by Zachary Evans

There are countless portrayals of criminal justice, criminology, and criminal investigations in popular culture today. Shows like CSI have become ratings juggernauts, while ones like True Detective have ruled critically. While these stand primarily as forms of entertainment, they still inform public perception of real-world crime solving. In the last year, a new voice emerged in true crime entertainment in the podcast Serial, and in a few short months, became an incredibly important piece of pop culture.

Sarah Koenig

Serial is a spinoff of the incredibly popular radio program This American Life and was co-created by Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, and hosted by Koenig. It tells the story of Koenig and her staff’s investigation of the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a Baltimore high school student, for which her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The state of Maryland’s case against Syed heavily relied on their timeline of the murder, which included a 21 minute window where they assert Lee was murdered.

The first season of the podcast consisted of twelve weekly episodes between October 3^rd and December 18^th, each touching on different aspects and revealing new details of the investigation. It was captivating and immersive, and quickly set records as the fastest podcast to ever reach five million downloads and streams in iTunes alone.

It was an undeniable hit.

Why was it such an immediate success though? There are countless podcasts available for listeners to choose from, many of which are already well established as ongoing radio shows, or are hosted by celebrities with preexisting fan bases. An obvious factor in this success is Serial’s attachment to This American Life, but even with that kind of backing, the numbers are still groundbreaking. After listening to even one episode of the podcast, it is clear and obvious that there are two things that set Serial apart—the writing, and Koenig’s narration of it.

According to the University of Southern California, the most important lesson people utilizing new media, such as podcasts, need to learn is that good writing never goes out of style. Serial’s writing, and how it is read by Koenig was, at all times, incredibly captivating and interesting. It toed a line of revealing enough information to get the listener hooked, while holding back additional pieces in order to bring them back for additional episodes. It catapoulted the listener into the mind of the investigator in the way a fantastic crime novel does, but through the lens of a true story.

Serial is important on the merits of its popularity alone. However, its importance is not solely based in this. The podcast is important because it injects truths about real world investigation, criminology and the American criminal justice system into the mainstream.

While it is true that shows such as CSI have popularized crime fighting and criminal justice within pop culture for some time now, their largely fictitious methods have had a damaging effect on public knowledge of the subject. Serial dove into the frustrating lack of evidence present in the case through host Sarah Koenig’s own misconceptions about how legal cases are built. She was shocked at the lack of biological evidence or fingerprints present in the case, when, in reality, “less than 1% of all serious crimes are solved with DNA” and “just over one in four lab cases include identifiable fingerprints.”

Adnan Syed

Serial also served as a fantastic way to showcase the ways in which criminology and criminal justice interact within the real world. According to an article from Portland State University about these two fields, “Ideally, they should be used in tandem to create a knowledge base that provides unique insight into the social determinants of crime and how the justice system better address it.” Throughout the podcast, Koenig detailed aspects of the investigation of Hae Min Lee’s murder and Baltimore Police’s investigation of Adnan Syed, and then connected it with Syed’s trials. She talked about how a piece of evidence or testimony was discovered in the investigation, then compared and contrasted its use in the courtroom. This connection between the sides of this case is important in bringing about a better public understanding of these two fields and how they interact.

While the podcast covers a wide range of aspects from “the case, there continues to be one vital piece that everything ties back to—the 21 minute window on January 13^th, 1999.” This window connects the listener with the crushing reality that frequently there are not satisfactory answers to the most important question of an investigation. Though it is the key to his claim of innocence, Syed cannot recall exactly where he was during that 21 minutes. There are conflicting testimonies about Syed during those 21 minutes, including one from a schoolmate’s of Syed named Asia McClain that would seem to exonerate him. However, McClain was never brought forward as a witness in the case, a fact that there doesn’t seem to be a satisfying answer for.

This uncertainty, as well as the other revealingly realistic aspects of Serial’s investigation into the murder of Hae Min Lee and the investigation and trial of Adnan Syed are what makes Serial so incredibly important. It stripped away the flash and immediate gratification that is present among other representations of crime and criminal investigation in popular culture. It made the listener confront the truth that not all questions have answers and not every investigation is based on easy to gather, surefire evidence. It lifted the veil of fiction without sacrificing a single piece of what draws people into the crime genre.

It proved that a genuine search for truth can be viable motivation in entertainment today, and for fans of true crime, that is an exciting revelation.

Zachary Evans is a freelance web writer and graduate of Boise State University with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. He spends his time writing, reading, playing music, and cheering on The Seattle Mariners. 

by Darcia Helle

In our modern world of supermax prisons overflowing with gang members, it might be difficult to imagine Alcatraz as a place criminals feared. But the men who spent time locked away on that now famous island prison would probably tell us that today’s inmates have it easy.

The small, rocky island of Alcatraz is located in San Francisco Bay, and sat unused until 1847, when the US Army claimed it as a military fortification. Initially a symbol of military strength, the fortress of Alcatraz included long-range iron cannons and 15-inch Rodman guns. Within twenty years, the modernization of weaponry rendered these defenses, and therefore the fortress, obsolete. At about the same time, the Army found itself in need of a military prison. The natural isolation made Alcatraz the ideal location for this purpose, and soon the fortress was transformed. In 1861, the island of Alcatraz began its 102-year history of housing prisoners, first as an army penitentiary and then as a federal prison.

Civil War prisoners were the first to arrive on Alcatraz, with the inmate population rarely exceeding a couple of dozen at a time. In 1898, the Spanish-American War changed things dramatically, and the prisoner count soared to more than 450. Life on Alcatraz became further complicated in 1906, when hundreds of prisoners were brought over after a catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco. The mass influx of prisoners forced building expansion. A large, three-story cell house was completed on the island’s central crest by 1912, and had nearly reached capacity by the late 1920s.

Rising operational costs of this unexpectedly massive island structure became too much for the army, and in 1933 ownership was handed over to the Department of Justice. The federal government was happy to have this ready-made prison. The Great Depression had brought with it an excessive crime surge. The combination of Prohibition, massive unemployment, and desperation fostered a new era of gangsters and organized crime. This new breed of criminals had taken over large cities, and local prisons were not able to keep these mobsters behind bars. The federal government needed an escape-proof prison where they could lock away the worst of these bad guys. With Alcatraz, they found exactly that.

Alcatraz was immediately transformed into a maximum-security federal prison, designed to hold no more than 300 inmates. Rarely was someone sentenced directly to Alcatraz. Inmates found their way to the island, known as “the rock”, through behavior problems and escape attempts. Once there, inmates had to earn their way to a different prison through good behavior. Parole was not an option from Alcatraz.

Al Capone was one of the first and most infamous prisoners to do time on Alcatraz. Raised in Brooklyn, NY, Capone worked as a bouncer in a number of brothels. He later moved to Chicago where, by 1924, he was heavily involved in running prostitution rings, gambling houses, and bootlegging. His earnings at that time are believed to have exceeded $100,000 per week. Adjusted for inflation, that would be approximately $1.3 million dollars per week today.

Capone loved the limelight and, for a time at least, the public loved Capone. Many people thought of him as a modern day Robyn Hood, as he opened soup kitchens for the poor and used his money to sway politicians. By 1929, Capone’s criminal empire was worth more than $62 million – $835 billion today.

By this time, Capone was living a life of luxury in Palm Beach, Florida, while his underlings ran things back in Chicago. His biggest rival was George “Bugs” Moran, who was cutting into Capone’s bootlegging business. Capone ordered “Machine Gun” McGurn to eliminate Bugs Moran. Ordering this hit would turn out to be Capone’s undoing.

Seven of Bugs Moran’s gang members were gunned down in what became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. In a stroke of irony, Bugs, the intended target, got away. Capone’s responsibility for this blood bath was widely known and impossible to ignore. President Herbert Hoover had no choice but to go after Capone. The intensive, undercover operation took nearly five years, but finally the federal government had what they needed to put Capone behind bars.

On October 17, 1931, Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years at Atlanta Federal Prison. But Capone made a mockery of his incarceration. He used his money and political power to bribe the guards and the warden for luxuries and special treatment. His lavish prison life brought him unwanted attention, and in 1934 he was sent to Alcatraz. On that island prison, Capone finally met his match.

James A. Johnston was the first of four wardens at Alcatraz. He made the rules and he did not back down. At the time, the average prison had one guard for every 10-13 prisoners. Johnston insisted on one guard for every three prisoners. The inmates had no commissary. Their reading material was strictly censored, and newspapers and radio were not allowed at all. Inmates received no counseling and were not offered any classes or groups to join. Recreation was severely limited and always monitored. Entertainment was virtually nonexistent. Boredom on Johnston’s Alcatraz was an ongoing and extreme problem for both inmates and guards.

The most controversial of Johnston’s rules was the “Silent System”. Conversation of any sort between prisoners was forbidden. Inmates were deprived of even the most basic human contact. Several inmates were reported to have developed psychological damage during this time. Four long years of this experimental policy proved the system too difficult to enforce and it was permanently abandoned.

The prison’s main corridor, dubbed Broadway, held 168 cells and stood three tiers high. Because this area received the most foot traffic, inmates had little privacy. While uncomfortable, Broadway was much preferred over Cellblock D. Officially called the special treatment unit, this area was also referred to as isolation, segregation, and solitary. Each cell contained a sink, a toilet, and a low-watt light bulb strung from the ceiling. The solid steel door had a small insert that opened in order to push the prisoner’s food through. No form of entertainment was provided or allowed. Each inmate was cut off from all human contact. Five of the cells on the bottom tier were so dark and dank, they earned the nickname “The Hole”.

The strip cell was reserved for particularly difficult inmates. This was a dark, steel-encased cell with no bed, sink, or toilet. The door was solid steel and remained closed at all times. Prisoners were stripped naked and placed inside with no blankets or light. The “toilet” was a hole in the floor. A thin mattress was provided for sleeping hours only.

Time in “the hole” was not supposed to exceed 19 days and time in the “strip cell” was limited to two days. This standard, however, was not always adhered to. Reports were made of prisoners driven insane by the extreme sensory deprivation caused by too much time in both of these types of cells.

This is the world Al Capone suddenly found himself thrown into. James A. Johnston ensured that Capone was given no special privileges. After several failed attempts to con or bribe Johnston, Capone finally admitted defeat and remarked, “It looks like Alcatraz has got me licked.”

Capone’s stay on Alcatraz was far from the luxury he’d experienced at Atlanta Federal Prison. He spent some time in isolation, and was stabbed with shears by a fellow inmate. Eventually the syphilis bacteria he’d been infected with years prior got the better of him. In 1938, when he became symptomatic, Capone was transferred to Terminal Island Prison in Southern California to serve out the remainder of his sentence.

By the 1950s, Alcatraz’s structure began to deteriorate. The salt air had corroded the metal and concrete. Around 1961, the power plant became a problem, causing electrical blackouts. Plumbing pipes were cracked and major structural repair was needed. During 1960-61, the Bureau of Prisons spent $300,000 on renovations. An estimated $4 million more would be required to keep Alcatraz from falling apart.

Repairs were not the only factor in the high maintenance costs of Alcatraz. Because of its isolation, all supplies, including water, had to be trucked in and sent over by boat. This meant that even everyday expenses for this prison were much higher than all others. The cost per prisoner was almost three times higher at Alcatraz than at any other U.S. Prison at that time.

By 1962, officials decided the costs were not worth the benefits and it was time to close Alcatraz. Construction had already begun on the US Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, the replacement for Alcatraz. On March 21, 1963, the last 27 prisoners were transferred from the island prison over to Illinois. Alcatraz officially closed in June of 1963.

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

Modern Day Executioners Despise the Death Penalty

‘Trial by Media’ Is Not a New Phenomenon: The Kangaroo Hanging of Alvin Edwin Batson

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

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

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Great Gasoline Mass Murder

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

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

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

The characters await you.

by Starks Shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by Lise LaSalle

After the initial shock of Brittany Murphy’s death on December 20, 2009, several questions were raised about her premature passing. Her husband Simon Monjack was in disbelief and at a loss to explain why his 32-year old bride could have encountered such a tragic end.

Monjack was a strange bird with a shady reputation. Unlike Brittany, who had been and remained one of America’s sweethearts, this out of shape older Britt had not won the heart of many. He was a talented photographer and an unemployed screenwriter, but his career was in Slow Mo and he had left a trail of unpaid debts and child support. The word around town was that he was an opportunist using Brittany for the lifestyle, and that he was ruining her career opportunities with his constant meddling. She had recently been fired from a movie set because of him.

On the other hand, mother and daughter Murphy seemingly lived happily with Monjack in their opulent home on the hill in the city of Fallen Angels. Sharon Murphy who had a front row seat to their relationship, only had positive things to say about her son-in-law and she even continued living with him after losing her daughter.

Monjack often spoke to the media of someone who could be “out to get us” and even opened his home up to reporters after Murphy’s death, revealing an elaborate security set-up.

“There’s actually 56 cameras that cover the house,” he said two months before his own death, as he showed off his high-tech security system.

“Inside the house, outside the house, down into the cul-de-sac.”

Along with the 56 cameras, he also had biometric door entries and even a system that scrambles the phone lines if someone tries to record conversations.

Monjack said that both he and Murphy were in fear for their lives and they believed someone was watching them. He even believed that they were in danger of someone “slipping them something.’’

The fact that he died on May 23, 2010, five months following the death of his wife at age 40, and of the same thing, acute pneumonia and severe anemia, also raised questions. But considering that he had cardiovascular problems, was overweight and like Brittany, was consuming loads of prescription pills, it might not have been such a surprise after all.

The LA County Department of Health examined the possibility of toxic mold having been found in the home as possible cause of death but it was later dismissed. After all, Brittany’s mother was living there and she was not showing any signs of intoxication. On the other hand, they found a huge range of over-the-counter and prescription medications in the two victim’s system.

Brittany Murphy was prescribed at least 200 pills monthly from 2008 through 2009, and it sometimes went up to 400. She was using an alias at the pharmacy for nearly two years before she was finally cut off 4 months before her death.

The records indicate that she was getting regular prescriptions of Hydrocodone, Clonazepam, Klonopin and Vicoprofen and certain months, the doses were doubled. The medications were prescribed by Dr. Richard Kroop who received a visit from the authorities during the investigation. He told the investigators that his pharmacy had cut off Brittany and her family 4 months before her death because, “We thought there was going to be an accident there.”

According to the autopsy, Brittany’s death was preventable. The primary causes were pneumonia, severe anemia and intoxication. The coroner believed her condition to be treatable, had she been taken to the hospital on time. The drugs pushed the outcome because of the pneumonia and anemia. So basically, she was sick and did not seek treatment so the anti-seizure medication, the acetaminophen and hydrocodone pushed her over the edge.

In spite of what her mother and widower tried to say at the time of her death, she had abused prescription drugs for years and it is a proven fact that opiate users often end up with anemia, heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia or hepatitis. In light of these facts, it is hard to comprehend why the coroner came up with such a simplistic conclusion as death of ‘natural causes’at the time, even if she had developed some health problems brought upon by the use of prescription drugs.

I was also quite surprised that the coroner’s office found no evidence she was abusing drugs. You only have to look at photos of Brittany and her husband during that period and consider what she was prescribed through the years to conclude that they were addicted to something. Brittany was emaciated and looking unwell. Her husband was bloated and not the picture of health either, but it was not as obvious as his bride. But I guess they chose to buckle the case with a pretty bow on top, and used the toxicology reports without trying to tie them to other logical possibilities.

It looked very similar to the Anna Nicole Smith case who also died because of her addiction to prescription pills.

Since her death, Brittany’s biological father, Angelo Bertolotti, has crawled from under his rock and petitioned the court to obtain hair, blood and tissue samples of his dead daughter to be analyzed for the presence of poisons in her system. He sent the strands of hair to a private lab and the results came up indicating the presence of 10 heavy metals as evidence of a poisoning death.

He is now writing a book called Britt with Julia Davis to explain his conspiracy theory. The documentary The Terror Within came out in 2012 and might now be reloaded.

CNN obtained the report by forensic toxicologist Ernest Lykissa, who concluded that the hair from the back of Murphy’s head had higher than recommended levels of 10 heavy metals. “If we were to eliminate the possibility of a simultaneous accidental heavy metals exposure to the sample donor then the only logical explanation would be an exposure to these metals (toxins) administered by a third party perpetrator with likely criminal intent.”

Lykissa, who operates a toxicology testing lab in Deer Park, Texas, did not respond to several calls from CNN to discuss his findings.

The director of forensic medicine at the University of Florida, who is the president of the American Board of Forensic Toxicology, reviewed the report and was very critical of its content. ”It’s ridiculous,” Dr. Bruce Goldberger said. A conclusion of poisoning is an “inflammatory statement” that “is a baseless allegation and outrageous statement to make based on a single hair test.”

Her autopsy indicated no physical signs of poisoning, he said. “A hair test alone, without any clinical signs or symptoms, cannot be used to establish poisoning.” The private report also showed a normal level of arsenic, which would have been elevated if rat poisoning was involved, he said.

“She was a beautiful woman and likely had numerous hair treatments,” Goldberger said. “Chemicals in the hair treatment would alter the chemistry of the hair sample.’’

A hair sample can be affected by many factors such as hair dye, hair spray, prescription medications, foods, smoking even if occasionally and even the environment. So it would take way more than these private lab results to draw serious conclusions on the matter.

Sharon Murphy was infuriated by Bertolotti’s statements. She said ‘’I have no choice now but to come forward in the face of inexcusable efforts to smear my daughter’s memory by a man who might be her biological father but was never a real father to her in her lifetime.’’

She went on to say ‘’Angelo’s claims are based on the most flimsy of evidence and are more of an insult than an insight into what really happened.’’

Brittany’s mom thinks that Bertolotti is trying to profit off of his daughter’s tragedy with the publicity surrounding the poisoning ‘revelations’. She is convinced that a toxic mold found in the house may have killed her daughter and son-in-law even if the Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner said there were no indications of mold in the house at the time.

Sharon disagrees and had filed a lawsuit stating that she discovered extensive water damage and mold infestation in the house where her daughter and, later, her son-in-law died suddenly; the Nina Bow Trust, which owned and operated the property, sued the contractor, subcontractor, and others back in 2006 over all of the perceived construction defects.

Britt and the Terror Within

Angelo Betolotti’s book and documentary explain how his daughter and Simon Monjack’s death are linked to Brittany’s support for government whistleblower Julia Davis.

In an interview he gave to the Fleur de Lis Film Studios in LA, Bertolotti said: ‘They were, in fact, under surveillance, including helicopters. Their telephones were wiretapped, Brittany was afraid to go home, because of the sneak-and-peek incursions into their residence and other terror tactics she suffered after speaking out in support of Julia Davis and being named as a witness in her lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.’

Julia Davis claimed that while working at the US border with Mexico she uncovered evidence that dozens of potential terrorists had entered America in shady circumstances that may have involved the bribery of customs officials.

She has a whistleblower website where she wrote that family members and witnesses who supported her were ‘subjected to land and aerial surveillance, to the tune of millions – at the expense of American taxpayers.’

‘This included warrantless aerial surveillance with fixed-wing airplanes and Blackhawk helicopters, vehicular surveillance, OnStar tracking, Internet monitoring, wiretaps, warrantless searches and seizures and series of other outrageous, unwarranted retaliatory measures.’

On the National Whistleblower Center website, Julia Davis said she ‘prevailed’ in court against the Department of Homeland Security despite a total of 54 ‘retaliatory’ investigations being launched against her in an ‘attempt to discredit Julia as an upstanding law enforcement officer and a staunch American patriot.’

The site also has photos of Angelo Bertolotti with his daughter and visiting her grave. He also says that Brittany ”was called as a witness in the Julia Davis case.” He added: ”Brittany did tell me she was under surveillance and incidentally so was I.”

Craig Harvey, the chief of operations for the coroner declared ‘’we stand by our conclusions and opinion.’’ ‘’We have no plans to reopen the inquiries into the deaths of Miss Murphy or Mr. Monjack.“

Like so many others, I really enjoyed Brittany’s screen presence and persona. She had a unique quality with big meaningful eyes that could tell a whole story without words and a smile to light up the planet. The sadness of her passing is compounded by the ridiculous claims floating around since she left. I get the impression that this tender soul was surrounded by bloodsuckers in life and now in death. The terror is and often remains within, and in her case, her own husband and some members of her family seemed to have used her as a cash cow without much care for her mental or physical health.

 Britt gone too soon

Visit Lise Lasalle’s website, The Trouble with Justice

by Darcia Helle

“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.” ~ Voltaire

If books and TV shows like the Rizzoli and Isles series are to be believed, then medical examiners are crime-fighting heroes who find all the answers hidden within the murder victim’s body, while also pretty much dictating the investigative process. The ladies also wear 5-inch Manolo Blahnik heels while performing autopsies and wandering through crime scenes. Today we’ll take a look at the history of autopsies, and learn whether medical examiners are as vital in solving murders as Maura Isles and her $800 shoes would like us to believe.

The word autopsy comes from the Greek word autopsia, meaning “to see for oneself”. Around the 17th century, autopsy entered our language to describe the examination of the inside of a dead body in order to determine cause of death and/or to learn about various diseases. Before this, the practice was rare. Words like dissection and examination were used, as it was more about scientific experimentation and exploration.

While Egyptians from as far back as 3000 BC removed organs in the religious practice of mummification, they did not examine the organs or the body to find cause of death. In fact, early Egyptians believed outward disfigurement of a dead body prevented that person from entering the afterlife. Organs were removed through small slits, and the body was treated as sacred. Most of our earliest societies, right up through the Middle Ages, forbade dissection of human bodies on religious and/or legal grounds. Fortunately, a few rebels along the way provided a foundation for understanding anatomy, biology, disease and, eventually, how all of this could help solve a murder.

The first dissections of human bodies for the purpose of studying disease were performed by Herophilus, who lived from 335-280 BC. Herophilus was a physician in the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt, and lived during a period in early Greek history when human dissection was legally allowed. He is credited with making huge strides in explaining the workings of the human body and is often referred to as the “father of anatomy”.

Erasistratus, an Alexandrian physician practicing around 250 BC, used Herophilus’s work as a starting point for his own studies. He is credited as the first to determine that the heart pumped blood throughout the body. He described the heart valves and the difference between veins and arteries. Erasistratus also gave one of the first in-depth descriptions of the cerebrum and cerebellum. These contributions earned him the title of “father of physiology”.

All of this paved the way for the first autopsy ever to be performed on a murder victim for the purpose of determining cause of death. On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of Roman Senators calling themselves the Liberators. The planned assassination took place in Pompey’s Forum after a Senate meeting. Caesar’s servants eventually carried his body home, where the physician Antistius performed an autopsy. Antistius documented 23 stab wounds, perhaps assuming each wound had been inflicted by a different attacker. He determined the second wound, an upward-angled thrust just beneath Caesar’s left shoulder blade, most likely pierced the heart and caused Caesar’s death. Modern studies indicate Caesar would have bled to death regardless of the deciding wound. Historians also agree it would not be possible for 23 people to have attacked Caesar at once, estimating between 5 and 10 people were responsible for the 23 stab wounds. Regardless of any inaccuracies, Antistius’s autopsy report is the first documented autopsy in history.

Various cultures continued performing dissections off and on, though mainly for learning about disease and the inner workings of the human body. Legal prohibition against touching the dead, along with the Christian belief that dissection of humans was a sin, made for extremely slow progress. In 925 AD, England assembled committees naming the ‘Coroner System’ in order to identify causes of death. In 1100, Jerusalem mandated the inspection of all murder cases, to be accompanied by reports stating what had been done to the victims.

The first documented and detailed forensic autopsy report, in which cause of death was investigated for the purposes of laying blame to a killer, was made by Bartolomea de Variagianca in Bolonia (Italy) in the year 1302.

The 15th-century Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni performed 15 autopsies with the specific intent of determining cause of death.

In 1532 in Germany, the “Constitutio Criminalis Carolina” required the dissection of all corpses when imported medical evidence was introduced in court. This legality helped push forensic autopsies forward, eventually leading to the separate branch of forensic medicine.

In 1769, Giovanni Morgagni published the first intensive book on pathology, titled On the Seats and Causes of Diseases as Investigated by Anatomy. By comparing symptoms and observations of roughly 700 patients with the anatomical findings after autopsy, Morgagni moved medicine from the study of books to the study of patients.

By this time, the religion-related fear of cutting open a dead body had, for the most part, been pushed aside and legal restrictions had been lifted. The absence of superstitions gave science room to flourish. First came French anatomist Marie F.X. Bichat, who stressed the role of different generalized body systems and tissues in the study of disease. Karl von Rokitansky of Vienna followed closely behind, introducing pathological anatomy as a diagnostic tool.

German pathologist Rudolf Virchow’s work in the mid-to-late 1800s made perhaps the biggest impact on our modern use of forensic autopsy. Virchow established and published specific protocols for standardized autopsy procedures still used to this day. He introduced the cellular doctrine, stating that changes in cells are the basis of the understanding of disease. He was against the singular dominance of pathologic anatomy in autopsies, which is the study of the structure of diseased tissue. Virchow believed the future of pathology lay in physiologic pathology, or the study of the functioning of the organism in the investigation of disease.

This all laid the foundation for forensic autopsies and crime-fighting medical examiners like Maura Isles.

In the US, any sudden of unexplained death, particularly if murder is even remotely suspected, typically falls under the coroner’s jurisdiction. A coroner is an elected official and not necessarily a medical doctor. Ideally, the police and coroner go to the scene together and decide whether a forensic pathologist is needed before the body is moved.

A forensic pathologist, or medical examiner, is a specialized medical doctor. Unlike a clinical pathologist, who studies and diagnoses disease, a forensic pathologist specifically focuses on cause of death. In doing so, the forensic pathologist must establish and document all anomalies, lethal and nonlethal, in order to present clear and definitive evidence for or against homicide charges.

Autopsy procedures differ in much the same way as pathologists do. A hospital autopsy is performed in order to study the progression of a disease, confirm cause of death, or determine medical malpractice. This type of autopsy is relatively rare, with only about 5% of hospital deaths resulting in autopsy.

A forensic autopsy is performed only on suspected homicide victims and is far more detailed. Here, the medical examiner looks not only for disease, but also for signs of trauma, foreign objects such as bullets and glass fragments, and all other clues that might lead to, confirm, or exclude a suspect. The forensic autopsy report is a legal document and must stand up to scrutiny. These cases are often referred to as medicolegal, because the investigators’ evaluation of the crime scene and circumstances and the forensic pathologist’s findings hold equal weight, and the case is dependent upon both.

In all autopsies, but particularly with forensic autopsies, the medical examiner’s findings must be dictated to a stenographer or into a digital recorder as they are determined throughout the procedure. This is crucial in legal cases, as the transcript or actual recording often becomes evidence. So when you see Medical Examiner Maura Isles talking to Detective Jane Rizzoli during the “ah-ha” moment while performing an autopsy, that is a legal screw-up. Maura needs to be recording her findings, not randomly running in and out of the room sharing information with her cop friend.

A forensic pathologist must approach each autopsy without preconceptions or assumptions, and be open to any and all explanations for cause of death. The pathologist must also determine the chain of causation leading to death. For example, a woman is stabbed on a city street. In her frantic attempt to escape, she runs in front of a car, is struck, and dies. During autopsy, the pathologist will need to figure out whether the stab wound would have been fatal on its own, or whether the victim would have survived had she not run in front of the car.

All autopsy reports contain the following information:

• Diagnoses
• Toxicology
• Opinion
• Circumstances of Death
• Identification of the Decedent
• General Description of Clothing and Personal Effects
• Evidence of Medical Intervention
• External Evidence of Injury
• Internal Examination
• Samples Obtained – Evidence, Histology, Toxicology
• Microscopic Examination

Unlike Maura Isles, who runs down to homicide shouting “Eureka!”, and waving her findings around because she’s solved the murder, a typical medical examiner files his/her report and is finished with the case. The rest is up to the cops, whose actual job it is to catch killers.

Let’s take a look at TV versus reality:

On TV, Maura Isles goes along with Detective Jane Rizzoli to interrogate suspects and make arrests. In reality, that never happens. Medical examiners are not cops, nor do they behave like cops.

On TV, lab results are almost immediate. Maura Isles wants to know if a murder victim was drugged. She runs the toxicology tests herself and in no time the results magically appear right from her own lab. In reality, these results take an average of 3-4 weeks and are not run at the medical examiner’s office. Furthermore, medical examiners do not decide which tests to run but instead only collect DNA. The law enforcement agency then decides whether or not they want to run tests at the crime lab.

Have you ever watched a crime show or read a mystery novel in which the murder was solved based on the stomach contents of the victim? Maura Isles is such a pro at this that all she has to do is sniff the stomach contents, which, by the way, grosses out Jane Rizzoli. The reality is that any tests for stomach contents are completely unreliable and not generally used. Medical examiners test for undigested pills. They do not find out the victim’s last meal was squid that is only served on alternate Thursdays at one restaurant on the lower East Side of New York.

What about murder weapons? Is it possible for a medical examiner to break a murder case open by determining the weapon was a 7-inch serrated blade, 1/4-inch in thickness, which penetrated exactly 6 inches into the chest, thrust upward at a 75-degree angle by a left-handed villain? Sorry, but no. The medical examiner does his/her best to determine whether the blade used was blunt, sharp, single-edged, etc. But the medical examiner simply cannot accurately measure the depth of the stab wound, and would not determine the exact angle of the initial plunge of the blade.

The one major discrepancy that might surprise most people has to do with time of death. This is always the first demand detectives make of the medical examiner. “Give me a time of death.” And, of course, our fictional pathologists always have the answer. The reality is that medical examiners do not determine time of death. Instead, they record the time the victim was declared dead by the professionals on-scene, whether cops or paramedics.

The reality of a medical examiner’s job is not nearly as glamorous as fiction would have us believe. But, then, reality doesn’t make for good TV. The truth is that even “reality” TV shows are scripted.

I have to address one final flaw in our fictional crime-fighting, medical examiner heroine Maura Isles. While I appreciate her fashion sense, I cringe at the way she prances around her office in those 5-inch heels and designer dresses. First, it’s just absurd to consider a professional woman standing on her feet all day in those things. But, beyond that, the reality is that medical examiners wear uniforms and are fully covered, from the cute little paper hat to the little paper booties. And I just don’t think Manolo Blahnik makes those booties.

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.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

When I was a young man I was seriously down and out for a few years, living in low rent apartments in our local “hood”, East Palo Alto, and trying to stay out of serious trouble. I had graduated from high school in Palo Alto (the proud Class of ’68) which was across the tracks from East Palo Alto (on the right side of the tracks, so to speak). The world famous institution of alleged higher learning, Stanford University (known as “The Farm” back in the day), is due west of Old Palo Alto which is hella pricy and a bit on the snobbish side.

In any event, on weekends back in the early ‘70’s, on Sunday mornings, my sweetheart S______ and I would rise and shine; grab a bite at a downtown greasy spoon (this was before the investment bankers moved in and the greasy spoons vanished) and then wander over to Stanford U to recover from the previous night’s “festivities” on the shore of Lake Lagunita, a manmade lake in the middle of the campus and a very pleasant place to recover from a hangover.

Although I was undoubtedly a lost soul during these years, I still retained a sliver of hope for the future, and somewhere buried deep within my pea-brain was the realization that if I knew which way was up, I would be going to college and improving my mind. While lolling around Lake Lagunita, which was near Fraternity/Sorority Row on the Stanford campus, I had a clear view of an outdoor campus basketball court where privileged young men and women emerged from their residences and whiled away the pleasant hours playing hoops at the court.

I remember watching these presumably healthy and happy kids and wishing fervently that I was in their (basketball) shoes. But I wasn’t. I was down-and-out living in the hood trying to keep the ancient pilot light lit, working in factories, drinking way too much and studying my reflection in the knife. (The last phrase is a lie; I just threw it in for effect but everything else is true. Let us simply say that Patrick H. was failing to thrive.)

But envious as I was of those lucky and privileged Stanford kids, I would have never wished to be in the shoes of a certain former Stanford swimmer, 19-year-old Brock Allen Turner, who on the night of January 18th screwed up his life so royally that he will most likely be paying a heavy price for a long time to come.

And the funny thing is, loser that I undoubtedly was, I can honestly say that I never even considered doing what Mr. Turner allegedly did at 1:00 am on January 18, 2015.

Alice Phillips and Joseph Beyda of The Stanford Daily write:

Freshman swimmer Brock Turner will be charged with five felony counts on Wednesday after he allegedly raped an intoxicated, unconscious woman on Jan. 18, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Tuesday night.

Turner faces these charges: rape of an intoxicated person, rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration by a foreign object of an intoxicated woman, sexual penetration by a foreign object of an unconscious woman and assault with intent to commit rape.

Based on these alleged acts, Turner could face up to 10 years in prison. He might very well have gotten away with his alleged crimes had it not been for the actions of two cyclists (Stanford has at least 10,000 bicycles on campus.)

The San Jose Mercury News reports, that Turner was sighted on top of an unconscious woman (the victim) at approximately 1 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 18, by the two cyclists, who chased him down, caught him, and held him prisoner while a third person called the police (shades of how the good folk of East Los Angeles captured the infamous Nightstalker, Richard Rodriguez, back in the 1990s, holding him captive until law enforcement arrived on the scene).

The incident occurred on Lomita Court near the Kappa Alpha (KA) fraternity. “After the arrest, he was transported to the San Jose Main Jail and released on bond later that day.”

(It seems likely that if Turner were not a privileged white boy, he would not be out on bail.)

According to University spokesperson Lisa Lapin, the alleged victim was not a Stanford student. As a result of his violent fall from grace, “Turner has voluntarily withdrawn his registration as a Stanford student and is not permitted on campus. Turner is not eligible to re-enroll,” according to the Stanford News Report.

“This is something that the University takes very seriously, and the University took immediate action,” said Ms. Lapin.

Catherine Criswell, the University’s Title IX Coordinator, praised the cyclists who apprehended Turner:

“Several students, both graduates and undergraduates, were upstanders (as opposed to bystanders) in this situation. They made the courageous decision to intervene and provide assistance. That is exactly the type of leadership and caring we attempt to cultivate in our community, and we commend those students on their courage and quick response.”

Turner was a pretty good swimmer. In his last meet on Jan. 10 meet against Pacific, eight days before the alleged rape, “he finish(ed) third in the 1,000-yard freestyle and second in the 200-yard backstroke.”

He worked as a lifeguard and had been heavily recruited athlete before joining Stanford’s high-powered swimming program, at one point ranking  10th in the nation. He twice won the state championship in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle while attending Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio and participated in the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials.

He better get in all the swimming he can before he goes to prison (assuming he doesn’t beat this on some kind of “wealthy and privileged” defense), because – to the best of my knowledge — the California state penitentiaries lack swimming pools.

Simon McCormack of Huffington Post reports that SF Gate notes that Stanford has come under fire for having lax sexual abuse policies.

SF Gate writes:

Between 1997 and 2009, just four of 175 reported sexual assaults were formally adjudicated at Stanford, with two of the alleged attackers held responsible, according to a report prepared by [Stanford law professor Michele Landis Dauber].

Wow! Does this mean that 171 rapists or wannabe rapists got away with it? Of course, some of the reports were probably exaggerated but I would assume that the majority of the accusations were valid.

It’s a curious thing to wrestle with the apparent fact that our college campuses have slowly but surely become “rape playgrounds”, but all too often, that seems to be the case.

by Robert Parmer

We live in a country still unfortunately filled with some social, physical health, and mental health stigmas. America doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to these types of shaming behaviors and that is, to put it lightly, disappointing. When it comes to the way our country’s police force deals with people struggling with mental health illnesses, the problem is one that has bloomed into something almost unimaginable.

When American citizens think of who is responsible for violent crimes in society, then often attribute it to people with mental problems. This is a huge misconception. The majority of these people are not dangerous, they are suffering. It’s easy for people that are cognitively healthy to look right past these issues and continue to take a judgmental and incriminating approach.

American police forces definitely struggle with this on the daily. Giving whole new meaning to incrimination of the unstable, officers have had countless controversies that have been made public over the years. Police officers have no problem using forces that are considered “less lethal” than simply beating or shooting citizens. Yes, ‘less-lethal’ rather than ‘non-lethal.’ They tase the homeless to force them to leave areas, as well as people with severe mental issues, although it’s unclear whether or not the victims of this treatment can even understand officers’ instructions in the first place. It is important to note that mental symptoms impact physical health and preying on the homeless and unstable is of zero validity.

Lets take a look at a direct example of this that has made headlines recently. The case of 17-year-old Kristiana Coignard from Longview, TX is completely nonsensical. Coignard suffered from extreme depression and bipolar disorder, while trying to cope with the fact that her mother died when she was only four. She was shot and killed by police officers in the lobby of her local police station. Coignard entered the police station on her own terms as a cry for help, and the claim is that she was wielding a weapon, a small knife. Keep in mind that the facts of this case have remained very vague, and the fact also stands that she was a small teenage girl.

Depression and bipolar disorder are not easy illnesses to cope with, but it’s worth pointing out that they are still somewhat mild compared to people that are facing disorders such as schizophrenia, antisocial, or other delusional disorders.

Studies have been conducted on whether or not there is a significant link to mental illnesses and crime. An article on the American Psychological Association’s website points out that only about 7.5 percent of violent crimes committed have a connection to people showing symptoms of cognitive dysfunction. The lead researcher at APA, Jillian Peterson, PhD, takes the following stance:

 “When we hear about crimes committed by people with mental illnesses, they tend to be big headline-making crimes so they get stuck in people’s heads. The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, not criminal, and not dangerous.”

As a whole, our country is over-criminalizing individuals that fit these types of demographics. It’s an easy way out for the police and it is both avoiding and pigeonholing the real issues. While researching this topic, I recognized that there are some police forces trying to reform their standardized opinions and tactics. I found a short documentary that was very insightful. It is titled Why Are We Using Prisons to Treat Mental Illness? A point that was brought up in this documentary really stands out. It states that police officers are not typically equipped with the knowledge to deal with situations regarding mental struggles. They barge in with force and intimidation, rather than using subtler communication techniques and a spirit of compromise that might actually help. A San Antonio police officer made this statement:

 “I would get calls all the time when I was on patrol, for a person who was in a mental health crisis. I had no clue how to handle it. I would just keep getting the repeat calls every couple days or every week to the same house, to the same person, and I just accepted that this person is going to be a repeat caller.”

He follows up by explaining that his police department has made huge headway with this issue by utilizing psychological education and integrating this into officer requirements. Far too many American citizens are struggling with being made prisoners when in reality they should be patients. The San Antonio PD is aiming to change that. They are making changes to typical protocol that involve showing up to calls involving people with cognitive problems in a much more calm, collected manner. Oftentimes, they will show up these scenarios in street clothes rather than being armed to the teeth and wearing intimidating uniforms.

Other police forces need to take note of the San Antonio’s unique perspective on this relevant issue. They are advocating change to what up to now has been an uncaring system, and that is a giant step in the right direction. Using proper communication and an understanding attitude, and discarding seemingly standard intimidation techniques will drastically improve the society we live in. We can offer counseling programs and therapy rather than wasting tax payers’ resources on the costs of incriminating and imprisoning misunderstood victims.

Please click here to view Robert Parmer’s earlier post:

Five Best Modern Crime Movies: Five Standout Films

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.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Henry Lee Lucas (the real life inspiration for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) loved confessing to murders whether he’d committed them or not. At one point he claimed to have whacked over 300 people. All his life he was desperate for attention and when someone was kind enough to give him the time of day, as likely as not he would murder them (or claim later he had murdered them) for thanks.

This is a case where “nurture” may well trump “nature.” Henry was born in 1936 and his childhood was abominable. Like Charles Manson’s mother, his mother Viola turned tricks for a living. Apparently, there weren’t any motels handy; Henry spent his formative years watching Mom service her clients right there on the dirt floor of their hardscrabble cabin in Blacksburg, Virginia. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Henry’s dad Anderson Lucas also had to watch. You see, poor Anderson had lost his legs in a railroad accident and couldn’t get around too well.

According to Jon C. Hopwood at IMDbPro, Anderson not only had to watch Viola cavort with her johns; he also had to absorb a generous daily dose of violence from her work-roughened fists.  Viola used her poor hapless husband as a punching bag. Finally, Anderson decided he’d had enough. He went outside and fell asleep in the snow while Voila was entertaining a customer. This led to pneumonia and Anderson gratefully shuffled off this mortal coil.

After that Henry had to bear the brunt of the punishment that had previously been divvied up between him and his dad.

Viola really knew how to stick the knife in. When Henry started school (a year late at the age of 7) Viola dressed him as a girl. She even coiffed his hair into sausage curls and then sent him off to the schoolhouse, barefoot and humiliated. Naturally, the other kids gave him hell. Much worse, however, was Viola’s reaction when a compassionate teacher gave Henry a second-hand pair of shoes.  It was a beating Henry wouldn’t soon forget. Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola’s live-in lover, Uncle Bernie (yes, she had a lover in addition to her johns), took pity on the boy and took him to the hospital. Despite this one good deed, Uncle Bernie was hardly a bargain. He introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused. Sometimes, Henry would try to adopt an animal and keep it as a pet, but Viola would methodically kill them. No one remembers how it happened, but on one occasion Henry sliced one of his eyes and needed immediate medical attention. Viola refused and Henry went through the rest of his life with only one eye.

It’s easy to understand why Henry developed a hatred for the fairer sex.

In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.

After getting out of the hoosegow in September of 1959, for somewhat inexplicable reasons, Henry moved back in with his mother. this didn’t last long. One night, both Henry and his mother were drunk. Viola had the bright idea of hitting her son with a broom. Henry didn’t take kindly that and son and stabbed her. That was the end of the road for Viola:

After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother’s corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.

This time Henry was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for killing his mother. They recognized that Henry had problems and transferred him to the state hospital for the criminally insane.  Six years later he was paroled and moved in with relatives in Tecumseh, Michigan. It’s amazing that his “loved ones” would take him in, but family bonds, as we all know, are very powerful. Henry soon molested two teenage girls. Though the charges were later reduced to  simple kidnapping, he was sent back to the state penitentiary.  He was paroled in August 1975, even though Henry warned them that he would kill again. No one listened; instead Henry went to work on, of all things, a mushroom farm. He also married his cousin’s widow. The relationship lasted for two years but then his wife divorced him after discovering that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.

Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.

They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.

In 1978, while living with with Ottis’ mother and sister in Jacksonville, Florida, Henry fell in love with Toole’s 10-year old female cousin, Frieda “Becky” Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. Henry and Ottis worked for a local roofing company for a while but this didn’t last. Soon they were back on the road, two men born to ramble.

When Ottis’ mother and sister died in 1981, Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. This didn’t sit well with Henry. He returned to Jacksonville and managed “to spring” Becky and Frank. Then they all went on the road together where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. Henry and Becky became common-law husband and wife. Henry was 30 years her senior. When the child welfare authorities got wind of this, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983. By this point, he’d seen too much depravity.

Becky and Henry made it back to Texas and wound up at the All People’s House of Prayer, a religious commune. Becky grew homesick and she and Henry hitchhiked back to Florida. Unfortunately for Becky, one night they had an argument and Becky slapped Lucas. This was a mistake. Henry was very good with a knife and that was it for Becky. He dismembered her corpse before returning to Stoneburg,

Henry claimed Becky headed for greener pastures with a passing truck driver. Three weeks later, he was on the lam one day after the disappearance of Kate “Granny” Rich, a local octogenarian. Then, one week later he showed up again in Stoneburg, the day after Rich’s home was destroyed by a mysterious fire.

Finally, on June 11, 1983, Henry’s luck ran out. He was arrested as a felon in possession of a handgun. No one really knows why, but over the next few days Henry spilled his guts. Becky’s murder and dismemberment had been bothering him and he had returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. On the night of June 15th, Lucas summoned the jailer:: “I’ve done some bad things,” he began.

One the faucet was turned on, there was no way to turn it off. Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Granny Rich. That was just the beginning. Eventually, body-count had risen to somewhere between 150 and 360, and, staggeringly, reached the 500 to 600 range when he factored in killings by his friends. Lucas implicated his erstwhile pal Ottis Toole in many of the murders, furthermore claiming that he and Toole had committed many murders as a hit-squad directed by a Satanic cult, “The Hand of Death,” that Toole had introduced him to. A cannibal, Toole sometimes ate the flesh of their victims, although Lucas didn’t join him in his insalubrious repast.

Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, had no problem being implicated by his former lover:

In fact, he offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings… The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas’ confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.

At his trial, Lucas took responsibility for over 600 murders. He even claimed to have supplied People’s Temple stalwart Jim Jones with the cyanide to effect the Guyana massacre. Ottis Toole, now on Florida’s Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas’ confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.

Henry Lee Lucas, of course, later changed his mind about  his confessions.  He claimed his whole wild tale was merely to improve his living conditions in jail. He eventually took credit for one murder, that of his mother. Because the authorities were never really sure how many murders could really be attributed to Henry, his multiple death sentences were commuted to life in prison by Governor George W. Bush; it was the sole death sentence ever vacated by the then-governor. This allowed Henry Lee Lucas to die a peaceful death in prison.

A few final notes on Henry:

He had an estimated IQ of 84, which is well below normal.

But Henry could express himself and was not shy about self-evaluation:

I hated all my life. I hated everybody. When I first grew up and can remember, I was dressed as a girl by my mother. And I stayed that way for 2 or 3 years. And after that I was treated like what I call the dog of the family. I was beaten. I was made to do things that no human bein’ would want to do.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

In the world of capital crime, there may be nothing more fascinating than The Cold Case. The term itself conjures up dark, hidden mystery suspended in time yet forgotten by everyone except the family of the victims, the perpetrators, any determined detectives who refuse to throw in the towel and continue working on the case, and of course diehard crime fans who have memories like the proverbial elephant and never forget an unsolved murder.

One of the curious things about The Cold Case is that even if the resourceful detectives do ultimately bring it to closure, not everyone is going to agree that they got it right. Such would seem to be the case with the brutal murder and disfigurement of a lovely 14-year-old-girl named Claire Hough, whose young life came to an end at Torrey Pines State Beach in San Diego on August 24, 1984. It was death by strangulation with, for good measure, her left breast cut entirely away with fingernail marks lashing her body, according to the autopsy report.

In an excellent San Diego Union-Tribune article dated October 23rd, Kristina Davis and Lyndsay Winkley skillfully break down the case:

For 30 years, investigators worked to unravel the mystery of who killed 14-year-old Claire Hough as she smoked cigarettes and listened to cassettes at Torrey Pines State Beach.

On Thursday, San Diego police said they believe one of the suspected killers was working among them as a criminalist in the same police lab where evidence of the teen’s brutal slaying was examined and stored.

The case was solved largely though DNA matches analyzed in 2012 which established both men’s DNA matched samples taken from the teen’s body. There has apparently never been much other solid evidence pointing a finger at any alleged killers.

According to the authorities, the criminalist in question, Kevin Charles Brown, 62, who retired from the police department in 2002, killed himself this week as officers were closing in to arrest him.

One of the facts which could cast some doubt upon the investigators conclusions is the fact that there is apparently no evidence connecting Brown to the second alleged killer, Ronald Clyde Tatro

“Tatro, is also dead, having drowned in an apparent boating accident in Tennessee in 2011.”

Playing it cool, on Thursday when the case broke, police refused to speculate as to whether the two men had any type of relationship. On the surface, however, “they appeared to lead very different lives.”

For starters, Tatro’s history suggests a possible serial rapist. Not only did he have a lengthy criminal record, but in 1985, one year after Claire Hough’s violent death, Tatro, who was 43 at the time, “was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and trying to rape a 16-year-old girl in La Mesa, police said. He coaxed her into his van and tried to subdue her with a stun gun, but she screamed and managed to get away.”

This brave teen who refused to be raped and escaped, also managed to give officers Tatro’s license plate number. As police prepared to swoop in, the 16-year-old’s assailant, displaying anything but bravery, slit both his wrists. He got away with pleading to a lesser charge of felony false imprisonment and was sentenced to a mere three years in prison.

Compared to Tatro, Brown’s history is the essence of stability. He worked as a criminalist, first in Mew Mexico for two years, “then for the next 20 years at the San Diego Police Department.” While with SDPD, “he worked in many parts of the lab over the years, from firearms to trace evidence.”

Claire Hough’s death had mystified and frustrated detectives for decades, but what little evidence there is suggested she walked down to the beach that evening to smoke cigarettes and listen to music.

Her body was discovered on a towel under the Old Highway 101 bridge by a passer-by about 5 a.m on the morning after her murder, with a radio, cigarettes and matches nearby.

No one knows for sure why the teen took the short stroll from her grandparents Del Mar Heights home to the beach that fated evening, but her bereaved father reported that she would take similar jaunts down to the bay from her home in Cranston, Rhode Island. In any event, the authorities do not believe there was any coercion involved in her decision to walk down to the Torrey Pines beach. Her grandparents didn’t realize she was missing until 9 am the next morning.

Claire’s family expressed their appreciation to the detectives on Thursday.

“In a way, it doesn’t make any difference who killed her,” her father, Samuel Hough, said from his Rhode Island home. “She’s dead and there’s nothing we can do about that. The important thing for us is what she was and what she became — the fact that she was so positive, so rich, at the time that she died.”

However, Kevin Brown’s widow, Rebecca Brown, is having none of it, claiming this is a clear case of DNA contamination because of her husband’s proximity to the evidence in the Police crime lab.

“The police have hounded my husband all year, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown and killed himself,” Rebecca Brown said Thursday. “They kept hounding him on something he didn’t do. He’s a good, kind, sweet, gentle man.”

San Diego Police Department homicide Capt. Al Guaderrama dismissed Rebecca’s allegations, stating Brown had never been assigned to any part of the Claire Hough investigation and was in no way associated with any of the evidence processed.

“We do not believe that there was any type of contamination in this case at all,” Capn. Guaderrama said. (Well of course not. Even if there was contamination, which is probably not the case here, there’s no guarantee that anyone would report it.)

Most of you reading this post have probably never been in trouble with the law, although a few of you may have been. Having worked with up to 200 criminals over the past 11 years, I can state without reservation that there is no worse feeling than having law enforcement come to your home with a search warrant. Many suspects never fully recover from the shock of hearing that knock on the door, which in some instances is more of a pounding.

Brown’s Chula Vista home was searched on January 9th and I suspect the knock was probably reasonably polite, given his long history of working for SDPD. Rebecca Brown recalls:

“It shocked the whole family.” Investigators seized numerous items: computers, old photo albums, cameras, her mother’s cookbook.

Capn. Guaderrama reports that the DNA match had spurred an exhaustive investigation including interviews around the country, probably mostly having to do with alleged co-killer Tatro. 30-year-old evidence was re-examined.

Although the Captain didn’t specify what precisely it consisted of, he did say several pieces of evidence were found.

After the initial knock/search/seizure, Brown was questioned multiple times throughout the year. So were his family members, friends and neighbors. According to his criminal defense lawyer, Gretchen von Helms, Brown suffered from bouts of anxiety and depression.

Von Helms also stated that Brown passed an independent polygraph test administered by a former police officer. (Of course, polygraph tests are rarely admitted into evidence at trial though they can occasionally play a part at sentencing.

“They haven’t believed him and they’ve kept at it,” his wife said. “They just pushed my husband to an early grave.”

When Rebecca Brown went to work at Mater Dei Catholic High School, where she teaches, last Monday morning, Brown was still in bed. After Rebecca left, he got up, dressed and told his live-in mother-in-law that he had things to do.

He certainly did. His body was found on Tuesday, hanging from a tree at Cuyamaca State Park on Highway 79 near mile marker 7.25, according to Capn. Guaderrama, who has told his widow that no suicide note was found.

* * * * *

Solid DNA evidence, which was presumably present in this case, certainly cannot be taken lightly. What makes me suspect that Brown may well be one of Claire Hough’s co-killers, however, is the fact that under duress, rather than hang on and fight it out at trial, he chose instead to end his life. If he was innocent, he almost certainly would have gone to trial, alleged DNA evidence notwithstanding, wouldn’t he have?

On the other hand, he could have been an unstable personality, but even those types rarely kill themselves when under police duress. Rather, they stew and suffer and complain endlessly.

From my own personal standpoint, I am every bit as comfortable with a case never being solved as I am with definitive closure which I instinctively distrust. But that’s just me. I’m very aware that most people want to place their faith in the “facts” and prefer closure in criminal investigations.

I was probably damaged by going to college and graduate school in the late 1980s when Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism were all the rage and Undecidability was the order of the day. As an old man, I chuckle at what I imbibed at the university back then but it does, alas, seem to have perhaps taken a toll on me.

Or maybe it’s just that I like the mystery of the chase which closure irrevocably puts an end to…

by Darcia Helle

Met Her on the Mountain: A Forty-Year Quest to Solve the Appalachian Cold-Case Murder of Nancy Morgan is as much a cultural study as a true crime story. Author Mark I. Pinsky takes us deep into the Appalachian Mountains of Madison County, North Carolina. In some ways, the lifestyle there will feel just as foreign to Americans as the tradition of lips plates of some African tribes.

The story got me thinking about how closely related culture and crime really are. We have the honor killings common to Middle Eastern culture, and the different kind of honor killings common among inner-city gang members. These are familiar cultural crimes, not supported by society at large. But the religious-based honor killings feel far more unnatural to Americans than our own homegrown reputation-based honor killings. This perception is, of course, purely cultural.

When humanitarian Nancy Morgan, fresh out of college, accepted a one-year Vista (the domestic Peace Corps) assignment to work in rural Madison County, North Carolina, she stepped out of her own cultural comfort zone without concern, which was to lead to her brutal rape and murder. In reading her story, I realized she was likely oblivious to just how out of place she appeared to those around her. This lack of insight became her downfall.

Nancy was born on January 6, 1946, on the Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. As a military brat, Nancy was always on the move. She spent her middle school years and part of high school in West Germany, where her father was director of international law for the US Air Force. CIA officers were occasional dinner guests at the Morgan home. The family’s lifestyle provided Nancy with a vast array of social and cultural experiences, and consequently she felt comfortable most anywhere.

In 1962, Nancy’s father was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Pentagon. The Morgan family settled in Northern Virginia, where Nancy finished her high school years in upper class suburbia.

Nancy had liberal beliefs on major issues of the time, such as race and sex. She was fascinated by the burgeoning civil-rights movement and horrified by JFK’s assassination. In many ways, Nancy was ahead of her time. The discord of the era moved her deeply, and she wanted to do something to make the world a better place.

Midway through her college years, Nancy’s father was transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois. Nancy followed her family, transferring from the prestigious and sheltered Radford College to the much different Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. There she mingled with a mixture of Vietnam veterans, antiwar protesters, hippies, stoners, older and very straight white students, young black urban students, and rural “hillbilly” types. Sharing classroom space with individuals from this hodgepodge of cultural backgrounds further fueled Nancy’s desire to help change the world for the better. She chose social work as her major, graduating in June of 1969.

The wife of one of Nancy’s professors remembers this about her: “She always had a social conscience and wanted to help people.”

Shortly after graduation, Nancy decided to commit to one year with VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), which was a national organization similar to the Peace Corps. In October, she went to Atlanta for brief training, which focused on leadership skills and community project ideas. Soon afterward, Nancy was sent to Madison County, North Carolina, where she would, for the first time, be living on her own.

The town Nancy and a handful of fellow VISTA members were sent to was beyond – or perhaps behind – anything Nancy had ever experienced. Only 25 per cent of the homes had indoor plumbing. Tobacco farming was the main source of income. There were no health centers and education was far from a priority. To say the area was poor only brushes the surface of what Nancy’s new environment was like. Madison County was, at that time, very much isolated. They didn’t have televisions. No one there traveled beyond their enclosed world. And few, if any, of the residents were progressive thinkers.

People in the Appalachian Mountains lived by what is called Mountain Justice, which is a code of living that dates back at least 200 years. The code states:

Adhere, believe, do, act, conduct yourself, follow, lead, say and otherwise exhibit, to wit: the straight-and-narrow, biblical, sex-concealing, low-toned, reverent, undemonstrative, Sunday-go-to-meeting way is the only way; be it, get with it brother or sister or reap “mountain justice”.

Sadly, Nancy Morgan was not informed about Mountain Justice during her brief VISTA training. Nor was she properly instructed on the closed culture and distrust of strangers she would encounter. Consequently, Nancy entered this fixed society with her typical carefree attitude, assuming she could assimilate into this community as she had everywhere else during her travels. But Nancy was a progressive thinker, a young woman who rebelled against boundaries based on gender roles. She didn’t understand how her friendly and sometimes flirtatious behavior could be misconstrued as wanton and whorish. And, perhaps most importantly, she didn’t know that a young, independent woman who socialized with men would be seen, in this culturally-closed Appalachian region, as a sinning whore not worthy of protection from the men whose attention she gained. This was particularly true when the victim was an outsider and the criminal was homegrown.

Nancy was killed early in June 1970. She’d been missing for several days before her car was discovered on a secluded mountain trail by a local resident. Her body was in the backseat, hog-tied. She’d been sexually assaulted, most likely by multiple assailants. Her murder, to this day, remains unsolved.

“If it were an outsider who committed that crime… they would be hunted down and prosecuted. But if it were local folks that were responsible for that, then it possibly should be ignored.” – Words of a Local Resident

The investigation, such as it was, made me think of The Beverly Hillbillies, with Barney Fife as Sheriff and the Keystone Cops running haphazardly all over the county. Mountain Justice played its virtuous chords in the background. Corruption isn’t even a word that can be properly applied here, since the “good ol’ boys” mentality was their way of life.

“Everybody said you couldn’t get a fair trial in Madison County.” – Joe Huff, Lawyer

This case is a reminder that, regardless of where we live, we are products of our culture. Even here in the US, we have different beliefs depending on where in the country we were raised. People are often quick to judge one another, basing our opinions on the environment we grew up in. We easily forget, or never acknowledge, that we too might hold different beliefs if we’d grown up elsewhere.

Nancy Morgan’s murder is a cautionary tale for all of us. We need to be aware of our surroundings, not just the beautiful view, but also the cultural differences. In traveling, we cannot expect others to conform to us. No one wants a stranger telling us how we should live or, for that matter, showing us how inadequate we are (in the eyes of the stranger).

I am in no way blaming Nancy for her own murder. She was a young, vivacious woman doing her best to make a difference in a tumultuous time. Blame here lies with the person or people who decided Nancy’s body, and subsequently her life, was theirs to take. But, in fairness, I also think that some of that blame also lies with the culture that produced her killers.

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

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

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Great Gasoline Mass Murder

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

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

The Electric Chair Nightmare: An Infamous and Agonizing History

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

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

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

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

Why Should I Believe You? The History of the Polygraph

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

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

The Terror of ISO: A Descent into Madness

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

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

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

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

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

The characters await you.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Sibling rivalry is a clear and present danger in many (most) families and the only sure-fire solution may be to have only one child. In my own family where I was originally 1 of 6 (we later expanded to 9), I had two brothers who feuded virtually every day of my childhood. They were both large for their age and when they would go at it, it was like two great and hairy mastodons trying to gum each other to death. Since one large brother was slightly bigger than the other large brother, he usually had the upper hand by just a whisper, which meant my job as the peacemaker and equalizer was to intercede when Extra Large Brother was about to kill (or seriously injure) Large Brother. I would get a good running start and fling myself (I was small) at Extra Large Brother’s head with all my might which would give Large Brother a split second to get back on his feet and then it would start all over again. Ah, those were the days!

I’ve often wondered how seriously Extra Large Brother would have injured Large Brother if I hadn’t been there to serve as equalizer. I suspect Extra Large Brother actually liked having me there because it meant he could inflict plenty of punishment on Large Brother without there being much danger of him going too far because he knew I would even things out when it got too dicey. Weird, huh?

In a case that comes to us out of Mundelein, a suburb of Chicago, which first emerged in January of last year, an older sister, who was 14, became enraged with her younger half-sister, who was 11, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was Big Sister felt under-appreciated for doing the lion’s share of the shores and helping Little Sister with her homework.

Things came to a violent head when Big Sister stabbed Little Sister 40 times with a kitchen knife. Unfortunately, there was no wise and judicious third sibling to disarm big sister or otherwise talk her out killing her sibling.

Lateef Mungin off CNN writes:

An 11-year-old Illinois girl was stabbed 40 times by her 14-year-old (half)-sister, police say, and the reason why has many in the small Chicago-area community of Mundelein reeling in disbelief.

Police found the 11-year-old girl unconscious and in need of medical attention in an upstairs bedroom of the dwelling Tuesday morning. She later died.

At first Big Sister concocted a tall tale concerning an intruder who she claimed had broken in and attacked her sister. The authorities bought it at first and three local area schools were placed on lockdown.

Under pointed questioning, however, Big Sister quickly caved and the lockdown was lifted after only 15 minutes.

The community was aghast. Mundelein Mayor Steve Lentz made the following statement:

“This incident is a heartbreaking tragedy that defies understanding. I am asking the Chicagoland area, please pray for us. Pray, first of all, for the family that has been devastated by this.”

It appears that at the perpetrator’s initial detention hearing, she displayed considerable candor, albeit in a juvenile way, making the following statements. She said that “her sister didn’t appreciate all she did for her”, stating that “she cooked dinner for her younger sibling and performed other chores”. She was also mad that the younger girl had recently hit her.

According to the prosecutors, the accused teen reported that the night before the attack, after thinking it over for 10 or 15 minutes, she grabbed the knife from the kitchen, which she apparently used the following morning. She then took a shower to wash off the blood, and called the police, initially reporting the cock-and-bull story about the intruder.

The strange thing is that according to the neighbors, the girls — who lived with their mother – seemed close. According to WLS, they played together all the time and practiced cheerleading routines.

“They would always be together,” Mary Ann Gryder, a neighbor told the affiliate.

“The older one would be taking care of the younger one, and vice versa.”

After she came clean, Big Sister was arrested and charged with murder. Although there was talk about moving the case to adult court, but this was circumvented, presumably by the spirit of reason on the part of both sides.

Mark Guarino of Reuters reports that the perpetrator, who is now 15 years old, was allowed to plead guilty to the fatal stabbing in juvenile court on January 21. Based on the terms of the plea deal, Big Sister will remain in juvenile detention until she turns 21, unless she receives parole before then which she will be eligible to seek in five years.

Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim reportedly agreed to drop two of the three charges of first-degree murder in exchange for the guilty plea.

Lee Filas of the Daily Herald reports that after the hearing, Nerheim refused to go into detail as to why he chose to keep the case in juvenile court. He did say that the guilty teen “will be able to better receive the extensive mental health treatment she requires in juvenile prison”.

“We did an extensive psychological evaluation,” Nerheim said. “After completion of the report, we are as convinced as we can be that she will get the treatment she needs in the juvenile department of corrections.”

He added the plea agreement ensures justice for Betancourt and safety for the community.

* * * * *

So what happened here? Why no 50 year sentence for the troubled child? After all, she murdered her sister? Why this European style sentence here in the American Heartland?

I would suggest a few things. One, the child must have shown genuine remorse. Two, she must have had an excellent defense team. Three, there must have been intangibles we know nothing about; and four, the prosecution must have dug down deep to find that sliver of mercy which all prosecutors must possess if our justice system is to be deserving of our full faith and trust.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

One of the big problems with doing heavy drugs is that sooner or later either you or somebody you know is going to wind up dead. And like it says in the Bible, “You don’t know the minute or the hour.” In a sense, you might almost be better off if you’re the one who winds up dead. Then, disposing of your corpse is somebody else’s problem.

Being confronted with this problem has always been a hassle, but in our modern era of advanced Social Media is all the tougher. Now you not only face the thorny problem of disposing of the stiff, but you also gotta decide (and quickly) how best to inform the cyber-world. Do you simply post it on FB and be done with it? Or do you tweet? Instagram is always an option. You can even Pin It which does seem fitting because photos of dead bodies are very common on Pinterest.

A 24-year-old Joplin, Missouri meth head, Chelsie Berry, was faced with this problem just last week when a weight-lifting friend of hers named Dennis “Nathan” Meyer injected a few too many Dilaudid (a powerful synthetic opiate) and expired right their in her car somewhere in Newton County.

The Smoking Gun has the story:

After their friend apparently died of a drug overdose, two Missouri residents posed for a “selfie” with the corpse, an image that one of them later uploaded to Facebook after dumping the body on a rural road, according to police.

As detailed in a probable cause affidavit, Chelsie Berry, 24, told cops that she was driving around with Dennis “Nathan” Meyer last week when he began acting “crazy” after injecting himself with the pain killer Dilaudid.

When the stiff jolt of Dilaudid apparently lowered Nathan’s inhibitions (let your imagination be your guide), Chelsie naturally got stressed out. She quickly phoned one of Nathan’s friends, a swinging dick named Jared Prier whom she had met the previous evening. Chelsea told Jared that Nathan seemed “unstable” and that he was making her nervous. Prier, who seems amiable enough, told Chelsie he’d be glad to help out and (because this is America), he picked her up at a neighborhood McDonald’s, so they did what good American’s do at McDonald’s, they “hung out in the parking lot for a little bit” (by this point Nathan was apparently unconscious). Of course, they didn’t yet realize Nathan was a “goner”, Chelsea believed he was simply “passed out.”

Jared and Chelsie then drove to a convenience store, possibly to pick up some Red Bull, which, they may have thought, might wake Nathan back up if they could get him to imbibe some. At some point, the cruel truth dawned on Jared and he told Chelsie that “he believed that Nathan had quit breathing.” Chelsie later told the police that she was concerned and that she also “checked Nathan and did not think he was breathing either.”

When making her statement, Chelsie explained to the police that she and Jared were “scared to call for an ambulance and did not want to take Nathan to a hospital because she and Jared were high on meth and Xanax and thought they would get in trouble.”

(As an aside, combining Xanax with meth seems to make good sense because Xanax, which effectively reduces anxiety in most people, should reduce paranoia in meth heads.)

At a certain point, Chelsie and Jared realized that Nathan’s “gig was up” and that they better ditch what was left of him. So they drove to a back road and “dragged Nathan from the front seat to the back seat because they did not want to look at him any longer and also the fact that he began to smell bad.”

Now this sounds like paranoia, Xanax notwithstanding. Based on my scant knowledge, I believe it takes up to 24 hours for a stiff to become odorous, even in humid Missouri weather.

According to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, before they moved Nathan’s body from the front to the back seat, they did the honorable thing and posed for a “selfie” with their 30-year-old deceased friend. They then decided Facebook was the way to go and posted the picture on the social media giant. This turned out to be a mistake because “a tipster subsequently alerted investigators to the photo after Berry uploaded it to Facebook, according to Copeland, who added that the image showed Berry, Prier, and the “passed out” Meyer in the front seat of Meyer’s Nissan Pathfinder.”

Berry told police that once she and Jared had fulfilled their social media obligations, they drove around “looking for a place to dump the body,” finally settling on a rural driveway where they “pushed the body out of the vehicle onto the ground.” According to an autopsy, Meyer’s “breathing would have been faint and it would have taken a while for Nathan to die.”

Berry and Prier were charged yesterday with abandonment of a corpse, a Class “D” felony under Missouri law which could result in a year or more in state prison. In addition, according to some reports, they have been charged with voluntary manslaughter which would greatly increase their prison exposure.

*     *     *     *     *

Although I take a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in goofing on these poor lost souls, the moral to this story is that hard drugs are very dangerous and it’s a good idea to give them a wide berth. Of course, “dopers” don’t always take kindly to good advice. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be “dopers”.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

In August of 2013, we posted a short piece on Aaron Hernandez describing how his adventures with Angel Dust/PCP transformed a angry, volatile young man into a highly paranoid, angry, volatile and heavily-armed young man who rarely went anywhere without a gun. All along, however, the question in my mind has been “Why?” Why did this supremely talented uber-athlete throw it all away to hang out with petty thugs and criminals? Why did this heavily-muscled tight end with flypaper hands and the speed of a wide-out choose to wreck his life (and allegedly take the lives of several other individuals) for absolutely no reason other than the fact he couldn’t seem to control himself?

Although we still don’t have a definitive answer, an article in Rolling Stone Magazine, “The Gangster in the Huddle,” makes a convincing argument that the twin blows of losing his father to sudden, unexpected complications following a routine hernia surgery combined with losing his mother to drugs and infidelity served as a kind of double whammy from which Aaron never recovered.

Paul Solotaroff and Ron Borges of Rolling Stone describe how Aaron’s rough-cut father Dennis Hernandez survived growing up in Bristol, Connecticut as one of the only Puerto Ricans in an Irish-Italian town:

Aaron’s father, Dennis, ruled those fields before his son followed in his footsteps. In the Seventies and Eighties, Dennis and his twin brother, David, became local sports heroes. Enormous for their age and fast and tough, they took to football straightaway and were happier running through, than around, you. They’d be three-sport stars in high school and draw scouts to their games, though as good as they were at football, they were better in street fights, say friends: Nobody fucked with the Hernandez boys.

“They were the roughest kids by far in Guinea Alley,” says Eddy Fortier, who went to Bristol Central with them in the Seventies and is a former youth counselor. “They had to be tough – they were about the only Puerto Ricans in an Irish-Italian town,” says Fortier’s brother, Gary, a reformed ex-con who’s now a painter and assistant pastor at a Bristol church.

After flaming out at the University of Connecticut where he had the chance to play college football, Dennis Hernandez returned home to Bristol where he and his brother David continued to “scrape the edges” right up until 1990, around the time Aaron was born:

The twins were pinched for small-change crimes – assault and petty larceny – in the decade after they both left UConn. As late as 1990, Dennis was busted for burglary, though neither brother seems to have done prison time. Friends say they also occasionally smoked crack, beat up dealers for drugs and cash, and bet way over their heads on sports. As for their pal Testa, he was caught in the act while robbing a house with his uncle, who shot and killed a cop while they tried to escape. “The rumor on the street was Dennis and David were there too,” says Sassu, “but we couldn’t make the case.”

Although it was probably not a case of instant cause-and-effect, both Aaron’s father and his uncle put the thug life behind them once they became parents:

…parenthood seemed to scare the twins straight. Both became fathers, found steady work and had no further truck with Bristol cops…  Dennis married Terri Valentine, a school secretary in Bristol, and got a job on the custodial staff at the other of the town’s two high schools, Bristol Eastern. They bought a small cottage on Greystone Avenue and produced two wildly gifted sons: DJ, now 27 and an assistant football coach at the University of Iowa, and Aaron, three years younger but bigger and faster, the apogee of the family’s genetics.

Each surpassed his father, both on the field and off, in part because Dennis took elaborate pains to keep them on the straight and narrow. Dennis built a gym in the family basement, paved a chunk of the backyard over for a half-court and staged three-on-three tourneys there, and peppered the boys with can-do slogans, burning them in through repetition. “Some do, some don’t,” he was always telling them. “If it is to be, it is up to me,” went another. He was bent on getting his sons to do everything right, whether it was making the proper blitz read or handing homework in on time, perhaps because he’d squandered his own chance.

As long as Aaron’s father was there for him Aaron did fine and — despite his obvious gifts — had a reputation as a polite and humble young man:

“Best athlete this city’s ever produced, and a more polite, humble kid you couldn’t find,” says Bob Montgomery, a columnist for the Press and the town’s official historian. “He’d be in here with his father being interviewed as Athlete of the Week, and there was never any swagger or street stuff from him, just ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir’ and ‘Thank you.’”

There is no doubt that Aaron and his brother DJ, despite their natural gifts, worked hard to make the most of their talent:

Friends say DJ was fiercely protective of his happy-go-lucky lug of a kid brother, and taught him what hard work really looked like. They’d be out running suicides in the dead of summer, and rising early to do squats in the basement. “Aaron was driven by DJ, who was like his second dad,” says Beam. “He really wanted to make Dennis happy.”

Oddly, up until his father’s untimely death in January of 2006, what family turmoil there was centered around Aaron’s mother Terri:

“She was good about schoolwork and that sort of stuff,” says a friend of the family, “but she brought drama into that house – starting with the bust for taking bets.” In 2001, when Aaron was 12, Terri was arrested in a statewide sting for booking bets on sports. The matter was handled quietly and she did no time, but she cast shame on the boys and dug a rift with Aaron that deepened over the next several years. Friends say Terri had begun cheating on Dennis with a physically abusive coke dealer named Jeffrey Cummings, who was married to Dennis’ niece, Tanya Cummings.

Terri’s relationship with Cummings, whose nickname is Meathead, was a bottomless source of grief for the sons. There was an ugly spectacle in the stands at a UConn game, says a family friend. Terri, on hand to watch DJ play, was angrily confronted by her niece and slapped in the face. The aftermath, says the friend, “hurt Aaron bad and broke his heart.”

Aaron might still have been held it together despite his mother’s erratic behavior if his father had been there to see him through. But tragically, this was not to be:

 …in January 2006, Dennis checked himself in for a hernia repair at a local hospital. Something happened on the table, though, and he contracted an infection; two days later, he was dead. He was 49, in otherwise splendid health, and beloved by virtually everyone in town. His funeral, at the Church of St. Matthew, was like an affair of state: 1,500 mourners packed the biggest church in Bristol, and hundreds more waited to view the body. DJ was inconsolable, sobbing over the casket, but Aaron, 16 and shocked beyond tears, sat stone-faced. Friends tried to console him or draw him out; instead, he locked down, going mum. “He’d open up the tiniest bit, then say nothing for weeks, like it was a sign of weakness to be sad,” says Beam. “His brother was at college, and the only other person he would really talk to was the one who was taken away.”

Heartsick and furious, Aaron seemed to implode. He also began spending a lot of time with family across town, in a roughneck stretch called Lake Avenue:

His father’s brother-in-law, Uncle Tito, had a house up the block from the projects, where he lived with his grown daughter Tanya – the woman Cummings had ditched to be with Terri. Aaron and Tanya, first cousins bonded by loss, drew close very quickly, friends say. (He has the name of her son – Jano – tattooed on his chest, and has supported them both financially since college.) Among the dubious people hanging around the house were goons like Ernest Wallace and T.L. Singleton, an older-but-not-wiser drug dealer who’d been in and out of prison since the Nineties… Along with fringe hustlers like Carlos Ortiz, the angel-dust tweaker, they filled the heart-size hole Dennis left, bolstering Aaron with bromides about family love and vowing that they’d always have his back – which is another way of saying they sunk their claws in. Their motives couldn’t have been plainer if they’d hung them in neon: Here was a kid with can’t-miss skills, a malleable man-child who’d be rich one day and fly them out of the hood in his G-5. All they had to do was get him high and gas his head, inflame his sense of grievance at life’s unfairness.

*     *     *     *     *

Despite his father’s sudden death and his mother’s infidelity and quasi-desertion, one might still express surprise over the fact Aaron’s response to these disasters — unlike his brother DJ who somehow weathered the storm — was to align himself with lowlifes, whether relatives or his “new trusted friends.” Based on my experience representing criminal of all types, I’m convinced that an individual’s decision to “turn wrong” rather than “stay right” is — more often than not — integrally connected to issues of self-esteem. A person with healthy self-esteem will naturally “just say no” to the lowlifes and a life of crime, whereas an insecure person, an individual with self-esteem issues, will make precisely the opposite choice which, in turn, often leads to disaster, which is precisely what has befallen Aaron Hernandez.

Click here for earlier posts on the Aaron Hernandez case:

Dateline Aaron Hernandez: Heavy PCP Use Helped Destroy Former Star Tight End

Aaron Hernandez Might Just Beat Odin Lloyd Murder Rap

Aaron Hernandez’ Fiancee Believed to Have Dumped Odin Lloyd Murder Weapon: The Plot Thickens

Aaron Hernandez Bombshell: Filmed with Murder Weapon by His Own Surveillance Cameras

Aaron Hernandez Serial Killer Case Strengthens as Grand Jury Hears Evidence of 2012 Double Murder

Eat Your Heart Out Aaron Hernandez: D.A. Will Cut Deal to Deliver You Up on a Platter

Aaron Hernandez Arrested for Murder: Bill Belichick Drops Him Like a Hot Potato

Eat Your Heart Out, Bill Belichick: Patriots Tight End Aaron Hernandez Wanted in Murder Probe

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Surprise Surprise. Tammy Moorer has already been released from custody and Sidney is expected to follow in her wake as soon as his bond is secured. I haven’t been following the case closely because there has been very little news but I must say I was initally surprised by this decision. But then when you examine Circuit Court Judge R. Markley Dennis’s (great old Southern name) reasoning, we quickly see that in releasing the Moorers on bond, he is doing the right thing. The prosecutor admitted at Friday’s bond hearing that the state had no direct evidence linking Tammy and Sidney to the disappearance of Heather Elvis. Not only that, the circumstantial evidence appears to be much weaker than I had previously supposed.

Previously, the circumstantial evidence primarily consisted of Tammy’s anger at Heather Elvis for sleeping with Sidney which resulted in the threatening text messsages, the series of phone calls between Heather and Sidney on the night she disappeared, and the alleged fact that the truck that was seen driving to and from the Peachtree boat landing where Heather’s car was found was identified as belonging to Sidney. Now, however, it appears that the prosecution’s earlier claim that the truck belonged to him may have been highly speculative and that they actually lack any such proof.

Rod Overton of WBTW News 13 reports:

Sidney Moorer’s attorney, Kirk Truslow, now claims “that links to Sidney Moorer’s truck have turned out to be false.”

“What they led the court to believe was that we have videotape of Sidney Moorer’s truck driving to the boat landing and back within the relevant time period.”

But Truslow argued that the wrong authorities — not the FBI — enhanced the video and it is not discernible as Sidney Moorer’s truck.

“It seemed to be a home run at the first bond hearing, but it can’t be seen as my client’s truck,” Truslow said.

If Truslow is correct, the state’s case would appear to be significantly weakened. Tammy’s animus toward Heather and the fact Sidney and Heather conversed several times by phone on the night of her disappearance, while cause for suspicion, hardly seems to rise to the level of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution apparently lacks (1) DNA evidence; (2) a murder weapon or a concrete theory of how the alleged murder was carried out; (3) the ability to tie Sidney’s truck to the crime scene, and (4) any strong motive for Sidney to even take part in the crime.

Could Tammy have carried out the awful act (assuming Heather is dead and did not simply choose to leave town) on her own? Possibly, but the state’s case against her as the sole murderer is woefully thin – all they would appear to have are the threatening emails, which standing alone without any physical evidence appears as flimsy as kleenex.

Of course, juries do weird things all the time and the trial is still scheduled for May of this year complete with 800 prospective jurors scheduled to perform their civic duty.

The issue of the prospective jury is interesting. The good folk inhabiting the Myrtle Beach area seem to be divided into an Elvis camp and a Moorer camp. To actually seat unbiased jurors might prove to be impossible. Therefore, it seems likely that some of the jurors will be on the side of Elvis while others will favor the Moorers. This, in turn could certainly result in a mistrial, or even a series of mistrials.

In short, with only moderately weak circumstantial evidence to support a conviction, it may ultimately be impossible for the state to convict either Tammy or Sidney.

Meanwhile, there are still rumors that the Elvis family is receiving death threats from Moorer supporters. As part of the terms of their bond, the Moorers must maintain a distance of five miles from Heather’s parents’ house.

This is all quite interesting. If, perchance, Tammy and Sidney did not murder Heather, one is left wondering who did? Or, is there a possibility she is still alive hiding out somewhere. It does not seem likely.

So in the final analysis, at present we are doomed to view this case “through a glass darkly.”

Although at this moment – 8:28 pm California time, Jan 31 – Sidney is still awaiting his release on bond, sooner or later he and Tammy will meet face to face. Imagine the myriad emotions that will be running through both of their minds. Remember, some of the smart money early on was assuming guilt and claiming that Sidney was going to have little choice other than to roll over on Tammy (and I don’t mean in the biblical way) in an attempt to get himself the best possible deal. It appears this has not happened. This could mean that they’re innocent but it also could mean Sidney, despite all, is loyal to Tammy and is going to stay loyal to the bittersweet end.

And imagine the emotions that will be bouncing around in the minds of the Moorer children when they are reunited with their parents. Of course, the kids are allegedly used to a rather unconventional lifestyle – having formerly slept, according to some reports, in one large messy room with rifles leaning against the walls (a true Disney childhood a la Dan’l Boone), so they may view the return of their beleaguered parents as all in the day’s work.

If I’m Sidney, though, and I’m glad I’m not him, there’s one thing I’m not going to stand for. When Tammy breaks out the handcuffs and attempts to lash me to the bed or to the floor or wherever we’re sleeping so that I don’t tomcat around, I going to look at her and I’m going shake my head and like my idol Nancy Reagan I’m going to say: “N-O spells no.” Either that or I’m going to return the favor and Tammy is going to be the one who ends up wearing the cuffs…

Please click here to read our previous posts on the Moorer-Elvis saga:

The Sound and the Fury of Tammy Moorer!

How Tammy and Sidney Moorer May Have Lured Heather Elvis to Her Death

Heather Elvis’s Father and Sister Receive Death Threats

Swingers Sidney and Tammy Moorer Charged with Murder in Death of Heather Elvis!

Myrtle Beach Couple Arrested in Heather Elvis Missing Persons Case

Can Tammy and Sidney Moorer Be Convicted of Murdering Heather Elvis without a Body as Evidence?

Were Heather Elvis’s Remains Wrapped in a Homemade Mickey Mouse Print Bed Sheet?

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

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

“It was a horrible, horrible accident.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by BJW Nashe

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen’s death-trip punk romance culminated in her murder in October, 1978, followed by his death from a heroin overdose in early 1979. For thirty years, the prevailing view held that Sid, the troubled Sex Pistols’ bassist, was the one who fatally stabbed Nancy in their room at Manhattan’s infamous Chelsea Hotel. In 2009, a documentary film called Who Killed Nancy? was released, which drew upon “new evidence” to show that Vicious was most likely innocent of the murder. Several news outlets followed up with stories questioning the established version of events. The main point was that Sid was too incapacitated from drugs to kill anyone on the night of Nancy’s death, so comatose from the massive dose of sedatives (30 Tuinals) he had gobbled that he couldn’t even lift a knife, let alone stab anyone.

So Sid’s legend no longer includes murder. His reputation as a punk icon should survive this relatively minor setback. There’s still plenty of bad behavior on his resume. Sid remains a potent symbol of anarchy and rebellion. Yet make no mistake: the reality of his short life in the limelight was marked by absurdity. He was a bit of a joke. His real name wasn’t Sid, it was John Ritchie, and he wasn’t particularly “vicious.” He grew up as a shy misfit from London’s working class. He became a rock star even though he couldn’t play music. He hardly contributed anything at all to his band’s hit album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. During the recording, Sid was hospitalized with hepatitis. He was famous simply for being famous — the biggest rock star of his era, based solely on his image as the ultimate nihilistic rebel. In the end, despondent over the death of his beloved Nancy, and horrified at the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars, Sid didn’t even have the guts to commit suicide. In a gruesome twist, he had his own mother administer the fatal dose.

If the incompetent Sid Vicious didn’t kill Nancy, who did? We’ll probably never know for sure. All we know is she was found lying dead in a pool of her own blood, clad in her black bra and panties, on the floor of the couple’s hotel bathroom. The murder remains shrouded in mystery, clouded over by the hazy recollections of seedy drug addicts and punk rock bottom feeders, many of whom are by now either dead, or too damaged to provide much reliable testimony. Journalist Alan Parker, the director of Who Killed Nancy?, points out that there were fingerprints from six other persons found at the scene of the crime, yet none of them were interviewed by police. Parker claims that a likely suspect is a shady character named “Michael,” who presumably robbed an unconscious Sid of several thousand of dollars of cash he had in the room, and stabbed Nancy in the process. One suitably odd character, a fixture on the scene at the time, was a sometime actor and full-time addict known as Rockets Redglare. Redglare once told a journalist that Nancy was killed during the making of a snuff film. Just imagine the price this foul item would fetch on the murderabilia market. Rockets is long dead from liver failure, however, and he was never a very reliable source of information.

“Who killed Nancy?” Perhaps the more interesting question at this point is “Who was Nancy?”  Nancy Spungen tends to get a bad rap as the insufferable groupie from hell who sank her claws into the great Sid Vicious, the iconic “James Dean of Punk,” and then dragged him to his doom. Anyone who sees the Alex Cox film Sid and Nancy is unlikely to forget Chloe Webb’s shrieking, obnoxious portrayal of Spungen. Yet this is a cinematic caricature, containing only partial truth. Take a closer look, and a more complex character emerges. One of the best pieces of writing on Nancy is Karen Schoemer’s October 19, 2008 piece for New York Magazine. [http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/51394/] In Schoemer’s reassessment, Nancy emerges as a more compelling, albeit disturbing, embodiment of pure punk rebellion and martyrdom than does Sid Vicious, or any of the other Sex Pistols. For Nancy, as well as other women on the scene such as Patti Smith and Deborah Harry and Penelope Houston, one can argue that the stakes were considerably higher than they were for the men. And for Nancy, who didn’t play in a band, to nonetheless become a major player on the scene is fairly remarkable. Nancy is the first superstar groupie. She’s worth paying attention to.

Juliet From Hell

Nancy Spungen was a middle class Jewish girl from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She was highly intelligent, but psychologically and emotionally troubled. Her family didn’t know how to handle her. Nancy was evidently one of those people who seem to have been put here for the sole purpose of raising holy hell. As a child, she screamed and yelled until she got her way. Her parents would give in just to get some peace and quiet, or because they were incapable of seeking alternative solutions. Nancy once attacked her mother with a hammer. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic at age 15, and spent time in a mental hospital. The psych ward didn’t help much, and probably only made her more rebellious. Let’s face it: girls who are “different” in some way have typically been pressured to conform, through outright coercion or with more subtle forms of bribery, rather than encouraged to express themselves via suitable means (art, music, writing, or whatever). As a society, we have made considerable improvements in this regard, with further progress yet to be made. In the sixties and seventies, however, many American girls still found themselves boxed into fairly rigid social and familial structures. As the hippie movement crashed and burned, suburban middle class life remained stifling and restrictive for young women. I’m not trying to blame society, or the Spungen family, for Nancy’s “problems.” I’m just trying to situate her behavior in its proper context.

In any case, Nancy found her upbringing stultifying. As a teenager, she proved to be utterly unwilling to pursue life as a “conventional” American female. In 1975, at the age of 17, she took off for New York City to fling herself into the hard rock scene. She lived on the Lower East Side, and trailed after hard-partying bands such as the Heartbreakers and the New York Dolls. She worked as a stripper and a prostitute on Times Square, then used the money to buy drugs for the musicians she pursued. She soon gained a reputation for wild, reckless behavior. By most accounts, she prowled the groupie scene like a wild, rapacious animal. Nancy didn’t play the standard, submissive groupie role. She was aggressive and in-your-face. She refused to hide her sex-for-money work (other groupies tended to avoid such activity, or keep it secret). Nancy didn’t reject one code of behavior — that of her suburban upbringing — in order to run off to the rock and roll circus, only to conform to another code of behavior — the one pertaining to groupies. Nancy rejected all codes of behavior. She probably didn‘t even know about Crowley, but she instinctively understood his maxim, “Do what thou will, shall be the whole of the law.” Conformists among the rocker/groupie scene naturally came to loathe her. She was too punk even for most of the other punks — some of whom were merely posers, or simply not as extreme as Nancy. Nancy was gonzo. She slept around, got wasted, pushed people down stairs.

In 1977, having worn out her welcome in New York, Nancy traveled to London to dive into the exploding punk rock subculture. There she located a prize suitable for her groupie ambitions. The prize was Sid Vicious, the bassist of the Sex Pistols. One can assume that Nancy, by this point, could eat punk boys like Sid for breakfast. Yet the two clicked in a deeper way. Supposedly a virgin before he met Nancy, Sid quickly fell in love with her. To seduce Sid, Nancy had to be more than just a she-devil. She was quite intelligent, for one thing. Sid came to rely on her brains and her street-savvy as he shambled his way through life as a newly famous rock star. Nancy supposedly could glean whether a person was a con artist or a phony right away — something which Sid struggled with. And Nancy herself was no faker. A lone interview clip — one of the few bits of footage of Nancy that survives from that pre-digital era — is very telling in this regard. While Sid and a member of the band Dead Boys goof around and mumble incoherently, Nancy comes across as a far more spirited and articulate spokesperson for the punk movement. She’s quick-witted, argumentative, and rude. And she’s committed to the lifestyle. The rebellion is not part of some “act” for her. She’s not posing. She’s also not content to sit on the sideline. She’s as important to the scene as Sid. And why not? It’s not as if Sid had some great musical talent she was lacking. Punk in the early days tended to knock down barriers between bands, groupies, journalists, and fans. It was all one big scene. Of course, that would change in time.

In addition to intelligence, Nancy also possessed some measure of kindness, to go along with all the vitriol. Certain punk insiders, such as Legs McNeil, author of the punk history Please Kill Me, have pointed out that Nancy, contrary to popular belief, could be a warm, friendly person. McNeil says that while Nancy’s ill-tempered rages were hard to ignore, this aspect of her personality was over-emphasized and exaggerated — probably because she was a woman. Plenty of the guys on the scene were just as deranged as Nancy. She was no worse than Dee Dee Ramone or Joey Ramone or Stiv Bators or Johnny Thunders. Punk rock was not exactly teeming with stable, well-adjusted, polite over-achievers. Mentally ill drug addicts were everywhere. They were all crazy, but most of them were nice at least some of the time.

No Future

Sid and Nancy’s tumultuous romance scandalized the music world. They were the Bonnie and Clyde of punk, Romeo and Juliet from hell. The term “dysfunctional co-dependency” doesn’t begin to capture the depths achieved during their downward spiral. They took drugs, they fought, and they took more drugs. Sid made enough money for both of them to become seriously addicted. Their lifestyle made a complete mockery of terms such as “relationship” and “career.” They made a spectacle of themselves wherever they went. Their reckless self-destructiveness knew no bounds. Johnny Rotten sneered about having “no future.” Iggy Pop sang a song called “Death Trip.” Sid and Nancy actually took the death-trip. They were what “no future” looked like back in 1978. For many, it was a repulsive, shocking thing to witness. Yet for millions of disaffected youth, Sid and Nancy presented a seductive image of pure rebellion. They were the face of the new “Blank Generation.” They were against everything.

When the Sex Pistols embarked on their brief, incendiary tour of the United States, mainly playing gigs in the Deep South, Sid’s bandmates forbade him from bringing Nancy along. Again, as a woman she was too punk for the punks. Sid spent the tour stumbling through concerts, dressed in leather pants and a dog collar, his shirtless upper torso and his bare, skinny arms bleeding where he’d slashed himself with razor blades. At one point, he carved the words “Gimme a Fix” in jagged letters across his chest and stomach. The tour ended with a show at Winterland in San Francisco. It was the band’s last show. At the height of their fame, the Sex Pistols simply called it quits. Johnny Rotten’s famous last words onstage were, “Do you feel cheated?” While the others went straight to the airport to board a plane back to London, Sid headed across town to a shooting gallery in the Haight, where he supposedly overdosed on heroin. He survived, this time.

Sid and Nancy eventually settled back in New York, where Sid planned to launch his solo career. Nancy lorded her success over the scene that had spurned her. Now she was more famous than any of the New York Dolls and their groupies. But the drug abuse was way out of hand. She and Sid holed up in Room 100 at the infamous Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. The Chelsea, a longtime bohemian stronghold, had once been the home of luminaries such as Dylan Thomas and Thomas Wolfe, who both wrote and drank their way to an early grave there, as well as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, who found the old hotel inspirational and convenient. Andy Warhol’s experimental film Chelsea Girls captured the place in all of its late sixties, speed-freak, transvestite glamour. By the late 1970s, the hotel was a run-down, drug-infested flophouse.

The Chelsea Hotel was perfect for Sid and Nancy, who mainly laid around in bed, nearly comatose, as couriers delivered them drugs. Occasionally, they ventured out to Max’s Kansas City, where Sid fronted an all-star punk band including Mick Jones, Johnny Thunders, and Richard Hell. Nancy sometimes joined him onstage. For even the most hardcore punk fans, Sid’s junkie act, as he nodded off and slurred his way through sloppy punk cover-songs, was growing tiresome. Attendance dwindled. Sid had some success with a new single, his recorded version of “My Way,” in which he ironically made a mess of the tune made famous by Sinatra. By and large, though, Sid’s solo career was going nowhere.

Death

On the morning of October 12, 1978, tragedy struck. Sid woke up from a deep drug stupor and found Nancy lying on the bathroom floor, stabbed to death. Sid called the police, who showed up and charged him with the murder. The knife definitely belonged to him, recently purchased on 42nd Street. Sid made conflicting statements to the cops. He said he stabbed Nancy during an argument, but that he didn’t want to kill her. He said she accidentally fell onto the knife. Then, he said he simply couldn’t remember what happened.

If Sid had been out of control before, now he truly fell apart. Ten days after Nancy’s death, he attempted suicide by slitting his wrist with a smashed light bulb. He spent some time in the mental ward at Bellevue Hospital. On December 8, he was arrested and charged with assault after an altercation with Todd Smith (Patti Smith’s brother) at a concert by the band Skafish. For this, Vicious spent 55 days at Rikers Island. On February 1, 1979, he was released on bail.

To celebrate his release, on February 2, Sid Vicious attended a macabre dinner party at the New York apartment of his new girlfriend, Michele Robinson. Sid’s mother, Anne, herself a long-time addict, showed up to the gathering. Sid, who had undergone methadone detoxification at Rikers, was craving dope, and convinced his mum to score for him. Unaccustomed to his typical large dose, and surprised by an unusually pure batch of heroin, Sid overdosed at midnight. He was revived by his companions. He and Michele reportedly went to bed some time near 3:00 A.M.

What happened next was subsequently pieced together by police and the press. Apparently Sid, his death wish unabated, wanted another dose of heroin. Michele wanted no part of it, and left the room. Sid summoned his mother, who later confessed to journalist Alan Parker that she administered the fatal injection to her son. Parker surmised that she did this because she knew Sid didn’t want to face the horrors of a murder trial, and a likely return to prison. She allegedly found a note in Sid’s leather jacket that explained the death pact he had made with Nancy: “We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.”

Whatever the rationale, the end result was that Sid Vicious was found dead on the morning of February 3. He couldn’t be buried next to Nancy, because she’d been laid to rest in a Jewish cemetery. Instead, Sid’s body was cremated and his ashes were scattered over Nancy’s grave.

No Moral to the Story

Sid and Nancy both died too young — she was just 20, and he was only 21. What can we reasonably conclude about this unholy pair? I’d like to think that even if they were a joke, they were a serious joke — the kind of deadly serious, sick joke often needed to shake society from its doldrums. The fact that neither of them had any real marketable talent, yet still achieved great fame and influence, only adds to their punk appeal. “Talent” was just another elitist concept to tear down, smash apart, or deconstruct. As personifications of subversion, Sid and Nancy posed a symbolic threat to the established order — both within the music business and extending outward to society at large. Nancy in particular took punk rebellion to new levels of outrage, especially for women involved in rock and roll. Rock stars often get praised and rewarded for being nonconforming outsiders. Nancy shows us that the groupies and strippers and hookers who are so integral to the scene are often the ones who are truly living on the edge. Usually, they don’t become stars. Nancy did, so she deserves extra credit. She was outrageous.

Even if Sid and Nancy were a sick joke, I’d like to think they were more than just fools. I’d like to think that they did exactly what they wanted to do, and died exactly as they wanted to die. If that doesn’t please us, so what. Rehab and recovery and responsibility wasn’t in the cards for them, which is too bad. But I see no need to moralize about Sid and Nancy. They had a death pact. They never hurt anyone other than themselves. They certainly never claimed to be “role models.” Rather than judge them, I prefer to view them as fascinating creatures, part of life’s rich pageant. They became famous, and went viral, because we ultimately derive spiritual depth and power from the mad, crazy ones among us who cannot be controlled, and who refuse to play by the rules. Sometimes we need outrageousness, especially when it comes to art and music. We need it more than we need a “moral to the story.” And we need it more than we need to solve a thirty year-old crime.

So we might as well let Nancy’s murder serve as the final outrage: it will most likely remain unsolved forever.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Marshawn Lynch AKA Beast Mode

This weekend we had two momentous events that elevated the Great American Bad Choice Sweepstakes to new and previously unscaled heights. With 30 seconds left in the Super Bowl, we had the moronic play call by Seattle’s offensive coordinator with Beast Mode in the backfield and the ball on New England’s one yard line. Instead of unleashing the Great Beast, Seattle ran a dangerous slant route across the middle and Russell Wilson, who does not have a cannon for an arm, threw an interception which meant victory for Bill Belichek and the Brady Bunch, warts and all. I’m sure John Nardizzi, an ardent Patriots fan, is pleased, and though I was rooting for Seattle, I’m thrilled for John.

But in the end, a game is a game is a game, and although virtually everyone agrees it was a terrible play call, it is of little importance other than to the players, their families and our 100 million rabid NFL fans.

What is much more important is what happened at America’s Best Value Inn on Saturday where rooms rent for around $40 per night in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Let me set the scene:

We have an all-American family who appear to be just a bit down on their luck, which is presumably why they have been living at the motel for the past week. The family consists of Mom and Dad, Grandmother, a 3-year-old son, a 2-year-old daughter, two faithful pit bulls and an 8-month-old fetus.

Dad apparently has a criminal record, though not necessarily a serious one. Therefore, he is not legally allowed to possess a firearm. Mom, however, like so many ardent Americans, believes that the family needs a firearm for protection (and you can sort of see why considering the fact the family is stuck there at America’s Best Value Inn).

The problem is that with five people, two pit bulls and a fetus in a motel room, there’s not a lot of spare space to safely store the firearm. Therefore, Mom made what in retrospect was a Very Bad Choice. She decided to keep her new 9 mm handgun in her purse, perhaps to keep it away from Dad who – based on his record – is not allowed to handle the gun. (In California, Dad would probably be in violation merely by living in the same room as the handgun but perhaps New Mexico law is not as stringent.)

So that’s the situation. Given the circumstances, you probably have some sense of what happened next. Just to set your minds at rest, let me assure you that although a couple people were wounded, no one was killed. Whew! In that sense, the situation was not unlike the Super Bowl where despite Bad Choice play calling, no one was killed (although I imagine some fans would like to kill the Seattle offensive coordinator).

As luck would have it, the 3-year-old son, who is apparently somewhat of a technological wizard (and a very good shot), decided he wanted to play with an iPad which he believed was in Mom’s purse. So he goes fishing around for the iPad, but instead of pulling out the iPad, he extracts the loaded handgun and proceeds to fire off a round which in the close quarters of the motel room, did a fair amount of damage. First the bullet zipped through Dad’s buttocks and then it lodged in Mom’s shoulder. Quite a feat for the young marksman!

Although their injuries were not life-threatening, both parents were hospitalized. Based on the fact she is eight months pregnant, Mom is being kept at the hospital for observation.

According to Albuquerque Police Officer Simon Drobik, who was first to arrive at the Best Value Inn on Saturday afternoon, Dad has been released.

Laila Kearney of Reuters writes:

“On the kid’s side, it’s a horrible accident that happened, but the parents are still culpable,” Drobik said. “They should have secured the gun.” (Maybe they should have given it to the judicious pit bulls and told them to guard it with their lives.)

Officer Drobik explained that although the parents could face felony negligence charges, no charges will be brought against the 3-year-old boy. Personally, I’m not so sure about the child getting off scot-free. Shouldn’t a boy this advanced be held responsible for confusing a handgun with an iPad? It’s almost like he wanted to get his hands on the gun and used the purported search for the iPad as a way to appropriate the handgun. But perhaps I’m letting my imagination run away with me. This would not be the first time.

As a result of this Extremely Bad Choice on the part of Mom and the Boy, he and his Sister were placed with child protective services where they will spend at least 48 hours. The innocent pit bulls were taken into custody by “animal control staff”.

There is no word yet as to whether the parents will actually be charged, or if they will escape with a warning/reprimand.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

They say the devil is a trickster but there was nothing tricky about the way Moises Meraz-Espinoza — an 18-year old self-styled Satanist and factory worker sporting a shaved head with nearly foot long braids dangling from his scalp — walked into the South County Huntington Park Police Department two years ago to report that he had killed his mother.

Not only had he killed her, he had done very weird things to her corpse. When law enforcement walked into the Maywood apartment Meraz -Espinoza shared with his mother, Amelia Espinoza, age 42, they found a gruesome scene.

Matt Hamilton of the LA Times reports:

A trail of blood led to the bathroom, where plastic covered the walls and floor. There, they found an electrical circular saw with pieces of bone, blood and flesh stuck to the blade. Nearby, in a freezer, police found skin and muscles stored in plastic bags. The woman’s skull, with all her teeth plucked out, her eyes removed and two upside-down crosses carved into the bone, was stashed in a backpack.

Prosecutors say that Meraz-Espinoza strangled his mother and then skinned, filleted and dismembered her body as part of a satanic ritual. A Norwalk jury convicted him of first-degree murder in June.

On Wednesday, July 17th at the sentencing, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. must of wondered why he had ever campaigned for a place on the judicial bench. While sentencing Meraz-Espinoza to 25 years to life in prison, he remarked that this particular slaying “certainly ranks up there at the top” of “the most disgusting, hideous and vulgar” cases he has seen during his 50 long, punishing years in the legal profession.

“I don’t know what I can say to turn your life around, but you’ll have a lot of time to think about it,” McKnew said.

The record shows that Meraz-Espinoza confessed to his cousin that he had killed his mother by stabbing her and had then — in some weird alternative mind-set — skinned her and cut her up into pieces. His purpose in turning to his cousin was not so much that he felt the psychological need to confess but rather because he needed her help in disposing of the the body. To her credit, she was having no part of that and instead  persuaded him to do the sensible thing and turn himself into the police.

There was some speculation that Meraz-Espinoza slaughtered his mother because he was depressed over his girlfriend’s recent death. The Deputy Dist. Atty. Heba Matta  scoffed at the theory, pointing out that such an explanation made no sense; if Meraz-Espinoza was depressed over his girlfriend’s untimely death, that was all the more reason to keep his mother alive. Rather, Heba Matta insisted that Meraz-Espinoza had been motivated by satanic beliefs, which he was “heavily entrenched in.”

Matta said Meraz-Espinoza has numerous tattoos that draw on satanic imagery, such as upside-down crosses and a 666 behind his right ear. Authorities recovered his copy of a satanic bible near the crime scene. The date he chose to strangle and dismember his mother, Feb. 2, 2011, also fell on a day in the satanic calendar that calls for ritual human or animal sacrifice.

“This crime was not in the heat of passion or rash and impulsive,” Matta said. “It was done for the purpose of devotion. That’s pretty much the ultimate sacrifice.”

This is somewhat unusual. The authorities often work hard to deny that any form of Satanism is involved in any slaying simply because that is a hornet’s nest they do not want to disturb. But not Deputy Dist. Atty. Heba Matta who was adamant that the murder was part of a satanic ritual.

Defense attorney Jonathan Roberts disagreed completely, contending — in what some might claim was an indirect defense of contemporary Satanism –that prosecutors were exaggerating Meraz-Espinoza’s involvement in satanic rites and were relying on dated interpretations of the church.

“The contemporary church of Satan doesn’t believe in human sacrifice,” Roberts said outside the courtroom. “I never bought that an [18-year-old] kid would adopt the principles of an organization from 50 years ago.”

Roberts also didn’t believe that his head-shaved client had “the expertise to skin and dismember a person on his own.” The defense attorney cited Meraz-Espinoza’s later statements to police that two other people were also involved. Roberts claimed that Meraz-Espinoza claimed that his participation was limited to helping to cut his mother into pieces after she was strangled.

To his credit, Meraz-Espinoza had no prior convictions. The prosecutors and the defense attorneys agreed on one thing — that the defendant’s relationship with his mother before the killing was typical for a teenager with a largely absent father. The mother-son dynamic was strained and poor Amelia Espinoza disapproved of his listening to death metal music.  Of course, that didn’t stop him, Heba Matta added.

In case you’re wondering why Meraz-Espinoza got off relatively easy with a sentence of only 25 years to life, it was probably for two reasons. First, he confessed and pleaded guilty which usually helps get a lighter sentence. Second, there was no evidence that Meraz-Espinoza engaged in mayhem or torture while executing the slaying. Thus, given his prior clean record, 25 to life is probably the highest sentence that the judge could legally pronounce.

Amelia Espinoza’s internal organs were never recovered.

by Patrick H. Moore

The list of radio and television personalities who have had their lives cut short by murder includes Bob Crane, the incredibly popular Los Angeles morning radio personality, circa 1960, and the star of “Hogan’s Heroes.” Crane was bludgeoned to death in a Scottsdale, Arizona hotel room in 1978, a crime that remains unsolved to this day.

According to Wikipedia:

Crane began his career as a disc jockey in New York and Connecticut before moving to Los Angeles where he hosted the number-one rated morning show. In the early 1960s, he moved into acting. Crane is best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E. Hogan in the CBS sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Crane received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on the series.

After Hogan’s Heroes ended, Crane’s career declined. He became frustrated with the few roles he was being offered and began doing dinner theater. In 1975, he returned to television in the NBC series The Bob Crane Show. The series received poor ratings and was canceled after 13 weeks.

While on tour for his play Beginner’s Luck in June 1978, Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale apartment, a murder that remains officially unsolved.

While starring as Colonel Hogan, Crane was introduced to John Henry Carpenter, a regional sales manager for Sony Electronics, who had many high end clients. The two men struck up a friendship and began drinking together at bars. As a celebrity, Crane attracted women with relative ease and was soon introducing Carpenter as his manager. Before long, they began videotaping their sexual encounters. Although Crane’s son Robert later claimed “that all of the women were aware of the videotaping and consented to it,” this is highly debatable. In any event, over the years, Carpenter, who later became national sales manager at Akai, “arranged his business trips to coincide with Crane’s dinner theater touring schedule so that the two could continue seducing and videotaping women. At some point, however, the friendship began to deteriorate.”

In June 1978, Crane was living in the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona while appearing in Beginner’s Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre. On the afternoon of June 29 Crane’s co-star Victoria Ann Berry found his body in his apartment after he failed to show up for a lunch meeting. Crane had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon that was never found, though investigators believed it to be a camera tripod. An electrical cord had been tied around his neck.

The Murder Investigation:

Right from the start, Crane’s estranged friend John Henry Carpenter was a prime suspect. An episode of A&E’s Cold Case Files reports that the “police officers who arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment several times and did not seem surprised that the police were there, which raised suspicions.” Several blood smears that matched Crane’s blood type were found in Carpenter’s rental car. DNA testing, of course, was not available in 1978 and Maricopa County Attorney Charles F. Hyder declined to file charges based on what he considered to be insufficient evidence.

The Maricopa County Attorney re-opened Crane’s murder case in 1990. The investigators reexamined and retested the evidence found in June 1978. This was in the early days of DNA testing and although the blood found in Carpenter’s rental car was tested, the results were inconclusive. A detective working the case, Jim Raines, “discovered an evidence photograph of the car’s interior that appeared to show a piece of brain tissue.” By this point, the blood and tissue samples which had been found in Carpenter’s car the day after Crane’s murder had been lost “but an Arizona judge ruled that the new evidence was admissible.” Carpenter was arrested and charged with Crane’s murder in June of 1992.

The Trial:

Carpenter’s trial was delayed until 1994. At the proceedings, Crane’s son Robert testified that:

“in the weeks before his father’s death, Crane had repeatedly expressed a desire to sever his friendship with Carpenter. Carpenter had become, “a hanger-on,” he said, and “a nuisance to the point of being obnoxious”. The night before his death, Crane reportedly called Carpenter and ended their friendship.

Predictably, Carpenter’s defense attorneys attacked the prosecution’s case as circumstantial and inconclusive. They, no doubt fallaciously, “denied the claim that Carpenter and Crane were on bad terms just before the slaying, and they labeled the determination that a camera tripod was the murder weapon as sheer speculation, based on Carpenter’s occupation.”  Displaying convincing logic, however, they disputed the claim that the rediscovered photo showed brain tissue, pointing out that the authorities “did not have the tissue itself.”

In what was perhaps most damaging to the prosecution, the defense was allowed to introduce as evidence that “Crane had been videotaped and photographed in compromising sexual positions with numerous women.” This, of course, implied that either a jealous person or someone fearing blackmail could well have been the killer.

Based on this and the other evidence, Carpenter was found not guilty. He maintained his innocence until his death on September 4, 1998 and Crane’s murder remains officially unsolved.

In 2002, “Crane’s life and murder were depicted in the film Auto Focus, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Greg Kinnear as Crane.” The film was based on Robert Graysmith’s book, The Murder of Bob Crane: Who Killed the Star of Hogan’s Heroes?, portrayed Crane “as a happily married, church-going family man and popular Los Angeles disc jockey who suddenly becomes a Hollywood celebrity, and subsequently declines into sex addiction.”

There is, of course, a moral to this story which goes something like this:

If, given the opportunity to bed an endless array of beautiful and exciting women, and if you lack the self-control to “just say no,” it is strongly recommended that you do not videotape the evidence. This compulsion to record one’s misdeeds is, of course, a modern phenomenon, and would appear to stem from a combination of prurient fascination, the desire to parade one’s conquests, and, perhaps, a measure of underlying guilt leading to what is ultimately a public confession.