compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Rainey Bethea, age 27, was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States. Bethea had confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, and — under Kentucky state law — was sentenced to be publicly hanged in Owensboro, where the crime had allegedly been committed. Blunders in performing the actual execution and the surrounding media circus (nothing new here) contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.

The Hanging

Rainey Bethea’s last meal consisted of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie, and ice cream, which he ate at 4:00 p.m. on August 13, 1936 in Louisville. Nine hours later, at about 1:00 a.m., Daviess County deputy sheriffs transported Bethea from Louisville to Owensboro. At the jail, the hangman’s assistant, a farmer from Epworth, Illinois, named G. Phil Hanna, visited Bethea and instructed him to stand on the X that would be marked on the trapdoor.

It was estimated that a crowd of 20,000 people gathered to watch the execution, with thousands coming from out of town. The actual hangman, Arthur L. Hash, a former Louisville police officer, who had offered his services free of charge (offer accepted), arrived at the site intoxicated, wearing a white suit and a white Panama hat. At this time, no one but he and the sheriff of Daviess County, a woman, Florence Shoemaker Thompson, knew he would be pulling the trigger.

Bethea left the Daviess County Jail just before 5:30 a.m. and walked with two deputies to the scaffold. He then took off his shoes and put on a new pair of socks. He then ascended the steps and stood on the large X as instructed. He did not deign to make a final statement to the crowd. He did, however, confess to the presiding priest, a Father Lammers of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville. The black hood was then placed over his head, and three large straps placed around his ankles, thighs, arms and chest.

The hangman’s assistant Hanna placed the noose around Bethea’s neck, adjusted it, and then signaled to Arthur Hash to pull the trigger. Hash, however, perhaps due to his intoxication, did nothing. Hanna shouted, “Do it!” and a deputy leaned onto the trigger which sprang the trap door. Throughout all of this, the crowd was hushed. Bethea fell eight feet, and his neck was instantly broken. About 14 minutes later, two doctors confirmed he was dead. He was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Elmwood Cemetery in Owensboro.

Afterwards, Hanna complained bitterly that Hash should not have been allowed to perform the execution in his drunken condition. Hanna further complained that it was the worst display of “hangman’s technique” he had ever witnessed in the 70 hangings he had supervised.

Many newspapers were also outraged, having spent considerable sums of money to cover the execution, believing that it was to have been carried out by Sheriff Florence Shoemaker Thompson, which would have made it the first public hanging of a man by a woman. Several of the newspapers assuaged their anger and frustration by taking extreme liberties liberties with their reporting, falsely claiming that the crowd of 20,000 rushed the gallows to claim souvenirs. Some reporters even wrote that Sheriff Thompson fainted at the base of the scaffold.

The Crime

Rainey Bethea grew up an orphan. Little is known about him before he arrived in Owensboro in 1933 when he was 24 years old. He worked for the Rutherford family and lived in their basement for about a year. He then moved to a cabin behind the house of Emmett Wells. He worked as a laborer and rented a room from Mrs. Charles Brown. On Sundays, he attended a Baptist church.

In April of 1935, Bethea was caught stealing two purses from the Vogue Beauty Shop. He was convicted of a felony, grand larceny, and served a year in the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. He was paroled on December 1, 1935.

On returning to Owensboro, Bethea continued to work as a laborer and was paid about $7.00 per week. Less than a month later, he was arrested again, this time for house breaking. On January 6, 1936, this charge was amended to drunk and disorderly. He was unable to pay the $100 fine and remained incarcerated in the Daviess County, Kentucky Jail until April 18, 1936.

During the early morning of June 7, 1936, Bethea entered the home of Lischia Edwards at 322 East Fifth Street by climbing in through her bedroom window. Bethea then allegedly woke her, choked her and violently raped her. He then searched her room for valuables and stole several of her rings. In the process, he removed his own black celluloid prison ring, and inadvertently left it in the bedroom. He then hid the stolen jewels in a barn not far from the house.

The next morning the Smith family, who lived downstairs, realized that they had not heard Ms. Edwards stirring in her room. (How they had failed to hear the rape in the wee hours is unknown.) Fearing she might be ill, they knocked on the door of her room, attempting to rouse her with no success. Ultimately, Smith obtained a ladder and climbed into the room through the transom over the door, and discovered that Edwards was dead.

When summoned, the Owensboro police found the room tidy, but with muddy footprints everywhere. The coroner also found the celluloid prison ring, which Bethea had left behind.

Rainey Bethea quickly became a suspect after several residents of Owensboro stated that they had previously seen him wearing the ring. Since Bethea had a criminal record, the police were able to use what was then a new identification technique – fingerprints – to establish that Bethea had recently touched items inside the bedroom. For the next four days, the police searched for Bethea, finally apprehending him on a riverbank trying to board a barge. When questioned, Bethea claimed his name was James Smith. After his arrest, Bethea was identified by a scar on the left side of his head.

The judge of the Daviess Circuit Court ordered the sheriff to transport Bethea to the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville, fearing a lynch mob because the suspect was a black man. En route to Louisville, Bethea confessed that he had raped Edwards and strangled her to death. He also lamented the fact that he had incriminated himself by leaving his ring at the crime scene.

Once incarcerated, Bethea made a second confession, this time before Robert M. Morton, a notary public, and George H. Koper, a reporter for The Courier-Journal. The presence of the notary and the reporter was requested by officials anticipating that Bethea, or someone else, might accuse them of coercing his confession.

On June 12, 1936, Bethea made a third confession and told the captain of the guards where he had hidden the jewelry. Owensboro police searched the barn in Owensboro and found the jewelry.

The prosecutor decided to charge Bethea solely with rape which could be punished by public hanging in the county seat where the crime occurred. If he had also been charged with murder and robbery resulting in the death penalty, by statute, the means of execution would have been electrocution at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.

Although Bethea made gestures suggesting he wanted to go to trial, he changed his mind and pleaded guilty at the start of the trial. The case was still presented to the jury, since it was tasked with deciding the sentence.

During his opening statement, the Commonwealth’s Attorney Herman Birkhead said:

“This is one of the most dastardly, beastly, cowardly crimes ever committed in Daviess County. Justice demands and the Commonwealth will ask and expect a verdict of the death penalty by hanging.”

The prosecution called 21 witnesses, none of whom were cross-examined. Under the law, Bethea could receive “not less than ten years nor more than twenty years, or death.” The sentence was never really in doubt and after only four and one-half minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a sentence: death by hanging.

The Appeal

Back in Louisville, Bethea acquired five new black lawyers – Charles Ewbank Tucker, Stephen A. Burnley, Charles W. Anderson, Jr., Harry E. Bonaparte, and R. Everett Ray. They worked pro bono to challenge the sentence, something they saw as their ethical duty for the indigent defendant. On July 10, 1936, they filed a motion for a new trial which was summarily denied on the grounds that under Section 273 of the Kentucky Code of Practice in Criminal Cases, a motion for a new trial had to have been received before the end of the court’s term, which had ended on July 4, 1936.

Bethea’s lawyers then attempted to appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which was also not in session. On July 29, 1936, Justice Gus Thomas refused to permit the appeal to be filed on the grounds that the trial court record — which only included the judge’s ruling — was incomplete. Bethea’s lawyers knew the appeal would be denied; this was only a formality in order to exhaust state court remedies before they filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in a federal court.

Bethea’s attorneys filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville. At the hearing on August 5, 1936 before United States District Judge Elwood Hamilton, Bethea claimed that he had not wanted to plead guilty but had been forced to by his lawyers, and that he had wanted to subpoena three witnesses to testify on his behalf, but the lawyers had also not done this. Bethea also claimed that his five confessions had been made under duress and that when he signed one of them, he did not know what he was signing. The Commonwealth brought several witnesses to refute these claims. Judge Hamilton denied the habeas corpus petition and ruled that the hanging could proceed.

The End of Public Executions in the United States

Although the media circus surrounding the Bethea execution was quite an embarassment to the Kentucky legislature, it was powerless to amend the law until the next session in 1938. Meanwhile, two other men were hanged for rape in Kentucky, John “Pete” Montjoy and Harold Van Venison, but the trial judges of both of those cases ordered that the hangings be conducted privately. On January 17, 1938, William R. Attkisson of the Kentucky State Senate’s 38th District (Louisville), introduced Senate Bill 69, repealing the requirement from Section 1137 that death sentences for the crime of rape be conducted by hanging in the county seat where the crime was committed. Representative Charles W. Anderson, Jr., one of the attorneys who assisted Bethea in his post conviction relief motions, promoted the bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives. After both houses approved the bill on March 12, 1938, Governor Chandler signed it into law, and it became effective on May 30, 1938. Chandler later expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, rather absurdly, “Our streets are no longer safe.” 

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In a shocking development, a highly decorated Iraq War veteran and the current National Security Agency’s Korea division chief, Brian O’Callaghan, 36, has just been charged with 1st-degree-murder in the alleged beating death of his 3-year-old special needs son, Hyunsu. The odd thing is that O’Callaghan and his wife, Jennifer, only adopted the boy in October after going through an arduous vetting process which is standard procedure in the case of special-needs adoptees, and were only accepted because of the defendant’s excellent service record and high-level NSA job.

Assuming the allegations are true, it demonstrates the great difficulty of ever discovering the true nature of a prospective adoptive parent. Clearly, the vast majority of these folks (I’m one myself) have the best of intentions, but god forbid that you are the poor child who gets selected by an unstable personality such as O’Callaghan may well be (this is once again assuming the allegations are true).

What makes this even stranger is the fact that O’Callaghan was awarded the Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his part in a gun battle that helped lead to the rescue of captured soldier Jessica Lynch.

Neither O’Callaghan’s family, nor his wife, Jennifer, nor O’Callaghan himself are in any way admitting that the boy’s death was anything other than a tragic accident. Those that know him best contend that the NSA chief – who has top secret clearance with the agency – isn’t capable of hurting the boy.

‘He was so loving of him,’ a family member told the Washington Post.

O’Callaghan’s story is that his son’s death was the result of an accidental slip in the shower two days before he died.

He reportedly told the police that on the night of January 31, 2014 he helped the boy take a shower. He noted that Hyunsu, who they call Madoc, didn’t like it when the water hit him. O’Callaghan was basically on his own attempting to care for his special-needs child. His wife was out of town and their other son, who is only 7, was in a different part of the house.

‘During the shower, Hyunsu was crying and upset,’ Detective Mike Carin wrote in court papers. ‘After the shower had ended, Hyunsu slipped in the bathtub, falling backwards. As he fell, he hit his shoulder. Brian consoled him and he went to bed without incident.’

Then comes a small twist. In the morning, Madoc reportedly appeared to be fine. In fact, according to Carin’s report, O’Callaghan took Madoc and his other son to breakfast and then to a swim center. They then returned home and Madoc took a nap.

According to the police report, it wasn’t until 4 p.m. that day, when O’Callaghan went to check on the sleeping Madoc, that he says he noticed something might be wrong. There were pink stains on the boy’s sheets and mucus coming out of his nose.

At this point most people would say,“Oh my god, what is going on here?” I know that I’d be on the phone getting help so fast your head would spin.

But not O’Callaghan. He did a sort of cleanliness thing. He changed the sheets on his dying son’s bed.

Then he left the room and came back an hour later to check on him again.

You can feel the grains of sand slipping through the hourglass. The second time, O’Callaghan noticed that the boy appeared to be in bad shape — he was unresponsive, O’Callaghan told investigators. Once again, O’Callaghan did a cleanliness number – he washed the boy off in a bathtub (we’re not told what he washed off but let your imagination be your guide). Only then did he finally take the boy to the hospital. According to the authorities, at the hospital, O’Callaghan could not provide an explanation for the boy’s injuries.

*     *     *     *     *

The Montgomery County, Maryland, prosecutors, believe this is a case of cold-blooded murder.

‘An absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim,’ said Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Fenton, running through a litany of injuries to the boy’s head, neck and back. ‘Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe.’

‘These facts are strong, these facts are horrific, and what this man did to this child is murder,’ said Fenton in court.

An autopsy revealed that Madoc’s injuries were consistent with having been beaten – he had a ‘fracture at the base of skull, bruises to the forehead, swelling of the brain and wounds to other parts of the body.’ There was also ‘blunt impact to the back from a linear and triangular shaped object.’

O’Callaghan’s attorney, Steven McCool, isn’t buying it. He stated in court Tuesday that medical tests performed at the hospital don’t support the findings in the autopsy.

‘There was a full CT scan done of Madoc, and there were no skull fractures,’ he said.

‘I find it impossible to believe that he’s been indicted for murder because he’s worked so hard to get this baby,’ O’Callaghan’s grandfather William Rose told the paper. ‘He was so loving with him. He’s been so wonderful with his other child. I’ve never seen him do anything that would make me believe he is capable of that.’

Until he lost it while trying to give a reluctant special-needs child a shower (assuming the allegations are true).

O’Callaghan has been charged with one count each of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. Needless to say, he is being held without bond.

Update:

An investigation has been launched in Korea which appears to be triggered by Korean concerns that Holt and Catholic Charities USA, a U.S.-based adoption agency that handled the adoption of Hyunsu, charged the O’Callaghan’s a whopping $41,650 to place the boy with them. My sense is that this is more than double what adoption agencies usually charge for Americans to adopt foreign-born children. On the other hand, the cost of foreign adoptions may have gone up sharply since we adopted our daughter 16 years ago. In any event, this would appear to be a face-saving measure on the part of the Koreans. The O’Callaghans were carefully vetted and at this stage, there is no reason to believe that any real impropriety on the part of the Holt Agency occurred.

There appears to be no new news on Brian O’Callaghan’s case with seems to be progressing at the “slow pace of the moon”, which is not surprising considering its high-profile nature and all that is at stake.

by Lise LaSalle

In 2010, Colonel Russell Williams was chosen newsmaker of the year in Canada.

The year had started so well for this decorated colonel. He was a rising star in the ranks of the air force that managed Canada’s largest military airfield. As a pilot, he had flown Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the prime minister and many VIP guests in military airplanes.

But the year 2010 ended very badly for Williams – his uniform was seized and burned by the military in an effort to erase any trace of him amongst their ranks. And this is also the year he confessed and pleaded guilty to charges of rape and murder.

From July 2009 until his arrest in February 2010, Russell Williams commanded Canadian Forces Base Trenton, one of the busiest Canadian airbases. He was relieved of his functions as base commander in February 2010 and formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of forcible confinement, and two counts of breaking and entering with sexual assault. Another 82 charges related to breaking and entering were subsequently added.  Or as I would call it: Collecting Artifacts.

Williams was sentenced to two life sentences for first-degree murder, two 10-year sentences for other sexual assaults, two 10-year sentences for forcible confinement and 82 one-year sentences for burglary (collecting artifacts). All the sentences were to be served concurrently at Kingston Penitentiary. The ‘’faint hope’’ clause of the Canadian criminal code does not apply to him, meaning he will never be a free man again.

Kingston Pen closed its doors in September 2013. It was the most famous prison in Canada, not only because of its infamous and notorious prisoners – Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, Hamed Shafia, Helmuth Buxbaum and Russell Williams, but also due to the fact that writer Charles Dickens, who toured the prison in 1842, had called it “an admirable gaol.’’

But the prison’s reputation was mostly built on the role its inmates played in building the city. They laboured to build a quarry in the village of Portsmouth and that quarry was made famous by writer Merilyn Simonds in her novel The Convict Lover. The inmates learned trades while at Kingston, and even the coffin Sir John A. Macdonald was displayed in when he died  in 1891, was made at the prison’s wood shop.

Inmate Russell Williams was transferred from Kingston Pen to Port Cartier prison in Quebec a few months before its closure. And Paul Bernardo was moved from Kingston to Millhaven penitentiary in Ontario. I hear that the inmates at Millhaven are quite pleased to enjoy the new privilege of hearing trains blowing their whistles from afar. So much for small pleasures.

Coincidentally, these two infamous criminals whose paths had crossed at Kingston Pen, had also met when they were young men studying at the University of Toronto in the 1980s.

Some say they were ‘pals’ and partied together but they both deny it. Paul Bernardo’s father stated that his son does not even remember Russell Williams/Sovka. They studied economics at the Military Trail campus and graduated in 1987. Some would love to think that there was a crime spree rivalry between the two, but that is absolutely unfounded.

Even though Bernardo and Williams had both lived in Scarborough, Ontario and attended the same university, their fate reunited them only much later when Williams ended up at Kingston Pen.

While Paul Bernardo was a busy bee becoming the Scarborough Rapist, Russell Williams kept himself occupied modeling his life to the ‘Top Gun’ movies he had watched in awe so many times. Like the hero of the story, he had decided to become a pilot. By all accounts, he worked relentlessly and diligently to achieve his goal.

At that time, there was nothing to indicate that Russell Williams was a troubled and troublesome soul. But Bernardo was already in full-fledge criminal mode. They also approached love very differently. A violent sadist, Paul could not have any normal relationship with a woman. He then met Karla Homolka and the rest is history.

But Williams, after a painful breakup, appeared to have finally met the love of his life, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, a senior executive for a medical Foundation. They were married for 18 years and had a solid and loving relationship. She became his ultimate victim, but much later, when she discovered her “perfect” husband’s secret activities.

David Russell Williams was born on March 7, 1963 and it is not until the age of 44 that he started his criminal behavior. He admitted having had fantasies of stealing women’s underwear in his 20s or 30s but his first break-in didn’t occur until 2007. That is when he started his strange ‘collection of artifacts’.

In fact, some American researchers led by Janet Warren, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, have included Williams in a study into why certain prolific sex offenders keep ‘’artifacts’’ of their victims even if it represents a huge risk to hold on to that type of evidence.

They found that these collections are more than just fetishes. They give the perpetrators a sense of power over the victims and they may be ‘’central’’ to why they commit the crimes.

“The methods used to capture, document, and preserve these experiences differ among offenders, however each reveals his wish to create a collection of victims allowing both a reverie of remembrance and proof that he is capable of taking any victim he chooses, any way he likes,” the researchers wrote in an article for the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior.

They have studied the most prolific sex offenders from the past 40 years, including Williams.

They dubbed Williams ‘’the cinematographer’’ because he films his crimes, poses his victims and participates in the scenario he created. He wants to shoot the ‘’perfect porno.’’

Before becoming violent, Williams started slowly by peeping through windows, breaking into homes and stealing lingerie, and then photographing himself dressed in it.

It escalated to his first victim, a 20-year old girl that he sexually assaulted. He ‘collected’ her bras and panties, bed sheet and baby blanket. He proceeded to break into her home again to steal more lingerie, her driver’s license and other ‘artifacts’.

He broke into the home of a 47-year-old neighbour, and tied her up. He then forced her to undress and pose for photos. It was not the first time he had broken into her house to take photographs and steal some of her personal effects.

The first woman he murdered was a 37-year-old corporal in the air force. She was beaten, tied up, raped and strangled in her own home. He videotaped and photographed the crime after adjusting the lighting for a better shoot.

The last woman he murdered was 27. He bound and raped her and recorded her in various poses wearing lingerie. He brought her to his cottage in the country afterward to continue his assault before the final kill.

The researchers wrote that ‘’Filming these crimes allowed Williams to capture his fetishistic behaviour, cross-dressing and sexual sadism, but it also captured his conflicted gender identity.’’

“The turbulence of these opposing experiences of gender identity escalated into murder, and perhaps that is the core sexual fantasy that Williams sought to capture and resolve.’’

Many killers keep trophies or artifacts as reminders of their exploits. As a way to relive the moments of total control they crave for in their arguably powerless lives.

Some keep objects but others keep journals. They have a strong urge to write the stories of their crimes to relive the surge of pleasure they had experienced. It is a powerful desire to control the materials and to prolong the powerlessness of the victims and enhance their control of the situation.

“It is our impression,” the researchers wrote, “that the collection serves to weld together an experience of self that is of paramount importance to the offender and possibly constitutes the most fundamental motivation for their crimes.”

Sadly, the researchers said, “no treatment exists” to render such offenders harmless, meaning their “rapid identification and apprehension” is key.

Having said that, we are still left wondering why a successful man like Colonel Russell Williams felt so powerless. Why was he looking for a sense of power when his life seemed drenched with honor and rewards?

He was a highly respected man. From all accounts, he had a great relationship with his loving and very smart wife who was not emasculating him in any way. They had decided against having children because ‘he did not want to bring children into this world’. That should be a clue. What was it about this world that he found unfit for children? He knew firsthand about the EVIL LURKING.

His upbringing had not been smooth sailing but by no means tragic. He had a stepfather and from all evidence, did not have a deep connection with him. But he nevertheless, took his side when his mother divorced him and cut ties with her over it.

His heart had been broken by a young lady he really cared about and her rejection drove him to become a hero-pilot à la Tom Cruise in Top Gun. His marriage to Harriman was described as harmonious but she was older than him and kind of homely. Was she the safe respite he craved after feeling undeserving of the one his heart truly desired? Or was it a convenient match to harbor his gender identify issues?

It was divulged that at the time of his crime spree, Williams was taking a cocktail of prescription drugs for an excruciating bout of chronic joint pain he was suffering from, and that he feared, could end his career as a pilot. It marked the crucial moment when he crossed the line from fantasy to obsession and started acting out his sexual deviancy by collecting artifacts and wearing them, and then by detaining women to take photos which led to the rapes and ultimately the murders of two of them.

Was it the effect of the meds? We’ve heard of several cases of people becoming psychotic, oversexed, angry and compulsive after taking these types of medications.  Something was not right. Maybe he was having a hard time fighting his demons and was trying to find ways to numb them. Instead, they somehow became enhanced and he no longer resisted them.

Williams’ best friend was shocked when he found out about his crimes. They were extremely close, and as an educated professional and seemingly sincere man, he had not seen any cold feelings or cruelty emanating from his best bud Russell. Williams and his wife had a cat called Cleo and when it died not long before the crime spree, he was utterly devastated. So he was as flabbergasted as Harriman when they found out that Russell was moonlighting as a psycho rapist and killer.

Even respected psychiatrists where shaking their heads. Several of them as well as crime reporter Timothy Appleby from the Globe and Mail, do not consider Russell a psychopath. He demonstrated genuine consideration to his friends and colleagues and according to them, was capable of feeling shame for his actions. One of the victims he did not rape but rather blindfolded and photographed; she told him she had a migraine and he gave her Tylenol and patted her on the head. She said that she felt he had a conscience.

Not one of Bernardo’s victims ever made such a statement.

Before his crime spree, Williams was already suffering from full-blown obsessive-compulsive behavior. You can see it in the way he catalogued all his ‘artifacts’ with precise attention to detail. He had impeccable computer records and boxes and bags of lingerie neatly folded and classified.

He had child pornography on his computer but refused to plead guilty to possessing child porn even if he was willing to admit to all his other crimes. He was too ashamed and remained adamant against admitting any sexual attraction towards juveniles.

Appleby concluded that William is a ‘’paraphiliac’’ or sexual deviant with sexual obsessions that somehow took over his life.

When the police brought in Williams for interrogation after having accumulated overwhelming evidence against him, he confessed mostly to protect his wife and the military. Sgt Detective Jim Smyth used the Reid technique on him and was hailed as a hero for it, but I frankly did not see this typical routine as brilliant. Instead, what I saw in the interrogation videos, was Russell Williams spilling the beans the minute he found out they would search his house. Right away, he expressed concern for the pain his wife would suffer and for the damage the searches would cause to their new home she loved so much. He also knew they were going to find his ‘artifacts’ so he could not maintain the charade anyway.

At trial, Russell pleaded guilty to expedite the process. He wanted to avoid prolonging his wife’s agony and minimize the scandal for the air force. The minute he was in jail, he tried to kill himself by swallowing a cardboard roll of toilet paper. He left a message on the wall written in mustard to the effect that his feelings were too much to bear and his affairs were in order. They intervened just in time to save his life, even though he had jammed the door lock with paper.

When asked by detectives why he committed the crimes, he genuinely did not seem to know the answer. He was driven by deep dark obsessions.

His wife divorced him in order to hold on to her share of their assets. She was highly criticized by the public for suing the police department to get compensation for damages done to her house during the searches, even though it is an accepted legal practice. Williams is being sued by his victims and his wife was named in the suit. She wanted the divorce proceedings sealed but the judge ruled against her.

Some have been plain cruel to Harriman and they maintain that she had to know what her husband was up to on his nightly jogs equipped with a camera. But from all accounts, this woman had no clue her husband was a criminal. She only knew the stand-up guy she married.

According to Paul Bernardo’s father who was visiting his son regularly at Kingston Pen, Miss Harriman was a frequent visitor at the prison. She stuck by Russell as he did with his son. He describes her as a bright and classy lady. To Harriman, he never was a monster but her officer and gentleman. It must be very difficult for her to this day to absorb this twisted reality.

Williams’ collection of ‘artifacts’, as described by the researchers, might be an indication of the type of deep compulsion he suffered from. And until they find the key to this mystery, the only treatment is his incarceration.

If Williams was to cooperate with researchers looking into the root causes of collecting artifacts as a form of empowerment in cases of sexual deviancy, it would not redeem his crimes or bring back his innocent victims, but, like an antidote, it could lead to some unorthodox form of healing in an otherwise sick and wasted life.

I am convinced that like the rest of us, the doctors would jump at the opportunity to ask him, ‘Colonel Russell Williams where have you been?’

Click here to go to Lise LaSalle’s website, The Trouble with Justice

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Even children with loving and responsible parents sometimes get a little fed up with mom and dad and their demands. Imagine what it would be like if both your parents had a history of psychosis and serious mental illness and were liable to “goes off their rockers” at any moment. Now, to make it all the worse, imagine you are only six weeks old, a helpless infant named Faith, and your mother experiences a complete psychotic breakdown. You wouldn’t have any way to protect yourself.

Sadly, this is what happened to a tiny six-week old English girl named Faith in the English town of Milton, near the ancient city of Cambridge, in June of 2009. While caring for Faith, her mother, 41-year-old Julia Lovemore — who had a history of psychotic episodes dating back to 1995 — veered into a state which she described as “getting bipolar”. She doesn’t know why she did it but the next thing she knew she was ripping pages out of her Bible and stuffing them into tiny Faith’s mouth. Julia admits to blocking the child’s airways:

 “I sat in my bedroom and I was ripping pages out of my Bible. I put some small bits of paper in Faith’s mouth and she spat them out. For some reason, I sat on her, I was crying. I was bouncing on the bed. I don’t know why I was sitting on her. I got bi-polar.”

Even the fact that Julia sat on Faith might not have seriously harmed her but bouncing on her was more than the infant’s tiny system could endure. Later that day, Mr. Lovemore turned up at his general practitioner’s office carrying the child’s lifeless body. He was accompanied by Faith’s older sister who had been doused in white spirit (a form of mentholated turpentine) but was otherwise unharmed.

What makes this situation all the sadder is the fact that while this was going on, or immediately thereafter, Julia and her husband, David Lovemore, were paid a visit by a community psychiatric nurse, Rebecca Hughes, and a second health care practitioner.

When they arrived at the Lovemore residence, they found David, 39, stamping his feet and saying: “Take the devil out of Julia.” Their older child was sitting alone on the stairs.

At a court hearing, Rebecca Hughes stated:

“I have never ever seen him like that before. It was as if he was in a trance. I felt the situation was unstable. I was very worried about David, I feared he may be becoming psychotic. I felt very unsettled, I would almost go as far as to say I was scared.”

Ms. Hughes and the other health care worker were so concerned by David Lovemore’s behavior that instead of checking on Julia and little Faith, who were upstairs, they left to seek help.

The Cambridge Crown Court prosecutor John Farmer stated logically enough:

“Unfortunately, neither of them sought to see the defendant and the best interpretation of events is that by then Faith was dead or dying because there would be no other reason why the husband of the defendant was so intensely engaged in prayer.”

*     *     *     *     *

Julia Lovemore has been detained indefinitely under the English Mental Health Act after admitting to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

In a commentary on Faith’s death, a blogger named Amelia McDonnell-Parry seems to blame the child’s death on the fact that the Lovemores were fanatical Christians combined with what she describes as a failure of the British mental health care system. Ms. McDonnell-Parry writes:

“Religious fanaticism is just scary. Julia Lovemore and her husband are both Christian fundamentalists with mental health issues.”

She then goes on to blame the health care workers:

What’s even more disturbing is that mental health professionals knew the Lovemores’ children were living in danger. When Mrs. Lovemore was pregnant, a psychologist concluded that there was a “high risk” of a bi-polar relapse and suggested it was necessary to monitor her. Their older daughter was also put on the “at risk register” in 2006, after her mom hit her with a hairbrush. Even the day of this incident, a psychiatric nurse visited the house and heard Mr. Lovemore shouting, “Take the devil out of Julia.” She bailed to “consult with experts,” while Faith was dead or dying somewhere in the house. It’s not fair to blame the social workers, but where were child services? What’s the point of acknowledging that someone is at risk if there are no intentions to do anything about it?

Both these claims on Ms. McDonnell-Parry’s part seem rather unfair to me. The fact that the Lovemore’s were fanatical Christians is not what caused Faith’s death. Her death came as a direct result of her mother’s serious mental illness. And the fanatical Christianity could very well be a symptom of the fact both the Lovemores were mentally ill. Furthermore, it’s all to easy to blame “child services.” It appears that the social workers were monitoring the Lovemores, albeit unsuccessfully.

No, the problem, in my opinion, is the fact that these two psychotic individuals had children in the first place. But society is not willing to step in and deny individuals the right to reproduce and for a very good reason. Who is to decide which groups can and cannot re-produce? In that direction lies a kind of social totalitarianism which few, if any, right-minded individuals desire.

What I think could help, though, would be for free societies to institute as part of the standard high school curriculum a class in parental responsibility, which would be required for graduation. In this class, one of units could address the issue that not everyone is cut out for parenthood, and that citizens should think long and hard before bringing children into the world as opposed to just blithely procreating.

by BJW Nashe

Many of us are well aware of the impending zombie apocalypse. Who knew that it would begin in Temecula? Then again, so many of our apocalyptic scenarios seem to originate in California, and Southern California in particular. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

News agencies today are reporting that in Riverside County a man has been arrested after stealing a big rig and colliding with several other vehicles on the highway. The man claimed he was being chased by zombies. Nobody was killed during this bizarre episode, which apparently caused a chain reaction crash on Interstate 15, but two people were seriously injured. The man arrested is identified as Jeremiah Clyde Hartline. According to the Temecula Patch, Hartline is being charged with assault with a deadly weapon, along with other felonies including auto theft, reckless driving, hit-and-run resulting in injury, driving without a license and multiple sentence-enhancing great bodily injury allegations. There’s been no further word on the zombies.

Is it any wonder that this is how the zombie war should start? Some strange incident occurs out on the highway, followed by the authorities willfully ignoring the true nature of the danger at hand, just to avoid widespread panic. Next thing you know, we are in an all-out fight for our lives. Who knows what would have happened if Hartline hadn’t engineered the whole freeway smash-up, in order to escape his undead pursuers? Or what if he did not in fact escape? What if he is now one of them? Our “Patient Zero.” Who knows what lies in store for the people of Temecula? The jail where Hartline is being held could rapidly turn into zombie central. All of California may soon be threatened.

For now, we are unable to ascertain whether these were flesh-eating zombies that chased Hartline, or if they were just trying to get their deteriorating hands on some of his crystal meth. Probably safe to assume both. And we don’t know if the zombies came from some secret biological warfare facility run by the government, or whether the horde was infected by some mysterious virus from outer space. Or something even worse. No accounts of UFO sightings or alien visitations have yet accompanied Hartline’s illegal highway escapades. Law enforcement, of course, is keeping a tight lid on the wider implications of the whole story. They are probably waiting for Homeland Security to step in and take over.

Here’s the official version (or cover-up) of Hartline’s arrest, as reported by the Temecula Patch:

 According to the California Highway Patrol, Hartline, a transient, was picked up by a trucker — Daniel Martinez — in Tennessee en route to San Diego, where the long-haul driver picked up a load of strawberries.

At around 6 p.m. on Saturday, Martinez parked his 18-wheeler at the CHP’s commercial vehicle compliance station just off northbound I- 15, according to the CHP. While Martinez was outside his tractor-trailer, making adjustments, Hartline began to have visions of zombies coming after him, said CHP Officer Nathan Baer.

He told City News Service the defendant was ‘altered,’ possibly under the influence of a controlled substance, and slid behind the wheel of the truck, throwing it into gear and accelerating onto the freeway.

“Hartline thought that zombies were chasing him and clinging to the truck,” Baer said. “Hartline swerved the truck side to side to shake the zombies off.”

Less than two miles into the wild ride, near the exit to Temecula Parkway, the defendant sideswiped a Toyota Tacoma pickup, causing that vehicle to collide with a Toyota 4Runner pickup, which hit a Mercedes-Benz, according to Baer.

“The Tacoma overturned, while the Mercedes sedan and 4Runner spun into the center divider,” the officer said.

“The big rig veered to the left, out of control, striking a Ford Taurus and a Honda Accord before jackknifing and blocking all four traffic lanes, according to the CHP.

Baer said Hartline leapt from the semi and ran to a van that had stopped nearby, climbing inside and allegedly attempting to steal that vehicle, according to the CHP. The driver detained the young man until officers arrived, according to the CHP.

Hartline was treated for minor injuries at Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta and transported to jail.

The occupants of the Tacoma — Kyle Schlosser of San Jacinto and Sarah Small of Hemet — were seriously injured in the crash and remain hospitalized, according to Baer.

He said the occupants of the other vehicles suffered minor to moderate injuries, for which they also received treatment.

The freeway was closed for three hours for the cleanup and investigation.

We don’t need to read too closely between the lines to understand the seriousness of the horror unfolding in Temecula. What were the results of the “investigation?” Was Hartline “infected,” or just scared out of his wits? How can we be sure he was only hallucinating? Why are precise details of the zombie attack being hushed up, or left unexplored?

This has the potential to make Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War  seem like a quaint bedtime story (i.e., The Twilight Saga). And yet World War Z may give us some idea of what we may be in for. Here are some excerpts that the CHP and Temecula Police Department and Riverside County Sheriff’s Department might want to pay attention to:

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

If you live anywhere within a 100 mile radius of Temecula, there may be still time to prepare. But the clock is ticking. Start stockpiling weapons, ammunition, food, and first aid supplies. If you haven’t read the Zombie Survival Guide, I don’t know how to help you… What have you been doing? Reading mysteries? Or “teen paranormal romance?” You may be a lost cause, at this point. Here are ten quick tips for surviving a zombie attack, so you are not totally unprepared:

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

You will notice that stealing a big rig and causing a pileup on the highway is not listed here. This was strictly improvisation on the part of Mr. Hartline, who was clearly thrown into panic when faced with the zombie menace. His approach is by no means recommended for anyone. There’s no need to go crazy here; reason must be allowed to prevail.

In any case, we feel certain that everyone in Southern California should leave work immediately. Stay away from school. Avoid all institutions. Go home and barricade yourselves safely inside your homes, before it’s too late. Trust no one outside of your immediate circle of “survivors.” Keep your own counsel, and maintain a “bunker mentality” until further news filters out from Temecula. It’s going to be a long night.

by Darcia Helle

In 1870, New Orleans was a city divided by politics, class, and race. The Civil War had left much of the south reeling, and now the government’s Radical Reconstruction attempted to force change by integrating the black population into the white-dominated hierarchy. Some whites rebelled, clinging to their Confederate roots, while others who supported the change suffered ridicule and disdain within their community. The atmosphere was tumultuous. Racism was not only openly practiced but encouraged.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice John Campbell, who resigned in order to join the Confederacy, illustrates this point well. He had this to say to his fellow New Orleanians: “We have Africans in place all about us, they are jurors, post office clerks, custom house officers & day by day they barter away their obligations and duties.”

Racial strife was not the only or even necessarily the biggest cause of violence. New Orleans’ wealthy class had a hair-trigger temper when it came to real or perceived slights. Duels to the death continued to be a favorite way of settling these disputes, earning the city of New Orleans the title of ‘Dueling Capital of the South’. The reason for this ran to the core of their values. Class and reputation were vital to the people of New Orleans. They believed the way a person dressed, spoke, and carried him/herself to be a statement of character. A person’s reputation was unquestioned, upheld by the community, and so the residents held a zero tolerance policy toward slander.

By 1870, this self-appointed elite class had become the minority. Foreign born immigrants made up 75% of the city’s population. Prejudices went much deeper than skin color. Irish and German immigrants were considered lowlifes, their presence tolerated by the upper class only slightly more than the presence of African-Americans. This hostile environment made New Orleans one of the most dangerous places in America during the late 1800s.

Thomas and Bridgette Digby were two of the city’s Irish immigrants living in relative obscurity. They had fled their country during the mid-1800s, along with thousands of others known as the “Famine Irish”. By June of 1870, the couple had three children and were living in a working class section of New Orleans. Thomas drove a hackney cab, and Bridgette took in laundry and sewing from the wealthy residents. Nothing about them or their lives was remarkable at the time. Certainly nothing suggested that their names would be committed to history.

That all changed on the afternoon of Thursday, June 9. At the end of each workday, the Digby’s street bustled with activity as people made their way home from their various jobs. On this day, two of the Digby children were in their front yard playing while Bridgette cooked dinner. George Digby, age 10, was playing with a group of friends. Seventeen-month-old Mollie was being watched by Rosa Gorman, a white teenage neighbor who sometimes babysat for Bridgette. Rosa was standing by the sidewalk, holding Mollie in her arms and occasionally conversing with the passersby.

Two African-American women who’d been walking by stopped to chat with Rosa. This was not unusual, despite the racial tension within the city. Irish and German immigrants shared that part of the city with free northern blacks and former slaves. They frequently conversed and even did business with one another. The two women were familiar to Rosa. She’d spoken to them before, though she did not know their names.

As they stood talking, Rosa noticed smoke and flames coming from a storefront two blocks away. Soon the fire engine, pulled by a horse, raced by with its bell clanging. An excited crowd followed to watch Seligman’s Photographic Studio burn. Rosa wanted to join the procession to watch the firefighters at work. She called to George Digby to take his sister. While George grumbled, the taller “mulatto” woman extended her arms and offered to take Mollie so that Rosa could go. Rosa happily handed Mollie off, leaving the two children in the care of the two African-American women on the sidewalk.

In today’s society, this would seem an insane thing to do. We don’t leave our children with strangers, regardless of race or color. But communities were different in the late 1800s. Relying on one’s neighbors was not unusual. The main factor here was probably that these two African-American women were well-dressed, well-spoken, and familiar. In the city of New Orleans, where people based their opinions on appearance, this meant the two women were trustworthy.

This one incident on that June afternoon taught an entire community that looks are deceiving.

After Rosa raced off behind the horse-drawn fire engine, the shorter of the two women called to George, Mollie’s brother, and asked if he knew where a particular seamstress lived. He said he did, and so the woman took him by the hand and asked if he would take them there. The two African-American women, one holding Mollie in her arms and the other holding George by the hand, made their way through the crowded streets.

According to George’s later account, he soon pointed out the home of Mary Cooks, the seamstress in question. The shorter woman told George he was mistaken, that it wasn’t the home they were looking for. And so they walked on.

New Orleans in 1870 was racially divided, but it wasn’t unusual to see black women with white children. African-Americans and black Creoles often worked as nannies for white families. No one paid the four of them any attention as they joined the crowds on the busy streets.

Eventually they reached a public market. The woman holding Mollie, described as tall and wearing a “seaside hat”, handed George some money, directed him to a booth to buy some bananas for his sister, and said they would wait for him. When George returned, the women – and Mollie – were gone.

The events following Mollie Digby’s kidnapping created chaos within New Orleans. The city was in the midst of Radical Reconstruction, already bitterly divided by racial issues, and now two black women had stolen a white child. The rumors didn’t take long to start circulating. People claimed Mollie had been taken for voodoo sacrifice. Others said she’d been sold to roaming Gypsies. Then there were those who speculated that she’d been abducted as revenge against Thomas Digby for some perceived slight, or that she was being used to extort money from a former lover by claiming the child to be his.

As rumors swirled and people pointed accusing fingers, the newly integrated police force struggled to gain traction in the case. In June of 1870, 28% of the New Orleans police force was African-American. While the majority, and all ruling officers, were white, this did nothing to ease the minds of conservative – bigoted – white New Orleans citizens. They wanted someone to blame for the police department’s failure to find Mollie and her kidnappers. White Police Chief Algernon Sidney Badger, along with Jean Baptiste Jourdain, the detective in charge of the case, became easy targets.

At a time when newspapers had limited circulation, before TV news gave us images of tragedies across the country, and long before the Internet put this all at our fingertips, the Digby case made national news. The missing child, however, was not the driving factor. Sadly, kidnappings and missing children were fairly common occurrences back then. The interest here stemmed partly from the circumstances, with well-dressed, well-mannered African-American women stealing a white child. But, more than that, the nation paid attention because this was the first case ever to be handled by a black police detective.

The details of this case are too complicated and convoluted to share here. For a full account of this story, as well as fascinating details of the historical period, I highly recommend reading The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Rage, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era by Michael A. Ross. The short version of this story is that the outraged and outspoken media and citizens pushed the police department toward an arrest. In fact, they demanded nothing less. The following is a typical newspaper quote during the weeks after Mollie’s abduction:

“We may say to the police of New Orleans, that unless this child be found, they will suffer a burning disgrace – a lasting shame.” ~ The Picayune

Nonexistent witnesses were conjured up, people embellished or outright lied, and police interrogated and threatened anyone thought to be even remotely involved. The intense emotions surrounding the case fractured the relationship between white and black Creoles. Before this, black Creoles and African-Americans existed on different planes, with black Creoles enjoying a higher status within their community. They were longtime residents, businesspeople, respected by the white-dominated population. With Mollie’s disappearance and the ensuing investigation, they found themselves scrutinized in ways they hadn’t experienced. Prejudice stung them as black Creole women became the lead suspects. The racial divide carried them along, lumping them in with the now freed slaves who couldn’t be trusted.

Eventually two black sisters – Ellen Follin and Louisa Murray – were arrested, after having been identified by three white ‘witnesses’. The preliminary hearing and criminal trial became the most talked about events in the city, as well as entertainment for the nation. The media was not so much concerned with facts of the crime, since the white-dominated papers, at least initially, assumed the women to be guilty unless proven innocent. The details the newspapers chose to share say much about the era and the mentality of southern society:

A reporter from the Picayune noted that Louisa Murray wore “a dress of brown checked summer silk and a very light brown and fleecy veil.” She was “a handsome quadroon” with “small features, thin drawn up lips”, and “a wealth of glossy hair”.

Another reporter noted that the two sisters were much alike. “Both are tall beyond the average women, and slenderly formed. They are… mulatresses, but are by no means deficient in good looks. They dress with exceeding care and evince in their appeal a great deal of taste.”

Perhaps the most astonishing part of this entire case, given the time period, the outright persecution of someone black to blame, and the lackluster defense, is that the two sisters were found innocent by a jury of ten whites and two Afro-Creoles. Not only were they found innocent, but the jury took a mere eight minutes to deliberate. Again, the newspapers played a large role here, though not in the way one might expect. As the investigative details became public, reporters latched on to the glaring improprieties made by police

The Commercial Bulletin wrote that it was “next to impossible that an inquest [could] be conducted with less regard to the rules of evidence, the suggestion of common sense, the proprieties of judicial proceedings, or the law indicating the duty of a committing magistrate.”

While the tumultuous times certainly contributed to Louisa Murray and Ellen Follin’s arrest, these same times also helped, on some subconscious level, to aid their defense. The sisters were well-known, well-respected, and well-educated Afro-Creole women. Had they been poorly educated African-American women, the trial’s outcome would likely have been far different. Also, Mollie Digby’s abduction came at a unique historical period. In 1870, New Orleans was a somewhat enlightened southern city. Just a few years earlier would have placed them in the midst of the Civil War, when Confederates demanded control and wanted to subjugate all people of color. Just a few short years later, this area of the south was taken over by White Supremists, ensuring no person of color held any position of power or authority. But during this seven month period, from June 1870 to February 1871, a racially divided city managed to look beyond color to see the core of injustice.

An especially intriguing aspect of this case is that, before the trial or even the arrests, Mollie Digby was found and returned home. Or so the story goes. A fair-haired child of the same age was certainly handed off to the Digbys, though we will likely never know for sure whether that child was indeed Mollie. When the child was first given to Thomas Digby, her father, a mere couple of months after her disappearance, he could not say for sure whether the child was Mollie. In fact, he initially denied she was Mollie and didn’t want to take her. With some cajoling from those who found her, he opted to take her back home to let his wife decide. Bridgette Digby saw her husband return home with the child in his arms, and she immediately declared that child to be Mollie. Most took her at her word, believing Bridgette Digby to know her own child. Others had doubts rooted in the fact that Bridgette had been institutionalized because of her inability to cope with the loss of her daughter. She’d only recently been released and, perhaps, was so desperate to have her child back that she deluded herself into believing the fair-haired stranger was hers. There appears to be no record of Mollie’s reaction to being reunited with her parents or, possibly, the two people who claimed her as their own.

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

The characters await you.

by Robert Parmer

The successes of film giants such as The Godfather, Scarface, and even Bonnie and Clyde, havehelped shaped the scope of things to come in the crime/drama genre.

These classic movies instantly draw images of mob mentality, excessive drug trafficking, and even romanticism. They have crafted a mold for other crime films to follow.

Today, we’ll briefly explore the top five crime movies of the last 25 years. These films have been heavily influenced by their crime film predecessors, but have taken a modern, sometimes cult-like spin on the traditional ideas of criminal film masterminds.

5. The Wolf of Wall Street

While this film doesn’t necessarily follow the lead of the rest of this list, that doesn’t change the fact that it is easily one of the most amazing crime films of the 2000’s. This film follows the rise and fall of a well-off, attractive, yet totally corrupt stockbroker played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The stand-up performances by DiCaprio, and co-stars Jonah Hill and Matthew McConaughey, were what made this film my favorite movie of 2013. The Wolf of Wall Street balances moments of crime, sexuality, comedy, and suspense in a way that pulls you in with its inviting and interesting filming style.

4. The Dark Knight Series

These two films successfully pushed the boundaries of what a proper movie release can be. The midnight release of The Dark Knight was showcased by record breaking ticket sales and a plot and cast to match all of the hype. This variant of the Batman film saga is without a doubt the most successful, with a superstar cast that deliver some of their best performances. Christian Bale portrays Batman flawlessly and the stockpile of awards that he received for these two Batman films directly reflects that fact. The bar was set high with these films, which featured immense budgets, intricate character development and costumes, and special effects that kept you wondering, ‘how is that even possible?’

3. The Shawshank Redemption

By definition, any film adaptation of a Stephen King story has a lot going for it and The Shawshank Redemption is by no means an exception to this rule. It follows some central themes that are present in another King film adaptation, The Green Mile. These films bring up a lot of essential questions regarding what it means to be imprisoned in our country.

What are the effects of capital punishment, in and out of prison? How do our country’s prison systems have lifelong effects on the imprisoned? To what degree are these people experiencing inevitable, permanent effects of being institutionalized? This film explores these questions as well as other psychological phenomena that impact our nation’s criminal justice systems, and powerfully depicts what can occur when a person is unjustly sentenced and becomes obsessed with gaining their freedom back.

2. Reservoir Dogs

It’s no surprise that a Quentin Tarantino masterpiece holds one of the top spots on this list. Tarantino has an immaculate way of blending classic crime content with modern filming techniques. Reservoir Dogs features a superstar cast, a plot structure that keeps you guessing, and some of the most brutally memorable scenes of interrogation and torture of any mob crime film. You all remember those timeless code names each of the main characters had, or the scene with the ear and the gasoline, right?

Furthermore, the actor Edward Bunker, who plays the role of Mr. Blue, has extensive real life ties to crime. Before his career as an author, screenwriter, and actor, he had run-ins with the law that spanned years. Early in his life Bunker was convicted of everything from bank robbery to drug dealing to forgery. Reservoir Dogs is a prime example of a perfectly crafted crime movie and has the cult following to prove it.

1. Goodfellas

Let’s face it, when you think of large scale mob movies, The Godfather series probably reign supreme. It’s a classic among this specific genre.  Mafia movies hold a special place in my heart. Although brutal and intense by nature, to be successful, these types of films must hold true to the mob mentality. They create a world of an explicit day to day life involving more risk and violence than any ordinary person could imagine or would ever want to face.

The first time I watched Goodfellas, one of the opening quotes stuck in my mind: “Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a gangster.” This idea is ingrained in the main characters of Goodfellas. This is something that real life organized crime members had ingrained in their own lives. Furthermore, actual mafia personnelhave shaped how crimes are solved in real life. This fact adds a level of realism to the crime/mob film genre and makes this film stand out, just as The Godfather did almost twenty years prior.

Robert Parmer is a freelance web writer and student of Boise State University. Outside of writing and reading adamantly he enjoys creating and recording music, caring for his pet cat, and commuting by bicycle whenever possible.

by The Starks Shrink

Skylar Neese was just 16 years old when she climbed out of her bedroom window for the last time on July 5, 2012 at around midnight.  She was a bright teen, with a strong work ethic in both school and her part time job at Wendy’s.  But she had a taste for the party life, as many teens in small towns do.  This wasn’t her first time sneaking out of her home late at night, as was evident by the stool she’d left outside beneath her bedroom window to facilitate getting back into her room undetected by her parents. Mom and Dad were none the wiser.

When her father came home from working the night shift to drop off his car for Sklyar, she was nowhere to be found. Her mother wasn’t too disturbed – after all, Skylar was 16 and it was summer; she could be out with her friends shopping or swimming.  Dad called around to some of Skylar’s friends to see if they’d seen her, but came up empty. When the manager at Wendy’s called to ask if Skylar was coming to work, red flags went up for mom, since Skylar never missed work. The police were then called in. Weirdly, however, law enforcement presumed Skylar to be one of the many kids that run away from home each summer in a quest for independence and adventure. The Neese’s were not convinced of that and as the summer wore on turning to autumn, they became increasingly certain that this was not a choice that Skylar had made for herself.

They were comforted and aided in their search for their daughter by one of her best friends — Shelia Eddy.  They’d known Shelia for years and thought of her as another daughter. In September, when school started, Skylar still hadn’t surfaced. Her bank accounts, social media accounts and cell phone had not been touched. Now, the climate began to change. The Neese family had a Facebook page that Mary (Skylar’s Mom) had set up to help people exchange information and hopefully help in the search for her daughter. Shelia Eddy was one of the posters on that page, posting about how she missed Skylar and hoped she’d come home.  Sadly, in reality, Shelia already knew all too well that Skylar would never be returning to her mother’s embrace.

What is fascinating about the quest to find Skylar is how it played out on social media, particularly on Twitter. You see, Skylar had two best pals — Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf.  She’d known Shelia for many years while Rachel had only joined their little posse about a year or so before.  But of course, in high school, a year can be an eternity. But now it is September; all the kids except one are back in school and they are talking. And talking. And they do it on social media, unlike any generation before them. Many of the kids suspected Shelia and Rachel of doing something to Skylar, or at the very least, knowing something.  What was amazing was that many of the details of the actual events that some of these kids tweeted about turned out to be the truth. In October and November, Skylar’s body hadn’t yet been found but kids at the school were tweeting to Rachel and asking about the big cut on her leg that she’d had in the days just after Skylar’s disappearance.  They tweeted to Shelia but she was much more brazen and impervious to the harassment.  Much of this was done via ‘subtweets’, which don’t call out a particular person, but those who are close to the subjects are completely aware of the context. And then the sock puppet accounts showed up.  They were anonymous and were very blatant in their accusations. This was in December of 2012. The two suspect girls were called  “pretty little liars” based on the TV series about mean girls who murdered.

It was in December that Rachel Shoaf cracked.  She’d had a blowout with her mother who decided that Rachel needed more help than she could provide and called police who hauled her off to a local mental hospital for several weeks.  I give credit to Rachel’s mother for having the courage to intervene like that.  It had to be hard for her but it turned out to be the thing that broke the case.

Rachel, apparently guilt-ridden, went to a lawyer after her stint in mental care and confessed all.  And I mean ALL. Her attorney worked out a deal with authorities and in January, Rachel led them to Skylar’s remains which had been concealed in a remote area of Pennsylvania since that fateful night she’d crawled out her bedroom window.

In the meantime, one could watch the breakdown of Rachel and Shelia’s trust on Twitter. Rachel had cooperated with police and FBI in order to get a plea deal and implicated Shelia in the process. Shelia was the ultimate mean girl.  Her hubris was evident from her demeanor on Twitter and she clearly thought that she was above punishment for killing her best friend. She even tweeted “Yes it’s true, we went on 3” – referring to the fact that Shelia and Rachel had planned the attack on Skylar and stabbed her to death on the count of three.

This year both girls were finally brought to justice, with Rachel getting 30 years for her plea to 2nd degree murder and Shelia getting 15 to life for her plea to Murder One.  The horrific details came out at Rachel’s sentencing when the prosecutor read from Rachel’s confession.  They had lured Skylar from her home intending to kill her.  They had driven to a remote area in Pennsylvania, just over the border from West Virginia.  They got her behind the car and on the count of three they both stabbed her to death with kitchen knives.  They stood over Skylar until she stopped breathing and then concealed her body with leaves and brush. They cleaned up with the cleaning supplies that Rachel had brought along and changed their bloody clothing.  They then drove home and went to bed.  These were children. Teens. How do teens plan, perpetrate and conceal a crime such as this? Skylar was murdered in July, Rachel broke in late December and Shelia was arrested the following May. I believe that social media played a part in breaking Rachel and it certainly played a role in demonstrating how cold and callous two teenage girls could be.  Shelia and Skylar’s twitter accounts are still up, though Rachel locked hers during her breakdown.  It’s a forensic psychologist’s dream since you can watch the plot unravel over time.  No one really knows the why the “mean girls” ran amuck. Rachel’s confession states that they “just didn’t want to be friends with her anymore”. Can the motive for murder really be as mundane as that?

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

The Sad and Tragic Story of Jamarion “Please Kill Me” Lawhorn and His Victim Connor Verkerke

Charlie Bothuell V May Have a Very Sharp Axe to Grind

Two’s Company, Three’s a Deadly Crowd: The Cruel Killing of Martha Gail Fulton

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)

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We all know that prison rape is as American as the Dallas Cowboys. The stronger inmates rape the weaker inmates with disturbing regularity and in recent years, it’s become more and more evident that in numerous penal institutions around the country, the guards rape the inmates, both male and female. A small ray of hope is the fact that to date, I have not heard of any prison wardens raping either the inmates or the guards that work for them. Never say never, though, sooner or later it’s liable to happen. (If I recall correctly, it did happen in the movie, Bonnie and Clyde, when Bonnie favored the warden with her body in return for springing Clyde.)

In January, a new and particularly nasty category of prison rape reared its ugly head in the Eyman, Arizona state prison when a teacher, who was administering the time-honored Graduate Equivalency Exam (GED), was stabbed and raped by a convicted sex offender who apparently felt he had a little reward coming after finishing the exam.

Bob Christie of the AP writes:

A teacher at an Arizona prison was alone in a room full of sex offenders before being stabbed and sexually assaulted by a convicted rapist, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press about an attack that highlighted major security lapses at the facility.

The attack occurred Jan. 30 at the Eyman prison’s Meadows Unit, which houses about 1,300 rapists, child molesters and other sex offenders. The teacher was administering a high school equivalency test to about a half-dozen inmates in a classroom with no guard nearby and only a radio to summon help. The Department of Corrections issued only a bare-bones press release after the attack, but the AP pieced together what happened based on interviews and investigatory reports obtained under the Arizona Public Records Act.

The rapist, a young man named Jacob Harvey, cleverly waited until the other inmates had finished their exams and left the testing area before swinging into action. The records show that Harvey then asked the teacher is she could open up the bathroom and then attacked her, stabbing her in the head with a pen before forcing her to the ground and raping her.

The teacher told investigators that she screamed for help, but none was forthcoming. After completing the act, Harvey chivalrously tried to use her radio to call for help. (This is odd but is reportedly what happened.) The teacher’s phone had apparently been switched to an inactive channel, so Harvey let the woman use another phone, perhaps one there in the classroom.

*     *     *     *     *

So what are we to make of this? Teaching inmates at a state prison is hardly a glamorous position and probably doesn’t pay that well. To be rewarded for your efforts by being raped is truly a low blow.

Bob Christie writes:

Carl ToersBijns, a former deputy warden at the prison, said the assault highlights chronic understaffing and lax security policies that put staff members at risk.

“Here you’ve got a guy that commits a hell of a crime … and he’s put into an environment that actually gives him an opportunity to do his criminality because of a lack of staffing,” said ToersBijns, who was deputy warden at the Eyman prison in Florence until retiring in 2010 and oversaw the Meadows Unit for 19 months.

The state prison officials, however, are apparently unconcerned. They say assaults of this nature come with the territory when your job is to oversee violent prison inmates (even apparently in a teaching capacity).

A cursory glance at Jacob Harvery’s history reveals that he was in the first year of a 30-year sentence for raping a Glendale, AZ woman in November 2011. Only 17 at the time, he had knocked on the female victim’s door in the middle of the day and asked for a drink of water, then forced his way inside, where he repeatedly raped and beat her while her 2-year-old child, who was in the apartment, no doubt cowered in fear. Harvey then fled naked when the woman’s roommate arrived home.

His arrest resulted from DNA evidence that connected him to the crime, and led to a guilty plea.

In Arizona violent felons are classified from Class 1 (least dangerous) to Class 5 (most dangerous). Harvey started out in Class 4 and was kicked down a notch six months later, despite violating prison rules at least once.
According to Department of Corrections spokesman, Doug Nick, classrooms at prisons across the state are having cameras installed. He stated, however, that no administrative investigation was launched after the teacher’s rape because there was no need. Nor was there any need for anyone to be disciplined. He also said that all prisons are dangerous places and that staff are trained accordingly.

“This is an assault that reflects the fact that inmates in our system often act out violently, and it is the inmate suspect who is responsible for this despicable act.”

Well of course the inmate rapist is responsible but it does seem that if individuals are going to be called on to teach these “animals”, they should be protected while carrying out their duties, shouldn’t they?

Nick also pointed out that not having a guard in classrooms or nearby “follows accepted corrections practices nationwide.”

Carolyn Eggleston, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who worked as a prison teacher in several states and is now director of the university’s Correctional and Alternative Education Program, disagrees with Spokesman Nick:

“I have to say, I don’t find that consistent with standards. In a sex offender unit, especially, they should be counting the people leaving the classroom. They just should. And there should be somebody, not in the class … but there should be somebody in proximity so they can help monitor that.”

Fortunately, the victim teacher was not critically injured. She has filed a worker’s compensation claim against the state and did not want to comment on case.

Although the Arizona prison officials appear to quite blasé about the whole matter in their public statements, internal emails obtained by the AP show that prisons Director Charles Ryan ordered all non-corrections officer staff at prisons statewide to be issued pepper spray and trained in its use just days after the attack. Furthermore, an internal memo sent right after the attack ordered guards at another nearby prison to begin checking on civilian staff every hour.
Nick, however, said the pepper-spray order was in the works before the assault.

Carl ToersBijns believes several factors put the victim instructor at risk:

1) Understaffing
2) No video cameras in the classroom
3) Insufficient guard presence
4) An outmoded classification system that misidentified Harvey as a relatively low-level threat

*     *     *     *     *

As for the perpetrator, Harvey, he seemed quite unconcerned about the whole matter. After all, he’s already serving a 30-year sentence so he doesn’t have much to lose. He was calm when confronted by officers in the classroom, refused to make a statement and asked for a lawyer. He was charged last month with sexual assault, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment.

Harvey was convicted at a prison administrative hearing of sexually assaulting the staff member. Three weeks later, he assaulted another prison employee. At this point the details of that assault are not available. His security classification has been kicked up to Level 5.

*     *     *     *     *

This is disturbing. I have at least six relatives who have taught at one time or another at various levels, as have I. Based on this incident, I would strongly advise anyone I know to not even consider teaching in a custodial environment, unless there were guarantees that the most rigorous safety measures would be in place. And even then, I would be very wary.

Although I am generally in favor of trying to rehabilitate our prisoners, when it comes to violent sexual predators, I’m not so sure. Harvey and people of his ilk are, in some respects, worse than animals, as he proved beyond the shadow of a doubt when he threw that poor woman to the ground and sexually assaulted her.

by Patrick H. Moore

The fiendish machinations of serial killers fascinate and terrify, in part because there is no definitive explanation as to what forms these monsters.  Jeffrey Dahmer, the mild-mannered monster from West Allis, Wisconsin falls squarely into the group of serial killers who were neither abused nor deprived during their formative years.  Nonetheless, Jeffrey managed to rape, torture and murder 17 victims between 1978 and 1991. At times, he dismembered and devoured their body parts. He always said that what he really wanted was a friend but that he could never keep one for long.

Experts in the field have dedicated their lives to studying and analyzing the nature of the serial killer, yet are unable to reach any real consensus as to what motivates these psychopaths. This unsettling fact is set forth in a number of scholarly works on the subject which are available at the website of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service:

D. Lester, author of Serial Killers: The Insatiable Passion, discovers that most serial killers in modern times have been white and that they largely eschew the use of firearms in committing their crimes.  He also opines that, in the final analysis, it is difficult, if not impossible, to construct a solid profile of serial killers.

In Overkill: Mass Murder and Serial Killing Exposed, authors J.A. Fox and J. Levin state:

“Most serial murderers do not kill for love, money, or revenge, but rather for the psychological stimulation and relief that it brings from an intolerably painful, powerless, and mundane existence.”

M. Newton, in Hunting Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers, avers:

“Motives were often psychological, with strong sado-sexual overtones and evidence of compulsive behavior. Six percent of the cases involved greed. Since 1969, 8 percent of the cases involved practitioners of Satanism, while another 5 percent involved members of the medical profession.”

It is tacitly accepted by many, however, that some form of psychological wounding, both as a child and continuing into adulthood, is intrinsic in the development of these individuals. The wounding, however, is not necessarily the result of mistreatment per se on the part of the killer’s parents but may stem from something more subtle and inscrutable. Such seems be the case with Jeffrey Dahmer.  Both of his parents were, shall we say, a bit peculiar.

In his book, A Father’s Story, Jeffrey’s father, analytical chemist Lionel Dahmer, searches for answers. Given his obvious shame and guilt for siring a monster, his observations should perhaps be greeted with some skepticism. He does appear to have some insight, however, which bears consideration. In general, Lionel believes that Jeffrey’s mother’s hysteria and psychosomatic illnesses during her difficult pregnancy with Jeffrey may have played a key role.

Throughout her pregnancy, according to Lionel, Joyce Dahmer vomited constantly, as if her body was sickened by having Jeffrey inside her. Far worse, however, were her bizarre seizures.  Lionel Dahmer writes:

“At times, her legs would lock tightly in place, and her whole body would grow rigid and begin to tremble. Her jaw would jerk to the right and take on a similarly frightening rigidity. During these strange seizures, her eyes would bulge like a frightened animal, and she would begin to salivate, literally frothing at the mouth.”

One cannot help but wonder and Lionel does:

“Why was she so upset all the time? What was it that she found so dreadful?”

While Lionel seems largely content with implicating Joyce as a kind of biological contaminant, he does admit to having been fascinated by fire and bombs throughout his own childhood, and in the context of telling the Dahmer’s family’s dark tale, he gradually reveals many of his personal oddities. Be that as it may, little Jeffrey was not your typical child.  At age 4, he became transfixed by the sight of bones. Around the same time, he suffered from a painful double hernia that required a difficult surgical procedure, which left him temporarily convinced that the surgeon had cut off his penis.

After that, Jeffrey grew increasingly strange.  Lionel writes:

“This strange and subtle inner darkening began to appear almost physically. His hair, which had once been so light, grew steadily darker, along with the deeper shading of his eyes. More than anything, he seemed to grow more inward, sitting quietly for long periods, hardly stirring, his face oddly motionless.”

Both father and son found solace in scientific experimentation.  In early adolescence, Jeffrey spent much of his time riding around their neighborhood on his bicycle, trolling for dead animals which he dissected at home or in the woods. On one occasion, he impaled a dog’s head on a stake. Lionel Dahmer writes: “In the lab, I found a wonderful comfort and assurance in knowing the properties of things, how they could be manipulated in predictable patterns.” As time passed, Jeffrey grew increasingly fearful and isolated, apparently mirroring his father’s youthful development. Lionel writes that he sees his son as a “deeper, darker shadow” of himself and warns that instead of guiding our children toward a healthy future, “Some of us are doomed to pass a curse instead.”

Lionel Dahmer’s cautionary tale suggests that it’s easy for a parent to be blind to his or her own destructive tendencies, traits that may be passed on to the next generation in far more virulent fashion. Lionel sums up the problem:

“Fatherhood remains, at last, a grave enigma, and when I contemplate that my other son may one day be a father, I can only say to him, as I must to every father after me, ‘Take care, take care, take care.’”

Jeffrey Dahmer’s Brief Self-Analysis:

In an interview conducted by television journalist Stone Phillips in 1994, shortly before he was beaten to death by other inmates in a Wisconsin penitentiary, Jeffrey Dahmer, though hardly as verbally facile as his poetic, albeit introverted, father, described his first murder:

“When I woke up in the morning, my forearms were bruised. And his chest was bruised, blood was coming out of his mouth, he was hanging over the side of the bed…  I have no memory of beating him to death, but I must have.”

Dahmer admits to striving for total control over his victims, which seems to be his motivation for committing the crimes. When questioned about the pleasure he acquired from the actual act of killing, Dahmer replied almost poignantly:

“The killing was just a means to an end; that was the least satisfactory part, I didn’t enjoy doing that. That’s why I tried to create living zombies with muriatic acid and the drill. But it never worked.”

Read more at http://www.ranker.com/list/top-10-most-chilling-interviews-with-famous-killers/jennifer-lee#GfZtGiVCgzZOQmvs.99

In an article extracted from the archives of the New York Times entitled “Jeffrey Dahmer, Multiple Killer, Is Bludgeoned to Death in Prison “(originally published on November 29, 1994), Don Terry writes:

Jeffrey L. Dahmer, whose gruesome exploits of murder, necrophilia and dismemberment shocked the world in 1991, was attacked and killed today in a Wisconsin prison, where he was serving 15 consecutive life terms.

Mr. Dahmer was 34, older than any of his victims, who ranged in age from 14 to 33. He died of massive head injuries, suffered sometime between 7:50 and 8:10 A.M., when he was found in a pool of blood in a toilet area next to the prison’s gym, said Michael Sullivan, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. He was pronounced dead shortly after 9 A.M.

A bloodied broomstick was found nearby, and a fellow inmate who is serving (a) life sentence for murder, Christopher J. Scaver, 25, of Milwaukee, is the prime suspect, the authorities said.

E. Michael McCann, the Milwaukee County District Attorney, who sent Mr. Dahmer to prison in 1992, said, “This is the last sad chapter in a very sad life.”

“Tragically,” Mr. McCann said, “his parents will have to experience the same loss the families of his victims have experienced.”

It is somewhat unusual for the authorities to express sympathy regarding the death of a serial killer with 17 victims etched in acid upon his soul, but that seems to be the case in this peculiar matter.  Finally, we are inevitably left with a sense of unrest that is almost uncanny.  Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother was highly neurotic and his father was introverted and prone to dark fantasies. This in itself is not that unusual.  A large percentage, if not the majority, of children grow up in families that are flawed. Sometimes, the flaws are dramatic, yet, the vast majority of these children do not grow up to rape, torture, murder, and sometimes cannibalize.  Why was Jeffrey Dahmer different?  We may never know the answer. But we do know one thing, that is, if we can believe Jeffrey at all. What Jeffrey really wanted was a friend that wouldn’t go away.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

There’s just something about ferrets – not to diss on them too heavily, but I clearly remember the first time I was introduced to them. My sainted ex and I were having dinner with Big Rick and his wife (now also his ex). Big Rick was a Silicon Valley tech genius. He had his house wired up for light, sound and even smells. The smell detector was quite an innovation at the time; it was close to 25 years ago.

In any event, Big Rick (not Rick Stack the lawyer who is the current Big Rick in my life), very proudly let his ferrets out of their cage and chortled merrily as they side-winded their way from one end of the parquet-floored living room to the other.

“Aren’t they lovely,” cooed Big Rick. He thought he was way cool because he was A FERRET KEEPER. Personally, I didn’t think they were so damned cool but I stifled my true response because I didn’t want to offend our 6’11” host. There was just something about the way they didn’t move in a straight line that creeped me out. Fortunately, I have never had ferret nightmares. Now, however, based on some nasty ferret news that comes to us out of that hotbed of crime, Darby, PA, I just may. Why? Simple. The AP writes:

Authorities near Philadelphia say a trio of pet ferrets mauled a newborn who was left downstairs in her car seat, chewing off the baby’s nose and part of her cheek and lip.

Officials say the month-old baby was attacked Thursday afternoon by ferrets that escaped from a cloth cage while the girl’s mother went upstairs and her father was sleeping. Authorities say the baby was in stable condition in intensive care Friday after emergency reconstructive surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Based on the understandable concern that our apparently feckless ferret keepers may not win any parenting awards, their four other young children have been placed temporarily with relatives.

“The parents, I believe, have problems,” Darby Borough Police Chief Robert Smythe told the Delaware County Daily Times. “They are challenged. They can’t take care of these kids.”

Chief Smythe explained that having fed heartily on baby nose and cheek, the “ferrets scampered away when the mother came downstairs after hearing the baby’s screams.”

Given my instinctive bias against ferrets, I am not a good judge of ferret character. The American Ferret Association (AFA) assures us, however, that “a healthy, a well-trained ferret shouldn’t bite.” Just like faithful Fido needs to be properly trained so that he doesn’t eat tasty children, ferrets reportedly must also be taught socially acceptable behaviors like any other pet. The AFA explains that ferrets and kids can peacefully exist and even “play well together” but that it’s not good form to leave small children (a one-month-old baby would fall into this category) alone with them (or any other pet, for that matter).

What is real cause for concern is that according to Chief Smythe, “investigators found more food for the family’s ferrets and cats than for the children.” The police have reportedly recommended that prosecutors “approve charges against the parents.”

“Just imagine that 1-month-old baby, that can’t help herself, (and) two or three animals are eating it alive,” said Chief Smythe. “Imagine the pain.”

I guess it’s fortunate that the original Big Rick, who was an inveterate lover of ferrets, didn’t have children. He was of a scientific and slightly perverse bent; I can easily imagine him putting a child a cage with his beloved ferrets and observing the results with the gimlet-eyed interest of a true Man of Science.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

As parents we all know that we’ve got to protect our children from the ubiquitous molester. What makes that tricky is the fact the molester could be hiding out in plain sight nearly anywhere. He could be the boy scout leader. He could be your priest or minister. He could the man with the big house that your son is doing yard work for. He could be your next door neighbor. He could be the father of your daughter’s new best friend. He could be the big brother of your daughter’s new best friend. He could be your son or daughter’s teacher. He even could be your son’s little league coach.

With so many potential molesters out there just waiting to dig their evil clamps into your child, you could go crazy if you’re not careful. I remember when my son played Little League, he mentioned that some of the kids were going to 1:00 am swim parties with Mr ______, an assistant Little League coach who also covered youth sports for our local daily paper. Immediately, my molester hackles went up. I know that my son — who had been making a name for himself as an ace shortstop and center fielder — wanted to go to one of those fun bashes but I told him absolutely not. Although I had no proof that the guy was a molester, I wasn’t taking any chances.

One children’s authority figure whom I had never placed within the ranks of the ubiquitous molester, however, was the school principal. I don’t know why. It just never dawned on me that a principal could or would stoop that low. Boy, was I wrong as the recent molestation news out of Fayetteville, North Carolina clearly demonstrates.

Former Fayetteville middle school principal, David Ellis Edwards, 49, has been charged with with two counts of second-degree forcible sex offense, two counts of sexual acts with a student, and five counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor. In addition, according to Judge Tal Baggett, Edwards is also facing charges of crimes against nature, whatever that means.

The detectives — based on the three alleged victims who have come forward — believe that the sex acts in question took place at Ramsey Street Alternative School and Douglas Byrd Middle Schools in Fayetteville. According to the detectives, the victims told them that between 2009 to 2011, they were touched inappropriately or were forced to participate in sexual acts with Edwards at each of the two school campuses.

The ages of the alleged victims, all of whom were boys , ranged from 11 to 14. That shocking news that sets this case apart from any school molestation I have ever heard or read about is that at least one of the sexual assaults occurred while a parent of the victim unknowingly sat in a waiting area in the office of the school. Assuming the charges are borne out, the sheer gall of Edwards is absolutely staggering. There you are waiting nervously. You assume that your kid is being scolded or even yelled at for some childish infraction, but never — not even in your wildest nightmares — would you assume that the principal is molesting your child.

According to sources, Edwards is (was) also the pastor at the First Missionary Baptist Church in St. Pauls.

The disgraced official was arrested this Friday after turning himself in to the authorities. It appears that even though the Cumberland County School system has stated that they were unaware of any pending investigation, Edwards may have had some inkling that his days were numbered in that he resigned from his position as principal six weeks ago, stating at that time that he was making the move to take advantage of new educational opportunities.

Edward’s bond was set at $140,000. During the pendency of the case, he has been ordered not to associate with anyone under the age of 16. Edwards made his first appearance in a Cumberland County Courtroom on Friday, October 11th.

Update:

More information has now been provided concerning David Ellis Edward’s alleged sexual crimes against the students at his school. What is shocking is the fact that if these reports are true, at least some individuals at the school may have been, at least to some degree, quite aware that Ellis was up to no good.

WRAL.com reported on Dece. 5, 2013:

A Fayetteville woman who says her son was sexually abused by his principal, David Ellis Edwards, while she was in the next room is speaking out about what happened in the hope of helping other possible victims come forward.

The woman, who is not being identified to protect her son’s identity, says her son – now 19 – came to her, upset, in January, broke down and told her that he was molested when he was 14 and a student at Ramsey Street Alternative Middle School.

“I think it’s tough for any victim to come forward. I think – for boys – I think it’s a little harsh. I think he was embarrassed,” the mother said Thursday. “I don’t think he could deal with it anymore.”

It was then, she says, she learned, that the abuse first occurred while she was at school for a meeting and that Edwards asked to speak with her son privately.

“I was right on the other side of the door, and my son said that was the first incident to happen,” she said.

The abuse, she says, continued into the next school year.

“I was devastated, because I didn’t send my son to school for that,” she said. “In the position he was in, I think he took advantage of these kids.”

When she found out, she went to authorities.

*     *     *     *     *

“The victim’s family wants to make sure that this never happens to anymore boys,” her attorney, Lisa Lanier, said. “We’ve interviewed witnesses who are former school employees, who have given us reasons to believe that the school system knew, or should have known, about this.”

Lanier says a former school employee, Lee Walker, submitted an affidavit stating that Edwards “spent a lot of time with young boys alone in his office nearly every day.”

“Had it been acted on properly, none of this would have happened. It would have been stopped,” Lanier said.

“Imagine sitting in third-period class and being called into the principal’s office – having done nothing wrong – and walking down that hallway, knowing that you’re about to be sexually abused again,” she added.

by BJW Nashe

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

What’s going on with these people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Patrick H. Moore

We’re all painfully aware of the need for absolute accuracy in many of our endless interactions with modern technology. If you forget your password or type it in wrong, you will not get into your Ameritrade account. If you’re working on a Word doc and inadvertently strike the wrong key, your document is liable to go into convulsions or, in some cases, vanish completely. Of course, we do have two sanity saving technological safety valves, or else we’d all eventually go mad. When googling, caps or lower case entries make absolutely no difference and the same goes for typing in email addresses. Whew!

This need for accuracy often doesn’t transfer over into the non-technological world. For example, when driving – unless you’re unlucky enough to be victimized by a speed trap – you can generally go 10 miles or so over the speed limit without getting pulled over. When cooking, some of the best cooks play it by ear, eyeballing the ingredients and adding pinches of this and that, playing it fast and loose with little fear of botching the dish.

The general area of criminal charges is notoriously sloppy. Upon being arrested, defendants regularly get the book thrown at them – a laundry list of felonies of decreasing seriousness with often a few misdemeanors tossed in for good measure.

No doubt many a defendant has gnashed his or her teeth in frustration upon discovering the litany of charges they face for what they probably assumed was a fairly basic crime. Now, however, it’s reported that a Massachusetts man has agreed to plead guilty to murdering his mother, but only if his indictment is superseded to include extra charges for him murdering his mother’s cats, thus rendering it dead-on accurate.

Steven Hoffer of the Huntington Post writes:

A Massachusetts man who confessed to killing his mother and her two cats says he will change his plea to guilty, but only if the deceased cats are added to the indictment.

Matthew McAveeney, 46, made the unusual request in Woburn Superior Court on Wednesday, CBS Boston reports. He previously pleaded not guilty to murder in the (beating) death of his mother, Barbara, and cruelty to animals charges.

Although the alleged killer offered an explanation for why the cats must be added to the indictment before he’ll plead guilty, it’s hard to determine whether his tongue was placed deeply into his cheek, which given the context would be yet another sign of how much he hates/hated his mother, or if he’s simply insane. (The court has ordered a mental evaluation.)

I suspect the first possibility is probably the correct one. Here’s what McAveeney said to the media, who had their cameras rolling, when he entered the courtroom, according to WCVB:

“To my mother Barbara McAveeney and to her cats, Pumpkin and Puffy McAveeney, I apologize deeply.”

McAveeney explained further:

“[The indictment] does not name animals that were killed,” he said. “The animals were living beings. They had lives. They had personalities. They had identities. If I am going to be convicted of killing them, I would like them to be known for what they were and who they were by their names.”

The judge, who has probably heard plenty of peculiar explanations during her time on the bench, agreed to accept the change to the indictment. She will not decide whether to accept the change of plea until after the mental evaluation.

Given the fact that McAveeney, who is 46 years old, has requested to represent himself, one could surmise that he may suffer from some form of grandiosity. Oftentimes, individuals who believe that, despite their inexperience, they can do a better job in a court of law than the lawyers are not playing with a full deck

McAveeney was arrested in October, 2014 in a store parking lot in Belmont, North Carolina, where he had been traced based on a credit card trail. What could be construed as his essential instability is further demonstrated by the fact that according to law enforcement, at the time of his arrest he was combative and reportedly assaulted an officer. On the other hand, he could simply be a badass who doesn’t mind mixing it up, and does not discriminate between 70-year-old mothers and the men in blue.

At present, it’s not clear why McAveeney beat his mother to death, though that may ultimately be revealed if the alleged killer is allowed to represent himself and is given the chance to speak freely in front of a captive audience, something he will probably relish.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s well known that sex accompanied by strangulation, known as erotic asphyxiation,  is an increasingly popular pastime among the young, the kinky, the just plain adventurous, and sometimes the not too smart. A few older guys and gals also apparently don’t turn up their noses at the giddy pleasure. The Reverend Gary Aldridge, of Montgomery’s Thorington Road Baptist Church, died on June 24, 2007 from “accidental mechanical asphyxia”; he was “found hogtied, wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask.” This is even weirder than the sad passing of film star David Carradine, whose death has been described in the following manner:

David Carradine died on June 4, 2009 from accidental asphyxiation, according to the medical examiner who performed a private autopsy on the actor. His body was found hanging by a rope in a closet in his room in Thailand, and there was evidence of a recent orgasm; two autopsies were conducted and concluded that his death was not suicide, and the Thai forensic pathologist who examined the body stated that his death may have been due to autoerotic asphyxiation. Two of Carradine’s ex-wives, Gail Jensen and Marina Anderson, stated publicly that his sexual interests included the practice of self-bondage.

This is all well and good but it doesn’t answer the question of what do you do when you accidentally strangle your partner to death during the sex act and are left with his or her still hot but very dead body. Not being a practitioner of erotic asphyxiation, I cannot answer this highly pertinent question from personal experience. In September, however, an Italian lover by the name of Andrea Pizzicolo found himself confronted with this prickly situation when his lovely 18-year-old Romanian lover, Lavinia Simona Ailoaiei, accidentally expired during an erotic game the two of them were playing.

David Lohr of the Huffington Post writes:

A man who allegedly killed a Romanian teenager, had sex with her corpse and then dumped her body, was arrested in Italy. During a weekend press conference, prosecutor Vincenzo Russo, said murder suspect Andrea Pizzicolo was arrested at his home in Arese. The 41-year-old accountant shares the residence with his 5-year-old daughter and an unidentified woman.

According to the investigators, Pizzicolo killed his 18-year-old lover sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. He also didn’t cover his tracks very well. The young woman’s naked body was discovered Sunday in a corn field in Lombardy.  Pizzicolo hadn’t bothered to remove the self-locking plastic ties that were bound tightly around her neck. He left her unclothed corpse with a towel draped over her head, a mistake because the the towel led police to a nearby hotel, where Pizzicolo had allegedly rented a room Friday night.

When the  authorities searched Pizzicolo’s home, they allegedly found plastic ties similar to those that were found on the victim. Pizzicolo was escorted down to the police station. After four hours of determined interrogation, the Italian allegedly confessed. According to Prosecutor Vincenzo Russo, Pizzicolo stated:

“I’ve lost my mind, I went on tilt.”

Pizzicolo apparently then confessed that he had met the teen, who had just turned 18, on the Internet. Their rendezvous on Friday at a motel north of Milan was only their second date. Pizzicolo told the investigators that they engaged in an erotic sex game, in which Pizzicolo put the plastic ties around her neck. According to Pizzicolo, she struggled to breathe during their game and, despite his best efforts, he was unable to remove the ties and she expired.

According to Russo and the Head of the Flying Squad of Lodi, Alessandro Battista, the investigators have learned that Pizzicolo transported Ailoaiei’s body to another hotel, where he allegedly had sex with her dead body before he dumped it. The teen’s cellphone and other belongings were found in the trash bin of a restaurant near the second hotel.

Strangely, Ailoaiei is not the first victim to have been dumped in the outskirts of Lodi. According to La Repubblica, in 2011, a Moroccan woman was found dead in the area with her head and hands removed from her body. Roughly 10 years earlier a 25-year-old woman was found naked and strangled. Neither case has been solved.

The authorities have not indicated there is any connection between those two cases and the Pizzicolo case.

Pizzicolo has been charged with murder and committing obscene acts on a corpse.

The victim’s ex-boyfriend decried the alleged acts and remembered Ailoaiei as a “compassionate loving” girlfriend.

“I did not expect her to get hurt … I really miss her and love her,” AdmYn AdrYano, told The Huffington Post on Monday. (It almost sounds like he was in the motel room with them.)

*     *     *     *     *

Although Pizzicolo is charged with murder and committing obscene acts on a corpse, it seems to me that unless it can be proved that he intended to kill the 18-year-old victim, a more proper charge would be some form of aggravated manslaughter. As to the “committing obscene acts with a corpse” charge, I don’t believe it just be given much weight at sentencing. (Note: This is what I believed prior to the update based on this single case. See Update below).

As for the poor deceased victim, it’s hard for me to comprehend why she would practice erotic asphyxiation with an older gentleman whom she barely knew. Good god, it was only their second date.

Update:

Andrea Pizzocolo may have been responsible for other violent attacks, according to police.

More charges may be forthcoming against Andrea Pizzocolo, 41, who was convicted for the death of an 18-year-old woman, police said at a news conference.

A man has come forward to describe how in August he rescued a young woman who was tied in the same fashion as the earlier victim, police said.

And as many as 10 other similar cases are under investigation.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Children’s fiction is full of stories in which clever teen (or even pre-teen) detectives delve into crimes and mysteries that they ultimately solve gloriously thus righting wrongs and bringing bad guy/girls to justice. These tales make for lively and highly entertaining reading that bring youthful readers many hours of constructive pleasure.

However, young readers should be forewarned that kids’ detective stories are just that: STORIES, and it is probably not wise or desirable for kids to attempt to solve serious crimes ON THEIR OWN IN REAL LIFE.

The heart-rending case of a 14-year-old Alabama special needs student who was SODOMIZED by a reputed adolescent sex fiend in a “sting operation’ gone wrong is an excellent case in point:

Hilary Hansom of Huffington Post writes:

An Alabama middle school is accused of using a special-needs student as “bait” in a sting operation that allegedly led to her rape.

The allegations resurfaced last week when the Department of Justice filed a brief saying the Alabama District Court made a mistake by dismissing the lawsuit brought by the girl’s parents, WAFF reports.

Here’s how this horrifying series of events “came down”, according to reports recently posted by various news services:

In January of 2010, a 14-year-old special needs student at Sparkman Middle School in Toney, Alabama went to a teacher’s aide named June Simpson and told her that a 16-year-old boy, who was known for sexual harassment and violent behavior, had propositioned her, telling her he wanted to have sex with her in the school bathroom.

Upon hearing this disturbing news, Ms. Simpson should probably have gone to the school authorities immediately, and if that didn’t work, she should have stepped it up to the next level by contacting city or county law enforcement.

Instead of following this “pedestrian” series of steps, Ms. Simpson decided to implement a “clever plan” to catch the rapist red-handed, “in the act” as it were, by using the 14-year-old as bait.

Ms. Simpson told the 14-year-old girl to wait for the Rapist in the bathroom. The plan was that as soon as The Rapist made his move, Ms. Simpson (and presumably others) would swoop in and arrest him. To her credit (and perhaps hoping that help would be forthcoming), Ms. Simpson informed vice-principal Jeanne Dunaway of the plan, but according to court documents, VP Dunaway did not give Simpson any “advice or directive.”

Before we unload on Ms. Simpson, it should be pointed out that earlier that school year, she had informed Principal Ronnie Blair that the boy needed constant supervision, but Blair informed her that he “could not be punished because he had not been ‘caught in the act.’”

Thus, although it seems quite clear that she may lack common sense, Ms. Simpson’s heart appears to have been in the right place. She wanted to nail the 16-year-old creep, and she tried to recruit help to aid her in doing precisely that.

Simpson allegedly told the girl to wait in the bathroom and instructed her, “Don’t do anything. Just get him to meet you and we’ll catch him.”

The aide later told authorities that she watched security cameras but saw neither the girl nor the boy go into the bathroom, so she gave up and left. However, the students had simply gone into a different bathroom, where the boy allegedly raped her, according to CNN.

VP Dunaway reportedly had the unmitigated gall to testify at a later hearing that the 14-year-old “was responsible for herself once she entered the bathroom.”

Doctors have confirmed that as a result of the sexual assault, the poor 14-year-old victim suffered anal tearing and bruising. The child withdrew from school and her family ultimately moved to another state. The damaged was done, however, and according to a press release from the National Women’s Law Center, the girl’s formerly good grades dropped and she began struggling with depression.

Unbelievably, although The Alleged Rapist was temporarily transferred to an alternative school, he later returned to Sparkman Middle School which he is now attending.

On second thought, perhaps it would have done no good had Ms. Simpson gone to the cops initially. Although a criminal investigation did take place after the rape it appears to have been perfunctory in nature and resulted in no charges. After that, the victim’s aggrieved family filed a lawsuit against the school’s administrators, but it was dismissed by the Northern District of Alabama District Court.

The Feds to the Rescue:

Although I am typically not a big fan of the Feds, it appears that they sometimes fill a valuable niche. At least, they appear to be doing so in this case. In a brief they filed last week in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that the Alabama District Court made a mistake and that the case should be heard in a different court.

Thus, depending on how the 11th Circuit Court rules, this case may not be over yet.

The National Women’s Law Center has also filed an additional suit against the Madison County School Board, calling the administration’s response “outrageous.”

Howe about “callous”, “cruel”, “uncaring” and “disgusting”?

So where do our Proud Players stand currently? Ms. June Simpson resigned (perhaps in shame) following the incident, but Jeanne Dunaway HAS BEEN PROMOTED and is now principal of an elementary school. Sparkman Middle School principal Ronnie Blair remains at the helm of his school. It is unknown whether he is supervising his 16-year-old Rapist as he lurks in the corridors of this bastion of higher learning.

I am slowly beginning to understand why some parents make the choice to home school their children.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

It’s rather a twisted thing, and it’s downright embarrassing, but for some weird reason I feel a certain perverse pleasure when I read about immature sons exploiting their ancient sainted mothers.

I’m painfully aware that I should probably be drawn and quartered for harboring such anti-social feelings, but at least I can honestly say that I never exploited my own sainted father; rather, I was kind to him until the day he drew his final breath.

Perhaps, through some misguided psychological quirk, I actually blame the mothers for allowing themselves to be exploited by Junior. Perhaps they were too smothering; perhaps they tied Junior too closely to the apron strings, perhaps they wanted to be exploited because they harbored conscious or unconscious guilt for psychologically castrating Junior and making sure that he never grew up to self-sufficient manhood.

We can be fairly certain, however, that MOMS, generally speaking, while perhaps experiencing masochistic pleasure in some cases from being exploited by Junior, almost certainly abhor the idea of Junior actually killing them and certainly do not want Junior to neglect them.

Yet, according to law enforcement, severe neglect may be precisely what happened in the case of 91 year old Caryl Vanzo of Plymouth, Minnesota. What makes Ms. Vanzo’s case quite unique is that she may be the first MOM in history to actually take a taxicab over to Wells Fargo and make a withdrawal when she was ALREADY DEAD.

It takes chutzpah; that’s for sure…

David Moye of The Huffington Posts writes:

Seven hours before Caryl Vanzo was reported dead at the age of 91, she went to the bank with her son and withdrew $850.

Now authorities believe Vanzo may have already been dead when she visited the Wells Fargo in Plymouth, Minnesota earlier this month.

Like a good immature but loyal son, David Vanzo called 9-1-1 on Jan. 5 to report his mother’s death. According to CityPages.com, however, investigators are not convinced that Ms. Vanzo’s death was unavoidable and an investigation is underway to determine exactly when Ms. Vanzo died and, most importantly, whether her son “had anything to do with it”. Now this sounds ominous and almost seems to suggest that law enforcement is suggesting David may have killed his mother.

My sense is that although David may have exploited MOM in her later years, and he may well have neglected her, based on what is being reported, there appears to be little if any evidence that David KILLED MOM. There’s a difference between the two actions that law enforcement may be losing track of. It is one thing to exploit MOM by spending her money while failing to attend to her hygiene adequately, but it’s quite a different thing to neglect her to the point where, for all intents and purposes, you kill her.

In any event, let us look at what is being reported and then let every man, woman and child decide for themselves. When the officers came to the house after David reported MOM’s passing, they were confronted by the overwhelming stench of urine and feces in the home. Ms. Vanzo’s body was wrapped up “in a robe, fur coat and boots covered in excrement, according to UPI.com.”

Now this is rather disgusting and strongly indicates that — other than keeping her warm in the cold Minnesota winter — David was doing a rather poor job of caring for MOM, but based on the photographs (of course mug shots can be misleading), it appears that he probably wasn’t doing a very good job caring for himself either. In fact, I suspect both Ms. Vanzo and David were quite demoralized as her hourglass slowly emptied. This, however, in no way suggests that David is responsible for Ms. Vanzo’s death.

The neighbors have gotten into the act, allegedly reporting that that when MOM and David got in a taxi to go to the bank, they found themselves wondering “if Caryl was dead or unconscious.”

She clearly wasn’t doing well. To add fuel to the fire, witnesses at the bank said Caryl’s feet kept dragging under her wheelchair.

In an impressive demonstration of police forthrightness and honesty (which as we know in sometimes in short supply, but obviously not in this case), Captain Jeff Swiatkiewicz of the Plymouth Police Department informed CityPages.com that the taxi driver “believed Caryl Vanzo was alive when she got in the cab, suggesting it’s possible she died on the way to the bank.”

Based on these reports, “David Vanzo has been arrested on suspicion of neglect, but has not yet been charged.”

This is not the first time that David has been investigated over his handling of MOM. In fact, on several occasions, he’s been accused of exploiting her financially, according to MyFoxTwinCities.com. According to bank records, on one occasion, he took out a $118,000 reverse mortgage and cash withdrawals of $47,500 and $25,600. David’s contention, though, is that he and his mother had a joint account.

David is steadfast that he’s done nothing wrong.

“My mother and I had an agreement. I took care of my mom for years, I’m the good guy here, not the bad guy,” he told the station. “My mother, she wouldn’t eat in the end.”

Well, no one eats in the end. It does appear, however, that David could have done a better job of taking care of her. It’s hard to excuse the urine and the feces and Ms. Vanzo’s general state of disrepair at the time of her demise.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

A few days ago I remarked that serious American violent crimes — which of course include sexual assaults — tend to be unimaginative. My statement was, in part, probably a defense mechanism designed to help me endure the horrific nature of the endless array of awful crimes that I cover on All Things Crime Blog. Now I’ve discovered that I was wrong, dead wrong. While sleuthing around I uncovered a horrifying case of American necrophilia that included two dead corpses and the perpetrator, an 18-year-old murderess named Alisa Massaro, having sex with her boyfriend(s) atop the dead bodies.

Decadent though it undoubtedly is, Europe may never match this nightmare for sheer dark orgasmic horror. Unsurprisingly, this all took place in Joliet, Illinois, the same beleaguered mid-American community that now bears the stigma of having more “Krokodil” hospitalizations than any other American community up to this point. Here is what happened as reported by The Independent:

An 18-year-old woman who was apparently “obsessed with necrophilia,” has been accused of having three-way sex on top of the corpses of two men she and her sexual partners allegedly murdered.

A police investigation into a brutal double murder in the town of Joilet, Illinois is said to have found that the bodies of 22-year-olds Eric Glover and Terence Rankins were placed in a pile after being strangled, so that Alisa Massaro could lie on them to have sex.

One of the accused murderers, 24-year-old Joshua Miner, admitted to being Alisa Massaro’s long-term boyfriend. He stated that “for years back she wanted to have sex with a dead guy”. He is reported to have said that he had hoped to help Massaro with her fantasy by offering to have sex with her on top of the bodies of the two men he is accused of helping to kill. I am somewhat dubious of the validity of part of Miner’s claim. Massaro was only 18 at the time of the murders. Given her age, it seems improbable that she had been fantasizing for years about necrophilia.

Police reports seen by JoiletPatch.com apparently state that Massaro pooh-poohed Miner’s offer at first and said she didn’t actually want to do it, although she “later acknowledged she and Josh did have sexual intercourse on top of the two bodies”.

According to the police documents, a third member of the alleged 4-person murder team, Adam Landerman, may well have joined in with the copulating couple. In one of its articles, the Daily Mail reported that 19-year-old Landerman is the son of a local police sergeant.

It’s a tall task for the authorities to sort out what actually transpired in this horrific double murder and sexual violation. Along with Massaro, Miner and Landerman, 18-year-old Bethany McKee is also charged with taking part in the slayings, though not the sex act. All four of the accused parties have provided the police with differing versions of what happened.

According to McKee, Miner was the ringleader who came up with the plan to brutally murder Glover and Rankins. She apparently said Landerman was simply a “follower” who did whatever Miner told him to do.

According to what is known, the four alleged perpetrators lured the victims to the Massaro’s house in Joliet with plans to rob them but instead strangled them both.  All four are being held in the Will County jail in lieu of $10 million bail.

Police Chief Mike Trafton said: “This is one of the most brutal, upsetting things I’ve ever seen in my 27 years in law enforcement…Not only the crime scene, but the disregard for common decency towards human beings.”

The mother of deceased victim Terence Rankins called the killings“demonic” and “evil”, and stated that her son and Eric Glover had been friends since childhood.

Although the circumstances of the murder are still under investigation, police have said they believe drugs were involved.

Alisa Massaro’s father is naturally shocked by what his daughter has been accused of and has stated:

“I don’t know what happened…I’m too devastated and I can’t talk about it.”

Later, he is reported to have added:

“All I can say is it’s a terrible thing that happened and I can’t believe my daughter had anything to do with it.”

*     *     *     *     *

All I can say is that I’m awfully glad my daughter doesn’t hang out with this crowd.

The death penalty was abolished in Illinois in 2011 which means the stiffest penalty any of these perpetrators can receive is life in prison, which I’m sure many people will find upsetting. Based on the photographic evidence, one can’t help wondering how these young people became so vile at such a young age. And I’m not referring to their clothes or hair, but rather to their sullen “get off of my cloud” expressions. Even that by itself would not be that upsetting but when you combine their look with their actions, you cannot help but find it intensely disturbing.

Update: Twenty-year-old Alissa Massaro pleaded guilty in May to two counts of robbery and two counts of concealment of a homicide – all felonies – in the January 2013 slayings of Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22. In exchange for her plea, prosecutors dropped Massaro’s first-degree murder charge, according to the paper. She received a 10-year prison sentence.

Massaro’s attorney, George Lenard, said his client’s plea deal was “based on evidence and her willingness to assist” the state in convicting the three other suspects: 25-year-old Joshua Miner, 20-year-old Adam Landerman and 19-year-old Bethany McKee. All three are charged with murder; it has yet to be determined whether or not they will be tried separately.

“If the others go to trial, and if [Massaro] is called as a witness, she will testify truthfully,” said Lenard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s blood behind the Night Stalker.”

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

Nina Golgowski writes for the Daily News:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Sloop continues in her prepared statement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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