelligence, he graduated from Harvard University in 1936 with a degree in English, and then embarked on postgraduate studies in anthropology and medicine. Yet he soon began using drugs and associating with underworld criminal types. He was denied entry into military service as many as four times. At age 25, in a state of mental duress, he severed the last joint of the little finger on his left hand, subsequently telling a psychiatrist that the self-mutilation was “part of an initiation ceremony into the Crow Indian tribe.”

As a young man out of college, Burroughs worked a series of odd jobs in New York, including stints as a bartender and an exterminator. Meanwhile, he continued his diverse studies independently. A wide range of subjects, including history, the occult, weapons, telepathy, and science fiction were all thrown into the mix. He met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, both students at Columbia University, who would remain longtime friends. He married a woman named Joan Vollmer, a free spirit who was addicted to amphetamines. Burroughs much preferred opiates such as morphine and heroin, to which he was soon heavily addicted. He and Joan moved to New Orleans for a while, and they also lived on a ranch in Texas, where Burroughs tried to farm a crop of marijuana.

Burroughs’s subsequent writing career was linked to a terrible tragedy. In 1951, he and Joan were staying in Mexico City, having fled the U.S. to avoid marijuana-related charges. During one drunken evening spent at their home with a few friends, Joan told William, “It’s time for our William Tell routine.” To amuse guests, Burroughs, a longtime gun enthusiast, would often fire at an object such as a glass that Joan had placed on top of her head. Burroughs was an excellent marksman, but on this particular night, his aim was off. He shot Joan in the head, killing her instantly.

Burroughs’s wealthy family was able to keep him out of prison in Mexico, although once the story was reported, many Americans thought he was guilty of a crime and should be prosecuted. The incident tormented him for decades. He often spoke of having a terrible premonition on the day of the incident that something awful was going to happen, which he would be powerless to stop. He also spoke of something akin to demonic possession — the invasion of a hostile spiritual force — that was at the root of his destructive tendencies. Most addicts know the feeling that something other has taken over one’s heart and soul and is now calling the shots, usually with disastrous results. They often speak of “my addiction” as if it is a separate entity working away inside their very being. Edgar Allan Poe, no stranger to addiction, referred to this self-destructive impulse as “The Imp of the Perverse.

In his confessional preface to his novel Queer, Burroughs remorsefully admits that Joan’s death was the key event in his decision to be a writer:

“I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.”

For Burroughs, writing was the only way he knew how to fight against the Ugly Spirit, frequently referred to as CONTROL, and best characterized as the dark forces that threatened to ruin his life (and all of our lives) through fear, addiction, violence, and death. He never defined these forces too narrowly, but he was able to vividly describe them at work in various contexts: political, social, sexual, medical, psychological, and spiritual. He located the Ugly Spirit in the manipulative schemes of the Western ego, in the exploitative practices of global capitalism, and in the oppressive institutions of governments and legal systems everywhere. His own personal problems, exacerbated by the accidental shooting death of Joan, were simply a localized instance of the Ugly Spirit that plagued the entire world.

Particularly fascinating was Burroughs’s assertion that the Ugly Spirit had infiltrated the structure of language itself. Hence his desire to “sever the word lines,” and produce cut-up, re-mixed texts closer to dense poetic collages than to linear narratives. If writing is a struggle against the Ugly Spirit of CONTROL, the stakes are high. Burroughs figured he might as well opt for total war. Not only did he fight against ugly social realities. He also had to fight his own addictive tendencies, which was a constant struggle. At times he waged war against linguistic meaning itself. This was not a surefire way to get on the bestseller lists, but it did result in some incredible writing that was like nothing else ever seen before.

Burroughs’s masterpiece is undoubtedly Naked Lunch, a brutally satirical, hallucinatory, and often pornographic series of sketches or “routines” that deal with heroin addiction, political corruption, sexual perversion, and technological insanity. Burroughs explains in his introduction to the novel that it was written after a prolonged period of drug-induced dissipation. Published in 1957, Naked Lunch was soon prosecuted for obscenity, but the state lost the case, and the resulting controversy propelled sales of the novel. Against all odds, the author was soon famous. Living primarily in Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs went on to produce many more works of fiction and non-fiction. Gradually, his role changed from that of literary outlaw to senior statesman of the avant garde. When he returned to live in New York in the mid-1970s, he was treated like an underground celebrity. His public readings became a huge hit with the artists and musicians of the burgeoning punk scene. In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France.

In spite of new-found respectability, Burroughs still battled his drug addiction — often unsuccessfully — and he remained a deeply troubled, unhappy man. Ceaselessly fighting against the forces of CONTROL was taking its toll. There are only so many angry Thanksgiving Prayers one can write, no matter how evil the system seems to be. In fact, waging war against the Ugly Spirit only seemed to make the bastard dig in even deeper. There has to be something else to reach for, in order to live out the rest of one’s life in relative tranquility. Succumbing to the living death of heroin addiction was not the way to go. Maybe the whole war had to be, if not surrendered, then somehow transcended. But how?

Burroughs disengaged from frantic urban life altogether, moving out of his infamous “Bunker” residence on the New York Bowery, and buying a simple, comfortable house in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas. Sticking with his methadone program, he largely stayed away from heroin. He began practicing “chaos magic,” and joined an organization dedicated to this esoteric pursuit. He wrote a powerful visionary novel called The Western Lands, which helped him come to terms with death by delving into ancient Egyptian mythologies of the afterlife.  He also began focusing on artwork, producing a series of “shotgun paintings,” which he created by firing at cans of paint positioned in front of canvases. You don’t have to be a psychologist to appreciate that the paintings were at least in part a way of reclaiming and transforming the primal scene of Joan’s crime, which still caused Burroughs tremendous shame and grief. Instead of splattering her blood and brains against the wall, now Burroughs’s gunfire was creating abstract art that was quite beautiful. In addition, at this time Burroughs began connecting closely with animals. The cats which he was ashamed to admit he had abused as a young man were now his dearest friends. He had as many as twelve of them. He even wrote a book about them.

All of this was transformative. But it was a Native American-style sweat lodge ceremony that seemed to have the largest impact on Burroughs’s long spiritual journey.

In 1992, the aging novelist decided he must try to exorcise the Ugly Spirit from his body and mind once and for all. With Allen Ginsberg and a group of five other friends, Burroughs made a pilgrimage to his childhood home in St. Louis. There, the men entered a kind of special cave or hole in the ground, which had a fire pit in the middle. In this sweat lodge, the group spent hours praying, chanting, and placing hot coals in their mouths in order to swallow up the evil spirits. And it worked. All of the men believed that the ritual had been a great success. Burroughs left claiming that he was finally rid of the Ugly Spirit. All of the pain and guilt and anger and remorse that had consumed him for decades was gone. He was able to forgive himself for Joan’s death. And he was ready to finish his life in what he called “a blessed state of beatitude.” On a deep level, he understood now that love was the ultimate painkiller.

There would be no more angry Thanksgiving Prayers. Five years later, on August 3, 1997, Burroughs died of a sudden heart attack. He was memorialized around the world as a key figure in 20th century art and literature, and as a counter-cultural icon whose battle against the Ugly Spirit, and whose search for final wisdom, can serve as an inspiration to us all.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Just when we begin to lose hope that our high school teachers can do little other than seduce their students, we come across a case which flies in the face of accepted “coercion dogma”. Coercion dogma is the prosecutorial theory that every teacher-student intimate relationship is triggered by coercive (or at least seductive) actions on the part of the teacher. And I suspect this may be true a large percentage of the time..

But what if there were some cases in which the teen is the clear-cut aggressor and the teacher is the quaking violet — shivering, oppressed and fearful of the student’s maniacal determination to have his way with the older man or woman?

In this case, which comes to us from our new favorite state for crime weirdness — Michigan (Ohio and Pennsylvania are also in the weirdness sweepstakes), we have a tutor named Abigail Simon, who took the stand at her trial for first-degree sexual assault and accosting a minor for immoral purposes. Abigail, however, testified while working at Grand Rapids Central Catholic High School,  she engaged in a close relationship with a student that did not include actual sex, even though they spent the night together on six occasions. Abby also said that she was afraid of the alleged victim.

It’s possible that no one believes her about the sex , not after the victim spent five days on the stand testifying that “the two had a mutual relationship”, but she certainly made her case with plenty of fervor.

Ken Kolker and the 24 Hours News Staff write:

But Friday, Simon got right to the point as she was questioned, saying the student, who was 15 at the time, forced her to have sex with him.

“I didn’t engage in sex with him. He forced me to have sex with him,” Simon testified, saying that it was against her will and she asked him to stop.

Simon testified she never thought of the relationship as romantic, but did admit text messages shared between her and the student were “inappropriate.”

Now this could all be mere subterfuge and misdirection, but Abby gives the distinct impression that she really cares about the young gentleman. She made it clear that she didn’t want the teen to suspect her of having gone to the police – for fear he would get angry and hurt either him or her. This is a weird position for a woman in her 30s to be, but it’s what can happen if you start cavorting (or are forced into cavorting) with a kid of 15.

Abby complained that the kid was controlling, always wanting to know where she was going and what she was doing. When she tried to distance herself, he would get mad. Then the texts began and then he started to tail her. And then the most treacherous sin of all – jealousy (although in this case it didn’t lead to bloodshed). Then Abby’s young gentleman had the gall to complain that she was being too friendly with other students.

In short, even if we see this in a light most favorable to Abby, the relationship reminds us of a teenage romance where two teens get jealous and spy on each other and generally make each other miserable. Only in this case, Abby was hardly a teen.

When Teen accused Abby of being too friendly, she reacted with passable gumption only it backfired:

“I said it was a slap in my face for me saying that, then he slapped me in the face and said ‘that’s a slap in the face,’” Simon testified.

Abby also made a point of telling the jury that she even looked for jobs in other states because being around Teen made her “uncomfortable”.

The hardest part for Abby may have been Friday morning before she testified when an interview was played for the jury in which she confessed to spending the night with the teen on six occasions without having sex.

Somewhere along the way, Grand Rapids Police Detective Amy Lowrie said, perhaps facetiously:

“It sounds like love to me.”

“I know how it sounds,” said Abby.

In response to Abby stating that they never had sex, Detective Lowrie said:

“I know you had sex, he told me that.”

The alleged “sex” is not going to go away but Abby held her ground and refused to confess. And she managed to bring things back around to her fear the victim might be suicidal.

The detective faced some pointed question under cross-examination and admitted that “the victim told police that he was the aggressor – that he had stalked the tutor and threatened to kill her if she told anybody.”

The detective, however, pooh-poohed the veracity of Teen’s confession:

“The story that he gave me, I did not believe,” the detective said.

During Teen’s five days on the witness stand, the alleged victim described racy text messages he exchanged with Abby. Their alleged sexual relationship reportedly began at the high school in early 2013.

As part of his attempt to discredit Teen, “on Wednesday defense attorney Michael Manley pressed the teen about lies told in previous court hearings regarding the sexual relationship between him and Simon. The teen previously claimed that he forced Simon to have sex with him. He claimed he said that because he “was trying to protect Abby.”

So this confuses me. Why demand That Teen recant his earlier claims that he, in essence, raped Abby? Seems like  dangerous way to discredit him…

In any event, Attorney Manley asked for a directed verdict, claiming Abby “was intimidated by the 6-foot-3, 220-pound, 15-year-old teen into staying in an abusive sexual relationship.” If the request had been granted, which it was not, it would have meant that the judge was dismissing the charges without the case ever going to the jury.

Abby returned to the stand for cross-examination on Monday, and after closing arguments the case went to the jury.

* * * * *

Thoughts Prior to the Verdict

Abby’s defense strikes me as a tough sell. The jurors are liable to meet her claims with more than a trace of incredulity. And won’t they tend to ignore the fact Teen is not a particularly credible witness? All that matters is the Big Sex Question. Did Abby have sex with Teen? Who will believe they spent the night together six times without “getting _____?”

On the other hand, Abby claims are not entirely out of the realm of possibility. It could have happened. Hell, it probably has happened… But did it happen in this case? Or is Abby merely concocting an arresting but not particularly credible defense that might play better in a crime novel or film than in an American courtroom?

The Verdict

Abigail Simon, 35, was found guilty on Wednesday on four of the five charges against her. Three counts were for first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of for accosting a minor for immoral purposes.

Ms. Simon could face up to life in prison.

The jury did not buy Ms. Simon’s elaborate tale of duress at the hands of Teen. This could work against her at sentencing. In fact, it could totally prejudice the judge. This is bad. Abigail Simon is in very serious trouble.

by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

 *     *     *     *     *

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

*      *      *      *      *

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

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

Austin L. Miller of the Halifax Media Group writes:

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

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

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

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

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

At present, there appears to be no further information available on how Shipman’s murder case is proceeding, although there are reports that he was suicide watch for a period of time following his arrest.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

In a deeply disturbing recent murder story, a Pennsylvania resident, 20-year-old Nichole “Jade” Olmstead has chosen to plead guilty to first-degree murder in the brutal death of 20-year-old Brandy Stevens-Rosine, an Ohio college student who was beaten and buried alive in a shallow grave in rural Pennsylvania. This story is not for the faint-at-heart but makes compelling reading for anyone interested in delving into the cruel depths of human nature. Dave Lohr of the Huntington Post writes:

Nichole “Jade” Olmstead bragged about the torture and murder of 20-year-old Brandy Stevens-Rosine, an Ohio college student who was beaten and buried alive in a shallow grave in rural Pennsylvania.

Those and other details were released on Halloween, following a surprise decision by 20-year-old Olmstead, who had been fighting a homicide charge, to plead guilty to first-degree murder.

“Olmstead had a journal,” Crawford County District Attorney Francis Schultz told The Huffington Post on Monday. “She talked about the fact that using a shovel [to hit Stevens-Rosine in the head] was perfect — that she could see [Stevens-Rosine's] skull and brains mixed in the dirt.”

Olmstead and her former lover, Ashley Marie Barber, yet another 20-year-old, were arrested last year and charged with one count each of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, and tampering with physical evidence in the death of Stevens-Rosine.

Stevens-Rosine’s close friend, Krysti Horvat has stated that Olmstead and Barber were lovers and that the unfortunate victim, Stevens-Rosine, had once dated Olmstead.

The victim, Stevens-Rosine, who has been described as a popular sociology student at Youngstown State University in the Ohio city of the same name, is reported to have left her Beaver Township, Ohio, home on the morning of May 17, 2012, for an impromptu meeting with Olmstead. Although the two young women had broken up, they had maintained regular contact.

Dave Lohr writes:

The reason for Stevens-Rosine’s get-together with her old flame remains unclear. According to (District Attorney) Schultz, the young woman was lured by Barber and Olmstead for a single purpose.

“These two defendants … [had] plans to kill her once she was here,” Schultz said.

In any event, the evidence shows that Stevens-Rosine drove 75 miles northeast, across the state line into Pennsylvania, to a home owned by Barber’s parents on Drake Hill Road in Crawford County, where Barber and Olmstead had been living together.

Stevens-Rosine did not return from the visit and two days later, her family reported her missing. Six days later, on May 23, 2012, authorities found Stevens-Rosine’s  partially decomposed remains in a shallow grave a few hundred yards from the residence.

The autopsy revealed that Stevens-Rosine had multiple injuries, from multiple objects, to a large percentage of her body.

At a preliminary hearing in July 2012, Pennsylvania State Police trooper Eric Mallory provided the following evidence:

Mallory alleged Olmstead said she hit Stevens-Rosine four or five times in the head, and could see Stevens-Rosine’s brain protruding from the gaping wounds. According to Mallory, Barber hurt herself head-butting Stevens-Rosine, and then repeatedly pounded the victim’s head against a stump.

According to Mallory, the women said they rolled the victim into a shallow grave they had dug prior to the assault. When they found Stevens-Rosine still breathing, the trooper said, they allegedly smashed her face with a large rock and poured water into her nose and mouth to drown her.

The autopsy report states that Stevens-Rosine suffered blunt force trauma, a skull fracture and 15 lacerations to the scalp. According to Erie County forensic pathologist Eric Vey, the  immediate cause of death was suffocation from dirt in her airway. D.A. Schultz stated in open court that Stevens-Rosine had been buried alive.

*     *     *     *     *

Lurid excerpts from Olmstead’s diary/journal were read into the court record at the hearing on Thursday. In changing her plea to guilty, Olmstead — who has clearly had plenty of time to think things over — admitted her role in the 2012 slaying and expressed remorse for her crime:

“[I am] truly and deeply sorry for what happened. Brandy did not deserve what happened to her,” Olmstead said in court.

Crawford County Court of Common Pleas Judge Mark Stevens sentenced Olmstead, without delay, to life in prison without parole.

Stevens-Rosine’s friend, Krysti Horvat, told HuffPost she is happy with Olmstead’s guilty plea.

“I’m glad she pleaded guilty and allowed Brandy’s family the slightest of relief to not have to go to trial twice … It’s not easy for me to give her credit for that, but her conscious [sic] must have come back to decide to plead guilty before trial … This might be the first sign of human behavior she’s exhibited since the planning of the senseless murder,” Horvat said.

Olmstead’s attorney, John Knorr, made a similar statement toHuffPost.

“She didn’t want to make Brandy’s parents go through the trial. There’s a lot of gory details that would have been very unpleasant, including autopsy photographs. She [also] recognized this [crime] has all of the elements of first-degree murder.

Attorney Knorr also said that based on her plea, Olmstead’s life sentence is not entirely written in stone.

“The present state of the law in Pennsylvania is that she is not permitted to have parole. However, the one thing we were able to accomplish is that we agreed that if there ever were a change in the law, she would have the benefit of being able to petition the court for a sentencing hearing, at which she could present mitigating factors that might result in something less than a life sentence.”

Thus, should the Pennsylvania law be changed, Olmstead would be able to request that the change, and any sentencing relief it might afford, be applied retroactively.

*     *     *     *     *

Olmstead had been scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 12. Based on her guilty plea, the district attorney’s office withdrew all the other charges.

It remains unclear how Olmstead’s guilty plea will impact Ashley Marie Barber’s case. Contacted by HuffPost on Monday, her attorney, Robert Draudt, said he had no information to share. When HuffPost inquired  about the content of Olmstead’s May 18, 2012 journal entry that was introduced into evidence at Olmstead’s sentencing hearing, Knorr declined to discuss it.

“It’s so heinous I’d rather not repeat it,” the veteran defense attorney said. “It certainly indicated, as of that day, a lack of remorse.”

Although D.A. Schultz has chosen not to release transcripts of Olmstead’s  journal to the media, citing it as possible evidence at Barber’s trial, he did read certain excerpts from it for HuffPost on Monday including a description of how Stevens-Rosine sounded while drowning in her own blood. Olmstead also apparently recounted in writing how Barber allegedly held Stevens-Rosine down while Olmstead administered the brutal battering.

“[She wrote that the crime] is perfect,” said Schultz. “She said, ‘I don’t believe we will ever get caught.’ She [also] asks a question at the end: ‘Do I feel guilty?’ [To which she answered], ‘No, not an ounce. I am proud.’”

*     *     *     *     *

Indeed, this story is not for the faint at heart. Yet, Olmstead’s journal excerpts provide a window into the dark recesses of the murderer’s mind. What has not yet been revealed is why did Olmstead and co-defendant Ashley Marie Barber bear such animus toward the victim, Brandy Stevens-Rosine. This information, however, may well be revealed in the still unreported portions of Olmstead’s journal.

I would think that this story — based on its lurid and compelling nature — is almost certain to ultimately re-surface as a book and/or movie.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Many people find December-May intimate relationships to be – shall we say – peculiar. Attractive young women who marry ancient rich guys often get raked over the coals for being avaricious and any guy with a sweetheart half his age is going to get some peculiar looks and be labeled a DOM.

Nevertheless, large numbers of very old men plot and plan to get their weathered hands on young women (or men). And now that we live in the cyber-world, there are websites that make it easy for the old geezers to hook up with the younger set.

One of these “sugar daddy” sites is called SeekingArrangement.com. It bills itself as a place “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships,” according to the New York Times.

Well, it seems that an old dude named Paul Aronson decided to try his luck on SeekingArrangement.com and quickly met a 17-year-old girl named Shaina Foster. 17 is the age of consent in New York so there was nothing illegal about the assignation. Paul and Shaina went out to dinner once and when Paul proposed a second dinner date, Shaina agreed, but this time she brought her twin sister Shalaine along.

Paul appeared to have plenty of class and he kindly took the twins to an expensive eatery in Midtown Manhattan. After they had dined in style, Paul invited the teens back to his 4-story brick townhouse on East 38th Street to have a drink.

James C. McKinley Jr writes for the New York Times:

He bought a bottle of raspberry-flavored rum from a liquor store on the way, a defense lawyer said. But instead of receiving caresses or whispered flirtations, Mr. Aronson ended up tied to a coffee table for 20 hours.

Prosecutors say the two girls bound him with zip ties, took $470 in cash from his wallet and went on a spending spree with his credit cards, buying makeup and clothes, while he lay helpless on his living room floor.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Shaina and Shalaine, looking very young and not terribly threatening, “pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to charges of kidnapping, burglary, larceny and related crimes.” Their respite from custody was short and after their hearing, Justice Michael J. Obus ordered them back to jail without bail. The burglary charge is serious and the kidnapping charge is even more serious, bringing a 15-year state prison sentence.

According to a criminal complaint, the two girls, working in combo on Oct 1, tied up the old guy. Shaina Foster bound his legs to a coffee table, while Shalaine Foster tied his hands behind his back. They then went through his pockets at around 8:15 p.m.

At some point, Paul collapsed onto the floor and was still lying there when a neighbor found him the next day and untied him.

It’s not clear when Paul reported the assault and robbery, but Shaina and Shalaine were arrested on Oct. 21.

When interviewed at the station, Shaina expressed surprise, even shock, over the fact Aronson, who formerly was part owner of a business in the garment district, had turned them in. It’s well-known among hustlers of every ilk that dudes who are looking for various types of illicit sex are very wary of reporting a snafu when something goes wrong for fear of public humiliation. Paul must have figured, however, that since the girls were of age, and considering there’s no clear evidence that he assaulted them, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if reported. And it appears he may be right.

Nonetheless, during the arrest proceedings, Shaina managed to speak her mind:

“He asked to do things I wasn’t going to do,” she told Detective Darryl Ng at the 17th Precinct. “He is ugly, old and disgusting. I tied him up. I took his money and left. He was starting to creep me out.”

Shalaine’s lawyer, Brian Kennedy, quickly moved to distinguish his apparently less culpable client from Shaina stating that his client only watched during the robbery. “She got caught up in something not of her making.” (This appears to overlook the fact that Shalaine allegedly tied Paul’s hands behind his back.)

It should be stated that Paul did apparently observe the niceties before getting down to the nitty-gritty. Not only did he take the twins out to dinner, but he also gave them a tour of his townhouse and let them play with his Yorkshire terrier named Muffins. It was only after these preliminaries were out the way that he poured them glasses of Bacardi and asked them to talk about their sex lives.

“Both girls were taken aback by that,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Kennedy also said that Paul “tried to grab one of the sisters when they initially started to leave his house, which precipitated the robbery. “This was an older man who was trolling these websites,” he said. “He was trolling for young girls.”

Now let’s think about this for a minute. Although Shaina confessed at her arrest, in the event she chooses to go to trial, I would think that Paul may be called upon to testify. Thus, he would experience a kind of public shaming in return for trying to help convict the girls. He would also probably undergo vigorous cross-examination designed to determine whether he really “tried to grab one of the sisters,” which of course could be construed as an act of assault and battery on his part which could complicate things further.

What may happen is that in order to convict the girls without a trial, thus freeing Paul from having to testify, the girls may ultimately be offered a reasonably good deal…maybe… I would be interested to see what Rick Stack thinks about this possibility.

Shaina and Shalaine have hardly lived lives free from pain, which may explain why they were willing to hang out with the old guy in the first place. They had both lived in separate foster homes. The family dysfunction manifested clear as day on Oct. 25 when their mother, Liza Torres, “was arrested on the courthouse steps and charged with heroin possession after attending their initial arraignment.”

Putting this in context, it seems unlikely that Shaina was genuinely shocked when Paul suggested they “talk dirty.” The fact they brought zip ties to the crime scene (Shaina said for self-defense if necessary) suggests they were waiting for an excuse to “jack” the old guy, and as stated above, did not think he would turn them in.

So where does that leave them? Shaina and Shalaine will be lucky, I would think, to get out of this with sentences in the 3 to 5 year range. And that assumes that Paul won’t want to testify at trial and their lawyers are able to hammer out a fairly decent deal.

If there’s no deal on the table, however, and the sisters have to go to trial, all bets are off and they could be looking at a very long prison sentence, even if it’s proven that Paul tried to grab one of them before they got down to business.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”, which means something like: “When things get really weird, the weird get even weirder.” Well things got very weird in a small office at Sister Marie Lenahan Wellness Center, a part of Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pennsylvania on Thursday afternoon. Allow me to set the scene:

We have a 53-year-old caseworker named Theresa Hunt, a 52-year-old psychiatrist named Lee Silverman, and an angry and troubled psychiatric patient named Richard Plotts. Of these three individuals, only Ms. Hunt was unarmed. She is now dead. Plotts, the angry patient, is in critical condition from three gunshots wounds and underwent surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. The psychiatrist and hero of our story, Dr. Silverman, sustained a slight bullet wound to the head, a mere grazing, according to reports.

According to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan, if Plotts survives (gets out of the hospital alive), he will be charged for the murder of Theresa Hunt. On Thursday, Whelan described the “weirdness that went down” at the hospital office when things took a sudden and unexpected violent turn.

Plotts and Hunt arrived at Silverman’s third-floor office shortly before 2:30 p.m. Hunt and Dr. Silverman were presumably unaware that Plotts was carrying a firearm. An argument broke out and, according to Whelan, hospital employees near the room soon heard shouting.

Whelan further states that one hospital employee “actually opened the door, saw him pointing a gun at the doctor.” Adopting the old adage that ‘discretion is the better part of valor’, “the worker shut the door quietly and immediately called 911.”

The angry Plotts was not to be denied and then opened fire. According to Whelan, two of his bullets struck Hunt in the face. Student of human nature that he is, the canny Dr. Silverman realized Plotts was out of control. He reportedly ducked under his desk, grabbed his gun, and came up firing, striking Plotts three times.

Courageous staff members rushed toward the scene and when Plotts ended up out in the hallway, another caseworker and a doctor tackled and pinned him dawn, according to Whelan.

By this point or shortly thereafter, a fully locked and loaded police contingent arrived on the scene as “patients and doctors streamed onto the lawn and driveways surrounding the building.”

The building was evacuated and placed on lockdown.

A patient in need of an X-Ray, Allen Williams of Upper Darby, recounts that he was handing over his ID and health card for his appointment when police officers rushed into the lobby.

“They came in with guns drawn,” said Mr. Williams. “It was just a shock to me.”

A different Mr. Williams (first name of Alfred) relates that he had just concluded a doctor’s appointment and was waiting for his ride when, without advanced notice, “swarms of police officers descended on the scene.”

“They kept coming,” Williams said. “Guys with helmets and automatic weapons kept jumping out of their cars. It was total panic. . . . I saw three people come out in stretchers.”

Anna Smith is an ultrasound technician. She was on the first floor celebrating a colleague’s 60th birthday when police burst in and told everyone to leave through the back door.

Ms. Smith, who appears to be a bit of a philosopher, opined:

“There’s a sign on the door that says you have to check your weapons at the front. But you can’t expect every crazy person to do that.”

Although it could be deemed a very good thing, it was not exactly clear why Silverman, who has been practicing medicine for nearly 25 years, had a handgun at the office. A spokeswoman for Mercy Fitzgerald, Berniece Ho, informed on Thursday that “it was against hospital policy for anyone other than security guards to carry weapons.”

Donald Molineux, chief of the Yeadon Police Department, seemed unconcerned about the fact that Dr. Silverman (who I should probably call Ol’ Doc Holiday) was armed, stating that if Silverman returned fire and wounded Plotts, he “without a doubt saved lives.” (At a minimum, his own.)

Silverman, who shot Plotts three times in the torso and arm, was expected to make a full recovery.

Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital is a 213-bed hospital that serves more than 186,000 patients each year. It was founded in 1933 by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and called the incident “a tragic event for our hospital and for our community.”

What is a bit odd is the fact that no one seems to know why Plotts arrived at the third floor office with the now deceased caseworker Theresa Hunt. According to DA Whelan, Plotts has a history of psychiatric problems.

Delaware County records show that a man matching Plotts’s name and age was sentenced in 1996 to more than seven years in prison for robbing a bank in Wilmington. According to other court records, an Upper Darby man believed to be the shooter has been arrested numerous times over the last 30 years for an array of charges including assault, drugs, weapons possession, and other offenses.

At least some of Plotts’s former neighbors were on to him. A man named Bert Garcia said that Plotts “was an uneasy presence in the neighborhood until he moved out sometime in the last year” and that he was either “on drugs or heavily medicated.”

“He was a big guy,” said Garcia. “He could be intimidating.”

Garcia recounted that on one occasion, he discovered that Plotts had removed some ceiling tiles in the hallway and was “messing around with the wiring.” Another time, he told Garcia he had stabbed himself in the leg. Garcia, however, did not observe that Plotts was bleeding.

“You could tell there was something wrong,” another neighbor named Cathy Nickel said. “He needed help.“

* * * * *

Although cases such as this are shocking and could be interpreted as a sign that society is steadily deteriorating; i.e., “the weird are getting weirder”, the statistics show that the violent crime rate in America has dropped steadily over the past two decades.

In an article titled “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts”, Richard A. Oppel, Jr. wrote in 2011:

In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.

Thus, we really are a much less violent society than we were a mere two decades ago. To what can we attribute these vastly reduced violent crime rate?

Mr. Oppel writes further:

As the percentage of people behind bars has decreased in the past few years, violent crime rates have fallen as well. For those who believed that higher incarceration rates inevitably led to less crime, “this would also be the last time to expect a crime decline,” says Frank E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The last three years have been a contrarian’s delight — just when you expect the bananas to hit the fan.”

But he said there was no way to know why — at least not yet.

“The only thing that is reassuring being in a room full of crime experts now is that they are as puzzled as I am,” he said.

Personally, I’ve long thought that the sharp decrease in violent crime and property crimes, which are also WAY DOWN, is because people today are so busy playing on their computers that they have neither the time nor the desire to go out and commit serious crimes.

It takes effort and a real commitment to find the time to read the various posts we present here on All Things Crime Blog and this is merely a single blog. And as we all know, many people regularly visit and keep up with several websites on a daily basis. Surfing the net is a time-intensive process and – the occasional “social media” violent crime notwithstanding – may well be instrumental in making America a safer, more user-friendly society.