commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We’re all probably familiar with the horrible dream scenario where you’ve been having a bad dream and you wake up, only you’re not completely awake, and you remember your bad dream with a sinking heart wondering if it really happened, and then as the cobwebs start to slowly lift you gradually realize that the “dream” was only a “bad dream” and a feeling of vast relief floods your system.

But what if this is precisely your situation and what if it wasn’t a dream but rather a TV show about a murder and as you watch it (or afterwards), you realize to your horror that YOU ARE THE MURDERER? Worthy of Edgar Allan Poe or the Twilight Zone, you say?

This is the peculiar scenario a 53-year-old man named Pedro Hernandez finds himself in concerning the now 35-year-old disappearance of missing poster child Etan Patz.

On the morning of Friday, May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz left his SoHo apartment in New York City. It was his first time walking the two block from his house to the bus stop by himself. Etan wore a blue captain hat, a blue shirt, blue jeans and blue sneakers. He never reached the bus stop. When he did not come home when school ended, his mother called the police. Etan’s disappearance helped spark the missing children’s movement, including new legislation and various methods for tracking down missing children, such as the milk-carton campaigns of the mid-1980s. In fact, Etan was the first ever missing child to be pictured on the side of a milk carton. He was declared legally dead in 2001.

Etan’s case was officially re-opened in 2012 and on April 19, 2012, FBI and NYPD investigators began excavating the SoHo basement of 127B Prince Street, near the Patz home. It had been discovered that case files revealed the basement had been newly refurbished shortly after the boy’s disappearance in 1979. The basement had been the workshop and storage space of a carpenter who had previous contact with Etan as well as many others in the neighborhood at the time. After a four-day search, investigators announced there was “nothing conclusive found”, including any skeletal or human remains.

It was while watching a TV show about the search of the basement workshop that Pedro Hernandez realized (or re-realized) that he had murdered Etan Patz by strangling him. But although he was quite sure he was the killer, he was not 100 per cent certain.

Jennifer Peltz writes for the AP:

“‘Did I (do) it?’ . It was just a thought that came into my head,” Pedro Hernandez recalls in the psychologist’s report, part of a recent court filing that adds new details about his defense in a case that galvanized the missing-children’s movement. “I was, like, nervous and questioning myself … trying to make sense.”

Hernandez would soon tell police he did choke 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, confessing after investigators were tipped (off) that he’d spoken of having harmed a child. But defense psychological experts later found him unsure of whether the brutal scenario he’d described was real or imaginary.

“I believed it in my mind that I did it, but I don’t think I did it,” Hernandez, 53, told one psychologist.

It turns out that Hernandez’ belief that he may have been the killer was not an entirely new realization for him in 2012 after watching the TV show. In fact, back in the early 1980s, he had reportedly told various people including his ex-wife (with whom he’d remained friends) and a church prayer circle that “he’d hurt an unnamed child in New York City.”

But although Hernandez may have confessed his alleged crime to various people 30 years ago, when questioned by the authorities, these folks provided widely varying tales. One person remembers him saying he’d dismembered a boy, while another recalls him strangling a child after being hit with a ball. The reports were all over the map and “even the child’s race varied, according to one of three recently filed defense psychologist’s reports.”

But based on the reports, old and inconsistent though they were, the investigators met with Hernandez in May of 2012 and questioned him for more than 6 hours. At some point in the interrogation, Hernandez confessed on video that “he choked Etan, put the still-living boy into a plastic bag, stuffed the bag in a box and dumped it on a street.”

“I felt like something just took over me.”

Hernandez has been on anti-psychotic medication for the past ten years. He has been diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, the characteristics of which include social isolation and odd beliefs.

In the course of his police interrogation, Hernandez said that he’s seen visions of his deceased mother. In his conversations with defense psychiatrists, he explained that he has heard voices ordering him around intermittently since his teens. He’s also seen furniture move without any sign of moving men and has observed people no one else sees hanging around around his house. He told his doctors that “a voice told him to approach Etan and that several mysterious people followed along during the attack, though he also said the memory “feels like a dream,” according to the psychologists’ reports.

Defense psychologist Bruce Frumkin believes that Hernandez’ psychological problems and intellectual limitations (his IQ in the bottom 2 percent of the population) put him “at much greater risk than others” of falsely confessing and make it difficult for him to distinguish real life from fantasy. Frumkin writes:

“His delusional thinking and hallucinatory experiences could have easily caused him to convince himself he was somehow responsible for the boy’s death when in fact he was not.”

This week the judge ruled that at Hernandez’ trial set for early next year, the jurors will be allowed to hear his confession, and that it will be up to them to decide how much weight to give it. Thus the curious borderland between belief and reality “is shaping up to be a central issue in his murder trial.”

Needless to say, the prosecution insists that his confession was entirely legitimate and they will be attempting to limit the admissibility at trial of “expert testimony on the psychological phenomenon of false confessions.”

“We believe the evidence that Mr. Hernandez killed Etan Patz to be credible and persuasive and that his statements are not the product of any mental illness,” the Manhattan district attorney’s office stated.

The prosecutors naturally have their own psychologists’ evaluations of Hernandez, which to date they have not disclosed. They do note, though, that Hernandez was never hospitalized for psychological problems before his arrest and that he’d been able to hold jobs, apply for government benefits and, on occasion, discuss religion.

Technically, the prosecution has requested that the judge limit any potential false confession expert testimony to factors accepted by the “scientific community,” based on a New York legal standard. Hernandez’s lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, stated, however, in court papers filed by the defense, that testimony provided by Hernandez’ doctors will meet the criteria propound by the “scientific community”.

* * * * *

I suspect that in reality the jurors get it wrong much of the time. How often? 20 per cent of the time? 30 per cent of the time? My point is that the evidence provided at trial often does not provide solid and unequivocal proof of who did what. Just last week, I read a 1,000 page trial transcript and came away from it quite certain that based on the evidence, it was impossible to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt whether the defendant was actually guilty. Yet the jurors chose to convict in relatively short order.

In the case of Pedro Hernandez, I suspect that there is no way on earth that the jurors will be able to conclude with certainty whether or not his confession was valid. Yet, more than likely, they will reach a hard and fast verdict to acquit or convict (probably the latter) at the end of the trial.

In a sense, the jurors will find themselves in a position not unlike Hernandez himself.

Hernandez: Did I kill Etan Patz? I think I did but I’m not sure.

Jurors: Is his confession valid? We think it is but we’re not sure.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, your Honor. We find Pedro Hernandez _____ of the murder of Etan Patz…”

by BJW Nashe

These days, if you’re going to start robbing banks or convenience stores, you need to put some effort into personal style and fashion. You are certain to be caught on surveillance video at some point during your escapades. Soon your appearance will be on the Internet for all to see–much like celebrities who grace the red carpets of awards shows. So there’s no excuse to neglect the fashion component of your criminal activity.

Lately we have seen criminals exploring a wide variety of styles — from glamorous cross-dressing to casual grunge to silly disguises — with varying degrees of success. No matter what, they have definitely been turning heads at the FBI. Here are some notable examples:

On May 20, a woman robbed a bank in Stuart, Iowa while wearing a striking green gown described as a “mullet dress,” since it’s short in front and long in the back. Surveillance footage shows that the slim, 5’4“ woman had long, dark reddish-brown hair, and carried a handbag slung over her shoulder. Authorities are still trying to figure out if the suspect is an actual woman, or a transvestite. Either way, all agree that as a pure fashion statement, this robbery was a big success.

Leonard Brown Jr., known by police as the “Stretchy Pants Bandit,” was caught on camera robbing a bank in Ceres, California in September 2012. His ensemble included a dark wig and women’s “flashdance-style” aerobics clothing. No one doubts that this was a large black man dressed as a female. And RuPaul doesn’t have anything to worry about, in terms of being upstaged by “Ms. Brown.”

According to the FBI, a woman known as the “Plain Jane Bandit” has robbed seven banks in Southern California since July 2012. She earned her nickname by pulling jobs without any makeup, and usually wearing sweats, with no hairstyle to speak of. Sometimes in the world of crime, “non-style” is a style in itself.

The “AK-47 Bandit” is a traditionalist. In 2012 he hit one bank in North Bend, Washington and then another in Chino, California. This past March, he managed to shoot and wound a police officer while robbing a bank in Vacaville. He tends to wear a black ski-mask, dark earth-toned shirts and trousers, and always carries an AK-47 assault rifle. It is a forceful, functional look that works well in any bank robbery.

Colton Harris-Moore, known as the “Barefoot Bandit,” led police on a two-year crime spree involving stolen cars, boats, and planes. For obvious reasons, he wasn’t shoplifting any shoes. Perhaps his barefoot antics indicated a willingness to dispense with clothing altogether, and head in the direction of fully nude crimes. We’ll never know, however, since Harris-Moore was eventually captured, and is now reduced to wearing flip-flops in a Washington State prison.

In July 2010 a man was caught on camera robbing a New York City bank while carrying a large bouquet of flowers. The note he reportedly handed over to bank personnel demanded cash, and stated, “Don’t be a hero.” The flowers, by all accounts, smelled lovely, and added an element of mystery and romance to the crime.

In Australia, a woman known as the “Buxom Bandit” was caught on camera with a male companion holding up a gas station with a knife. She earned her nickname for two obvious reasons, which were barely covered by the plunging neckline of her top. If you got it, flaunt it–especially when it comes to armed robbery.

 The “Geezer Bandit” looks like an 85 year-old man as he shuffles up to the bank teller and demands cash. His wrinkled face is partially obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap, though. After his most recent robbery in California, he was seen sprinting across the parking lot. The authorities think the geezer look might be a disguise.

The “Fat Clown Robber” in Redding, California became an Internet sensation in late March when security cameras videotaped his botched attempt to bust into a convenience store in the middle of the night. The huge gut, stocking cap, and colorful pajama bottoms are a sure way to make a spectacle out of yourself during any crime. And if you fall flat on your face when trying to make your getaway, you will no doubt gain some “fans.”

So there you have it. Any wannabe armed robbers out there might want to take this lesson to heart. If you’re going to stick up a bank or a gas station or a convenience store, your “look” matters. The cameras will be rolling. Soon the cops will give you a nickname. Then the fashionistas will start weighing in. It may be your last chance to make a statement, before you end up in a faded prison jumpsuit.

by BJW Nashe

Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s roller coaster ride during the past decade — through the ups and downs of running a business, surviving a hurricane disaster, enduring injustice, and achieving fame — came to a screeching halt in July 2012 when he was arrested for assaulting his ex-wife, Kathy Zeitoun, and then charged with plotting to have her murdered.

The Syrian-American painting and building contractor from New Orleans gained renown in 2009 as the subject of Dave Eggers’s award-winning book, Zeitoun, which detailed both his heroic actions and his wrongful arrest and detention as a “looter” and “possible terrorist” during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005. Eggers’s narrative ended on a positive note: we were left with a good deal of hope that Zeitoun and his family will continue down their own unique path of personal integrity and hard-won prosperity.

Instead, everything went to hell for Abdulrahman Zeitoun. He became abusive, and his marriage fell apart. He was arrested twice for assaulting Kathy, then serious criminal charges were filed. Zeitoun’s July 2013 trial for solicitation of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder of his ex-wife ended with him being acquitted on both counts. Yet the abusive behavior underlying the murder charges have cast a heavy shadow over his life and reputation. Most of us who first learned of Zeitoun in Eggers’s remarkable book are left wondering, what went wrong?

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Zeitoun was an immigrant success story. He was born and raised in a large family of hard-working over-achievers in Jableh, a dusty fishing town on the coast of Syria. As a young man, he became accomplished in many trades, including sea-faring, fishing, and carpentry. In 1988, he traveled to the U.S. on an oil tanker bound from Saudi Arabia to Houston, Texas. He decided to stay in the States, and began working for a contractor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Due to his strong work ethic and multifarious skills, he became moderately successful. Soon he was in New Orleans managing his own team of painters and contractors. He formed his own business, Zeitoun Painting Contractors LLC.

Zeitoun met Kathy in 1988 and they were married six years later. She was raised in a Southern Baptist family in Baton Rouge, but converted to Islam soon after her first marriage ended. When she met Abdulrahman, she was a 21 year-old single mom, living with her young son, Zachary. Zeitoun was older than her, at 34, but they hit it off well. She found him to be good husband material: kind, ambitious, and devout in his faith. He found her to be more than his match in terms of smarts and savvy. She was well-read, quick-witted, and tough-minded. Eggers portrays the Zeitouns in a loving partnership — a far cry from the violence and abuse that would later come to dominate their story. By the summer of 2005, the couple is raising three young daughters in addition to Zachary, and both are working tirelessly at running the family business. They also own and manage half a dozen rental properties in New Orleans. Life is challenging, but they are getting ahead.

Everything changed with the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Eggers tells us what happened to the Zeitouns in simple, straightforward prose. No literary tricks are required, because the story is so remarkable in itself. Here we have a man and a woman desperately struggling to endure two calamities: the great devastation brought by the storm, and the disastrous failures of the agencies and officials who were supposed to bring relief to the storm’s victims.

As the storm approached New Orleans in late August 2005, Kathy decided to take their four children to Baton Rouge, while Abdulrahman insisted on staying behind to guard their home. Barricaded safely inside, Zeitoun assumed he had made it through the peak of the storm unscathed. When the levees protecting the city were breached, however, Zeitoun’s neighborhood was flooded with more than ten feet of water that reached up to the second floor of most houses. Zeitoun began exploring the city in a secondhand canoe, distributing any supplies he could gather, rescuing and ferrying neighbors to higher ground, and caring for abandoned dogs.

On September 6, Zeitoun’s humanitarian efforts were shut down when he and three of his companions were arrested at one of Zeitoun’s rental houses by a group of U.S. Army National Guardsmen and police officers. Abdulrahman’s ensuing ordeal is emblematic of the government’s fundamentally flawed and inhumane response to Hurricane Katrina. Rather than focusing on storm relief for the victims, law enforcement working under the umbrella of FEMA — which after 9-11 had been folded into the Department of Homeland Security — approached the disaster zone primarily as an anti-terrorism operation. Search and rescue missions became secondary to patrolling the “war zone” to round up “suspects” and maintain “law and order.” Since they were working in a “state of emergency,” federal, state, and local officials were all too willing to set constitutional rights aside. For someone like Abdulrahman Zeitoun, New Orleans may as well have been Baghdad.

Caught up in this terrible dragnet, Zeitoun and his friends were detained for three days in a makeshift jail at a Greyhound bus station, where their cells were little more than crudely constructed cages. Then they were transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in nearby St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Here Zeitoun was held for 20 additional days without being formally charged with a crime or given a court appearance. Meanwhile he was physically and verbally abused as he was interrogated as a terrorist suspect. He witnessed other detainees being similarly mistreated. He and his friends were held in segregated cells, denied lawyers, provided no medical attention, and prohibited from using phones. Zeitoun was unable to contact his family. His wife thought he had somehow disappeared. He was unsure how many weeks, months, or even years he might be kept locked up.

Zeitoun was finally charged with looting in the amount of $500, and bail was set at $75,000, ten times the normal amount for the crime. Several officials refused to disclose to Kathy Zeitoun the location of his public hearing, telling her that the information was “private.” She was finally able to track him down, post his bail and pick him up from Hunt Correctional Center. Once there, she barely recognized her husband. He had lost 20 pounds, his hair had grown shaggy and gray, and he looked like a sad old man. Here is Eggers’s account of their reunion:

“A few minutes later he was free. He walked to her and she ran to him. They held each other for a long moment. She could feel his shoulder blades, his ribs. His neck seemed so thin and fragile, his arms skeletal. She pulled back, and his eyes were the same — green, long-lashed, touched with honey — but they were tired, defeated. She had never seen this in him. He had been broken.”

Upon his release from prison, Zeitoun returned home to find his house destroyed, with the carcasses of the family dogs rotting in an upstairs room. One of his rental properties had been looted, because police had left it unlocked after their search. It was difficult for Zeitoun to get his wallet and ID back; the authorities insisted that they be kept as “evidence.” When Kathy managed to convince an assistant DA to return the wallet, all of the cash, business cards, and credit cards were missing — or should we say, “looted.”

The three friends taken into custody with Zeitoun fared far worse. They were incarcerated for longer periods of time — five, six, and eight months — before they were eventually released. One of them, who had been carrying $10,000 in cash to evacuate New Orleans with, never saw his money again. This too was apparently “looted.” All charges against these men were eventually dropped.

Post-Katrina, the Zeitouns struggled to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. Eggers explains how they lived in seven different apartments and houses while their home was gutted, rebuilt, and expanded. The couple steadily regained control over their painting and contracting business. Yet there were problems. Abdulrahman’s return to full health was slow, and he continued to struggle with anger and shame over his arrest. He was fearful of any further encounters with police. Islamophobia had always been a factor in their lives, especially in the tense months following 9-11. After Zeitoun’s arrest, however, it was difficult not to feel unjustly persecuted. On top of all this, Kathy began experiencing digestive tract problems and cognitive difficulties. She had trouble remembering things. Sometimes she forgot how to use the computer, or couldn’t understand what people were saying to her. She was told these were most likely symptoms related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The Zeitouns wanted to put the whole hurricane episode behind them, but were unsure how to do so. Encouraged by friends, they hired a lawyer to pursue a civil suit against various local, state, and federal agencies. Then they were basically told to get in line. New Orleans was no longer literally underwater, but the city was now flooded with thousands of lawsuits just like the Zeitouns’.

In spite of these great difficulties, Eggers closes his book with a meditation on Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s hope for building a better future:

“We can only do the work, he tells Kathy, and his children, and his crew, his friends, anyone he sees. So let us get up early and stay late, and, brick by brick and block by block, let us get that work done. If he can picture it, it can be. This has been the pattern of his life: ludicrous dreams followed by hours and days and years of work and then a reality surpassing his wildest hopes and expectations. And so why should this be any different?”

Zeitoun was published in 2009 by McSweeny’s, Eggers’s own independent publishing company. It went on to win the National Book Award as well as a host of other honors, and is widely considered to be a masterpiece of nonfiction narrative, as well as a leading account of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. All author proceeds of the book went to the Zeitoun Foundation, established by the Zeitoun family, Eggers, and McSweeny’s. Jonathan Demme purchased the movie rights, and planned to turn the story into an animated feature film.

Meanwhile, Abdulrahman and Kathy’s marriage came unglued. It is unclear exactly why the relationship deteriorated. In any case, the loving husband in Eggers’s book turned monstrous. In March 2011, police arrested Abdulrahman for allegedly beating Kathy and threatening to kill her in front of their four children. After that incident, Kathy asked the district attorney’s office to reduce the charges from domestic-abuse battery to negligent injuring. She has since testified that she felt a lot of “pressure from friends and family, because of the book, because of the movie, because of our business reputation.”

The couple was divorced in February 2012. Later that year, on July 25, 2012, Abdulrahman was arrested for allegedly attacking Kathy with a tire-iron on Prytania Street in New Orleans. Once Zeitoun was behind bars, more serious charges began piling up. A man named Donald Pugh, who was imprisoned with Zeitoun at Orleans Parish Prison, told authorities that Zeitoun offered him $20,000 to kill his ex-wife. The plan, according to Pugh, was simple. Pugh was soon to be released from prison. Once outside, he was to call Kathy and ask to see one of the family’s rental properties. After meeting her there, he could kill her. Pugh said Zeitoun also told him to buy a “throwaway phone” and take some pictures to confirm she was dead.

Instead of pursuing lesser charges of domestic-abuse battery or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, prosecutors decided to charge Zeitoun with solicitation of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder of his ex-wife based primarily on Pugh’s testimony. This turned out to be a mistake. Zeitoun waved the right to a jury trial, and it was relatively easy for his defense attorneys to cast doubt on Pugh’s credibility.

As he issued his verdict of not guilty on both counts, Judge Frank Marullo criticized prosecutors for relying on the testimony of Pugh, a self-described thief who has been imprisoned in four separate states, and who lied to his child’s mother about his real name for the duration of their five year relationship. “That guy is a liar,” Judge Marullo said. “He has no credibility at all. I’m surprised the state put him on the stand at all. That’s an injustice.”

Relatives of Kathy Zeitoun reportedly stood up and rushed out of the courtroom as soon as Marullo read the verdict. “It is what it is. It’s our system,” said her brother, who asked to be identified only as Gino. He said he would try to keep his sister safe from her ex-husband with “restraining orders, whatever we need to do.”

Kathy’s own testimony pointed to a far deeper and more troubling pattern of domestic abuse than many of us who knew the Zeitouns strictly from Eggers’s book would have thought possible. Her statements indicated that she suffered abuse from the beginning of their marriage in 1994, up until the storm, and then even worse in the aftermath. “The first time he attacked me I kept everything quiet,” she said. “I felt that gave him the ability to do it again.” When Assistant District Attorney Lauren Faveret asked Kathy in court whether she would be fearful for her life if her ex-husband was released, she replied, “I’d be dead.”

The precise reasons for Zeitoun’s increasingly violent behavior remain unclear. Has he been suffering from a PTSD-related breakdown? Was he unable to accept the fact that his marriage was ending, and thus driven to escalating outbursts? Is he merely following the pattern of most domestic abusers, in which the problem only worsens over time? These are all plausible explanations, but we simply do not know for sure. Kathy has described her husband becoming more angry and violent in the years following Hurricane Katrina. She says her husband’s faith has taken on more radical overtones. Several of these factors — a prior pattern of abusive, stress, divorce, religion — may have joined together to create a potent psychological cocktail.

Dave Eggers, meanwhile, has been taking some heat during the past two years for refusing to answer any questions pertaining to Zeitoun’s legal troubles, especially in regard to how the domestic abuse allegations might conflict with his portrayal in the award-winning book. On December 9, 2012, Salon.com posted a story (originally printed in the L.A. Review of Books) by Victoria Patterson titled, “Did Dave Eggers Get ‘Zeitoun’ Wrong?” On December 20, Sara Foss at Daily Gazette.com was emphatic in her skepticism: “The criminal charges against Zeitoun make me question everything Eggers has ever written…” On September 12, 2013, The Philadelphia Review of Books demanded answers from Eggers:

“The answer to a simple question – did you know anything about the abuse while reporting your book? – might help us understand what to take from a work that claims to tell us something important about Islam and the justice system and the United States in the early 21st century. Was Zeitoun the noble man Eggers presents in his book or was that portrayal a simplistic literary perversion? Did Zeitoun suffer a post-traumatic stress reaction after his detainment so severe that he could not function as the good man he once was?

“Zeitoun, the man, is a private person, not beholden to the public. But Eggers shared his creation with the world and should care enough to help readers put his work into perspective.”

In re-reading Zeitoun, however, I find little to support the claim that Eggers presented his subject as a saint or a noble hero. In fact, Abdulrahman comes across as human-all-too-human. Granted, he’s no wife-beater. Yet, in addition to all of his virtues, Eggers plainly describes Zeitoun’s disagreements with his wife, which involved the kind of squabbling many couples are quite familiar with — probably even more heated than most. And Eggers shows us that Zeitoun is a stubborn man at times, and a steadfast workaholic. Moreover, Eggers states outright that following his arrest and detention, Zeitoun was struggling with anger and despair. He describes both Abdulrahman and Kathy as “broken.” Even though Eggers ends their story on a positive note — because he clearly cares for them — he is not asserting that their success is guaranteed, because they are such noble individuals. He might hope so, but he has shown us two imperfect beings who have been deeply scarred by their experiences.

So I think it is unfair to accuse Eggers of suppressing information or whitewashing Abdulrahman’s character, simply because he does not want to wade into a controversial legal matter. It is not that difficult to understand how Eggers could work with the Zeitouns on this project and still be unaware of any domestic abuse going on behind closed doors in the Zeitoun home. Families often hide this kind of problem for months and years at a time. Eggers was telling their hurricane story, not investigating their personal lives.

More relevant than what Eggers did or did not get right, is the way in which Zeitoun’s unfolding story forces us to acknowledge that people can be very complex. It is entirely possible for an individual to serve as a brave humanitarian in one set of circumstances, and then turn around and act like a villain or a madman in another set of circumstances. Moreover, given the traumatic nature of Zeitoun’s hurricane experiences, it is not all that surprising that he would have serious difficulties down the road. Hopefully, his pride is no longer standing in the way of him admitting that he needs help.

Rather than criticizing Dave Eggers or demonizing Zeitoun, we would do better to focus on the huge problem of domestic violence in our society. Why didn’t anybody know about the pattern of abuse Kathy had suffered? Why did she feel that she needed to put up with abuse for so long in a relationship? What was wrong with her husband? Why did he feel compelled to abuse her? How did his wrongful arrest exacerbate the problem? How does the criminal justice system in general contribute to the problem? Does religious fundamentalism play a role? How can we stop this from happening in so many American homes?

From this whole incredible saga, only one thing is certain: on a whole range of issues — immigration, extreme weather, emergency response, wrongful arrest, Islamophobia, the War on Terror, PTSD, domestic violence, and murder trials — Abdulrahman Zeitoun has left us with an awful lot to think about.

by Mike Roche

Until recently, the Darin and Kim Campbell family lived in a rented 1.6 million dollar Tampa mansion, the former home of retired tennis star James Blake. The house sat behind the gates of the prestigious and very private Avila development, which was populated with multimillion-dollar homes and occupied by celebrity powerbrokers and athletes. The neighborhood centerpiece was an exclusive private golf course. Darin Campbell, 49, was a business executive at VASATEC, a digital records management services company. His wife, Kim, 51, was a stay-at-home mom, who was active in the community and at her teenagers’ school. The Campbell children, Megan, 15, and Colin, 18, attended the prestigious Carollwood Day School. Megan was an honors student and dancer. Colin, who had just attended his senior prom, was a talented student and baseball player.

In the predawn hours, on this day of ignominy, neighbors of the Campbell’s frantically summoned the fire department as they watched in horror as the opulent home became engulfed in flames. As firefighters battled the blaze, they discovered a grisly scene. Four unidentified bodies were located inside the house. Investigators quickly determined the fire was the result of an arson and the victims were killed by gunshot prior to the fire destroying the home.

Despite the outward appearance that the Campbell’s were the all-American family, there were cracks in the façade. Investigators have learned that in the days prior to fire, Darrin Campbell made several rather unusual moves. First, he purchased several gas cans at a home improvement store at about 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 4^th. An hour later, he bought over $600 worth of fireworks. The sales clerk at the fireworks store noted no unusual behavior from Darrin. On Tuesday, the day before the fire, he filled the gas cans at two separate service stations. He had already previously purchased a handgun in 2013.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Colonel Donna Lusczynski said, “Darrin Campbell, with the gun that was registered to him, systematically shot his son, his daughter and his wife in the head. He then placed fireworks throughout the residence. Used an accelerant to assist in lighting the fire. Lit the fire and then shot himself.”

*     *     *     *     *

Darrin and Kim Campbell moved from Michigan to Tampa in 2000 with their children. They built a home in an upscale neighborhood not far Tampa Airport. Their mortgage was a formidable  $546,000. In 2003, they acquired a vacant lot in another affluent development north of Tampa for $338,000. Darrin and Kim were thriving economically. They paid off the mortgage on the lot and sold the land for a handsome $160,000 profit in 2006.

During the Christmas Holidays, the Campbell family home was so lavishly decorated that the pleasing display drew crowds from neighboring communities. For four consecutive years, the home won honors as the “Best Decorated Holiday Home.” The family’s electric bill rose $800 during the holidays and they accepted donations to defray expenses. The Campbell’s then donated the $3,733 in donations to Metropolitan Ministries, a homeless support shelter for indigent families.

At the height of the real estate boom, the couple bought another vacant lot for $294,000 in the same development where their previous vacant lot was located. Although they still owned the new lot at the time of their deaths, the market had soured and the property was now worth one-third of the original purchase price. A lien was placed on the lot due to $7,800 in unpaid homeowner’s association fees. They eventually paid off the lien, but their financial struggles continued, and they were continually delinquent on their property taxes. They refinanced their house several times before selling it in 2012 for $750,000. The Campbell’s made a profit on the deal, but their overhead expenses continued to be steep. Their next big move was to move into the former Blake residence in the Avila estates.

Darrin Campbell was on the board of Carrollwood Day School, and served as treasurer. He formerly was a senior vice president at PODS, a shipping and storage container company. In 2007, Darrin took a position as vice-president at IVANS, an insurance company. After it changed ownership, he became the chief operating officer (COO) at VASTEC, where he recently took a leave of absence. The rent on the former Blake home was estimated to be a tidy $5,000 a month for the 5,000 square foot home. The base annual tuition for Carrolwood Day School was approximately $34,000 for the two children. The additional cost of books, uniforms, various fundraisers, and other educational expenses had to be a drain on the Campbell family checkbook. And of course, college tuition loomed on the horizon with Colin scheduled to graduate in a month.

Darrin Campbell’s mother, Mary, told the Daily News she was searching for answers. “I have no idea what happened. I spoke to him last night.” (the night before the conflagration). Family friends and neighbors heaped accolades on the entire family. It was obvious that they were well-respected and loved within the community.

We rarely have the opportunity to gaze behind the veneer of the façade our neighbors, or even our relatives, erect. We see what they allow us to see, and they often successfully conceal what’s really going on, especially if they have serious issues.

After conducting an extensive examination of the arson scene, investigators are still searching computers and papers found in the home. Interviews of family and friends may uncover ripples, or even violent rapids, sullying the appearance of calm waters. Interviews with employers both past and present may also shed light into Darrin Campbell’s employment stability or any possible inappropriate behavior. A financial audit will reveal the magnitude of the family’s financial problems.

The further up the ladder one ascends, the more difficult it becomes to step down when one’s personal wheel of fortune descends. One of the top ten stressors in life is finances. As individuals become overwhelmed with financial stress, the pressure often intrudes into both their domestic life and their employment. The negative emotional vortex sucks many formerly successful individuals into a life of despair from which they see no way to escape. They view alternatives (translated as a substantially reduced standard of living) as a stamp of failure.

Two-thirds of those who engage in targeted violence and mass murder have contemplated or attempted suicide in the past. When immense personal darkness clutches at these people, their thought processes and judgment become clouded. They become convinced that their family will have to endure the grief of their loss and the humiliation of their tarnished legacy. As a result, they view killing their family as an act of altruism.

Darrin Campbell will now be labeled as a family annihilator. These killers are most often men. In 2012, a study of 313 murder/suicides by the Violence Policy Center found that 90% of the killers were male. Most multiple-victim, murder-suicides involving a male murderer and three or more victims are perpetrated by family annihilators.  69% of murder-suicides falling into this category were perpetrated by family annihilators.  Family annihilators are murderers who kill their intimate partners and children, as well as other family members, before killing themselves.  USF Professor, Dr. Donna Cohen, states that in over a third of these cases, the annihilator starts a fire to cover their crime leaving only ashes. She feels that this is an attempt to deny access to their personal lives.

As surviving friends and relatives of the Campbell family struggle with the grief of this tragic loss, they are left to contemplate the lost contributions that Kim, Megan, and Colin would have provided to the world.

Please click here to view Mike Roche’s previous posts:

Alex Hribal Was Desperate and Said He Wanted Someone to Kill Him

Columbia Mall Shooter Darion Aguilar Followed the Model of Notorious Mass Murderers

Peter Lanza Speaks: The Lethal and Unvarnished Truth about His Son Adam

FHP Officer Jimmy Fulford Fields Pipe Bomb Intended for Young Mother with His Bare Hands and Dies Instantly

Fire Department and California Highway Patrol Go 9 Rounds: Win, Lose or Draw?

The Boston Bombers: A Tale of Two Troubled Brothers

Don’t Text at the Movies, The Life You Lose May Be Your Own!

Killers and the Catcher in the Rye

Mike Roche has over three decades of law enforcement experience. He began his career with the Little Rock Police Department, and spent twenty-two years with the U.S. Secret Service. The last fifteen years of his career were focused on conducting behavioral threat assessments of those threatening to engage in targeted violence. He is the author of three novels and two nonfiction works on mass murder and also rapport building. Retired, Mike is currently a security consultant at Protective Threat LLC, and an adjunct instructor at Saint Leo University. He resides in Florida with his family.

Mass Killers: How you Can Identify, Workplace, School, or Public Killers Before They Strikehttp://www.amazon.com/Mass-Killers-Identify-Workplace-School-ebook/dp/B00GHZWC1M/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389112969&sr=1-2&keywords=mass+killers

Face 2 Face: Observation, Interviewing and Rapport Building Skills: an Ex-Secret Service Agent’s Guidehttp://www.amazon.com/Face-2-ebook/dp/B009991BII/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354630000&sr=1-6

The Blue Monster  http://www.amazon.com/The-Blue-Monster-ebook/dp/B0054H8TMA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1312641741&sr=1-1

Coins of Death http://www.amazon.com/Coins-Of-Death-ebook/dp/B005RPZ256/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317860179&sr=1-3

Karma! http://www.amazon.com/Karma-Mike-Roche-ebook/dp/B0054H4OAG/ref=la_B00BHEIF78_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389724285&sr=1-4

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Opinions differ as to the validity of vigilante efforts in criminal matters and — for the most part — it’s probably a good thing that non-law-enforcement personnel are typically not in a position to mete out justice. Last June, however, in a rural area of Lafayette Parish, La., it was the family of kidnap victim Bethany Arceneaux, 29, of Duson, La, that rescued her from her abductor, Scott Thomas, in an abandoned house on the edge of a sugar cane field after law enforcement had searched for her fruitlessly for nearly two days. This is yet another true crime story in which the facts could easily be poured into a captivating crime novel.

Alexis Shaw of World News writes:

The family of a kidnapped Louisiana mother tracked down and killed the father of her child in the abandoned house where he was allegedly holding her prisoner, authorities said.

Bethany Arceneaux, 29, of Duson, La., was abducted in the parking lot of a daycare where she was picking up her 2-year-old at approximately 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Department Captain Kip Judice told ABCNews.com.

Witnesses saw the suspect, Scott Thomas, allegedly force Arceneaux into his white Buick LeSabre, before driving off…

Although they were not married, according to Captain Judice, Thomas, 29, of Leonville, La., was the father of Bethany Arceneaux’s child. As a result of relationship problems, Bethany filed a police complaint on June 15, claiming Thomas locked her in a house and threatened to kill both her and her son. A protective order against Thomas was issued June 17 and Thomas was arrested on Aug. 8th, and later released, for violating the order.

At the time of the abduction, Bethany’s child was left behind in her car at the daycare center. Bethany’s mother arrived later and was allowed to take the child home with her. Meanwhile, the search for Thomas and Bethany kicked into high gear. Later that evening, law enforcement officials found Thomas’ car near an abandoned sugarcane field in a rural area of Lafayette Parish, La.

One of Bethany’s shoes was found in the Buick LeSabre; the other had been left in the parking lot of the daycare center.

After locating Thomas’ vehicle, the authorities searched the sugarcane field Wednesday night and all day Thursday, but to no avail. The sugar cane towers two feet above a typical man’s head and it was brutally hard for the rescue team to fight their way through the dense cane.

It wasn’t until Friday morning that a break came resulting from a determined search mounted by Bethany’s own family members. They came upon a secluded, abandoned house behind a cluster of trees directly across the street from the field where Thomas had abandoned his car. According to Captain Judice, only the home’s roof was visible from the road:

“[The family] converged on a piece of property about a mile from where the car was found. One of the family members heard what he thought was a scream.”

Arceneaux’s cousin (it is unclear whether he was the family member who heard the scream) then approached the home, kicked in the door in and entered. There was Thomas holding the beleaguered, and considerably the worse-for-wear, Bethany captive. At the sight of her cousin, Thomas began stabbing Arceneaux, and a confrontation ensued.

“The cousin, who was armed, began firing several shots at Thomas,” Judice said. “After a couple of shots, [Arceneaux] was able to get free of him and they escorted her out of the house.”

Meanwhile, officers who heard the gun shots fired surrounded the home. Upon entering, they found Thomas, who had sustained several gunshot wounds, lying lifeless on the ground.

Arcenaux, who had suffered multiple stab wounds, was transported by ambulance to Lafayette General Medical Center, where she is in stable condition.

Oddly, Captain Judice — in what would appear to be pre-autopsy protocol — stated that Thomas’ cause of death is not known. The captain also stated that Thomas did not own the abandoned home.

Bethany, who was extremely weak and had not eaten or drunk anything since her abduction on Wednesday, told investigators that the home was the only place she remembers being held hostage.

Unsuprisingly, no charges have been filed against the cousin who shot Thomas, and according to Captain Judice, it is unlikely that the man will be charged:

“In the state of Louisiana, you have a right to protect yourself and others from imminent bodily harm. We believe at this point, based on evidence and statements collected, that this guy was acting in defense of Ms. Arceneaux and thus, was within the state law.”

*     *     *     *     *

Carol Kuruvilla of the New York Daily News writes:

The family has been praised for their actions, but the case has also raised questions about why the police were second on the scene. Bethany’s cousin, Dawnetta Roy, found it “upsetting” that her family had to find the missing woman themselves.

But Cpl. Paul Mouton, a Lafayette Police Department spokesman, said that police were on the hunt as well. He claimed it was coincidence that the family found Bethany first.

“While we were looking on one side, they were looking in another and they came upon her. It just so happens where they were looking was where she was found,” Mouton said. “If we weren’t looking at all and they were searching, that would be different.”

“I’m so happy. God is good,” Monica Arceneaux-Henry, Bethany’s aunt, said. “We followed our faith and believed she was alive. God answers prayers.”

 *     *     *     *     *

Although I’m not generally an advocate of vigilante justice, which all too often can deteriorate into mob violence, in this case it seems that it was both effective and necessary. Although some readers will no doubt feel that he had it coming, we’ll never know for certain, however, whether the shooting of Thomas was actually necessary.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

Exhibit I:

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

Exhibit II:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

Exhibit III:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

Exhibit IV:

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We’ve all heard of bad odds but the odds in Saturday’s shootout between 107-year-old Pine Bluff, Arkansas man Monroe Isodore and the Pine Bluff SWAT team were ridiculous. Isodore, who is now deceased, never had a chance. The showdown was triggered when police were called to his home on Saturday afternoon and informed that Isodore had apparently threatened two people at the house  by pointing a weapon at them.

Officers had the pair leave the home for their safety. They then approached a bedroom where Isodore was holed up. According to Pine Bluff Lt. David Price, when the officers announced who they were, Isadore shot through the door but did not hit them.

The officers retreated to reconnoiter. Supervisors and additional help were called in. The superiors started negotiating with Isadore and the negotiations continued when SWAT officers arrived at the home, which is about 45 miles southeast of Little Rock.

SWAT officers inserted a camera into Isodore’s room and saw that he had a handgun. Lt. Price stated that when it was clear that the negotiations weren’t working, SWAT officers released tear gas into the room from outside a bedroom window. The SWAT officers then entered the home, made their way to the bedroom and threw a “distraction device” into the room. Although it’s unclear what exactly the “distraction device” was, it apparently inspired Isodore to once again begin shooting at the officers, who then fired back killing the old man.

No officers were injured in the incident, which is under investigation.

*     *     *     *     *

 Drew Petrimoulx of Arkansas Matters. com writes:

A 107-year-old man was killed during a shootout with the Pine Bluff SWAT Team Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday there was shock, sadness and anger in the community where Monroe Isadore lived. Witnesses say Pine Bluff Police showed up in force at a home off 16th Avenue after reports that Isadore had pointed a gun two people. The police have stated that Isadore fired at them on three separate occasions Saturday before SWAT members shot and killed him.

“I’m in shock today,” said Larry Smith, who attended church with Isadore at New Direction Baptist.

Police say after the first time Isadore fired at them, they backed off and tried to coax him out peacefully.

“He couldn’t hear,” Smith said. “Somebody should’ve told the [police] he couldn’t hear.”

Friends say Isadore was also legally blind. After police deployed gas and a distraction device, they believe Isadore must have been confused.

“For that to happen and like that… had to be,” Smith said.

People in the community who knew him say Isadore was a God-fearing man who grew vegetables and gave them away at church.

“That’s the kind of man that our police department killed,” said Pine Bluff resident Gary Wilson.

Police say the shooting is being investigated, but neighbors believe the situation could have been handled differently.

“I think it should’ve been handled a better way… bottom-line,” a Pine Bluff resident named Canada said.

The Pine Bluff Police Department are expected to comment on the case today. Meanwhile, concerned members of the community will hold a town hall meeting at 6:00 pm Monday at the Pine Bluff Community Center.

*     *     *     *     *

Well, there are two sides to every story but it does seem that once the other residents had been evacuated from the house, law enforcement could have just waited Isodore out. Sooner or later the old man would have either fallen asleep, expired from the tear gas, or left the room on his own accord at which point he could have been apprehended by tasing him or otherwise incapacitating him.

I imagine there will be further developments in this unusual case.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We all know how irritating it can be when the neighbor’s dogs will not stop barking. Across our back fence and one house to the east, there is a “pack” of, I believe, four dogs who unleash a great unkepmt howling around 1:00 am 3 or 4 nights a week. For unknown reasons, they don’t burst forth with this “natural form of noise pollution” on a nightly basis. If they did, I would have to grab my Glock 9, vault the fence and send them to doggie heaven in a volley of hot lead. Actually, that probably won’t be necessary.  Our neighborhood is pretty safe. The worst acts of malicious mischief we have ever been subjected to are the following: 1) One complete and rather artistic TPing. It was artistically rendered but pissed me off plenty — it took me 30 minutes to clean it up; one very thorough egging –my windshields looked like the bottom of a frying pan; and 3) one equally thorough ketchupping. Yuck! The freakin perps should be horsewhipped! Not!

I wish I were a little more alert and would manage to catch them in the act. Would they turn on me and slash my throat and stab me 79 times, like Isabella Guzman did to her mother in Aurora, Colorado, or perhaps blow me away with a handgun? Maybe. But somehow I doubt it. Not in our town…

A different Moore family — the Bruce Moore family of Phoenix, AZ — was not nearly so lucky on Oct 26, 2013. Bruce, his autistic 17-year-old grandson Shannon, and Shannon’s parents, Michael and Renee, and 2 of their 5 dogs, were shot and killed by a reportedly depressed individual named Michael Guzzo in a town home the family had owned for decades, according to the police. Neighbors have reported that Guzzo often argued with pet owners about barking dogs in the development, and police have stated that Guzzo shot at another dog-owning neighbor on Saturday, after which he returned to his own unit and killed himself with the same pump-action shotgun he used for the slayings.

JJ Hensley and Laurie Merrill of The Arizona Republic write:

Michael Guzzo’s life ended as his former wife predicted — at his own hand — but Janet Guzzo said she never envisioned her ex-husband killing anyone else as he sought to end his own deep depression. Guzzo shot a family of four, including an autistic 17-year-old boy, before killing himself with a shotgun in his Phoenix apartment on Saturday morning.

On any other Monday, 66-year-old Bruce Moore, would have escorted Shannon Moore, 17, to the bus, neighbors said, so Shannon could attend classes at a Phoenix high school dedicated to meeting the needs of special-education students in a small-school environment.

Instead, grief counselors met with students at the Desiderata school where Shannon had transferred in April. Many of the conversations centered around one theme: Why Shannon?

“He was such a nice kid. How could this happen to him? Why him?” said Craig Pletenik, a Phoenix Union High School District spokesman who related the questions that the counselors received. “He was at home. Are any of us safe? If you are not safe in your home, where are you safe?”

 The police believe that the answers to the questions Shannon’s classmates were grappling with probably died with Guzzo on Saturday.

*     *     *     *     *

Janet Guzzo, however, who was married to Guzzo for more than a decade before they divorced in 1999, provided some input into this tragic situation, stating that the barking dogs and the presence of a weapon, coupled with Guzzo’s extreme depression and increasing isolation, probably all contributed to Saturday’s catastrophe.

“He always was just such a troubled individual,” said Janet, a psychiatric nurse. “You just knew it was coming. I said, ‘Mike, something bad is going to happen if you can’t get a handle on that rage and anger.’ “

Janet said her ex-husband had never complained to her about his neighbors. According to her, however, his deep-seated depression, which grew worse with age, made anyone who set him off a potential victim.

“It was a case of mental illness, and (he) chose not to address it.”

“Sadness, isolation. It’s hard to get your hand around it because it’s not tangible. He is a nice person, and he wasn’t a bad person; he did a very bad thing,” Janet said. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

*     *     *     *     *

A neighbor of Bruce Moore’s — who has lived in the complex for more than 40 years — explained that Bruce had moved to the unit to care for a relative and that his daughter and her family had joined him within the last few years.

Other neighbors mentioned that Bruce’s daughter Renee and her husband Michael had recently returned from China. Renee was reportedly excited to get her five dogs out of quarantine. Charise Hatchett, a neighbor, explained that Renee left a note on Friday asking Hatchett to drop off her dog for a grooming appointment.

The Arizona Humane Society took possession of the three dogs that survived the shooting.

*     *     *     *     *

I often wonder why my town — which is just an ordinary, racially-mixed, working middle-class community — is so generally peaceful and why the children are relatively good-natured. Whenever I’m over at the high school for parent-teachers conferences or any other event, I’m struck by how polite the kids are. They smile at Old Man Moore and offer pleasantries.

Just this morning, when I was driving my kid to school (now the child is off at college), I asked the child how come he/she didn’t make plans to murder her mother and me when we tell her “no”, which does happen on occasion. The child looked at me in exasperation and cranked up the hip-hop on the car radio. I then asked the child if any of the kids at the high school plotted to murder their parents. The child looked at with increasing exasperation and barked, “No dad, if they did they wouldn’t still be at school.”

How could I argue with that? We listened to the new Eminem and Rhianna duet and I dropped the kid off. Sometimes I think I’m very lucky. Other times I know I am.

But the fact that our town seems reasonably safe and pleasant does not mean that there might not be a Michael Guzzo-type brooding silently behind closed doors. As long as guns are readily available anyone could flip out and wreak havoc with the neighbors or at the high school or at the shopping mall. I just pray that it does not happen. One of the tools that helps me get through each day is my fond belief that our town is somehow a “good place” where violence is scarce and where the kids are more or less decent. I would hate to be proved wrong.

by Bob Couttie

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England, in 1955. The last man to be executed is a coin toss between Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans who were simultaneously dispatched on 13 August 1964. But for a quirk of timing it would have been Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the Moors Murderers.

From July 1963 to October 1965 Ian Brady sexually assaulted and murdered four children with the help of his girlfriend Myra Hindley and buried their bodies on the desolate Saddleworth Moors near Manchester. They were finally caught after Brady involved Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, in the killing of 17-years old Edward Evans. Smith went to the police who searched Brady’s house and found evidence of two of the earlier killings. In 1987 Hindley confessed to two further killings, that of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

First to die was Pauline Reade. On July 12, 1963 Hindley lured the 16-year old friend of her younger sister into her van while Brady followed on a motorbike. Hindley told the girl that she wanted help finding a glove lost on Saddleworth Moor. As they arrived at the moor, Brady pulled up on his motorcycle and went with Pauline to supposedly look for the ‘lost glove’ while Hindley waited in the van.

Pauline was sexually assaulted and her throat was cut. Together, Brady and Hindley buried the body.

Four months later Hindley picked up 12-year old John Kilbride in a hired car. While pretending to drive him home Hindley again used the excuse of looking for a lost glove on the moors. Again, Hindley waited in the car while Brady lead the boy off, sexually assaulted him and strangled him with a piece of string after trying to slit his throat.

 As a souvenir, Brady took a photograph of Hindley sitting at the edge of the grave with her dog, Puppet.

The third victim was 12 year old Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley’s MO was the same: Keith was lured into Hindley’s vehicle and taken to the moors under the pretext of looking for a lost glove. Again Brady sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him.

The body has yet to be found.

Victim number four was Lesley Anne Downey, 10 years old. They abducted her from a fairground. At the house of Brady and Hindley Lesley was photographed naked, tortured, raped and killed.

For a souvenir the couple tape-recorded Lesley’s torture. The tape lasted 16 minutes and 21 seconds.

In what may or may not have been their final victim, in October 1965 Brady and Hindley lured 17 year old Edward Evans to their home where Brady repeatedly hit him with an axe before strangling him with electrical chord. Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, was recruited to help dispose of the body but Smith reported the incident to the police.

From then on the Brady-Hindley murders began to unravel. The tape of the Lesley Anne Downey torture and the photograph of Hindley at Kilbride’s grave surfaced.

It was the month after the arrest of Brady and Hindley that the death penalty was abolished in England.

After a two-week trial at Chester Assizes Brady and Hindley were found guilty of three murders: John Kilbride, Lesley Anne Downey and Edward Evans and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In the early 1980s Brady admitted to two more murders, those of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

The sentencing judge considered Brady “wicked beyond belief” but considered Hindley could be reformed once she was removed from Brady’s influence. The possibility of a reformed Myra Hindley caught the attention of some serious people such as David Astor, editor of the liberal Sunday newspaper The Observer, Lord Longford and the Reverend Peter Timms, a Methodist minister who had once been a prison governor who came to believe that Hindley had reformed and urged her release.

Was she really a woman misled by a ruthlessly wicked man or was she a full partner in a monstrous folie a deux?

Before meeting Hindley when both worked for a chemical company, Brady was a small-time criminal whose biggest ambition was to be a bank robber.  He had an interest in Nazi atrocities and the works of the Marquis de Sade. There is some evidence that he and Hindley were into sadomasochism. Yet thousands share these same tastes without becoming murderers.

In his book, Gates of Janus, Brady writes: “In childhood years I was not the stereotypical ‘loner’ so beloved by the popular  media. Friends formed around me eagerly in the school playground, listening to me talk, and I took it as natural. Apparently, I had a descriptive talent and contagious enthusiasm. All harmless, adventurous stuff, no devious intent. No sense of superiority.”

What finally pushed him across the line may have been Myra Hindley’s chameleon-lie ability to be whatever others wanted her to be, an ability that reinforced the beliefs of those whom she wanted to influence.

Hindley’s background was little different to those of any other working-class Manchester girl. Her ex-paratrooper father liked his drink and was a hard man who wanted his daughter to be hard. When she was hit by a boy as a youngster he told her to go back and beat up the boy, threatening to use his belt on her if she did not. She beat the boy and got her first taste of power but her real talents lay elsewhere.

They both worked at a local chemical company. Hindley became infatuated with Brady, the first man she’d met who had clean fingernails. At first he ignored her, probably deliberately, until finally inviting her out to see a movie – Judgment at Nuremburg (Some account suggest the movie was King of Kings).

The journey to the horror of the Moors had begun.

They largely isolated themselves from co-workers and others in their social circle. Hindley bought a gun for a planned bank robbery and Brady would read from accounts of Nazi atrocities as she cleaned it. They started to lose the essential contact with reality that mixing with others might have brought them.

Hindley dyed her hair blonde and took to wearing makeup and clothes that made her appear more like the Aryan ideal woman of Nazi mythology. In that isolation, with Hindley mirroring and not countering him, Brady came to believe that he was no longer bound by the mores and norms of society.

In the 1960s, the idea that a young woman who might wish to have children one day should murder youngsters seemed only plausible if she had come under the influence of Brady. It was comforting to believe, that removed from his influence, she would be reformed. In due course she became a cause celebre among those who wanted desperately to show that no matter how terrible a crime the criminal was capable of being reformed and returned to society.

She became a devout Catholic, took up tapestry and badminton and took an Open University course in Humanities, middle class pursuits that made her a better fit to the mindset of the reformists who became convinced that she had reformed and should be released.

To prison authorities she became the ideal prisoner and was put in charge of the kitchens.

To a former nun who became a prison guard, Patricia Cairns, she became a lover, one whom Cairns would help escape and the two would run away to South America as missionaries. The scheme was uncovered when wax and soap copies of prison keys were discovered.

Janie Jones, a fellow prisoner, saw another side of Hindley: “(She) could ‘be whatever people wanted her to be. Even then, I noticed two sides to her. One was temperamental: she’d throw a tantrum, shout and perform, and they’d just lock her in her cell where she’d sit and sulk. The other side was very gentle and kind, and this is what made it so difficult to come to any conclusions about the woman’.

Dr. Tom Clark, who studied prison papers about Hindley released in 2008, says: “”You’re expecting something evil, almost as if you are touching evil, but what you find is someone who is very well caught up in the prison administrative system and is actually quite tedious… She uses the system to achieve all sorts of things, whether it’s being able to make her own cups of tea or asking the home secretary about her tariff date.”

Was she a victim of Brady’s force of personality? Dr Clark suggests not: “Hindley did not “do anything that she didn’t want to do. She is very resilient and very forthright in her own mind… I have no doubt that she knew what she was getting involved in.”

Hindley died in prison aged 60 in 2002 and was cremated.

Ian Brady, meanwhile, has been declared insane and is kept under high security at Ashworth Hospital. He wants to die and is on hunger strike. Currently he is being fed by tube and consistently appeals to be returned to prison and allowed to die, a luxury he has not been granted.

But for a quirk of timing he might have achieved that ambition at the end of an executioner’s rope nearly 40 years ago.

See Also:

Serial Child-Killer Ian Brady Argues For Death

More stories from Bob Couttie

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

Sean Rossman of the Tallahassee Democrat writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

Update:

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

We all know about the tried-and-true forms of murder. This includes shootings, beating people to death, stabbings and/or throat-slashings, and now and again 4) death by poison (which is popular with doctors). In the past few months, however, I’ve taken note of three peculiar modes of killing that although probably atypical, seem to be growing in popularity. Specifically, I’m referring to 1) beheadings; 2) people being doused with lighter fluid and lit on fire (the recent horrific death of poor Jessica Chambers of Courtland, Mississippi comes to mind); and 3)  very young children being locked in washers or driers and spun until they expire.

The scary thing about Number 4 is that the victim child will not only be killed from heat and from being banged around in the case of a drier, or drowning and being spun to death in the case of a washing machine, but the poor child will also almost undoubtedly experience the most terrifying sense of claustrophobia once it is locked inside its death capsule.

This may be what happened to a 4-year-old Garland, Texas boy named Koda Blocker on Tuesday.

Lydia Warren writes for MailOnline:

A father has been charged with capital murder in the death of his son who died after being inside their washing machine.

Authorities will not comment on whether Joseph Blocker, 28, put his son, Koda Blocker, inside the washing machine or if the boy had climbed inside himself, but they did say it is a front loading machine that must be closed and switched on from the outside before starting a cycle.

So this is a bit peculiar… Joseph Blocker, who based on the available pictures, is rather a stern-looking dude, is charged with capital murder yet the investigators appear to be reluctant to come right out and say that he closed the door of the front-loading machine and ran a wash cycle. The clear implication, though, is that whether or not the victim child climbed in on his own, Mr. Blocker closed the door and turned on the machine.

Koda’s 22-month old sister, who was the third and last person at the house at the time of this tragic event, is probably too young to have been the perpetrator.

At around 3:30 pm on Tuesday, Mr. Blocker called 911 to report that Koda was unconscious at his house. When the authorities arrived, the child was already dead.

The detectives have stated that according to a medical examiner, the boy’s injuries are consistent with him being inside a washing machine. So in theory this could mean that the child was submerged in the water during the wash cycle or bounced around violently during the spin cycle, or both.

Here is what Garland Policer Officer Joe Harn had to say:

“What we feel is at some point the child was inside the washing machine in the home.

“According to investigators it is a front-loading type. For the child to be in the machine, the door had to be shut and it had to be started from the outside. It does not start by automatically shutting the door.”

According to Officer Harn, the Medical Examiner’s Office of Dallas County is working with the detectives to determine the exact cause of death.

Although a fourth party, a woman, also lived with Mr. Blocker and his children at the house in question, she was not there when Koda died. Mr. Blocker appears to have been taken into custody shortly after the authorities arrived and found Koda dead.

A neighbor named Yesenia Varela told CBS that she witnessed Blocker being taken into custody on Tuesday and managed to insinuate that the alleged killer was without emotion as they led him away.

“He had no expression on his face. I don’t know what to tell you. He had no expression.”

As other crime critics for whom I have considerable respect have pointed out, the fact someone is not wracked with great obvious emotion after the death of a child does not mean that the lack of affect definitively proves that the suspect is the killer. Another way of putting this is that not everyone beats their breast after a tragedy.

If you think about it, though, the only conceivable way Blocker could have inadvertently killed Koda (killed him by mistake) would have been if 1) there were already dirty clothes in the washer; 2) Koda climbed in and more or less buried himself among the clothes (and you must admit this is the sort of thing kids like to do); 3) Blocker came over and absent-mindedly ran the load (not an impossibility); and 4) discovered the poor child dead after the spin cycle was completed.

Now I admit this scenario is somewhat unlikely but it probably could happen. If I’m Blocker’s defense attorney, unless the suspect had already made contradictory statements when he was taken into custody, I might be tempted to resort to this defense. The trick would be to get both Blocker and his female roommate (and Koda’s mother if possible) to testify that little Koda, like lots of kids, had the habit of burying himself under clothes, blankets, pillows, etc.

The defense would be even stronger if one or more witnesses would testify that they had seen Koda climb into the washer on one or more occasions and burrow under the clothes.

Would a jury buy this theory? Probably not. Without some kind of viable defense, though, unless he pleads out in return for LWOP or some similar sentence, Blocker could well find himself facing the DP.

Based on appearances only, Mr. Blocker does look like he might be able to “hold his mud” in a prison environment.

His cause is probably not helped by the fact another neighbor, Luz Juarez, said his hands appeared to be streaked with blood.

Blocker is being held at the Garland Detention Center and his bond has been set at $500,000. He has a prior for marijuana possession and was convicted on a DWI charge in 2013.

Koda’s mother was in another state at the time of her son’s passing and is now caring for his 22-month-old sister.

*     *     *     *     *

The tragic accident scenario that I have suggested, although perhaps fanciful, is in keeping with the position being taken by his friends who are asking people not to be too quick to judge.

Demond Fernandez of WFAA writes in a article published after the initial reports:

“There’s no way he could have done this,” said Michael Dorfman, who described himself as a close friend of Blockers and one of the victim’s former babysitters. “It had to have been an accident somehow.”

Dorfman says he and Blocker’s family believe whatever happened inside the house was a tragic accident. He says they are confident more facts will be uncovered soon.

“I can’t even imagine what he’s going through,” Dorfman said regarding Blocker. “Not only losing a child, but being locked up for it too, with no answer as to hey, this is what happened, and still being behind bars.That’s got to be brutal.”

It is also noted that Blocker has been released from the Garland Detention Center as police investigate further which might not be the case if this were an open-and-shut murder case.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

Rachel D’Oro writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The big question for singles is how best to meet members of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that is your inclination). Are you simply looking for a brief “hook-up” or are you inclined toward something more permanent? Are you open to meeting lots of different people and then narrowing them down to Ms. or Mr. Right, or do you have specific requirements? Good luck if you do — I’ve always chuckled at the personal ads where The Searcher spells out a long list of very specific (and perhaps impossible to find) desired characteristics in a prospective partner.

No matter how you go about it, The Search can be frustrating and fraught with disappointment. And then, especially if you’re a woman, there’s always the danger issue. In a world fraught with peril, the last thing you want to do is find yourself in a compromising position with Mr. Right only to discover that he’s a stoned killer with a Mother Complex and he’s about to take your life.

One common way to try to narrow down the possibilities is to go out with someone who you believe shares common interests. This is seemingly what 26-year-old Vernicia Woodard, who reportedly has family members in law enforcement, did when she met she met up with Atlanta Police Officer Tahreem Zeus Rana last week for what she probably assumed would be a “getting to know you” evening with the pleasing possibility of romance.

Police believe that Woodward, who recently moved to Atlanta from New York, and has an 8-year-old child, met Officer Tahreem Zeus Rana on Craigslist.

Steve Visser of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes:

Investigators linked the gruesome homicide to APD Officer Tahreem Zeus Rana through the woman’s phone records, Hapeville Police Chief Richard Glavosek said Thursday. (Hapeville is a Fulton County community of slightly over 6,000 adjacent to Atlanta.)

Glavosek told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Vernicia Woodard’s phone records led to Rana. Detectives then located Woodard’s posting on Backpage.com, a classified and hook-up website, where investigators believe the couple met, Glavosek said.

The crime was discovered when a Hapeville city worker found Woodard’s body burning along Elm Street. The authorities have stated that the 23-year-old Rana first shot Ms. Woodard multiple times and then set her body on fire in hopes of destroying the evidence.

Rana was in the process of attempting to flee the country when he was arrested on Thursday. According to Channel 2 Action News, officers apprehended him bright and early at around 8:30 a.m. at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Rana, who had been placed on the no-fly list, was reportedly headed to Monterrey, Mexico, which may have been a stop on the way to India.

After his arrest, Hapeville police booked him into the Fulton County jail Thursday on charges of murder, arson, kidnapping and tampering with evidence.

Rana waived his first court appearance Friday afternoon and will remain in jail without bond until his preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for Sept. 12 in Fulton Superior Court.

* * * * *

Local law enforcement personnel is genuinely shocked that the 23-year-old Rana is the prime (and at this point apparently only) suspect in the case, not only because he was a lawman, but because some officers remember him as a kid growing up in Hapeville, Chief of Police Richard Glavosek said.

“They remember him walking to school with his mother,” said the Chief.

Stephen Cushing is the lead Hapeville detective on the case. He “told Channel 2 Action News that investigating Rana was almost surreal because of the young man’s long ambition to become a cop.”

“I’ve been a police officer in the city of Hapeville for 15 years and actually saw this young man grow up and heard him say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a police officer.”

Rana appears to have gone through the normal channels to achieve his goal. According to his APD personnel file, he earned an associate degree in criminal justice at Atlanta Metropolitan State College, in addition to earning a dual degree with honors in 2011.

During his three years on the force, his evaluations rated him as effective to highly effective in performance of his duties. He did, however, get in three traffic accidents during his time on the job, according to his internal affairs file which was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Rana had been exonerated in one of the accidents and admonished in a second. An incident from July of this year remains unresolved.

Although the media seems to be discounting the seriousness of these three accidents, in my mind that many wrecks in a relatively short period of time could be seen as an indicator that this young man was, perhaps, a bit of a loose cannon. Still, his lousy driving hardly suggests that he was a “murderer-in-waiting”

Atlanta police department spokesman Carlos Campos described the department as “shocked and saddened.”

“We must allow the justice system to run its course,” Campos said. “But these clearly are very disturbing allegations.”

* * * * *

My take on this is fairly simple. Placing an ad on Craigslist suggesting that you are interested in romantic encounters is a very bad idea. It’s seems odd that Ms. Woodard would take this foolish step, given that she has at least one family member in law enforcement, but she undoubtedly did not consult with them before “putting herself out there”.

In a more general sense, this young woman’s tragic death hammers home the fact that folks need to be extremely careful in how they meet potential romantic partners. Society is unfortunately full of “nutjobs” and some of them are not only “cracked” but “murderers-waiting-to-happen”.

compiled by Patrick H. Moore

This compelling yet horrifying array of 51 disturbing quotes from 19 disturbed serial killers is drawn from the public domain. Although I’m quite certain that each and everyone of these killers had their moments of intense terror and loneliness, I am struck by the fact that some of them seem far more unhappy than others. For example, Aileen Wuornos may have been one of the most unhappy women that every lived. Compared to her, suave Mr. Bundy seems to to be feeling only moderate pain, while the deadly Dahmer appears to be consumed with guilt over his actions. What all of this boils down to is that although serial killers may well shares many basic personality characteristics, they are all different which makes it tough to generalize effectively about them.

Aileen Wuornos  (the saddest woman who ever lived)

“May your wife and children get raped, right in the ass. (to the jurors who convicted her) “

“To me, this world is nothing but evil, and my own evil just happened to come out cause of the circumstances of what I was doing.

David Berkowitz  (was no doubt possessed by something though probably not the devil)

“A ‘possessed’ dog in the neighborhood won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.”

“Hello from the gutters of New York City, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.”

“I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I love to hunt.”

“I was literally singing to myself on my way home, after the killing. The tension, the desire to kill a woman had built up in such explosive proportions that when I finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, all the hatred, had just vanished, dissipated, but only for a short time.”

“The demons wanted my penis.”

Ed Gein  (the inspiration for Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lamps. Gein lived in my home state of Wisconsin)

“She isn’t missing. She’s at the farm right now.”

“I had a compulsion to do it.”

“They smelled bad.”

Edmund Kemper (Big Ed was tall, large and reportedly had the I.Q. of a genius. He has been a model prisoner.)

“Even when she was dead, she was still bitching at me. I couldn’t get her to shut up!”

“I just wanted to see how it felt to shoot Grandma.”

“I remember there was actually a sexual thrill . . . you hear that little pop and pull their heads of and hold their heads up by the hair. Whipping their heads off, their body sitting there. That’d get me off.”

“The first good-looking girl I see tonight is going to die.”

“With a girl, there’s a lot left in the girl’s body without a head. Of course, the personality is gone.”

H.H Holmes (completely unique in that he built his notorious Murder Castle where he apparently did in his victims)

“I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing..I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.”

Henry Lee Lucas (Henry was without a doubt the victim of bad parenting. The cult film, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is loosely based on him and possibly Ottis Toole. I strongly recommend it but keep in mind, it is not for the faint at heart.)

“I hated all my life. I hated everybody. When I first grew up and can remember, I was dressed as a girl by mother. And I stayed that way for two or three years. And after that 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.”

“Sex is one of my downfalls. I get sex any way I can get it. If I have to force somebody to do it, I do…I rape them; I’ve done that. I’ve killed animals to have sex with them, and I’ve had sex while they’re alive. “

Ian Brady (Brady, killer of children along with his partner Myra Hindley, was apparently quite the intellectual. He is old and ill now and has expressed his fervent desire to die but the British authorities insist on keeping him alive by means of a feeding tube.)

“Contrary to popular perception, the so-called Moors Murders were merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964.”

Jeffrey Dahmer (What can you say about Dahmer that has not already been said and re-said?)

“I carried it too far, that’s for sure. “

“I’ve got to start eating at home more..”

“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies.I viewed them as objects, as strangers. It is hard for me to believe a human being could have done what I’ve done”

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

John Wayne Gacy (I don’t like this guy at all though I am weirdly enchanted by his Clown Paintings.)

“A clown can get away with murder.”

“The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.”

Peter Kurten  (known as The Vampire of Dusseldorf)

“After my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment , the sound of my own blood gushing from my neck? That would be the best pleasure to end all pleasure. “

Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker was smart and could have done much good in the world if he’d had a decent childhood.)

“Big deal, death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”

“I’ve killed 20 people, man. I love all that blood.”

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

“We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid, control life itself.”

“You maggots make me sick, I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all.”

Ted Bundy  (There’s something quintessentially creepy about Bundy. Monster Smooth is a little too suave and self-serving for my taste.)

“I haven’t blocked out the past. I wouldn’t trade the person I am, or what I’ve done – or the people I’ve known – for anything. So I do think about it. And at times it’s a rather mellow trip to lay back and remember.

“I just liked to kill, I wanted to kill.”

“You learn what you need to kill and take care of the details…Its like changing a tire…The 1st time you’re careful…By the 30th time, you can’t remember where you left the lug wrench.”

“You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!”

Albert DeSalvo (Although DeSalvo was definitely a rapist, it has not been definitively settled whether he was actually a murderer. That could be why his quote seems unlike those of the “real” serial killers. His remains have been exhumed in hopes of obtaining DNA matches.)

“It wasn’t as dark and scary as it sounds. I had a lot of fun…killing somebody’s a funny experience.”

Albert Fish (Like Henry Lee Lucas, Fish was very likely prone to exaggerating his evil deeds. He was one of the early lucky fellows to “ride the chair” at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York.)

“I always had the desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost. “

 ”I saw so many boys whipped, it took root in my head.”

 ”I like children, they are tasty.”

Arthur Shawcross (This execrable human claimed to have eaten the vaginas of 3 of his 11 known female victims.)

“I took the right leg of that woman’s body, from the knee to the hip took the fat off and ate it while he stared at the other girl. When I bit into it she just urinated right there.”

“She was giving me oral sex, and she got carried away . . . So I choked her.”

Dennis Rader ( “BTK” was his infamous signature. It stands for “Bind, Torture, Kill”.)

“When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can’t stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t.”

“I actually think I may be possessed with demons, I was dropped on my head as a kid.”

Charles Manson  (You have to admit that Charlie is quite the character.)

“I’ve killed no one. I’ve ordered no one to be killed. These children who come to you with their knives, they’re your children. I didn’t teach them, you did.”

“Total paranoia is just total awareness.”

“Believe me, if I started murdering people there’d be none of ya left.”

“You know, if I wanted to kill somebody, I’d take this book and beat you to death with it. And I wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d be just like walking to the drug store.”

Carl Panzram (Panzram confessed to 22 murders, and to having sodomized over 1,000 males. He was hanged for having murdered a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1930.)

“I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it.”

 “Today I am dirty , but tomorrow I’ll be just dirt.”

“Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you’re fooling around!”

The Zodiac Killer Quotes (The Zodiac was very smart although he certainly might have been brought to justice if modern forensic techniques had been available during his “reign of terror”.)

“If the blue meanies are going to get me they’d better get off their asses and do something.”

Last fall, after four days of jury deliberations, Massachusetts horned man and self-styled blood-drinking wannabe Hells Angel Caius Veiovis was convicted of murdering three Berkshire County men and ditching their dismembered bodies. According to various news reports, Caius did not take the verdict in stride:

“I’ll see you all in hell! Every f—ing one of you! I’ll see you all in hell!”

It is perhaps somewhat surprising that Veiovis was found guilty after four full days of jury deliberation, but that just goes to show that you can never be certain of a verdict until the jury reassembles in the courtroom and its verdict is formally announced.

Here is our earlier somewhat whimsical take on Veiovis and his unconventional ways:

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Stories, stories, stories. And now cometh one of the more eerie alleged triple murderers we’ve come across. Caius Veiovis, a 33-year-old Springfield, Massachusetts man, is accused of helping two Hells Angels, David Chalue and Adam Hall, murder and dismember David Glasser, Edward Frampton and Robert Chadwell in 2011. According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Frampton and Chadwell were scheduled to testify against Hall, who was a ranking member of the Berkshire County chapter of the Hell’s Angels, which meant they had to be silenced.

Veiovis’ trial is now in its early stages. Chalue and Hall have already been convicted of the triple murders and are serving life sentences. I’m largely unfamiliar with the details of the case and will mostly focus on Veiovis in this short post.

According to a story written a few weeks ago by Sebastian Murdock of the Huffington Post, Veiovis’s lawyer, James G. Reardon, is worried his client’s appearance might make prospective jurors prejudiced. You see Veiovis is one the stranger looking fellows we’ve come across during our agonizing trek through the minefield of violent crime.

Mr. Murdock writes:

Veiovis considers himself a worshipper of Satan, and told police he was a vampire who drinks the blood of others along with his own, Mass Live reported.

Along with a large septum piercing and the number 666 tattooed on his forehead, Veiovis also has body modifications in his head that resemble protruding horns.

As is well-known, the number 666 refers to the Beast of Revelations, who is some kind of anti-Christ diabolical figure who opposes God and Truth. See http://www.ucg.org/bible-faq/what-does-666-number-beast-mean for a standard analysis of what the Beast is all about. In addition, Aleister Crowley, the British occultist and sex magician, known as The Wickedest Man in the World, is associated with the number 666.

Veiovis’s attorney, James Reardon, however, stated in his interview:

“I don’t know what 666 means.”

I suspect Reardon is playing dumb in an attempt to distance his client from Satanism. A great many people have at least some sense of what the Beast and 666 refer to.

Veoivis was not always named Veiovis, and it’s not hard to understand why he chose a “flashy handle”, given his penchant for the macabre, and the fact he apparently does not want to be seen as normal. Before changing his name to Veiovis, he was known as Roy C. Gutfinski Jr.

The fact that he was simply Mr. Gutfinski, Jr. did not stop Veiovis from being a vampire. His desire to drink his own blood and the blood of others appears to be very real. In 1999, he and his girlfriend were sentenced to 10 years in jail for bringing a 16-year-old girl to a hotel room, slashing a 7-inch gash in her back, and drinking her blood.

Veiovis was also charged with a much more prosaic crime in 2006, which led to a parole violation and him being sent back to prison. He allegedly kidnapped two strippers from a nightclub and held them against their will in a hotel room. Those charges were later dropped for unknown reasons.

I realize I’m a little weird myself in that I find this fellow to be quite fascinating. Not only is he apparently a real live vampire, but anyone who implants horns in his forehead gets an 11 on my weirdness scale. I could do without his involvement in murdering state witnesses, however, and suspect that the charges against him are likely to stick.

I am a bit disillusioned by one thing, though. Veiovis’s alleged motive for taking part in the triple murder was to prove himself to Hall and the other Hell’s Angels so that he would be accepted into the motorcycle club. This rather mundane desire is not what I would suspect from a blood-drinking, horn-implanting, real live vampire. Not only that, but if he’s convicted and goes to state prison, the only blood he’s going to have access to, beside his own, is CONVICT BLOOD which, from everything I’ve heard, has a rather rank flavor and smell that even vampires turn up their noses at it and often refuse to even sample, much less quaff with gusto.

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

Regular readers of All Things Crime Blog are probably aware that we have the habit of occasionally posting Karla Homolka articles, some of which are fairly extensive. On a Wednesday morning in July, as I blearily crawled to my computer and logged onto the blog, I noticed that our “Karla” posts were going through the roof. When this happens, it generally means that the criminal in question is “in the news”.

I wondered if perhaps some disaster had befallen Karla, but when I googled her name, I discovered that the disaster had befallen (or rather may befall) yet another Paul Bernardo victim.

The grim truth is too horrifying to approach directly so instead I will try to approach this from the side, ferret-style. What is the most horrible fate that could possibly befall a father or mother? Well, obviously there are lots of potentials horrors that could drive a parent to strong drink, but one of the worst possible fates would be for your daughter to marry a notorious convict serving a lengthy prison sentence for murder or some other horrible violent crime..

For example, in the event my daughter decided to marry Russell Williams or Charles Manson, I would probably have to garrote myself.

But suppose the lucky man leading my daughter astray was Mr. Disreputable himself, the Scarborough rapist and serial killer Paul Bernardo?

I would start by using logic and common sense. After all, being married to a serial killer serving an extended period of incarceration could hardly be a “walk in the park”. If that didn’t work, I might resort to bribery. And if that failed, I would plead, I would beg; I would use circuitous logic and reverse psychology. I would do anything and everything to spare my dear daughter the dreadful fate of marrying Bernardo or any other dangerous convict.

Nevertheless, the despicable Bernardo had succeeded in smiting a pretty young thing with his redoubtable charms and a prison marriage may be in the works.

Sam Pazzano and Randy Richmond of QMI Agency write:

From a prison cell, serial sex killer Paul Bernardo has charmed and manipulated an attractive, university-educated woman into planning to marry him, the Toronto Sun has learned.

The 30-year-old London, Ont., woman admitted she has been writing letters to the Scarborough Rapist, telling friends the schoolgirl killer is “innocent” and was a bystander to the rapes and torture slayings of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

Sporting a recent ankle tattoo that says “Paul’s girl” in cursive writing, she has been corresponding with Bernardo since last fall.

First of all, how in the hell can you be an innocent bystander to 25 rapes and a couple of hideous murders. The answer is: You can’t. Not unless you were roped and tied like the character in Elton John’s Sugar Bear song (“Someone Saved My Life Last Night”), in which case you likely would have been a victim yourself.

The bride-to-be seems to be a bit confused. She has informed friends that she has wedding bands and has described “Paul” as someone who’s serving time “for the most horrible crimes you could imagine.”

“He is a kind man, a Christian, a very nice man,” the lucky bride-to-be told the Sun.

And a friend has quoted her as saying: “He told her not to tell her parents until after they were married.”

Fortunately, there is some evidence that the fetching young woman is reconsidering her cockeyed plan.

In fact, her parents insist that “reality has set in” and that their daughter is reconsidering.

A key element in Bernardo’s seduction scheme appears to have been calling his betrothed “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Her father believes she was vulnerable because: “She has had a number of bad relationships that undermined her self-esteem despite her brilliance. She is looking for someone who will love her unconditionally.”

Dad thinks that the woman’s intelligence, emotional fragility and belief in her own street smarts made her the perfect victim for Bernardo. He explained that his daughter also believed in Bernardo’s innocence.

“He has convinced her that he didn’t do this (rapes or murders). But, after the conversation last week, I think she has changed her mind.

“It was very easy for him to get her locked into a train of thought. I’ve been very explicit that he actually did these things and reality sunk in this last week in a big way.

“I am getting the feeling that from the way she was defending him in the beginning that now reality has finally kicked in and she realizes, ‘What have I got myself into?

“I told her the media have something that indicates (you are planning to marry him) and she says, ‘Well, he doesn’t get out for three more years (2018, first eligibility for parole).” 

But with the relationship now coming to light, the woman said she “did something that got people upset and she is rethinking … and struggling with it.”

In an interview, Bernardo’s beloved appears to have been evasive, but never indicated she didn’t want to marry him or that the wedding plans had been (or were being) called off.

In an odd twist, the woman admitted asking her pastor about forgiveness, although she never referred to Bernardo by name.

She quoted the pastor as saying, “It is not for another person to judge his brother.

“And I said, ‘But what about the worst thing ever, could that be forgiven?’ ” she recalled.

And the pastor apparently said, ‘As soon as that person committed the act, God has already forgiven him.”

Remember that, ye haters of Homolka…

* * * * *

Paul Bernardo is now half-a-century old. The pretty boy is not nearly so pretty anymore, but could still be considered reasonably attractive for someone tipping the mid-century mark. He is serving a life sentence for the first-degree murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, and was declared a dangerous offender in 1995 after pleading guilty to 32 sex-related crimes, including 12 rapes in the east end of Toronto dating to 1987.

Hey! All you people that like to paint Karla as the truly dark one and Bernardo as the vixen’s victim should realize that whatever you may think about Homolka does not change the fact that Bernardo did some really rancid shit.

In Canada, all inmates, with the exception of those on disciplinary restrictions or at risk for family violence or identified as Special Handling Unit cases, are permitted “private family visits” of up to 72 hours duration once every two months. Spouses are included within this category which means that if Bernardo’s beloved lawfully weds him, they would presumably have the opportunity to screw like bunnies, which means, unless Uncle Paul has drastically changed his ways, his young lady would soon be introduced to, shall we say… No, we shall not say.

The CSC can neither confirm nor deny any nuptial plans for an inmate.

CSC informed the Sun via email: “Once an inmate makes a request to marry while incarcerated, the institutional management along with the inmate’s case management team will assess the request to make sure it would not pose a risk to the security of the institution, staff and public.

“The institutional head is the authority responsible for determining if a marriage will be accommodated within the facility,” the statement continued.

CSC has “no jurisdiction over whether two people can obtain a marriage licence.” Canadian marriages are governed by provincial legislation.

It is noted that Bernardo is eligible for day parole on Feb. 17, 2015, and full parole on Feb. 17, 2018. It is anticipated that due to his notoriety, he is unlikely to ever be paroled. Furthermore, as a dangerous offender, Bernardo has no entitlement to statutory release.

* * * * *

I feel for the young woman’s parents. On the other hand, Bernardo marrying at this late date would be rather amusing in a dark and twisted way. And just think of the thousands of women all across North America who have secretly longed “to make beautiful music” with Uncle Paul. They are bound to be more than a little miffed.

The fact that Bernardo has convinced his betrothed that he did not commit the rapes and murders suggests that he’s as wily and oily as ever.

But in fairness, perhaps Bernardo would “treat her right” if she marries him. As the old saying goes, the “proof is in the pudding”. And conjugal prison visits could well be a “real turn-on” for Miss Naive Lovely, should she prove to be one of those that requires her sexuality to be leavened with “a bit of the old kink.”

Click on the following links to read previous Karla posts:

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Just Did As She Pleased

Watching Karla Homolka: The Game Gets Real

Watching Karla Homolka: Karla Stacks the Deck

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

Watching Karla Homolka: It’s a Family Affair

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

Is Karla Homolka the Most Hated Woman in North America?

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

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

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

There’s no finer place than the Wild Wild West. Where else can a 9-year-old year munch down on a yummy burger (my mouth is watering) and then proceed to the firing range to receive expert instruction on how to fire: not a cap pistol (do they even exist anymore), not a Walt Disney toy flintlock (like I had when I was a young boy in the Midwest), not a Lady Derringer (which would be kind of cool to shoot if you think about it), not a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver (a tried and true firearm if there ever was one), not a 30-30 deer rifle (a staple amongst the German farmers I grew up with), but rather an honest-to-goodness Uzi SubMach (capable of firing 950 rounds per minute)? Talk about a kick in the head!

And all of this splendor is available at the Last Stop Bullets & Burgers outdoor shooting range in White Hills, Arizona, not far from Las Vegas.

At the Last Stop, as long as your parents are there with you and you are at least are 8-years-old, according to company policy, you can rent an Uzi SubMach and blast off your 950 rounds with your instructor standing nearby paying close attention to make sure everything is copacetic.

Here’s how “Bullets and Burgers” describes itself on its website:

“The Bullets and Burgers Adventure is a private outdoor range set in a stunning outdoor desert landscape. We separate ourselves from all other Las Vegas ranges with our unique ‘Desert Storm’ atmosphere and military style bunkers. We are located on the eclectic 30+ acre Arizona Last Stop property surrounded by picturesque mountain views at the edge of the undeveloped Lake Mead Recreational Area.”

The advertising material goes on to talk about how “a wide range of fully automatic machine guns and specialty weapons” are available, how lunch is included featuring the “World Famous All American Hamburger”, and how guests are picked up at their hotel and dropped off after the “Bullets and Burgers Adventure” which “is approximately 4 – 5.5 hours in length.”

The cost is about $270 for the basic package. (I’m not sure if that’s per person or per family.)

On the morning of Monday, August 25, just as millions of Americans were easing into their work week, a New Jersey family happened to be vacationing in the great Southwest. Perhaps Dad had picked up a few bucks playing blackjack in Vegas; perhaps Mom had pulled a few handles with alacrity; in any event, our All-American family had made reservations at Bullets and Burgers.

It turned out our All-American family had a surprise in store as did their shooting instructor.

Hasani Gittens of NBC News writes:

A shooting range instructor in Arizona was accidentally shot and killed by a 9-year-old girl who was learning how to shoot an Uzi, authorities said on Tuesday.

Charles Vacca, 39, was teaching the girl how to use the automatic weapon on Monday morning at the Last Stop outdoor shooting range in White Hills, Arizona, when she pulled the trigger and the kickback caused the gun to lurch over her head, investigators said.

Vacca was hit by a stray bullet and airlifted to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, where he was pronounced dead late Monday. The girl was at the range with her parents at the time, but their names were not released.

The victim of the Uzi that went awry, Mr. Vacca, had prepped the child by having her fire a single shot at the target, which went off without a hitch. He then apparently flipped the gun to auto mode.

While this was going on, the child’s mother had set up the family’s video recording equipment and was happily shooting a home movie (or whatever they call them these days).

And I certainly don’t blame the child’s parents. There is no cuter sight on all of God’s Green Earth than a lovely 9-year-old girl armed with a Uzi SubMach on full auto blasting away at a much-perforated target. And it’s excellent practice, for God knows, the way things are going, one day she may need to shoot illegal aliens or space aliens or some kind of aliens, or even terrorists, and since aliens and terrorists can appear in large numbers, a fully auto Uzi SubMach in seasoned, veteran hands could put a lot of them out of their misery in very short order.

The 9-year-old girl, however, apparently lacked “seasoned veteran hands” which is why when she started shooting on auto, the kickback caused the gun to lurch over her head which resulted in Mr. Vacca being shot in the head.

(When our contributor, BJW Nashe wrote his classic meditation, “14 Ways to Get Shot in the Head”, he failed this include this possibility, but that can certainly be remedied with a quick revision.)

And to look on the bright side, although the child may be permanently scarred from accidentally shooting her instructor in the head and killing him, at least her mom recorded it so it will presumably be available for the whole family for all posterity. And when the child ultimately goes into therapy, instead of explaining what happened, she can simply play the video for her shrink.

Furthermore, it’s not like Bullets and Burgers was careless or was out of step with the other shooting ranges. Sam Scarmardo, the manager for the Last Stop’s shooting range, told NBC News that “the established practice at most shooting ranges is 8 years old and up with parental supervision.”

(Personally, I think these rules are far too restrictive. There’s no reason a mature 5-year-old girl should not be allowed to fire an Uzi SubMach at a target or terrorists, for that matter. The younger you learn, the more valuable you’re going to be on that dreadful day when our backs are up against the wall.)

Mr. Scarmardo said Mr. Vacca — who was in the military for 12 years and had plenty of experience with firearms — was a “great guy, with a great sense of humor” and called him “very conscientious and very professional.”

Mr. Scarmardo said that the range has never had a similar incident in over a decade of being in business, “not even a scratch.”

“I just ask everybody to pray for Charlie, and pray for the client, she’s going to have a hard time,” said Scarmardo.

There is some question, however, as to why Mr. Vacca didn’t keep a firm hand on the Uzi SubMach when the child started firing. Ronald Scott, a Phoenix-based firearms safety expert, said most instructors usually have their hands on guns when children are firing high-powered weapons. “You can’t give a 9-year-old an Uzi and expect her to control it,” Scott told the Associated Press.

But I guess that’s really the point. Firearms are dangerous and the more high-powered they are, the more dangerous they are. They should be handled with extreme care and in this case, the instructor was apparently not careful and it cost him his life. That’s the thing about guns. One false move can be “all she wrote” and in this case it was. So as a society, we need to learn from this. Not only do we need to be more careful, but we also need to start training our kids at a younger age. In this case, the shooter was 8-years-old, far too old, practically ancient. If she’s already had three years of experience firing high-powered rifles and SubMachs under her belt, she would have instantly recognized the need to remind the instructor to “keep his hands on the gun” as she was firing to avert any possibility of tragedy.

Ah well, there’s plenty of opportunity to “live and learn”. And I’m pretty sure that Bullets and Burgers is going to be around for a long time.

Click here to view BJW Nashe’s classic meditation of gun violence in America:

14 Ways to get Shot in the Head

by BJW Nashe

In Joe McGinniss’ Fatal Vision, we have a grisly triple murder at the Fort Bragg home of Ivy League doctor and Green Beret Captain Jeffrey McDonald. The doctor’s pregnant wife and two young daughters are stabbed and bludgeoned to death. The doctor suffers relatively minor, non-life threatening wounds. The crime scene investigation is botched. Charges are filed against the doctor, then dropped. Nearly a decade later, the doctor is put on trial. He enlists well-known journalist Joe McGinniss to tell his story. The doctor is eventually convicted of murder, for killing his own family. The journalist’s book, three years in the making, becomes a true crime classic. The doctor feels betrayed by the writer, so he sues him. The controversy surrounding the case shadows the journalist. He can’t get away from it. He is attacked by other journalists, criticized, called names. Thirty-four years later, the controversy still swirls, as attorneys push for a new trial in light of DNA evidence. It is a rich, multi-faceted tragedy, with tragicomic elements. The questions keep piling up and new books keep coming out. No one is quite certain whether Dr. McDonald is actually the murderer.

The triple murder on February 17, 1970 of Collette, Kristen, and Kimberley MacDonald was a perplexing tragedy that received plenty of national attention, though it was perhaps overshadowed by other high profile crimes committed during the same time period by the Manson Family, for instance, and the Zodiac Killer. And the MacDonald family murders were strangely linked to some of those other shocking deaths. A copy of Esquire Magazine with a cover story on Charles Manson was found at the MacDonald crime scene. (In 1970, Manson was somehow connected to everything — an essential part of the zeitgeist.) In the McDonald family master bedroom, above the bed, the word “pig” had been scrawled in blood. In numerous statements, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald claimed that he and his family had been attacked by deranged hippies saying things like, “Acid is Groovy” and “Kill the Pigs.”

The only problem was that there was no evidence whatsoever of any intruders. Not a hint of hippies — or anyone else other than the doctor and his family. Indeed, the crime scene appeared staged — showing few if any signs of a realistic, spontaneous struggle. The fact that Dr. MacDonald was left alive, while his family was so brutally murdered, seemed strange. Yet Dr. MacDonald, an all-American success story educated at Princeton and now serving as a Green Beret, with no history of mental illness or criminal activity, was about as far from the stereotypical psycho killer as one could get.

Could McDonald really be responsible for the carnage inside his house? When case-hardened MPOs (military police officers) arrived at his Fort Bragg home, even they were shocked. MacDonald’s pregnant wife, Colette, was stabbed 16 times with a knife and 21 times with an ice pick. Daughter Kimberly, age five, was bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck. Kristen, age two, was stabbed 48 times; one of her fingers had been nearly severed as she tried to fend off the blows.

At a closed military hearing, although Dr. MacDonald was the only likely suspect, initial charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence, even though his version of events made little sense, and there was nothing to indicate an attack by intruders. Flamboyant defense attorney Bernie Segal was able to shred the testimony of investigators who had made a mess of the crime scene investigation. Even circumstantial evidence against Dr. MacDonald was cast into doubt. In the aftermath of the tragedy and the dropped charges, Dr. MacDonald — an extreme “Type A” personality — enjoyed a certain amount of publicity, or perhaps notoriety is a better term. He talked to news reporters at length; he appeared on the Dick Cavett show. He did not appear overly traumatized.

Dr. MacDonald’s father-in-law, who had initially supported the doctor, soon changed his mind following his own investigative work, and pushed civilian authorities to pursue the case. A grand jury subsequently indicted MacDonald in 1975. He was found guilty of murder four years later, and is serving three life sentences. If his appeal fails, he does not become eligible for parole until 2071.

All of this makes for a compelling murder case. When crafted into the shape of a true crime classic by journalist Joe McGinniss, the case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald takes on a near-mythic quality. The story of how Fatal Visioncame to be written, and the controversy that still haunts the book to this day, is just as fascinating as the crime story itself.

Joe McGinniss was educated at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1965. After working as a journalist in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he achieved massive success with his 1968 book about Richard Nixon, The Selling of the President, which is still considered a classic of campaign reporting. By 1979, he had written several other books, and was working as a writer-in-residence at the L.A. Herald Examiner. He was then approached by Dr. MacDonald, who was interested in having a talented, yet sympathetic reporter tell his story as he moved ahead with his upcoming trial defense.

For the trial, McGinniss embedded himself in the defense team. He lived in the same house as Dr. MacDonald for several months. Initially impressed by the doctor’s intelligence and charisma, and willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, McGinniss gradually achieved a frightening new understanding of the defendant, and the tragic events of the night of February 17, 1979. McGinniss slowly became convinced that MacDonald’s outward appearance of all-American perfection, though compelling at first, in fact belied a psychopathic personality. He came to view MacDonald as a Gatsby-like character. Pull back the curtain on MacDonald, strip away the outer veneer of prestige, wealth, and success, and something truly awful was revealed. The over-achiever was over-compensating for some inexplicable inner darkness. Thus, we learn of the controlling behavior, the violent temper, the hatred of any criticism, the intolerance of imperfection, the amphetamine abuse, the womanizing.

Fatal Vision is a tour de force of true crime reporting, frequently compared with two other classics of the genre –Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. McGinniss’ s 900-plus page monster wipes the floor with most crime fiction lining the bookstore shelves, and blows just about every other true crime book out of the water. His close proximity to the defendant, his obsessive grappling with all details of the investigation and trial, and the steady revelation of the doctor’s psychotic, narcissistic personality disorder all makes for a powerful reading experience. McGinniss has described how this case consumed him — his sleepless nights and fits of anxiety, all brought on by the creepiness of the slowly unraveling mystery. This heady cocktail of diverse elements infuses Fatal Vision with a sense of drama and foreboding that is rare in non-fiction.

In writing this masterpiece, Joe McGinnis came to realize that the man he was living with, who had hired him to tell his story, was a murderer. No gang of crazed hippies had killed MacDonald’s wife and two daughters. It was the Green Beret doctor himself, in a speed-fueled psychotic rage. We can only imagine what the man’s patients — who he had been treating throughout the 1970s — must have thought about all of this.

But is this what really happened? Did McGinniss get the story right? Fatal Vision was a bestseller in 1983. A television miniseries followed one year later. Meanwhile, Jeffrey MacDonald was stewing in prison, plotting his appeals. And we get the sense that McGinniss was finally ready to move on, let go of his obsession with the grisly tale. The grisly tale, however, was not ready to let go of him.

MacDonald, although he had signed a release allowing McGinniss to basically write whatever he wanted, felt betrayed by the author and filed a civil suit against McGinniss in 1984, alleging that McGinniss pretended to believe MacDonald innocent after coming to the conclusion that MacDonald was guilty, in order to ensure the doctor’s continued cooperation. After the six-week civil trial resulted in a hung jury, the insurance company for McGinniss’s publisher chose to settle out of court with MacDonald for $325,000.

Then the inevitable backlash ensued. Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost published a book called Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders,  which was a clear counterattack to Fatal Vision. Claiming that MacDonald was without a doubt innocent, Potter and Bost criticized McGinniss’s book for being wildly inaccurate. In particular, they tried to lay waste to McGinnis’s theory that the doctor’s murderous frenzy was brought on by abusing diet pills. At the civil trial, McGinnis had been forced to admit under oath that he had no hard evidence to support his diet pill theory, and that it may not have happened at all. Potter and Bost also pointed out that Judge Ross, who presided over the civil trial, had likened McGinniss’s conduct toward MacDonald to that of “a thief in the night.” Even worse, the judge had then corrected himself, saying, “I guess a thief in the night wouldn’t see you. He is more of a con man than he is a thief.”

Perhaps, but this might be said of all great writers. And in reading Fatal Vision, we have little doubt that we are in the company of an outstanding investigative journalist. Surely, some of our finest novelists and reporters have been called far worse things than con artists or thieves. Just read some of the criticism of Hemingway, for example. Papa could probably have lived with accusations like “con artist” and “thief” without breaking a sweat. In fact, he might have even viewed  such claims as damned fine praise.

In her own book, The Journalist and the Murderer (1990),  Janet Malcolm used the “Fatal Vision Case” to explorethe problematic relationship between journalists and their subjects. Delving into the murky world of journalistic ethics, rather than attempting some sort of nuanced position on the issue, Malcolm simply damns all journalists to hell for their immoral tactics. She is highly critical of McGinniss; yet she seems to be saying there is plenty of blame to go around. In other words, he is by no means alone in his transgressions:

“Every journalist,” she writes, “knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and then betraying them without remorse.”

McGinniss has responded to this by defending his methods. Of course, he argues, no journalist is going to show his entire hand when dealing with subjects. Both parties are engaged in a certain amount of cat-and-mouse. To accuse a writer of outright deception or betrayal is crude, however. A more complex game is being played by both journalist and subject in a case as morally complicated as the MacDonald murder trial. And the truth of the matter, according to McGinniss, is that Dr. MacDonald was the one most deeply committed to manipulation and persuasion, not vice versa. His sense of betrayal only reflects his disappointment over the fact that his attempt to sway the reporter ultimately failed. So who was really trying to con who here?

Malcolm’s critique of McGinniss is too one-sided. And besides, even if what she is saying has a kernel of truth — that journalists are “immoral” — we are still left with the question of “so what?” McGinniss got extremely close to the story he was covering. His book delivered the goods. Brilliantly. So what if he “betrayed” someone? Loyalty and trustworthiness were not exactly part of his job description in writing Fatal Vision.

It goes on and on. MacDonald’s attempts to appeal his conviction received renewed attention with the 2012 release of a book provocatively titled, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald. Written by Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, this account of the MacDonald family murders portrays the Green Beret doctor as a man who has been wrongfully convicted on the basis of incomplete and corrupted evidence, as well as prosecutorial misconduct.

In December 2012, McGinniss himself felt the need to weigh in on the whole issue one more time with Final Vision: The Last Word on Jeffrey MacDonald.

Except that this won’t be the last word on Jeffrey MacDonald. We will no doubt keep hearing more about this unique American nightmare in the coming months, as the wheels of justice keep grinding.

Last year in September, MacDonald’s attempts to appeal his conviction resulted in a federal hearing in Wilmington, North Carolina. McGinniss was called to testify for the prosecution. He thus came face to face with his infamous subject for the first time in years. McGinniss found the doctor, after years in prison, to be a shadow of the man he once was. Even a Green Beret is no match for the penitentiary. At the hearing, MacDonald’s lawyers asserted that newly-discovered DNA evidence — three hairs that match neither MacDonald nor any of the victims — and the secondhand confession of a key witness who claimed to be at the family’s home the night of the murders, justify reopening the case. As yet, no decision has been made as to whether there will be a new trial.

The “Fatal Vision case” continues to wrap its tentacles around McGinniss. It appears to be the story with which he will be forever linked. For this writer, it has been a lucrative blessing as well as a troubling curse. Much like Capote and the Kansas murders depicted in In Cold Blood, McGinniss has enjoyed considerable fame and success as a result of his true crime epic. Yet he struggles to get past the Jeffrey MacDonald saga, to fully close the door on the psychotic doctor. Some of McGinniss’s subsequent books have been reasonably well-received. Others have bombed. None have enjoyed the stupendous success of Fatal Vision. At least McGinniss has continued investigating and writing, unlike Capote, whose life degenerated into a celebrity blur of booze, pills, parties, and talk shows.

McGinniss’s latest book is The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (2011). Just as he bravely embedded himself in the psychotic doctor’s defense team three decades ago, in order to get as close as possible to the story, for The Rogue McGinniss moved to Wasilla, Alaska, in order to live next door to the Palin’s. Surely, McGinniss’s courage as a reporter is beyond any doubt. Being called a con man is the least of his worries.

In the end, McGinniss remains unconvinced by any attempts to tarnish his own book and exonerate Jeffrey MacDonald: “He’s a psychopath,” says McGinniss. “He doesn’t have the kind of emotions that you and I would have. He doesn’t have the capacity to feel badly about it. These weren’t his wife and children. These were people that got in his way.”

by Jared Keever

It didn’t take much, just a morning news story.

I was back in the Midwest visiting family for the holidays. We were all in my parents’ living room, getting ready to leave the house for the day. The television was on. I had other things on my mind but the story caught my ear. A Pennsylvania college student, 21-year-old Shane Montgomery, had gone missing.

He was last seen by friends at a bar in downtown Philadelphia. That was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I was catching this news story just a few days before Christmas, so Montgomery had been missing for almost a month. Police were searching along the banks of the Schuylkill River.

All the details called to mind a brief piece I had written earlier in year about a theory called the “Smiley Face killer.”

I grabbed my notebook and jotted down Montgomery’s name and the details of case: Philadelphia, Schuylkill River, white male, college student, bar.

I didn’t know much about the theory but I knew enough to know that the particulars of the case so closely matched those of dozens of other cases I almost couldn’t believe it wasn’t mentioned in the news story.

I promised myself I would look into once I returned home and to my writing desk.

By the time I had, police had recovered Shane’s body. The West Chester University student was found in the Schuylkill River Jan. 3, more than a month after he had disappeared. The Philadelphia medical examiner ruled the death an accident. Montgomery likely stumbled from the bar drunk, made it to the banks of the river and had fallen in, police said.

And that has been the ruling for dozens — some say hundreds — of similar deaths across the Northern part of the U.S. since the 1990s. Such a string of “accidents” is improbable according to those who believe in the Smiley Face killer theory.

To understand the theory one needs to go back, at least, to Halloween night, 2002 in downtown Minneapolis.

That’s the last time anyone saw 21-year-old Chris Jenkins alive. Just as with Montgomery, there are few details about the night Jenkins disappeared. What police and his friends do know is that the University of Minnesota student was kicked out of the Lone Tree Bar & Grill sometime around midnight. His coat, keys, wallet and cell phone were all left behind in the bar. It was 20 degrees that night.

He wasn’t found until four months later. His body was discovered, floating face up in the Mississippi River. His arms were crossed across his chest. Police ruled the death an accident or possibly a suicide. He either fell in or jumped off the nearby Hennepin Bridge, police told his parents.

But a surveillance camera on a nearby building never captured an image of Jenkins on the bridge. And a police dog, during the initial investigation, reportedly picked up the young man’s scent and followed it into parking lot adjacent to the bar. There, police found a few droplets of blood and a red feather which might well have come from an Halloween costume Jenkins was wearing that night.

His family refused to accept either the suicide or the accident theory. And Jenkins’ father eventually reached out to a retired New York City police detective.

Kevin Gannon was a likely candidate to work with Jenkins’ family. Just five years earlier, when he was still with the New York Police Department, he had promised the mother of 19-year-old Patrick McNeill he would never rest until he brought her son’s murderer to justice.

But few believed McNeill had been murdered. Just like Jenkins’ death, McNeill’s was ruled an accident because the teen disappeared after leaving a bar, presumably dunk. He disappeared Feb 17, 1997 and police fished his body out the East River 50 days later. He was floating face up, a position most investigators say is rare in accidental drowning cases.

Gannon never believed the boy simply fell into the river. The body was recovered 12 miles from where he disappeared, for one. He also had ligature marks on his neck and, Gannon believed, the body showed signs of torture — mainly small black spots on the body Gannon thought were burns but the medical examiner dismissed as early stages of decomposition.

Others facts detailed in the autopsy report also troubled Gannon. Fly eggs, found in the young man’s pubic hair, suggested his body had spent some time on land before it was slipped into the river. And the absence of “skin slippage” suggested the body had only been in the water for about 24 hours.

Gannon would later admit he became obsessed — to the point of being unhealthy — with the McNeill case. He never caught his man and its unclear if he was ever able to get the medical examiner to change the cause of death to homicide.

But what is clear is that in 2006 Minneapolis police changed reopened Jenkins’ case and began investigating the death as a murder.

By that time Gannon, and his partner Anthony Duarte were both retired from the NYPD and working together as private investigators. In that capacity they had continued to work on the McNeill case and were investigating other drownings in New York State and other states as well. They had spoken to the Jenkins’ family as early as 2003.

In 2006 they went back to Minnesota and continued their work, and their Smiley Face theory began to emerge.

By 2008, a Minnesota television reporter named Kristi Piehl,had picked up on the theory and begun reporting what the detectives were up to.

Through the course of their investigations into the deaths of Jenkins and McNeill, Piehl reported, the detectives had come across 40 other drownings in which the victims were white, college-aged, males who were last scene leaving a bar or party, possibly drunk, only to disappear and have their bodies turn up weeks or months later floating in a body of water, usually a river.

Using GPS and river current information the detectives tracked backwards, from where the bodies were found, and attempted to pinpoint the location where they might have been dumped into the river.

At many of the sites, often times a park, they found graffiti of a smiley face. That was a sign, a calling-card, left behind by the killer or killers Gannon suspected. They found other links too. For instance at a number of sites they found the word “sinsinawa” spray painted nearby.

And with Piehl’s reports a killer was born. Rather the theory of a killer — or gang of killers — was born and it quickly took on a life of its own. The strange trajectory of the theory’s life is reminiscent of some of the best police stories — something that could be straight out of HBO’s True Detective.

In short, Gannon believes that 40 deaths are the work of a gang of killers working in conjunction, taking victims across the Northern U.S. They nab these young men from bars, possibly by drugging them, or possibly just picking vulnerable ones who are observed stumbling away from their friends, alone. The men are then tortured, possibly for days, then killed and dumped in the river. The killers leave behind bizarre graffiti, like the smiley faces, to taunt the police, Gannon says. Placing the bodies in the rivers has the advantage of destroying evidence.

Gannon and Duarte found graffiti smiley faces at theorized crime scenes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa. In all they found victims in 25 cities, across 11 states, along the Interstate 94 corridor that they believe were killed by the gang.

The FBI investigated the theory and dismissed it.

An academic paper from the Center for Homicide Research examined it and found no scientific evidence to support continued belief in the theory. There was the trouble of chronological succession with the spray paint, for one. There was no proof that the graffiti had been placed nearby when the the bodies were dumped, the paper argued. The graffiti could be years old. Not too mention that, as graffiti goes, a smiley face is a pretty common thing. But what about “sinsinawa” that strange word that turned up at some of the scenes? It’s a Native American word, common across much of the Midwest the paper argued.

That was 2010. But the theory persisted. Gannon and Duarte never backed away from it.

But Gannon did suggest he and Duarte were running out of money to work on the case. As private investigators and businessmen they went to cases that could pay. Internet research suggests Gannon’s work on the cases, or at least his media appearances, began to slow by 2012.

But the theory’s persistence — or perhaps it’s our persistence in clinging to it — is what’s interesting.

A simple Google search for “Smiley Face killer” will turn up countless blogs of amateur web detectives, convinced they are the trail of a gang of killers. Many of the blogs are created by family members of some young man who disappeared from a bar and was found in a river. The blogs tell stories of slap-dash police investigations, that hurriedly arrived at the answer of an accidental drowning. Unable to accept the police determinations, family members start searching for a killer.

That might be chalked up to a distraught loved one attempting to cope with an accidental death. That would be understandable. But it doesn’t account for the countless others who remain convinced that Gannon and Duarte are — or at least were — on to something, and are determined to find the proof.

It is as if the existence of a torturous gang of killers, hunting midwestern bars for victims is somehow preferable to a rash of accidental drownings. Is that possible? Or do people just love a good mystery? Or perhaps, the search for a killer that may or may not exist is tied to a human desire to be scared. Knowing that a gang of monsters lurks in the shadows, is indeed frightening and strangely, somehow, affirms life.

Just as the sad news of the disappearance of Shane Montgomery stirred all those old feelings in me, so too did the 2013 death of Nick Wilcox for one Milwaukee journalist.

Wilcox, a college-aged, white male, disappeared from a bar in Milwaukee, only to be found later in the river. Police said he got drunk and fell in.

This happened a year after Gannon seemingly backed away from media appearances. But one Milwaukee columnist, Eugene Kane, against the advice of editors and police, brought the Smiley Face killer theory back into the spotlight. It’s too early to discard the theory he argued. There are still too many unanswered questions.

Kane’s column is among the most recent, and stark, examples of the theory’s ability to terrorize us. While coming very close to accepting that the deaths could be just what the police say they are — accidents — Kane kept the possibility of a monster alive in his readers’ minds.

Many in the city argued that the Smiley Face theory was distracting people from a serious problem of binge drinking, he wrote.

“More than a few people I’ve discussed this issue with insist the real problem is that drunken young whites males go out on a bender and get separated from friends who apparently aren’t looking out for them,” Kane wrote.

“But I’m still intrigued why black males who drink a lot don’t end up in the river and why that particular racial angle seldom gets discussed,” he added, on his way to making a point about a Milwaukee serial killer everyone knows.

“Years ago, black and Hispanic men of a certain background started disappearing from the lives of their families and friends but nobody paid attention until it was too late,” Kane wrote. “That killer’s name was Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Sources

Shane Montgomery:

http://6abc.com/news/family-shane-montgomerys-cause-of-death-ruled-accidental/460549/

http://articles.philly.com/2015-01-06/news/57711012_1_kevin-verbrugghe-garden-state-rector-st

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Body-of-Missing-College-Student-Shane-Montgomery-Found-286962511.html

Chris Jenkins:

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2006/11/20/jenkins

http://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com/2013/11/chris-jenkins-homicide-someone-knows.html

http://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com/2006/11/103102-christopher-jenkins-21.html

Patrick McNeill case from Gannon’s own PI site:

http://www.nationwideinvestigations.us/case1.html

Kristi Piehl Story:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4738621

Theory Debunking

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2008/05/06/smiley-face-killers-born-minneapolis-urban-legend-takes-wing.html

This is the research paper mentioned in Mr. Keever’s article:

http://homicidecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Research-Brief-on-Smiley-Face-Murder-Theory-FINAL.pdf

Eugene Kane column:

http://onmilwaukee.com/buzz/articles/smileyfacekiler.html

Click here to view Jared Keever’s previous posts:

Up Close and Personal: Tracking the Daytona Beach Serial Killer

The Secret at Fox Hollow Farm: Herb Baumeister Murdered and Buried 11 Gay Men on His Indiana Country Estate

About Jared Keever: Jared is a full-time writer and journalist living in southeast Georgia. He has lived in Indiana, Montana, Washington state, and Florida. His interests include history, literature and true crime. When he isn’t reading or writing he is usually on a bike or spending time with his family. 

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The building was evacuated and placed on lockdown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

Mr. Oppel writes further:

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

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

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

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

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

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