Feb. 4, 2013

Lt. William Calley

Mini-My Lai massacres happened nearly every day in Vietnam, and thousands of war crimes were committed there by both sides in the conflict. In 1971, while the war was still raging, dozens of former American soldiers and Marines stepped forward to confess to the crimes they’d witnessed or participated in. Their harrowing testimony was part of the “Winter Soldier Investigation,” a truth commission sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

by David Robb

Lt. William Calley was the only American ever convicted of a war crime in Vietnam. He is infamous for having led the 105 men of Charlie Company on a rampage through the village of My Lai, massacring more than 400 unarmed civilians, many of them women and children. Babies were bayoneted; teenage girls were raped in front of their parents and grandparents and then shot as they begged for mercy. Dozens of people were herded into an irrigation ditch and mowed down with automatic weapons. Many of the dead had been beaten and tortured first, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.

Testimony from his military trial revealed that Calley himself had killed more than 20 unarmed civilians, including a 2-year-old child, who Calley caught trying to escape the carnage. Calley grabbed the little boy by the arm, swung him into a ditch and dispatched him with a single shot. One of his men later testified that while he was standing guard over a group of more than 25 villagers, Lt. Calley approached him and ordered him to shoot them all. When he refused, Calley backed up a few steps and sprayed the wailing people with machinegun fire.

One soldier was so sickened by the slaughter that he shot himself in the foot to avoid taking part. He was the only American casualty that day.

But mini-My Lai massacres happened nearly every day in Vietnam, and thousands of war crimes were committed there by both sides in the conflict. In 1971, while the war was still raging, dozens of former American soldiers and Marines stepped forward to confess to the crimes they’d witnessed or participated in. Their harrowing testimony was part of the “Winter Soldier Investigation,” a truth commission sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, held in Detroit Michigan from Jan. 31 – Feb. 2, 1971.

These are some of their stories:

Chop, Chop

Joe Bangert was a Marine from Philadelphia assigned to the Marine Observation Squadron Six with the First Marine Air Wing in 1968. On his first day in Vietnam, he landed atDa Nang Air Base, and then took a plane to Dong Ha. From there, he hitch-hiked rides with military convoys on Highway 1 to his unit.

“I was picked up by a truckload of grunt Marines,” he testified. “We were about five miles down the road, where there were some Vietnamese children at the gateway of the village and they gave the old finger gesture at us. It was understandable that they picked this up from the GIs there. The trucks slowed down a little bit, and it was just like response, the guys got up, including the lieutenants, and just blew all the kids away. There were about five or six kids blown away and then the truck just continued down the hill. That was my first day in Vietnam.”

Sgt. Jack Smith was a highly decorated Marine sergeant from New Haven, Connecticut. When he first got to Vietnam in 1969, he and the other Marines in the 12^th Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, were sympathetic to the hungry little children they’d see running alongside their trucks, yelling “Chop, Chop” – meaning, “Give us food and candy” – as they convoyed though villages. The Marines would toss them candy and food – C-ration cans – so that the kids could eat, and to help win the hearts and minds of the innocent civilian population. But after months of bloody combat, that all changed.   

“We began trying to hit them with the cans,” he testified. “We’d toss them into barbed wire and watch the kids go tearing after them, cutting themselves up. Some guys would drop the cans off the back of the truck when we were in a convoy. They’d drop the cans so the kids would have to dart out and grab them and try to get out of the way of the next truck.  One of the kids didn’t get out of the way in time. The convoy just kept going. Every truck ran over that kid.”

James Duffy was a machine gunner on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter with Company A, 228^th Aviation Battalion, 1^st Air Cav. Division, who served in Vietnam from February 1967 to April 1968. He later recalled this incident of giving “food” to Vietnamese women and children.

“We’d throw out the C-ration cans that we didn’t like, and after they thought they were getting a lot of food, we’d hand them cans of 5606, which is helicopter hydraulic fluid, and very poisonous. And I observed one kid, that I handed a can of hydraulic fluid, take a good healthy drink out of it before his mother knocked it over, knocked it right out of his hand, and he was immediately sick right after that happened.”

Bill Hatton was a heavy equipment mechanic who joined the Marines out of high school in 1966. In Vietnam, he was assigned to the Engineer Maintenance Platoon at Dong Ha.

Trioxane heat tab. Note warning: Harmful if swallowed.

“I frequently traveled between Quang Tri and Dong Ha,” he recalled, “and we’d take C-ration crackers and put peanut butter on it and stick a trioxane heat tab (fuel used to heat rations) in the middle and put peanut butter around it and let the kid munch on it. Now they’re always looking for ‘Chop, Chop,’ and the effect more or less of trioxane is to eat the membranes out of your throat, and if swallowed would probably eat holes through your stomach.” He called this a “heat tab sandwich.”

Hatton also told the story of the little Vietnamese boy who used to taunt Marines driving by in convoys, yelling at them, “You Marines, Number 10” – meaning that they were bad men who didn’t give children food and candy. Good soldiers who gave the kids candy were called “Number One GIs!”

“We used to drive by this row of hooches (huts),” he recalled, “and a little 3-year-old kid in a dirty gray shorts used to run out and scream, ‘You, Marines, Number 10,’ and we’d always go back, ‘Oh fuck you, kid,’ and all this stuff. So one night the kid comes out and says, ‘Marines, you Number 10,’ and throws a rock. So we figured we’d get him because this was a way of having fun. The next night before we went out we all stopped by COC (Combat Operations Center), which is right by the ammo dump, picked up the biggest rocks we could get our hands on and piled them in the back of the truck. So when we left the Combat Base we just turned the corner and we saw a little kid, we were waiting for the kid – he ran out of the hooch – and he was going to scream, ‘Marine Number 10,’ and we didn’t even let him get it out of his mouth. We just picked up all the rocks and smeared him. We just wiped him out. In fact, the force of the rocks was enough to knock over his little tin hooch as well. I can’t say that the kid died, but if it would have been me, I would have died easily. The rocks, some of them, were easily as big as his head. It was looked upon as funny. We all laughed about it.”

He also recounted this story: “In March of ‘69, I was serving as security in a convoy, they just gave me a ride at the gate and we got four miles south of the Dong Ha perimeter and there were a group of Vietnamese women and children who were gathered around at this little bridge outposts the ARVNs (South Vietnamese military) had as security on Highway 1 there. The truck was doing considerable speed and it was just sort of spontaneous reaction, they said, ‘Let’s get ‘em. They want Chop, Chop, we’ll give it to ‘em,’ picking up cases of C-rats which weigh up to approximately 30 pounds and threw them off into the women and the kids. You know, just flattened them out and knocked them back quite a few feet. There was no way of determining whether or not they were actually dead but the injuries must have been serious.”

“My commanding officer once fired at a group of kids merely because they came up to our hill to collect C-rations,” recalled John Beitzel, a squad leader with the 11^th Brigade, 4/21 Infantry. “We were also ordered to fire gas grenades at them. There was a big pressure for body count. We had a very low body count in our company and we had a lot of pressure coming down from the battalion commander to the company commander, down on to us. We were given new incentives to get a higher body count such as a six-pack of beer or a case of soda. And sometimes, a three-day pass, you know, for the amount of body count we had.”

Robert McConnachie was 18-year-old high school graduate from Florida when he enlisted in the Army in 1967. He was a sergeant E-5 in Vietnam in 1968 with the 1^st Infantry Division, 2^nd/28^th, Black Lions, when he witnessed several children killed by fellow soldiers playing the C-ration can game.

“When I was out in the field outside of Lai Khe with the infantry,” he recalled, “we were moved north, so some of us had to go by slicks, which are helicopters, and some by trucks, or jeeps, to Quan Loi, to re-supply the people who left before us. On the way up to Quan Loi, we were on Highway 13, you go through villages and you see little kids with their hands out, begging. Well, at first I saw GIs tossing the cans out to them, C-ration cans. Then all of a sudden I saw they were coming pretty fast at the children, and I saw two or three of them killed right there, stoned with C-ration cans. We were stopped by the MPs; he just warned us, so we kept on with our convoy and nothing was said about the kids.”

“It wasn’t like they were humans. We were conditioned to believe that this was for the good of the nation, the good of our country, and anything we did was okay.”

Jamie Henry was 19 when he was drafted into the Army on March 5, 1967. In Vietnam, he served with the 4^th Infantry Division.

“On August 8^th (1968), our company executed a 10-year-old boy,” he testified. “We shot him in the back with a full magazine M-16.

“Approximately August 16^th to August 20^th, I’m not sure of the date,” he continued, “a (Vietnamese) man was taken out of his hooch sleeping, was put into a cave, and he was used for target practice by a lieutenant, the same lieutenant who had ordered the boy killed. Now they used him for target practice with an M-60, an M-16, and a .45. After they had pretty well shot him up with the 60, they backed off aways to see how good a shot they were with a .45 because it’s such a lousy pistol. By this time, he was dead.

“On February 8^th (1969), this was after a fire-fight and we had lost eight men, we found a man in a spider hole. He was of military age. He spoke no English, of course. We did not have an interrogator, which was one of the problems in the fields. He was asked if he were VC and, of course, he kept denying it, ‘No VC, No VC.’ He was held down under an APC (armored personnel carrier) and he was run over twice – the first time didn’t kill him.” (The second time did.)

“About an hour later,” Henry recalled, “we moved into a small hamlet, this was in I Corps, it was in a Marine AO (area of operation), we moved into a small hamlet. Nineteen women and children were rounded up as VCS – Viet Cong Suspects – and the lieutenant that rounded them up called the captain on the radio and he asked what should be done with them.

“The captain simply repeated the order that came down from the colonel that morning, which was to kill anything that moves, which you can take any way you want to take it.  

“When the captain told the lieutenant this, the lieutenant rang off. I got up and I started walking over to the captain thinking that the lieutenant just might do it because I had served in his platoon for a long time. As I started over there, I think the captain panicked, he thought the lieutenant might do it too, and this was a little more atrocious than the other executions that our company had participated in, only because of the numbers. But the captain tried to call him up, tried to get him back on the horn, and he couldn’t get ahold of him. As I was walking over to him, I turned, and I looked in the area. I looked toward where the supposed VCS were, and two men were leading a young girl, approximately 19 years old, very pretty, out of a hooch. She had no clothes on so I assumed she had been raped, which was pretty SOP (standard operating procedure), and she was thrown onto the pile of the 19 women and children – and five men around the circle opened up on full automatic with their M-16s. And that was the end of that.”

Mark Lenix was a 21-year-old lab technician when he was drafted into the Army. He went to officer candidate school and landed in Vietnam in 1968 as a first lieutenant, assigned as a forward observer with the 1^st/11^th Artillery attached to the 2^nd/39^th Infantry Battalion.

“In November ’68,” he recalled, “in an area called the Wagon Wheel just northwest of Saigon, while on a routine search and destroy mission, (helicopter) gunships which were providing security and cover for us in case we had any contact were circling overhead. Well, no contact was made, and the gunships got bored. So they made a gun run on a hooch with mini-guns and rockets. When they left the area, we found one dead baby, which was a young child, very young, in its mother’s arms, and we found a baby girl about 3 years old, also dead.

“Because these people were bored; they were just sick of flying around doing nothing. When it was reported to the battalion, the only reprimand was to put the two bodies on the body count board and just add them up with the rest of the dead people. There was no reprimand; there was nothing. We tried to call the gunship off, but there was nothing you could do. He just made his run, dropped his ordnance, and left.

“And there they were, man. The mother was, of course, hysterical. How would you like it if someone came in and shot your baby? And there was nothing we could do, man, we just watched it. And nothing happened. I have no idea what happened to the helicopter pilot, or to anyone in the gunship. It was gone.”

“We went mad when Pierce got blown away,” recalled Sgt. Michael McCusker, of Portland, Oregon, who served with the First Marine Division in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967.  “A sniper hit him. The shot came from a village we just passed, and I turned around and saw this old priest standing there. Someone shot a gun right behind me and shoved that little priest right into his altar. Then we wiped out that village and another. I mean everything – we shot people, pigs, dogs, geese – we burned every hut. It was just madness.”

(The Vietnam War Memorial lists 50 Americans killed in the war with the last name Pierce.)

Charles Stephens was an Army private first class from Fords, New Jersey, and in 1967 was attached to the 27^th Infantry, 101^st Airborne Division, in Vietnam. His unit had taken numerous casualties in a battle in a place they ironically called Happy Valley, and the next day, they went into a village called Tuyhoa, and started shooting the place up, killing and wounding many civilians.

“The next morning,” he recalled, “we were camped on a hill above the village and the villagers were having a burial ceremony. This sergeant and a Spec/4 started firing machine gun rounds at the burial ceremony. They hit a guy, and people didn’t even look to see if he was dead. They just rolled him over and put him in the hole with the others and covered him up.

“We went down that same day to get some water and there were two little boys playing on a dike and one sergeant just took his M-16 and shot one boy at the dike. The other boy tried to run. He was almost out of sight when this other guy, a Spec. 4, shot this other little boy off the dike. The little boy was like lying on the ground kicking, so he shot him again to make sure he was dead.”

Jon Drolshagen was an Army 1^st lieutenant from Columbus, Ohio, attached to the 9^th Infantry, 25^th Infantry Division, in Vietnam from 1966-67. Torturing suspected Viet Cong, he recalled, was routine.

“We’d attach wires to parts of their bodies,” he recalled. “The wires ran to a 12-volt Jeep battery. They would give off a pretty good scream when we stepped on the gas. If the wire method failed, the major in charge got out his knife. Once he just filleted a man alive, cut strips off him like bacon. We had to kill him after that – you couldn’t take a guy in that condition to a hospital.”

Sgt. Scott Camil, of Gainesville, Florida, was an advance artillery spotter in Vietnam attached to the Eleventh Marine Regiment, First Marine Division. “I could call in artillery whenever I saw fit. All I had to do was report incoming fire and I could get it. What we’d do is, if there was a slow time, we’d just pick out a village and say, “Okay, let’s see how many shots it takes to destroy this house.” And I’d call in artillery until I’d destroyed it. And then the mortar guy would call mortar rounds in until he destroyed one. And whoever used the least amount of rounds would win. The loser would buy the winner beers.”

He also told this story: “If an operation was covered by the press there were certain things we weren’t supposed to do, but if there was no press there, it was okay. I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers. When we got up to her she was asking for water. And the Lieutenant said to kill her. So he ripped off her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread-eagled her and shoved an E- tool up her vagina, an entrenching tool, and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out and they used a tree limb and then she was shot.

“It wasn’t like they were humans. We were conditioned to believe that this was for the good of the nation, the good of our country, and anything we did was okay.”

Joe Bangert, the Marine who saw five or six children intentionally murdered on his first day in Vietnam, also tells this story:

“In Quang Tri City I had a friend who was working with USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and he was also with CIA. We used to get drunk together and he used to tell me about his different trips into Laos on Air America Airlines and things. One time he asked me would I like to accompany him to watch. He was an adviser with an ARVN group and Kit Carson Scouts (former Viet Cong working for the U.S.). He asked me if I would like to accompany him into a village that I was familiar with to see how they act. So I went with him and when we got there the ARVNs had control of the situation. They didn’t find any enemy but they found a woman with bandages. So she was questioned by six ARVNs and the way they questioned her, since she had bandages, they shot her. She was hit about 20 times. After she was questioned, and, of course, dead, this guy came over, who was a former major, been in the service for 20 years, and he got hungry again and came back over working with USAID. He went over there, ripped her clothes off and took a knife and cut, from her vagina almost all the way up, just about up to her breasts and pulled her organs out, completely out of her cavity, and threw them out. Then, he stopped and knelt over and commenced to peel every bit of skin off her body and left her there as a sign for something or other.”

Kenneth Ruth was an Army medic in Vietnam who not only witnessed atrocities, but also participated in them. “Each of us could go on all day talking about atrocities that we witnessed,” he said. “Each of us saw many, and many of them we all participated in.”

One war crime he was involved in – the torturing of two villagers suspected of being Viet Cong – took place after the Special Forces unit he was attached to had entered a village and asked the villagers to point out who the Viet Cong were.

“Somebody had to be pointed out,” he recalled, “and the villagers weren’t going to point out themselves.” So two villagers were selected as VC suspects and tortured.

William Calley today lives in Atlanta, Georgia

“We were given two people that we were told were Viet Cong,” he said. “We took these two guys out in the field and we strung one of ‘em up in a tree by his arms, tied his hands behind him, and then hung him in the tree. A Special Forces man was running the whole show, and this is all under their command and everything. Now what we did to this man when we strung him up is that he was stripped of all his clothes, and then they tied a string around his testicles and a man backed up about 10 feet and told him what would happen if he didn’t answer any questions the way they saw fit. So they’d ask the guy a question: ‘Do you know of any enemy units in this area?’ And if he said, ‘No,’ the guy that was holding that string would just yank on it as hard as he could about 10 times, and this guy would be just flying all over the place in pain. And this is what they used. I mean anybody’s just going to say anything in a situation like this.

“Then we took the other guy to the other end of the village, and we didn’t do this, all we did was burn his penis with a cigarette to get answers out of him.

“This is just one of the things I saw. I could just go on all day. All of us could. But it’s not just us. Everybody knows this. It isn’t just Lieutenant Calley. I was involved, I know there are so many other people involved in all this American policy in Vietnam.”

But Lt. William Calley was the only person convicted of war crimes in Vietnam.

On March 29, a military court martial found him guilty of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians, and on March 31 he was sentenced to life in prison and hard labor at Ft. Leavenworth.

The next day, however, President Richard Nixon ordered him transferred from Leavenworth to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he spent the next three-and-a-half years living in comfort under house arrest.

When he was released a free man by a federal judge in 1974, a Georgia congressman accompanied him on his flight home.

Feb. 7, 2013

Over a 10-year-year period, from 1972 to 1982, the Shankill Butchers gang, led by psychopath Lenny Murphy, terrorized Northern Ireland Catholics, becoming the most prolific group of serial killers in British history.

by Robert Walsh

“A lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry.” – The Shankill Butchers, as described by their trial judge, Lord Justice O’Donnel.

Ireland in general (and Northern Ireland in particular) has long had a troubled, violent and dark history. Invasions, rebellions, famine, revolution, civil war and what are generally described as “The Troubles” have cast a long shadow over the Emerald Isle and its neighbor (and former colonial ruler) Great Britain. In recent years, especially after the peace talks and ceasefire of the early 1990’s, both the British and Irish people have begun to bury their differences and to explore their common history, dark and uncomfortable though it often is. One of the darkest episodes was that of the Shankill Butchers.

 The Shankill Butchers were based in the Shankill district of Belfast (a staunchly pro-British part of the city) and laid a nominal claim to being pro-British paramilitaries. However, leader Lenny Murphy’s motives were far more personal than political. Murphy was the lynchpin around whom the Butchers revolved.

The Troubles – A Short History

In order to understand the Butchers they need placing in context. Northern Ireland itself was born of talks between the British and Irish following the 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent violence. As part of a treaty between the British and the Irish rebel leadership, six of Ireland’s 32 counties were split from the newly-formed Irish Free State (today’s Irish Republic). These six counties (the six Irish counties possessing the largest Protestant majorities) became Northern Ireland or Ulster under what was called “Partition,” remaining under British rule. The issue of a united Ireland has dogged the British and Irish ever since.

Paramilitary groups and their political wings had long existed on both sides and both readily employed violence. Those supporting a united Ireland peacefully became known as Nationalists while their paramilitaries (and their associated political front groups) were collectively labeled Republicans. Those campaigning lawfully to preserve links to Britain (campaigning according to the law as it then stood, often with the unofficial connivance of an often openly biased police service and judiciary) were known as Unionists, while their paramilitary groups (and their own political front groups) were collectively labeled Loyalists.

One of the many murals that decorate the walls in Belfast and it  depicts the Ulster Volunteer Force (Lenny Murphy's paramilitary group)

There was also a religious difference. Republicans or Nationalists were largely Catholic while Unionists and Loyalists were usually fiercely Protestant. There were both Catholics and Protestants who broke that tradition, but they were exceptions to the rule. It’s important to recognize the difference, on both sides, between those who adopted violence and those who didn’t. Simply supporting either side never meant automatic support for paramilitary methods. Violence was freely employed by paramilitaries on both sides, but their motivations and strategies were very different.

Both sides readily made examples of known or suspected informers, but their other targets differed immensely. Republicans tended to attack members of the British armed forces, officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (nowadays the Police Service of Northern Ireland), part-time soldiers (Territorials, similar to the U.S. National Guard) and Loyalist paramilitaries. The Republicans had clear criteria for selecting potential targets. Their targets were visible and selected for political or military status rather than religious or political sectarianism.

Targeting by Loyalists was far less selective and far more likely to be sectarian. The Republicans had adopted guerilla tactics, emphasized tight security among members, used a cell structure to further separate the activities of individual Active Service Units (known as ASU’s) and generally tried to be inconspicuous, making targeting specific Republicans far harder for Loyalists. Plus the politics of Loyalism (as distinct from Unionism) have been described as “the politics of fear.” Many Loyalists tended to fear the idea of Catholics (and, by extension, Republicans) gaining the basics of equality, seeing it as a stepping-stone towards a united Ireland. Loyalist violence often (but not always) placed sectarianism before strategy, reflecting hatred born of fear.

One of the more notorious Loyalist paramilitary groups was the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and it was his links to the UVF that allowed Lenny Murphy to recruit his henchmen, intimidate potential witnesses and informers and for the Butchers in general to kill as openly, brutally and frequently as they did. The UVF’s membership and influence had declined, but had revived from the late-1960’s onward. Violence (and an ever-present, credible threat thereof) was an intrinsic within UVF policy and philosophy. It’s no surprise that Murphy found them attractive.

The “Master Butcher”

Murphy was born into perpetual violence, extremism and sectarianism. He spent his childhood in staunchly Protestant areas and was constantly bullied for having what some considered a Catholic-sounding surname. Where Murphy grew up Catholics were often so loathed that even the wrong surname was considered suspect. He was also taunted over a common belief that he was illegitimate and that his father wasn’t the man who actually raised him. In short, Murphy was a ready-made victim of perpetual abuse and mistreatment.

Lenny Murphy

Murphy grew into a violent bully, usually ready to meet the slightest perceived insult or challenge with instant aggression. Possibly as a direct result of his suffering being (in his mind) related to religious bigotry, he developed a lasting, visceral hatred of Catholics. His venom knew no limits and fuelled his later crimes. Murphy was a classic case of prey turning predator and he may have seen this simply as a means to survive in a dangerous, hostile environment. What separates him from most people with similar backgrounds is his sheer barbarity and his relishing extreme sadism and violence for their own sake.

Murphy was a natural recruit and joined the UVF after leaving school. He was young, fanatical, violent, eager to both learn his chosen trade (paramilitary violence) and fight his perceived enemy (Northern Ireland’s Catholics, Nationalists and Republicans). He was also far from a stereotypical Neanderthal thug and possessed brains as well as brawn. It was through the UVF and other such groups that Murphy combined his unrelenting anti-Catholicism with the technical skills and personal contacts needed to assemble and lead the Shankill Butchers. Murphy furthered his “education” by regularly attending trials as a spectator, becoming a regular feature in the public gallery. Murphy clearly wanted to understand policing and the law in order to frustrate them. Studying the legal system was an excellent opportunity to find its inherent weaknesses and later use them to evade and obstruct law enforcement. If he already intended a campaign of purely sectarian murder, he was actively laying the foundations by this point.

The victims came from an unusually broad variety of backgrounds. Most were Catholics (chosen simply for being Catholics), some were killed in personal feuds with one or more Butchers, a few were other Loyalists killed in factional feuds and others were what the military call “collateral damage” (they happened to be in the wrong places at the wrong times). Such was Murphy’s dominance over his gang that, even after he had been imprisoned on unrelated firearms charges, other Butchers continued to kill on his personal orders as he felt that continued killings would hamper police efforts to see him convicted of serial murder. Murphy was so confident of his absolute command that he sometimes called himself the “Master Butcher.”

One of the things that marks the Butchers as serial killers rather than paramilitaries is their collective desire for power and domination, a desire to act as they pleased regardless of the damage to others and to kill out of hatred and sheer enjoyment rather than furthering any political goals. It would be wrong to say that their paramilitary links were purely incidental to their crimes. Their environment (religious, political, social and criminal) was the breeding ground from which they came together and played a sizeable part in local citizens being terrified to speak out. The “Troubles” weren’t by any means a sideshow, but I’d argue that their crimes were far more about personal gratification than devotion to a cause.

The methods varied as much as the victims. The standard method was for a group of Butchers to cruise the Shankill district in a black taxicab similar to those used in London. All the Butchers knew the Shankill district intimately. They knew which routes Catholics used to pass through the Shankill, the best escape routes, that local residents were terrified to co-operate with the police, fearing both the Butchers themselves or the paramilitaries with whom many Butchers had links. The Shankill was their personal hunting ground and they used it to indulge a combined passion for sadistic murder, confident that those who knew or suspected their identities were highly unlikely to inform. They inspired such extreme fear that local people took a different route if they saw a black cab parked in the Shankill that looked remotely out of place.

“The Cut-Throat Murders”

Once victims were chosen they were overpowered and dragged into the back of the cab. Once inside they were beaten, slashed, choked and then (depending on the Butchers’ whim) probably killed and dumped in public places where they were sure to be found. One victim was deliberately left within a minute’s walk of the local police headquarters. If the Butchers were feeling particularly sadistic their victim was kept alive and taken to one of several locations considered secure and safe (especially the Lawnbrook Social Club, a Loyalist drinking den). Victims were then gratuitously tortured until either they died or the Butchers became bored and silenced them permanently. The level of sadism especially distinguished the Butchers from other criminals in Northern Ireland. Not only did they kill for little or no political or paramilitary gain, they reveled not only in killing for killing’s sake, but also in making their crimes as barbarous as possible. Neither sadism nor recreational killing were common practice, even in a place as troubled and violent as 1970’s Northern Ireland.

Other victims died through poisoning, gunshot wounds, a bomb attack and simply being beaten to death. Unlike the victims of many serial killers, they had few common denominators, there was little to indicate a pattern of the kind a psychological profiler might find useful. All that usually linked the victims was their Catholic religion, the violence of the murders and the fact that they all occurred within the Shankill district, but the Butchers did have one particular trademark that stood out. Many victims were found with their throats cut, several were cut so severely that they were almost decapitated before being dumped in public places where they were always going to be found quickly. The victims’ bodies also usually bore the signs of torture before death and mutilation afterwards. Merely killing wasn’t enough for the Butchers; they had to embellish their crimes as well which indicates a greater interest in killing for pleasure over killing on a professional basis. Torture, throat-cutting and mutilation were their hallmarks, leading to local people and the press referring to their crimes as “the cut-throat murders.” In total, at least 30 individual murders have been attributed to various Butchers between Murphy’s first kill in 1972 and the Butchers’ last known killing in 1982.

The Romper Room

Murphy’s first personal victim was Francis Arthurs in July 1972. Arthurs was a Catholic and had been travelling through the Shankill in a taxi from the predominantly Nationalist Ardoyne district. The taxi was hijacked and Arthurs was taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a Loyalist drinking den. Arthurs was dragged into what club members called the “romper room,” a room set aside for what they called “rompering.” Rompering always involved violence and degradation, often torture and sometimes murder. Torture sessions and punishment beatings in the romper room were usually conducted in front of an audience as the torturers felt making spectators into accessories made them keep quiet. Arthurs would never leave the romper room alive. He was held prisoner until non-paramilitary customers had gone home and then the remaining drinkers took turns beating and torturing him. Every thug present took their turn before beating Arthurs as a group. He was then shot and dumped on a Shankill street less than a mile from the crime scene.

One of those involved later admitted that one of the gang, a 20-year old man, was especially violent and sadistic. He made a point of delivering more blows and hitting harder than anyone else as though he had something to prove or a particular level of hatred. The same man also tortured Arthurs with a knife just before the shooting. It was Lenny Murphy, the story of the Shankill Butchers had begun and there was no turning back.

Murphy in The Maze

The killings continued. Three more victims swiftly followed Francis Arthurs. All were sadistic, involved considerable torture before death and were seemingly for no political motive while all were similar enough that police believed they were the work of the same killer. After the UVF-ordered murder of William Pavis (a Protestant suspected of selling firearms to Republicans) Murphy and his accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested and Connor folded. He confessed, implicating Murphy as the actual shooter. Both ended up in Crumlin Road jail awaiting trial.

Unfortunately for the prosecution, Connor then suffered fatal cyanide poisoning, a supposed suicide note detailing his immense guilt at “falsely” implicating Murphy. It later transpired that Murphy had dictated the note for Connor and then forcibly fed him the poison. Connor lingered overnight and died the next morning. Two prison officers specifically assigned to guard Connor were mysteriously distracted into watching television with other inmates. Seemingly in spite of their specific assignment to protect Mervyn Connor night and day they didn’t see Murphy approach Connor’s cell, they didn’t hear him dictating the fake suicide note and false confession and they didn’t hear Murphy holding Connor in a headlock while pouring a phial of cyanide into his mouth. Murphy was promptly transferred to Her Majesty’s Prison, Maze and the case collapsed (with the star prosecution witness dead, the remaining evidence wasn’t nearly enough to take to trial).

Murphy’s time at The Maze was equally eventful. Back among other Loyalist paramilitaries he displayed willful, abrasive and confrontational behavior that caused resentment among other Loyalist inmates. That discontent (and his already fearsome reputation) caused many to view him as a problem but also as too dangerous to confront openly. The UVF’s grip on Murphy began to slip even further, giving him an even freer hand. Violent confrontations with other Loyalists, some of whom were far senior to him in the Loyalist hierarchy, further marked him as dangerously reckless and, on his release, even many extremists kept a wary distance from both Murphy and the tightly-knit clique he gathered after his release in May 1975.

Murphy’s Inner Circle

There were three men who were especially keen to follow his lead, marking them out from other Butchers who tended to participate in some murders but not others. William Moore, Sam McAllister and a fellow Crumlin Road inmate, Robert “The Basher” Bates, formed Murphy’s inner circle. They provided weapons, vehicles and extra muscle once victims had been chosen. McAllister and Bates were mainly there for their violence, while Moore supplied the black taxi used in some of the murders, a set of butcher knives and a meat cleaver stolen from his former workplace and often firearms as well. William Moore was perhaps Murphy’s most obedient follower and ever-present in the Butchers’ career.

Murphy was married while in jail and the couple had a baby daughter. With his domestic affairs settled down (as much as they ever would be) it was time for Murphy to stop killing alone and begin leading the Butchers as a unit. The Butchers’ first collective crime was also one of their most destructive, involving an armed robbery at Casey’s Bottling Plant, a local liquor wholesaler. Paramilitaries on both sides often supplemented their income with crimes such as drug dealing, extortion and robberies and the Butchers were no exception. Casey’s was a lucrative target. It would also be the scene of a quadruple murder committed, not out of necessity, but on sectarian grounds. Once Murphy and his accomplices forced their way into the plant and detained the four staff present, Murphy discovered that they were all Catholics. His response was to simply execute them all.

Marie McGrattan, Frances Donnelly, Gerard Grogan and Thomas Osbourne paid with their lives for the crime of following a different religion. Only weeks later, in late November 1975, Catholic Francis Crossen was found dead, severely beaten and with his throat cut, in a Shankill alleyway. Five days later it was UVF member Noel Shaw, shot dead in an internal UVF feud. In January 1976 Catholic Edward McQuaid was murdered in a drive-by shooting and in February another Catholic, Thomas Quinn, was found stabbed to death in the Shankill. Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle were both Protestants but, the Butchers having mistaken them for Catholics, they were promptly shot dead while they sat in their delivery truck only three days after the discovery of Thomas Quinn. Two weeks after they were killed, Catholic Francis Rice was found stabbed to death in a doorway.

Murphy Orders Killings from Prison

Then the Butchers took what was, by their standards, a long hiatus. In March of 1976 Murphy attempted the drive-by shooting of a Catholic woman. He was arrested later the same day and jailed to await trial for attempted murder. After many months on remand (and without a killing attributed to the Butchers) he made a plea bargain in October, 1977 and received a 12 year jail sentence. Shortly after his arrest he received visits from two men still identified for legal reasons only as “Mr. A” and “Mr. B.” Through “Mr. A” Murphy ordered that the killings should continue, partly due to his own desire to kill and partly to divert suspicion for the previous murders away from himself. “Mr. A” and “Mr. B” now became Murphy’s representatives, passing his orders to the rest of the gang.  Such was Murphy’s dominance over his followers that only months after his sentencing the killings restarted.

After Francis Rice’s murder it wasn’t until August of 1976 that another victim was found. Cornelius Neeson was discovered lying on a Shankill street corner having been beaten to death with a hatchet. At the end of October, 1976 Catholic Stephen McCann was discovered, stabbed and shot to death, not far from where Thomas Quinn had been found. Only five days before Christmas of 1976 a 22-year old Protestant, Thomas Easton, was found beaten to death near the sites of the Quinn and McCann murders.

The new year began with a short break for the Butchers, followed by another murder. On January 31 Loyalist paramilitary James Moorehead, a member of the rival Ulster Defence Association (UDA), was found lying on a Shankill pavement having been beaten to death. Moorehead’s death was the result of a personal dispute rather than for paramilitary reasons. He had fallen foul of the Butchers and paid the usual price. On February 3 (again within walking distance of where Quinn, McCann and Easton had been murdered) another Catholic, Joseph Morrissey, was found hacked to death with a hatchet. Late in March of 1977, Francis Cassidy (another Catholic) was found stabbed and shot to death lying on a grassy knoll in the Shankill.

Kevin McMenamin was perhaps the most tragic victim of the Butchers and also by far the youngest. He was only 7 years old when a Loyalist bomb planted by one of the Butchers exploded outside a known Republican club during a parade marking the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The Butchers hadn’t targeted him directly, but the bomb they planted killed him just the same.

Gerard McLaverty (yet another Catholic) was a true rarity among the Butchers’ victims in that he was their only victim to survive an attack. He was found in an alleyway having been slashed, stabbed and beaten. After emergency medical treatment he survived and was driven round the Shankill district by RUC detectives who’d been working to catch the Butchers for several years, albeit with a conspicuous lack of success. McLaverty was actually able to identify the men who had attacked him, spotting them from the car as armed detectives drove him round the Shankill district. McLaverty was the last known victim of the Shankill Butchers until 1982 by which time many of the Butchers were behind bars.

Many were behind bars, but not all. Murphy served only six years of his 12-year sentence on firearms charges, but his influence was still ever-present around the Shankill. While he was in jail, murders attributed to the Butchers ceased for several years but didn’t end with the failed attack on Gerald McLaverty.

One of Murphy’s reasons for often attending trials as a young man was to know his enemy. By accumulating first-hand knowledge of police procedures, criminal law and the workings of the Northern Ireland court system, Murphy had evolved a number of ways to hamper police investigations. Their known links to paramilitary groups inspired fear of retribution. The culture among many living in Northern Ireland was to avoid informing in general, owing to either a distrust or hatred of the police or out of a simple desire to avoid being maimed or murdered. Fear is a very powerful weapon when used wisely and the Shankill Butchers used it to great effect. It was to further confuse the police and aid his own chances of escaping prosecution that Murphy ordered his followers to restart the killings a few years later. He knew that while he was in jail he was less feared (making the chance of somebody informing the police that little bit greater) and he also wanted to lay the groundwork for denying any involvement because the killings continued even after he had been jailed on unrelated charges. 

The Downfall of the Butchers

The Butchers’ downfall finally began with their failed attack on Gerald McLaverty. Having left McLaverty for dead the remaining Butchers seem to have been perfectly confident in their security, confident enough to strut around the Shankill in broad daylight without seeming overly concerned about being caught. Their arrogant carelessness gave McLaverty the chance to identify his attackers and gave the police (perpetually meeting a wall of silence) the breakthrough they so desperately needed. With McLaverty’s attackers firmly identified, chief investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt was able to order a series of dawn raids and picked up Sam McAllister, his accomplice in the McLaverty attack (and peripheral gang member named Edwards) and their known associates. With a solid witness who was prepared to talk, Nesbitt knew that there was always a chance that a suspect would either talk to save himself or let slip some vital information accidentally. DCI Nesbitt was proved right.

Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbit

McAllister slipped up during questioning, originally admitting only his role in the McLaverty attack. Unfortunately for him, McAllister let slip that he knew far more than he should about the type of knife used on McLaverty which was very similar to that used on a number of the Butchers’ other victims. Nesbitt pressed the point, pushed every suspect he questioned and eventually many of the Butchers and their associates finally admitted their respective roles in the gang. The prime mover in all the violence was overwhelmingly named as Lenny Murphy. Many Butchers directly implicated him and his two still-unidentified associates (“Mr. A” and “Mr. B”) in both the “cut-throat murders” and various other paramilitary crimes. However, they later retracted their stories after, it is claimed by some, intimidation from the senior members of the UVF. Lenny Murphy (still serving his firearms sentence), “Mr. A” and “Mr. B” were all questioned several times regarding the Butchers’ inquiry but prosecutors (lacking either corroborative witnesses or forensic evidence against these three suspects in particular) decided that none of them would face charges.

The other Butchers were tried during 1978 and on into early 1979. In February 1979 11 men stood convicted of a total of 19 murders and various related offences (not including the murders attributed to the Butchers, but lacking final confirmation). In addition to being the most prolific group of serial killers in British legal history the Butchers also collected the longest combined prison sentences of any criminal gang in British legal history. Describing their crimes as “A lasting monument to sectarian bigotry” Lord Justice O’Donnel handed down 42 life sentences totaling over 2,000 years among them. He also had no hesitation in stating that, in his opinion, those sentences should carry a “full-life tariff,” meaning life without the possibility of parole.

Even though it was curtains for the gang, it wasn’t over for Lenny Murphy. He’d managed to avoid even being prosecuted after principal witnesses were allegedly intimidated into recanting their evidence, leaving the prosecution with nowhere near enough to take him to trial. This didn’t stop him killing for pleasure as soon as he was released. In July, 1982 it was the turn of a Protestant, 33-year-old Norman Maxwell, who suffered from a learning disability. He was a quiet, inoffensive man wouldn’t have been able to spot the attack coming or defend himself when it came. In the end he did neither. He was found on a patch of waste ground in the Shankill, beaten to death, only one day after Murphy’s release. In early September a Protestant, James Galway, disappeared. The UVF suspected Galway of being a police informer, what Northern Irish people call a “tout.” In Northern Ireland even being suspected of “touting” was enough to make him a marked man. After being abducted and shot dead, Galway’s body was eventually found crudely buried in a shallow grave on a local building site.

The penultimate victim was another UVF member, Brian Smyth, one week after the murder of James Galway. Smyth was another fellow paramilitary who had made the mistake of crossing Murphy by not paying a debt. Smyth did pay the penalty. He was drinking in a Loyalist club when his drink was spiked with a lethal dose of cyanide. Staggering out of the club and presumably realizing he was already in grave danger, Smyth was promptly shot dead by a passenger on a passing motorcycle. Murphy killed Brian Smyth over a fairly small debt that could easily have been resolved without bloodshed.

The Butchers’ final confirmed victim was, true to their particular preference, yet another Catholic. Joseph Donegan was passing through the Shankill when he hailed the wrong black taxi. As soon as he boarded the cab Donegan was attacked and murdered. He was found dead in a doorway like many previous victims, having been viciously beaten to death.

Murphy Gunned Down by the Provisional IRA

What goes around, comes around. Murphy had been born into a climate of violence, had inflicted terrible violence of his own and, some might say appropriately, he died violently as well. It was Tuesday, November 16, 1982. Murphy had been followed into the Glencairn estate (in the heart of the staunchly Loyalist Shankill district). He was standing outside his new girlfriend’s house when a van pulled up and out jumped two masked, armed members of the Provisional IRA. Murphy was hit by over 20 bullets, dying instantly. Speculation over who ordered the killing was rife for several days afterward, until the IRA issued a statement openly claiming responsibility. By contrast with Murphy’s indiscriminate butchery, the IRA statement reiterated its policy of “non-sectarian attacks” that were not based purely on religious prejudice. The fact that Murphy was deeply unpopular with some leading Loyalists, his (Republican) killers did the job in the heart of the Shankill and that his killers seemed to know his movements very well has led to suggestions that the Loyalist leadership colluded with the IRA to arrange his murder. The Republicans sought revenge for Murphy’s anti-Catholic atrocities, many Loyalists wanted a man often regarded as a “mad dog” put to sleep permanently. This might explain why IRA gunmen found it so easy not only to track Murphy’s movements, but to enter the heart of the Shankill, murder a well-known Loyalist heavyweight and still escape unscathed.

A popular suspect for arranging Murphy’s death is senior UDA figure Jim Craig. Craig had clashed with Murphy following Murphy’s release and there was no love lost between them. Supporting this theory (unconfirmed though it still is) is the fact that Craig was himself murdered by UDA members for what they considered “treason,” specifically allegations that Craig arranged for several rival UDA leaders to be murdered by the Provisional IRA.  A simpler theory suggests that Murphy was a man who had made many enemies and that one of them finally caught up with him.

Lenny Murphy was buried with full paramilitary “honors” at Carnmoney Cemetery (ironically, home to several of his victims) in late November, 1982. His gravestone bears the phrase “Here lies a soldier.” That gravestone has since been smashed and had to be replaced.

Feb. 11, 2013

Natalie Wood and Joshua Swalls: Foul play, or splendid accidents?

Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner

by EPONYMOUS ROX

Without a doubt, this glamorous woman’s fatal midnight plummet from the deck of The Splendour into the cool ocean waters off Catalina Island in 1981 has got to be the most high profile “accidental drowning” on record.

In the hours preceding her watery demise, she was overheard loudly quarreling with an enraged and jealous husband. They had been at this all day, in fact. All evening they’d been drinking.

Married, divorced, and remarried for a second try, the two were known to have a volatile relationship, with more than their fair share of public and private disagreements, be they drunk or sober. But this argument was different. The worst one yet.

When she drowned, she had prominent contusions in “no particular pattern” all over the front and back of her body. Some of these were fresh injuries, said to have been obtained as she frantically grappled with a small, wooden dinghy secured to the side of the yacht. Some she’d received just days before plunging to her death.

She had a variety of unexplained abrasions, too: On her flawless face, on her lovely hands, on her shapely thighs and calves.

And, as demonstrated by her casual attire on the morning would be rescuers fished her bruised body from the ocean—in a flannel nightgown, cotton socks, no lifejacket—she had clearly not entered the water voluntarily.

Yet it still took the loved ones of celebrated actress Natalie Wood over three decades to prove that her saltwater drowning was more than a little suspicious.

A perfect crime, reevaluated

It was said to have been foretold by a family member that she would someday lose her life “in dark water,” and on November 28th 1981, during an escalating argument with a husband on the rampage, die in dark water she did.

His famous wife had been lost at sea for practically two hours when Robert Wagner finally decided to report that Natalie Wood had gone missing from his boat. By that time she was surely dead, as the emergency personnel who first responded to his SOS call strongly suspected. Consequently, they found Wagner’s delay peculiar and perplexing.

The actor’s answer when questioned about it told them all they needed to know. “I thought she was off on another boat screwing around,” a sweaty, anxious, and inebriated Wagner blurted, “because that’s the kind of woman she is.”

So there were already whispers of abuse and foul play even before Wood’s beaten corpse was retrieved from the ocean a few hours later. Still, the coroner’s office of Los Angeles county, where the deceased was immediately transported for autopsy, didn’t hesitate to pronounce her drowning death an accident. Thereafter, these officials’ final determination, signed, sealed and certified, would remain undisturbed for 31 consecutive years. Until, in the summer of 2012, they changed their minds at last:

AUTOPSY SUPPLEMENTAL #81-15167 ‒ WAGNER, NATALIE / A.K.A. WOOD, NATALIE: “The right forearm showed a 4 inch x 1 inch diffuse bruising on the lateral aspect and few bruises on back of hand. The left wrist showed a slight deformity in the lateral condyle of the ulna and there was also a superficial fresh bruise in this area 1/2 inch in diameter. There were multiple small 1/2 to 1 inch fresh bruises in the left anterior lateral thigh. There was a two inch recent bruise to the left knee. There were recent bruises to the right upper leg in the area and right ankle. The anterior neck showed a small scratch. There was also superficial abrasion in left forehead, left brow and left upper cheek area with an upward direction. There was white froth in the nasal oral area. There were recent bruises to the back of the left thigh. A few day old bruises were on the back of the right thigh and knee, but there were fresh bruises and scratches to the posterior leg…There are conflicting statements as to when the decedent went missing from the boat and whether there were verbal arguments between the decedent and her husband…This Examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanism causing these injuries.” — Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, Chief Medical Examiner and Coroner for the county of Los Angeles, California - 6/15/12

Semi-perfect crimes, reevaluated

Drowning is a fast and efficient way to end a life, but not usually the weapon of choice for murderers. Possibly because they’d have to get wet themselves to do it right.

Nonetheless, there are some people who adamantly believe a gang of serial killers has been roaming the United States and selecting college age males for death by drowning. Luring an unsuspecting victim to the waterfront, preferably one who’s publicly intoxicated, and then drowning them when nobody’s looking is “the perfect crime” such theorists claim. Water washes away all the evidence.

They’ve even dubbed these mysterious marauders of young men ‘The Smiley Face Killers’ since this alleged band of evildoers has also been rumored to leave gloating graffiti at their crime scenes.

Ominous phrases, song lyrics, initials, and of course smiley faces, sometimes with horns drawn on them, these allegedly are the markings Smiley boldly leaves behind on nearby trees and walls and boulders and docks, after they’ve drowned someone…but not always.

To be sure, ever since 1997 when 21-year-old Patrick McNeill vanished from New York City and his badly decomposed corpse was found in the East River several weeks later, there have been hundreds of documented incidences of similar disappearances and drownings in America’s northland. Moreover, just as diehard believers in the Smiley Face murder theory are claiming, there is by now a well established victimology of young men meeting such a tragic end.

Police are never able to solve this vexing syndrome, even if they try, which they usually don’t, so conspiracists think they can.

Every compelling conspiracy theory that goes viral will invariably have its naysayers and critics though, and chief among those who periodically strive to debunk the Smiley Face one is the FBI, the Center for Homicide Research, a handful of expert criminologists and university professors, and swarms of local, outraged law enforcement agencies who feel self-conscious about clusters of young men drowning in their jurisdictions and who don’t want a lot of attention drawn to the situation.

It isn’t, after all, an especially appealing feature of any municipality to have youths jumping in droves into icy rivers, lakes, ponds, and streams and perishing, but all of these authorities state, in no uncertain terms, that water recreational deaths really aren’t that rare in the scheme of things.

More males drown while swimming and boating than females do anyway.

Serial killers do not drown their victims, they also add, so therefore these young men are simply drinking too much and, just as poor, drunken Natalie Wood did decades ago, they’re somehow staggering into water and accidentally drowning.

It’s a flimsy argument at best, and since it never fixes the problem opponents always cry foul in response to it. They counter with the obvious: that these guys aren’t going swimming or boating in the wintertime, that most are barely over the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle, that only certain types of men are disappearing and drowning, and that Natalie Wood’s death was hardly an accident.

Totally valid objections, each and every one of those. Except it’s true that intentional drowning does not fit the motif of serial killers, for the very simple reason that it’s much too speedy and bloodless a death to satisfy their perverse yearnings. These are deeply twisted creatures, and they seek power and pleasure exclusively through sexual assault, torture, brutal murder, and dismemberment. None of which is typically evidenced on the bodies of drowned men.

As well, even the most “organized” brand of psychopathic killer is, by virtue of profound mental disorder, incapable of teaming with others, let alone his own ilk, so the notion of a group of them somehow evading capture for more than 15 years, while fleetingly amusing to envision, is also rather specious.

Serial killings versus serial killers

Whether one is a police detective, a medical examiner, a professional private eye or a citizen sleuth, the sharpest tool anyone has for dissection and analysis will always be Occam’s Razor, a tried and true principle which posits that the simplest hypothesis is most likely to be the correct one. Or, as Einstein so eloquently summed up in decades past, “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

This is the only sensible approach to investigating because, otherwise, with every assumption that is made about a thing another possibility for error is introduced into the equation, increasing the probability that a theory is wrong…

The theorizing of the public and police concerning missing/drowned men are at extreme odds with each other, producing a stalemate. These two entrenched beliefs will always be irreconcilable because one is constructed on a plethora of odd assumptions and the other is overly simplistic.

Sadly, this has left the reasonable and important question as to why so many young males are now ending up dead in the water unanswered. But, while the drownings are most likely not due to a serial killing gang being at large in the region, their frequency shows they are by no means accidental, either.

In fact, stripped of all rhetoric and assorted red herrings, the evidentiary facts that have thus far accumulated in The Case Of the Drowning Men reveal the vast majority of victims were last seen being accosted by bouncers and/or cops only minutes before vanishing. A sharp razor is hardly necessary then to peel away such a thinly veiled mystery and see that their subsequent deaths are, instead, due to a pattern of excessive force. Inglorious and shameful as that truly is.

It’s no secret that cops and bouncers are valued for their skilled aggressiveness, and that far too often such aggression erupts into acts of brutality. To address this chronic problem, technology for subduing people in “nonlethal” ways was invented, and over the past two decades such handheld devices have become so popular and affordable that even average citizens can purchase them now without too much difficulty or even background checks.

Unfortunately though, just like mercilessly pummeling a young man until he’s rendered unconscious, employing a nonlethal weapon against him, such as a stun-gun or taser, can also lead to sudden death or a deathlike coma, especially if used improperly or to excess. Technically, this could be deemed an accidental consequence, yes, but it’s clearly not one directly caused by inebriation.

When in the process of ejecting a young man from a bar and/or arresting him in this manner he does inadvertently die from being roughed up or repeatedly stunned, it’s only then and there that a nearby river, lake, stream or pond presents itself as the ideal solution to the gruesomely unexpected.

The motive for such devious thinking is obvious: while disposal and cover up is an unpleasant business, it’s better than facing community backlash and legal ramifications that result from a wrongful death.

Wrongful death and devious thinking

As with Natalie Woods’ perilous tumble of convenience, pushing the dead or mortally injured over the railing of a ship positioned miles away from land, or else standing at the shoreline and heaving them on the count of three into a body of freshwater, is a crime after the fact. A desperate, kneejerk attempt by the felonious to hide and disguise their original offense.

And, like Wood, somebody fairly intoxicated, who’s only been knocked unconscious or is comatose, could still “naturally” drown once fully submerged, displaying all the usual drowning symptoms when their bodies resurface again: saturated lungs, foam at the mouth, high levels of magnesium and chloride distributed unevenly in the left and right chambers of the heart, volumes of watery fluid in the stomach and diluted blood.

For that matter, anyone who’s ever studied police forensics 101 knows that even a stone-cold cadaver can manage to draw some water into its air passages, if it soaks long enough.

When and if assault victims ditched in this underhanded manner are ever recovered, any telltale contusions and lacerations that may still be visible can easily be explained away as well—many bouncers are actually off-duty cops moonlighting as security for pubs and clubs, and every police department enjoys a cozy relationship with the local coroner’s office.

That means it doesn’t take a preplanned, sophisticated plot to pull off an accidental drowning whenever one becomes necessary, nor to accomplish the misdeed time and time again without getting caught. A few confidential phone calls is all it would require.

This scheme will make manufactured drowning deaths seem to qualify as perfect crimes per se, but the success of the heartless ruse is dependant entirely on halfhearted investigations.

Fame and infamy

Thanks to Hollywood, the very machine that made Natalie Wood and her embroiled former husband Robert Wagner superstars, serial killers too have become celebrities. As a result, the public today is unabashedly enamored with such malevolent personalities, reimagining them as principled and omnipotent slayers, instead of the out of control sadists and psychos that they really are.

The present-day enthrallment with such monsters, promoted by blockbuster films like Silence of Lambs and Hannibal that grossly misrepresent these antisocial predators, has also led to widespread fallacies about them, too. Particularly as relates to their prevalence.

In reality, serial killers are but a tiny fraction of the criminal population, and tortuous death at the hands of such deranged strangers only accounts for slightly less than one percent of all the murders committed annually. Whereas, in approximately 85 percent of all other homicides committed within this same time span, the victims were acquainted with their attackers. Many even related to them, either by blood or through marriage.

Likewise, despite the idea of a serial drowning gang being a premise worthy of the big screen, most if not all missing-found-drowned males were in fact last observed involved in disputes or physical altercations. So it’s fair to conclude they were already dead or on the brink of dying when their bodies were surreptitiously placed in water. The drowning events, therefore, were not the real cause or manner of their deaths, but rather the violence that preceded them.

Fists, firearms or whatever, these kind of regular run-of-the-mill “crimes of passion,” whether spontaneous or hastily premeditated, in clear view or covered up, are usually isolated acts of extreme aggression, occurring primarily in the victims’ residences and, not infrequently, in public gathering places like bars and discotheques.

Admittedly, the odd serial slaying now and then by a coldblooded psychotic may be more luridly fascinating for some, but the truth is it’s plain old passion, manifested in the form of a sudden blind and murderous rage, that is the source of nearly all homicides worldwide. Almost every single murder takes place in the heat of the moment, during some sort of impromptu confrontation between two or more average citizens which rapidly gets out of hand.

An angry friend or relative, a jilted, cheated lover, a bouncer annoyed with a boisterous patron, a cop on the beat resorting to excessive force or lethal tasering, a husband feeling cuckolded and hell-bent on revenge…forget about serial killers, these are society’s homicidal maniacs. Normal people experiencing heightened emotions that set the stage for runaway violence which can, and often does, result in unintended deaths.

Universally, any indirect murder of this nature is classified as manslaughter, but, regardless that an assault turning deadly may indeed have been unanticipated, if the killing wasn’t done in self-defense it can still carry a pretty hefty prison sentence.
Especially when the perpetrator endeavors to conceal his crime by secretly disposing of the victim…

Accidentally on purpose

Apart from the possibility that someone may have been bribed or even threatened back in 1981, it’s not impossible that it was solely due to the fame of the people present on the night Natalie Wood drowned which served to influence the erroneous ruling that her death was purely an accident.

The testimonies of Wood’s illustrious and equally drunken companions on that evening, Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, were always in glaring contradiction, so who knows if LA County’s former coroner wasn’t a bit star-struck in deliberately choosing to disregard other qualifying factors, too. Namely, the couple’s protracted squabbling on deck and below, the inordinate delay by Wagner in reporting his spouse missing, the ugly remarks he made about her to first responders, and indications of assault on her body when it was finally recovered a short distance from his yacht.

The hired skipper of The Splendour at the time has since also described a long and vicious argument Wagner had with Wood in their cabin and on deck prior to her falling overboard, as well as an elaborate cover up of the same by the actor and his representatives in the days, weeks and months following her death.

Considering the actress had multiple, days-old bruising when she disappeared and drowned, the captain’s tale of a final and fatal altercation between the unhappy twosome is therefore a credible story. One that challenges the iconic leading man’s historical version of exactly how his 43-year-old, water-phobic wife entered the Pacific Ocean, and which, in light of the new inquest into the actual circumstances of her drowning and injuries, also explains why Robert Wagner is steadfastly refusing to cooperate with investigators.

Some fans and sympathizers speculate that Wagner, now in his eighties, has clammed up only on the good advice of his lawyers. He’s a major celebrity, a veritable household name, they argue, and his silence is not an admission of guilt but rather to protect his career, his family and his legacy.

True or false motivations, only those conducting the fact-finding mission at this stage in the renewed inquest will be able one day to tell us. However, be he a famous man or just an infamous rogue in hiding, Wagner’s stonewalling should be viewed no differently than any other prime suspect attempting to dodge a worrisome police probe, or, when made to answer under oath, outright lying or taking the fifth to avoid self-incrimination. Acting belligerent or being uncooperative speaks for itself.

Not known

In his own brief but comparatively ordinary existence, 22-year-old Joshua Aaron Swalls, who somehow disappeared and “accidentally drowned” while visiting Indianapolis in November 2012, had probably never even heard of the late, great Natalie Wood. Nor does it seem very likely that he’d ever watched any of her once-groundbreaking movies either. His was a different era, one which came to an end for him much too soon.

Distanced by decades and thousands of miles, not to mention celebrity status, Joshua Swalls’ accident and Natalie Wood’s are obviously two distinctly unique events that happened to two distinctly unique individuals. Viewing their drowning deaths in terms of basic forensics, these are the other notable differences between them:

1. With a blood/alcohol concentration of 0.14, Natalie Wood was somewhat intoxicated when she drowned, and Joshua Swalls was not.

2. Wood died in saltwater off the coast of California; Swalls in the freshwater of a small, Indiana retention pond.

3. Wood’s body was found within only hours of dying and well before rigormortis had fully set in; Swalls’ decomposing corpse wasn’t discovered until three weeks after he’d vanished.

4. Wood was a middle-aged female of petite stature; Swalls was tall, athletic and svelte, and had only just reached manhood.

Yet these two November drown victims have uncanny similarities in their cases that are impossible to ignore: Both went missing under extremely suspicious circumstances, with key witnesses to their disappearances and drownings issuing contradictory statements to investigators. Both suffered virtually identical injuries prior to dying which were inconsistent with those derived in standard drowning events. Both were clad in the type of clothing that clearly implied they had not planned on going swimming and therefore hadn’t entered the water voluntarily.

And both of their cases were speedily closed by authorities as accidental, with no signs of foul play involved in either of them.

Still waters

“The deep blue sea” is, of course, very deep. But not necessarily peaceful. Still, it’s not the type of body of water where a drown victim, once fully immersed, will be dragged across jagged rocks or other underwater obstacles. An action that commonly occurs in narrower, fast-flowing rivers and creeks and which contributes to most postmortem injuries, particularly to the face and hands.

By contrast, a pond, whether manmade or natural, tends to be quite shallow. But even if spring-fed its waters are relatively calm as well. Therefore a drown victim, upon death, will, gently sink to the pond’s silty bottom and then, when gases from putrefaction have filled their corpse to maximum capacity, lurch like a helium balloon to the surface once more.

Water and air temperature determines how quickly a cadaver does that, but in the time between these inevitable events—sinking, rotting, and ascending—those in ponds and wide open bodies of seawater will usually sustain no further injuries after death and during decomposition, unless nibbled away at by marine animals.

Bodies sunken in a river or creek naturally sustain more damages because if the currents are swift enough corpses can be tossed against submerged objects and dragged along stones in a riverbed. Once refloat finally occurs, they can then travel on the water’s surface for several miles before they’re sighted by anyone. As they’re carried along like that, they can also collide with docks, barriers and piers, become ensnared by tree limbs or other floating debris, and even get mangled by the propeller blades of a passing craft.

However, any dedicated examiner conducting a thorough evaluation of such wounds can discern the difference between the ones which occurred after a victim had expired and those inflicted while they were still alive.

Decedent Joshua Swalls was delivered to the morgue for autopsy with pronounced “contusions of the right forehead and eyebrow, bridge of nose, and right zygomatic arch in the shape of a reverse C, continuous.”  He also had an “abrasion of tip of nose” and additional “abraded contusions to kneecaps bilateral, and to shins, multiple bilateral, with one underlying a tear in the left pants leg.”

All of these injuries were judged by the medical examiner to have been received before or at the time he died, not after.

Given the way both Wood and Swalls presented at autopsy then, each clothed in non-swimming apparel and plainly beaten, the only nagging question left for authorities to answer was just how these two black-and-blue people had entered the water where they drowned and who it was that had previously assaulted them, since neither an ocean nor a pond could have possibly caused all their injuries.

Ascertaining the true sequence of events which ultimately led to a victim entering a body of water and then drowning in it is part of any complete forensic analysis, and a meticulous inquiry by a coroner is demanded as a matter of law in all premature deaths.

Everyone can agree that, whether perfect people or fundamentally flawed, dying at age 22 or age 43 is much too young to be considered natural. And anytime someone dies in water when not even engaged in any water-recreational activities should additionally raise eyebrows.

In each of these troubling cases police and medical examiners could also tell that the odds of either battered victim diving into that water on their own volition were fairly slim: Joshua Swalls wasn’t drunk, wasn’t on drugs, wasn’t mentally defective, and wasn’t going to take a quick dip in frigid weather; and Natalie Wood, who frankly didn’t know how to swim because of an intense dread of water, had no history of ever being reckless with her life or suicidal.

On the other hand, she was known to be in a dragged-out domestic dispute with a spouse on a drunken tirade only moments before she “accidentally” fell into the Pacific Ocean. A man seeing red that night because he thought Wood and Walken were having an affair, and who’s last words to his doomed wife were purported to have been “get off my f—cking boat.”

It took the people who cared about her more than 30 years to achieve, but at last the dubious ruling on Natalie Wood’s manner of death has been overturned and the long overdue investigation into the likelihood of homicide fully launched. But Joshua Swalls’ drowning is every bit as questionable as hers is, and still it continues to be listed as an accident.

Will his loved ones have to wait three decades for justice, too?

Eponymous Rox is the author of The Case Of The Drowning Men and Hunting Smiley

Feb. 11, 2013

Ted and Diana Kuhl

In 1997, Ted Kuhl was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for murdering his girl friend, Janet Nivinski, in Loves Park, Illinois. Reporter Harriet Ford presents the case for his innocence.

by Harriet Ford

Just after midnight on December 6, 1996, Janet Nivinski, a 28-year-old, blue-eyed blonde, was murdered beside her car in the parking lot of a strip mall in Loves Park, Illinois, a small township located outside Rockford, Illinois in Winnebago County. The bullet that killed her was fired assassination style, six inches from her head.

During the last week of Janet’s life, she had been investigating a discrepancy at Amcore Bank, where she was responsible for transferring large sums of money overseas. She spoke to a male friend about it. She was disturbed and said, “I can’t say what it is right now, but something is not right at the bank.” A bank employee was fired that week. Police interviewed him and dismissed him as a suspect. 

An unknown man also stalked Janet a few weeks before her death. A neighbor woman became suspicious and jotted down the license number of his car, but this number was lost –one of several pieces of possible evidence to be misplaced.

Janet and her best friend Christa Peterson were planning to fly to California together in January. Janet’s boyfriend, 48-year-old Ted Kuhl, surprised the two women with plane tickets, which he had purchased for them, possibly as an early Christmas gift.

Earlier on Janet’s last day, Ted took her shopping for a Christmas tree at a lot owned by his friend, Dan Johnson. The pair spent over an hour picking out just the right tree. Dan said they were having an enjoyable and affectionate time together. Ted purchased the tree for Janet and she took it home to decorate

Ted went to deliver a gift to Janet’s mother, Sandy Ostrander, but she was not home.

Later that evening, Janet met Ted and a group of seven friends including Dan Johnson, Ricky Mueller, and Christa Peterson met at the Backyard Bar and Grill for a late supper. Located in the Loves Park Meadowmart strip mall, the bar stayed open past midnight because, according to the bar tender, everyone was having an enjoyable time, laughing and bantering with him as well as each other.

The only member of the group who seemed a little out of sorts was Christa. She did not like what she considered flirtatious behavior toward her from Ricky Mueller, a married man whose wife was not present. 

At a previous social gathering, Janet also had voiced concern about Mueller, telling a friend, Carol Brannon: “Rick gives me the creeps. I don’t trust him. He told Ted that women are like a raccoon scratching in the garbage can. You shoot ‘em and they just keep coming back. That remark was meant for me.”

The Stalker in the Bomber Jacket

Outside in the strip mall parking lot, a man in a leather bomber jacket and ball cap kept pacing around the perimeter. Two security guards grew suspicious and asked him what he was doing. The unknown man snarled a few curse words. Then he said, “I’m waiting for someone inside.”

The temperature was 28 degrees, yet the man continued to walk the parking lot for more than an hour instead of entering a place of business. He made a call from a payphone to young woman who is the daughter of a gang member. After midnight, the guards went home. The strip mall parking lot lights blipped out. The stalker was veiled in darkness.

Many vehicles were still parked in the area because the Game Place was just closing.  Around 1:18 a.m., Ted and Janet decided to leave the Backyard Bar and Grill. Other people left also. Ted walked out with Janet and Christa. Ricky Mueller, a longtime friend of Ted’s, headed for his car parked near Ted’s pickup at the far north end of the lot and some distance away.

Ted and Janet stopped at Christa’s car and said their goodnights. Christa began scraping ice from her frosted windshields. Walking five or six stalls farther on, Ted kissed Janet goodnight beside her car.

At 1:26 a.m. Ted turned to walk away. He heard Janet scream. He heard four to five shots ring out and zing past his head. He began running in a zigzag pattern as if dodging bullets, according to a shopkeeper who heard a bullet strike his storefront window and looked out.

Ricky panicked, gunned his van, and sped away from the scene. Several blocks away, he used his cell phone to call 911. In a panicky voice, he reported someone had just been gunned down, and he provided a description of a suspect in a leather bomber jacket, baseball cap, and tan pants. This is the same description later furnished by two additional witnesses, the security guards, who saw a man walking in the area just prior to Janet’s murder.

Stopping to grab Christa, who was trying to crawl under her car, Ted rushed her back inside the restaurant and shouted, “Someone just shot my girl!”

Dan Johnson ran outside with Ted. They found Janet lying in a pool of blood, clearly beyond help. The bullet from a .357 Magnum entered her head on the right temple area and exploded in her brain.

Loves Park Police arrived within three minutes. During those three minutes, Ted ran from vehicle to vehicle pounding on windshields and demanding, “Who did this?” Dan remained with him.

Loves Park Chief of Police Darryl Lindberg arrived and said he didn’t like Ted’s angry behavior. He asked an officer to seat Ted in the back of a squad car. He also said, “You’d better check his vehicle for a gun.”

The Bearded, Barefoot Man

An excited witness at the crime scene pointed to a vehicle and said, “There he goes!” For no other reason than he apparently saw a guy jump inside and gun the engine.  An officer made a traffic stop and conducted a “field interview.” He found the bearded driver, barefoot and bare-chested despite the sub-freezing temperature outside. Giving his name as Darrel D. Weichert, the driver was allowed to leave the scene, based solely on his denial of any involvement. Weichert was not asked to step out of the car. The officer did not check for bloody shoes or shirt. He apparently regretted this.

A short time later, the same officer (apparently realizing he had made a serious mistake) knocked at Weichert’s door in Loves Park, and the man appeared without the beard. He did not shave it off, because according to coworkers, he had never worn a beard. His story was that he had been out doing drugs and removed his shoes so he wouldn’t wake his wife. Police evidently believed it. Could he have been the unknown man walking the lot in the bomber jacket? Street gang members were known to wear that style of jacket.

WROK Radio man Fred Speer arrived to photograph the body. He said the area was so dark he had to turn headlights on from five feet away in order to see Janet’s corpse.

Officers drove Ted and Christa to the station to take their statements.

From blocks away, Ricky phoned the Backyard Bar and Grill to ask if Ted had been shot. Then he drove to the police station and gave Ted a consoling hug. Police took his statement also.

Christa and Ted gave short simple statements to Loves Park police and were allowed to go home. Their vehicles were kept overnight inside the yellow crime-scene ribbon.

The next day, Ricky Mueller arrived at Ted’s house and asked Ted to go skeet shooting with him.

Also the next day, police and fire department members scoured the crime scene area, the garbage cans, and the entire roof of the strip mall. No gun was ever found.

Zeroing in on Ted

First believing the murder was a gang-related shooting, police continued to press Ricky, Ted and Christa for more details. They were stymied by the fact there was no apparent motive for the murder.

It is apparent from the chronology of these reports that Ricky began to fear he would be accused. He eventually turned suspicion toward Janet’s boyfriend and lover, Ted.

It is a staple of police investigation to take a hard, close look at the people closest to a murder victim, such as a spouse or lover. Ted fit the bill.

By all accounts, Janet and Ted lived together off and on for two to three years. Janet told Christa that she would set ultimatums: “If you don’t want a child by November (Dec. etc.), I’m moving out.” After it became apparent to her that Ted, the father of a college-age son, did not want more children she moved out a final time. Nonetheless, the couple still enjoyed a close personal relationship. They continued to see each other socially, and on occasion, intimately.  In fact, a pregnancy exam was actually part of the forensics report. Janet was not pregnant.

The second area of potential conflict was Janet's request to Ted to have her name taken off the mortgage on the house they had purchased while living together. There was no indication in any of the statements that this conflict was more than a verbal request by Janet.

The money Janet loaned Ted for the down payment of his house had already been repaid months earlier. Thus, there did not appear to be any friction over money aspects of the house.

There was later a mention by Janet’s mother Sandy Ostrander (only after Ted became a suspect) suggesting that Ted and Christa might possibly be seeing each other.

Christa’s night at Ted’s

Christa was Janet’s close friend since grade school. The 28-year-old single mother was emotionally shattered by Janet’s murder.  She felt surrounded by violence. Just 12 weeks earlier, her ex-boyfriend had been gunned down during a drug-related incident. Now Janet’s bloodied body lay on the tarmac. She reasoned, “What if the killer saw me and might be coming after me too?”

Christa’s children had stayed with their father that weekend. She did not want to go home alone to an empty house. She asked Ted if she could sleep on his sofa until morning.

That innocent request led investigators to conclude that Ted and Christa were having an affair – a manufactured motive for the crime-of-passion theory. They could find no other motive. Both Ted’s and Janet’s close personal acquaintances and family members later stated to me and to investigators that they knew this alleged affair never happened.

A co-worker with Ricky Mueller also knew Ted, Janet, and Christa on a social basis. He spoke to me much later after the trial to say he drove past Ted’s home every night on his way home from work. He never saw Christa’s car there—only Janet’s car.

The Interrogations

Ricky, Ted, and Janet were interrogated on several occasions during the remainder of December.

On December 18, Ricky’s 10^th contact with police, he was taken to Reid and Associates for a polygraph examination. He failed all questions regarding his supposed knowledge that Ted was the shooter.

After failing his polygraph test, Ricky’s nervous state increased, and he changed his story again, eventually 16 times in the records and even more times to friends. Ricky began to claim he had furnished false statements to police in order to protect himself from Ted and indicated he feared Ted would also shoot him.

Once Ricky was willing to say he saw Ted with the gun, Illinois State Police persuaded him to make a pretext call to Johnstone Supply (heating and air conditioning) where Ted worked, to get Ted to implicate himself. They recorded the call and listened in.

In the call, Ricky says in a very nervous voice, “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I need to know what to do to protect you and me. Why’d you do it Ted?”

Calmly, Ted answers Ricky, “Come on buddy. I was there. If you really believe I shot Janet, where’s the gun?”

Christa’s Consistency

Significantly, Christa Peterson’s and Ricky’s first statements matched before he began to change his story.

Christa saw Ted running from an unknown man firing at him. She tried to crawl under her car and Ted grabbed her and ran with her to the restaurant. At least three additional witnesses, identified by private investigator Joe Lamb, reported seeing a shooter simultaneously while Ted was fleeing.

In an attempt to get additional information, police began to accuse Christa of lying. Still she refused to verify several police scenarios in which they suggested to her that Ted was the gunman.  They said they had photos and evidence to prove that she was lying. They also said Ted had confessed to shooting Janet. Even with that revelation, her story remained consistent. She kept asking what possible motive could Ted have to shoot Janet.

It is apparent from police reports that police hoped to break Christa’s story. They continued to press her concerning Ted's actions, implying that she was not telling the truth and was withholding information. This is documented in several parts of the report as "Christa became defensive."

On January 8, 1997, Christa took a polygraph test and passed it. The examiner said she was truthful in her statements.

Ted

Shocked that his best friend would accuse him, Ted suggested that he and Ricky meet at the Illinois State Police headquarters, where he expected to confront his accuser and go home. He reasoned correctly that they had no evidence against him.

His employers urged him to have a lawyer present, but Ted foolishly believed he did not need an attorney: “I knew I was not guilty. I did not want to appear guilty by asking for a lawyer. I also believed police would do their job. They would find the killer.”

It was Ted’s suggestion to confront Ricky at the police station instead of running and hiding, as a guilty person would do. He showed up after a full day’s work and underwent a brutal 14-hour interrogation throughout the night, during which he was shouted at, accused of lying, given coffee but refused permission to go to the restroom.

State law dictates that in the course of an investigation, a suspect must be informed of his legal rights.

It is clear that by the December 19 interview, police believed Ted was the offender and had begun to focus on him to the exclusion of all other possible offenders.

Theoretically, the rights advisement should have been initiated once incriminating statements were obtained and additional such statements were being sought.

In some jurisdictions, when incriminating statements are obtained from an interviewee, without benefit of a rights advisement, a "cleansing statement" is required prior to continuing the interview.

A cleansing statement essentially is a clear advisement by police, basically stating that even though incriminating statements were made without benefit of rights advisement, the interviewee has no obligation to continue with the interview.

A legal expert needs to evaluate whether Ted's rights were violated at this time.

Interrogators began suggesting differing scenarios of the crime, and as the night progressed, a wearied Ted began to change his story. Eventually, they promised him that he could leave if he signed a statement written by them, in which they claimed Janet “pulled a gun and Ted wrested it away from her. During the struggle, the gun accidentally fired.”

Actually Janet died with a shot glass in one hand and car keys in the other. It is evident that she did not have a gun.

Exhausted and believing the scenario impossible, Ted foolishly signed it.

Ted later said, “I was broken. I was in shock. I was shaking so badly I had to pull over and stop my truck in order to gain some composure. I also knew it was an impossible scenario. From where I stood with my back turned, I would have had to be left-handed and a contortionist to shoot Janet in the right temple, and I believed the police would realize that when they checked the facts. But they stopped checking the facts when they got that document—which was never a confession to premeditated homicide—signed.”

From that point on throughout the remainder of the investigation, police made no effort to corroborate any of the statements made by Ted or Christa.

Satan’s Disciples

Loves Park Police also ignored investigating other possible suspects. Private investigator Joe Lamb examined surveillance video film from that night and traced license plates to members of a violent street gang, the Satan’s Disciples, known for drive-by shootings in Rockford.  Loves Park police had originally believed the crime to be a drive-by shooting. Another car in the lot belonged to a driver who actually had a murder conviction on his record. This information was withheld from the jury.

No Forensic Evidence

From the Crime Lab’s reports covering the forensic examination of the physical evidence, there was no physical or forensic evidence that linked Ted to the shooting.

The bullet fragments recovered from Janet and from the Game Place should have been compared on the Integrated Ballistics Identification System through the state crime lab to determine if the weapon used in this homicide was ever used in another violent crime. If it were used after this incident, then it would be very strong evidence that another person was the actual killer.

Police believed the multiple gunshots reported by Ted, Christa and other witnesses were a result of echoes within the parking lot. However, there was nothing to indicate any efforts were made to verify this fact.

At the time of the investigation into Janet’s murder, I was a newspaper reporter for the Rockford Labor News. I found a bullet hole in a utility pole near Christa’s car, indicating that shots were fired in her direction, but police also ignored this. They claimed it could have been there for some time. The bullet hole indentation strongly supports Ted’s and Christa’s statements that the gunman fired at them after he shot Janet. This refutes the theory of Ted being the shooter. “Why would he run dodging bullets fired by himself?" I asked. I could find no police report of gunfire at Meadowmart Mall in previous months.

Inconsistencies at the Trial

In 1997, Ted Kuhl was sentenced to 40 years without any forensic evidence, no gun ever found, no motive ever substantiated, and a single eyewitness who changed his story 16 times as a matter of court record.

Several inconsistencies worked against Ted at the trial, many of them related only indirectly to the actual homicide investigation.

Age difference

Ted Kuhl was 48 at the time, 20 years older than Janet. The age difference worked against him in the trial. A Rockford attorney later said, “Juries typically do not like cradle-robber boyfriends, such as Ted was portrayed.”

Too Dark to See

Ricky testified he could see Ted from 50-feet away aiming a gun. This is highly unlikely. WROK radio news reporter, Fred Speer, who photographed the crime scene, said it was so dark he had to turn the headlights on to see the body from even five feet away.

I visited the parking lot at 1:26 a.m. (the time of the shooting) on a December night and stood approximately where Ricky said he was. I do not believe Mueller saw what he described unless he was much closer than he claimed to be.

Too Far Away

Fifty feet from the victim is also inconsistent with Forensic Doctor Larry Blum’s autopsy report. Stippling around the wound indicated the gunman fired from as close as six inches. That is consistent with what Christa saw before she dropped to the pavement to hide. She described the gunman standing in front of Janet. Janet screamed and turned her head toward Ted, so the bullet entered her right temple.
Christa also saw Ted begin to run under gunfire.

At least three other witnesses at the scene saw the gunman and Ted simultaneously, but they could not agree on the description so their testimonies were laughed out of court.

The Wrong Color

Ricky Mueller also stated in court that Ted’s ball cap was white. In fact Ted wore a green ball cap that night. His attorney had the cap in the courtroom, but failed to call the discrepancy to the attention of the jury.

The funeral dress

Even though her story remained completely consistent, prosecutors treated Christa as a hostile witness, quickly identifying her as the “other woman.” They pointed out that she spent the night with Ted after Janet’s murder. They also suggested he bought the blue dress for Christa, which she wore to Janet’s funeral. Christa had a Visa receipt to prove she purchased the dress—not Ted—however this was not noted in court.

Not Enough Emotion

Ted’s calm demeanor worked against him at the trial. Janet’s mother, Sandy Ostrander, initially described Ted to me as “charming.” Sandy had been the one to introduce Ted to her daughter at a pizza bar in Loves Park.

Once police began to suspect him, she turned bitterly against Ted because, “He didn’t even cry at her funeral. Is that the way a man acts who is supposed to love Janet with all his heart?” The jury appeared to be suspicious of Ted’s lack of visible emotion.

Ted’s brother Monty Kuhl spoke with me. He said that both he and Ted were never outwardly emotional. They did not openly weep at their own mother’s funeral. Ted’s grief was very private, however Monty saw Ted’s tears during times they were together shortly after Janet’s death.

The Viet Nam Lie

Janet’s mother did not begin to suspect Ted until police began to listen to Ricky’s accusations. That’s when she accused Ted of being a pathological liar and pointed to a lie he admittedly told—that he had served in Viet Nam and saved other soldiers but could not save Janet.

This lie actually damned Ted in court, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the murder investigation. Assistant State’s Attorney Weber used the Viet Nam lie to persuade the jury. He thundered, “Ted Kuhl lied from the beginning of this investigation and innocent men do not lie!”

Twenty years earlier, Ted had claimed he served in Viet Nam to impress a boss, and later to impress Janet’s pro-military father. Joe Lamb later mused, “Ted had told the Viet Nam lie for 20 years and he never killed anybody. If everyone who ever told a lie is guilty of murder, the prisons couldn’t hold them all.”

Missing From Police Reports

Unfortunately, Loves Park Police did not write in their reports that no gun was found in Ted’s or Christa’s vehicles. This worked against Ted at trial. The glaring omission from the reports prevented defense attorney Albert Altamore from having the grounds to argue that no gun was in the vehicles. Altamore was widely known as a DUI defense attorney at that time.

The omission also allowed Assistant State’s Attorney Glen Weber to create doubt in the minds of the jury: “Ladies and gentlemen, you know the gun had to be there.”

Both Christa’s and Ted’s vehicles were left inside the yellow crime-scene ribbon and driven the next day by an officer, who would have seen a gun if it had been lying on the floorboard or seat. But this was not permitted in court simply because it was not in the police reports.

I also had a statement directly from Loves Park Police Chief Lindberg that the vehicles were searched, but this was not admissible at trial.

Information withheld

Defense attorney Albert Altamore was never informed that Ricky Mueller had recanted a statement in which he claimed to hear Ted say he was planning to kill Janet. In a lost post-conviction relief appeal, defense Attorney Dan Cain asked, “How can anyone flip flop on such a damning statement? How can anyone forget that?”

At the appeal, Cain called the prosecutor to the stand. Attorney Mark Karner admitted withholding this information from the jury. Also present at the appeal, Ricky admitted he did not recall Ted ever threatening to kill Janet. He did not make eye contact with Ted, and kept his head down. 

In spite of this, Chief Judge Michael Morrison denied Ted’s appeal. “The evidence shows that Janet was shot from very close, and by your own admission you had walked only three or four steps,” said Morrison. The judge ignored all the witness statements that a second man stood in front of Janet.

Cain later stated, “Any good trial lawyer knows that he could have turned the verdict on this point alone.”

Did political motivation play a part?

Both Loves Park Chief of Police Darryl Lindberg and the aspiring young assistant state’s attorney, Glenn Weber, were campaigning for career moves—Lindberg for mayor of Loves Park, and Weber for a judgeship. Without implying intentional wrongdoing on their parts, I view both of these two as strongly motivated to bring the murder case to a quick close.

All criminal justice professionals are motivated, and rightly so, to convict the guilty as well as to protect the innocent; however not to the extent that they overlook other strong possibilities in a murder case and bend the facts to fit their theory. Clearly, that is what happened. Investigators left so many other avenues unexplored, once they decided to prosecute Ted Kuhl.

Gang Related?

Defense investigator Joe Lamb believed the killing might have been a case of mistaken identity. Janet had a twin sister involved with a man known to associate closely with the Hell’s Angels gang. Lamb also believed the man in ball cap and bomber jacket, who was seen circling the parking lot, was the real killer. Lamb may have been able to prove it if he had lived just one more day. He had identified a gay male exotic dancer, who had moved to Chicago, as one of the men in the parking lot on the night of Janet’s murder. Lamb had scheduled an interview with the dancer, however Lamb died in his sleep of a heart attack the night before. That dancer’s name was buried with him, to my knowledge.

Significantly, I received correspondence from the leader of the Satan’s Disciples street gang, Johnny White, convicted two years after Janet’s death for the 1998 drive-by shooting death of Rockford woman, Paula Proper. Johnny White strongly implied that Ted is not the killer. His specific words included, “It was a very dark night in the parking lot (the night of Janet’s death). He also drew an outline of a hand on the paper and wrote across it, “The hand of the true killer.”

His letter drew my attention, because Satan’s Disciples were known to be at the crime scene on the night of the murder, documented by Joe Lamb. Loves Park police never questioned these gang members, though it is well known to police that gang members do commit drive-by shootings in order to move up in the gang.

Missing Evidence

Six video surveillance cameras, which actually may have filmed the shooting that night, went missing. Police somehow lost this potentially crucial evidence, and it has never turned up. Post conviction relief Attorney Cain asked, “Doesn’t that raise a red flag in any thinking person’s mind?”

Cain prepared seven significant issues for a second post-conviction relief appeal.These issues were never heard, due to a missed filing deadline by a matter of hours. At least one of these issues included the highly suspicious driver, Darrel D. Weichert, stopped by police, who was not wearing shoes or shirt, and had on a fake beard. It was 28 degrees that night. Why no shirt and no shoes and a fake beard on a freezing night just moments after a fatal shooting?

The barefoot man, Darrel Weichert, has a link to the victim's family. He was living with a Darla Fawcett at the time. Her relationship to Gary Fawcett is uncertain, as the family refuses to speak to me, however Janet's twin sister was living with Gary Fawcett and they had a two-year-old child. If Fawcett was not an actual member of the Hell’s Angels, he did have a key to their club building, according to Dan Johnson. Janet's twin and Gary Fawcett were said to be heavy drug users and Janet had been threatening to remove their child. Was that a motive for murder? People who knew and feared Fawcett said he was certainly capable of violence.

The Gunman

Other people have contacted me at the newspaper office since Ted’s conviction, one of them a woman, returning from a late shift. She said she saw a man running through her yard behind the Meadowmart shopping mall minutes after the shooting. According to her, the man carried a gun.

That gunman was not Ted Kuhl, (as police later suggested to me) because Ted was seated in the Loves Park squad car at the time. He never left the crime scene.

Ted was never alone in the parking lot. Where and when could he have hidden a gun in front of numerous witnesses at the scene?

The answer is, he could not.

Joe Lamb documented the time of gunfire from video surveillance cameras, which show a bullet striking a storefront glass. Ted had only 12 seconds to hide a gun, which nobody ever found. Lamb also conducted his own ballistics test and confirmed to himself that more than one shot was fired from where Janet’s body dropped. These shots were fired toward Ted and Christa.

No history of angry outbursts

I spent hours talking with Ted’s family and friends. All of them, including a next-door neighbor who has known him from childhood, his former wife of 18 years, Diana, and his son Jason, say Ted never had a single incident of violent behavior. In short, he was mild mannered and not given to outbursts of temper.

Ted was a Boy Scout leader, a hard working middle-class citizen and a law-abiding man with no previous criminal history. His employers, Albert and Roseanne Kunze at Johnstone Supply, were adamant that Ted did not kill Janet.

Psychologists say it is highly unlikely that a mentally stable man would suddenly exhibit a violent, murderous psychotic fugue immediately after kissing his girlfriend goodnight. Yet that is what police say happened—that he walked three or four steps, turned, and shot her without provocation or motive.

The Case for Ted Kuhl’s Innocence

Ted’s employers were so shocked at Ted’s arrest that they hired a pair of top-notch private investigators to look for the real killer.

A highly respected forensics scientist, Arthur Chancellor, was employed as an investigative consultant. He examined police reports and witness statements.

In his professional analysis, Arthur Chancellor states: “Minor personal conflicts between Ted and Janet were not violent or long lasting. Such personal problems or conflicts that evolve into motives for a homicide have traditionally come to the attention of family and friends over a period of time. If this were the case, it would be consistent and expected that family and friends would be able to identify specific times and events in the recent past when heated arguments, accusations, or even physical assaults occurred (as in the case of Howard Purcell who was known to attack his wife more than once before he was convicted of murdering her in Rockford's staircase-killer case). No family member or close friend ever identified such conflicts.”

Ted’s college-age son, Jason Kuhl, had in fact, just days before the homicide, spent Thanksgiving with Ted and Janet at Ted’s place. He said the three of them had truly enjoyable time together. He would have known had there been any animosity or friction between them.

In the words of Chancellor: “There is not enough evidence to convict Ted Kuhl of premeditated murder. I find no logical motive. I do not see any evidence of where the gun came from or where it went afterwards.

“I am struck by the dichotomy presented by police of Ted, ‘the intelligent murderer’ who is able to conceal a weapon all evening and then dispose of it in 12 seconds in front of witnesses. But at the same time, Ted stupidly picks a public place when he could easily have lured Janet to a private location and shot her without any witnesses.”

Chancellor also pointed to Ricky’s behavior immediately after the shooting as inconsistent with the behavior of someone in deadly fear of another. “Would Ricky hug Ted at the station and then ask Ted to go skeet shooting the next day if he honestly believed Ted was trying to shoot him or harm his family? Absolutely not.”

“I do not believe this was a crime of sudden passion. There are just too many inconsistencies. Christa, Ricky, and two additional witnesses (names withheld from reporters but furnished to Chancellor) observed the gunman who matched the description of the man in the bomber jacket waiting for someone inside.

“The last official contact available for my review is Christa's grand jury testimony. Transcripts document possible government misconduct, in that while they were waiting to testify, Christa and Ricky were placed in the same waiting room where Rick openly discussed his proposed testimony. Ricky specifically said he was going to testify that he actually saw Ted shoot Janet (something he later denied).

“Ricky’s startling claim coupled with Christa’s prior knowledge of Ted's so-called confession (which the police had told her during interviews) may have been an attempt to induce her to change her testimony or to be uncertain as to what exactly she observed that evening. However she remained steadfast, even though police repeatedly told her she was in denial and that her mind had blocked out painful details.”

After the trial, Christa actually went to a hypnotherapist to find out if she had indeed blocked details from her mind. She told the same consistent story under hypnosis—that she saw Ted run when an unknown gunman fired at Janet.

The Man in the Bomber Jacket

In Chancellor’s analysis of the crime, he states: “I see the time and location of the homicide as very inopportune.

“Waiting until Ted and Janet parted, appearing out of the dark, firing without leaving Janet a chance to defend herself, then shooting other rounds at the potential witnesses while leaving the scene, having a planned escape route and getting away unobserved—these are marks of premeditation. This is all consistent when the unknown man in the bomber jacket walking the lot is substituted as the gunman.

“None of it makes sense when Ted is considered the suspect. The most important aspect of the police interrogation is the fact that neither Ted’s oral admissions nor final written statement make any sense when compared to other evidence documented in this case. There is a legal maxim that roughly states a man cannot be convicted based on his confession alone. Yet in this case, it appears the only real evidence police have is what they were able to obtain through questionable interrogation techniques. That evidence basically consists of Ted’s and Ricky’s statements.”

Joe Lamb’s investigation led him to identify people associated with violent street gangs overlooked by the investigators. He believed one of them killed Janet. Lamb was not certain of the motive, but he believed the street gang certainly had stronger reasons for killing Janet than Ted Kuhl, who had none.

What Now?

Ted Kuhl remains in prison – convicted in 1997. His son, friends, and loyal employers continue to visit him. I made a visit to his prison only once, where I heard his story and was satisfied that he told the truth.

Ted has lost every appeal. He recently asked for a clemency hearing, which also was denied. He writes to me occasionally. He has indicated that he could plead guilty, ask for mercy, and perhaps be released, but that outcome is uncertain. His former employers, Albert and Roseanne Kunze, spent thousands of dollars in the hopes of overturning his conviction. They hired Joe Lamb and Arthur Chancellor at their own expense. Both highly respected investigators arrived at the same conclusion independently, that Ted is not guilty.

Ricky Mueller and his wife were later divorced. Mrs. Mueller absolutely refused to speak with me about the case. Her demeanor and bearing indicated she was terrified.

I have heard rumors from the streets suggesting that Ricky actually was threatened by street gang members and forced to say his best friend pulled the trigger. There is no way to prove this is true, but I would consider it more believable than Ricky’s story of fearing that his best friend would kill him for no reason.

I once interviewed a Loves Park bar bouncer known as Big Tiny, who had information linking a drive-by homicide with the Satan’s Disciples, (the leader of which wrote to me hinting he knew the real killer). Big Tiny has since died.

Janet’s mother, Sandy Ostrander, died of cancer a few years after Ted went to prison.

Ricky Mueller moved out of town and took a job in Freeport, Illinois.  A former co-worker called the news office years after Ted’s conviction to say Ricky once tried to sell him a supposedly “hot” gun during the time of the investigation. This co-worker has since moved to Wisconsin.

Both Joe Lamb and I spent hours talking with Christa Peterson. She remained tormented by Ted’s conviction and the suggestion that she was having an affair with him. Her reasoning was: “Janet was like a sister to me. She slipped Christmas gifts under my tree so my kids would have surprises. We were going to California together. So even if it was true, and Ted had these two women who are still great friends, why would he need to kill one of us?”

Christa eventually moved out of town. I have no information on her whereabouts.

The young assistant state’s attorney and trial prosecutor, Glen Weber, lost his bid for a judgeship. He took a position in Jo Daviess County in northwest Illinois as state’s attorney. He was later dismissed due to allegations of official misconduct. I have a copy of the official document. A Rockford policewoman once said to me that Weber tried to coax her to lie on the stand. That officer has since died of cancer.

Weber was welcomed back to the Rockford court system and later worked for a respected legal firm in Rockford.

Chief of Police Darryl Lindberg was soon elected mayor of Loves Park where he has enjoyed a long career.

Illinois has a history of wrongful convictions. In January of 2003, then-Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 death row prisoners, calling the system “terribly flawed” after 13 death row inmates were exonerated by DNA evidence. That number grew to 151 nationwide while I was working on the Ted Kuhl case.

Since then, wrongful convictions have continued to be overturned by DNA evidence. Sadly, there was no DNA evidence in the Janet Nivinski homicide. Ted has very few options left. He will serve his 40 years if additional evidence does not exonerate him at some point in the future.

My book, Shadow in the Rain, a fictionalized re-telling of Ted’s story is available on Amazon.com.

Feb. 18, 2013

To avoid race riots and the resulting negative impact on tourism, a succession of Bermudian government administrations has whitewashed the assassinations of Bermuda’s governor and police chief in the early 1970s by a radical black-power group known as the Black Beret Cadre.

by Mel Ayton

During 1972 and 1973 the North Atlantic British colony of Bermuda, which had become a playground for vacationing Americans, was suddenly thrust into a climate of fear when a spate of murders, including political assassinations, occurred. Bermuda became the only British territory ever to have the Queen’s representative murdered in cold blood and the first nation to suffer the violent effects of the importation of 1960s’ American Black Power militancy.

The tragic events of the early 1970s had been viewed by many Bermudian politicians as a stain upon Bermuda’s reputation as a haven for travellers and an island of tranquillity. This attitude prompted them to ignore the Black Power connection to the assassinations lest further investigations stir up trouble between the races and provoke island-wide riots. Political leaders were also afraid that the truth about the murders and the instability of its political system, which the killings exposed, would damage Bermuda’s tourist industry which was its principle source of income.

Additionally, political leaders were embarrassed that a militant Marxist revolutionary organization, the Black Beret Cadre, which had been widely supported by many young Bermudians, was connected to the killings. The Black Berets, usually never attaining a membership of more than 100, modelled themselves on the American Black Panthers. In fact, many of its members had close connections with Black Panthers in the United States. Although two black Bermudians allied with the Berets were tried and executed for the murders, the weak response of the government in establishing a wider conspiracy effectively swept the whole affair under the carpet.

The Assassinations

The first murder was committed on September 9, 1972 and the victim was Bermuda Police Commissioner (Police Chief) George Duckett, a British expatriate officer who had previously served in a number of British colonies around the world. Duckett had been lured to the back porch of his home, Bleak House, North Shore in Devonshire, where he was ambushed by his killer, or killers.

The Bermuda Police, ill-equipped to deal with a major murder enquiry, sought the assistance of Britain’s Scotland Yard which had been involved in prior murder investigations on the island during the previous decade. Scotland Yard flew a team of detectives out to the colony.

A substantial reward was offered by the Bermudian Government, but neither money nor murder squad detectives could raise any clues to the killer’s identity. The new governor of Bermuda, Sir Richard Sharples, a sailing friend of UK Prime Minister Edward Heath, suspected the involvement of the Black Beret Cadre. Although a number of Black Beret members were interviewed, none were charged with the murder.

Following the British detectives’ return to London, and exactly six months to the day since the police chief was killed, Governor Sharples and his aide Captain Hugh Sayers were shot dead in the grounds of the Governor’s Mansion in the capital city of Hamilton. Once again a team of detectives was requested to investigate the murders. With no more evidence than that three or four black men were seen or heard running from the scene of the latest shootings and a conviction that the two murders were linked with that of the police chief, the detectives once more led a massive hunt for the killers but after months of trying to find them they eventually conceded defeat.

The assassins of the police chief and governor were so confident of their ability to elude police they struck again in the capital city Hamilton on April 6, 1973. Two white shopkeepers, Mark Doe and Victor Rego, were found dead on the floor of their store. They had been shot with a .32 pistol although some .22 bullets were left at the scene of the crime. The .22 bullets indicated a link with the murder of Police Chief George Duckett. With what now appeared to be a further embarrassment to the Bermuda Government, Scotland Yard detectives were once more called to investigate. A new and enlarged Scotland Yard police team arrived in Bermuda and in desperation the Bermuda Government offered a reward of $3  million for information leading to the apprehension of the killers.

In September 1973, the Bank of Bermuda was robbed of $28,000 by an armed man, Buck Burrows, and on October 18^th detectives, acting on a tip off, arrested him. After a second man, Larry Tacklyn, was arrested and charged, and with a large reward still outstanding, information began to trickle in confirming the involvement of the two men in the five murders.  For the next two years police gathered evidence against the accused men who were held on remand in Casemates Prison, situated at the western tip of the island. By November 1975 an inquest jury had concluded that both men had been responsible for the governor’s assassination “with other persons unknown.”

In 1976, Burrows and Tacklyn were charged with the murders of Sir Richard Sharples, Captain Hugh Sayers, Victor Rego and Mark Doe. Burrows faced an additional charge of murdering the police chief. Burrows was found guilty of murdering George Duckett, Governor Sharples, Captain Sayers, Mark Doe and Victor Rego.  Tacklyn was found not guilty of murdering the governor but guilty of murdering the two store owners. (In my book, Justice Denied, I provide compelling evidence that it was Tacklyn, not Burrows, who actually shot Sir Richard Sharples.)

Erskine Burrows

It emerged that although the two men were low-level professional criminals, they entertained some sympathy with the Black Power movement and this had established the political motive for the crimes. However, it was never established at their trials that the Berets trained Burrows and Tacklyn in the use of firearms or that the black militant organization had  told Burrows  he was an important figure in the “coming revolution,” giving him the title of Commander-in-Chief of All Anti-Colonialist Forces in Bermuda.  Additionally, jurors were never told the spate of robberies and drug deals were designed to secure funds for the Black Berets. But jurors were privy to a wider conspiracy when Burrows sent a written confession to the prosecutor in which he admitted killing the governor “along with others I shall never name.” 

Both men received the death sentence. On December 2, 1977 Burrows and Tacklyn were hanged in Casemates Prison. The executions provoked revenge racial riots throughout the island causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage to property and the deaths of three people. The riots were incited by the Black Berets and the intemperate remarks of leading radical politicians. Rioters attacked police stations and business premises, especially in the capital city of Hamilton, and a state of emergency was put into effect that included a call-up of the Bermuda Regiment and the despatch of troops from the United Kingdom.

A Whitewash

For the past 30 years the people of Bermuda had been given a whitewashed version of what exactly occurred when the murders were investigated and the two killers brought to trial. However, as many Bermudians had suspected all along, the government had erred in not bringing the assassins’ accomplices to justice.

Ten years ago the British Foreign Office released its files about the murders. Although they added to the sum of knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the murders it was the release of the Scotland Yard Murder files some years later that put the true story of the assassinations in the proper perspective.

In the summer of 2004 I visited Scotland Yard’s Archives branch situated a short distance from London’s St. James’s Park Tube station. Scotland Yard Assistant Departmental Records Officers Andrew Brown and David Capus allowed me access to the Scotland Yard Bermuda Murders Files before they were reviewed and transferred to the National Archives. At the time, they were inaccessible to Bermuda’s newspapers and they had not been seen by any member of the public.

In September of 2004 I received a letter from Sir Richard Sharples’s widow, Baroness Sharples. She knew about others who were involved in the assassination of her husband. Specifically she named a third man who was investigated by police but never charged. Baroness Sharples wrote, “(name redacted) was the third involved, he went to the USA at that time where he was under observance, returned to Bermuda many years later, where I was informed he would not be arrested if he did not step out of line…” In subsequent telephone conversations, Baroness Sharples expressed dismay and disgust that the authorities had not arrested him. She also believed there was sufficient evidence compiled by the police to bring him to trial.

Additionally, further research by this author and a series of interviews with police officers involved in the murder investigations have provided a context that had been missing when two of Bermuda’s leading newspapers ran a series of stories which had been based on the newly released Foreign Office files.During my research I also made contact with a former high ranking Bermuda police officer, ranked within the top six officers on the Bermuda force, who provided me with information about the murders. According to one of his former colleagues in the force, “… he was an honest man and took his job seriously and professionally…he was one of those people who if he told you to do something you did it not only because it would be an order but because you knew it was right and that he would back you up if there was subsequently any problems; you could trust him…..He was privy to a great deal of information and procedures…..He was someone with ‘status’”.  The senior officer said the information I gave him went beyond anything published on the assassinations. He also said I was correct in my conclusions about who was to blame for the assassination of the governor and the police chief and that I was “…accurately centred in the middle of the nest.” Additional interviews with former prison officers revealed that the assassins were in constant communication with Black Beret members during a period of incarceration following their arrests.

An Unholy Alliance

The Scotland Yard Murder files reveal how a group of Bermudians, an “unholy alliance” of underworld criminals and a remaining hard-core of black militant activists within the Black Berets, conspired to commit murder, assassination and robbery. Self-styled “Godfather” Bobby Greene, who owned a restaurant in the Court Street area of Hamilton, led the underworld element.  He was the mastermind behind the spate of robberies in the early 1970s and was a known drug importer/dealer. The governor’s assassins spent most of their free time at the restaurant. In fact, it was known as a meeting place for the militants.

The Scotland Yard files also reveal that the Black Berets had “reconnoitred Government House” on at least four occasions and watched the homes of leading politicians in the years before the actual shootings. The Berets had even planned a series of political assassinations when the time was ripe for their “Marxist revolution.” Investigators discovered the planned attack on Police Chief Duckett was taken straight from an urban guerrilla manual that was amongst literature read by Black Beret members. Additionally, Black Beret leader John Hilton “Dionne” Bassett had been seen firing a .38 revolver, the same type of weapon used to kill the governor. He fled the island after the murder of the police chief and never returned. It is believed he joined the Black Liberation Army in the United States. The BLA was responsible for assassinations of New York City police officers in the 1970s. This information was never revealed during the trials of the governor’s assassins. Bassett died in the 1990s.

The “Third Man”

The Scotland Yard files reveal the police gathered compelling evidence against another Black Beret leader and that he conspired with Burrows and Tacklyn to murder the governor. Until a Royal Commission re-investigates the assassinations his name must be withheld. He is referred to in my book as the “third man” and is still alive and living in a Middle Eastern country.  (Scotland Yard detectives were also convinced a “fourth man” was involved but they were unable to discern his identity.)  

• The “third man” had expressed hatred for the governor on more than one occasion.
• The “third man” was the most violent member of the Berets. He was the leader of the more militant faction of the Black Power organization. He was a strong advocate for the elimination of the island’s political leaders and the institution of a “revolutionary Marxist government.”
• A witness, who senior police sources said had been a police plant in the Berets, testified he had “reconnoitred” the Governor’s Mansion with the “third man” on at least four occasions. The “third man” had also drawn up sketch plans of Government House and Police Headquarters.
• A live 12-bore shotgun shell was found in the apartment of the “third man.” It was linked to the weapons used in the shootings.
• On March 14, 1971 the “third man” had threatened to kill a senior police officer, Detective Inspector John Joseph Sheehy. He was found guilty of the offense and sentenced to a period of corrective training. He also had a criminal record in the United States. On August 7, 1972 at Berlin, Vermont, he was arrested and charged with attempted breaking and entering of a Sports Shop whilst armed with a .22 rifle. He was later allowed bail but returned to Bermuda where he remained.
• The “third man” was observed handling the weapon that was used to assassinate the governor.
• The “third man” had showed a consciousness of guilt by fleeing the island under disguise when police eventually connected him to the assassination. When police officers attempted to arrest him he struck one of them, then made his escape on a flight to the United States disguised as a woman. Police sources reveal his eventual destination was Cuba or Algeria via Canada(The police received information from intelligence sources that the Berets had received funding from the Cuban government). He was aided in his escape by Calvin “Shebazz” Weeks, a leading member of the Berets. In an email to the author, these facts were corroborated by the alleged assassin’s biological daughter who now lives in the United States.
• At one time the “third man” had shared an apartment with convicted assassin Larry Tacklyn and a notorious Bermudian criminal, Dennis Bean. Bean had been convicted of the robbery of a store in Hamilton and had eventually been sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison.
• Scotland Yard detectives discovered that on the night of the governor’s assassination the “third man” went out of his way to be conspicuous and to be observed socializing with non-Berets. Senior police officers believed he had been trying to establish an alibi.
• Investigating police officers discovered that the quick-tempered and violently anti-white “third man” had a controlling influence over the convicted assassins. He exerted a kind of “psychic hold” over Burrows and Tacklyn and persuaded them they were active revolutionaries who could change Bermudian society at a stroke and help institute a revolutionary-type government. Although Burrows said the assassination of the governor was on his “direct orders” and “inspired efforts” the murder was in fact planned and directed by the extreme faction of the Berets with Burrows and Tacklyn playing the secondary role of hit men. Many years later some former members of the Berets would come to believe that Burrows had indeed been indoctrinated by militant members of the group and this small group of Berets were behind the murders.

Following the escape of the “third man” to North America, the authorities decided it was not in the interests of Bermuda to bring him to justice even though there was substantial and compelling evidence to show he had participated in the governor’s assassination. Police in the United States and Canada had been contacted by Bermudian authorities and a request was made for them to “keep an eye” on him but he was never extradited. He returned to the island a few years later but the arrest warrant had mysteriously gone missing. As a former police officer involved in the murder investigations stated, “With regard to arresting (the “third man”) I don’t believe there was much choice - the whole file including warrants… had gone, I believe from the court registry … I have a vague memory of an arrest on arrival prior to them discovering everything missing. I do not know why it was not reinvestigated with fresh information; maybe too much was missing. Maybe a deal was struck?”

The missing arrest warrant, according to the ex-police officer source, indicates there were people in high places who conspired to prevent the arrest of the” third man.” “My opinion is and was,” the former police officer said, “that if they brought (him) back this would create such a political mess with the Bermuda Industrial Union (Author’s Note: The BIU was allied with the opposition Progressive Labour Party)…. The government had enough on its plate. The island was divided 50-50 on the race issue. They had enough trouble dealing with all the black participants (in the murders)….. I guess the feeling was if anything comes to light that can directly involve and get a confession from someone or point to (the “third man”) that they could put before the courts, it’s better to have him at arm’s length and being watched.” Numerous sources for this book also deduced that the reason why the “third man” was not arrested was due to his strong links to powerful individuals on the island. The motive for stealing or destroying the arrest warrant, the sources allege, was a fear that riots would ensue.

Myth Instead of Truth

Justice Denied By Mel Ayton

The Black Berets continue to play an important role in Bermuda’s political life. Using the same tactics as many Marxists in the UK who joined the Labour Party in the 1970s, many Berets infiltrated Bermuda’s established left-wing Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in order to continue their covert radical agenda. They were clearly aware that their previously overt appeals to racism and violence would be rejected by the moderate black majority. However, the PLP has done nothing to correct the historical record with regard to the Berets. For the past 35 years PLP members have romanticized the black militant organization and embraced many of its former members. Additionally, leading Bermudian politicians of both races have not spoken out about the conspiracy because they believe it would not only affect tourism, which is the island’s principle source of income, but also expose the instability of Bermuda’s political system.

The Black Beret Cadre believed it had a God-given right to inflict its pathologies on the rest of Bermudian society and in so doing created great harm to the island and its people, both black and white. The role the Black Cadre played in the assassinations was whitewashed by consecutive Bermudian government administrations in the interest of racial harmony. Over time the history of the assassinations became a myth. And what people believe happened will unfortunately enter into the culture and memories of generations to come.

Feb. 20, 2013

Lyndsay van Blanken

Eighteen-year-old Lyndsay van Blanken, a promising cartoonist for Walt Disney Animation in Sydney, Australia, was strangled to death by her former boyfriend.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

It was the second marriage for Lyndsay van Blanken’s mother, Cynthia Pleasant, in the summer of 2001. It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Sydney, Australia. Lyndsay’s parents had an amicable divorce a couple of years earlier and there was no animosity between them. Family and friends were enjoying the good food and music provided by a talented quartet. However, 16-year-old Lyndsay only had eyes for the handsome cellist, William Matheson. During a break he approached her and it was clear the attraction was mutual. They were soon involved in a relationship which was fun but, at times, intense due to William’s possessive nature.

Lyndsay was a talented artist and in August 2003 had been selected, from hundreds of applicants, to join Walt Disney Animation as a trainee cartoonist in their Haymarket office in Sydney.  This was her dream job and her superiors and colleagues were very impressed with her talent and it was obvious she had a bright future ahead of her.    

Like a lot of people, Lyndsay liked to play video games on the Internet which led to the beginning of a special friendship with a 21-year-old hairdresser, Brandon Leonard, who lived in Seattle, Washington.  Brandon said it began as an intellectual relationship but they both soon realized they were falling in love. Lyndsay then ended her involvement with William which he didn’t want to accept. He began to show up unexpectedly at her work place and her home. This behavior made Lyndsay very uneasy and she asked him to please leave her alone.

In July 2003 she received by mail an engagement ring from Brandon and was happy to accept his proposal. In September Brandon flew to Sydney and the couple moved into an apartment at the rear of the van Blanken’s family home. 

November 24, 2003 was an especially happy day for Lyndsay as her mother had given her an early Christmas present of two return tickets to Seattle for herself and Brandon. This was for Brandon to introduce his fiancée to his parents and they planned to get married during the visit.  

Lyndsay’s Final Text Message

Lyndsay left work at 5:30 p.m. and was expected home within an hour. She texed Brandon saying how much she was looking forward to their trip. That was the last communication he would receive from her. When she didn’t arrive home at her normal time, Brandon became worried, as did her mother and other family members.  This was completely out of character for Lyndsay as she was always reliable and would inform someone if she were delayed, or just to report her whereabouts. After a  couple of hours, they contacted the police and reported her missing.

The police found nothing to make them consider foul play and were treating it as a teenage runaway. Even her own mother had thoughts that the last few months of stress with William, the engagement, the upcoming travel and wedding plans might

have become too much and Lyndsay may have just needed some space. Lyndsay’s mother made several emotional appeals asking anyone who might have seen her daughter to come forward.

The police questioned Lyndsay’s ex-boyfriend, William, who admitted he had met with her that day, during her lunch break, at Walt Disney Animation, and again when she alighted from her train around 6 p.m. on her way home. He said he walked with her for a bit and then left her near her home and had not seen her since.     

As the days went by and with no contact from Lyndsay, her family and police began to fear that she had met with foul play. On December 3, the police re-enacted Lyndsay’s last movements in the hope that it might jog someone’s memory. However, that was unsuccessful and the police were left with a baffling case. There had been no activity on her bank account and her mobile phone had not been used since her disappearance.

Her mother made a last emotional appeal. “Lyndsay, the family is missing you terribly, please contact us. We’re desperate to hear from you and we all love you. We’re not angry with you, we just want to know where you are.” There was no response.

Two weeks after her disappearance, in the early morning, police spotted William Matheson “lurking suspiciously” in a quiet street in the Queens Park area of Sydney.  In his backpack they found a small axe, a large pair of scissors, a Stanley knife, surgical gloves, torches, a candle and holder, cling wrap, deodoriser and a bottle of holy water. He, allegedly, told the police he was planning a picnic in the park. 

Obviously, having these items in his possession did not constitute a crime and the police, while suspicious, let him on his way.                                                        

On January 10, 2004, residents of an apartment block, used mainly by backpackers, complained about a foul odor which seemed to be coming from a storeroom underneath the apartments. The building maintenance inspector went to investigate the odor and was horrified to find a badly decomposed body stuffed into a large sports bag. The body was soon identified as that of Lyndsay van Blanken. She had died of strangulation by two cable ties joined together.

Police investigations soon traced the origin of the sports bag which was only sold by one store in that area.The store confirmed that it had sold one of that particular sport bag on November 22, two days before the murder. Under questioning, William Matheson admitted he had bought such a bag but claimed it had gone missing prior to the murder. 

Upon hearing that Lyndsay’s body had been found, William, allegedly, told his father, “I think I did that.” He later said he only meant he felt responsible because he hadn’t walked her the whole way home. His mother informed police that her son was a loner and she was aware that he was not a normal young man.The Matheson family has a history of schizophrenia and William’s brother had committed suicide in 1991.

With the evidence mounting, William was arrested and charged with the murder of Lyndsay van Blanken.

The Trial

The trial began in November 2004. One witness for the prosecution stated that on the day of Lyndsay’s disappearance she saw her involved in a heated argument with a young man she later identified, from 20 police photographs, as William Matheson. Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cuneen read to the court a poem written by William which he had given to a friend, along with Lyndsay’s diary, on the day the body was discovered for safe keeping.

The poem:  “Just the other day I watched you pass away/ You said I love you but please let me stay/ Help is not here for you or for me/Close your eyes when you go/ I’ll meet you there in eternity.” A shocked courtroom was told that Lyndsay had been William’s first and only girlfriend and he had become obsessed. He was unable to accept that she had fallen in love with, and was planning to marry, her American fiancé, Brandon Leonard.    

On November 24, 2003 William met Lyndsay on her way home, and under some pretext, lured her to the storeroom, where they often hung out when dating to be alone and listen to Goth music. However, the prosecution made it clear to the court that the murder was not one of passion, William had bought the sports bag two days earlier and that made it premeditated. William Matheson showed no emotion during the trial.

On December 8, 2005 Matheson was found guilty of the murder of Lyndsay van Blanken. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 18 years. He will not be eligible for parole until the year 2022.

Jan. 14, 2013

How do so many illegal drugs get smuggled into prisons all over the United States? The author spent 20 years in various Florida prisons and tells how.

by Shawn R. Griffith

There is a drug epidemic inside America’s corrections system.

While serving 20 years in Florida’s prison system from 1992 to 2012 for an armed robbery, I saw every drug imaginable. Although I rehabilitated myself and quit using drugs altogether in the 1990s, that’s not the case for many prisoners. At least 60 percent of the estimated 20,000 prisoners I met inside frequently used drugs. After serving time in 18 different Florida prisons, never once did I witness an institution free of narcotics. Moreover, I met hundreds of men on transfer from other state prisons, and most said that the prisons from which they had come had more drugs than Florida’s institutions.

While doing research for my book, Facing the U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong, I unearthed a number of disturbing statistics related to drug addiction of U.S. prisoners. These stats have supported my own observations in Florida. Experts in one study found that 50 to 60 percent of prisoners had drug addictions severe enough to warrant intensive drug treatment. In addition, according to the Department of Justice, a study conducted in 2004 showed that 17 percent of all state prisoners and 19 percent of all federal prisoners admitted to committing their crimes to buy drugs. Of these drug-related offenses, 9.8 percent committed by state prisoners were violent crimes. In 2007, 3.8 percent of the 14,038 homicides were known to be narcotics-related. That’s equal to 533 victims of drug-related murder.

After considering these statistics, I would say that having so many prisons in the U.S. with a dynamic drug culture is a serious problem. What I wonder is just how many addicted prisoners today will commit a new murder of some unsuspecting victim tomorrow. It will occur. And it will occur partly because the system fails to adequately address the drug problem when officials have addicts inside prison. Something to think about when the question of funding prison drug programs invariably arises for public debate.

Nonetheless, the issue is not just a demand for effective drug rehab programs, but also reducing or eliminating drugs from the prisons altogether. Institutional programs are less effective when addicted prisoners go back to their dormitories and get a contact buzz from their druggy roommate or cell neighbor. The problems must be addressed holistically.

Questions and Answers about Drugs in Prison

When I speak with people during lectures on the criminal justice system, a lot of people ask me questions related to this topic: What types of drugs are most prevalent? How expensive are they? How do prisoners pay for them, and how do so many drugs get into the facilities?

These are good questions. Since most Americans have never been to prison, they rarely understand many of the things that go on inside the walls. For this reason, I’m going to share some personal experiences and other observations to answer these questions. Let’s begin with a few of the narcotics seen more often than others and a few examples of what they cost.

Marijuana is by far the most frequently used. It is cheaper compared to other drugs, such as opiates and depressants. A small amount, about the quarter size of a sugar packet, sells for $5. This is not to suggest that more potent drugs are less available. The prisons definitely have Roxies, Oxycodones, and other pills, including Valium, Xanax, and Ecstasy. They are just a little less frequently used, because of their cost. These “designer drugs” carry a high price inside. For instance, one Xanax “football” or one 7.5 mg pain pill of Lortab will cost between $10-to-$15, and users usually require more than one to get high. An Ecstasy pill can cost $25 or more, and just one Roxy or Oxycodone can run up to $30.

Another new drug has also become prevalent in prisons. It is called “Spice,” or “K2.”A myriad of state prison systems have been flooded with this synthetic marijuana. In its many different varieties, it still costs about the same as pot does. Forty-five state legislatures have recently banned these artificial bath salts, potpourris, and cannabinoids from legal possession and sales.Florida’s ban is covered under F.S.§893.03, which makes the possession or use a third-degree felony. The federal government has also taken action against the drug. In July of 2012, the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act was signed into law. It banned synthetic compounds commonly found in synthetic marijuana, placing them under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Yes, before these bills were presented, the drug was actually legal outside of institutional settings. This is why it became so common inside prisons. Indeed, now that the push to make it unavailable has begun, it will likely cause the price of it to double inside penitentiaries. It won’t go away; it will just become more expensive to buy.

Cocaine and heroin are also available in prison, and these hard drugs usually cost more than others, depending on their potency. To get high just once or twice will run a prisoner at least $40 or $50, and dealers generally won’t deal with someone inside for less than a $50sale of these types of narcotics.

Why?

When a prisoner has run out of money to buy coke or heroin, violent robberies against other prisoners usually begin to increase. Because stabbings and other assaults are directly linked to hard drugs, prison officials pursue investigations more assertively against their proliferation. Thus, prison dealers limit the small-time sales as much as possible, to lessen their risk of being “snitched” on. A prisoner who runs out of crack cocaine because of little money will usually ask the dealer to give him some for free or on “front,” as a loan until the addict can rob someone or have more sent to his inmate bank account. If the dealer says no, which inevitably happens, desperate addicts might set the dealer up for a robbery or go tell authorities in retaliation. This creates a problem most inmate dealers wish to avoid. For this reason, dealers target sales to those prisoners who have better access to funds.

Funds come from a number of different sources. For prisoners who have little of their own resources, they get money sent from family and friends. No, that doesn’t mean that most grandmothers or mothers are knowingly sending their incarcerated relatives money for cocaine. Most incarcerated addicts will come up with some manipulative story about needing a new pair of tennis shoes or some other pressing need. Once the money is received, however, the addict will then have the money transferred.This process is called a “mail out,” because the addict mails out the money from his or her own account to wherever the dealer wants it.

Not everyone comes to prison broke. For those prisoners with a sizeable bank account on the outside, drug use is fairly easy. Prisoners are allowed to use money they’ve earned before incarceration. They can purchase commissary or things through the mail. If they want to send money to a wife or friend, they can. In fact, getting the drugs is the least of their worries. For every prisoner who has money for drugs, there are at least 25 addicts who don’t. Having drugs can be a dangerous proposition for rich inmates who might not be as street savvy or tough as those with rougher backgrounds.

A Cautionary Tale

I have seen firsthand how drug addiction can also increase violence inside prison in this way. My anecdote is about a prisoner addicted to crack cocaine. Everyone called him Reese, but his real last name was Bell. He was a black homosexual who sometimes wore lipstick and tight shorts. Anyone who was fooled by his appearance didn’t have long to find out how dangerous this “sissy” really was. He repeatedly robbed affluent inmates for crack cocaine or valuables to purchase it. He also had attempted suicide so many times that his arms and chest were covered with hundreds of deep-slash scars. He was a fighter and loved to cut his enemies, including himself. I was at a prison with him in 1989 and again in 2010, at Tomoka Correctional Institution, the prison from where I was released in 2012.

One night in 2010, as I was talking to a loved one on the phone, I heard a commotion and saw Reese fighting with another inmate. Some blows were exchanged; the altercation only lasted a few minutes. Of course, incidents involving someone like Reese always made me increase attention to my surroundings. As I continued the discussion on the phone, I started to look for Reese in our closed-in dormitory. I didn’t see him, but I did see his opponent. He was sitting in front of the television with his back turned as if nothing had happened. Not good! I also knew this inmate, named Diggs, and knew that he was a little slow, yet frequently had money. I watched intently because the tension in the dorm was also higher than usual, which signified to me that the altercation was not over. Reese also had threatened to finish business later, and I knew that he meant it.

In a show of stupidity, masked as tough bravado, Diggs just kept watching television as if Reese was no threat. I saw Reese, with a shiv in his hand, and Diggs had no idea what was coming. Reese came up to me. He didn’t say anything, but used my body to hide behind. This crazy addict was literally crouched beside me, looking like a mad animal on the hunt, bumping up against my leg. His hand gripped the homemade knife tightly.

Reese then moved suddenly, violently stabbing Diggs in the neck, and then backed away. They then fought, with Diggs grabbing a large trash can, to shield himself until the officers came and apprehended them. Diggs survived, and later I learned that the altercation was about drug money. Reese was transferred to Dade Correctional Institution, where, within the same year he killed another inmate. He was sent to Florida State Prison, and the next year he committed suicide.

Guards Smuggling Drugs into Prison

Drugs in prison increase violence in prison. Usually the inmates who get robbed and physically harmed have nothing to do with making drug deals. They get victimized because of someone else’s addiction, and yet another person’s greed. These drugs do not miraculously appear out of thin air. Someone is trying to make a profit at other people’s expense, and someone has to get them inside the facility.

About 50 percent of the smuggling is carried out by guards themselves. How do they get them inside? One of the common ways is for them to make a big lunch or other meal and slip the drugs into their food. A compressed quarter ounce of marijuana fits well between a bologna sandwich. When the guard decides to throw away the uneaten part of his lunch, and the inmate orderly who cleans his office slips the sandwich into his pocket, who would know the difference? Nobody. Even if another inmate were to see, most would think nothing of it. Even non-drug-smuggling corrections staff will frequently reward inmate lackeys with leftover food from their lunch boxes.

If another prisoner were to witness a drug transaction between a guard and another convict, opening his mouth could lead to serious consequences. Not only does he have to worry about the repercussions of snitching on the prisoner, but more dangerously, the guard could have another inmate or corrupt officer bypass any safety measures, such as protective custody, and he could find himself with a shank in his back. This is a common fate for informers against corrupt guards.

Another common way for guards to smuggle is simply to place the drugs somewhere on their bodies and meander into the facility with them. Compressed freezer bags of dope taped around a mid-section, pain pills that look similar to prescription medications, and ballpoint pens stuffed with crystal meth in plain view are ways drugs get inside. After all, who better to know how to smuggle than the security personnel themselves.

I remember drug drops made by a guard at a prison in the 1990s whohad just started working a few months earlier. One day he approached my cellmate, who was dealing marijuana. He told him to beware of two sergeants who were investigating his mail and the consecutive sequence of money orders that had reached both my cellmate and one of his user customers. This was a routine way of identifying inmate dealers, because families don’t usually send other inmates money at the same time that they send it to their relative. The sequential money orders in different envelopes (with serial numbers only one digit apart), yet with similar handwriting, are dead giveaways.

My cellmate was shocked. He hadn’t spoken with this guard before he had been provided with such pertinent information. Since my cellmate had been buying his drugs from an inmate supplier, he could not see the connection or understand why this officer had told him about the investigation. The dealer thought that maybe the officer was looking to exchange information, to allow him to deal and become a snitch on everyone else. My cellmate was not a snitch, and secretly discussed this with the guard. The guard said he didn’t need anything in return. But to make the corrupt cop look good, my cellmate placed a large knife made from a lawnmower blade inside the trash can so the guard could find it. This would allow the rookie to garner respect from veteran guards who might not otherwise trust him.

About two weeks later, the rookie guard returned the favor. He walked into our cell, opened up his button-down uniform shirt, and pulled out two large freezer bags of premium marijuana wrapped and taped around his midsection. He dumped them on the locker and handed my cellmate an address to where the money should be mailed. To my cellmate’s delight, the rookie was the true supplier of the drugs my celly had been buying all along, only now, my celly had been tested and was trusted by the rookie. They simply cut out the middle man.

“Suitcasing”

Much of the blame for drugs inside prisons rests with the guards, and many more ways have been employed by corrections employees to smuggle drugs inside prison.  But prisoners themselves also come up with ingenious ways. About 50 percent of the narcotics smuggled into the penitentiaries originates through prisoners’ outside sources. The most frequent of these involve visitations with friends and family, mail packages,outside work details, and recreational, educational, or hobby-craft equipment donations.

Unfortunately for the children and families of prisoners who obey the law, contact visitation gets a bad rap for its role in smuggling drugs. For those wondering if prisoners really smuggle drugs by placing them inside their rectal cavities, yes, it’s true. This is by far the most common method of sneaking drugs into correctional facilities by inmates, rather than guards. It’s called “suitcasing.”

This is how it’s done. A friend or family member of the prisoner will go get the drugs. If the narcotics are pills or are in powder form, compression is not necessary. For larger packages like marijuana, the dope is wrapped flat in some type of sealed package, usually plastic wrap, and then placed into a book. The book is placed under a car’s tire, some other heavy object, or squeezed with a heavy vise overnight, folded in half the next morning, and compressed again. This process is repeated enough times until it is compressed into a rectangular-shaped packet, about one inch wide by three inches long. A packet of this size can hold up to an ounce or two of marijuana, and many times that amount of cocaine or heroin. This is then jammed down into a roll made for quarters and wrapped tightly with tape. This is usually electrical tape, because it is more pliable for insertion into the rectum.

Before rectal insertion, the prisoner prepares by either bringing a small packet of KY jelly or lotion to the visitation room. To avoid detection of this lubricant, the offender will hide it away stitched within his clothing, shoes, or even inserted inside himself. Ordinarily, five to seven guards provide surveillance inside the visitation area, but this number is frequently reduced to as few as three officers during lunch or during disturbances on the main compound. In other cases, guards have to conduct body strip searches of inmates coming into and out of the area. This reduces security and provides an opportunity for inmates to steal a kiss or a sexual act from their visitor. It is also the time, when the coast is clear, for the pass off of drugs to occur. The visitor then pulls the packet out of a bra, panties, shoes or other crevice of concealment and the pass is made. Some cons are so adept at the process that no bathroom is necessary. They simply put some lubrication on the end of the tube-shaped package, and up the rectum it goes. Some men can successfully suitcase three or four of these at a time. For female prisoners, using the vagina and the anal cavity can increase the quantity to six or seven packages amounting to multiple ounces of dope.

Once visitation has ended, the prisoner gets stripped and told to bend over and cough. Nine times out of 10, the package is far enough up the anal cavity that it can’t be seen by the guards. The prisoner gets dressed, goes back to his dorm, and sits on the toilet. After the dope is defecated, it is then rinsed off and opened. The problem with many packages of dope is that the visitors don’t adequately seal the packet, causing the dope to be tainted with feces. Does that dope get flushed? Not at all.The dealers who smuggle heroin or coke will sell these tainted drugs to unsuspecting junkies, who then shoot the bacteria-filled dope into syringes and veins, sometimes causing infections, septicemia, or even death.

Although most dope smokers in prison get away with smoking by making sure the smoke goes directly in the cell exhaust vent, some inmates are less careful than others. Many hallways will smell like crap-smoke later in the day.

Mail packages, especially yearly gift packages from families and case work supposedly from legal agencies, commonly contain drugs and paraphernalia. One example that I witnessed involved a pair of shoes. Inside these Fila basketball shoes, the high-top cushions were cut out and replaced with saran-wrap-filled, fluffy, hydroponic weed, then neatly sewed up. The inside walls of the shoe also had a handcuff key, and between the bottom and the sole cushion $500 in cash and half of a hacksaw blade were hidden. These shoes made it into the prison and were never discovered by authorities, similar to the way that legal packages with dope get by security measures.

Legal Mail Packages

Legal-mail packages are the only ones that may not be opened by prison officials without the prisoner recipient’s physical presence, for confidentiality reasons. Designing the packages of pot or other drugs is fairly simple. Frequently, the con will have some collaborator on the street get a 200-300-page transcript from the courts, take it home, and cut a section out of the top, where the holes made by a holepunch have a brass slide and are covered by some folder top or other common binding. They then place a compressed packet of dope in the cut-out section and super glue the pages around the cut. This way, when staff flips through the transcript, the little inch or two margin at the top just looks like it stays closed because of the normal brass prongs that go through the holes. On the return address they put an attorney’s name and address or even the court from which the transcript originated.

Cons love this method. Frequently, they will not even have the package mailed to themselves. Instead, they will send a contraband package to some other prisoner, without even telling the prisoner that the dope is on the way. This is why authorities cannot always stick someone with a charge or conviction for smuggling through the mail. They know that oftentimes the recipient knows nothing about the drugs. The true perpetrator knows that the package is coming. The creative con also knows when it arrives, because legal-mail packages are usually posted on bulletin boards inside dormitories, with the names of the recipients. This enables the prisoners to know when to go pick up the legal package from the mailroom staff. After the dope is safely in the hands of the unsuspecting inmate, the real culprit will approach the duped inmate and either offer him a cut, or strong-arm the package away, depending on the reputation of the unsuspecting convict.

Donated Equipment

Visitation and mail packages are particularly common for smuggling into maximum security facilities. Another method involves hiding dope or guns inside recreational equipment that has been “donated” to a prison chapel or recreation office. Because these pieces of equipment usually have metal inside their designs, the contraband won’t be detected by ordinary correctional methods, such as metal detectors.

For instance, a scheme was discovered at Tomoka Correctional Institution, Daytona Beach, Florida in 2011 involving two inmates who had cell phones and dope hidden inside a large musical keyboard. These artists played the tune of smuggling three successful times, without detection. A jealous competitor them snitched them out to authorities. Later, rumor had it that these same prisoners were making mobile calls from confinement to retaliate against the snitch. Business and more violenceas usual.

Outside Work Details

For facilities that house minimum-custody inmates, however, a method more common than visitation, mail, or donated equipment involves outside work details. Most of the public has seen the guys with the striped uniforms working along some county road, usually with some red-faced guard supervising them. What might be shocking to most are the primary culprits who aid and abet these guys’ access to ganja. There are some women in the outside world, especially younger ones, who are fascinated by convicts or “bad boys.” A person only has to read bizarre stories of women marrying murderers on death row to know this is true. In the case of drug smuggling, these girls are responsible for tons of narcotics getting into facilities. Some girls just drive by and throw one joint to a handsome prisoner. Others throw whole ounces, without even knowing the convict.

In other cases, a girlfriend, or any other loved one for that matter, male or female, places a package of dope close to a work camp or other minimum-custody facility. The inmates who have mowing, painting, weeding, or some alternate work assignment will make a call to have this arranged. In the morning, when they exit the facility, they will work as usual and pick up the drugs from their concealed spot. When the workday is complete, they stash the dope inside a mower, truck, or some other instrument of concealment and walk into the secure area. They get physically stripped searched, wash up, and then grab their equipment and go to place it into its assigned storage locker, shed, or other unit inside the institution. Within hours, deals are being made.

Solutions

Unfortunately, I have more knowledge about this topic than I’d like to admit, and I’m glad that lifestyle is far behind me. Sometimes I wish that I could just forget it all. After years of rehabilitation, however, I feel compelled to use my past to educate people so that our society can eventually develop a more effective corrections system in the United States. Education is half the battle to instituting effective drug interdiction and intervention inside prisons.

To combat the scourge of drugs in prisons, reformers and concerned citizens will face much resistance over the cost of drug rehabilitative programs, aftercare for released prisoners, mentoring programs, and family initiatives. However, people need to argue back that one murder by a drug-addicted recidivist can carry no price tag. Furthermore, the cost of one prisoner is tens of thousands of dollars annually. If taxpayers spend only $5,000 on rehabilitating one drug-addicted prisoner, who then becomes a taxpayer himself, the amount of corollary tax savings is appreciable. In the debate, reformers must include the public dole for the victim’s family, years of welfare for the children of reoffending prisoners, lack of child support, lack of healthcare for prisoners’ children, and so many more responsibilities missed by an otherwise drug-free, taxpaying mother or father.

The time for changing our corrections system is now. Drug use in our prisons should be completely unacceptable. Laws and more corrections guards have not stopped it. The source of the problem is the addict’s demand for it. This core of the problem must be addressed with effective drug treatment for addicted inmates, both while in prison and after release.

Jan. 17, 2013 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Seth Ferranti’s new book, Gorilla Convict: The Prison Writings of Seth Ferranti. To buy the book or for more information, go to www.strategicmediabooks.com or Amazon

by Seth Ferranti

I don't know why I became a drug dealer. Free drugs I suppose. It wasn't something I planned. It just happened. I used to buy quarter ounces of weed or hits of acid from my godbrother and his friends. They had a party house by Springfield Mall. I was always cruising over to score. I was like 17 and these dudes were all 21 or so. I idolized them. They didn't work or nothing. Just hung out, partied, got laid, and sold drugs.

I was bringing them crazy business. Finally I said fuck it. I can do this myself. But I needed some contacts. I asked my godbrother to hook me up and he took me down to Kentucky. It was a long trip but worth it. My godbrother introduced me to country boy Scott, who became my contact. He had a tobacco farm down in Monticello and grew a little weed on the side. He didn't fuck around though. He and his partners had it down to a science. These guys were straight-up country. I'm talking shotguns, moonshine, cockfights, muscle cars, and pit bulls. They planted and cultivated their weed to perfection. They showed me a patch once, way out in the deep forest. I thought they might try to kill and rob me and leave me buried out there. But they didn't. Their marijuana plants were like trees, easily 15-feet tall, with tree size trucks, and an IV-bag mainlined into the roots pumping in plant vitamins. It was some crazy fucking shit.

I still needed an LSD source though, my godbrother said, "Go on tour dude."

The first Grateful Dead show I went to was in Deer Park, Indiana. I drove there from Fairfax with some deadhead wanna-be's. I wasn't really into The Dead, music wise, but I needed an LSD connect. Dead shows were filled with LSD peddlers. The parking lot scene was a carnival, half circus, half flea market, with drugs, tie-dyes, hippies everywhere. I met this kid, Drummer Al, a hardcore Deadhead who was at all the Dead shows. They called him Drummer Al because he was always in the drum pit banging on the congas. This dude was skinny and really burnt out, with natty dreadlocks to his waist. He wore cut-off fatigues and Birkenstocks, but never wore a shirt. He sold me 2,000 hits of triple-set, blotter acid and gave me a number to call in Frisco to order more whenever I needed it. Mail-order LSD was only a phone call away. What an awesome connection, I thought. I figured that, with the Kentucky bud contact and the new mail order acid, my fortune was made.

Back home in Virginia things were jumping. I was becoming very popular. "You got the kind dude?" Someone asked.  "Fuck yeah." Everyone welcomed me to the party. The scene was straight suburbia: Burke Centre, Fairfax County, 1988, hot chicks, cool dudes and imported brewskies. Stolis. REM blasted on the stereo. All was enjoyed in the confines of somebody's parents' house. I greeted the hostess, an exotic looking brunette with large brown eyes and creamy olive skin who was a freshman at Penn State. She was wearing a tight black dress that stuck to her curvy, lithe form and magnified the prominence of her breasts which seemed to jut out at me. "Steph, where's the folks?" I inquired, trying not to stare at her tits.

"They're at the beach house, dude, all weekend." She beamed. "You can stay here if you want." She said with a hint of smile. Cool, I thought I can set up shop and possibly hook up with Stephanie.

Everyone had money and everyone wanted drugs. Luckily, I was holding. I had the kind from Kentucky and the blue unicorn trips from Cali. Like the Bluegrass State, I was open for business.

I made money but I spent it just as fast. It just seeped through my hands like water. More Becks for the party? Okay. I got it. Order Dominoes pizza. No problem. A little trip to the Union Street Bar and Grill. Don't worry. I got the tab.

I would take my inner circle of friends out to eat at Red Lobster or wherever. It was always my treat. I was the king of my own court and I was always decked out. I bought Eddie Bauer Polo shirts, Timberland boots, Doc Martins, Air Jordans, and whatever new CDs or Sega Genesis games came out. Shopping was an everyday thing. I would buy something, wear it once, and give it away.

And the drugs-- I smoked weed constantly, like cigarettes. I loved going to parties and busting out a Cheech-and-Chong size joint. "Fucking hell, dude," they would say, "Is that all weed?" I would smile with satisfaction as I nodded my head and lit the stogie. I enjoyed being the man.

Seth Ferranti

It wasn't long before drugs became my whole life. I bought them. I sold them. I lived them. In '89 I graduated from Robinson High School. It was a blast but it was time to move on. I was still living at home and I'm sure my parents knew what was going on, but not to the full extent. One time I gave my mom twelve grand to hold for me. She was like "Where'd you get this?" I told her I orchestrated a couple of drug deals. "Well you better not do it anymore," she said. I promised her I wouldn't. But I was lying because I was already planning on getting the next load, then cashing out and re-upping. I thought I was a businessman, a professional drug dealer. It was like I had a career or something.

As my clientele grew, so did my cash flow. I started looking for other sources and reached out to my Robinson High School buddy Zane who attended the University of Texas at Arlington. This guy was a first-class stoner. I'm talking weed connoisseur. He had his shit together though. He went to University of Texas full-time and managed a little bar-restaurant at night. He was a solid dude.

I would fly down to Dallas and cop 30-pound loads of commercial-grade brick pot from Zane's source, Mexican Eddie. I would then wrap the bricks in hefty bags, pack them in my suitcase, and check it through baggage for my flight back to DC. I would pay someone $500 to pick up the load from the luggage carousel at DC National just in case there was any problem.

This proved to be a sweet connect as Mexican Eddie had a trucking company based in Matamoras, Mexico. He brought in 500- pound loads. He was always on. The weed wasn't as good as the Kentucky bud, but it was cheaper at $500 a pound. And it moved fast for $1,500 a pound. I also got it on the front so I didn't have to pay for it until I sold it.

This guy Mexican Eddie was a trip too. He had this apartment in Dallas where he entertained his customers and finalized deals. This place was jumping like 24 hours a day. Every time I went there, no matter what time it was, there was this fucking mariachi band playing their Mexican asses off in sombreros and Mexican bowtie suits. It was crazy. Mexican Eddie would be hooping and hollering like Speedy Gonzales, as some Latinas made burritos and served Coronas. A couple of big vatos stood in the background all silent like, acting as Mexican Eddie's personal bodyguards. I could never get over the sight of the mariachi band though at 2 a.m. in the morning playing loudly in the apartment’s living room. It was like a Tiajuana-mescalin trip or something.

Most of my friends were at colleges now and they all wanted drugs. So I started hauling loads up to the universities. I had a set route. I used to drive south down Interstate 81 in Virginia from Fairfax to Radford and Virginia Tech where the Miller brothers took care of business for me. The older brother was an acid freak who moved crazy LSD at Tech. The younger one attended Radford. His thing was pot and women. He hooked me up with a new cutie every time I rolled in. I would drop off Kentucky green. Brick pot. Acid. And I collected whatever money they had for me as I frolicked with whatever girl was at hand. I would then cut through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and meet up with country boy Scott, who always wanted trips to sell at Eastern Kentucky University.

Then I would drive north up Interstate 75 to Lexington and the University of Kentucky where this spacey, psych major Brandon bought acid and kind bud. Then I drove east to West Virginia University in Morgantown where my buddies in the Delta Fraternity sold drugs for me. This was definitely my biggest market and a major party place. I would stop and see the hot brunette Steph at Penn State, who knew a lot of dudes who could move a lot of drugs, before going back to Fairfax. At each stop it was like, "What do you got dude? Here's the money."

For a while I had this girl Kristi, running drugs with me. She would do most of the driving and when I drove she would give me blowjobs. She was also a nymphomaniac and was up for sex whenever, a real dream girl. We did have some close calls on the road though, such as when a Virginia State Trooper pulled right up behind us on Interstate 81 when we were carrying. "You don't think he saw the joint, do you?" Kristi asked me.

"I don't know. Just drive normal," I told her. "And think of white light. Only white light. It will make us seem innocent." Kristi put the joint in the ashtray and turned down the car stereo.

"Are you thinking of white light?" I asked as the five-o flicked on his lights. Momentarily we were gripped with panic, but then the cruiser switched lanes and rocketed past us. Kristi laughed as she grabbed the joint, fired it up, and turned up the thumping bass lines of NWA's "Fuck the Police." I really loved Kristi, but eventually she dumped me for heroin.

Trip parties were also a big event in Fairfax, especially in the summer time when everyone was home from school. A house was always available as people's parents went on vacation. I would make sure to invite everyone and supply the acid. I convinced this girl Shawnthia to throw a trip party one weekend when her parentals cruised. She was a pretty blond chick from Robinson who just graduated. The party was crazy. The techno music was pumping LA Style's "James Brown is Dead" as we held our own mini rave. Everyone was dosed out, chilling, but this one dude started freaking.

"Fuck dude, I'm like totally tripping," he said. "It's like the colors are in my head,.but they're floating and they're falling. I'm drowning in colors. They're everywhere. Don't you see them?" Shawnthia and I laughed as we tripped on the dude wigging out. I decided to make my play, so I grabbed Shawnthia's hand and pulled her into a bedroom. "What are you doing?" She asked.

"Trying to get some privacy," I answered as I guided her head down to my crotch. "Oh," she said, as she unbuttoned my jeans.

I loved my life. I was like a rock star. Drugs, girls, money, blowjobs. What more could I want? I was 19 and on top of the world. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get busted. I mean, I was no criminal. I was from the suburbs. And I was white. They never busted people from the suburbs, especially not white kids. But I was wrong.

I was in Hawaii when I heard about the cop. The younger Miller brother was making moves via the mail-order LSD contact. Word was that a 16-year old Reston boy tripping on LSD shot and wounded a Fairfax County police officer, Darryl McEachern. The pig chased the kid down while breaking up a field party in Clifton. Apparently the punk was running naked through the woods.

Somehow he snatched the cop's gun and shot him in the chest. Miller told me that our buddy Dave, a long haired metal dude, had sold the acid to the 16-year old. We were fucked.

Soon thereafter, Dave the metal dude started working with the cops and upon my arrival in Fairfax, Miller and I were lured into a sting operation and arrested by undercover Fairfax County narc Mike Sullivan. This kid Scott, a small insecure kid who Miller was breaking in was arrested with us. We were charged with LSD conspiracy by the state of Virginia.

The DEA was called into interrogate us. DEA task force agent Joe Woolf explained that the DEA was well aware of all my dealings and that if I gave up the shipment of LSD I had stashed they would make it worth my while. I told him "I'm not saying anything until I see a lawyer." He yelled back, "Oh yeah, well your lawyer's gonna want to suck my dick."

My parents bailed me out of Fairfax County Jail, putting up their house to secure the bond. They were angry though. The DEA had ransacked our house but no drugs turned up. Then disaster struck. Scott, the new kid, under pressure, cracked, confessing to police that he was holding 100 sheets of acid for me in his basement bedroom. It was time to see that lawyer.

My mother suggested this lawyer Michael Reiger. She had heard he was a hotshot criminal attorney. Not knowing any better, I agreed. In my first consultation with Reiger, he pressed me to tell him the whole story. So I did. I gave him six grand cash as a retainer. "This isn't drug money, is it," he asked.

"Like you fucking care?" I retorted. In my opinion there wasn't much to the case. I expected leniency because I was from the affluent suburb of Burke Centre and had no criminal record. I thought maybe I'd have to go into a drug rehab or something. My attorney, Mr. Reiger, seemed to take the whole affair lightly. But I hadn't taken into account the revenge factor of the Fairfax County Police Department.

At the urging of the Fairfax County Police, the case went federal. They portrayed me as an arrogant hothead who flaunted cash and sold LSD to unsuspecting high school students. The evidence against me consisted of fingerprints on the acid blotter paper and various written records of drug transactions. Mr. Reiger insisted we needed a federal lawyer to assist him. So I hired Tom Carter. The first time I met Tom Carter, he informed me that Christine Wright, the U.S. Attorney, was going to indict me on seven different 10-to-life counts consisting of LSD conspiracy and distribution charges. He counseled that I plead guilty to a Continuing Criminal Enterprise charge that carried a mandatory-minimum 20-year sentence and that I cooperate with the government. The CCE charge was known as the drug-kingpin charge, something they would have slammed on Scarface. It didn't look good.

Following Mr. Carter's advice I pled guilty but I wasn't going to cooperate and I had no intention of serving any time. I always said I'd rather die than go to prison. I started making plans, one of the stipulations of my plea bargain was that I was to be released on my own recognizance. Judge Claude Hilton conducted my plea proceedings at the Alexandria Federal Courthouse in Old Town, Alexandria, on August 28, 1991. "How do you plead?" He demanded.

"Guilty." I answered.

"All right then," he concluded. "The court formally accepts your plea. You are released on a personal recognizance bond until sentencing on December 13, 1991.” I planned on being long gone by then.

My homecoming after the guilty plea was difficult. My parents were angry and disappointed in me. My mom, a religious woman, was particularly devastated. My dad, the military type, was standoffish, offended. I remember my mom crying, telling me I needed to pray to the Lord for guidance. Between her tears I decided all I needed was some luck to get the hell out of there. Luck and a solid bong hit.

I began to prepare for my flight. I had to be careful so as not to raise any suspicions. I was faking my way through debriefings with the feds. During those interviews I was interrogated by U.S. Attorney Christine Wright, DEA Agent Joe Woolf, and the arresting Fairfax County undercover agent Mike Sullivan. I bullshitted them, making them think I would lure in big-time LSD dealers from Cali for them to bust. But the truth was I didn't know any big-time LSD dealers. Even if I did, I'm no rat motherfucker. Anyway, all my dealings were with anonymous people over the phone. The feds didn't know that though.

Christine Wright was particularly fanatical about the case. Her nipples seemed to pop out of her shirt whenever she discussed the possibility of inflicting misery on others. Her diabolical aura made her seem like a female Darth Vader. I felt like Luke Skywalker fighting the dark side of the force. The evil factions of the United States Government were arrayed against me, as I attempted to escape their clutches.

I contemplated suicide, but the prospect of death was terrifying so I decided to stage my suicide instead so the feds would think I was dead, throwing them off my trail and making my transition to a new life easier. If I never turned up, I would be declared legally dead in seven years. It was a good idea I thought.

Great Falls was the place where I would pretend to die. I had it all planned out. I would stage my suicide and then split. Great Falls was a National Park frequented by tourists and kayakers. Vast cliffs towered over the rushing Potomac and the jagged rocks below where class-IV rapids ran wild, representing the most accessible whitewater river in the world. I pictured my body being smashed and mangled against the rocks in the whitewater frenzy as it washed out to the Atlantic Ocean.

I left my wheels in the parking lot for the U.S. Park Police to find. On the banks of the Potomac, near where the Great Falls were crashing down, I left a half-empty bottle of Stoli's vodka, my jacket and wallet, everything necessary to establish my identity. I left a note in the Subaru:

            Journey to the center of the star ain't that far
            Boundaries are limitless in my head Now I'm dead

            Such a tender young imagination Adds to my frustration
                        I crave death
                        Death is my maker
                        So ends the journey of a lost soul
                        Wrong person Wrong place
                        Wrong time

The note captured my feelings exactly. I'd rather have died than have gone to jail. The prospect of spending my youth in prison was too much for me to handle. My whole world had crumbled so quickly. I just wanted to escape the situation. I felt so empty inside as all my hopes and dreams turned to dust. I was left with only one aspiration: To run.

As I walked away from the Potomac I walked away from my shattered life. "Let's go." I told my godbrother who drove me to D.C. National Airport to begin my life on the lam.

I flew to LA where an old girlfriend, Nancy, took me in. She was kind of slutty but sexy and pretty. Not too bright though. She lived at Point Magoo, a Navy Port, up the coast from LA. Her dad was the XO on the base. Her folks didn't know I was a fugitive.

This was the start of my fugitive lifestyle. I lived under a series of false identities, zigzagging from Hollywood to Dallas to St. Louis. At first I experienced extreme paranoia. I was always looking over my shoulder. I thought the feds were waiting around every corner to arrest me and take me to prison. It was all mental though. There were no feds, only me and my paranoid delusions.

For the first couple of weeks after my arrival in Cali, Nancy and I scoured the Washington papers for news of my disappearance. It was strange seeing the headline news in the Metro Section of the Washington Post, "Fairfax LSD Kingpin Missing: Suicide Note found in car." As I read the article I became distraught. Law enforcement officials had declared my suicide a hoax after the park police made an extensive search of the area and found no evidence of a body. It appeared my ruse was up.

When my cash flow ran out I ended up in Texas. My old buddy Zane put me up. He reacquainted me with Mexican Eddie and I started moving some brick weed. Zane's friends at UT were good customers but you can't make money selling weed in Texas. It's too cheap and plentiful. I was selling quarters to the Harrigan’s crowd when I met Jeff, a sleepy eyed, mellow, guitar playing stoner who cooked at the restaurant. He started helping me make moves and I eventually found out he was from St. Louis. So I proposed a little trip.

We took 20 pounds of brick pot up to Missouri. The shit flew out the door. At a grand mark-up per pound, the market was good. Through Jeff I met Dan the man who had a glass blowing business and made some killer pipes and Laid-back Dave who was a senior at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Both of those dudes moved some serious weight. It looked like my fortune was rising again. I went by Christopher Hoss. I had different fake ID's with the first name Christopher so when people asked my last name I said Hoss to avoid confusion. It sounded like a Texas name.

Dallas to St. Louis became my new smuggling route. I was running up 20-pound loads every other week. The loot was rolling in as I started hanging with the TGI Friday party crowd. I was actually getting over all that paranoia shit. Then disaster struck again.

I got arrested in a Burger King parking lot with my partner, Jeff the cook. The cops found a half-pound of weed in his truck. We were taken to St. Charles County Jail. The police released us after I agreed to feed them info on high-level traffickers. Another line of bullshit. When they never heard from me they ran my prints and all hell broke loose.

From watching episodes of "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted," I figured it would take two to three months for my prints to match up. What I didn't count on was my U.S. Marshals top-15 status. My prints matched up in three days and the U.S. Marshals Special Fugitive Task Force, led by Marshal Luke Adler, were hot on my trail.

Why was I top 15? Apparently this federali, Henry Hudson, was one of the U.S. attorney's handling my original case in Virginia, and when I fled, I represented the black mark on his otherwise distinguished record. Coincidentally, Hudson left the U.S. Attorney's Office soon thereafter to head the U.S. Marshal's Service. Hudson moved my case to the Most Wanted list, making it among the marshal's top investigative priorities. This was another case of the revenge factor working against me

On October 1, 1993, at 6:45 a.m., U.S. Marshal Luke Adler and the Special Fugitive Task Force busted into my Econolodge motel room in Bridgeton, Missouri, and captured me. I was kind of half expecting it because in the preceding days I could feel them closing in on me. Jeff the Cook had turned himself into the marshals and became an informant. So due to his snitching ass, I was cut off from my clientele, friends, and money. I was stuck in the hotel room with 18 pounds of pot that I couldn't sell. So I tried smoking it.

It was a relief to be caught. I could be myself again. No more fake ID's. No more running from state to state. No more making up phony stories to protect my identity. And at last, I could call mom.

Seth Ferranti

I was taken to the North County Federal Detention Center. As soon as I was able, I phoned my mother. It was an emotional phone call. I hadn't talked to her for almost two years. She had been repeatedly harassed by the U.S. Marshals during my absence. They threatened her, trying to get her to give information of my whereabouts, information she didn't have. She assured me everything would be okay. She would pray for me and call my lawyers. It was good just to hear her voice. "See you soon mom," I said. As I hung up the phone, I felt tears on my cheek.

I was extradited back to Virginia and brought before the judge. Amid the spectators attending my sentencing, I spotted my mother and gave her a smile. U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea told the judge I was a machine-gun- toting, skinhead-LSD-marijuana freak who corrupted society and deserved to go to prison for life. My lawyer, Reiger, countered that I was a drug- addict mixed-up kid who fell in with the wrong crowd, but that I was really a good person at heart who wanted to change for the better. I felt more like a victim of circumstance, guilty only of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I don't think any of that mattered to the judge.

Judge Hilton tried not to look bored as he contemplated my fate. His countenance grew grim as he shuffled some papers and pronounced my sentence. "You will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General for a term of 304 months." After doing the math, I realized I had a 25-year sentence – more time then how old I was.

Postscript

A first-time, non-violent offender, Ferranti has served 19 years of his 25-year mandatory minimum sentence. His case was widely covered by the Washington Post and Washington Times, and his story was profiled in the pages of Rolling Stone and Don Diva magazine. His current release date is October, 2015. During his incarceration, Ferranti has worked to better himself by making preparations for his eventual release back into society. Ferranti earned an AA degree from Penn State, a BA degree from the University of Iowa through correspondence courses, a Masters from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Along with his studies, Ferranti writes about the prison experience. Numerous magazines including "Don Diva, Slam", "Vice", "FHM". "King", "Feds", "The Ave" have published his articles. Go  tohttp://gorillaconvict.com for more information.

Jan. 21, 2013

Newtown students

A month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama called for sweeping legislation to stem “the epidemic of violence” confronting the United States. The next day, the National Rifle Association called the President’s proposal to rein in gun violence “the fight of the century.”

by J. Patrick O’Connor

In 2012, the Newtown, Connecticut massacre capped the worst year in U.S. history for mass murderers using high-capacity ammunition clips in assault weapons. Fifty innocent people were gunned down in public places.  In April, seven people at Oikos University in Oakland, California were shot to death; in July, 12 people, including a 6-year-old girl, were murdered at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado where another 58 people sustained gunshot wounds; in August, five men and one woman were shot to death at a Sikh Temple outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Three others, including a police officer, suffered gunshot wounds.

All the children murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, were first graders. Seventeen of them were 6 years old and three had recently turned 7. If police and other first responders had not arrived as swiftly as they had, dozens if not scores more of children would have been shot to death.  The shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had several hundred unspent bullets in additional ammunition clips.  Instead of committing the second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history – second only to the 32 people shot to death at Virginia Tech in 2007 – he would have committed the worst.

The principal, the school psychologist, and four teachers were murdered. A vice principal and a teacher suffered gunshot wounds.

Not one child who was shot survived. The medical examiner reported that each child was shot at least three times – some as many as 11 times – with a high-powered semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.

Lanza entered the locked elementary school by shooting out a large glass window near the school’s locked front door shortly after 9: 30 a.m. Hearing the commotion, Principal Dawn Hochsprung ran from her office to confront Lanza. When she lunged at him in the hallway, Lanza gunned her down. As Lanza advanced toward the classrooms, Vice Principal Natalie Hammond and Mary Sherlach, a school psychologist, tried to stop him.  Lanza shot them both, killing the psychologist and wounding the vice principal in the leg.

By now someone had turned on the school’s intercom system and the loudspeakers throughout the school were picking up the gunfire. Teachers all over the school began scrambling to secure their classrooms and hide their students. First grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, hearing gunfire just outside her classroom, led her students into the class bathroom and pleaded with them to keep quiet.  They did and Lanza passed that room and instead entered the first-grade classroom of Lauren Gabrielle Rousseau and opened fire with the Bushmaster, killing Rousseau and behavioral therapist Rachel D’Avino who were both attempting to shield the children.  Then he murdered all 14 children in the room.

Victoria Soto’s first-grade class would be next. The 27-year-old teacher and her teaching aide, Anne Marie Murphy, 52, herded their students into closets and cupboards as shots rang out in the adjoining classroom. Soto slammed the door shut and she and Murphy huddled with the children in the closet. The gunman burst into the room and approached the closet. Soto and Murphy were acting as human shields when Lanza shot both of them dead. As he continued firing the Bushmaster, killing six children, other children dashed behind him and out the door. By now Newtown police were arriving en masse. Lanza used one of the two semi-automatic handguns he brought with him to take his own life, shooting himself in the head.

Lanza was the 28^th victim to die at his hands that day. Earlier that morning he had shot his 52-year-old mother, Nancy Lanza, to death in her bed before setting out for the school.  Authorities said Mrs. Lanza was shot in the face. All the weapons and ammunition Lanza had with him were obtained legally by his mother with whom he lived alone in a $1.6 million home in Newtown. Mrs. Lanza, according to what her sister-in-law Marsha Lanza told a reporter, amassed an arsenal of high-powered, semi-automatic weapons “because she was prepared for the worst,” fearful of the day when the “economy collapses” and “the government and police can’t protect you, and only your own firepower will keep you safe.”

Because this mass murder involved the massacre of 20 first-graders in a rustic setting in an affluent, New England town, it touched a nerve in the American psyche that the slaughter of older students at Columbine and Virginia Tech had failed to ignite. From across the country, calls rang out for stricter gun-control laws. At an interfaith service in Newtown for the Sandy Hook victims and families on Sunday after the tragedy, President Obama said, “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them we must change.”

The next day the White House announced the formation of a special task force headed by Vice President Biden to develop specific policies that might prevent future mass shootings.  Over the next four weeks, the vice president met with 229 groups involved in gun-violence issues, including representatives of the National Rifle Association.

On January 16, President Obama laid out a sweeping gun-safety agenda “to stem the epidemic of gun violence.”  The plan he unveiled represents the largest overhaul of firearms regulations since Lyndon Johnson was president.  Standing at a podium in the White House with children who had written to him in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, the President called on Congress to reinstate of the assault-weapon ban that Congress allowed to expire in 2004, to restore a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines, and to implement universal background on all gun buyers. Currently, people buying guns from private dealers, at gun shows or via the Internet are not required to submit to background checks. As a result, an estimated 40 percent of the guns purchased each year in the United States are acquired without the purchaser undergoing a background check.

Reinstating the assault-weapon ban, limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds, and requiring universal background checks for all gun purchases are measures that require congressional approval and are expected to face deep resistance, particularly in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. At the White House event announcing his gun-safety initiatives, President Obama encouraged members of the public to take their concerns about mass killings to their elected representatives, “Ask them what’s more important: Doing whatever it takes to get an A grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns? Or giving parents some piece of mind when they drop their child off to first grade?”

Despite the uphill battle gun reform faces in Congress, the American public, including gun owners, is now, in direct response to the Newtown tragedy, more inclined to embrace the notion of new gun laws. A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted by phone in mid-January found that the Newtown massacre “appears to be profoundly swaying Americans’ views on guns, galvanizing the broadest support for stricter gun laws in about a decade,” The New York Times reported on January 18, 2013. The poll determined that 54 percent of Americans believe “gun control laws should be tightened up markedly.”

The Times reported that a majority of independent voters now favored stricter gun laws and that there was an 18-point increase among Republicans who felt the same.  By a wide margin, Democrats endorse stronger gun laws. Considering that a USA Today/Gallup Poll taken in the immediate aftermath of Newtown showed that 51 percent of the American public opposed the reinstatement of the assault weapon ban, the movement in public opinion toward tougher gun laws was impressive.

In the New York Times/CBS poll, 47 percent of the respondents said they or someone in their household owned a firearm. There are nearly 300 million firearms in U.S. homes. Among Republican respondents, 62 percent owned guns as compared to 50 percent of independents and 34 percent of Democrats. When asked if they favored a ban on semiautomatic weapons, 53 percent said yes; did they favor a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines, 63 percent said yes; did they favor background checks, 92 percent said yes; did they support a national database on all gun sales, 78 percent said yes. 

A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 88 percent of Americans support requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows; 65 percent support banning high-capacity ammunition clips, and 58 percent favor a ban on assault weapons.

Under the headline “Obama’s gun-violence plan faces a race against time,” an editorial in USA Today on January 17 warned about the futile history of gun politics: 

 “The sad history of gun politics is that the public zeal for reasonable restrictions spikes after terrible incidents, such as last month’s slaughter at a Connecticut elementary school, then fades as time passes and the forces of delay-and-defeat mobilize.

“So it’s encouraging that President Obama, who expressed little appetite for gun control before he was re-elected, has moved ahead quickly with a sensible ‘all of the above’ approach to curb mass killings and the wider gun-violence problem. Now the challenge facing him and other supporters of new measures is to sustain the pressure in the face of powerful interests seeking to slow-walk the proposals to oblivion.”

It did not take long for the battle lines the USA Today editorial referenced to form. The day after the President announced his plan to reign in gun violence, the National Rifle Association sent out an urgent fundraising letter to its four-million members that stated, “This is the fight of the century.” The NRA also released a TV advertising campaign that accused the President of being an “elitist hypocrite” because Secret Service agents protect his two daughters while he opposed armed guards at all the schools in the nation. The White House denounced the ad as “repugnant and cowardly.”

Ron Fournier, writing in TheAtlantic.com, said by putting forth gun-safety initiatives anathema to the National Rifle Association that the President was taking on a formidable opponent. “The organization [NRA] will threaten every red state and rural congressman and woman with the loss of their jobs if they vote for the President’s proposals.”

At Politico.com, columnist George Gascon said that if Congress does nothing else, it should ban high-capacity magazines. He wrote that in all 22 of the mass shootings between 1984 and 2011, the killer used a clip that carried more than 10 bullets. “Those oversized magazines enabled the shooters to collectively fire more than 1,500 rounds in schools, workplaces, churches, and other public places, murdering 225 people and wounding 242 more. Bystanders or police were able to overpower the shooters only when they stopped to reload. There is no need in civil society for such weapons of mass destruction.”

Jan. 24, 2013

“Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Although the crimes took place sporadically over 17 years, there were many distinctive elements, enough to provide a profile of the serial killer who was never caught.

by Dr. Nicola J. Davies

It is one of the most perplexing and fascinating crime sprees in the annals of unsolved murders. “Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Despite numerous arrests and convictions, the true killer or killers remain undiscovered. Various books, films and investigators have theorized on the perpetrator of these brutal crimes, but with no physical evidence being left at the murder scenes, there is little to link the crimes to a perpetrator. However, while the perpetrator/s has never been apprehended, a psychological profile of “The Monster of Florence” can be assembled, providing insight into this killer and his motivations.

Il Monstro: Serial Killer

While some serial killers are opportunistic and disorganized, with his methodical approach and obvious foresight, Il Monstro was clearly an organized killer of high intelligence. The time, dates and location of his crimes indicate that his attacks were planned and well-researched. Furthermore, although the crimes took place sporadically over many years, there were many distinctive elements, the primary one being that all of the victims were couples, except for one suspected case of mistaken identity when two men were killed. In most of the cases, both victims were shot and killed, with special attention being paid to the female. In particular, there was a disturbing sexual element to the crimes, with the female victims being mutilated postmortem. As with many serial killers, this displays an obvious and deep-seated hatred of women, which is reinforced further by one particularly disturbing act within the crimes: the removal of female sexual organs.

The perpetrators method of surprising his victims and shooting them at point blank range exhibits a possible case of significant low self-esteem. The killer did not want to interact or be witnessed by those he intended to kill. It seems that Il Monstro wanted to dispatch his intended targets as quickly as possible, before moving on to the mutilation of the women. When there were difficulties in the execution of an attack, with victims attempting escape or in the case of mistaken identity, he abandoned his usual killing rituals and fled. This suggests that the risks involved circumvented his desire to kill and maim. Other serial killers often trap and torture those that they target, while Il Monstro appeared to want his victims dead as quickly as possible.

The lack of evidence at the crime scene, except for the distinctive bullets used to slay his victims and which could be traced back to the same missing gun, exhibit a particularly chilling attention to detail. Indeed, there is a strong possibility that the perpetrator had an understanding of police procedures and detective activity. As Il Monstro’s knowledge allowed him to resist capture, his killings grew more elaborate with time. While his precision over leaving no traces of evidence continued over the course of his slayings, the treatment of the bodies became more gruesome. His earliest victims were shot and left practically untouched, but it was not long before mutilation of the corpses began, followed by the removal of female body parts, frenzied stabbings, and the body’s being placed in specific positions after death.

The Crime Scenes

The locations for most of the killings were chillingly similar. All took place in or around Florence, indicating that the killer had a good knowledge of the area and therefore might have lived or worked locally. The perpetrator tended to choose rural areas away from busy roads and possible witnesses. These areas, as well as providing the vantage point to the romantic couples the killer appeared to target, provided the privacy that allowed the killer to commit his horrific crimes undisturbed. The killings occurred between 10 p.m. and midnight on overcast, moonless nights, usually on a Saturday evening. This provided the ideal cover for the killer.

The victims selected by Il Monstro also displayed similar characteristics. Couples involved in romantic liaisons were always targeted. With some serial killers, age and appearance can be an important factor, but this didn’t seem to be a concern for Il Monstro; although all couples were relatively young, ages ranged from 18 to 36. Curiously, however, all of the victims had spent the previous evening dancing at nightclubs. The only exception to these behaviors appeared to be the case of two male German campers who were killed. It is believed that this was a case of mistaken identity, as one of the men had long blonde hair.

Ballistic tests indicate the crimes were committed with the same .22 caliber Beretta automatic pistol using unusual copper-jacketed Winchester bullets and a single edged blade. Forensic tests also indicate that rubber surgical gloves were used during the crimes to prevent detection. The gun was used to slay both victims, with evidence suggesting the male victim was targeted first, with the blade used postmortem on the female victims only. This blade was to play a more important part in the crimes as they progressed, with the corpses being slashed, stabbed and body parts amputated. The stabbings and mutilations within these crimes reveal the ritualistic nature of the killer. In particular, the progression in the treatment of the corpses exhibits a development in the motivations of the killer – as his body count increased his actions became more elaborate, possibly due to a growing confidence or an increasing anger or vehemence in his actions.

The Signature

The collated patterns of behavior adopted by Il Monstro provide a “signature” that can be attached to his criminal profile. This signature can be used to reject copycat crimes, while also providing insight into the perpetrator’s drives and motivations. So, what does Il Monstro’s signature tell us about why he killed?

Without the perpetrator caught and behind bars, it is inevitably difficult to establish why Il Monstro chose to kill. However, the particular elements within each crime can provide some insight into motivations. For example, Il Monstro always selected couples for the subject of attack. This might represent his inability to form a relationship himself. In other words, it is possible that the killer felt a need to eradicate something he could not accommodate in his own life.

While both men and women were targeted, his obvious anger towards women is apparent due to the treatment of the female corpses. The attention paid to the female victims indicates that they represent more importance to the killer. The mutilation and removal of genitalia displays a vehement hatred towards women and the fact that these missing organs were never subsequently discovered suggests they could have been kept as trophies by the killer. This is indicative of a possible sexual element within the crimes, in particular an element of sexual inadequacy or rejection.

Criminal Profile: Who is Il Monstro?

Italian authorities, and the media, have also toyed with the theory that there was not just one killer committing these crimes, but a group of killers, possibly connected to a satanic sect or religious cult. Some investigators surmise that the removed female body parts could have been used in religious ceremonies. If this group killing theory can be rejected and the crimes attached to just one individual, then what kind of man is responsible for these horrific murders?

The methodical nature of the killings, which were not spontaneous acts of passion but well thought out pre-meditated actions, point to a highly intelligent and organized individual. While he may not be a native of Florence, he certainly knew the area well. With a focus on the female victims, his hatred of women is obvious, while using firearms to quickly disable the targets suggests a man with a drive to kill but who also lacks the self-esteem to interact or tackle his victims. When the killer did face difficulties during a particular crime, such as the attempted escape of a victim, he abandoned his usual ritualistic activities, suggesting his survival instinct was stronger than his motivation to mutilate.

The complete lack of evidence at any of the crime scenes suggests someone with a good working knowledge of criminal investigation techniques. The use of gloves and a single-blade knife, plus the discovery of one of the killer’s signature bullets outside a Florence hospital, could also suggest a medical connection. With no crimes since 1985, it seems Il Monstro’s killing spree has ended. However, with no viable suspect behind bars and an increased interest in the case in recent years, fascination with the case shows no signs of abating.