by Starks Shrink

We here at All Things Crime Blog have touched upon the notoriety of certain criminals based upon their perceived attractiveness as well as the attractiveness of their victims. The Jodi Arias-Travis Alexander case is a prime example. There are a wealth of studies on this topic that explore how we view each other with respect to appearance, and more specifically, about how these perceptions apply to our legal system and our juries that either acquit or convict at trial. Often the results of these studies directly conflict with one another. The basic precept for many of these studies compares the idea of information processing occurring on a rational versus an experiential basis, with the perception of physical attractiveness being a facet of experiential processing. Of course, in reality, we all use a combination of these two modes of information processing, whether or not we are aware of it.

When we look at a person for the first time, without being consciously aware of it, we process the person based upon our own cognitive representations, which collectively are known as social stereotypes. We all possess them. Some typical examples of social stereotypes include the doctor in a lab coat who is presumed to be intelligent, the little girl in pigtails who is presumed to be innocent and naïve, and the car salesman in a loud sport coat who is presumed to be dishonest. These reactions are built into our perceptions as a result of years of experience. This is also why when we see defendants in court, especially at trial, they often appear significantly different from the candid, and often unflattering, photos of them as they appeared prior to their arrest. Part of the defense attorney’s stock-in-trade is to manipulate, or alter, the appearance of the defendant they are representing in order to play on social stereotypes. But, this is precisely where the genders can diverge dramatically on how they perceive a social stereotype.

Women are more harshly critical of other women, especially attractive women, than they are of males both attractive and unattractive. Males, on the other hand. are more likely to hold a kindly bias toward attractive people, both male and female. I know this both rationally and experientially. We even have negative terms for attractive women in our vernacular. If you are an American guy who has a mother and a fondness for the opposite sex, then you are likely to have experienced this. I recall dating a woman in college who my mother derisively referred to as “that blonde bombshell”, despite the fact that she was a Ph.D. candidate in psychology. My mother’s opinion was that I was clearly at risk.

Thus, youthful, attractive defendants such as Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias, instantly engendered scorn from women around the country. Both were depicted in photographs as flamboyant and flirtatious, so women came down harshly in their criticisms of both women, labeling them as whores and sociopaths. This may seem counterintuitive but women judge themselves and other women on their appearances far more often than men are likely to. A woman looking at Jodi Arias sees an outward attempt to alter her appearance in order to make herself more attractive to the opposite sex. They see the breast implants, dyed blonde hair and, oddly enough, to some degree feel threatened.

Now before all the women get up in arms, the perceived threat is that here is an attractive woman who “isn’t playing fair”. Most women believe that they “play fair” when it comes to attracting and keeping their mate; they are honest and forthright and present themselves as they really are. When women like Jodi Arias and Casey Anthony pervert the rules, doing anything in their power to attract the opposite sex, most women are angered and some become outraged.

Now if the first impression and subsequent judgment of defendants based on appearances and behaviors only occurred in the courtroom, perhaps the published studies that suggest attractive people are judged less harshly than their less attractive counterparts would hold true. However, these studies make the mistake of discounting the impact of media coverage prior to a trial. The studies are essentially performed in a vaccuum by giving mock juries photos and profiles of mock defendants as well as mock case evidence. So in a vacuum, these theories will hold up. In the real world, however, I tend to think that they do not.

When photos and descriptions of the accused are published in the media, people necessarily make that initial experiential judgment at the moment they see them. Some attorneys have told me that an impartial jury is still possible and that jurors can set aside any preconceived opinions in favor of the rational evidence presented at trial. I disagree. People by nature have an inclination towards belief preservation and tend to discount or minimize evidence that disputes their original beliefs. In the case of forensic evidence, one can easily set aside rationally-formed opinions when new conflicting facts are presented (except in the case of conspiracy theorists), but when it comes to experiential opinions, it is much more difficult to overcome earlier perceptions. Opinions as to character, motive, and personality are subjective opinions and people will tend to grasp those bits of information that support their beliefs, and will discard those that do not. We’ve all heard the term “you can’t unring a bell”, but it goes beyond even that when subjective opinions have already formed. They are very difficult to uproot or overturn.

The media, of course, carefully selects the cases they choose to present to the public based on the desire for high ratings and the sensationalism that usually drives high ratings. So it’s not at all surprising that the media chooses more attractive defendants and/or victims on which to focus. Studies have proven that people would much rather view someone deemed attractive rather than their plainer counterparts. More and more, media is about visuals and soundbites as opposed to unbiased news coverage, so with increasing frequency, our biases will be affected by what the media chooses to present to us. The media, in turn, gauges the reactions to their stories and subsequently choose to present aspects of the story that match the widespread public opinion formed from the initial story. In this way, they create a “feeding frenzy” of sorts, with the public participating with almost rabid enthusiasm, such as we witnessed in the Anthony and Arias trials.

The question remains, however; does the public become enthralled by true crime stories simply because the participants are attractive? I think it goes deeper than that but certainly the attractiveness of the players is what whets the appetite and gets the ball rolling.

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

Charlie Bothuell V May Have a Very Sharp Axe to Grind

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

Why Beautiful Murderesses Inflame the Passions of the True Crime Fan

Going Postal Goes Fed-Ex!

How to Raise a Serial Killer in 10 Easy Steps

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

Luka Magnotta: Man, Boy or Beast?

The Disturbing Truth about Mothers Who Murder Their Children

Teleka Patrick Needed a Psychiatrist, Not a Pastor!

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

Skylar Neese and the Mean Girls Who Killed Her

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

Sean Rossman of the Tallahassee Democrat writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

Update:

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

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.

by BJW Nashe

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Character of the Murderess:

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

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

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

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

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

Jodi Arias’ Choice of Victim

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

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

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

The Artistry of the Murder Itself

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

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

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

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

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

We must, therefore, rank Jodi Arias considerably lower than we would prefer on this account, simply because she made the aesthetically disastrous choice to use a gun. It’s a shame, because her knife skills are unsurpassed, truly off the charts. Her blade work and the ensuing bloodshed is reminiscent of both the disfiguring cubism of Picasso, and Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist splatterings and drips. The bathroom scene is a true wonder; it’s shocking that this was only her first murder. And the sexual activity takes us into the realm of transgressive Viennese performance art. (A pre-murder sex tape would have been an excellent touch, but you can’t have everything.) Moreover, Jodi’s incredible performance during the police interrogation – complete with yoga positions and pleasing gymnastics — is pure Dada. Hugo Ball would have surely applauded this tour de force.

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

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

Zut alors! Not exactly Oprah’s Book Club material–but undeniably the angry screed of a thoughtful psychopath.

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

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

by Darcia Helle

“I didn’t do it, but I know who did.”

Imagine you are a 20-year-old, uneducated man-child who has spent his entire life in a small, crime-infested community. Your family defines dysfunctional, but you don’t think about that because you don’t know what a functional family looks like. Add to this the fact that you’re a minority in a city where prejudice runs rampant. One day you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and suddenly you find yourself arrested and charged with the brutal murder of a young woman. You tell everyone who will listen that you did not kill her. In fact, despite your fear, you provide police with the name of the real killer.

You have confidence in the justice system. They will see that you are not the killer. They will find the real killer and set you free. You believe this up until the moment the state puts you to death for a crime you did not commit.

The Wrong Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution is the true story of our imagined young man. Carlos DeLuna was arrested in February, 1983 and executed on December 7, 1989. This case was pushed through the Texas courts with alarming speed. The average US death penalty case takes about 13 years to go through the appeals process. Carlos had six years from arrest to death.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this case is old and things like this don’t happen anymore. We have far more sophisticated science. We have DNA tests. Sadly, you’d be mistaken in your trust of our modern judicial system. Carlos DeLuna’s case could just as easily happen today. We need to acknowledge all the wrong in our justice system before we can hope to get things right.

Let’s go back to the beginning. In 1960, Carlos’s mother, Margarita Conejo, moved to the La Armada housing project in Corpus Christi, Texas, with her six children after having divorced their father Francisco Conejo. There she met Joe DeLuna, and together she and Joe had three children in the three following years. Carlos DeLuna was the middle of these three children, born on March 15, 1962.

Joe DeLuna couldn’t be bothered to hang around and take care of his children. Margarita found herself with nine children, no money, and no patience. The job of raising Carlos was left to his older half-siblings.

By all accounts, Carlos was emotionally stunted, learning disabled bordering on mildly retarded, and “childlike”. In March of 1974, school psychologists diagnosed him with a “language-learning disorder”. Two years later, another school evaluation found him to have “fine-motor difficulty,” “specific learning deficits,” and “possible neurological difficulties.” Neither school officials nor his mother found the time or the right programs to help Carlos get even the most basic education. In the spring of 1977, at the age of 15, Carlos dropped out of school after having struggled through to just the eighth grade.

Carlos was no angel, nor did he claim to be. He was arrested multiple times for theft, intoxication, and sniffing paint. He was very much a boy left to fend for himself in a harsh and unforgiving environment. But Carlos was never violent. Despite multiple arrests, at no time was Carlos ever in possession of any sort of weapon. Anyone who knew Carlos said the same thing: he did not carry or even own a knife.

Carlos Hernandez, on the other hand, was not childlike or even remotely innocent.  Born on July 14, 1954, Hernandez spent his life in the same neighborhood as Carlos DeLuna. They were never friends, but they did know one another. Everyone knew Hernandez, and everyone feared him.

In 1960, when Hernandez was just six years old, his father was arrested for rape and his mother placed him in foster care. He returned to his mother a year later, though life never got easier. His father did not return home and his mother would not be winning any parenting awards.

In 1972, Hernandez was arrested on three counts of armed robbery of a gas station/convenience store. While in county jail, he was raped by at least one older inmate. This pushed the already unbalanced man who was prone to violence right over the edge. From then on, Hernandez always carried a knife. He cultivated a tough guy image, brandishing his knife and bullying people into doing what he wanted.

Over the following years, Hernandez was arrested multiple times for assault and even suspicion of murder. Hernandez always had a specific type of fixed-blade knife on him. He was also known to be extremely abusive to the women in his life. Despite his reputation, Hernandez managed to evade any hard prison time. When necessary he expertly manipulated the justice system, though often he slipped through the cracks without much effort at all.

With this history in mind, we move forward to February 4, 1983. Wanda Lopez, a young, single mother living in the same neglected neighborhood, was murdered while working the night shift at Sigmor Shamrock gas station. But telling you she was murdered is putting a shiny gloss on a dirty, vulgar act. Wanda was gutted with a knife. She was sliced up, dragged about, beaten, and left for dead. This act was brutal and personal. This was not a robbery gone bad, though the homicide detectives did their best to spin it that way.

At the exact time of Wanda’s murder, she was on the phone with 911 – for the second time – asking for help. Moments earlier, she’d made her first 911 call. She’d told the dispatcher that a man with a knife was outside the store and she was afraid, but the dispatcher had refused to help unless and until the man actually did something. When the man walked into the store, she called again. This time she was connected to a different dispatcher, and he made her repeat her story. He questioned her as if she was the suspect, demanding to know all the specifics. By the time he agreed to send help to Wanda, she was already being attacked. This is captured on the 911 recording, which you can listen to here: http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/media.html?type=audio&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.law.columbia.edu%2Fjliebman%2Fmedia%2F35-911-call-by-wanda-lopez.mp3

You might have guessed that the man in the store was Carlos Hernandez. At the time he was deciding to murder Wanda Lopez, Carlos DeLuna was standing across the street. He saw what was happening and ran. He was terrified of Hernandez and also terrified of the police. He was a child running for cover.

Hernandez left Wanda for dead, pushed out the door directly past a witness stepping inside, and raced off in the opposite direction from which Carlos DeLuna had run. The witness who came face-to-face with Hernandez saw which way he ran. But other people passing by the area saw Carlos DeLuna running the opposite way, and they assumed he was the killer. These conflicting eye-witness accounts were inconvenient to detectives arriving on the scene. Within minutes, police had compressed the differing descriptions into one person. Carlos DeLuna became that person when he was quickly found hiding beneath a truck nearby.

Police then bullied the reluctant witnesses into participating in a “show-up” identification. Carlos was driven back to the crime scene and witnesses were assured they had their man, and that he’d been found hiding under a truck. One-by-one, the witnesses were walked to the squad car, where Carlos sat in the back. A cop shined a flashlight directly in Carlos’s eyes so, according to the detectives, he wouldn’t be able to see the witnesses. Out in that dark parking lot, these terrified witnesses with disjointed stories who’d been told Carlos was the killer, were prompted to identify him. When a couple of them were reluctant, they were, for lack of a better word, coerced.

The one man who’d nearly walked into the killer hesitated but eventually agreed that Carlos DeLuna was the person he saw running out of the store. Years later, the authors of The Wrong Carlos questioned him:

Baker didn’t mince words. He had trouble recalling Hispanic names; they were all “Julio” to him, he said. And he had trouble telling Hispanics apart and judging their age. “It’s tough,” he said, “to identify cross cultures.”

This is not simply an issue of prejudice. All of us, regardless of how liberal our thinking, have more difficulty identifying and remembering specific features of people outside our own race. Add to that inherent shortcoming the fact that these witnesses were under tremendous stress, both from being involved in a murder scene and from the police pressure to help them make an arrest, and it’s not surprising that they instead got it horribly wrong.

The Innocence Project has this to say about eyewitness identifications:

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in nearly 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

And this leads us straight to the issue of DNA. Had Carlos DeLuna been arrested in 2014 instead of 1983, would DNA evidence have saved him? The answer is maybe.

First, to understand how absurd the arrest was from the start, I need you to picture the scene. As I mentioned, Wanda Lopez’s murder was brutal. There was quite literally blood everywhere. There were puddles of it in the store. The killer had dragged her through it. His bloody footprints tracked along the floor and out into the parking lot. When Carlos DeLuna was pulled out from beneath that truck, he did not have one speck of blood on him. None. Police explained this by saying he’d washed it off in a puddle. Corpus Christi had 1/8-inch of rain early the morning of Wanda’s murder. More than twelve hours later, it’s difficult to believe Carlos would find a deep enough puddle to fully wash away every trace of blood, all while desperately running away.

Furthermore, Carlos DeLuna had never been known to carry a knife and had never been violent. His first words to the cops who found him were: “I didn’t do it, but I know who did.” Those cops told him to shut up. Even much later, when Carlos finally broke through his fear of Hernandez and gave his name to police, not one person looked into the possibility that Carlos DeLuna was telling the truth. This, despite the fact that Hernandez was known to carry the exact same knife and had a history of violent behavior.

So much was wrong with this case from the very beginning. Some other highlights: Evidence was not collected. The lead homicide detective had never worked a homicide on her own. She spent one hour inside the store, then allowed the owner to scrub everything clean. She did not collect blood samples from inside, did not swab all the areas, did not look closely at the footprints in the blood or the handprints by the cash register. She completely ignored the fact that there was money scattered all over the floor and the owner told her that, at most, $20 was missing. Also, despite this being a vicious murder, no one questioned the fact that, aside from living in the same area, Carlos DeLuna had absolutely no connection to Wanda Lopez. He had a regular job, and none of the money in his pocket held even a tiny speck of blood. Given the magnitude of this botched case, it’s difficult to know how or if DNA could have helped. Really, all that was needed was for someone to listen to Carlos.

The topic of DNA is interesting in itself. The prosecution collects the evidence and decides which tests, if any, to run. If they feel their case is strong enough without DNA, they won’t bother. DNA tests are expensive and it’s better for their budget if they can avoid the cost. On the flip side, and showing my cynicism, maybe they also won’t initiate testing if they feel the results might muddle their chances of a win. The state is under no obligation to perform any forensic tests. Furthermore, and this is vital, the state is also under no obligation to approve the costs of these tests if the court appointed defense attorney requests them. Carlos DeLuna was poor, and poor men can’t afford private attorneys. They must make do with whichever lawyer the court appoints for them. And that lawyer must do his/her job under the constraints of a miniscule budget. This disparity is one major reason you will likely never see a wealthy person on death row.

According to this book’s authors:

The worst problem with executions is that the truth about them can so easily die with the executed prisoner. Sadly, the certainty that DNA and other forensic testing now makes possible has not changed this situation. This is because once executions occur, the same officials whose deadly mistakes might be exposed by DNA testing are given control over the crucial physical evidence in the case and consistently bar forensic testing of – or, as in Carlos DeLuna’s case, simply lose – the evidence. The public has no recourse to freedom of information laws or the courts to obtain forensic testing. The steadfast refusal of legislators, judges, and prosecutors to allow forensic testing that could provide unassailable proof of the accuracy, or not, of executions makes it difficult to credit those officials’ repeated assurances that the men and women whose executions they have sanctioned were undoubtedly guilty.

The details of this case are far too dense and convoluted for me to do justice to here. Carlos DeLuna was pushed through a system that did its best to ignore his innocence, while Carlos Hernandez fell through every crack and blissfully went on to rape and murder again. Carlos DeLuna went to the death chamber professing his innocence, pleading for just one person to do his/her job correctly and find Carlos Hernandez. Even in the moment of his state-sanctioned murder, Carlos DeLuna was not offered a shred of dignity. The first of three injections, meant to render Carlos unconscious, failed, and Carlos was conscious when the second, paralyzing drug entered his system and began suffocating him to death.

http://www.thewrongcarlos.net

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

 “Met Her on the Mountain”: Cold Case Social Worker Hog-Tied, Raped and Killed in Appalachia

Jovial Private Bartender Snaps; Assaults and Drags Obnoxious 84-Year-Old Club Patron

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Great Gasoline Mass Murder

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Back in September of 2013, we posted an article titled “Pre-Nuptial Child Sex Agreement Is Centerpiece of Marriage Contract” in which we told the dark story of former Marine Jonathan Adleta who entered into an infernal “daddy-daughter sex agreement” with his then wife Sarah Adleta as a condition of getting married. Acoording to the terms of the agreement, these two dismal excuses for human beings agreed that Jonathan would have the right to rape their child if she was female, while Sarah would do the same if he were male.

Andres Jauregui of the Huffington Post writes that in January of last year in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida, Jonathan Adleta was sentenced to two life sentences. Sarah Adleta was sentenced to 54 years in October for making child pornography with Jonathan using their son and daughter as “actors”.

In court on Monday, U.S. District Judge Roy B. Dalton Jr. stated that Adleta was guilty of the “destruction and scarring of his own children,” and that he chose two life terms partly because he believed that Adleta would offend again if released.

Apparently, Adleta could have received as little as five years for his counts of conviction which were conspiracy and transporting minors across a state line to engage in a sex act. Such a light sentence, however, was completely out of the question based on the 54 years Sarah Adleta received.

Our original post is included in its entirety below:

Pre-Nuptial Child Sex Agreement Is Centerpiece of Marriage Contract

As I knock out my daily quota of stories for the crime blog, it’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that the number one problem facing America may not be gun violence, bad as it is. The number one problem we face is child abuse –sexual, physical and emotional, and although I cannot prove it, child abuse my be the foundation upon which violence of all types festers and grows. A recent story by Amy Pavuk of the Orlando Sentinel hammers this home in the most shocking way imaginable:

There is a man, a former Marine officer named Jonathan Adleta, age 25, whose goal in life — for unknown reasons — was to engage in what is euphemistically called “daddy-daughter” sex. When he and his girlfriend, Sarah Adleta – a University of Central Florida student who has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor – conceived a child, Jonathan informed her that he would only marry her if she would allow him to rape their child, assuming it was a daughter. If the child was a son, Sarah would be required to have sex with the boy.

This hideous scenario was revealed in an Orlando courtroom where prosecutors and witnesses described in graphic detail the horrible exploitation and abuse the couple’s toddlers endured at the hands of their parents — even after they divorced.

The abuse would still be going on had the FBI not received a tip that Sarah Adleta, now divorced, was in touch with a North Carolina pedophile who was arrested on charges of child sex abuse.

Many of the horrific revelations that came out at the trial were revealed by Sarah Adleta herself on the witness stand. She testified that when she began dating Jonathan in 2008, he began showing and telling her stories about fathers and daughters having sex, to gauge her interest and persuade her to agree to his plan. Sarah, who testified wearing Orange County jail garb, stated that she initially struggled with the idea and and more or less assumed that Jonathan would lose interest in it. Sarah also testified that she “loved” Jonathan, needed the financial security he promised to provide, and was basically willing to do whatever it took to not lose him.

Sarah gave birth to their daughter in March of 2009, and she then became pregnant with their son shortly thereafter. She and Jonathan were married in 2010.

So in effect, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Gable told the jurors, the couple made raping their children “part of their parenting plan.”

Being a marine, Jonathan Adleta was deployed to Afghanistan. When he returned from his tour of duty, he and the family moved to California, where he was stationed. There, according to Sarah’s testimony, he had sexual contact with the children.

By 2011, Jonathan Adleta was bored with Sarah and filed for divorce. Although she returned to Central Florida, she still allowed Jonathan to continue to prey on their daughter electronically through the videoconference program Skype. Cyber molestation, however, did not long satisfy Jonathan’s aberrant desires and by the spring of 2012, he had found a new girlfriend, 23 year old Samatha Bryant of Texas,  who agreed to let him victimize her daughter.

Samantha Bryant also testified at the trial stating that she watched as Jonathan Adleta molested her daughter, and on at least one occasion, took photographs of the assault. In her article in the Orlando Sentinel, Amy Pavuk writes:

Bryant, who was visibly shaken and cried throughout much of her testimony, said Jonathan Adleta asked her to write fantasy-type stories about him having sex with his daughter and her daughter. She did. She also complied when he asked Bryant to perform sex acts on her own daughter.

The culmination of this appalling story took place in over Christmas in Oklahoma where Bryant and her two children met up with Jonathan and Sarah and their two children. On the witness stand, Sarah Adleta told the jurors that in Oklahoma, her former husband sexually abused their daughter in his bedroom with her watching. During this part of her testimony, Sarah — who for the most part was without emotion — got choked up:

“She seemed very resistant,” she said of her daughter, adding that the child was “really upset” and “frightened.”

Sarah did not help her weeping daughter.

There is still more to this horribly dark narrative:

Several weeks later, Jonathan Adleta contacted Sarah who had returned to Florida and told her that she needed to find another man to abuse their daughter so she would become comfortable with the sex acts, which would prevent her from ‘freaking out” in the future.

While this was happening, Sarah Adleta was communicating with Aaron Dixon, a North Carolina man who was later arrested on child-sex charges in an unrelated case. Sarah told the jurors that she performed sex acts on the children while Dixon watched on Skype.

In her closing argument on Thursday, A.U.S.A. Gable told the jury that the last time the Sarah and Jonathan spoke, they discussed Sarah taking their daughter to Dixon so that he could sexually abuse her. That same day, the jurors found Jonathan Adleta guilty of two child-sex charges. He’ll be sentenced in December and faces 10 years to life in prison. Sarah, who faces 15 to 30 years in Federal prison, will be sentenced in October.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

Rachel D’Oro writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Lise LaSalle

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

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

The historic Cecil Hotel was located near Skid Row and it did not take long for the mystery to take a turn for the occult when Elisa was found dead because of the strange circumstances surrounding the event and of a surveillance video of Lam inside an elevator pushing buttons and behaving oddly.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore & Others

The “evil Gods” are alive and well in Clemmons, North Carolina. And since every high priest of evil needs at least one acolyte, our Ungodly Man of the Day, a 35-year-old curiosity who goes by the name of Pazuzu Illah Algarad, has two loyal female retainers: Amber Nicole Burch, 24, and Krystal Nicole Matlock, 28.

Naturally, our man Pazuzu, who appears to be the sort of cannibal-murderer who prefers to dispose of the skeletons of his murder victims in his own back yard rather than dumping them in secluded nether regions, lives just off Peace Haven Road. How he worked this one out is anybody’s guess, but facts are facts.

Like last month’s prize model for peculiarity, Caius Veiovis, Pazuzu has also adopted a flashy pseudonym. His real name is the far more pedestrian John Lawson.

Now I want to make things perfectly clear and I do not want to come across as a complete ass. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a young man adopting a “look at me” persona in an attempt to draw attention to oneself. I did it myself when I was one of the “young dudes” and it is not something I regret or am ashamed of. Rather, I think, it’s just part of growing up for insecure souls who feel the need to be noticed and are not sure how to accomplish that without putting on a bit of the Dr. Strange.

This behavior pattern, however, becomes highly problematic when it leads to serious crime, which, if the jury got it right, is what happened in the case of the Horned-Man Veiovis,. If the allegations are correct, such is also the case with the majestic Pazuzu, whose name reportedly comes from the mythological king of the demons of the wind.

Pazuzu is currently charged with one count of murder and one count of accessory after the fact to murder.

WXII News writes:

Two people whose skeletal remains were found buried in a Clemmons backyard Sunday were killed in 2009, Forsyth County deputies allege in court documents obtained by WXII Tuesday.

The remains were found in the 2700 block of Knob Hill Drive off Peace Haven Road. No names have been released, though warrants identified one of the bodies as a male.

Pazuzu Illah Algarad, 35, of Clemmons; Amber Nicole Burch, 24, of Clemmons; and Krystal Nicole Matlock, 28, of Winston-Salem, have been arrested so far in the ongoing investigation.

Like Pazuzu, Ms. Burch, who apprently lived with him at the address on Knob Hill Drive, faces one count of murder and one count of accessory after the fact to murder. Both of them are being held without bond in the Forsyth County Detention Center.

The deputies allege that Pazuzzu killed one of the victims sometime after June 1, 2009, and Ms. Burch helped him bury the body in July of that year. They also allege that the third defendant, Ms. Matlock, also helped Pazuzu perform the burial.

With a name like Pazuzu and with two acolytes standing by, the burial should have been performed with pomp and circumstance, but based on the fact the bodies were found buried in shallow graves, this may not be the case.

Pazuzuz’s charge of accessory after the fact to murder stems from the fact that he allegedly helped Ms. Burch dispose of the body of a victim she had murdered in early October of 2009, the second of the two bodies recovered in the twin shallow graves in Pazuzu’s backyard.

The remains of both bodies have been transported to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for further evaluation and, hopefully, positive identification.

It appears that the act of murder, like most if not all all bad habits, can be habit-forming, and based on Pazuzu’s example, it appears that acting as an accessory after the fact can also be addictive. In 2010, almost precisely a year after the first of the 2009 murders, he was again charged with accessory after the fact in connection with the shooting death of Joseph Emmrick Chandler, also of Clemmons, a legally blind man, whose body was found on June 7, 2010, at the Yadkin River Access at Donnaha Park.

In the Chandler case, Pazuzu got off rather easily, receiving a 5-year split sentence that included probation.

Digging up dead bodies and scouring property can be time-consuming and according to neighbors, the investigation of Knob Hill Road began on Sunday morning and SBI tents were still erected on the property on Tuesday morning.

Unsurprisingly, there had long been rumors to the effect that Pazuzu may have buried corpses in his backward. Sebastian Murdoch of Huffington Post writes:

Bianca Heath claimed she lived with Algarad for a month in 2005, and that he had spoken of the bones in his back yard.

“Paz told everyone,” Heath told The Huffington Post. “But I never believed him. I’m sure no one else believed him either. He laughed about the skeletal remains when telling the story on why he did what he did.”

According to Ms. Bianca, Pazuzu laughingly informed her that he had picked up two prostitutes at two separate locations, after which he killed and ate them before burning the leftovers in a fire pit prior to burying the skeletons.

“I never once saw the skeleton bodies, I honestly thought he was lying, now I’m not sure what to believe,” Heath said.

An anonymous post on an online message board dated 2012 states:

“He has bragged to other members of my family about sick things he has done and told them he has killed other people and has buried other bodies.”

Like anyone dedicated to self-promotion (which at this point includes a large percentage of social media conscious Americans), Pazuzu has/had what he no doubts considers a very cool Facebook page featuring “a large collection of pictures featuring demonic creatures and upside down crosses.”

In her interview, Ms. Heath described Pazuzu as a worshipper of “evil gods.”

Although eye-catching murderers such as Pazuzu certainly have at least a modicum of entertainment value (assuming he is guilty of the charges), it is sobering to think that he is apparently just one of a huge number of twisted young men capable of taking life in a most cavalier fashion.

On Monday morning, in response to the “wannabe Dexter” post about Steven Miles, who murdered and dismembered his 17-year-old girlfriend, retired parole officer Stephen Daniels wrote:

As a retired high risk parole agent, I had the opportunity to interview and/or research files of nearly 200 convicted murderers.

First, there are many youth who are teetering on the brink of killing. They are inundated with violent images, and with other stimuli, such as drugs, games, etc, have a difficult time sorting out the noise of violence that surrounds them. (Not) all kids who are involved with violent images become killers, but it is simply one more ingredient in the stew.

Second, I think it is time to define the serial killer mentality qualitatively, not by quantity of victims. I would imagine this young boy in the “Dexter” story fits many of the serial killer red flags.

What is striking to me about Pazuzu’s “serial killer style” (and with one murder to his credit and two accessory after the fact allegations, he certainly seems to more or less fall into the general serial killer category) is the utter casualness with which he approaches his craft, telling his pals and lovers about his foul deeds as if they are mere trifles rather than the brutal taking of lives.

This is some scary stuff: to take someone life is arguably the most serious of crimes, but to take life and laugh about it, as if it was just good jovial fun, is a quintessentially disturbing phenomenon.

Click here to view our follow-up post on Mr. Algarad in which his alleged mental illness is discussed:

The Curious Case of Pazuzu Illah Algarad: The Enigmatic Satanic Schizophrenic Is a Tough Nut to Crack

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Apparently neither the children of Georgia nor their parents have gotten the message that schoolyard bullying has had its day and that it’s time for children (and adults) to learn to treat one another with respect. Wishful thinking on my part? Well, perhaps, but let’s not forget that there was a time when women were disenfranchised (weren’t allowed to vote), not to mention the fact that as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, Jim Crow was the de facto law of the land throughout much — if not all — of the South.

With respect to bullying, however,we still have a long ways to go as the events in Carroll County, Georgia, graphically demonstrate.

Michael Walsh of the New York Daily News has the story:

A little girl, third grader Aolani Dunbar, 8, of Rootville, Ga. has been bullied unmercifully by her classmates for the last three years. In other words, she’s been targeted by her so-called “classmates” ever since she started school. The viciousness  of the harassment intensified after Aolani had extensions put into her hair on Sept. 28. The other children, egged on by two small, aggressive boys, began pulling her hair — HARD!

“The following Monday, kids started teasing her, telling her she was stupid to have a wig on her hair,” said Sarah Charles, Aolani’s mother. “We called the school on Tuesday saying that her hair was being pulled.”

The school either did nothing or did not do enough. The bullying and hair-pulling continued. Aolani’s mother continued to call Rootville Elementary School for the next two weeks, asking for the school to launch a real investigation. But either the message did not get passed on or the school did not care enough to take steps to solve the problem. In any event, according to Aolani’s family, no effective steps were taken to protect the girl from her tormenters.

Although Sarah Charles appears to have been quite diligent in calling the school administrators, she did not catch on to how severe the hair-pulling was for quite some time. Also, Aolani apparently kept the degree of the damage to herself for over two weeks. Then on Oct. 15, Sarah noticed an “ungodly smell” coming from Aolani’s head.

Sarah and other family members began removing the extensions to see what was causing the odor.

“There was a humongous sore,” Charles said. “The doctor at the emergency room had never seen anything like that.”

You can imagine the shock and sorrow Sarah must have felt when when the surveyed the damage. The continuous tugging and yanking had actually torn off part of Aolani’s scalp.

The massive wound on the crown of the child’s head was so serious that it was treated in the emergency room as if it were a burn.

Doctors say Aolani’s hair might never grow back on the damaged part of her scalp and she may need a skin graft. She also had to have the rest of her head shaved to avoid infection.

Although Aolani is recovering physically, she is still a wreck psychologically. She has been out of school for nearly three weeks now suffering from “severe headaches, anxiety and extreme humiliation.” She will be transferred to another school within the same district, according to Sarah.

*     *     *     *     *

WSB-TV, the first station to cover the case, reported that Aolani shaved her head to decrease the risk of infection. Several family members and friends shaved their heads as well in a gesture of solidarity.

The family said that two little boys were responsible for encouraging a larger group of students to “have a tug” at her hair. One of the boys got an in-school suspension, but the other has not been disciplined.

The Carroll County School District released a statement saying the “administration immediately investigated and dealt with the students who had engaged in the behavior and appropriate disciplinary action was taken against them.”

*     *     *     *     *

Yeah, right. Until the boys choose another victim to pick on. But I am reminded of what our friend Pitchforks points out in his post, “Leading Lambs to Syllabic Slaughter.” Pitchforks argues that it’s really rather senseless “to let the buck stop” with the child perpetrators. When children act out in cruel fashion, says Pitchforks (albeit far more eloquently than I am capable of), they are reflecting what they have been taught by their parents at home. Their cruelty doesn’t come out of nowhere. The parents are largely to blame and should be called out for their lousy parenting.

Suppose the parents of the two little boys who instigated the vendetta against Aolani were required to serve 300 or 400 hours of community service to demonstrate that they “get it” and will do their level best to ensure that their kids stop picking on the weaker children.

Of course, it will be a cold day in hell before this happens. Or will it? Time will tell, my friends. In the meantime, children like Aolani who are somehow perceived as being different or weird or somehow unacceptable to the mindless majority will continue to be scapegoats in this dishearteningly cruel world.

by BJW Nashe

Carlos Castaneda’s journey from anthropology student to famous author to New Age cult leader makes for a strange tale that is far more disturbing than anything found in his bestselling books.

At the peak of his career, Castaneda crossed over an invisible line. He turned his back on the clear light of humane, rational thought, and stepped into a shadowy realm of manipulation, secrecy, and lies. It’s tempting to compare this to the metaphorical leap into the abyss that figures so heavily in his writings. Yet Castaneda’s real-life leap had consequences that were quite different from the magical escapades depicted in his writing. Once he became rich and famous and began facing scrutiny, Castaneda shunned the limelight and spent the next two-and-a-half decades pursuing a bizarre alternative lifestyle largely hidden from the public. He proclaimed himself a shaman and a sorcerer and assumed the role of a mysterious guru surrounded by a group of close followers.

When Castaneda passed away in 1998, several of his disciples simply disappeared. To this day, no one knows what happened to them. Since then, others from Castaneda’s inner circle have spoken out about their experiences with “the Nagual.” A highly complex, sinister, and sleazy portrait of the man has now emerged. The most detailed source of information is a memoir published by Amy Wallace (daughter of novelist Irving Wallace) in 2003 called Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Robert Marshall’s discussion of Castaneda’s dark legacy in a 2007 article for Salon.com is also very informative, drawing on both Wallace’s book and interviews with other insiders who knew Castaneda well. We are ultimately left with a lasting image of Castaneda as a creepy cult leader who manipulated and controlled his closest female followers — known as “the witches” — to such an extent that they may have been led to end their own lives.

Stopping the World

What we know of Carlos Castaneda’s life prior to his meteoric rise to fame is fairly unremarkable. He was born on December 25, 1925 in Cajamarca, Peru. He immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. In January 1960, he married Margaret Runyan. On August 12, 1961, Margaret gave birth to a son named Carlton Jeremy (“C.J.”) Castaneda. Carlos supposedly divorced Margaret in 1973, although records indicate they remained legally married throughout Castaneda’s life.

As a young man, Castaneda enrolled in UCLA to study ethnography. He may have dropped out for a while — there are conflicting reports on his education — but records show that he graduated with a B.A. in anthropology in 1962. He went on to pursue a doctorate degree at UCLA, continuing his anthropology studies. Post-graduate education in California in the 1960s could be pretty free-wheeling. Castaneda was able to take advantage of this by reading widely in various esoteric disciplines and making frequent trips to the desert to conduct research. It was during his grad student years that Castaneda decided to start writing about his “apprenticeship” with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer named Don Juan Matus, whom he claimed to have met while immersing himself in the rich lore surrounding psychoactive plants in the Sonora Desert. Castaneda aspired to be a “psychedelic scholar” loosely modeled after Aldous Huxley, whose book The Doors of Perception was very influential at the time.

Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, was published  in 1968 by the UC Press, which led to a book deal with Simon and Schuster. Castaneda followed his debut with two further texts, A Separate Reality (1971) and Journey to Ixtlan (1973). All three books were recognized as anthropological field studies, and marketed as popular non-fiction. Journey to Ixtlan was submitted as a doctoral thesis, for which Castaneda received a Ph.D. in 1973. The UCLA faculty were not the only ones impressed with Carlos’s writing. The books found a large audience with counter-culture types — which was a thriving market back in the early 1970s. Scores of long-haired college students, hippie travelers, metaphysical seekers, and dabblers in the occult found Castaneda’s books to be irresistible — a kind of intellectual catnip. These books seemed to be tailor-made to fit their various preoccupations.

The popularity of Castaneda’s early work is not difficult to understand. A talented storyteller blessed with natural wit and charisma, Carlos also had just enough erudition to be dangerous. His first-person accounts of traveling to the Sonora to become initiated into the magical world of Don Juan and his fellow sorcerers make for compelling reading. The desert setting is rendered in vivid detail, the prose is crisp and clear, and the characters are alternately fascinating, eccentric, and menacing. Most important, the subject matter is mind-blowing — a philosophical walk on the wild side, in which the narrator is taught to “stop the world” by breaking free from his habitual ways of thinking and perceiving. Stopping the world allows him to enter another dimension of reality — the “nagual” — that is filled with supernatural intensity. Becoming a “warrior” in this psychic zone involves various outlandish activities such as ingesting powerful hallucinogens, learning to control dreams,  talking to luminous coyotes and dogs, and turning into a crow and flying through the desert sky.

The star of the show is Don Juan Matus, who comes across as a psychedelic Native American zen master with a sharp occult edge. The world of sorcery is fraught with peril, often a life-and-death struggle against powerful dark forces. Yet Don Juan’s teachings contain a strong current of anarchic humor. The second book (A Separate Reality) opens with the narrator “Carlos” paying a visit to Don Juan in order to present him with a copy of the first book, which he is immensely proud to have authored. Don Juan declines the gift, suggesting that it be used as toilet paper instead. Then a new cycle of grueling apprenticeship begins, even more intense than the last time. Once again, Carlos’s mind must be blown to smithereens in order to obtain true visionary power.

Becoming Inaccessible 

Castaneda’s books would go on to sell more than ten million copies during his lifetime (and they are still selling today). He received glowing reviews from the literary establishment. Notable anthropologists from the nation’s top universities praised his work. With fame and success came heightened scrutiny, however. In 1973, Time Magazine ran an article by Sandra Burton that raised serious questions about the details of Castaneda’s biography and the credibility of his apprenticeship with Don Juan Matus. Richard De Mille (son of film director Cecil B. De Mille) thoroughly investigated Castaneda and published a book called Castaneda’s Journey: The Power and the Allegory  that declared the Don Juan books to be fraudulent — little more than a clever hoax. De Mille reviewed library records at UCLA to demonstrate that Castaneda imported the content of Don Juan’s teachings from a slew of historical and metaphysical texts. Castaneda’s true adventure, claimed De Mille, occurred not in the Sonora desert, but among the stacks of the university library. De Mille also argued that Castaneda’s details regarding the Yaqui Indians of Northern Mexico were insufficient or inaccurate. Most damaging, in the eyes of many, is De Mille’s assertion that Yaqui Indians do not use peyote in magical rituals as depicted by Castaneda.

In hindsight, it is hard to believe that anyone — including the faculty at UCLA — considered Castaneda’s writing to be literally true. The books might be based in part on field research and interviews with Native Americans. They may contain a certain level of poetic or spiritual “truth.” So does Paradise Lost, yet few of us today would claim that Milton’s masterpiece is a “true story.” These days, hardly anyone considers Castaneda’s stories about Don Juan Matus to be pure non-fiction — no matter where they are shelved in bookstores. Yet Castaneda’s books remain popular works of metaphysical literature that sit comfortably alongside Gurdjieff, Crowley, Huxley, and Ouspensky.

As criticism of his work intensified, Castaneda stopped talking to the press. He did not retreat from public life altogether; there were still parties to go to, and people to meet. After the Time article in 1973, however, Carlos gave no more interviews, refused to be photographed or filmed, and would not allow his voice to be recorded. He also forbade those close to him from speaking to the press or discussing him in any way without his approval. In a telling move, Castaneda also severed all ties with his estranged wife Margaret Runyan and their son C.J.

Castaneda had no interest in defending his writing as literature. He has been described as a trickster who pulled off the perfect hoax, because he never admitted to any fault whatsoever. In fact, he remained committed to the illusion of truth perpetuated by the hoax. He wanted people to think he had been initiated into a world of secret knowledge. He wanted to be recognized as an actual sorcerer. And he craved followers who believed in his magic. Since he was a famous figure, there were plenty of fans willing to sit at the feet of the master. Castaneda began referring to himself as “the Nagual” — as if he were a supernatural being with all-knowing powers. He was such a compelling fabulist that he apparently brainwashed himself into believing his own BS.

Erasing Personal History 

Castaneda continued publishing books throughout the 1970s and 80s. He also began organizing his followers and channeling their activities in certain strategic directions. Along with the philosophy presented in his writings, he also began promoting a spiritual practice called “Tensegrity,” which is best described as a movement technique somewhat similar to Tai chi. Carlos claimed the technique had been passed down through 25 generations of Toltec shamans. Castaneda established a Los Angeles-based corporation called Cleargreen, which promoted Tensegrity through workshops, seminars, and instructional videos. People paid up to $1200 to attend sessions where Castaneda and his disciples would speak and answer questions, while  Tensegrity demonstrations were performed by black-clad acolytes called “chacmools.” Books and videos were on sale, along with T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “Self Importance Kills — Do Tensegrity.”  The workshops were quite successful, often selling out. Castaneda was a marketable brand. (It should be noted that Cleargreen’s outreach continues to this day, with locations in Southern California, Europe, and Latin America.)

Behind the scenes, life at Castaneda’s compound on Pandora Avenue in Westwood was growing increasingly strange. At the core of the Nagual’s inner circle — which numbered up to two dozen people at any given time — was a group of intensely devoted young women who were all at one time or another romantically linked to Castaneda. They were referred to as “the witches.” Once they were lured into Castaneda’s orbit, he instructed them to change their names and cease all contact with their former friends and families. Then they were subjected to various methods of control: hypnosis, verbal and emotional abuse, mind games, bizarre rituals, dubious teachings, and sexual domineering. The women were forbidden from exhibiting any signs of illness, should they ever become sick. They began dressing in a similar style of black clothes and sporting the same short, dyed blonde haircuts. They each claimed to have been instructed by Don Juan Matus in the desert. Two of them were directed by Carlos to write their own books about these “apprenticeships.” The primary task of the witches, however, was recruiting new female members for the Nagual to share his unique magic with.

Within the group, three women were particularly close to Castaneda: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, and Carol Tiggs. Tiggs at one point defected from the cult, but was eventually lured back by Carlos. Amalia Marquez, who served as president of Cleargreen Corporation, and Kylie Lundahl, a Tensegrity instructor, were also key figures in the Nagual’s inner circle. The individual with the strangest role of all in Castaneda’s inner circle was Patricia Partin, also known as “the Blue Scout.”

Patricia Partin grew up in LaVerne, California. After dropping out of Bonita High School during her junior year, she worked as a waitress for a while, and then at 19 got married to an aspiring filmmaker named Mark Silliphant. At some point during their courtship, Silliphant introduced Partin to Castaneda in 1977. Just 19 days into their marriage, Partin left her new husband and went to live with Carlos. She paid one last visit to her mother, during which she refused to pose for a family photograph. She never spoke to her mother again.

Castaneda renamed her Partin Nury Alexander. He also referred to her as “Claude,” or the Blue Scout. Young and attractive, she soon enjoyed a privileged status as one of his favorite disciples. Carlos claimed she possessed a rare energy that was “barely human.” In an exceedingly odd move, Castaneda officially adopted her in 1995, then explained to the other witches that he had “conceived her with Carol Tiggs in the nagual.” Carlos evidently enjoyed the conceptual incest involved in the adoption arrangement. Within the group, Partin was frequently infantilized. New cult members would be assigned the task of playing dolls with her. Castaneda at times deferred to her judgment regarding serious spiritual matters. He told the group that the Blue Scout had convinced him to start Cleargreen. He liked to use her special status as leverage in the mind games he played with the others.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Amy Wallace, who was closely associated with the group during the early 1990s, has provided us with the clearest picture of what life was like in Castaneda’s cult, with his harem of witches and his adopted daughter, the Blue Scout.

Castaneda first met Amy through her father, novelist Irving Wallace, who was friendly with the younger author. Carlos would often stop by the Wallace home in Los Angeles. Shortly after Irving’s death in 1990, Amy — who was then living in Berkeley — received a phone call from Castaneda in which he said that her father had visited him in a dream, saying that he was trapped inside the Wallace’s house, and needed Amy and Carlos to free him. (This pickup line probably only works if you are a famous New Age author.) Amy agreed to meet up with Castaneda in LA, and the seduction was underway. He told her he hadn’t had sex in the last 20 years (!), and soon persuaded her to join him in bed for a mystical experience. When she worried about possible pregnancy (the Nagual did not use birth control), Castaneda exclaimed, “Me make you pregnant? Impossible! The Nagual’s sperm isn’t human … Don’t let any of the Nagual’s sperm out, nena. It will burn away your humanness.” The vasectomy he’d undergone years earlier was never mentioned.

The courtship with Amy lasted for several weeks, and led directly into mind games and manipulation. At one point, Castaneda told her they were “energetically married.” However, when he noticed her checking the street signs around the compound — as if trying to get her bearings — he flew into a rage and banished her back to Berkeley. When she called on the phone, Carlos refused to speak to her. The witches instructed her to “let go of her attachments.” So she got rid of her pet cats. Then Carlos told her she was “an egotistical, spoiled Jew” who should “go get a job at McDonald’s.” After six months of this treatment, she was finally allowed to return.

Such expulsions were common within the cult, and could occur arbitrarily, without rhyme or reason. If the Blue Scout didn’t like you, obviously you were toast. As in most cult situations, random exercises of power were used to keep the Nagual’s followers fearful and subservient. The obvious question is, why would anyone, including Amy Wallace, ever want to return? Why would anyone stick around in the first place?

We can answer this question in four ways — personal, social, philosophical, and psychological. First, Castaneda could be a charming and charismatic leader, when it suited his purposes. His personal magnetism was augmented by an aura of genius and fame. Certain people were easily seduced by him. Second, group members enjoyed a sense of close family connection that may have been absent from their lives before. Being part of a group — even a dysfunctional, abusive group — is sometimes viewed as preferable to alienation. Third, for people who are seeking something deeper and more meaningful than a normal nine-to-five existence in the business world, the Nagual’s spiritual philosophy and sexual games provided a clear alternative. Fourth, people who join cults often experience — at least temporarily — a sense of joy in being liberated from the responsibilities of decision-making. Freedom can be a burden. When someone else — a charismatic leader — is calling all the shots, one can be carefree in one’s subservience.

So there were certain “benefits” gained from living in Castaneda’s cult. As far as cults go, the benefits of Cleargreen were notable. Still, most of us would soon find these benefits seriously overshadowed by the horrors involved. In a 2012 interview with the Examiner, Amy Wallace explained that her passionate love affair with Carlos was initially intoxicating, yet soon devolved into abuse and humiliation. He berated her in front of the others for being “fat,” even though she was a petite woman who wore a size zero. He blamed her for “killing” him. He flipped out when he discovered that she was taking Prozac. “He believed he was cursed forever because his penis had entered a Prozac-contaminated body.” She witnessed him expel members from the group for drinking, smoking pot, and for getting sick or injured. Meanwhile, Carlos was always on the prowl for nubile young women, sometimes engaging in activities that bordered on kidnapping. In hindsight, it’s surprising that criminal charges were never brought against him. In writing her memoir, Wallace recalled that at one point she felt so tormented that she considered suicide. “Just remembering how close I came still terrifies me. It was horrific to write about.”

Amy Wallace has published several other books on various topics, yet she received her highest praise from readers and reviewers alike for telling her story about life with Carlos Castaneda. She insightfully describes both the seductive qualities that lead people to follow cult leaders, and the nightmare that awaits them once they get caught up in the lifestyle. “My book is very much a warning,” she says.

A Leap into the Void 

In 1997, Castaneda was diagnosed with liver cancer. The diagnosis was kept secret from everyone except the core group of witches, because illness was not supposed to be part of the sorcerer’s playbook. The seminars and workshops continued on as if nothing was wrong. Meanwhile the witches privately supervised traditional and alternative treatments for the Nagual.

With his health declining, Castaneda rarely left the compound. Many of the witches purchased guns, according to Carol Tiggs. This is not a good sign for any cult, since it could lead to random violence or a Branch Davidian-style Waco conflagration. Another bad sign is when the cult leader is bedridden with a morphine drip, gazing at the flickering images of war videos on the TV/VCR, while his closest followers are busy burning his papers. Taisha Abelar was drinking heavily, yet she told Amy Wallace it didn’t matter anymore. “I’m not in any danger of becoming an alcoholic now,” she said, “because I’m leaving. So, it’s too late.” Wallace figures that this was Abelar’s way of indicating that her own death was near.

An end-of-the-world vibe permeated the group. Wallace had another revealing conversation during this tense time period. Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl told her, “If I don’t go with him, I’ll do what I have to do… It’s too late for you and me to remain in the world — I think you know exactly what I mean.”

In April 1998, the witches and other members of the inner circle were packing up the Castaneda compound. A week later, the Nagual died at age 72. He was cremated at the Culver City mortuary. No one knows where his ashes ended up. Within a few days, Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, Patricia Partin, Kylie Lundahl, and Amalia Marquez had their phones disconnected. Then they all vanished, leaving no word with anyone as to their whereabouts (at least, not that we know of). A few weeks later, Partin’s red Ford Escort was found abandoned in Death Valley. Her sun-bleached skeleton would be discovered five years later in the desert.

Within the greater community of Cleargreen associates and followers, few knew that Castaneda was dead. Yet rumors quickly spread, leading to a sense of growing despair. Still, the workshops continued. Carol Tiggs assumed a leadership role within the corporation. She told one member of the inner circle that she was supposed to have “gone with them,” but “a non-decision decision” had kept her here to run the show. Tiggs banned all grieving and mourning within Cleargreen. Many reportedly took to drowning their sorrows in alcohol and drugs. Some contemplated suicide in order to “get close to Carlos.”

When news of Castaneda’s death was finally made public two months after the fact, Cleargreen members stopped answering their phones. A brief statement was soon posted on the web site claiming that “… Carlos Castaneda left the world the same way that his teacher, don Juan Matus did: with full awareness.”

Nobody knows for sure what happened to Partin, the Blue Scout, in Death Valley. Nobody knows the fate of other three women closest to Castaneda who disappeared shortly after his passing. Some Cleargreen people think they are still alive, and have started over in a new setting, with new identities. Most people familiar with the story think they committed suicide. Without the Nagual, they saw no point in going on. Perhaps they had formed a suicide pact. Maybe the Nagual knew all about it. Followers had frequently heard Castaneda and the witches talking about suicide — about “making the leap” together. The path of the Warrior included choosing one’s own death. Carlos reportedly once sent the Blue Scout out to the desert to locate possible suicide locations.

There is no record with the LAPD or FBI of any investigation into at least three of the disappearances — Donner-Grau, Abelar, and Lundahl. No one reported them missing, since they had been estranged from their families for years.

There is an open investigation into the Amalia Marquez case, due to the efforts of her brother Luis. He claims the LAPD ignored his requests for assistance until the skeletal remains of the fifth missing cult member — Patricia Partin — were discovered in Death Valley in 2003 and positively identified in 2006 using DNA testing. Still, Luis Marquez claims the LAPD has been reluctant to visit Cleargreen or question anyone there about possible foul play. When Luis contacts Cleargreen headquarters himself, he is told that the missing women are “traveling.”

In a related incident in 2002, a woman named Janice Emery from Taos, New Mexico, who was a Cleargreen follower and workshop attendee, jumped to her death in the Rio Grande gorge. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Emery was suffering from cancer. One of her friends told the newspaper that she ended her life because she “wanted to be with Castaneda’s people.” Another friend said: “I think she was really thinking she could fly off.”

A Different Sort of Leap

An astonishing fact to ponder: so many organizations devoted to spiritual well-being — from mega churches to fringe cults — seem to share a very disturbing characteristic: domination, control, and abuse of women. We see this feature in certain fundamentalist denominations of Christianity and Islam. We see it in the Church of Scientology. We know it was all-too apparent in the Manson Family, the People’s Temple at Jonestown, and the Branch Davidian compound at Waco. I’m sure there are other examples. In this sense, Castaneda’s cult is not exceptional or unique. It fits into a general pattern of misogyny and sexual subjugation seen in many other faith-based institutions and groups.

The domination and control of women is so prevalent in these organizations that one wonders whether it is more than just an ugly tendency or side-effect. Is it too much of a leap to argue that the domination of women just might be the primary goal or mission of the leaders of these groups? Are all of the mystical teachings and metaphysical doctrines just a smokescreen for the true objective? Is religion sometimes just a convenient way for men to control other people — in particular, women? It certainly starts to look that way, when we consider the case of Carlos Castaneda, AKA the Nagual.

Courtesy of The Lair, we present 25 wrenching quotes from Jeffrey Dahmer. Unlike Ted Bundy, Dahmer does not make excuses. Rather, he reaches for answers to the unanswerable horror that he perpetrated. Dare we give him marginal credit for honesty? That’s a question each reader will have to answer for themselves.

“I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if it meant my own destruction.”

“It’s just a nightmare, let’s put it that way. It’s been a nightmare for a long time, even before I was caught … for years now, obviously my mind has been filled with gruesome, horrible thoughts and ideas … a nightmare.”

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

“I don’t even know if I have the capacity for normal emotions or not because I haven’t cried for a long time. You just stifle them for so long that maybe you lose them, partially at least. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know why it started. I don’t have any definite answers on that myself. If I knew the true, real reasons why all this started, before it ever did , I wouldn’t probably have done any of it.”

” … Like arrows, shooting through my mind from out of the blue.” …Fantasies

“That night in Ohio, that one impulsive night. Nothing’s been normal since then. It taints your whole life. After it happened I thought that I’d just try to live as normally as possible and bury it, but things like that don’t stay buried. I didn’t think it would, but it does, it taints your whole life.” …Hicks

“Yup, she’s lived in that house a long time.” …’Do you love your grandmother?’

“At about eleven o’clock at night, when everyone was gone and the store was locked up from the outside, I went out and undressed the mannequin and I had a big sleeping bag cover. I put it in that, zipped it up and carried it out of the store, which was a pretty dangerous thing to do. I never thought of them maybe having security cameras or being locked in the store, but I walked out with it and took it back home. I ended up getting a taxi and brought it back and kept it with me a couple of weeks. I just went through various sexual fantasies with it, pretending it was a real person, pretending that I was having sex with it, masturbating, and undressing it.”

“I felt in complete shock. I just couldn’t believe it happened again after all those years when I’d done nothing like this… I don’t know what was going through my mind. I have no memory of it. I tried to dredge it up, but I have no memory whatsoever.” …Steven Toumi

“Am I just an extremely evil person or is it some kind of satanic influence, or what? I have no idea. I have no idea at all. Do you…? These thoughts are very powerful, very destructive, and they do not leave. They’re not the kind of thoughts that you can just shake your head and they’re gone. They do not leave.”

“After the fear and terror of what I’d done had left, which took about a month or two, I started it all over again. From then on it was a craving, a hunger, I don’t know how to describe it, a compulsion, and I just kept doing it, doing it and doing it, whenever the opportunity presented itself.”

“He just wants to make people feel as guilty and lousy as possible. The guy is such a prick.” …His opinion of Geraldo (woohoo!), a statement made prior to the Geraldo Rivera Talk Show broadcast concerning Dahmer’s crimes.

“I decided I wasn’t ever going to get married because I never wanted to go through anything like that”. On his parents marriage

“It was nice, with African cichlids and tiger barbs in it and live plants, it was a beautifully kept fish tank, very clean … I used to like to just sit there and watch them swim around, basically. I used to enjoy the planning and the set-up, the filtration, read about how to keep the nitrate and ammonia down to safe levels and just the whole spectrum of fish-keeping interested me … I once saw some puffer fish in the store. It’s a round fish, and the only ones I ever saw with both eyes in front, like a person’s eyes, and they would come right up to the front of the glass and their eyes would be crystal blue, like a person’s, real cute… It’s a fun hobby. I really enjoyed that fish tank. It’s something I really miss.”

“Yes, I do have remorse, but I’m not even sure myself whether it is as profound as it should be. I’ve always wondered myself why I don’t feel more remorse.”

The following three quotes concern murders that weighed the most heavily on his conscience

“I wish I hadn’t done it.” …Steven Hicks

“I had no intention of doing it in the first place.” …Steven Tuomi

“He was exceptionally affectionate. He was nice to be with.” …Jeremiah Weinburger

…I was very careful for years and years, you know. Very careful, very careful about making sure that nothing incriminating remained, but these last few months, they just went nuts… It just seemed like it went into a frenzy this last month. Everything really came crashing down…

“Something stronger than my conscious will made it happen. I think some higher power got good and fed-up with my activity and decided to put an end to it. I don’t really think there were any coincidences. The way it ended and whether the close calls were warning to me or what, I don’t know. If they were, I sure didn’t heed them… 

“When you’ve done the types of things I’ve done, it’s easier not to reflect on yourself. When I start thinking about how it’s affecting the families of the people, and my family and everything, it doesn’t do me any good. It just gets me very upset. ”

” … If I was killed in prison. That would be a blessing right now.”

“I should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium, that’s what I should have done.”

” This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing….. a sick pathetic, miserable life story, that’s all it is.”

by Heather Piedmont

Using the first fully televised court case as its subject, a recent documentary, Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, directed by Jeremiah Zagar, examines the question of whether (and if so, how) the televising of courtroom trials have affected the possibility of justice being rendered. In re-examining the case and its key events, the documentary explores the question through interviews with Pamela Smart as well as with experts in the legal field and individuals who were involved in the case.

The Case

On May 1, 1990 Gregory Smart was found dead in front of his Derry, New Hampshire condominium. Four teenage boys, William “Billy” Flynn, Pete Randall, Vance Lattime, Jr., who drove the getaway car, and Ray Fowler, were soon found to be the alleged plotters/killers of Pamela Smart’s young husband.

It was discovered that Billy Flynn, who was 15 at the time, and Pamela, who was Director of the Media Center at the teen’s high school, were having an affair and Pamela was soon convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder; conspiracy to commit murder; and witness tampering.

Billy Flynn was convicted of second-degree murder, and his three friends were convicted as accomplices. The court records state that Flynn shot Gregg Smart once in the head as Pete Randall held a knife to his throat. Vince Lattime and Ray Fowler waited in the car.

As of July of this year, all four young men are either free or are in the process of gaining their freedom, as a result of them receiving lesser sentences for agreeing to testify against Pamela. William Flynn was recently moved to a minimum security prison in Maine as part of a work release program. Patrick Randall is now a minimum security inmate at a transitional work center. Vance Lattime Jr. was released on parole in 2005, and Raymond Fowler, who may have have done little other than wait in the car alongside Lattime, received parole in 2003.

Pamela Smart, however, based on her counts of conviction, is serving mandatory LWOP. Although her harsh sentence may have been inevitable, there is a real question as to whether the manner in which she was portrayed by the media hopelessly prejudiced the jury against her.

Character Assassination or Accurate Portrayal?

Smart’s trial was widely watched and was likened to a “media circus.” In addition to Jeremiah Zagar’s recent documentary, the trial spawned a television movie starring Helen Hunt and Chad Allen and inspired the Joyce Maynard novel To Die For, which was adapted into a 1995 film starring Nicole Kidman. The case was also the subject of several best-selling true crime books, including Teach Me To Kill and Deadly Lessons.

As the documentary takes pains to point out, the image that probably best captures the media’s attempt to portray Ms. Smart as a brazen, fallen and conniving woman are the infamous bikini shots that she allegedly used to sexually arouse her teen lover. In reality, however, these photos were actually taken with her best girlfriend to apply to a fashion contest literally years before she started working at the Media Center.

Jeremiah Zagar includes a telling scene that demonstrates that even today as she wearily serves her life sentence, Pamela is still scared to reveal who and what she was at the time of her husband’s murder because she still fears how the media will portray her.

The documentary also discusses how her alleged lack of emotion, once caught on camera, allowed any and all negative labels to be foisted upon her such as the now infamous “Kill for Love” phrase that was plastered all over her case even before the trial began.

It is noted that while in prison in prison, Smart has spent her time tutoring other inmates and has completed two master’s degrees in literature and legal studies, which were paid for with private funds from Mercy College. While incarcerated, Smart became a member of the National Organization for Women, campaigning for rights for women in prison.

Despite her academic success while in custody, Ms. Smart’s time in prison has been no bed of roses:

In October 1996, Smart was severely beaten by two inmates M. Graves and G. Miller, who accused her of snitching about their prison relationship. The attack resulted in a metal plate being placed in the left side of her face.

In 2003, photos of a scantily clad Smart were published in the National Enquirer; after filing a complaint, she was placed in solitary confinement for two months. Smart filed a lawsuit, claiming the photos were taken by a prison guard who had raped her. The lawsuit was dismissed but the following year, Smart and another inmate sued officials of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, claiming both sexual harassment and sexual assault by a corrections officer, who they said coerced them into posing for the suggestive pictures that were published in 2003. Five years later, Smart received a $23,875 settlement from the state of New York.

Everybody Wants to be a Star

It is human nature that, given the right circumstances, many of us want to be stars and grip tightly onto any opportunity to gain our “time in the sun”. During the trial of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, it was alleged that law enforcement personnel not only worked to gain financially from the story of the murders and eventual capture of the killer, but even conspired with her lover, Tyria Moore, while she was a witness for the prosecution. This unfortunate tendency is demonstrated in Zagar’s documentary, which reveals that the arresting officer wanted to re-write his first words to Pamela at the time of her arrest, or at least his first words as presented to the first reporter on the story, William Spencer.

In fact, what Spencer “thought” about what had happened to Gregory Smart, according to appellate attorney J. Albert Johnson, were set in media-stone by the made-for-television movie, Anatomy of a Murder, which was released to the public two days before the jury was selected.

There was even a mini-accusation of the police giving Ms. Smart a longer than usual perp walk “for the cameras”.

Brief Reflections on the Banality of Pop Culture

As the O.J. Simpson trial evolved, so did the hairstyles and wardrobe of prosecutor Marcia Clark; as the Casey Anthony case progressed, the Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton’s ties became national news when he wore a “Stay Dwight” necktie in the courtroom as a futile attempt to convince Dwight Howard to stay with the Orlando Magic.

“One of my sons had this made for me and asked me to wear it,” Ashton said as he touched the neckwear outside the Orange County Courthouse.

The current emphasis on banal inessentials such as State Attorney Ashton’s neckties may have gotten its start, as Zagar points out in his documentary, with the emphasis on Pamela Smart’s hair bow stories. Although this is perhaps to be expected in the world of pop culture, it certainly seems to beg the question…was justice achieved at Pamela Smart’s trial and what in the world do her hair bows have to do with that pursuit of justice?

At Ms. Smart’s trial, even the testimony, in theory the lifeblood of the proceedings, was reflected in true pop culture fashion. One of the “important” facts discussed when Pamela’s lover Billy Flynn took the stand was that one on of their trips together, they went shopping for cars.

The Connections We Make

The most engrossing and important issue the documentary really discusses is how we see what we see. Richard Sherwin of the New York Law School discussed it insightfully when he said that when we view cases like the Pamela Smart case, we see the “Black Widow” story that we know from movies and pop culture, which in turn almost blankets the reality of the situation.

“Ah Ha…I know the Black Widow story…I know the Ice Princess Story,” the legal expert stated. He then continued stating that once we identify the label it is “internalized” and cannot be removed from our perception of the case and that therefore we only reflect on details that support this biased and narrowed understanding of the case.

Even Joyce Maynard, who recounted the story in her now made-infamous-by-Hollywood text To Die For, stated that we all know the archetype that we are supposedly seeing in Pamela as well as a personal and heavily emotionalized archetype of the beautiful woman we love to hate, and love watching as she is destroyed both in the courtroom and through the media-fueled character assassination.

The Result: Was There Justice?

With Gregory Smart’s two main killers of the verge of being released from prison and Pamela Smart being literally scared of her own shadow to this day, what was the effect of the media portrayal on her conviction which inextricably led to her sentence of LWOP? While there were many honest and, therefore, rejected jurors, appellate attorney J. Albert Johnson stated that the jurors may have had their “bell” rung once they learned about the case before even entering the courtroom. In fact, Ms. Smart’s defense requested a change of venue and sequestration, both of which were denied. In the end, we have a woman imprisoned for life….and are left with the burning question: With all of this in the mix of the trial…could justice possibly be served?

And another equally important question: To this day, do we have any actual sense of who Pamela Smart really is? And, of course, we are left to wrestle with the larger question: If we can’t confidently conclude whether the first televised trial brought about justice…what about all the other televised “media circuses” that have followed in its wake?

Heather Piedmont, in addition to being a marketing coach is also a freelance crime writer and reporter. She has covered the Jodi Arias Trial and the Scott Peterson Trial, as well as the Casey Anthony Trial.

[Edit Post]

by John Paolucci

12/25/93:

As I sat silently enjoying the quiet predawn moments, stillness was shattered by a rooster’s crow. I said a prayer for peace and hoped that I would make it home to spend Christmas with my family. Then out of nowhere, I heard a voice from afar and it was speaking directly to me!

“Housing 9225, respond to 10-54 unconscious at 3-1-5 East 1-4-3 apartment 3 Charlie.” An “unconscious” is often a DOA, so I envisioned my Christmas plans evaporating since in those days it could take up to 12 hours for the detectives and ME’s investigator to check the location and the body for signs that might point to a homicide. Then the “meat wagon” would have to come to take the body away and with approximately 2,000 homicides a year it was hard to get a meat wagon. By the time I signed out I’d be able to get a couple hours sleep before I had to be back in uniform for the next tour, so I called my family and told them to have Christmas without me again.

My “problems” vanished instantly when the family in 3 Charlie opened the door. A woman clad in a nightgown lay motionless in front of a Christmas tree under which presents were labeled with young children’s scrawling “M-O-M”. I felt guilty that my plans were so important to me that I neglected to think about this family. Those teary, wide eyes looked at me, the police, for hope and I wanted to cry, but you never can, so I called for a rush on the ambulance and felt the cold skin of the mother as I attempted to find a carotid pulse.

12/27/2014

That same stillness could be felt once the order “Present arms” was called, but now the sun was shining and instead of only my partner and a South Bronx rooster there were approximately 25,000 men and women from all over the world standing in formation, assembled to say goodbye to Police Officer Rafael Ramos who was murdered as he sat in his patrol car.

The previous days were anything but still with angry protesters and angry cops. For the first time in 3 years, I regretted being retired and wished I were back in uniform, mentoring a squad of young cops who know they are all targets for assassins. I was hurt, sad, angry and even vengeful.

Over the loud speaker I heard the minister quote Dr. Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I saw how the Ramos family put their pain aside and, with forgiveness, shed light on one of the darkest times in New York City’s history.

Cops will go back to work and do their job with professionalism and courtesy that will never be seen, but make one mistake and they’re media stars. Protesters will keep protesting, and my question to them is “What is the result you are trying to achieve?”

You called for justice and the officers were put In front of Grand Juries. You called for reform and the president promised body cameras while the mayor began to retrain the entire NYPD. Both politicians consulted with Al Shaprton, who knows nothing about forgiveness. Some of you called for dead cops and you even got that. If you want peace, heed Gandhi’s wisdom and “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

Please click here to view John Paolucci’s previous posts:

Dead Body at the Crime Scene – What Forensic Value Does It Have?

New York City Housing Police: A Bygone Era Worth Talking About

Forensics Dispatch From New York City: Searching A House Of Horrors!

About the Author: John Paolucci is a retired Detective Sergeant from NYPD who worked his last eight years in the Forensic Investigations Division, four of them as a Crime Scene Unit supervisor. He was the first ever to command the OCME Liaison Unit where he managed all DNA evidence in NYC and trained thousands of investigators in DNA evidence collection and documentation. He developed a strong alliance between the OCME Forensic Biology Department and NYPD. He also worked as a Narcotics Undercover and Patrol Officer in the Housing Projects of the South Bronx. He is currently the president of Forensics 4 Real Inc., where he provides forensic support to private investigations, international and domestic. He also trains students and law enforcement in forensic evidence and crime scene investigations and provides consultations with movie and television writers, directors and developers working on real crime shows and dramas. www.forensics4real.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Darcia Helle

August 15th of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the most gruesome mass murder Wisconsin has ever seen. The story has all the makings of a New York Times bestseller or blockbuster movie. We have the wealthy and world-famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who had the sense of entitlement that often accompanies being born into a respected and prestigious family. We have a torrid love affair, the ensuing scandal, and, of course, the crazed killer.

The roots of this tragedy go back to Chicago, circa 1909. By this time, 42-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright was already well-known as the leader of the “Prairie School” school of architecture. He’d been married to Catherine Tobin for 20 years and they had six children together. His life was, on the surface, idyllic. But Wright did the unthinkable; he fell in love with a client’s wife. Her name was Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and their affair rocked Chicago society.

Wright abandoned his wife and children, fleeing to Europe with his mistress and her two children, John and Martha. Not wanting to face the scandal back in Chicago, but wanting to return to the US, Wright decided to build a home on his maternal family’s land in Wisconsin. This new home was a sprawling one-story estate with multiple surrounding buildings, situated on 31.5 acres of land. And, like all proper estates, this one had a name. Because the estate sat on the brow of a hill, leaving the top of the hill unencumbered, Wright called it Taliesin, meaning “shining brow”.

In 1911, Wright, Borthwick — who by then had dropped her married name — and her two children quietly moved to Taliesin. Eventually the press discovered their presence, but the ensuing frenzy came and went. Wright and his new family then settled into a routine, with him back at work and Borthwick caring for the children and watching over the home. Their household staff included Julian and Gertrude Carlton, a married couple from Barbados. Gertrude did the cooking, while Julian filled a variety of roles from handyman to butler. Julian was considered well-educated and likable, though beneath that façade he apparently hid something dark and vicious.

On August 15, 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago on business. Mamah Borthwick had a house full of staff and workers, including a carpenter and his 13-year-old son. That afternoon, per family custom, Julian served dinner to the men in a separate room reserved for workers. Mamah and her two children ate on the veranda. As the men were eating, Julian entered the worker’s room and asked William Weston, the carpenter, for permission to get some gasoline in order to clean a rug. Weston gave his consent.

In retrospect, it was strange that Julian Carlton bothered to seek permission to get some gas. From this point on, the facts are fuzzy, but the order of events following his peculiar request seem to be as follows:

Julian, hatchet in hand, went to the veranda where Mamah and her two children were eating lunch. Catching them completely off guard, he first swung at Mamah Borthwick, killing her with a single blow to her face as she sat in her chair. Julian then turned to John, aged 11, quite literally hacking into the child before he had a chance to move. Martha, aged 9, tried to run, but Julian easily caught and killed her. He then poured the gasoline over their bodies and lit them on fire.

Julian took his hatchet and the rest of his gasoline back to where the men were dining. He poured the gasoline under the door and set the room ablaze. The room erupted in flames. One of the workers, Herbert Fritz, happened to be by the window, and was able to break it and dive out. This caught Julian unprepared and Fritz was able to escape. He broke his arm in the fall and his clothes were on fire, so he rolled down a hill to extinguish the flames which saved his life.

Emil Brodelle came next, but this time Julian was ready and he swung his hatchet taking his life. William Weston and his son Ernest then fled the flames straight into Julian’s bloody blade. Julian struck William as he launched himself through the window. William stumbled, then got to his feet and ran across the courtyard. Julian raced after him, striking him with the hatchet a second time. Weston crumbled to the ground and, likely thinking he was dead, Julian left him and returned to his carnage.

David Lindblom got past Julian with a nasty but non-fatal blow to the back of his head with the blunt edge of the hatchet. He was not so fortunate in escaping the fire. Despite Lindblom’s severe burns, he and William Weston managed to run to a neighboring farmhouse a half-mile down the road to call for help. Lindblom remained at the neighbor’s home, while Weston returned to the Wright’s estate to help the fire brigade extinguish the flames. The efforts, though, were futile. In less than three hours, most of Taliesin’s main house was reduced to ash.

In all, seven people lost their lives at Julian Carlton’s hands. They were: Mamah Borthwick, John and Martha Cheney, Emil Brodelle, Thomas Brunker, Ernest Weston, and David Lindblom, who later died as a result of the burns. Only William Weston and Herbert Fritz managed to survive the ordeal.

Hours after the fire, Julian Carlton was found hiding in the basement’s fireproof furnace. He’d swallowed muriatic acid (household name for hydrochloric acid) in a failed suicide attempt. An angry mob attempted to lynch him, but the police intervened and safely transferred him to county jail. Over the following two months, Julian starved himself to death. He refused to talk or explain his actions, and died without ever offering a reason for the brutal murders.

Gertrude Carlton was found in a nearby field that fateful day, apparently unaware of her husband’s intentions. She was taken into custody, but released shortly afterward with $7 and a train ticket to Chicago.

Survivors don’t offer us much in the way of insight. Later testimony stated Julian Carlton had once accused everyone in the Wright household of “picking on him”. One theory is that Julian’s primary intent was to murder Emil Brodelle, who had called him a “black son-of-a-bitch” just days before the massacre. Some claimed Julian had a disagreement with Mamah Borthwick and she’d fired him, giving him two weeks’ notice. Others said his wife Gertrude wanted to return to Chicago, and so he’d given notice on his own.

Whatever the truth is, we do know that Julian had been showing signs of psychological disarray. Gertrude stated that he’d been agitated and paranoid in the days leading up to the murders. He’d been acting strangely, staring out the window long into the night and sleeping with his hatchet beside the bed. Sadly, either no one tried or no one was able to intervene before his mind snapped and he went on his brief but gruesome rampage.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s grief struck deep. He could not bear to hold a funeral for Mamah Borthwick, but he did fund and attend services for all his employees. Angry about the hurtful gossip that had followed them throughout their relationship, Wright made a final tribute to the woman he loved in a letter he addressed “To My Neighbors”. It reads, in part:

Mamah and I have had our struggles, our differences, our moments of jealous fear for our ideals of each other—they are not lacking in any close human relationships—but they served only to bind us more closely together. We were more than merely happy even when momentarily miserable. And she was true as only a woman who loves know the meaning of the word. Her soul has entered me and it shall not be lost.

For months afterward, Wright suffered from conversion disorder, which is a psychological disorder thought to be brought on by severe stress. His symptoms included insomnia, weight loss, and temporary blindness. His sister, Jane Porter, took care of him during this time. As we know, Frank Lloyd Wright eventually recovered and continued on with his career, and came to be known as the most famous architect in American history. Julian Carlton, however, forever altered the course of his life, separating him forever from his dear Mamah.

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

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

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

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

by Patrick H. Moore

I have not been following the situation in New York City and the current NYPD issues of apparently unnecessary killings by the police and the clearly vindictive killings of police officers in reprisal closely so I am not able to comment with any credibility on what is going on there. I have run two posts on the issue of the current protests in the wake of the shootings. One is yesterday’s post by former NYPD Sgt-Detective John Paolucci and the other is by Robert Emmett Murphy Jr, also of New York City, both of whom are writers I like and respect. I believe these two gentlemen are both sincere and well-meaning, although their respective viewpoints are very different.

I do have a fair amount of personal experience with law enforcement from when I was quite young which I will recount here.

Exhibit I:

When I was 17, I took part in a non-violent protest against the Vietnam War at the Oakland Induction Center in Oakland, California. It was an extremely peaceful affair. We knew we were going to be arrested and we were. We were kept on a bus for about two hours waiting to be booked. Nothing strange about that.

What was strange was the way the Oakland police officers who were guarding us on the bus (we were such darned pacifists that we posed absolutely no threat to anyone) treated us. We were verbally abused for the entire two hours that we sat on the bus. That was 47 years ago and I have no memory of what specifically was said. I can say, however, that such gratuitous abuse, for absolutely no reason, tends to make one lose respect for law enforcement.

Exhibit II:

D.C. Law Enforcement giving Patrick H. Moore the Finger

This happened the summer before my arrest in Washington, D.C. I was 17 years old. I had spent the night at a friend’s house in NW Washington D.C. I walked home on the morning of July 4th (my 17th birthday). My route took me past the White House, where Washington D.C. police officer were mustered in large groups on the corners of every block. I would say there were perhaps 100 police officers present. At that time, I was a standard issue “longhair”, one of several hundred thousand in the U.S. at that time. To my surprise, as I walked by on the other side of the street, dozens of the police officers began to curse me out. They called me every dirty name in the book, c___s_____ this and c___s_____ that. DC law enforcement was clearly very fond of that word. I kept walking and did my best to not look at them. This was very scary. I was a 17-year-old middle class white kid without a great deal of “real-life” experience. It was the sort of thing that I would never have believed possible, yet it happened to me.

This is the sort of thing that makes one lose respect for law enforcement.

Exhibit III:

The following summer I was in Beach Haven, New Jersey (“down on the shore”). I had two jobs: I earned $1.25 an hour working in a bakery as a trainee and I had a second job moonlighting in an all-night coffee shop as a all-around helper. One night in the coffee shop I met a very beautiful young woman — undoubtedly the prettiest girl by far I had ever had pay attention to me. Anyway, that morning we got a little “too frisky” on the beach in public and I was arrested, hauled in for questioning. I’ll never forget the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when four police cars came swooping down on me with me due at work in 15 minutes. They can really move fast when the spirit moves them and I knew that I wouldn’t be going to work that day. I say without reservation that the police were entirely within their rights to haul me in. I was undoubtedly guilty of some sort of misdemeanor — disorderly conduct in public or something of the sort.

Since I don’t have a pix of the lovely lass, you’ll have to put up with me…

What happened next was a bit strange… That summer, 1968, there were weed smokers galore there in Beach Haven. I was questioned for most of the day by the Chief of Police and a Detective. They did a regular “good cop”, “bad cop” routine; the Chief was aggressive, the plain-clothes Detective used cajolery and the old soft-sell. Since they had me pegged as a longhair, they wanted me to give them the names of people I knew on the island who were involved with drugs. I knew a few weed smokers but that was it; I’d only been on the island for about 10 days and had spent much of my time working.

The good life in Beach Haven!

Obviously, I wasn’t going to give them the names of the people I knew; I suppose I was too young or too idealistic to be a snitch. Finally, the Chief and the Detective got frustrated. The Detective bowed out for a while and the Chief had me taken to a different room where I was left alone for a while to think about it. Then to my surprise and horror, the Chief and a young patrolman came in. They were livid. Since I wouldn’t respond to milk and honey, they had decided they were going to scare me into giving them the information I was withholding, sparse though it was.

The young patrolman was a nasty-looking dude. I knew he was itching to f___ me up and I believe he would have kicked the shit out me if he’d been given carte blanche to do so.

The Chief and the young officer held out their gloves in a threatening manner and one of them (I believe the Chief) asked me if I’d ever been whipped. I probably mumbled no and hung my head. I was plenty scared but I simply was not going to snitch. They got madder and madder and started jumping up and down and shouting: “Who are they? Who are they?” It got louder and louder and more and more surreal. The shouting probably went on for about 120 seconds, maybe a bit less.

God’s Little Acre

There was a happy ending of sorts (sometimes we need a happy ending). The Chief and the young officer did not lay a hand on me. The fact I was white and reasonably well-spoken may have kept me from getting beaten up. I’ve been lucky more than once.

At some point during the day, the Chief searched my backpack and belongings with great care. Fortunately for me, there was no evidence of any marijuana or marijuana residue. Lucky for me I was only an occasional weed smoker.

I was charged with a misdemeanor (being a disorderly person) and was taken to the Ocean County Jail in Tom’s River. Four days later, I had a hearing in front of a magistrate judge who, given my contrition, gave me time served and had me pay $22 in courts costs. I was a bit surprised at the time because there was no talk whatsoever of me being assigned a public defender. I guess in those days you were  on your own when charged with a misdemeanor, unless you had money to hire counsel.

Due to being in the slammer for 4 days, I lost my job and returned to California as soon as I could get there.

To sum up:

It happened right at the red dot!

There is a reason ordinary citizens do not trust the police. Police abuse happens with disheartening regularity. In my job, we interact with police officers regularly and more than once, officers have described to me the manner in which some officers abuse the citizenry just because they can. From what I’ve been told, and this is hearsay, it’s generally aimed at the helpless and vulnerable within our society who cannot protect themselves. In fairness, on many occasions, when stopped by the police (and I was stopped regularly as a young man), I’ve been treated very fairly, and I do not wish to imply that the police are always abusive. They are not. But sometimes they are, as I discovered on three occasions by the time I turned 18.

Solutions:

In my opinion, there are no realistic solutions other than humankind growing a new brain. I have long since given up pacifism as a way to achieve justice and I tell myself I would fight to the death my for loved ones without hesitation, something I hope never happens.

I will conclude with a couple of quotes from Bob Dylan:

“Democracy don’t rule this world/
Better get that through your head/
This world is ruled by violence/
But that’s better left unsaid.”

Unfortunately, the violence is homegrown and is not merely a bad habit endemic to other countries.

“And it’s sundown on the union/
And what’s made in the USA/
Sure was a good idea/
Till greed got in the way.”

by BJW Nashe

The George Zimmerman trial got off to a dramatic start when attorneys delivered opening salvos laced with jokes and profanity. Prosecutor John Guy’s first words to the jury were,  “Good morning,” followed immediately by a quotation of Zimmerman’s own words spoken just prior to the killing of Trayvon Martin: “Fucking punks. These assholes always get away.” Guy emphasized that “those were the words in that grown man’s mouth as he followed a seventeen-year-old boy.” To further drive home the point, Guy repeated the phrase “fucking punks” three times.

Zimmerman’s defense counsel Don West tried to counter by opening with a “knock knock” joke. “Knock knock… Who’s there?… George Zimmerman… George Zimmerman who?… Ah, good. You’re on the jury. West’s attempt at humor fell flat, and confused many of us. Zimmerman is no doubt hoping that West is a better attorney than he is a comedian. Louis C.K. will not be calling any time soon for tips on new material. West continued with a line of reasoning that presumed the sidewalk to be a weapon. How could Martin be considered “unarmed,” in other words, when he had the sidewalk at his disposal, which he could allegedly slam Zimmerman’s held against? With this kind of logic, we surely have nothing to fear.

Courtroom drama is nothing new. People have always enjoyed the theatricality of a good trial — especially highly publicized proceedings such as the State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman.The O.J. Simpson trial seemed to set a new standard for judicial entertainment in our era. Now more than ever — with cameras in the courtroom, feeding directly into our media-saturated culture — we expect pure conflict, raw emotion, surreal moments, strange outbursts, and just plain bad behavior. We seek the raw impact of reality TV, in all of its inglorious, trashy, and often ridiculous splendor.

In court, many Americans are more than happy to oblige. Compared to some of the recent antics seen in courtrooms across the country, the Zimmerman trial so far is rather tame. But there’s still plenty of time for scandal and drama to develop. Hopefully, reason will prevail amidst all of the antics. Meanwhile, consider the following bizarre incidents, which seem better suited to the Jerry Springer Show than to the Halls of Justice.

Nazi Dad in Court. Earlier this month, in the middle of a child custody battle, Heath Campbell decided to wear a Nazi uniform to court in New Jersey. Campbell was petitioning afamily court judge to allow him to see his youngest son. The father claims he lost custody of three older children because he gave them Nazi-inspired names. The state claims there is a history of violence in the home. Campbell was in the news back in 2008 when he raised a fuss because a supermarket refused to write his son’s name on a birthday cake; the kid’s name is “Adolf Hitler Campbell.” Asked whether his Nazi costume would help or harm his child custody case, Campbell replied, “If they’re good judges and they’re good people, they’ll look within, not what’s on the outside.”

Spastic Fits and Coprophilia in Court. On June 5, Tyler Lee Rodgers made a spectacle of himself in the Torrance courtroom where he was being tried for attempted murder. Rodgers ischarged with slashing a store clerk’s throat during a robbery in Manhattan Beach, California.  While three witnesses testified during the hour-long proceeding, Rodgers veered from appearing calm and composed, to rocking back and forth in his chair, demanding medication, smacking his forehead on the defense table, and then being unable or unwilling to rise and be escorted out of the courtroom. He kept repeating, “I want my radio.” The bailiff and deputy had to restrain and drag the spastic defendant off to a holding room. The District Attorney accused Rodgers of “putting on a show,” and pointed out that doctors had deemed the 19-year-old to be healthy and sane. Rodgers has a history of strange behavior in court. Last year, his trial was suspended for a psychiatric evaluation after he put feces on his face in the holding room. He also reportedly ate his own feces during a previous courtroom appearance. This is probably too much even for the Springer show. Other defendants must be wondering, if eating your own feces in court will not get you declared insane in Torrance, what will?

Courtroom Butt-Slap. Former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson was reprimanded during an early June court appearance when he reached over to playfully whack his attorney on the rear end as they both stood in front of the judge. Johnson was at a hearing in Broward County Circuit Court after being charged with violating probation in regard to a domestic violence case. Johnson had reached a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail, in lieu of counseling and community service. One quick butt-slap in the courtroom, however, changed all of that. Judge Kathleen McHugh scolded the football star for goofing around in her courtroom, and sentenced him to 30 days in jail. There is no word on whether the attorney will file sexual harassment charges. Best to keep one’s hands to oneself in front of the judge!

Flipping the Bird in Court. Penelope Soto of Miami appeared to be struggling with anger management issues during a court appearance in February of this year. At one point she grew so agitated that she gave the judge the finger and blurted out, “Fuck you.” Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat was not amused. He sent Soto to jail for 30 days on a contempt charge. Soto had been arrested for drug possession when she was allegedly found with Xanax. Her court hearing was only intended to determine the appropriate bail. But one thing led to another, the bird was flipped, the judge was irked, and Soto ended up spending time behind bars before her case was even heard. When Soto was subsequently released after apologizing to the judge, she explained that she was under the influence of alcohol and Xanax at the time of her outburst. Evidently the disinhibitory quality of these substances outweighed whatever calming effect they were supposed to induce!

Phone Sex in Court. American jurisprudence reached a new level of salaciousness when defense attorneys in the Jodi Arias murder trial played a lengthy phone sex recording for the jury. Among other things, the kinky conversation included the victim, Travis Alexander, telling Arias how he would like to tie her to a tree and sodomize her. The courtroom phone sex was a field day for the heavy-breathing press, but it failed to sway the jury in Arias’s favor. They found her guilty of first degree murder.

Defendant Punches Attorney in Court. In October 2012, Lamarcus Williamson of Charlotte, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to assault, robbery, and drug charges pertaining to an incident involving a female college student. When the judge announced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, Williamson turned and punched his defense attorney in the face. Despite being handcuffed, Williamson was still able to land a knockdown blow. This did nothing to improve his standing with the court. The judge tacked on some additional time to his sentence.

Refusing to Take the Oath. Last October, Otis Jackson Jr., the former General Sessions Court Clerk from Nashville, Tennessee, rejected an offer that could have led to the dismissal of official misconduct charges against him, preferring to go ahead and face trial. During the hearing, Jackson shocked the courtroom by initially refusing to raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth. Special Judge Walter Kurtz told Jackson: “In 30 years and six months, you’re the only person I’ve ever run across that refused to be sworn in court, which I find kind of odd and inexplicable.” After coaxing Jackson to go ahead and take the oath, and even threatening him  with contempt, the defendant simply stated: “I shouldn’t be here.” After several minutes of awkward drama, Jackson finally gave in, and said he would “do his best” to tell the truth.

Dazed and Confused, with Orange Hair. In July 2012, Batman shooter James Holmes made his first public appearance in a Colorado courtroom since his movie theater gun massacre. He looked strangely dazed and unresponsive, with his unruly hair still dyed bright reddish-orange. His demeanor alternated from a sleepy, nearly comatose expression, to a bizarre bug-eyed stare. According to Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers, there would be no information provided as to whether Holmes was on drugs or some kind of medication. Holmes was being held in solitary confinement and was brought to the courtroom via an underground tunnel. He was also wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The Judge is Packing Heat. In February 2012, a Superior Court Judge in Lumpkin County, Georgia, shocked the courtroom when he pulled out his pistol and brandished it in order to“make a rhetorical point.” Judge David Barrett was presiding over a case in which a woman brought charges of rape and aggravated assault against a former sheriff’s deputy from Fall County. When the victim took the stand to testify, Barrett told her that she was “killing her case” because she wasn’t cooperating fully. The judge then pulled out his gun and pretended to hand it over to her, reportedly telling her, “You might as well shoot your lawyer.” The District Attorney objected and approached the bench to ask the judge to put the gun down. Now that’s what I call a trial. It should be noted that Georgia law allows judges to carry concealed handguns in the courtroom, but it’s a crime to point a gun at another person if there’s no reason to do so.

Rage Against the Machine. In 2007, Anthony Viscussi from Everett, Washington, found himself in a Snohomish County courtroom facing charges of assaulting a woman. He displayed such bizarre behavior, including angry outbursts and screaming at witnesses, that the judge had to have him removed to a holding room, and then strapped to a chair so he could be wheeled in and out of the courtroom. Viscussi was also forced to wear netting over his head and a mask over his face, Hannibal Lecter-style, to prohibit him from spitting at corrections officers. In jail, officers reportedly needed to don riot gear in Viscussi’s presence. Pepper spray was often used to subdue him during his violent rages. A psychologist testified that Viscussi suffers from schizophrenia exacerbated by methamphetamine use. We might sympathize, were it not for the fact that he was accused of beating a woman with a metal rod in front of her 6 year-old son.

by Darcia Helle

You’ve probably fantasized about your dream home. Most of us do. You might want a spacious mansion, a decadent penthouse, or an old farmhouse. Chances are you won’t be fantasizing about a Murder Castle. It’s even less likely that you’ll be designing and building one. But H.H. Holmes did just that.

Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett, on May 16, 1861, in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. His parents, Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price, were farmers and devout Methodists. We don’t know a lot about Holmes’s early life. Some reports state that his father was a violent alcoholic, though it’s unclear how much, if any, abuse Holmes endured during his father’s drunken outbursts. Holmes claimed to have been bullied as a child, brought on in part by his fear of the local doctor. Hoping to terrorize him, the bullies forced Holmes to look at and touch a human skeleton. This scheme apparently backfired and instead sparked his lifelong obsession with death.

 Holmes began his adult life with a con job. On July 4, 1878, he married Clara Lovering with the sole intent of using her money to put himself through medical school. Their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, was born on February 3, 1880 in Loudon, New Hampshire. We don’t know what kind of relationship Holmes had with his wife and son in those early years. Holmes struggled in medical school, all the while resenting the wealthy, carefree students who didn’t need to work to support a family.

While in medical school, Holmes was exposed to the questionable practice of buying and selling skeletons and freshly dead bodies. Medical schools needed intact skeletons and cadavers for their students, and their methods for supplying those bodies were not monitored by law enforcement or any agency. Though they didn’t flaunt their practices and were careful not to purchase obvious murder victims, their questionable methods were a kind of open secret. Holmes paid attention and soon found ways to use this to his advantage.

Holmes’s descent into the macabre began with stealing dead bodies from the medical school laboratory. He’d take out life insurance policies on the dead under false names, disfigure them so they were unrecognizable, then claim they’d died accidentally so that he could collect the insurance. Not long afterward, he realized it was smarter to use newly dead bodies, since they had yet to be embalmed. This afforded him a double scam. After collecting on the life insurance, he could sell the body to the medical school. And so began Holmes’s career as a killer.

In June of 1884, Holmes managed to pass his final examinations. He’d done so poorly at the medical school that the board had to vote twice before agreeing to give Holmes his license. The problem wasn’t that Holmes lacked intelligence, but rather he lacked the focus and desire to perform well on exams. Not long after receiving his medical degree, he left Clara Lovering, changed his name from Herman Mudgett to Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, and moved to Chicago.

Holmes began his new life working as a pharmacist in a drugstore owned by Dr. Elizabeth S. Holton. She soon sold the business to Holmes, most likely because she’d become pregnant though this is more speculation than fact. By most accounts, Holmes was a well-liked and respected businessman. No one questioned his identity or credentials.

On January 28, 1887, he married Myrta Belknap, despite not having divorced his first wife, Clara. For the most part, Holmes kept Myrta away from his business. Their family home was in Wilmette, Illinois, but he spent most of his time at his pharmacy in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Today the travel time is only about 30 minutes by car, but would have been far longer back in the late 1800s. Holmes eventually had three children with Myrta, though again it’s unclear how much time and attention he gave his new family.

Around this time, work began on the World Columbian Exposition – now known as the Chicago World’s Fair – which was expected to be the largest event in history. The site where the fair would be held was only about three miles from the Englewood neighborhood where Holmes worked. Though he had very little money of his own, Holmes managed to con creditors and use further scams to purchase an empty lot across from his drugstore. He immediately began work on the design and construction of what he claimed would be a hotel for the fairgoers. In reality, though, Holmes had other grisly ideas from the very start.

The massive three-story building took up the entire city block, and locals began referring to it as the Castle. Holmes moved his drugstore to the bottom floor, along with various other shops. The two upper floors were a maze containing his office and “guest” rooms. Within this labyrinth were 100 windowless rooms, doorways opening to brick walls, stairways leading nowhere, doors that only opened from the outside, closets with trap doors in the floor, and hallways jutting out at odd angles. Throughout the construction, Holmes repeatedly changed builders, often using workers from out of town, and never shared his completed plans with anyone.

In 1889, during the three-year period of construction, Holmes met the carpenter Benjamin Pitezel. The two formed a relationship of sorts that Pitezel and his family would eventually pay dearly for. Holmes and Pitezel traveled together, sometimes sharing a room. They also schemed together, particularly with insurance fraud. Despite what Pitezel took to be friendship, Holmes seems to have marked his friend as a victim early on.

The city of Chicago was consumed with preparation for the upcoming fair, and so was Holmes. He hired young, single women to work in his Castle as maids and secretaries. All were given life insurance policies as part of their job benefits, which Holmes paid for and was also beneficiary of. While Holmes and Pitezel had plans for insurance fraud, Holmes actually had plans for much more. Although Pitezel believed they were merely scamming the life insurance companies, Holmes was actually murdering the women.

Chicago bustled with activity during the years leading up to the fair. Workers needed to live close by. Supplies were trucked in. The local economy boomed. The surroundings offered the perfect cover for Holmes’s murder spree.

Approximately 27 million people passed through Chicago during the fair’s six-month span. Crime ran rampant. Strangers came and went, filling the city with transients. The fledgling, understaffed police force couldn’t keep up. Holmes found his ideal playground.

The Castle had been made to the specifications of a madman. Secret passages, sound-proofed rooms, and specially greased chutes were only the beginning. Holmes had stocked his Murder Castle with torture equipment, such as an elongated bed with straps thought to be used to see how far the human body could be stretched. Some of the rooms were equipped with gas pipes, so he could slowly poison his guests while they remained locked inside. He’d installed a special furnace that burned hot enough to incinerate bone, and kept vats of acid for eating away flesh. The special chutes gave him a convenient method of moving bodies from the second and third floors down to the basement for disposal.

Of course, at the time no one but Holmes knew the reasons for the odd, maze-like construction. The missing maids and secretaries were easily explained. Young, single women often left to marry. Or went home to visit their families. Guests came and went all over the city. They weren’t known and were rarely associated with a stay at Holmes’s hotel. No one questioned the respected businessman running The Castle.

In October 1893, when the fair shut down, activity in Chicago came to a grinding halt. The economy fell into a slump. Creditors were catching up to Holmes, who’d failed to pay most of the construction costs for his Murder Castle. So he did what he’d become good at, and made plans to scam an insurance company.

Around this time, the Murder Castle caught fire. Dates differ depending on the source. Some cite August 19, 1894 but most claim the fire occurred in November 1893. It’s possible these were two separate fires, with the first being smaller and unsuccessful. Most agree that Holmes was in deep with debt and attempted arson to collect on the $60,000 insurance policy he held on his castle. The insurance company was not as easily scammed as the life insurance companies he’d worked with in the past. Because Holmes constantly changed the building’s ownership papers in order to avoid creditors, the insurance company argued fraud. They refused to pay and Holmes had no choice but to flee. Soon police and firemen were uncovering the gruesome scene Holmes had left behind.

Holmes, unaware authorities were on to him back in Chicago, went blissfully along his murderous path. He traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, where he had property he’d inherited in one of his murder schemes. There is speculation that he attempted to build a second murder castle, but for whatever reasons, he abandoned the project and moved on. He then traveled to Denver, where he married Georgia Yoke on January 17, 1894. The two had met at the fair, and Georgia seems to be the only woman Holmes ever truly loved.

In July, 1894, Holmes – under his new identity of H.M. Howard – was arrested for the first time on charges of horse swindling. While in prison, he met convicted train robber Marion Hedgepeth, and the two of them concocted a plan for insurance fraud. Holmes was to fake his death, Hedgepeth would collect on the life insurance claim, and the two of them would share the money. Hedgepeth gave Holmes the name of a lawyer who was an associate and would happily comply with their scam. But after leaving prison, Holmes quickly forgot about Hedgepeth. Instead he made a similar plan with his friend Benjamin Pitezel, only this time it was Pitezel who was supposed to fake his death.

Holmes and Pitezel devised a scheme, though it’s unclear how much of the plan Holmes intended on sticking. In Philadelphia, Pitezel would assume the identity of an inventor named B.F. Perry. Holmes was to procure a corpse, presumably from a mortuary or medical school. Holmes and Pitezel would then rig a laboratory explosion in which B.F. Perry would be killed, with the cadaver as Pitezel’s stand-in, becoming disfigured and therefore unrecognizable in the blaze. Pitezel’s wife would then collect the $10,000 life insurance policy and they would split the money.

At some point, Holmes came up with a much more elaborate and lucrative plan of his own. Pitezel tended to be melancholy, slightly depressive, and a heavy drinker. Holmes used this to his advantage, feeding his friend alcohol until he’d passed out. After arranging the scene to his liking, Holmes doused his friend in flammable liquid, concentrating on Pitezel’s face, and lit a match. His friend, Benjamin Pitezel, might have been alive when he was set on fire, though this detail is unclear.

Holmes’s wife Georgia had accompanied Holmes to Philadelphia during this time, though she knew nothing about the insurance fraud or the murder. After killing Pitezel, Holmes took his wife back to their home in Indianapolis. He then traveled to St. Louis, where he told Carrie Pitezel, Benjamin’s wife, that Pitezel was in hiding until they’d safely collected on the claim.

In the meantime, on September 4, 1894, a visitor to the Philadelphia office of B.F. Perry arrived to find the door locked. Thinking this strange, she contacted the police who then forced the door open. Inside the office, they found the body of a man with severe burns. A pipe, matches, and a broken bottle with remnants of a flammable liquid similar to benzene, or possibly chloroform, lay nearby. The victim of an apparent explosion, police assumed him to be B.F. Perry, who’d recently rented the office.

About two weeks after the discovery of Perry’s body, Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia received a letter from St. Louis claiming B.F. Perry was actually Benjamin F. Pitezel, whose life had been insured by their company. Soon two professional men arrived in Fidelity’s Philadelphia office, claiming to represent the widow Pitezel. One introduced himself as Dr. H.H. Holmes, with the explanation that Mrs. Pitezel was too ill to travel. The other man was Jephtha Howe, Mrs. Pitezel’s attorney. With them was one of Pitezel’s children, 14-year-old Alice. Holmes made the identification, assuring the insurance representatives that Pitezel had certain specific moles and markings enabling him to do so despite the severe burns. The $10,000 insurance claim was paid to Holmes, who was there acting on behalf of the widow Pitezel and her five children.

Fidelity would likely never have questioned any of this if it hadn’t been for an angry, vindictive prisoner Holmes had double-crossed. Marion Hedgepeth, the man Holmes had once share a cell with back in St. Louis, was furious that Holmes had used a version of their scam and the lawyer he’d recommended, but had reneged on his promise to share the money. Hedgepeth gave a detailed account of the scheme to police, who then passed the information on to Fidelity. Though Hedgepeth only knew Holmes as H.M. Howard, it didn’t take long for the insurance company to figure out that Howard was actually H.H. Holmes. They tried unsuccessfully to track him themselves, and soon hired investigators from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to chase him down.

Holmes now had the money in his pocket and assured Carrie Pitezel that he would lead her to her husband, but they had to be careful not to be followed or caught. He also managed to convince her that it would be best if he took three of the children – Alice, Nellie, and Howard – with him, leaving Carrie to travel only with the oldest and the youngest of her children.

Holmes inexplicably took the three children across country, at the same time traveling with his wife Georgia. And so began Holmes’s game of human chess. He managed to move his wife and the children from one city to the next, together but separately. The children were kept hidden away in rooms, hotels, and sometimes houses, without his wife ever knowing of their existence. Each day the children wrote letters to their mother, detailing their experience on the run. Each day Holmes took the letters with a promise to ensure their mother received them, which of course she never did.

While he shuffled the children and his wife from city to city, Holmes had Carrie Pitezel and her two remaining children moving along a parallel route. Holmes devised an elaborate ruse, supplying multiple forwarding addresses for communications. At various times, he told Carrie that her children were safe with a widow in Indianapolis and a wealthy woman in London, and that her husband was safely hiding, first in Canada and later in London.

Amidst all of this, detectives from the Pinkerton Agency somehow managed to track down Holmes. Finally, on the afternoon of November 16, 1894, H.H. Holmes was arrested in Boston as he reportedly prepared to take a steamship to England. Because the insurance scheme and Pitezel’s murder had taken place in Philadelphia, Detective Thomas Crawford brought Holmes back there. The police in Chicago, where the Murder Castle held his many atrocities, were initially unaware of Holmes’s arrest.

During the time Holmes awaited trial and, later, while awaiting execution, he spun extravagant tales about his escapades. He always claimed innocence, and his stories changed frequently. Months passed and the Pitezel children were nowhere to be found. Finally, in the early summer of 1895, Detective Frank Geyer was assigned to track them down.

For reasons never explained, Holmes had kept all the letters the children had written to their mother. The letters were in his possession when he was arrested. Using these letters as a guide, Detective Geyer took a train to the Midwest to begin his search. In Cincinnati, Ohio, Geyer found someone who remembered Holmes traveling with the children. He’d been using the alias Alex E. Cook, which he’d sometimes used in prior business matters. That contact led Geyer to a woman who’d seen Holmes with a boy in a nearby house. But there was no sign of the children.

When those leads dried up, Geyer continued using the letters to follow the trail. He wound up in Detroit, where Alice had written the last of her letters to her mother. In this letter, Alice wrote, “Howard is not with us now.” This, to Geyer, almost ensured that Holmes had killed the boy prior to arriving in Detroit.

Geyer followed more leads to Toronto, Canada, where he questioned real estate agents about a man traveling with two young girls. He was told about a man who’d rented a home for a short time. A woman identified Holmes from a photograph, stating he was in fact the man who’d rented the house. He’d also requested the use of a spade to plant potatoes in the cellar, and had only brought one mattress into the house.

Inside, Geyer found the cellar had a soft dirt floor that appeared recently disturbed. Almost immediately after he began digging, the specific stench of human decay filled the air. Three feet down, Geyer came upon a small arm bone. He stopped digging and had an undertaker continue the job. Soon they had exhumed the bodies of two girls, both naked, believed to be Nellie and Alice Pitezel.

Detective Geyer was now determined to find the body of Howard Pitezel. He knew Howard had been separated from his sisters before arriving in Detroit, so he backtracked the route laid out in the girls’ letters and went to Indianapolis. Eventually, instinct and luck brought Geyer to Irvington, Indianapolis, where he found a man who’d rented a house to Holmes. The man recalled a small boy had been with Holmes.

Geyer checked the basement but found no disturbed dirt and no body. He did find a trunk in a small alcove and sent the description to Carrie Pitezel via telegram. When she replied that the trunk was hers, Geyer knew he’d found the right place.

In the barn, Geyer found a coal stove with stains that looks like dried blood. A local doctor poked through the ash and showed Geyer pieces of charred bone, which turned out to be part of a skull and femur belonging to a male child. Geyer dismantled the chimney, where they discovered a complete set of teeth and a piece of a jaw. A dentist identified these as belonging to a boy 7 to 10-years-old. More grisly body parts were uncovered at the bottom of the chimney, and Geyer had no doubt he’d found Howard.

By this time, Chicago was battling Philadelphia for the right to try Holmes first. Philadelphia prevailed, and Holmes’s trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel began on October 28, 1895. On the first day, Holmes decided to fire his lawyers and defend himself. This was unprecedented in the U.S. where no murder defendant had ever before  chosen to represent himself. Various accounts describe Holmes as cool and calm or monstrous and out of control. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer called his behavior in court “remarkable”.

The trial lasted five days. Despite Holmes’s courtroom theatrics and declarations of innocence, the jury convicted him of Pitezel’s murder and the judge sentenced him to death by hanging. Holmes would not stand trial for the murder of the three Pitezel children or any of the atrocities done at the Murder Castle.

After his conviction, Holmes was paid $10,000 from the Hearst newspaper syndicate to write a public confession. He did so, and the piece was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Knowing he had no hope of appeal, Holmes changed tactics and decided to brag about his conquests. Initially he claimed to have killed more than 100 people, though he soon retracted that confession and changed the number to 27. As his hanging loomed ever closer, he wrote, “I was born with the Evil One as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world.“

On May 7, 1896, H.H. Holmes was hanged. His final words were a retraction of all his confessions, and a declaration of innocence:

“Gentleman,” he said, “I have a very few words to say. In fact, I would make no statement at this time except that by not speaking I would appear to acquiesce in life in my execution. I only want to say that the extent of my wrongdoings in taking human life consisted in the deaths of two women, they having died at my hands as the result of criminal operations. I wish to also state, however, so that there will be no misunderstanding hereafter, I am not guilty of taking the life of any of the Pitezel family. The three children or the father, Benjamin F. Pitezel, of whose death I am now convicted and for which I am today to be hanged. That is all.”

The two women’s deaths Holmes admitted to being responsible for were, he claimed, a sort of medical malpractice. When the trap was sprung, the gallows malfunctioned and Holmes’s neck did not snap in the fall. He dangled for about 15 minutes, reportedly twitching, before succumbing to death.

Holmes had been terrified that body snatchers would steal his corpse and sell it for a profit, and so he’d made arrangements with an attorney to have his body buried in a coffin filled with cement. Two Pinkerton guards stood over the grave in Holy Cross Cemetery as the coffin was placed and the entire grave filled with cement. No stone was erected to mark the spot.

In the end, no clear answers or motives were ever provided for Holmes’s gruesome deeds. When Chicago officials went over missing persons records and various registries during the time of the fair, they surmised that his victim count could be as high as 200. We’ll never know what drove Holmes or how many lives he really took. He was only 35-years-old when he died on the gallows.

• While researching this case, I came across a variety of spellings for Benjamin Pitezel’s name. An 1895 issue of the Chicago Tribune has it spelled Pitzel, as does a feature story in a 1943 issue of Harper’s Magazine. One 1894 article in the New York Times has it spelled Pietzel, while another spelled it Pitzel. All later articles have his name as Pitezel, which is the spelling I stuck with here.

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

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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.

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